Long Shadows: The Lycanthropy Files, Book 2

by Cecilia Dominic

  A chill went down my spine. Apparently I had attracted some unwanted attention, but I still had no idea from whom, only that they were powerful enough to manipulate memories.

  We talked about mundane things as we ate the rest of our sandwiches, but when he walked me to my car, he put his hand on my shoulder and looked into my eyes.

  “Be careful,” he said. “I didn’t want to say this inside where I could be overheard, but there have been strange smells in the woods, and none of us hunt alone anymore.”

  With those disturbing words, he closed my car door for me and waved to me as I pulled away.

  Chapter Three

  I had been so freaked out by someone being after me, perhaps more than one, that I hadn’t noticed the scenery on the drive up to Crystal Pines. Now, brain on overload, I took a deep breath to focus and tried to orient myself.

  The buds had just started appearing on the trees in Little Rock when I left. Here it was still winter with a few bulbs poking their green shoots out of the ground, and a few crocuses opened their faces to the dim sunlight. Yes, the clouds had cleared, but the air had a damp chill that went straight to my bones. I hummed a happy tune, but then I remembered I’d never called Joanie to tell her I was on my way. The thought of seeing her again human face to human face without the limitations and barriers imposed by our spirit forms made my stomach clench, and I regretted eating all my fries.

  At least my not calling her was all my own avoidance. I pondered what I had just discovered from Matthew, and the air grew colder, or maybe my arms just decided to kick out goose bumps for the heck of it. His disturbing revelations were easier to focus on than what I would say to Joanie.

  What do you say to someone you’ve been a complete bitch to? I decided to throw myself on her mercy and the hope that there was something left of our friendship, which had been close since college. If the amount of dirt we had on each other was a gauge of friendship, ours should be strong enough to survive anything.

  The address had seemed familiar when I plugged it into my GPS, and I almost turned around when I arrived at the house she lived in now. It was Peter’s old place, the Tudor-style four bedroom, three and a half bath he’d shared with Marguerite and their son Lance. The address hadn’t computed, but the panic sure did. I sat in the driveway in my car, my palms sweating and my heart racing. My inner wolf was quiet for once, although her excitement about seeing her pack-mates again and confusion about my reaction whispered in the emotional part of my brain.

  The last time I had been here, the damage had already been done, my transformation complete, and all of us dealing with the consequences of having been kidnapped by the men who had contaminated the vaccines. That explained what happened to everyone else. I was the mystery.

  “Well, sitting out here is only going to look weird,” I mumbled and got out of the car, my purse slung over my shoulder.

  The front door opened before I got halfway up the sidewalk. Joanie leaned against the frame, her arms crossed, and an expression of polite interest on her pixie-like face. She had gained weight since I last saw her in person and looked healthier than she had in years. She even had a little bit of a tummy, which had never happened before. I forced a smile and blinked back the tears of anger and jealousy.

  Why does she get to be so obviously healthy and in love, and I have to run from my demons and who knows what else?

  “You should have called. I was just on my way out,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, I got caught up with…” Again words failed me, but that’s because when I got closer, I smelled something different about her. She moved her arms to put her hands in her pockets, and I noticed that, whereas before she’d had trouble filling out a B-cup, her chest had become rounder and more voluptuous as well. I counted backwards—we hadn’t hunted together for a few weeks.

  She grinned. “I was going to call you soon, anyway. As you’ve probably guessed, I’m pregnant.”

  “Leo’s?” I asked, and then mentally smacked myself. “Of course it’s his.”

  “Yep. Apparently coming off a long period of celibacy is good for fertility. Or having one’s primitive impulses geared up regularly. We’re still studying it.”

  I couldn’t help it, I had to hug her. “Congratulations!” Anger and jealousy fought with the new overwhelming urge to protect her.

  She hugged back fiercely. “Won’t you come in? I had an appointment, but I can change it.”

  “Is it an obstetrician appointment? I don’t want to keep you from those. They’re important.”

  She shook her head. “Haircut.” She fingered her dark curls, which had grown past shoulder-length. Another change—she’d always kept it short. “But I’m on the fence about it, so this will give me an excuse to waffle some more.”

  I followed her through the white marble foyer—now cool from the door having been open—and into the living room.

