Page 27 of Blade

Blade was just staring at it but he hadn’t moved away from me. I wanted to think that was a good sign but I wasn’t sure. I tried being patient but that had never been my strong suit, so I just did the best I could as he made up his mind about something.

“There’s all kinds of new technology that will make talking easier until we get this figured out.” Some of it had to be helpful in our situation. “You’re smart and we’re highly motivated, so?—”

Oh.

M

He was touching the buttons with his nose but probably had a thousand questions about what the fucking tablet was. He’d been whammied before cordless phones were a thing, so this had to look insane.

A

What was he spelling?

I really didn’t have the patience for this game.

T

This didn’t look right at all.

What kind of question started with mat?

Material?

Matrix?

Matted fur?

E

Oh.

Fucking hell.

“My first reaction is to close my eyes and not look at that word, but I understand that would be mean.” It was his only form of communication, so I couldn’t do that. “Are you going to be mad at me if I tell you that I’m not ready to talk about that?”

His blank expression wasn’t giving me any clue but the fact that he hadn’t walked away probably did.

“I heard the ranger say that word and I’ve had just enough exposure to your world to understand the basics of it.” I really wished I could’ve claimed ignorance, though. “There is just a lot of stuff going on right now and I don’t think I have enough…I don’t know…mental bandwidth to add that to our list.”

Did that make sense?

If anyone needed that spoons analogy it was me, but I wasn’t sure Blade would understand it.

Was that mean?

I went back to petting his head. “I’m not denying we had a connection right off the bat, but I’d like to put off that conversation until we can communicate better.”

Was that fair?

Maybe?

Blade licked my cheek, making me laugh before he turned back to the tablet.

C

A

T