by Holley Trent
“What do you mean it?” Soren asked.
The woman pantomimed giving herself a shot in the arm. “Sent us home with twelve or fifteen of them needles full of the stuff, and had us go in every three days so they could draw blood.”
“When was this?” Marcella asked.
The lady grimaced and paced. “Oh, about a year ago now. To be honest, I didn’t think them shots was doin’ nothin’, then about a month after I’d finished all of them, I blacked out. Boom.” She smacked her hands together and then pointed to floor in front of the sofa. “Right there. Hit my head on the coffee table goin’ down. Kim had to call me an ambulance, and she couldn’t answer none of their questions. She didn’t know what was wrong with me.”
“What happened at the hospital?”
“Kim couldn’t say for sure, but I guess they had me in some system, so they already knew who to contact if I ever got brought in. When I woke up, I was sharing a hospital room with a lady who had the same problem as me. Passed out. Them folks from CarrHealth had us in some kinda isolation ward and shackled to the beds like we were convicts.”
“You shifted,” Soren said.
Slowly, she nodded. “I think so. I don’t remember shifting the first time until a couple of months after that, though. That’s when I started to put two and two together. They’d scoop me up the morning it’d happen, and I’d fight ’em, but they’d take me anyway and lock me down until after the changes had passed. I told them to tell me what they’d gone and done to me. Shots weren’t supposed to be for that mess. They said…” She took a breath and then another, fanning her face as if the room had suddenly gotten too hot and the air wasn’t what her lungs wanted.
Both Marcella and Soren stood, but Marcella nudged him back. “Take a deep breath.” Marcella picked up a bill from the cluttered coffee table and fanned the woman with it. Pamela the name on the sticker said. “Deep breaths. It’s all right. I’m sure dredging up the memories is difficult. Catch your breath before you say anything else.”
Pamela nodded and did as she was told. She drew in some ragged inhalations and let them out in sputters, but her face was less pink, and breathing sounded somewhat less labored. “Why’d… Why’d they do this to me?”
“We were hoping you could tell us. What did the researchers inform you they were doing?”
“They told us all different things. They told me they were giving me a treatment for perimenopause, and I jumped on that ’cause we always get it early in my family, and I didn’t wanna be like Momma sweatin’ myself half to death when alls I’m doin’ is watchin’ the TV. They gave me a thousand dollars. Made me sign some forms sayin’ I’d never sue ’em.”
Marcella cut Soren a look.
He nodded his understanding.
CarrHealth had learned their lesson since the SHREW Study. Dana had filed a class action suit and sued the company for every penny she could grab.
“Do you still have the forms you signed? We have some ladies back at the office where I work who could probably tell you if the legalese holds water.” There was also plenty of other information of the principals involved in the scheme in some of that paperwork, too.
“Yep. I have ’em over there in that case in the kitchen. I’ll get ’em.” Pamela fetched a translucent yellow file tote from under the table and sifted through the folders.
“How many others like you are around here?” Soren asked. “I’d guessed you were mostly female.”
“’Bout twenty’s what we got, I think…” She narrowed her eyes. “Eighteen women. Two men. We had to work this mess out on our own about the full moon and whatnot. They were supposed to send some other Bears down here to help out, but they never showed up. They didn’t tell us nothin’. They got all they wanted from us, and then they left us on our own for a while. They come back now and then offering some folks checks in exchange for blood and piss, and some of them folks will give ’em everything they want. Not me. No sir.” Pamela gave her head an emphatic shake. “Ain’t worth it. I don’t need the money that bad. I’d sure like to have a little more cash, though.” Chuckling, she handed Marcella the sheath of papers.
Marcella skimmed through them, looking for anything that would help immediately in the investigation. As she read, Pamela plopped her hands on her hips and looked to Soren.
“So, you tellin’ me you’re like me but different?”
He grunted. “I’m as the race was evolved to be. I sense my environment more like a Bear and less like a human. Does my scent seem less human to you now that you know what I am?”
She shrugged. “Smell like a regular man to me.”
Marcella glanced up from the papers in time to see his brow crease.
“Do the other Bears in your group smell different than humans to you?”
“If they do, I can’t tell.”
“That’s not right.”
“Whadda ya mean?”
“Made-Bears almost never have abilities as good as boron-Bears, but they still have better senses of smell and hearing than humans. You need those defense mechanisms to protect yourself in your Bear form.”
Pamela shook her head. “We didn’t get none of that. Just lots of Bear fat and fur once a month.”
“They fucked up again,” he murmured.
Marcella grimaced and put her thumb on a couple of Georgia-based addresses she wanted to have Drea research. Marcella couldn’t tell how far they were from their location, but even if they were within driving distance, they didn’t want to go into any situation half-cocked.
“I could do without the fat,” Pamela said sourly. “I’d lost thirty pounds right before the treatment, and it all came rushin’ back. It’s enough to make a lady cry, I tell ya.”
“You shouldn’t cry,” Marcella said. “Your current weight looks good on you.”
