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nodded. “I was brought into this country as part of the sex trade.” She’d never admitted this to anyone before, not even her friends, but for the first time in her life she felt no shame about her past. If Tala could admit to being a prostitute…
“I was six years old when I came here,” she added. “At first there were just pictures and lots of touching by disgusting old men, but by the time I was ten I was an experienced whore. I might have been little, but I was old enough to know I didn’t like what they did to me. At least I survived. A lot of the other girls died of AIDS.”
“You’re all lucky to be alive,” Tala said. There was no laughter in her voice now. “Thank your Chanku heritage. For whatever reason, we appear to be impervious to human illness. AIDS and other STDs don’t touch us. I haven’t had a cold since I started on the nutrients, and rarely before. You might have been HIV positive before, but once you started nibbling on those grasses, once the changes started to happen in your bodies, any virus in your system would have been removed by a whole new set of antibodies.”
It was quiet around the table. Jazzy felt a new sense of family, even stronger than it had been before, when she’d been part of the group they called the wolf pack.
There’d been no condemnation, not a single negative comment about her and Beth. She glanced at Tala and got a big smile in return.
“For now,” Tala said, “we need to see if there’s enough stuff around here for you guys to wear. I see Nick found some clothes. That’s good. Nothing worse than a naked guy at the table.”
Mik patted Tala on the knee. “We do have our standards. Tala happens to think they’re too low.”
Laughing, Tala hushed him. “We’re leaving early in the morning for Anton’s place up north. I’m tired. I’d love to skip that trip to the store.”
They finished their dinner, talking about the trip north. What it would finally feel like to run on four legs through the towering forests of their dreams.
Somehow, Logan and Jazzy ended up doing dishes while the others went in search of extra clothing. Since his earlier posturing, Logan had grown quietly introspective.
Jazzy liked him a lot more this way.
“You gonna go with them?” Logan started rinsing dishes and adding them to the dishwasher.
“Aren’t you?” Jazzy slid the leftover lasagna into a smaller dish and covered it with plastic wrap.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s all happening pretty fast. We don’t know them.”
Jazzy stared at Logan. “I don’t know you.”
“Huh?” Logan straightened up and frowned at her. “You’ve known me for almost a year. What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Just what I said. I know your name is Logan. I know you showed up one day when we were all hanging out on Stanyan. I know you followed us when we moved to the garden in the park, and I know you like to be in charge. That’s it, Logan. And by the way…is Logan your first name or your last?”
His broad shoulders slumped and he looked away from her. Jazzy’s instincts suddenly went on high alert. “Logan? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.”
She frowned. “You don’t know what’s wrong?”
“Don’t know my name. Don’t know how old I am. Who I am.”
“But…you’re Logan. I don’t get it. Isn’t that your name?”
He shook his head. “I woke up in the hospital a little over a year ago. I found out later that someone found me unconscious near Glide Memorial Church and called an ambulance. I’ve got some memories, but they’re all screwed up with TV shows and fictional stuff, so I can’t tell what’s true.”
Jazzy wrapped her fingers around his forearm. This time he didn’t pull away. Instead he looked directly into her eyes. It felt as if he was trying to talk to her, but without words. She jerked her head and the buzzing in her brain stopped, but she didn’t look away. “Your name is Logan, right?”
He sighed and shook his head. “I don’t think so. It was the name I remembered on the ID tag one of my nurses wore. I needed a name. I took his, but to this day I don’t know if it was his first or last name or if I noticed it because it was familiar. When I got better, they discharged me. One of the doctors said my memories should come back at some time, but they haven’t. Not yet, anyway.”
“Do any of the guys know…?”
He shook his head again. “No, and I don’t want you to tell them.”
“Why’d you tell me?” Jazzy raised her chin. He trapped her once more, holding her prisoner with the feral intensity of his gaze. The harsh sound of his voice was urgent, insistent.
“Because you’re different, Jaz. Because you matter.”
Then he blinked, and Jazzy watched him disappear once again into his cocky, all-knowing, and irritating persona. He tugged his arm free of her grasp and went back to rinsing the plates from dinner.
Somehow, she’d ended up in the same big SUV they’d ridden in before, but this time it was just with Mik, Beth, Nicky—who, now that he’d gotten laid, wanted to be called Nick—and Logan. Tala, AJ, Deacon, and Matt were in Tala’s smaller vehicle, and they were all headed somewhere into the redwoods of Humboldt County in northern California.
Last night they’d called some guy everyone talked about in hushed voices. He’d told them his cabin would be stocked with fresh food and clean linens, so they didn’t have to take much of anything. Jazzy wasn’t sure who Anton Cheval was, but he must be someone important to these people. Even Mik seemed to hold him in awe.
Jazzy sat by herself in the middle seat, scratched at her itchy, tingly arms, and stewed most of the way north. Beth and Nick had the backseat to themselves and spent an inordinate amount of time staring into each other’s eyes. Made her sort of nauseous, to be honest.
Logan was up front with Mik. They were getting along famously, now that Logan had dropped his cocky bastard attitude. In fact, she’d never heard him quite as animated as he’d been over the past hours while Mik drove north. They’d talked about the Chanku, the history of their kind. The fact they were so heavily controlled by their overactive libidos that sex sometimes got in the way of smart thinking.
So what else is new? Jazzy slumped down in her seat and stared sightlessly out the window. Wasn’t that usually the way things worked? Of course, on the other hand, she’d really been hoping for something to happen last night, once she knew they’d have beds and a roof over their heads. She wasn’t sure exactly what, but sleeping on a rollaway in the bedroom with three snoring, farting guys hadn’t been it.
She’d sort of had some strange idea of sharing the bed with Logan, especially since that little window he’d opened into the real man, but they’d all flipped a coin for the big bed and Deacon and Matt got it—with a row of pillows jammed between them. She knew Matt swung both ways, so the pillows had to be Deacon’s idea. Like Matt was going to make a move on him with both Jazzy and Logan in the room?
“Logan? You mind getting that gate? Here’s the key.”
Jazzy blinked herself awake when she heard Mik’s voice. She must have fallen asleep miles ago, because the scenery sure had changed and she really had to pee. Logan grabbed the key ring Mik handed to him and climbed out of the car. He stretched and then walked around the front and opened the gate. Mik drove through, followed by Tala’s vehicle. Logan closed and locked the gate and got back in the car.
Jazzy took a good look around her and realized that while she’d been stewing and napping, they’d left the dry foothills and entered a thick forest of unbelievably huge trees and monster-sized ferns like something out of a movie. The air was damp and foggy, the ground smelled like wet dirt and mushrooms.