Daisy blinked. So few men were tall enough they had to lower their chins to look at her. And he was so broad shouldered he had to swing his body sideways when he came through the door. “Are all Shifter guys big, like you?” She could wish.
The doctor’s face got all fatherly-tight. “Time to think about something other than boys.”
“I don’t always think about boys.” Daisy couldn’t stop the pout her lip wanted to make no matter how she tried. “Why can’t I think about boys? I just asked a question. It’s not like we’re being attacked right now. Why can’t I ask?”
His head pivoted toward the stairs so fast Daisy gasped. When his arm came up, she didn’t fight. She moved behind him.
“Sniff, Daisy. Do you sense that?” Dr. Torres flattened them both against the wall next to the stairwell.
She breathed deep, hoping to catch something. And there, on the edge of her perception, a faint whiff telling her to do exactly what everyone told her to do drifted down the stairs, as mercurial as he’d told her all the Shifters were. “I smell ‘do what I say.’”
He nodded. “It’s ‘comply.’ And in a large enough dose it’s filtering down the stairs before it dissipates.”
“Which means a strong Shifter, right? Someone you called an… enthraller?” And she wasn’t active. So she could still fall victim.
Chatter floated down the stairs. Chatter that wasn’t in English. Or Spanish.
A whiff of ‘surprise’ rose off Dr. Torres. At least that’s what Daisy would have named it. It held that sense of Oh my God! that she always associated with surprise.
Japanese? he mouthed.
She nodded. Yes, Japanese. She didn’t speak much of it, but she recognized it from when she was little. “A couple of the shipping companies with guard dogs my mom used to treat were run by Japanese families,” she whispered.
One company in particular had been full of men who smelled a way that had, at the time, seemed weird to her primary-school brain. Even now, she had a hard time remembering what they looked like. Were they big, like the doctor? Small? Did they all have dark hair or were some of them lighter toned? Were they all men? She only remembered that they were “at the docks with the dogs” and that she shouldn’t think too much about it.
But she always got a sense that maybe scary monsters were about when her mom took her down to the piers.
Japanese monsters, like maybe her mom’s past just caught up with them. “Oh, no.”
Daisy burst up the stairs, not thinking. Something wiggled in the back of her mind, some memory from when she was a little kid, and she knew smelling calling scents and hearing Japanese wasn’t good.
She took the stairs two at a time, running as fast as she could go toward the door at the top. The one that led into the hallway leading toward her apartment’s door. The one where the Japanese voices drifted from.
Daisy spun around the rickety metal railing to the last flight of stairs and a wave of something new hit her. Something that smelled just like ‘stop.’
But she didn’t. She fought through it.
And Daisy walked right up to the short man she remembered, but didn’t. The handsome Japanese-looking guy with the clean, conservative haircut in the clean, conservative suit that looked expensive but probably wasn’t. The guy flanked by two other men equally as huge as he was small. The guy who, when she and her mother ran, had looked exactly like he looked right now. He lifted an eyebrow and smirked when she crested the top step. When his hand flew out, she knew she’d better shake it.
“Daisy! Darling,” he said in perfect American English. “My, how you have grown.”
“Mr. Kobayashi.” She remembered this man, but her brain fought to not remember.
Or something in the air told her brain to not remember.
Not this time. This time, she’d overcome.
He grinned all sly, his eyes more condescending than anything else. “Just the young woman we were looking for.”
Chapter Nine
So, not all Shifter men were huge. Some, like the snake standing in front of Daisy, were little pieces of shit.
“Who’s this with you?” Kobayashi pointed over her shoulder and a blast of ‘truth’ filled the tiny, wobbly landing to the third floor of her apartment complex.
“He’s a doctor.” She’d keep it in check.
Behind her, Dr. Torres stopped on the top step. There really wasn’t room for him, Kobayashi, and Kobayashi’s bruisers, who were the two most forgettable men she’d ever seen. They both had generic faces under generic hair. Generic to the point she’d have a hard time describing to a cop even what ethnicity they appeared to be. White? Hispanic? Asian? She couldn’t tell. They seemed to be shifting right before her eyes.