“Aw. I like you, lady.”
Headlights flickered in the front window, and the rattling treble of a cheap car radio rattled the storm door. The god-awful noise stopped. The lights went off. And then there was the slam of a door.
“Oh, hell,” Pamela said. “That’s Kim. Don’t mind her none. She’ll warm up after a while, but I don’t reckon y’all’ll be here as long as that.”
“No, we need to get moving and do some more research,” Soren said, standing. “If we have questions, can we follow up with you at the restaurant? That’s where we found you.”
“Ah. I was wonderin’. Well, sure, I reckon. I’m on the schedule for the next three days. After that, I’m here, collectin’ rent for The Man.” She giggled.
A young woman, who must have been Kim, bounded up the steps and open the door. Her narrowed gaze scanned around the room, finally landing on the big Bear by the door. “Momma, who’re—”
“Thank you again for your time,” Marcella said, already moving toward the door. “I’ll return these papers back to you urgently.”
“You can keep ’em,” Pamela said. “I’ve got another copy in my car. Had to give ’em to my doctor so he could try to get the records and find out what was wrong with me, but he couldn’t find out nothin’. I still ain’t told him about the Bear stuff. I only told him about the muscle aches and whatnot hoping he’d prescribe me some relaxants.”
“We’ll have our doctor phone you if you like,” Soren called through the door. “She’s knowledgeable about people like us.”
“Lord, please, tell her to call! Number’s on them papers.” Pamela laughed and waved them away as she closed the door. “See y’all soon.”
“Momma, who are they?” came Kim’s murmured voice.
“God dang, you’re nosy. Can I have some business of my own, please? Thank you.”
Marcella caught Soren by the elbow and got him moving at a not-quite-leisurely pace toward the SUV. She wanted to be out of earshot of the trailer, and plus the guy with the trash was still outside with his friend chewing the cud.
A glance over her shoulder confirmed that Kim was watching them through a back window.
“I get a bad feeling about her,” she murmured.
“About who?”
“Don’t turn!”
He grunted but stopped his head mid-movement. “The daughter?”
“Yes. I don’t know. Something’s not quite right.”
“In what way?”
“I don’t know yet. My witch’s intuition is flaring up, I suppose. I don’t have enough information, and I’m not certain this is the sort of circumstance asking questions and snooping around will support.”
Soren had left the doors unlocked, so with one quiet tug on the handle, she was inside the vehicle and getting her seatbelt fastened.
“Let me guess.” Darkness pervaded the inside of the SUV as he slammed his door. “You’re going to do witchy shit.”
“I don’t know if I want to waste the energy. I listen inwardly until the nagging stops. Sometimes it doesn’t, and at that point, if I want to sleep, I’ll have to do some work.”
“Hmm.” He hit the ignition switch and used the running lights to navigate out of the sodden half-grass lot to the road. Then he turned on the brights. A woodland creature with a death wish streaked across the road ahead of them. “Couldn’t hurt to have Drea do some research. Let her see if she can find any background information on the daughter.”
“I will, but she won’t be able to get me that until tomorrow. I want satisfaction tonight.”
Soren swung his head rightward.
She put her hand on his forehead and steered him toward the road once more.
And then she rubbed her palm and stared, unfocused, at the road.
Odd that touching him didn’t upend her. Anxiety should have been crippling her. Fear of losing control of her pulse, her air, her flesh, because she’d contaminated her essence with someone else’s should have paralyzed her.
So why doesn’t it?
CHAPTER TEN
Marcella shut her room door and immediately headed toward her altar, of sorts, set up at the end of the dresser.
Soren, pushy bastard that he was, opened the door she’d closed on him and let out a frustrated breath. He muttered something in what was probably Romanian.
Rolling her eyes, she heeled off her shoes. “What do you want?”
“I was going to assist you in putting in your queries to Drea. I believe you said you wanted to sleep.”
“And I will.” Sighing, she pressed her palms to the edge of the dresser and closed her eyes. “Do you not trust me to be efficient in managing my time?”
“I’m trying to help you.”
“I—”
“You didn’t ask for assistance. Yes, I am aware of this. I choose to assist, however. I urge you to let me.”
“Will you be more insufferable tomorrow if I make you leave now?”
“Without a doubt.”
He was honest, which gave him one redeeming quality, at least.
She turned and leaned her ass against the dresser, folding her arms over her chest.
He passed his phone from one large hand to the other and watched her with the intensity of a referee calling an NBA game. His focus unsettled her. She was used to more laid-back men—men who didn’t like the frustration she caused them, and who gave her space with little provocation. No wonder she couldn’t handle him. She needed a different playbook.
“Okay.” She shrugged. “Fine. I’ll get my computer and will see if there’s a wireless Internet connection here.”
Finally, he looked elsewhere—to the computer she hadn’t taken out of its case since she’d arrived.
It was a three-year-old machine that looked brand new. Marcella didn’t use her laptop often when she was on the road, or even at home. She wasn’t one for keeping detailed notes about her cases or for relying on web searches to get background information. The information she needed was rarely available on public sites, but she could certainly see the benefits of working with people who had access to private databases.
