Reflected

by Rhiannon Held

  Dr. Doyle had a pad to take notes, but he was better than most actors portraying psychologists at minimizing its importance. He glanced down only often enough to keep his writing on the page, and he otherwise ignored it with his body language.

  Selene sat forward. “So when she called and said she wanted to apologize, of course I tried to meet her halfway, even more than halfway. She’s been telling everyone that she just told me a corner and I was the one who went into the house on my own, but that’s not the whole story. She must have been walking on wet grass, because I recognized her shoeprints on the sidewalk when I got there. They went right up to the door. I think she did it on purpose, walked up there and then walked on the lawn so she didn’t leave prints going back. I figured it was her friend’s house, so when the door was unlocked and her footprints were right there, I knocked and let myself in. And then the owner came home.”

  Dr. Doyle nodded as if that was all perfectly comprehensible. Selene doubted it would be that easy, though. “Some believe that the roots of what we do in the present lie in our past, where we came from. Can you tell me about where you came from? Your childhood?”

  Selene took a deep breath. Family. Stepping out onto that topic was like stepping out onto a floor that vibrated with the steps of what she didn’t want to think about. Steps coming closer, so she’d best use her time well.

  It had been a long time since she’d used these particular lies—or perhaps not lies, more of a translation of her life into human terms. “My father wasn’t really in the picture much. My parents never married, and he moved on when I was maybe four or five. I remember his—” She almost said scent, but that would be strange in human terms. “Face. There was me and my older brother, Ares. Mom always liked Greek myths.” She managed a smile.

  Dr. Doyle exhaled in amusement before his bland neutrality returned. “How did not having a father figure affect you?”

  The question caught Selene off guard, and she swallowed a dismissal that would have been too quick. She’d had a pack, but humans didn’t have those. A missing parent should have left a hole in her life. “I had plenty of other adult role models. We lived with my uncle and aunt—Mom’s brother.”

  Selene hesitated, wondering what the psychologist would make of her lack of a mother figure too. But to cover that would be too many lies by half. “When I was twelve, so Ares must have been seventeen, I guess, Mom died of cancer. I don’t remember the type off the top of my head, but it was a nasty one. They found it late, so the end was pretty sudden.” Her mother’s real death by gunshot wasn’t so uncommon among humans either, but it would raise troublesome questions about what she’d been doing at the time. Minding her own business, just running in wolf.

  Dr. Doyle nodded in acknowledgment. “So you’d essentially lost both parents. How did you deal with that?”

  Selene hesitated, trying to think while balanced over much more painful family memories. She’d dealt just fine, but was that too strange, too different from how a human would have coped? Again, she couldn’t see a way to shade the truth without creating lies so complicated they tangled and tripped her without warning. “It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t as bad as it is for some people. We were already living with my aunt and uncle, so we stayed with them. Ares lived at home to save money when he went to college, and my cousin was around too. I’m still really close to him.” Poor John. She supposed he couldn’t get rid of her now that she and Andrew were his alphas, not that he seemed to want to.

  “Are you still close to your brother now?”

  Selene took a deep breath. She picked up one of the pillows because the fringe was tangled on the corner, and she ended up holding it tightly to her chest because she had nothing else to hang on to. Lady, if only Andrew were here. “About four years ago was the car crash. Ares, my sister-in-law, their children, all of them—” Blood, and silver stink. But this was a human translation, different from those memories. Keep going, she reminded herself. Just keep going. “I had head trauma, that’s why my memory is screwed up now. And nerve damage in my arm.” She set the pillow aside to lay her bad arm flat across her lap, palm up. Her sleeves were long today, hiding the scars from when Andrew had slit the welts to let the silver-tainted blood drain out. Those would certainly give the lie to her translation.

  “So now it’s me and my cousin left.” Selene tucked her bad arm away against her stomach. She hated seeing it lying there like a dead fish. “He’s married, and his wife is a wonderful woman, and their son is adorable. Four years old. Runs everywhere at full speed until he smashes into something. And I’m living with my boyfriend and his daughter, of course. Andrew’s—” How would humans say it? “My anchor.”