Morphers. That’s what Dr. Torres called Shifters who were changelings. These two must be morphers.
Kobayashi stared around her shoulder at the doctor, his eyes wide. “Well, well. Looks like our little darling’s found herself a protector. I can smell it on you.”
The two morphers laughed.
Kobayashi dismissed them with a flick of his wrist. “Go check on Tony.”
The two morphers glanced at each other, both shrugging at the same time, like they were mirror images of each other. The one on the left ducked into the hallway while the one on the right returned to his hands-behind-his-back bodyguard pose.
Kobayashi sniffed in much the same way as Dr. Torres had before. “You’re strong enough to resist my calling scents.” He wisped his hand at Dr. Torres this time. “And a doctor. A healer, I presume?”
Another blast of ‘truth’ filled the landing.
Dr. Torres pulled Daisy backward. He literally picked her up off the landing and set her against the wall on the step below where he stood, and stepped between her and the two men up above.
He didn’t answer Kobayashi’s question.
All Daisy’s memories of Perth melded together. Images of a warehouse popped in and out of her mind. Of an office in the back corner. Barking dogs. Boxes and boxes and boxes of imported things and the sounds of seagulls outside and the salty decaying smell of the ocean wafting in.
When she was very little, her mom had always been happy. But as the years went by, the happy changed into a flat forgettableness much like the bruisers. And when they ran, it had become fear.
“What do you want?” she asked from behind Dr. Torres.
Kobayashi glanced down the hallway. “Your mom’s got a special variant calling scent ability. She ever tell you that? Explain what it is she can do?”
The doctor’s back hardened. Daisy knew why—he was probably thinking about the whole “tell or don’t tell the kid” question again. For a second, she wondered if he would just run down the stairs and out the door and leave her here so he could go home and scoop up his little girl and tell her everything.
But he didn’t. He didn’t say a word. He watched.
Kobayashi didn’t seem to care. He did, though, seem to like hearing his own voice. “Animals! Imagine that. An enthraller who can talk to the animals.” He whistled a little song Daisy sort of remembered, from some kid’s movie about a vet who talked to animals. Dr. Doolittle, if she remembered right.
Dr. Torres didn’t move. “That’s rare.”
Daisy stared around his big arm.
Kobayashi grinned again. “Damn straight, it’s rare.” He shrugged. “She’s not all that powerful.” He shrugged again. “Still, useful.”
The guard who had gone reappeared, with another equally huge and equally forgettable guy who Daisy figured was Tony. “We should leave, boss,” he said.
Kobayashi frowned. “Why?”
The one closest to Kobayashi bent forward and whispered something into his boss’s ear.
Kobayashi stiffened and his eyes widened. He nodded and waved the bruisers toward the stairs.
Fates. It had to be Fates. What else could make them run away like scurrying rats? And her mom was alone in their apartment.
“Get out of
my way!” Daisy tried to shove by the doctor but it didn’t do any good. He weighed too much.
“Hey!” Kobayashi threw his hands in the air and backed up a step. “Calm down, darling. We’re all friends here, right boys?”
The bruisers all nodded yes.
Dr. Torres stepped up to the landing just as what Daisy could only call ‘don’t look at me’ flooded the space.
He was attempting to get them by without too much harassment.
Kobayashi winced. “You got skills, huh? Good for you.” His hand grabbed the doctor’s elbow.
Dr. Torres twisted with lightning speed. His hand circled Kobayashi’s neck and the little man flung straight up into the air and out over the steps, held in the bigger man’s grip. “You will allow me and this young woman to pass.” He shook Kobayashi. “Do you understand?”
The three bruisers nodded, once again, as one.
“Move down the stairs. Do not touch the young woman. Do it now.” The three pressed their backs against the railing and all three scooted by, down the step, as Daisy moved to the landing.
Kobayashi squeaked. “You and your mom need to come home where we can protect you. Educate you into the family.” His gaze dropped toward the stairs. “Keep you safe from Fates and your father.”
