Promises to Keep (6 page)

After pulling up to the main entrance, Jay left his car running while he went inside
to get help. The shapeshifter’s body temperature had returned to normal during the
trip, but he still hadn’t been able to wake her, which meant this was a case for doctors
and witches trained in healing, instead of a hunter with a rudimentary knowledge of
magical and mundane first aid.

“Can I help you?” the receptionist asked as Jay looked around, hoping to find Caryn
loitering conveniently nearby.

“I have a woman in my car out front,” he answered. “She’s a shapeshifter, she’s unconscious,
and I can’t wake her.”

The receptionist pressed a button on her desk and said, “Medical needed at main entrance.”
Two of SingleEarth’s EMTs appeared within moments. The receptionist echoed what Jay
had just told her, looking at him only to ask, “What breed?”

“Not sure. You need a witch to look at her, though.”

“Bring her in,” the receptionist told the EMTs. To Jay, she added, “We have plenty
of trained doctors on staff. If it looks like she needs magical care—”

“Where’s Caryn?” he interrupted. Jay had napped a couple hours at Xeke’s place, but
he still needed real
sleep
, of the variety that he liked to regularly engage in for six to eight to twelve hours.
He didn’t have patience for a bureaucratic runaround from a receptionist who normally
dealt with things like shapeshifter obstetrics, minor human injuries and illnesses,
and non-critical mystical mishaps.

Winter Village
, her mind answered, as she said, “Ms. Smoke is not—”

“Never mind.” Though few shapeshifters and fewer witches celebrated Christmas, enough
SingleEarth members did that Haven #2 had set up a “Winter Village” in the events
hall.

Sure enough, Jay found Caryn there, arranging brightly wrapped presents around a half-dozen
evergreen trees whose piney scent had filled the large room. While Caryn meticulously
adjusted wrapping and ribbons, her mind raced through thoughts of schedules, dance
lessons, and food. Something about a caterer and cake.

“Caryn?”

She turned with an expression that was half smile and half frown. “What’s up?” she
asked.

“Medical needs you,” he said.

“They haven’t paged me.”

“Trust me.”

“Jay …” Caryn shook her head and bit back an explanation of
why
the triage process Jay was trying to circumvent existed. Caryn was the only witch
regularly at this haven. If she were called for every skinned knee and headache, she
would never have time to sleep or eat. “Fine,” she said. “What’s the issue?”

She followed him toward the medical wing as he explained.

“Was she with the others you called in earlier?” Caryn asked as she waved aside the
triage nurse and started checking the shapeshifter’s vitals. Pulse was steady, though
slow. Breathing even. Temperature slightly elevated for human norms but well within
most shapeshifter norms.

“No. I went to a Christmas party and stayed with a friend after.” And Kendra’s house
was … hmm. The name of the town was on the tip of his tongue. “Well, I found her in
the woods, a bit ago.”

“Which woods?” Caryn asked.

Behind the apartment complex, which had been named … nope.

“I’ll have to get back to you on that,” he answered.

Caryn took a deep breath, mentally counting to ten, before she said, “Well, she’s
in good hands now. Why don’t you go get some sleep? Your usual room is empty.”

Finally—permission to
sleep
! Jay didn’t need to be told twice. He picked up the key at the front desk, stretched
out on the sun-streaked bed the moment he entered his room, and then let his mind
settle into the shape of
cat
.

His body didn’t change, but mentally he was
cat
. A house cat, who lived only to laze about in the sun and be pampered. And one of
the things cats liked most was to sleep long,
long
hours, which was why
cat
was one of Jay’s favorite things to be.

The Jay-cat dreamed of forests. Of pouncing on butterflies and stalking motes of dust
as they drifted in the warm air. Bit by bit, though, he realized something bigger
was hunting
him
.

He crouched low, trying to hide. He swiveled his head slowly, looking around, but
couldn’t find the source of his unease.

Grass rustled like bones creaking back to life. The rocks themselves groaned in response,
making his body ache and his skin twitch. He growled.

