“I love you, too.”

“I love you more.”

“I love you mostest,” I said; we hung up, and Nicky walked me in and down to the showers with the waiting guards carrying my equipment bags. Nicky was the local Rex, which meant when there was other muscle around he didn’t carry shit either.

42

I PUT MOST of my equipment away and was down to minimum dangerous toys when I headed to the group shower area for the second time in less than twenty-four hours. I’d sent Nicky to bed, because one of us needed to get some sleep before we went to Cynric’s senior awards banquet today, and it wasn’t going to be me or Micah. It was as I headed down the hallway after kissing Nicky good-bye that I heard the rumble of male voices—a lot of male voices.

I’d totally forgotten that now was one of the busiest times for the showers, because it was either people who came in early to make sure they got the required gym workout done before work, or those who finished their shift and then headed to the gym before bed. I’d done it both ways. Honestly I preferred to work out in the early or late afternoon and then head in to work, but some weeks I just struggled to get the exercise in like most people did. The difference was, if I wasn’t in good shape I might lose the next fight with the bad guys, or not be able to outrun them or chase them down; either way exercise wasn’t a luxury for me, it was a serious necessity.

Hearing all those voices, feeling the energy of them even from a distance, made me slow down. I so did not want to deal with having to either walk through the group shower and all the naked men to one of the covered shower stalls, or throw the boss card down and make them all get out and wait while I showered. Either way it was awkward. I almost turned back for the room I shared with Micah and Nathaniel when we slept at the Circus, but two things stopped me. One, Nathaniel was probably asleep and I’d wake him. Two, I was being all cowardly about the group showers and I hated being that uncomfortable about anything. I’d found it was just better to face it head-on and keep going. It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it worked for me—most of the time.

I walked up to see a laughing group of guards, most with their hair still damp from the shower, walking toward me. The laughter faded a little around the edges, as they all tried to do their own version of greeting one of their bosses. Two nodded, one said, “Ma’am,” and one gave a very crisp salute. It wasn’t the first time one of the fresh-from-the-military guys had done that. I’d been told the rules. I did not salute back; if I’d been a superior officer then it would have been my call whether to return the salute anyway, but since I’d never served in the military for real, my saluting could be seen as a sign of disrespect.

I nodded back. If I could remember names I used them with the nod, though honestly we had so many new guys coming in to use the gym that I didn’t know all the names anymore. Now that I knew that Micah and the other leaders were trying to recruit enough “soldiers” to replace all the werehyenas if we needed to, I understood why there were so many new faces. Most of the new guys must have liked a morning workout, because the amount of noise from inside the showers was a lot.

I stood just outside the door, steeling myself to go into the shared locker room where we could put our weapons and some people undressed. If we’d known we were going to have more female guards we might have built two locker rooms, but no one thought of it when the plans were laid out, or maybe lycanthropes just didn’t sweat nudity, even in the shower, so maybe it was just me feeling all squirmy awkward about it? Either way, I wished for a girls’ locker room as I hesitated at the open doorway; I wished really, really hard. But like all the female sportscasters who’d been told, sure you can have all the chances to interview the players that the male sportscasters have, but you still have to go into the shower and see the people you’re trying to interview possibly naked—there really is no such thing as equality, just different levels of inequality, and how hard are you willing to fight for it all? Fuck.

Did I yell out “girl in the locker room” the way they did in some of the professional sports locker rooms? I realized I would have been a lot more comfortable if someone inside there were a lover of mine, but knowing they were men I’d never seen nude, or had no “right” to see nude, made me more embarrassed. I’m not saying that made sense; I’m just saying that’s how I felt.

Someone walked around the open doorway so fast, they ran right into me and sent me stumbling backward. I barely kept my feet. It was one of the new female guards from L.A. She was a little taller than me, and built like a feminine square with shoulders broad enough to make most men very proud. Sheer greater mass had almost set me on my ass.

“Oh, I’m . . . so sorry.” She blushed scarlet even through the darkness of her skin, which was a nice solid brown, as if she’d tan incredibly dark given a chance.

“It’s okay,” I said.

She reached out to touch my arm as if to reassure herself I was okay, then dropped her hand as if she didn’t know what to do with it. “I didn’t see you. I mean, I wasn’t noticing. I mean . . .”

I laughed. “It’s okay, Pepita, right?”

She nodded. “Yes, I’m Pepita, but they call me Peppy.”

“Which do you prefer?” I asked.

She looked confused for a second, and then said, “Peppy, I am so not a little anything.” And she spread her hands wide to sort of take in the thickness of her body.

“Don’t apologize for not being little; you’ll be able to lift weights that I can’t even imagine lifting.”

She looked pleased and ran a finger through her short, black hair, tucking it behind one ear where it didn’t stay. Either she had only cut it short recently, or it was a very old habit from years of having much longer hair. Some habitual gestures stay on for years after the reason for them is long past.

She was still dressed in baggy gym shorts and an oversized men’s T-shirt, as if she wanted to hide her body even while she worked out, or maybe it was just comfortable and I was projecting.

“You just finish working out?” I asked.

She nodded, smiled. “Yes.”

“But you didn’t shower yet.”

The smile faded. “No,” and she looked down, not meeting my brown eyes with her own anymore.

“Too many men, and not enough privacy for you in there?”

Her eyes darted up to me and then she looked at the floor again. “I know we’re all shapeshifters and nudity is okay, but . . .”

“You’re still the only girl with a bunch of guys, most of whom are cute and very in shape, and you’re all expected to pretend you don’t notice each other.”

She looked at me. “Yeah, we didn’t do this kind of big group thing at home. Claudia told me that she did it and so could I.”

“Is she in there now?” I asked.

Pepita, I mean Peppy, shook her head.

“When did Claudia tell you that?”

“When she showed us around the gym area. We asked where the girls’ locker room was and she told us that we were going to be professional about this, just like we were about any other part of our job.”

“That sounds like Claudia,” I said.