Read Online Incubus Dreams by Laurell K. Hamilton - Free Book Online Page A

own outrage, and anger.
    We’d started seeing each other less and less over the last few months, until it had gotten to the point where we hadn’t talked in a couple of months. I’d known she and Louie were still dating, because he and I had mutual friends. I wondered what the fight was about, but it wasn’t my fight. My fight waswaiting out there in the parking lot, leaning against the side of my Jeep. All three of them were leaning against the Jeep. It was like a lineup, or an ambush.
    I hesitated in the middle of the asphalt, debating on whether to go back and offer to referee Ronnie and Louie’s fight. It wasn’t kindness that made me want to go back; it was cowardice. I’d have much rather gotten dragged into someone else’s fight than face what was waiting for me. Other people’s emotional pain, no matter how painful, is so much less painful than your own.
    But Ronnie wouldn’t thank me for interfering, and it really wasn’t my business. Maybe I’d call her tomorrow and see if she’d talk, see if there was still enough friendship left to save. I missed her.
    I stood there in the darkened parking lot, caught between the fight behind me and the fight waiting for me. Strangely, I didn’t want to fight with anyone. I was suddenly tired, so terribly tired, and it had nothing to do with the late hour, or a long day.
    I walked to the waiting men, and no one smiled at me, but then I didn’t smile at them either. I guess it wasn’t a smiling kind of conversation.
    â€œNathaniel says you didn’t want to dance with him,” Micah said.
    â€œNot true,” I said. “I danced, twice. What I didn’t want to do was play kissy-face in front of the cops.”
    Micah looked at Nathaniel. Nathaniel looked at the ground. “You kissed me earlier in front of Detective Arnet. Why was this different?”
    â€œI kissed you to give Jessica the clue to stop hitting on you, because you wanted me to save you from her.”
    He raised his eyes, and they were like two pretty wounds, so pain-filled. “So, you only kissed me to save me, not because you wanted to?”
    Oh, hell. Out loud I tried again, though the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach told me that I was going to lose this argument. Lately, around Nathaniel, I always felt like I was doing something wrong, or at least not right. “That isn’t what I meant,” I said.
    â€œIt’s what you said.” This from Micah.
    â€œDon’t you start,” I said, and I heard the anger in my voice before I could stop it. The anger had been there already, I just hadn’t been aware of it. I was angry a lot, especially when I wasn’t comfortable. I liked anger better than embarrassment. Marianne, who was helping me learn to control the ever growing list of psychic powers, said that I used anger to shield myself from any unwanted emotion. She was right, I accepted that she was right, but she and I hadn’t come up with an alternative solution, yet. What’s a girl to do if she can’t get angry, and she can’t run away from the problem? Hell if I know. Marianne had encouraged me to be honest, emotionally honest with myselfand those closest to me. Emotional honesty. It sounds so harmless, so wholesome; it’s neither.
    â€œI don’t want to fight,” I said. There, that was honest.
    â€œNone of us do,” Micah said.
    Just hearing him be so calm helped the anger ease away. “Nathaniel pushed it on the dance floor, and the ardeur rose early.”
    â€œI felt it,” Micah said.
    â€œMe, too,” Jason said.
    â€œBut you don’t feel it now, do you?” Nathaniel said. His eyes were almost accusing, and his voice held it’s own thin edge of anger. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever heard him that close to being angry.
    â€œAnita is getting better control over the ardeur ,” Micah said.
    Nathaniel shook his head, hugging