“If there’s no Wi-Fi here,” he said, “I’ll tether my phone to your computer so you can have cellular Internet. The connection won’t be fast, but it’s better than nothing.”
“Always prepared, hmm?”
“Stay in the business as long as I have, and you’ll pick up plenty of tricks. Having Peter doing the same job means we can share news about resources with each other. We don’t compete.” He added in a murmur, “There are plenty of derelicts out there to pummel.”
“That sounds nice.” She set the computer on the peeling faux wood table beneath the air conditioner and stabbed the power button with her index finger. “I mean, having someone who knows what you do and being certain they’re not judging you. Not the pummeling part.”
“Maria doesn’t judge you.”
“True. She doesn’t. I keep waiting for her to, but she’s not going to, is she? I’m not used to having that sort of familial relationship yet.” She paused speaking so she could type in her startup password and then pulled a chair out from the table to sit. “I haven’t explained to her everything that I do, and she’s good at not asking questions I don’t want to answer yet. It’s not her who I fear will think badly of me, but the people who already have.”
“Who?”
She was glad her back was to him. She hated how harmless conversations turned personal far too quickly, and she wasn’t good at talking about those things. In her family, women held their cards close to their chests and didn’t seek solace from outsiders.
“Rely on yourself,” her grandmother had always told her. “No one else will get you.”
She’d been right, of course. She was always right. As Marcella had gotten older, though, she’d learned that there were nuances in “right.” Variables were different depending on location, on time, and…on person.
On a whim, she clicked the Wi-Fi bar at the top of her screen and, sure enough, there was an unsecured motel connection. All she needed to do to connect was type in her last name and room number.
“Well?” Soren asked.
She let out a breath and waited for her browser page to finish loading. Slow Internet was better than no Internet. “Just people at home,” she said. “Which is funny because we have a deep culture of non-mainstream religious and spiritual practices. I think that when people have legitimate gifts, others don’t know how to treat them. It’s easy to say you believe in something when the something is out of sight and out of mind, but when the thing is right in front of you…” She shook her head and navigated to webmail.
“You deserve respect.”
“What makes you think that? You don’t even know me.” She pushed the chair back. She’d left the contract Pamela had given her somewhere in the room. Like her grandmother, she had an unfortunate knack for setting things down after passing through a doorway and then not remembering where.
“Everyone deserves respect, at least until they do something to make you rescind it,” he said.
“That sounds dangerous.”
“Trust me. I’ve never been too slow in revoking my trust.”
“Interesting.” She found the papers. Soren was half sitting on them. Sighing, she wriggled them out from under his thigh.
“You could have simply asked,” he said.
“Faster to act.”
“And of course, if I’d done you a favor, you would have had to have said ‘thank you.’”
“I have no aversion to saying those words.”
“Even to me?” He raised a brow.
“You didn’t come in here to help me. You came in here to frustrate me and goad me.”
“I assure you, I’m here in a professional capacity.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “And perhaps to find out what you did with the other half of the sandwich. You didn’t let me finish.”
“You can’t seriously be hungry.”
“I’m a Bear.” He said the words as if there was some overarching certainty she should have absorbed.
She didn’t know where the sandwich was, either. Another thing she’d set down. Grimacing,
she scratched the back of her head. “I… Maybe it’s in the SUV. I don’t remember taking the bag out. Why don’t you go get it?”
“If I go out, you’ll lock me out.”
She shrugged. “Yes, I most certainly will.”
“So, you go get it.”
“No.” She draped her jacket over the back of the armchair near the dresser and flipped the pages of the packet as she retreated to the table. She wanted Drea to check Pamela’s license information first, and then dig up whatever she could find on Kim, and then research the two addresses on the back page. She could do some cursory searching on her own, but nothing as deep as Drea could do.
She’d barely gotten her ass plopped onto the seat when Soren loomed behind her, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Forcing a growl through her clenched teeth, she typed in the header information on the email. “Move, beast.”
“I’m hungry.”
“The problem seems to have a simple solution.”
“Either you get the sandwich, or you give me your key.”
“I’m not doing either.”
“Then you’ll come with me.”
“Also not doing that.” She started the message with Dear Drea, and then deleted that because the Shrews weren’t so concerned with formalities. She tried again with, Drea:
“Tell me you won’t lock me out,” he said.
“I won’t make that promise.”
Drea: please let me know if this format suits you—if you’d like all my queries in one message, or if I should send a separate email for each research item next time.
“She’s not picky,” he said. “After all, she’s mated to Peter, right? How much less picky could a person get?”
“Not being snarky at all—I believe Peter and Andrea both have what they need and deserve. And stop reading over my shoulder.”
“I could be halfway across the room right now with a sandwich in hand and my mouth shut around it.”
“Ugh.” She forced her seat back yet again and stomped to the door. “You’re supposed to be in your own room which isn’t even here. I should have tried harder to shake you off at the airport.”