He woke grumpy, sore, and more tired than he had been before his nap. His sunbeam
had left with the morning, his headache had returned, and he knew the mysterious shapeshifter
from the woods was somehow responsible.

Jay had too much magic to mistake outside power for a mere dream. Something was trying
to communicate with him, something powerful enough that even in cat form, his unconscious
mind had instinctively wanted to hide.

Well, whatever it was had ruined his attempt to sleep, which as far as Jay was concerned
was a hangable offense.

Hanging
.

He still couldn’t get Brina out of his head. Could this dream
have been a manifestation of her pain, or an impression from the mind of someone else
he had encountered at Kendra’s? His dreamscapes often echoed lingering bits of the
strongest minds he encountered.

No. Vampires didn’t rattle him like this. This was something more powerful, more alien.

His stomach rumbled. Still lost in a strange jumble of kitty and witch thoughts, he
sought the kitchen.

To a cat, scents were more powerful than sights, and the scents in SingleEarth were
always exciting. There were humans and witches and shapeshifters of every kind. Some
SingleEarth havens were huge complexes where hundreds of individuals lived, but Haven
#2 was small, just a few buildings. Residents mostly cooked for themselves.

People said hello as he opened the refrigerator, trying to figure out if there was
something he could make quickly and easily.

Bacon … 
mmm
, that had promise.

He tossed four strips into a frying pan and turned the knob on the stove, listening
for the
click-whump
sound of the gas going on.

As he waited for the bacon to begin crackling, a nagging feeling at the back of his
neck whispered to him, warning,
There is something out there, something
big.
It’s creeping up behind you, and you’re making bacon?

Food is important
, he thought, trying to reason with his own mind.

Survival is critical
.

Okay. Fine. He would look in on the shapeshifter, see how she was doing, and maybe
figure out the stupid mystery of the ominous lurking power. Maybe she was a hyena
or lion or some other predator that his cat mind had sensed and blown out of proportion
in his subconscious?

Jay lay his bacon on top of some napkins and carried it with him as he returned to
the medical building. The strange shapeshifter was being examined by a human doctor
whose mental patter gave him away as Caryn’s fiancé. Underneath his forethoughts,
which were mostly concern for the still-unconscious woman, he had dance steps on the
brain. What was it about dancing?

“Have you tried asking the serpiente?” Jay suggested.

The human jumped, spinning around. “What?”

Why did so many of his conversations begin with people asking,
What?

“About dancing. You and Caryn are both so stressed about it. Why don’t you ask the
serpiente? They’ve danced professionally for thousands of years.”

“Thanks, but we’re going for a more traditional—I mean, traditionally human—well,
traditionally— We’re not going for serpiente style dancing, um …” He trailed off when
he realized he didn’t know who he was talking to.

“I’m Jay Marinitch,” Jay provided. “We’ve met, but only once.” Jay wouldn’t have had
the foggiest idea what this young doctor-in-training’s name was, either, if it weren’t
for the convenient name tag reading
Jeremy Francisco, Medical Assistant
. “How is she?”

“Nervous enough to shatter,” the human answered with a shake of his head. “We’re supposed
to go by my mother’s this afternoon—for Christmas, you know. It’s the first big family
event Caryn’s come to, and—” He broke off, looking sheepish. “You meant the patient,
didn’t you?”

Jay
had
meant the patient, yes, but now— “You don’t really think they’d
hurt
her, do you?”

“
What?
No, I … Wait. Jay. I remember you now,” he said, thinking,
Caryn was right. He is always this way
. “One of my uncles had a bad run-in with a shapeshifter psychopath a long time ago,
and now most of my family is of the opinion that not-human equals bad. When I first
told them I was in SingleEarth and marrying a witch, a lot of them talked big and
bad. Some of the worst of that still goes through my mind when I’m worried, but I
would
never
bring her anywhere I thought she would be in danger.”

“Physical danger isn’t the only kind,” Jay pointed out.

“Right. But, see, this holiday is my mother’s big effort to show her support before
the wedding. If we don’t go, we might as well write off my whole family, and I’m not
willing to do that as long as they’re halfway trying. I already told my mom flat out
that if anyone gets nasty with Caryn, we’re leaving.”

