Thank You For Not Shifting (Peculiar Mysteries Book 2) (14 page)

“Yes. He’d been skinned while still alive, his throat cut after.”

I shuddered. “It takes a sick, sick mind to come up with some heinous crap like that.”

“I’ve seen worse.” He closed his eyes for a moment as if shaking a memory. “I was a war medic during Vietnam.”

I met his gaze, and I could see he meant it. Even though he didn’t look it, Billy Bob had to be close to sixty-years-old. Undoubtedly, he’d seen a lot over the years.

“Come sit with me in the living room. I don’t want to be apart from you.”

I followed him to the couch, and we cuddled on it like two love-struck teenagers. I touched his cheek with my non-star clutching hand. “I’m sorry for your pain. I’d take it from you if I could.”

“My father never believed his dad could really talk to spirits, so when I began my journey as a spirit talker, he made my life in our community miserable. I joined the military as a way to escape my family.”

“Seriously?”

He smiled sadly and stroked my cheek. “I figured I’d rather face an enemy that I didn’t have personal or blood ties with. I walked over one hundred miles to the nearest recruiting station. A week later I was sent off to basic training. I became a combat medic because I wanted to heal people. To help.”

“And that’s why you became a doctor?”

“Yes, when I returned to the states, I made my mind up to the go to medical school.” His silvery hair spilled forward, tickling my face as he kissed my forehead. “There were times when I thought Brother Wolf had abandoned me, and it took me many years to get to a place where I really trusted him.” He shook his head and chuckled. “Now I find out that you can talk to him any time you want.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Am I envious? Yes. Am I happy for you? Yes. I am glad Brother Wolf is with you. I’d spare you all this horror if you’d let me, but knowing our spirit guardian is with you, at least gives me some comfort.”

“I’m glad too, but I hope you know I wouldn’t thank you for treating me as if I couldn’t handle it.”

“I know.” He sighed. “It’s two in the morning. We should try to get some sleep. Are you going to open the restaurant tomorrow?”

“Today, you mean.” I made a mental note to text Sunny before going to bed to let her know I was okay. Ugh. I did not want to deal with her innuendoes, especially now that they would all be true!

He smiled.

“Yes, oh, wait. It’s Sunday.” The last three days had melded into one awful blur. “We’d planned to open for breakfast only.” I flinched as another thought occurred to me. “I have a lunch date with Dominic Tartan.”

Billy Bob’s lip curled, and his body began to vibrate with agitation. “No.”

“He might have some insight into the victim. He’d seemed to know the ex-girlfriend, Willy Boden, when she came into the police station. I think I should keep the date.”

“No.”

I patted his chest. “I’ve never seen you act this way, Doc. Don’t you trust me?”

“Fine,” he said, instantly changing his demeanor. “I guess I’ll keep my lunch date with Bethany Hilliard as well. She might know something about Blackwell too.”

“If she touches you, I might have to kill her,” I said.

“Same goes for Tartan,” he said without humor. The blazing intensity in which he stared at me made my heart race and my palms sweat.

“Oh God,” I groaned as a highly developed sense of possession overtook me, and I leaped up and wrapped my legs around him. I let him kiss me until I was light-headed, and when he said, “I’m taking you to bed,” I said, “Take me right here, and then take me to bed.”

The delicious roar that tore from his chest when he bent me over the coffee table made me cry out in triumph. After two spectacular orgasms, he took me to bed, where he made love to me, slower, gentler, as he whispered how much he loved me over and over until I cried.

I
’d never been in Billy Bob’s cooler. In here, he kept things that needed refrigeration, like certain medications, burn treatments, and, apparently, dead bodies. He kept the room at thirty-six degrees. In other words, ass-crack cold. It was five in the morning, and he finally agreed to let me see the corpses.

He had three body drawers. Frankly, I thought it was odd he even had one, but as the only medical doctor in a therian community, I guess he had to be ready for anything. Seeing a skinned person in the stark, fluorescent light took away any mystery that might have remained for me. Without shock to protect me, I could see the muscle striations, the bones where the killer had cut too deeply into the flesh as he filleted the skin. I sniffed, sifting through the myriad of aromas on the corpse. There was the expected blood and meat, the sassafras, which seemed to cover his entire body, not just in his mouth, but there were other things as well.