  Dr. Doyle raised his eyebrows, inviting her to expand on that particular topic. “And his daughter is the one who precipitated the incident.”

  Selene agreed and repeated a briefer summary of the human version of events, but her heart began to pick up its pace. She could guess that now would come the harder questions.

  Dr. Doyle looked down at his pad. “Outside the house, you saw shadows?”

  There it was. Selene had the lie ready, but her heart raced as fast as a rabbit’s even so. “My memory blipped for a minute, so I couldn’t remember why I’d gone into the house. That’s why I ran. So I was already pretty upset when I ran into the policemen, and they looked so tired, you know? Hardened by their experiences. That’s all I meant by shadows. I thought maybe they’d think the worst of me, but I couldn’t find the words for it at that moment.”

  Selene smelled the psychologist’s attention sharpening. Did he believe her? He’d have to believe her—what she’d said to the police officers about Death and shadows had been the most damning part. Everything else was easier to explain as confusion.

  “Your memory problems—how long have they been going on? How often do they occur?” Dr. Doyle’s attention did not ease.

  Selene swallowed. She hadn’t prepared that. She should have, should have expected they’d want details when she and Susan made it sound like a human mental illness. Stupid. But she couldn’t sit here berating herself, she had to say something. “Since the car accident. I don’t really … don’t really know how often, because I don’t always notice, until people point it out, I guess.” No, that didn’t sound right, so Selene tried to rescue it. “It happens in unusual situations. Like I only go to the airport a couple times a year, and sometimes I can’t remember the word ‘airport,’ but I picture the place in my head. People coming and going. Traveling long distances.” She was speaking too fast, she knew it.

  “It sounds if your memory problems are frustrating to you? Perhaps even upsetting?”

  “I’m used to them by now.” Selene smiled to emphasize her nonchalance, but he didn’t relax. What was it about her words that he didn’t like? She caught a flick of his eyes to her hand, the way she clenched it on her knee. It came to her like cresting a hill and seeing everything laid out below: he was reading her. Not with scent, but in other human ways. She should have expected it, she’d certainly seen the way Susan could guess at people’s moods with observation.

  But if she treated Dr. Doyle as a Were who could smell her, wouldn’t that also remove the signs he was reading? Selene concentrated on her breathing, setting her emotions at a distance, as she would when trying to keep them from her scent. They twisted and fought her, clinging to their grip on her heartbeat and the wavering fear at her core, but she kept at it. Calm. Just as if he was a Were.

  Dr. Doyle nodded, apparently accepting her answer this time. “And do you think Felicia expected something like that might happen?”

  Selene relaxed her hand with an effort. “I don’t know. Even if I was sure, how could I tell my boyfriend that when he gets back? ‘I think your daughter tried to get me arrested, maybe because that boy of hers talked her into it.’ But she knows about my memory problems, she had to know I’d…”

  She’d have thought talking about Felicia would be easy in comparison, but her att
ention was divided, some of it chasing a scent she didn’t have the energy to capture at the moment. If that roamer was from Madrid, Andrew’s enemies in Spain had to be involved.

  “How do you feel about your boyfriend’s relationship with his daughter?”

  “I don’t feel threatened, if that’s what you mean!” Selene couldn’t restrain the heat in that answer, for good or ill. “I’m glad they have a relationship. Her mother died when she was a toddler, and that side of the family got custody, and they didn’t allow him contact until three years ago. He missed her whole childhood! She only came to live with Andrew because she was finally old enough to make her own choice.”

  “So did you meet your boyfriend before his daughter was in the picture, or after?”

  Selene pulled the pillow to her chest again. What did any of this have to do with whether she was crazy? She’d thought they’d finished with family. “About a year before. But I told you, I was happy when she came to live with us.” Selene could smell him react, probably to the ring of a lie about that, and she hurriedly corrected it. “Maybe I don’t always know how to deal with her, but I was happy for him! Being part of his daughter’s life made him whole again.”

