Page 94 of Rapture's Edge (Night Prowler 3)
But he didn’t speak. He held his silence and the raw, barren look on his face didn’t change, but no sound came out of his mouth and that was almost too much for her to bear. In that moment, she felt like something inside of her died.
She took a step back. Another.
He said, “I’ve never lied to you. Give me your trust and I can prove it.”
Her laugh was a bitter, ugly thing that she might have been ashamed of if she weren’t so choked with the ashes of her hope. “If you were in my shoes—if the roles were reversed—would you trust you?”
He stared at her, unmoving, miserable. His mouth twisted. He whispered, “No.”
She closed her eyes and briefly wondered how long it would take before her ravaged heart just decided to stop beating, bereft as it was of any reason to keep on.
“Finally.” She opened her eyes and looked at him. “Finally an honest answer.”
Then she Shifted to Vapor and left her clothes in a pile at his feet, leaking air.
The problem with Shifting to Vapor and leaving all your clothes in a heap on the floor is what happens when you Shift back.
In other words, if you’re anywhere except a nude beach or alone, people are going to stare.
Eliana crept, as slowly as she could without being noticed, over the smooth plaster ceiling of the hospital corridor. Nurses and doctors passed unawares beneath her as she flowed silently forth, navigating around buzzing light fixtures, trying to be as unobtrusive as a small cloud of mist slinking along a rough ceiling possibly can. She passed the visitors’ area and the information desk and swept into an elevator with a hugely pregnant woman holding the hand of a small boy.
Stretched thin as a breath of air, she hovered against the metal fixture on the roof of the car that held a row of florescent lights. The boy—towheaded, barely a toddler—looked up and smiled. To her horror, he pointed and said to his mother, “Thmoke.”
“There’s no smoke, honey.” The mother didn’t even look up. The elevator doors slid shut, and the car began a smooth climb. But the child would not be dissuaded.
“Thmoke!” he insisted, and stomped a foot. “Thmoke!”
Eliana shrank slowly to one corner.
The mother sighed—the heavy, defeated, I-never-signed-up-for-this-shit sigh of motherhood—dug through a large handbag slung over her shoulder, and produced a set of brightly colored plastic rings on a chain with bells. She dangled it over the boy’s head.
“Here, sweetie. Play with this.”
When the child snatched the rings from her hand and began to chew on them, instantly forgetting his fascination with the cloud of mist that was Eliana, she relaxed, profoundly grateful for short attention spans. The doors opened on the fourth floor, and mother and child disappeared down an empty corridor.
She took form for a millisecond as woman and pressed the button for floor six, then Shifted back to Vapor, drifted back up against the ceiling, and rode the rest of the way alone.
Once on Gregor’s floor, she found the nurses’ break room without too much trouble, and luck, for once, was on her side. Someone had left their uniform in a plastic dry cleaning bag slung over a chair.
Eliana smiled. She wouldn’t have to visit Gregor naked after all.
“Time for your sponge bath, Mr. MacGregor.”
Gregor opened his eyes, saw a somber Eliana in a nurse’s uniform and white hat perched on the metal rail at the foot of his bed, and wondered how a man of thirty-eight could survive a bullet to the chest but later die of heart failure from the simple pleasure of seeing a sexy woman in tight, fantasy-inducing clothing, mere feet away.
“Sweet Jesus,” he muttered, eyeing her. “Saint Nick was feeling generous this year.”
She tugged on the collar of the uniform, which appeared to be a size too small; she was bursting out in all the right places. “Better than a lump of coal in your stocking?”
He grinned. “I’ve got a lump all right—but sweetheart, it’s not in my stocking.”
This earned him a smile, small and wry. She slid off the railing and took a seat in the ugly green chair next to his bed. She had her hair tucked up under the hat, but a few messy strands escaped, blue-black and telling. He glanced at the door, at the two armed police officers still stationed outside.
“Not safe,” he murmured, and then glanced back at her. “Probably not too smart, either.”
“How could I stay away? You underestimate the power of your charm, Gregor. Also, you overestimate the intelligence of our friends, there.” She shot a dour look to the door. “They didn’t even look at my face when I came in.”
Gregor dropped his gaze to the low V of the white uniform, perusing the lush landscape of cleavage presented therein. “Can you blame the poor bastards?”