“Do you notice the burnt smell?”

“Yes,” Billy Bob said. “I believe it is thyme.”

“The herb?”

“Some cultures believe it purifies the soul. Not that this is part of a ritual, but…”

“It all feels ritualistic, like what I’ve seen on some of the crime dramas on TV.” I thought of the star in my pocket. “Whoever is doing this, I don’t think they’re done.”

“I agree.”

“What can you tell me about Blackwell?”

“A thirty-six-year-old therian, born and raised in Oklahoma, moved to Kansas to join a community when he was twenty-two. His father was bear, his mother coyote.”

“So he was mixed?”

“Yes.”

“Mike Wares was mixed too. Bear and Raccoon.”

“Hmmm.” Billy Bob tapped his chin. “Probably just a coincidence. Two doesn’t make a pattern.”

With my armchair degree in criminology thanks to the Investigation Discovery channel, I thought the killer was too confident for these to be his first murders. He displayed both bodies at places where the possibility of getting caught was high. “I bet if the sheriff looked, he’d find similar murders somewhere. And with people in from Kansas and Arkansas, he should start inquiring there as well as Missouri.” I crossed my arms and stared at a metal shelf across the room as the smell of disinfectant began to overtake all others. “I’d read in an article that there are serial killers all over the place, and most never get caught because they don’t have any real motive other than to kill.” I glanced back at the bodies. “These poor guys probably never even saw it coming.”

“I’ve sent off blood samples for analysis. I think they were drugged, or at least paralyzed while the perpetrator did this to them. I don’t know how, but I think they might have been forced to partially shift.”

I cringed as I remembered the way the hunter’s guards had tormented me, trying to force me to shift. There were so many sick fucks in the world. Billy Bob put his arm around me and kissed my temple. “Seen enough?”

“Yes. More than.” I rubbed my upper arms. “I better get back into town. Jo Jo and Sunny are opening.”

“I’ll tell the Sheriff about the sassafras. You really should give the star to him—it’s probably evidence.”

I nodded, even though I had no intention of handing over the star. I didn’t know why, but it needed to stay with me.

“Sunny is going to be unbearable,” I said. My
not-to-worry
text sent at 2 a.m. didn’t mention Billy Bob, but after the night I spent with the doc, she would know! And not because she was psychic. My BFF had a gift for reading me as easily as a Doctor Seuss book.

“Tell Tartan hello for me,” he said.

“Tell Bethany to go to hell for me,” I said back.

He smiled. “We’ll meet up at three. Your apartment?”

“It’s a plan.” I rose on my tiptoes and kissed him. I’d meant it to be chaste, but he encircled me in his arms and commanded me with his lips, conquering me where I stood.

When he finally let me go, he said, “Remember. I’ll kill him.”

I shivered all the way down to my toes as he and his fine ass walked out of the cooler in a grand exit. Until I realized he’d left me alone with bodies. Son-of-a-bitch!

I swore under my breath and fled the room with all the grace of a deer on ice.

* * * *

Sunny’s Outlook was slow for breakfast. After we’d closed the day before and news of the murders had gotten around, we apparently declined in popularity for Jubilee attendees. Granted, the body had been left outside, but still—it wasn’t exactly an appetizing image to associate with a restaurant.

The bridge out of town had been manned with guards because the town council and the Tri-State council had voted to close off the town, nobody in or out until the murderer was found.

The sheriff’s office was busy tracking down everyone in town both residents and visitors to take their information. Sunny volunteered us to help man the intake booths to get initial information from folks in the afternoon. I wanted to smack her, but I couldn’t very well say, “No,” now. I told her I couldn’t do it until after four. I had lunch with Dom, and no way was I missing my meet-up with Billy Bob at three…not that I told Sunny about it. As a matter of principle, I had avoided proximity with my bestie all morning.

I wasn’t ready to answer questions about what was going on with me and the doc, especially since it involved more than just my heart. Was I really turning into a lycanthrope? How was that even possible? Yes, there was wolf blood in my family dating back several generations, but Ruth had been right the night before when she’d talked about how therians were always only one animal, no matter their parentage. Jo Jo was a coyote like his dad, not a mountain lion like his mom. This was how our biology worked. So how could this be happening to me? Billy Bob was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a liar. If he said I turned into a timber wolf, no matter how incredulous, I believed him.

