Long Shadows: The Lycanthropy Files, Book 2 (7 page)

“What?” She looked at me, startled. “Did I miss something?”

This close to her, I could see the dark circles under her eyes, and guilt bloomed like a black flower in my chest. She’d been keeping watch over me. I could vaguely remember some argument between her and Leo, which explained why he wasn’t in evidence.

“No, sweetie. Keep reading. Tell me if you find anything useful.”

“You’re not getting off that easily.” She grabbed my wrist when I turned away. “Here are some books for you to look through.”

“Let me read, and you go get some sleep.” I took the book from her. “Thank you for watching me, but you need your rest.”

“Yeesh, you get pregnant, and suddenly people go from saying how tough and resilient you are to ‘you need your rest.’”

“The shadows under your eyes agree with me.”

“Fine.” She yawned. “I’ll go grab a quick nap. Dinner’s in the slow cooker. It’ll be ready about six. Come get me if I’m not up by then.”

She left me at the desk with a big stack of books. There were more entries on the making of werewolves than how to unmake them. Each culture had their own take on it, but nothing could explain what had happened to me, either when Peter turned me or when Max unmade me.

But do I think it was Max?
I asked myself.
My instincts say no. They say he saw the dart in my leg, realized I’d probably collapse inside, and didn’t want to stick around for an angry Leo to confront him, especially right after the hunt and with his pregnant mate nearby. So where did he go, and where is he now? And how did he not leave a scent?

As if my thought had conjured Leo, I heard him open the side door, and I jumped. I’d been staring at the same page for twenty minutes, thinking but not reading. His footsteps came to the library.

“Can’t you do anything quietly?” I asked him, half kidding. “Joanie’s napping.”

The face that appeared in the door wasn’t Leo’s ruggedly handsome dark one, but rather one I had become all too intimately familiar with the year before. Blond hair, ice-blue eyes, a long, straight nose, and narrow, aristocratic features—Peter.

My heart danced a Tarantella in my throat to the point I couldn’t speak around its tapping. I wasn’t sure if the sweat that came to my palms was a sign of fear, anger, joy, something else, or a mixture of all of it. He walked toward me, his hands out in a placating gesture.

There must have been some of the wolf in me somewhere because the anger won out, and I snarled and slapped his face. Or tried to. My hand went right through him, and the momentum made me stumble into the desk, bruising my hip. I rubbed the spot and took a deep breath. He watched me, arms folded and with a puzzled look.

“Am I dreaming?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I might be. It’s night where I am. You called me.”

“No, I didn’t. I don’t even have my phone with me.”

“Not like that. With a spell. What were you reading?” He walked to stand beside me, and I shuffled over. He hadn’t felt cold like a ghost, but I wasn’t sure what he was.

“I was trying to figure out what happened to me in the woods. I got shot with something, and now I can’t access my wolf side.”

He studied me, then, a puzzled expression on his face. “You’re one of them?”

“Because you made me.” Now I really wished I could hit him. “You did something to me that first day when we went to lunch and made love.”

“I… I didn’t know it had worked.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “What did I do? It’s been so long, and so much has happened, I can’t remember.”

I opened my mouth to tell him, then shut it.
Not so fast there, Buddy.
“I don’t remember it all, either.”

“You’re lying. I don’t blame you.” He smiled, but not in a friendly way, and his wolfish side came through. “Don’t worry, I do remember certain details of that day. You were quite compelling in your efforts to get information out of me.” He caressed my cheek with one finger, his touch feather-like.

Heat rose through my chest and into my cheeks. “It helped us solve what was going on here, and you got your son back. You made out better than anyone here.”

This time, the anger on his face made me step back, but he followed me, a dangerous dance with a partner I wasn’t even sure was real.

“I would say your little friend the fake doctor came out better than anyone,” he told me. “Marguerite left with Lance once we got to France and is hiding with her family. I can’t even see my son.” The anger on his face melted into pain, but then the fury was back.

“Joanie was turned too,” I said. “It hasn’t been easy for any of us.” Something Max had said in the woods came back to me. “I was told by someone that the way I was turned into a werewolf made me different, and I have attracted some dangerous attention. Do you know anything about that?”

“No, but I will look into it for you. I have made some powerful friends among the European wolves.” He looked up. “I must go, but I will visit you again now that I know how to find you.”

That didn’t reassure me. He disappeared, and I came to myself sitting in the desk chair, the old spell book open in front of me to the “Nocturnal Travelings” chapter.

“Maybe it was a dream.” I stood to get a drink of water, and my hip twinged where I’d hit it. “Or maybe not.” My gaze wandered to the woods outside. “But he said European werewolves! We aren’t the only ones.”

Chapter Six

Joanie appeared for dinner looking much more lively and rested than I felt. I’d tried to read the books she left for me, but the strange terms and language only danced around in my head. We sat down at the kitchen table to camp stew and fresh baguette.

“The best thing I ever learned in graduate school was how to nap,” she told me. “How did your reading go?”

“Oh, it went.” Although the sore spot in my hip made itself known every time I moved my leg, I still couldn’t convince myself that Peter had been real.
Maybe I bumped it while I was asleep, or it’s from the tranquilizer dart.
“Where’s Leo?”

She shrugged. “He’s in town in the clinic with Matthew. They’re working on safety precautions since we don’t know who or what is hunting us.”

“Does he think it’s Fortuna?”

“That’s one possibility, but he had plenty of opportunity to capture you, especially after you’d been tranked. Instead, he brought you home.” She shook her head. “Not that we were thinking clearly about it at the time. He was smart to disappear, but I’d love to know how he did it without leaving a trace.”