  “You say you don’t know how to deal with her; how do you feel about your own relationship with her? Do you see yourself as a mother figure?”

  Selene gritted her teeth, then put the pillow aside. “I can’t have children of my own, so I’d love to be a bigger part of Felicia’s life. But the world doesn’t always give us what we want.”

  “If she did mislead you into going into that house, why do you think she did it?”

  Selene concentrated on her nose, but sorting out whether he believed her would take familiarity with his base scent she didn’t have. It didn’t matter if he believed her or not, she supposed, as long as he considered it a reasonable conclusion from real events, not something she’d made up in her mind. Lady grant it wasn’t something she’d made up in her mind. “To humiliate me after the fight, maybe? But she hasn’t seemed that defiant. Even when she was arguing with her father about getting a job, she wasn’t acting like she wanted to defy him, she was acting like she was terrified he was doing it as the first step on the road to kicking her out of the house. Which of course he’d never do.”

  Selene twitched the fingers on her bad hand. Think, she needed to think. “And then I felt like this was all to push us away, but that doesn’t make any sense either, if she didn’t want to move out yet. Do you think it might be that new boy she’s chasing? Don’t people do that sometimes, try to get their lovers to push away everyone but them?”

  “That’s one of the strategies abusers can use to isolate their victims, yes. How long did you say Felicia has known this boy?”

  Selene had to count carefully, probably for longer than she should. She didn’t usually keep close track of days, or even weeks. Months were the important part, for the Lady, and the seasons. “Only a week or two. I don’t think they’re serious, and I know she’s a damn smart girl, the timing is just suspicious.”

  Of course, if Felicia was smart, she wouldn’t have been trying to impress the roamer, or punish Tom, or anything like that. She wouldn’t have been listening to Enrique at all, to allow him to influence her to push people away, even if they had known each other in Madrid. So if she wouldn’t have let him influence her willingly, what about unwillingly? Had he threatened her?

  “I obviously can’t form any conclusions without speaking to the young woman directly.” Dr. Doyle cleared his throat, signaling a shift of topic. “Tell me more about the circumstances of the fight with Felicia.”

  From there, it wound down, the last few questions overlapping things she’d already answered. It made it easier, having the human translation ready to hand, but she knew her control over her emotions was wearing very thin. Just a little longer, she had to keep herself calm.

  And finally it ended, thank the Lady. Dr. Doyle set his pad and pen to the side. He rose and Selene followed his example. “Thank you for being patient with all the questions.” He offered a hand to shake once more. “You need have no worries about my report. I’m not sure why you even needed one for something like trespassing, but you’re healthy.”

  Selene shook the hand, thanked him, and held in a hysterical bubble of laughter. If only he knew. She couldn’t release the memories yet, though, she had to get away from human eyes. She didn’t want to take the chance of collapsing or losing her way. She made it successfully from the office to the reception area, where Tom and Felicia shoved to their feet. When she didn’t stop to talk, Tom hurried to get ahead of her and Felicia fell in behind.

  Few humans were around in the building’s lobby. Her appointment had finished late enough the rush of people leaving at the usual quitting hours had trailed off. Selene allowed herself to relax enough to see the worry in Tom’s drooping shoulders. “It went fine,” she reassured him.

  The door to the men’s restroom was open ahead, and Selene caught a waft of cleaning chemicals and a slice of reflection from the mirror. As she passed, Enrique stepped out from behind the door and gripped her good arm. The smell of silver metal suddenly revealed under the chemicals resolved into the knife now jabbed into her ribs. “Why don’t we take a walk?” he said, the intensity of a snarl in his low voice. “Discuss what a good evaluation I just heard you had.”