Dr. Torres dropped him. He hit hard, one ankle twisting on the top step, the other twisting on the next one down. Kobayashi staggered backward and would have fallen down the steps if one of his bruisers hadn’t caught him.
“She comes home and all will be forgiven.” He pointed at Daisy. “We’ll keep you safe. Fates are bad news, kiddo.” He threw the one arm not massaging his ankle into the air and leaned against the wall. “The Fates can have their bait. As long as I get you and your mother back.”
“We don’t belong to you!” Daisy gave him the finger.
“But you owe us.”
She tugged on the doctor’s arm. “We need to get Mom before the Fates show up!” They had to go.
Kobayashi jumped up like a kangaroo and smoothed his suit. “She can’t hide anymore. From us or your father.” His hand smoothed over his still-perfect, still-conservative hair. “What’s your mother going to do now, huh? Run to that son of a bitch and ask for clemency?”
Daisy yanked Dr. Torres through the door. Kobayashi could rant all he wanted. Her mom needed them.
“You two need to come home before the Russian figures out you’re alive!”
The door slammed behind Daisy as she and the doctor ran through, muffling Kobayashi’s words.
Chapter Ten
The door to Daisy’s apartment bounced against the inner wall and swung back so fast it almost smacked her in the face. But she straight-armed it and barreled over the threshold like a linebacker.
Their home was a mess. Smelled like Kobayashi’s goons, too. The bruiser named Tony must have trashed the place and rubbed his armpits all over the walls. It smelled sweaty and not-quite-male and moldy.
Did he take something? They said they didn’t want the “Fate bait” but it sure looked like the goons had been looking for something. It’s not like Daisy and her mom had brought anything with them from Australia. Just a couple of suitcases of clothes and two of Daisy’s stuffed animals.
A kangaroo and a koala. The only bits of home she still had.
But her mom said they were Americans now, so she’d added a stuffed buffalo and a teddy bear to Daisy’s collection. And a little music box. The kangaroo and the koala had been pushed to the back of her closet.
Daisy burst into the tiny, frayed living room of the apartment she shared with her mother, kicking aside the couch cushions and the pages of her homework that now littered the floor. “Mom?”
Her mother had to be here, among the piles of random trinkets and mismatched silverware. With all her mom’s cheap costume jewelry they couldn’t afford. With the boxes of random food.
Stuff that usually just appeared.
Sobs rolled down the short hallway that led to the bedrooms and the bathroom. Cecilia Reynolds must have hidden.
Daisy ran the ten strides into her mom’s room. “Mom!”
All the bedding had been ripped off her mother’s cheap mattress. It lumped like quicksand between Daisy and her mom, a twisting, constraining trap laid by a group of Australian gangstas.
Gangstas from whom her mom had stolen. And now Daisy wondered just exactly what Cecilia’s job skills were.
Her mom looked as disheveled as the bedding. She rocked back and forth, a pillow hugged to her chest, and blubbered like a baby. Which wasn’t helping anyone. Not her. Not Daisy. Not anyone, except maybe the men who’d just terrified her and torn up her life.
Daisy dropped onto the mattress next to her mom and pulled her close. Her mom still wore her cleaning uniform, so she must have walked in on the bruisers while they broke all the furniture and threw everything on the floor. Big curls of black hair had escaped her ponytail and smeared makeup streaked her warm skin, making her already dark eyes look all the darker.
Daisy didn’t see any cuts or bruises, and her mom wasn’t screaming like she hurt. Only sobbing like the goons had given her a good scare.
A long exhale blew out between Daisy’s lips. No wounds. No broken bones. Her mom might be terrified, but she’d live.
Cecilia hiccupped. “I can’t believe that scumbag found us. I won’t go back. I won’t let him turn you into another of his lackeys.”
The doctor swung into the room and shock and anger spread across Cecilia’s face. “Who are you?”
“He’s a doctor, mom. Let him look at you.” Just in case they did something that wasn’t visible, Daisy thought. But she didn’t say it. She didn’t need to scare her mom even more. “Then we need to leave.”
