The Turning Season (24 page)

By the time the song ends, I feel like I've shrunk into a fragile collection of sticklike bones and dried-leaf skin; squeeze me too tight and I'll crumple into dust. As the last notes sound, all the couples on the dance floor stand motionless, still embraced. It's as if we've all been frozen by the cessation of music. I suppose it's only three seconds before the next song starts, but it feels like an eternity before Bruno Mars comes wailing out from the speakers. The people around us shake themselves back to life.

Ryan lifts his head, pulling back a little, though he doesn't release me. Wordless, I glance up at him, not even attempting to arrange my expression into something less exposed. Maybe he can't read my face in the dark, but I can tell he's smiling.

“That was nice,” he whispers, and drops a kiss on my mouth.

My whole body trembles as someone takes hold of Ryan and gives him a hard shake. “Hey! No making out on the dance floor!” It's Celeste, of course, and she pries Ryan's fingers off my arm. “My turn. I want to dance, and Joe says he's done for the night.” Now that I'm liberated from Ryan's embrace, she pushes me back in the direction of the table. “But I bet he'd dance with
you
if you wanted.”

I stumble for a step or two, then have to twist out of the way of three young girls who are gyrating together more wildly than the music would suggest. By the time I'm back at the table, I feel a little less dizzy, but my brain is still in something of a whirl.

Joe's lounging at his ease, sipping from a water glass instead of his beer. From his expression, I can't tell if he didn't witness Ryan's kiss or he just didn't think it was any big deal. “Not exactly the way I expected the evening to wind up,” he says over the music.

“That's what happens when Celeste is in the mix.” My voice sounds normal enough to me.

He holds his arm out to show me the watch on his wrist. Past eleven. “I've got a drive to make tomorrow, and I have to get back tomorrow night before basketball,” he says. “Probably time to leave.”

I am so ready for this night to be over. “Just what I was thinking. Let's go.”

“What about Celeste?”

“Ryan'll take her home or back to her car. She'll be fine.”

But I wave to her anyway as we head toward the door and she waves back, clearly unconcerned. A few minutes later, Joe's truck has pulled up next to my Jeep where we left it outside Paddy-Mac's.

“Here's the bad part,” he says. “Me dropping you off at your car and worrying about your long drive home.”

“I'll be fine. I'll text you when I get in.”

“You do that. Or, you know, you can always sleep at my place. On any piece of furniture you choose.”

“I know. Don't worry.”

He hesitates a moment, and I think he's trying to figure out how to express something unpleasant. I tense up. But all he says is, “You know I'm busy the next couple of days.”

“Yeah. And—I don't know about me. Maybe Sunday or Monday or Tuesday—the change will happen. I can't tell.”

“So it might be a few days before I see you again.”

“Yeah.”

“So that'll give you a little time, I guess.”

“Time for what?”

“To think about Ryan.”

There's dead silence.

“I don't want to think about Ryan,” I manage at last.

He gives me a small smile. Lighting in the truck, under the streetlights, is just about as poor as it was in Black Market, but I can see the unhappiness on his face. “Well, I think you do sometimes whether you want to or not. And he's sure thinking about you.”

“Ryan's not the right guy for me. I'm positive of that.”

“Sometimes we want stuff even if it's wrong for us.”

“Joe—” I put my hand on his arm. He doesn't pull away, but he doesn't draw me closer, either. “I confess, when Ryan's around, I still get muddled a little. But—”

“You're not over him.”

“Maybe not, but I
want
to be over him. I want to move on with my life. I want him in my past, not my present. I want—I want
you
in my life.”

He's been gazing out the front windshield, but now he looks at me again. “And I can't tell you how much I want you in mine,” he says. “But I don't want to fall in love with someone who isn't ready to fall right back. I've done that. And that's about the worst place anyone can be.”

It's the first time the word
love
has come up for air during our conversations, but it's been swimming around just under the surface for a couple of weeks now. I feel a small, hopeful smile come to my face, and I squeeze his arm tighter. “Well, I don't want you to be in that dark terrible place,” I say softly. “I want to fall when you do.”

Unexpectedly, he leans forward and gives me a brief, hard kiss. It's a ghostbuster of a kiss; it chases away the lingering wraith of Ryan's memory. “Don't wait too long,” he says. “I've already started falling.”

I
don't change for another seven days.

It's weird. I feel like I'm in a state of suspension, as if I'm waiting to hear the results of a medical test or a bar exam—as if I can't move forward with my life until I get some resolution on a current problem. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to keep my human incarnation, and even hopeful that my modified injections have bought me more time in my natural state, but I'm unsettled, too. The only thing I want more than a normal existence is a little consistency in my abnormal one.

Joe calls every day, even comes out Monday and Tuesday evening, because I don't want to be caught in town when the change comes over me. He seems to be in a good mood, but there's a little distance between us. We cook meals, we watch movies, we talk easily, we make out a little—but there's a suspension in the relationship, too. Waiting for something.