  The burst of anger from Felicia’s scent turned into a growl behind them, but Selene held up her hand to stop her from doing anything stupid. Either to help, or to harm. Shouldn’t she have smelled a little more surprised? Was this what Enrique had meant about something being arranged?

  “You forget, boy. Silver doesn’t hurt me.” Selene mentally calculated who would hear and come running if she screamed. Making a scene as a victim in front of humans could be a good strategy, better than letting Felicia and Tom attack him where they could be seen. But that knife could still cut and she could still bleed, bleed worse than a normal werewolf. She could die from blood loss, same as a human.

  Enrique must have had the same thought, because he jabbed the knife again. “Madrid told me all about you, don’t worry.” He leaned in close to hide the knife between their bodies. His grip on her arm tightened past ache to pain.

  Ahead of them, Tom whined and settled his weight forward, ready to attack. Selene glared him down too. Not yet. “Let’s all go down to the car, like friends,” Enrique said, accent smearing his words together. “Talk things over.” He pulled her around Tom, who whined once more but stayed where he was.

  Enrique led the way to the elevator banks that would take them all the way down to the parking garage rather than just within the building. Selene didn’t look back, but she heard scuffling, like Tom and Felicia were arguing through looks and Felicia had had to restrain him physically.

  Selene felt a strange sort of clarity formed of relief. This attack, she could fight. Perhaps not on her own, muscle against muscle, but this young man stank of panic. He should be easy to trick, frighten, or otherwise escape from. She couldn’t let go of the memories just yet, not while they were moving, and the flayed feeling of such prolonged exposure to them made her laugh inside.

  Enrique had no idea who he was dealing with and what forces she’d defeated before. He was an upstart little rabbit trying to snarl.

  The walls of the elevator weren’t mirrored, but the metal was polished so they might as well have been. Selene watched the others in it as they rode down. Tom was practically vibrating with his inability to do anything. Felicia wasn’t much better, probably with the effort of keeping Tom in check. They held each other’s eyes in the reflection.

  Selene watched Enrique’s face in the reflection. If he was from Madrid, then she had been threatened by his alpha before. In comparison to that calculated maliciousness, this boy was only a boy, but with him pressed against her, his knife at her side, that didn’t cheer Selene. Panic made the insecure lash out. At this moment, she felt in more danger from this boy than she would his alp
ha, because no logic would prevent him from reacting if startled.

  She needed to stay Selene for now lest her transition startle him just when she was at her most vulnerable, but stress shredded her control worse than ever. Tom’s phone rang as the doors opened onto the first parking level, now only dotted with cars here and there where it had been packed when they arrived. Selene tried to find the tune in her memories, ground herself that way. It sounded like an old-timey movie soundtrack, but nothing she recognized.

  “Wait!” Enrique said, when Tom reached for it automatically. He wrenched Selene around so the two of them faced Tom. “Who is it?”

  Tom snarled silently and turned the screen. ROANOKE stood out clearly.

  Enrique hesitated, stink of panic congealing around him. Selene took a deep breath to calm her racing heart at the thought of speaking to Andrew. This was a possible danger, not a source of rescue. She had to handle Enrique carefully. “Let me talk to him,” she said, low and calm. “I won’t tell him anything. You’ll be right here, you’ll know. And then he won’t get worried.”

  The phone began its song again in Enrique’s silence. Finally the young man growled. “If you say anything I don’t like, you’ll bleed white long, long before he gets here,” he said.

  Selene nodded and accepted the phone from Tom. “Hello?”

  Andrew breathed a deep sigh of relief. Just hearing him made Selene want to collapse. So close, so close, and yet not here. No help. “Oh, Silver. Tom’s there listening too, I assume? We’re at Sea-Tac, just heading for the car now. We’ll be home soon, love. How did it go?”

  His tone changed on the last part, because of course he didn’t know that she’d understood the first part just as well as Tom at the moment, and he didn’t need to translate.

  “It was fine. No hurry, Andrew.” Selene kept her voice absolutely steady. “I’ll meet you at home. Love you.”