Page 7 of Delivered and Devoured
My hands flex. The ridges settle. Mostly. This is fine. Containment job. Chain-of-custody handoff. Sign a flimsy and pass the haunted shipment to whoever Mother has sent and undock by mid-shift. I can do this with my eyes closed. I have done this exact handoff a hundred times.
That’s when the boots stop at the top of the ramp.
Not at the ramp. Past it. They made it all the way up and into the hold before going still, and that means nerve, or momentum, or the particular forward motion of someone who has had an unpleasant morning and decidedthroughis the only direction available.
My tongue flicks out before my brain has a vote.
Adrenaline. Recent-sprint, not fear-fresh. And underneath it, warm and unannounced, something sweet and layered that my biology straightens up and pays attention to. Compatible. A register that hasn’t fired in forty-one years of living and isn’t supposed to fire at all.
Female.
I set the driver down very carefully.
I turn around.
She’s small. Curvy. Flushed all the way down to where the jacket — wrong jacket, too broad in the shoulder, broken into a male’s frame — gapes at the throat. Her hair’s escaping whatever she did to it this morning, brown strands curling damp at her temple. Her eyes are huge, hazel shifting green in the work-light. She’s holding a datapad two-handed, like it might bolt.
Everything in me saysyes.
It says it without consulting anyone else. It says it the way a Skiveth male’s biology is supposed to say it once in a lifetime and has not, for me, said it in forty-one years, and I have approximately one second to decide what I am going to do with my face.
I lean a hip against the cradle. Cross my arms.
“You supposed to be here?”
She straightens. Both feet planted. “Lorri Vance. SNAG. Chain-of-custody on the flagged pod. I have the datapad, I have the authorization, I’m absolutely meant to be here.” A breath. “I went up the wrong ramp first.”
“How wrong?”
“Bay Thirteen wrong.”
“Ah.”
“Something in there roared at me.”
“I’d imagine it did.”
“It was deafening.”
“Vresh has feelings about visitors. He bites.” I tip my chin at her hands. “You held onto the datapad.”
“I held onto the datapad.”
“Good.”
That word does something to her. The flush deepens from cheek into throat, and her grip on the datapad shifts. Her pulse is going at her collar. I could count it from here. I could count it with my eyes closed. My tongue catches the edge of her scent again and I stop counting because if I keep tracking her pulse while tasting sweet-warm-compatible on the air, my ridges are going to go full dark in front of her, and I am not ready to explain that.
“Jazil Ereux.” I push off the cradle. Walk toward her. Slow. “OOPS. The pod’s mine until you sign for it.”
“Right.” She fumbles the datapad around. “Right. Yes. I have the form preloaded.”
She has. It’s flawless when I take it — every field, the case number, the containment specs, the signature line waiting clean and bright. She does this part well. Whoever briefed her drilled it.
“Who briefed you?”
“Flossie. Florence Knight. SNAG.”
I look up. “Flossie’s running her own outfit?”