Bonnie brings Alonzo out on Wednesday and I pronounce him fit to resume light exercise, though I don't think he should be playing basketball yet. “He could dribble and shoot with his right hand, but what if someone knocks him to the floor? It could tear his wound right open.”

Alonzo, who makes it a point not to want anything enough to beg for it, is clearly disappointed, so I relent a little. “Well,” I say. “You can go to practice and do the passes and the shootarounds, you just can't play in any of the games where you might get hurt. And I'll tell your coach the same thing.”

“That's cool,” he says, seeming satisfied.

Except for the fact that he's been recently shot with an arrow, Alonzo's in a good place right now. He enjoys the basketball team; he's started taking a math class at the middle school, and he's unexpectedly good at it; and he got the job with Q-Ville Drugs. Before I cleared him to start riding his bike again, Bonnie took him around in her car to make deliveries, just so he could get a feel for the route.

“That Rich Hogarth—the guy who owns the drugstore?—I think
he
thinks Alonzo has Asperger's,” Bonnie says. “He said something the other day, like, ‘I have a son who's on the spectrum, too. It gives me hope to see Alonzo doing so well.'”

“Huh. I wouldn't say that's Alonzo's primary disability, but maybe it's not a bad thing if people think it,” I reply. “It makes them more willing to make accommodations.”

“Well, he doesn't need any accommodations in math. He's blowing everybody away. It makes me so proud.”

But the most interesting thing that happens this week is that I acquire new tenants.

It's Friday evening, and I've just spent a couple of hours cleaning the barns and rearranging cages. Two different sets of people dropped off puppies earlier in the week, so now I have seven tumbling around the enclosure—three that look like setter/Lab mixes, and four that might be half poodle and half God knows what. The poodles were brought by a longtime client who said her neighbor had threatened to drown them; the other three were left at the house in the middle of the night. Scottie woke me up with a warning growl, so I got to the door just in time to see a shadowy shape dash from the porch to a waiting car, leaving the box of squirming dogs behind. I wished I'd woken up in time to get the license plate, because the puppies looked like they were barely three weeks old, and the night was unexpectedly cold. If Scottie hadn't sounded the alarm, they could have frozen to death by morning.

They're young enough that I start to get anxious about what will happen when I change shape and no one else is around. I bottle-fed them that first morning, then coaxed them to eat real food by nightfall. Still, they won't survive long without constant care. At the moment, Daniel isn't on the premises, so I can't even beg him to stick around until they've grown up enough for me to stop worrying.

But then this particular problem—of all the ones in my life at the moment—chooses to solve itself.

I'm just getting ready to leave the barn and head for the house when I hear car tires scrape across the gravel. Now that we're almost through October, night falls so early. It's almost full dark when I step outside and try to figure out who's arrived.

The car is a big old clunker, white with a lot of rust. It's not too hard to imagine that it's just managed its very last burst of effort and will never be able to move again. A woman is climbing out of the driver's side door, and I note the head of someone else, maybe younger, in the passenger's seat. If there are any others in back, I can't see them.

I stroll close enough to talk, stay back far enough to not seem threatening. It's hard to tell in the dark, but the woman looks edgy to me, nervous, like she's not sure she wants to be here. “Hi, I'm Karadel, can I help you?” I ask.

“I'm looking for someone named Janet,” she answers. There's a slight quaver in her voice. Could be fear, but I'm betting exhaustion. Like the car, she seems to have been pushed to the limit

“Janet's been gone awhile. She sold the place to me. But I know all about her particular—clients,” I say delicately. A down-on-her-luck after-hours visitor is likelier than not to require specialized services, but just in case this woman isn't a shape-shifter, I don't want to be the one to say the word out loud.

She comes a little closer, moving into the circle of my perimeter lights. She's a short, plump, tired-looking woman who might be in her mid-forties; she clearly hasn't spent much time on her hair or clothing. Or maybe she's just been driving for days.

“My dog's sick,” she says abruptly. “Can you look at her?”

“Of course,” I answer. “Is she well enough to walk inside, or can you carry her? Or do I need to get a cart?”

“I'll carry her,” she says.

A few moments later, we form a procession from the car, across the yard, and through the side door into the office. Scottie's right behind me, followed by the nervous woman, who's holding in her arms a Dalmatian that's maybe halfway to adulthood. Bringing up the rear is a teenage girl. I didn't get a good look at her except to notice her fine dark hair, her pale white skin, and her sulky expression. Neither of the newcomers speaks until we make it to my office.

The woman lays the dog on the examining table and leaves her hand resting on the animal's thin shoulder. Just from the way she's breathing, I'm betting that the Dalmatian has a respiratory problem; she lies on the table with the listlessness of a creature too miserable to care what happens to it next. But her dark eyes are intelligent and alert, and they meet mine with a preternatural self-awareness.

The woman might not be a shape-shifter, but her dog is.

I check the patient's vitals, listen to her lungs, and manage to induce a cough. My diagnosis is tracheal bronchitis, and she's a pretty sick little girl, but some oxacillin and prednisone ought to help her mend quickly enough. I give her an injection, which she endures with utter stoicism, then I offer her mother a choice.