Her mom dropped the pillow and her mouth rounded in a way Daisy could only describe as awe. One of her hands came up to her mouth and the other gripped Daisy’s elbow.
“I know what he is, Mom.” Daisy nodded toward the doctor. “He saved me from—”
“He saved you?”
Her mom’s face looked more like Why the hell did you let a man save you? than You had to be saved? Daisy almost groaned.
“Mom! Calm down.” Nothing good would come from her mother freaking out. “He healed my leg after I got hit by a car.”
Her mom screeched. “Hit by a car? You got hit by a car?”
“I’m fine! Mom, stop screaming!” Daisy had left the apartment door wide open. Everyone in the building could probably hear her mom yelling.
Cecilia’s finger thrust at the doctor. “You told my daughter what you are?” Her mom grabbed the pillow again and whipped it at Dr. Torres. “The last thing she needs is to be involved in a fucking clan!”
“Clans?” The doctor hadn’t said anything to Daisy about clans. “Like the syndicates you told me about? Are all Shifters in gangs?”
Maybe being a Shifter wasn’t something Daisy wanted.
Dr. Torres fumbled the pillow before throwing it at her mom’s now-broken dresser. All the drawers had been yanked out and dumped. Her mom’s bras and granny-panties littered the cracked top, covering up her also-dumped jewelry and deodorant.
Daisy sniffed at her mom. She didn’t smell fear anymore. She smelled anger. So at least Cecilia wasn’t going to cower in the corner because of this. Her mom would fight.
But fighting the doctor probably wasn’t a good idea.
“I’m a healer, Ms. Reynolds.” The doctor walked in slowly, his hands out. “My name’s Sandro Torres. I found your daughter and helped her get away from a Burner.” He glanced at Daisy.
Daisy didn’t smell any calling scents. He wasn’t using that ability, not even to calm down her mom. He was being respectful.
And letting her mom scream. “A Burner? Oh my God that asshole Kobayashi set a Burner on you?”
Fear very suddenly flashed off Daisy’s mom in a wave that was part calling scent and part old-fashioned, wide-eyed terror.
“The Fate said—”
“
Fates?” Her mom grabbed the other pillow and held it up between herself and the rest of the world, like it would actually protect her.
The panic rolling off her mother rolled right on across the bed and into Daisy’s chest. Her throat constricted and she blinked. And the only two words her brain would make were Oh shit Oh shit Oh shit.
“Everyone calm down.” Dr. Torres held up his hands. ‘Calm’ spread through the room, exhaled on the back of his words.
“You said you’re a healer!” Her mom sucked in her breath and held it, her cheeks puffing out like some silly chipmunk.
“I have some enthralling abilities. As I suspect your daughter will, once you activate her.” He pointed at Daisy.
Her mom exhaled sharply. “Absolutely not!” She slammed the pillow against her lap. “I left that all behind in Perth! All of it. I will not raise my daughter inside some God-awful syndicate. I won’t!”
“I understand, Ms. Reynolds. I do. But they found you, didn’t they? She needs to be able to protect herself. She needs—”
“Get out of my apartment!” Her mom screamed her words so loudly Daisy knew everyone in the building heard. Everyone.
Down the hall, their drug-dealing dumbass neighbor’s two German shepherds barked and woof woof woof filtered into the room.
“Mom! Stop yelling!” They didn’t need the cops, too. Or two vicious attack dogs stupidly named Dawnstar and Lonestar running at high speeds down the hallway.
But the dogs’ distraction didn’t absolve her mom from withholding Daisy’s heritage from her. “Why can’t it be my choice? It’s my body!” Her mom never gave her any information at all. “What else have you not told me because you want to control what I do? Huh?”
Daisy pushed off the bed and paced between her mom and the doctor. “You dragged me to the States! You took away all my mates and everything I knew and you forced me to become an American for what? Because you don’t like what you are?” Daisy threw her hands into the air. “And I don’t even know what you are!”
“The short man with the goons said you enthrall animals.” The doctor didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t move at all. He stared at her mom.
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