Anthology: Bad Boys Of Summer Part 26

"Heap of junk?" Instead of being insulted, he laughed good over that, the sound sc.r.a.ping at her belly because it'd been a long time since she'd heard it.

Of course, she hadn't seen him in ten years, and the last time she had, he'd been eighteen to her sixteen, all long and lanky, not yet grown into his body.

He was grown into it now, d.a.m.n him, and how. Reaching back, he lovingly stroked the steel of the plane, making the entirely inappropriate thought take root in her brain:did he stroke a woman like that?

Clearly she needed caffeine.

And a smack upside the head.

"You know exactly what kind of plane this is," he noted easily. "And how valuable."

"Fine," she granted. "Your toy is bigger than mine, you win.Now you can go."

Tossing his head back, he laughed again, and she made no mistake-he was laughingat her.

Nothing new.

And finally, here is a portion of a wonderful,

new magical romance that is the first

Zebra trade paperback,

WHEN YOU BELIEVE.

by Jessica Inclan.

Available now.

The men had been after her for a good three blocks.

At first, it seemed almost funny, the old cat calls and whistles something Miranda Stead was used to. They must be boys, she'd thought, teenagers with nothing better to do on an Indian summer San Francisco night.

But as she clacked down the sidewalk, tilting in the black strappy high heels she'd decided to wear at the last minute, she realized these guys weren't just ordinary cat-callers. Men had been looking at her since she miraculously morphed from k.n.o.bby knees and no b.r.e.a.s.t.s to decent looking at seventeen, and she knew how to turn, give whoever the finger, and walk on, her head held high. These guys, though, were persistent, matching and then slowly beginning to overtake her strides. She glanced back at them quickly, three large men coming closer, their shoulders rounded, hulking, and headed toward her.

In the time it had taken her to walk from Geary Street to Post, Miranda had gotten scared.

Now Post Street was deserted, as if someone had vacuumed up all the noise and people, except, of course for the three awful men behind her.

"Hey, baby," one of them said, half a block away. "What's your hurry?"

"Little sweet thing," called another, "don't you like us? We won't bite unless you ask us to."

Clutching her purse, Miranda looked down each cross street she pa.s.sed for the parking lot she'd raced into before the poetry reading. She'd been late, as usual. Roy Hempel, the owner of Mercurial Books, sighing with relief when she pushed open the door and almost ran to the podium. And after the poetry reading and book signing, Miranda had an apple martini with Roy, his wife Clara, and Miranda's editor Dan Negriete at Zaps, but now, she was lost even though she'd lived in the city her entire life. She wished she'd listened to Dan when he asked if he could drive her to her car, but she'd been annoyed by his question, as usual.

"I'll be fine," she said, rolling her eyes as she turned away from him.

But clearly she wasn't fine. Not at all.

"Hey, baby," one of the men said, less than twenty feet behind her. "Can't find your car?"

"Lost, honey?" another one said. This man seemed closer, his voice just over her shoulder. She could almost smell him: car grease, sweat, days of tobacco.

She moved faster, knowing now was not the time to give anyone the finger. At the next intersection of Sutter and Van Ness, she looked for the parking lot, but everything seemed changed, off, as if she'd appeared in a movie set replica of San Francisco made by someone who had studied the city but had never really been there. The lot should be there, right there, on the right hand side of the street. A little shack in front of it, an older Chinese man reading a newspaper inside. Where was the shack? Where was the Chinese man? Instead, there was a gas station on the corner, one she'd seen before but on Mission Street, blocks and blocks away. But no one was working at the station or pumping gas or buying Lotto tickets.

The men were right behind her now, and she raced across the street, swinging around the light post as she turned and ran up Fern Street. A bar she knew that had a poetry open mic every Friday night was just at the end of this block, or at least it used to be there, and it wasn't near closing time. Miranda hoped she could pound through the doors, lean against the wall, the sound of poetry saving her, as it always had. She knew she could make it, even as she heard the thud of heavy shoes just behind her.

"Don't go so fast," one of the men said, his voice full of exertion. "I want this to last a long time."

In a second, she knew they'd have her, pulling her into a bas.e.m.e.nt stairwell, doing the dark things that usually happened during commercial breaks on television. She'd end up like a poor character in one of the manyLaw and Order shows, nothing left but clues.

She wasn't going to make it to the end of the block. Her shoes were slipping off her heels, and even all the adrenaline in her body couldn't make up for her lack of speed. Just ahead, six feet or so, there was a door or what looked like a door with a slim sliver of reddish light coming from underneath it. Maybe it was a bar or a restaurant. An illegal card room. A brothel. A crack house. It didn't matter now, though. Miranda ran as fast as she could, and as she pa.s.sed the door, she stuck out her hand and slammed her body against the plaster and wood, falling through and then onto her side on a hallway floor. The men who were chasing her seemed to not even notice she had gone, their feet clomping by until the door slammed shut and everything went silent.

Breathing heavily on the floor, Miranda knew there were people around her. She could hear their surprised cries at her entrance and see chairs as well as legs and shoes, though everything seemed shadowy in the dark light-either that, or everyone was wearing black. Maybe she'd somehow stumbled into Manhattan.

Swallowing hard, she pushed herself up from the gritty wooden floor, but yelped as she tried to put weight on her ankle. She clutched at the legs of a wooden chair, breathing in to the sharp pain that radiated up her leg.

"How did you get here?" a voice asked.

Miranda looked up and almost yelped again, but this time it wasn't because of her ankle but at the face looking down at her. Pus.h.i.+ng her hair back, she leaned against what seemed to be a bar. The man bending over her moved closer, letting his black hood fall back to his thin shoulders. His eyes were dark, his face covered in a gray beard, and she could smell some kind of alcohol on him. A swirl of almost purple smoke hovered over his head and then twirled into the thick haze that hung in the room.

She relaxed and breathed in deeply. Thank G.o.d. Itwas a bar. And here was one of its drunken, pot smoking patrons in costume. An early Halloween party or surprise birthday party in get-up. That's all. She'd been in worse situations. Being on the floor with a broken ankle was a new twist, but she could handle herself.

"I just dropped in," she said. "Can't you tell?"

Maybe expecting some laughs, she looked around, but the room was silent, all the costumed people staring at her. Or at least they seemed to be staring at her, their hoods pointed her way. Miranda could almost make out their faces-men and women, both-but if this were a party, no one was having a very good time, all of them watching her grimly.

Between the people's billowing robes, she saw one man sitting at a table lit by a single candle, staring at her, his hood pulled back from his face. He was dark, tanned, and sipped something from a silver stein. Noticing her gaze, he looked up, and smiled, his eyes, even in the gloom of the room, gold. For a second, Miranda thought she recognized him, almost imagining she'd remember his voice if he stood up, pushed away from the table, and shouted for everyone to back away. Had she met him before somewhere? But where? She didn't tend to meet robe wearers, even at the weirdest of poetry readings.

Just as he seemed to hear her thoughts, nodding at her, the crowd pushed in, murmuring, and as he'd appeared, he vanished in the swirl of robes.

"Who are you?" the man hovering over her asked, his voice low, deep, accusatory.

"My name's Miranda Stead."

"What are you?" the man asked, his voice louder, the suspicion even stronger.

Miranda blinked. What should she say? A woman? A human? Someone normal? Someone with some fas.h.i.+on sense? "A poet?" she said finally.

Someone laughed but was cut off; a flurry of whispers flew around the group and they pressed even closer.

"I'll ask you one more time," the man said, his breath now on her face. "How did you get here?"

ISBN 0-7582-1953-9.

end.