Owl Be Bear For You (Camp Shifter Book 1)
Page 8
And speaking of managers...
“What’s wrong?” Sharon asked, frowning. “Did we lose funding?” She looked pointedly at the letter in Mara’s hands.
“Yes!” she replied eagerly, smiling with relief of having a lie she could use. “Yes, we did!”
“Then why do you seem so happy?”
“I’m not happy!” Mara failed to wipe the grin off her face. All her muscles felt frozen. No part of her felt like her right now.
“You’re grinning like a cryptkeeper, Mara,” Jim chided.
“I’m just thinking about my date last night,” she declared, trying to distract everyone.
Jim’s eyes folded up a creased brow as he frowned. “Oh, yeah? With that doctor?” He snorted at the word ‘doctor,’ the derisive tone clear.
“Yes. Jack.”
“He treat you well?” Jim’s voice tightened.
Define ‘well’, she thought. Good in bed? Hell, yes.
“Yeah,” she said with a sigh, her words coming out two seconds after it felt like she said them. Between her racing heart, a palpable dread, and the sense that Jim knew more about her than he was letting on, Mara’s fight-or-flight response kicked in.
She needed to flee.
“Sharon, I need to go home.”
“Home? You sick?”
“Uh, Nonnie is,” Mara lied. Sharon had a soft spot for her grandmother.
“Shoo! Go! Take care of her. The world can’t lose those amazing cannolis she makes.”
Tears threatened to fill Mara’s eyes and turn her into a blathering mess in front of her friend. Only Jim’s prying eye kept her from saying anything.
“I’ll walk you out to your car,” Jim said. Weird. He never did that on other days when she worked. A prickly chill began at the base of her neck and traveled downward.
He knew.
Was it written all over her? Did she send out some kind of secret shifter signal that highly trained people could detect? Is that how the Camp Shifter people knew to contact her—because it was so obvious to the rest of the world that someone had reported her?
She really needed to get away from Jim. Maybe it was just paranoia talking, but even if that was all that drove this feeling of being watched, it was enough. Getting out of here was her number one goal right now. Fleeing her sanctuary, the library she loved, was paramount.
Grabbing her purse from the locked drawer under the big counter, she shoved the letter into it and walked out the main door, not even waving goodbye. She knew Sharon would text her and she realized her behavior was bizarre, but that was the best Mara could manage. If she stayed near people right now, she was going to fall apart cell by cell, molecule by molecule, until she was nothing but a pile of sobbing flesh.
If she was going to be a pile of sobbing flesh, she’d rather do it in her car, in peace.
Sunlight blinded her as she strode down the pathway to the parking lot, her vision blurring as tears filled her eyes. She was gasping by the time she unlocked the car, and keening once she was in it, doors locked again, her chest fighting against the wellspring of painful horror that could finally start to leak out.
This was so, so unfair.
This wasn’t really happening.
This must be a mistake.
They got it wrong.
She wasn’t a shifter.
She couldn’t be a shifter.
Oh, God.
She. Was. A. Shifter.
Chapter 14