“I can write you a prescription for pills you'd need to administer daily. She looks like she'd be pretty good about taking them,” I say. “But if you're planning to be in the area for the next few days, I can give her shots till she's well.”

“But she's okay? She's not—” She doesn't complete the sentence, but it hangs in the air:
She's not dying?
“We've been on the road for a week, and she just kept getting worse—”

“She should be fine,” I say gently. “Better if you stay put for a while.”

The woman sags against the table and buries her face in her hands. “I would. I would. But we—I don't know where we can go, and I—it's just been so
hard
, it's so much
harder
than I thought it would be—”

I can't help glancing at the dark-haired girl, who's pressed up against the wall as if she's hoping she'll turn into some kind of vaporous matter that can leak right through the plaster and wood and into the night air outside. Her eyes are fixed on her mother. For a moment, her stony expression holds, then she presses her lips together, pushes away from the wall, and comes over to give her mother a hug. “Everything will be all right once Desi is better,” she says. I can't tell if she believes it. I
can
tell that she's said some version of this sentence maybe a thousand times in her life.
Everything will be all right. Just wait and see.

“Let me give you some tea and maybe a little dinner and we can talk about your options,” I say quietly.

The girl gives me a sharp look. She's not used to random displays of generosity, and she's already wondering what the catch is. But the woman takes a deep breath that's just this side of a sob and nods. I hand the daughter one of the rag blankets I keep in a basket and say, “Let's all go to my kitchen. Take this and make a bed for Desi. She probably needs water and a little food, too, and then a place to sleep. Come on. You all look like you're starving.”

In a few minutes we're settled in the kitchen. The Dalmatian is curled up in the corner, the blanket beneath her and Scottie lying close enough to provide warmth and comfort. The three of us are seated at the table, where I've set out bowls of microwaved soup, fresh rolls, and mugs of tea. It's the most unalarming scene you can imagine, so I figure it's safe to say the scary things.

“So the dog's name is Desi,” I begin.

“Desdemona, actually,” the woman answers.

“Very pretty,” I approve. “What about the two of you?”

“Helena,” the woman says, gesturing at herself. “And this is Juliet.”

“And are all of you shape-shifters, or just the dog?”

Helena drops her spoon with a clatter.
“What?”

Juliet stiffens and stares, but doesn't speak.

I continue to calmly eat my soup. “Shape-shifters. People who transform into animals and back. Desdemona is one, but I don't know about you two.”

Now Helena is staring as hard as Juliet is. “How do you—why do you—”

“That's who Janet treated when she owned this practice. That's what half of my patients are. I recognize them in animal shape.” I smile slightly. “Not always in human shape.” They still don't seem ready to trust me, so I add, “I'm one, too.”

“Ohhhhhhhh—” Helena lets her breath out in a long sigh. “Oh God. So that's how you know.”

Juliet doesn't stop watching me, but the quality of her gaze goes from hostile to considering. “Mom isn't,” she says. “But I am. Desi and I are twins.”

“Do you turn into a Dalmatian, too?”

She nods. “But hardly ever. Three days a month. And Desi is human three days.”

“The same days?”

“Sometimes. Usually we have one day where we overlap and we're both human.”

“Those must be special days,” I say.

She nods again, but doesn't elaborate. I think there must be a whole dense, intense, wonderful and sad story behind her determined silence.

“We'd been living in Massachusetts,” Helena says. “And it was going okay, but I started getting depressed. So I thought we'd go to New Mexico and stay with my sister for a while. But then Desi started getting sick, and I didn't know what to do, and I remembered that I'd brought the girls by to see Janet, oh, eight or ten years ago. They were just little then. I didn't even know if she'd still be here.”

“No, she's been gone about five years. But she trained me, so I can look over both the girls before you go.”

Helena gives a heavy sigh. “I don't know if that damn car can make it all the way to New Mexico, to tell you the truth. And my sister—well—I mean, she has to take us in, right?”

Juliet flicks an unreadable look at her mother, then returns her attention to her soup.

“You can stay here awhile, if you like,” I say. “I have an empty trailer and that's what it's for—to give shape-shifters a place to live when they're sick or in trouble.”

Now Juliet's face gets that sharp look again, while Helena's just looks eager. “I could pay you,” she says. “Not very much, but maybe I could get a job.”

Juliet's voice is challenging. “Why would you be so nice to us? We're strangers.”

“Juliet!”

“People were nice to me when I needed help.”

“We could steal things,” she warns me.

I glance around. “Not much here to take that's worth any money.”

“We could
murder
you.”

“
Juliet!
The things you say!”

“I suppose you could,” I agree. “But I'm going to live a short, odd life anyway, so at least I'll live it trying to do good things instead of holding back when people need me.” I sip my tea. “And the truth is, I could use your help. I have a bunch of animals that I care for on the property, and when
I
change, I worry about them. I have friends who can cover for me—but only if I have enough warning to call them. And lately, sometimes I don't get much warning. If there was somebody else living here who could feed and water the puppies and the rabbits and the birds, well, that would ease my mind.”