“I was wondering about that too.” I swirled my wine. She, of course, wasn’t having any but had opened a bottle for me. “Leo’s mad at me, isn’t he? I admit I don’t remember a lot of our conversations from last summer since I was getting sick, but I do recall his temper, especially after hunting.”

Joanie wouldn’t meet my gaze. “He just needs time to cool off. Being here in his brother’s house unsettles him, and he sometimes swears he can feel Peter’s presence here even though we’re pretty sure he’s not dead.”

A chill went down my spine. “I can leave if I need to.”
Not that I have anywhere to go.

“No! That will not be necessary,” she said more calmly. “It’s my house and ultimately my decision. It’s not really about him and me, but rather our inner wolves fighting it out for alpha position. I thought we’d made progress with taming those impulses, but with the baby, they seem to have gotten worse again.”

“I’ve heard men have sympathy reactions with hormones and stuff,” I said. “But I can leave. I have some money saved up, and maybe I’ll move to a different part of the country and disappear.”

She took a deep breath and exhaled. “I don’t want you to. And you don’t have to worry about money—you know that.”

“You can’t support all of us, Joanie.” Once again, I was reminded of the strength and stubbornness in her petite self. “What is this really about?”

A tear escaped in spite of her furious blinking. She wiped it off with the back of her hand. “I’m just lonely,” she said. “I mean, Leo’s great, but ever since…” She gestured at her belly with the spoon, and I guessed she meant her pregnancy. “Everything’s changed. I used to be satisfied with my books and my research and my studies of these fascinating new CLS sufferers, but now it’s like I crave having other people around. Leo’s gone long hours at the clinic, and it’s just me here with the trees and the sounds of the forest.”

“That does sound isolated. Is there something you could do to meet more people in town? What about the other pack members?”

“Stop playing social worker,” she snapped, and her irritable response told me just how much stress she was under. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be snippy. The pack members are all male at this point, and even Kyra didn’t really give me the kind of female connection I need. As for the townspeople, they’re understandably mistrustful of outsiders, especially after the kidnappings and everything.”

“But you were the one who solved what was going on.”

“I’m still not one of them. Maybe it’s the money. Maybe it’s having the manor rebuilt. Maybe it’s because they sort of know what we are.” She shrugged. “Whatever it is, there’s a distance that’s not going away.”

“If I’d known, I would have come back sooner,” I said.

She smiled then, a small but genuine one. “I can’t depend solely on you, I understand that. I’ll just enjoy your being here while you are, and I’ll help you get set up wherever you go next.”

“Thanks.” My wheels were turning. “There’s got to be werewolf communities somewhere you can talk to, figure out some of this stuff like how to handle your increased need for community and your mate’s stronger protective urges while you’re pregnant. Maybe in Europe?” I asked, remembering what Peter had said.

“I’ve looked online, but with the teen vampire and werewolf craze, there’s too much from people who are pretending to be paranormal creatures. I don’t even know if traditional werewolves would use the internet.”

“Well, it’s hard to type with paws. Phew,” I said and looked in my now-empty wine glass. “What’s the ABV in this? I don’t remember wine ever going to my head like that before.”

“It’s not that strong. Remember, you were drugged, and you slept for thirty-six hours, so you weren’t eating.”

The room spun. “I should go back to bed.”

“Good idea.” She helped me up the stairs and into my bedroom. I don’t know if it was our best friend link or something else, but I could feel her loneliness and months of isolation. She kept me awake while I brushed my teeth and put me to bed. It was like in college when I’d been out, and she’d stayed in to study.

“You’ll be a good mom,” I mumbled, and the words slipped out before I could stop them. “Seriously, Europe. There are wolves there. Peter said so.”

“Peter? When?”

Before I could answer, I was asleep.

In my dreams, I was back on the beach, sunning myself in that goofy skimpy white bikini. I had to admit it looked good—the hunting and changing, even in spirit form, seemed to have kicked up my already high metabolism. Both my parents had been full-blooded Italian and slender. It was a measure of how much the alcohol was affecting me because I only let the memories of them into my conscious mind rarely, and usually not by choice.

I brought my attention back to the scene: the white sand glittering in the sunlight with a million little refractory rainbows, the clear blue-green water caressing the shore with waves, tropical trees and plants behind me and nothing but ocean in front of me. I was alone except for a seagull digging in the wet sand a few feet in front of me. It glanced at me with intelligent eyes and went back to hunting for food.

“Not much here, is there?” I asked it. “Not that I want there to be. No other people, no music, no memories… Perfect.” The sun in its cloudless sky warmed me, but the memories had pushed to the surface, green shoots from the bulbs of pain beneath.

“What the hell?” I asked the seagull. “Maybe saying these things out loud will purge them and make them go away. Not that the therapy I did in college helped much, but she was more of a ‘tell me about your week’ therapist, not someone who actually did anything.” I sighed and closed my eyes. The negative image of the ocean and sand stayed in my eyelids and made the beach look dark and the water white. It’s how I’d always imagined the afterlife: the reverse of life with more darkness and sorrow than joy.

“My parents were killed in a car accident when I was a freshman in college. My Aunt Alicia took over the finances and helped me manage my money through school, but we weren’t close. My main support during that time was Joanie, whose parents were divorced. She was well on her way to being estranged from her father, and her mother was batshit crazy. Pardon my language.”

The seagull had stopped picking at the sand and just watched me. Its eyes judged me.

“It’s my dream. I can use whatever vulgarity I want. See? Fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck fuck.”

The bird shook out its feathers.

“Oh, did I offend you? Man, you’re the worst therapist ever, even more than the lady in college.”

“Tell me more about your parents,” it said in a voice with an accent I recognized.

I tried to crab-crawl over the back of the beach lounger, but something held me in place. I pondered running but knew he could find me anywhere here in this world of his making.