Jay knew he was a little late to take on the role of big brother. Time to change the
subject.

“So, how is the patient?” he asked.

Jeremy’s frustration with his parents blended seamlessly with his frustration with
this patient. “Physically, we can’t find anything wrong with her. Even magically,
Caryn says she is
stable now. I was about to hit the library, to see if I can identify her breed or
where she might have come from. Want to help?”

“No, thanks,” Jay said automatically. He could read just fine, but given a choice,
he preferred not to. Books were just words to him, flat and static and frustratingly
slow to reveal themselves.

“Okay. I’ll let you know if I learn anything,” Jeremy said. “Mer—um, have a good day.”

“Thanks. Merry Christmas,” Jay answered, since Jeremy apparently celebrated that holiday.
Most of Jay’s kind didn’t, though some had picked up some neo-pagan leanings and had
started claiming holidays celebrated by human witches in the last few decades.

Once Jeremy had left, taking his anxiety and wedding obsessions with him, it was easier
for Jay to focus on the other mind in the room. If the problem wasn’t medical or magical,
then it was probably psychological. That meant Jay was better equipped to deal with
it than the doctors. It was silly that they hadn’t asked him yet.

Skin-to-skin contact made mental contact stronger. Jay reached out to take her hand.

Yes, the shapeshifter slept, but not in any normal or healthy way. In sleep, people’s
minds still worked. Even when they didn’t dream—even if they were medically brain-dead—they
let off sparks from unformed thoughts and neurological impulses. A telepath might
hear nothing unless the person were dreaming, but Jay could pick up on the basic static
that was
life
.

This woman’s mind was as silent as a corpse’s. Either there
was absolutely nothing happening in her mind, in which case her body systems should
have stopped, or else something very powerful was keeping Jay out.

Normally, he would have taken that as a challenge to which he must rise, but this
time he hesitated. Back in the woods, this had gone badly, and he couldn’t help but
remember the presence that had stalked him in his dreams. Did he
want
to seek this woman’s mind?

“J
AY, QUIT IT
.”

The sharp words came from a familiar voice and mind just as Jay had steeled himself
to reach for the shapeshifter’s hidden psyche.

He drew back carefully from the shapeshifter before standing with a long stretch of
his spine and saying, “Hi, Vir. What are you doing here?”

Vireo didn’t bother to answer the question, or to continue addressing Jay in any way.
SingleEarth had called him to check on their patient, since he was a practiced mental
healer. He didn’t bother to say anything out loud, because he knew that as soon as
Jay asked the question, the answers came to mind. Speaking was a waste of time.

After all, they were brothers.

“Careful,” Jay said. “There was another power in her when I first found her. I’m not
sure if it was hers, or someone else’s, but it threw me out. Hard.”

Jay spoke out loud because Vireo, despite having worked most of his life to focus
his empathic abilities, wasn’t always great at picking up all the details.

Vireo nodded and said, “Thanks,” though he had already focused his attention on his
patient and was just waiting for Jay to go away and stop being a distraction.

As Jay turned to leave, he heard Vireo’s mental suggestion:
You might want to change your clothes, too
.

Oh, right
. He was still wearing wrinkled, water-stained tuxedo pants and a dress shirt that
had seen better days, and he had never bothered to put his shoes back on after his
interrupted nap.

Jay kept a cache of clothes in his car for whenever he ended up somewhere unexpected—which
was most of the time. Unless he was hunting, Jay tried not to plan anything more complicated
than naps and breakfast, which meant he didn’t maintain an apartment. Even his car
was registered in his father’s name. He was willing to rise to the occasion when he
needed to do his job, but he refused to join the stable grind of so-called respectable
life.

While he was retrieving his duffel bag from his car, he noticed his dead cell phone
on the passenger seat. He brought it with him back to his room and plugged it in before
he changed.

Once he was comfortable in jeans and a T-shirt under a heavy sweatshirt he wasn’t
entirely sure was his, he turned on his phone and dialed into his voice mail.