It is my doing, sister
, the voice in my head said. I dropped the plate I was washing.

Now that I knew the voice was real, I replied back. “How? And for fuck’s sake, why?”

I can only communicate with my children. Coyotes are not mine.

“I thought I was your sister.”

You are my sister, my daughter, my mother. Where I am, we are all.

“That’s some real philosophical shit there, Brother Wolf.”

I could almost feel his smile.
Good, then we are accepted.

“How did you manage to make me into a lycan?”

It was already in your blood, little wolf. I just called to the part of you that I knew would answer.

“That explains everything.” Not really. I still didn’t understand everything about this spirit talking, but I thought it strange that I could talk to Brother Wolf while doing the dishes, while Billy Bob needed a sweat lodge and a whole bunch of ritual.

You did not call to me, sister. I called to you. The summoning is mine
.

I wanted to get it, but I didn’t. “So, you find me. Is that what you’re saying?”

In order to find you, you have to be lost. You are important to me, child. If you need me, I will come.

“Uh, thanks.” I felt his presence fade. I rinsed the dishes I’d just scrubbed and contemplated the fact that I’d was talking to a spirit in the
aether
, a type of otherworld plane of existence. At least that’s how Billy Bob had explained it. And not only was I talking to him, but he'd also turned me into one of his own. I wanted to be mad about it, but without Brother Wolf, I would have never made it out of that hunters’ lodge alive. I would have shifted. I know that now. He’d kept me strong. Sane.

Well, as sane as I could be after everything I’d been through. Belatedly, I sent up a silent thank you to my spiritual guardian. Mom and Dad were going to be seriously freaked out when they found out that not only was I dating a wolf, I was turning into one, and I was talking to
the
wolf spirit.

Oh well. They’d get over it or they wouldn’t.

“I’ll finish up,” Sunny said as she peeked around the door to the kitchen. “It’s almost noon. I say we close up for the rest of the day. I don’t think we’re going to get more customers. Besides, you better get going for your date with Dominic.” She made kissy faces, and I flipped her the bird.

“Love you too,” she said.

I unplugged the drains in the triple sinks and hung up my apron. After a quick check of my hair and makeup, I headed out for Blonde Bear Cafe.

Main Street was quiet compared to the prior three days. The murders had definitely put a damper on the festivities. However, Blondina’s restaurant was packed. Even horrified, people needed to eat. Dominic was seated at a table in the far corner of the room. His expression was darkly contemplative. He was doing something with his phone, but it was hard to tell what. He could have been texting, searching the Internet, checking out his social media, or playing a game of Angry Turds. When he set his phone down, he looked up and saw me. The darkness ebbed in his expression as his frown turned into a very charming smile. It gave me a warm fuzzy to know he was glad to see me.
Bad Chavvah.

He waved at me. I waved back and headed to the table.

Before I could sit down, Blondina Messer came over with a tall glass of ice tea for me. She was a tall, curvy woman, who always reminded me of Flo from Mel’s Diner, a TV show my parents used to watch. She set the tea on the table. Its perfume made me gag. Sassafras. Ugh.

“I’m sorry, Chav.” Blondina blinked. “I thought you’d like it. Elton Brown got some great sassafras wood in for his furniture shop, and he’s chipped the bark for tea and potpourri. It tastes really good. I swear.”

“Elton’s the one selling all this sassafras?”

“Yes,” she said. “He’s made some fine-looking pieces with it as well. Some of his best work.”

The eight-point star was burning a hole in my windbreaker pocket. I resisted the urge to reach for it.

Dominic stood up and came around my side of the table and pulled put my chair. “Speaking of fine-looking,” he said. “You are looking rather fine this afternoon, Ms. Trimmel.”

This close he smelled like cinnamon buns. I had to resist the urge to lean in and inhale deeply. No man should smell like dessert…or maybe all men should. I thought about Billy Bob, and I smiled. He
was
dessert.

I took the offered seat. “Thank you, Mr. Tartan.”