  “Have a seat, and I’ll call the salon about the appointment. Would you like anything to drink?

  “Water would be great.”

  She fetched a glass of water for me from the kitchen and went in another room to make her phone call. I looked around. I hadn’t been in the house before, but I guessed she had redecorated because there was nothing I could see that reminded me of Peter. He and his brother Leo had always been like night and day. I had imagined Peter’s place decorated in antiques, or at least reproductions his toddler wouldn’t destroy. The house had an interesting mix of modern pieces, bold colors, and a few details that made me smile, like the wine barrel end table. A large bank of floor-to-ceiling windows led to a back patio on the ground floor. The view was of the forest, the trees a lacework of naked limbs with hints of dark greens where the pines peeked through.

  “It looks like your grandfather’s place,” I said when she returned with a cobalt-blue mug, a string and tag hanging over its side. The floor plan was open and spacious, but she’d added touches like a sea chest, the original of which had burned with Wolfsbane Manor.

  “Yes, I’ve been collecting things that remind me of him. Leo and I have talked about it, and we want the new Manor to be a mix of us and him—a place where the whole pack will feel comfortable. When it’s finished and we move back up there, we’ll take this stuff and keep the original furniture in storage or offer it as an option when we sell or rent this place.”

  She waved me to a brown microfiber sofa. I saw Leo in its clean lines and her in the autumn-colored throw pillows.

  “You’re doing a great job. I can see you and him and your grandfather all here in the furniture. You’re adorable, by the way.” I gestured to her little poof of a tummy, and the questions all females have to ask came tripping off my tongue in spite of my wanting to clear the air before getting into the details of our lives. “How far along are you? What’s the due date? Do you know the gender?”

  She just shook her head. “It’s funny how the instincts take over, isn’t it? You get to answer my questions first since you just showed up out of nowhere.” She blinked at the tears that threatened her. “Sorry, pregnancy hormones.”

  “That’s all right.” I smiled. “All I can say is I’m sorry for my harsh words. I should have kept my tongue and feelings in check. It’s not your fault I got changed, and you lost so much more.”

  “There’s no point in arguing over who lost more or didn’t,” she said. “It’s a useless conversation. And you were going through a lot physically and emotionally.”

  “I still shouldn’t have been such a bitch to you,” I told her, the need to make everything right with my pack mate foremost in my mind.

  “Apology accepted.” She smiled and sipped her tea. “To answer your questions, I’m about eight weeks along, and I’m due in September. It’s too early to know the gender or even to be telling people, but there’s no keeping something like this from the pack.”

  I flared my nostrils, wondering if I caught a hint of fuchsia in her scent, but I shook my head.

  “What’s wrong?” She leane
d forward and put her tea on a coaster. “You’ve gone pale.”

  “I never answered your question.” I looked into my water glass. “I’m here because I’m being hunted.”

  Her hand went to her stomach in that age-old protective gesture, and she got the patented “Stony Joanie” look on her face. “By what?” Her tone had gone from concerned to clinical.

  “I don’t know, but I took precautions to make sure I wasn’t being followed.”

  She relaxed then. “I trust they were good ones considering you’re a private detective who knows how to follow people. I noticed you didn’t drive George up here.”

  I nodded. “My pursuer has his plate number, courtesy of the weasel who’s my boss. He doesn’t know about this car. I never registered it with the deck I park in.”

  She drummed her fingers on the tea mug. “Start at the beginning.”

  I told her everything from Paul having called me in to ask me about my clubbing and me suspecting it was Kyra to the strange electrical incident and dream at my apartment to Paul’s strange shift in attitude and his phone calls.

  Joanie listened like a scientist, asking questions to draw out more details. “You were smart to get out of there,” she said once I finished. “Do you think it’s Peter?”

  I shook my head. “I would have recognized it if it had been. A monster knows her own creator. Sorry,” I added, remembering that she was a monster as well.

  “You’re definitely shaken up. I’ve never heard Lonna Marconi apologize so much in a day. Besides,” she said with a sad smile, “I’m still trying to decide if this is my family curse or my family legacy. It’s put me in the position to help people directly, which I never did with my research.”

  “It only works if people want to be helped,” I said, thinking about some of my tougher cases at work, and then what had drawn me up here originally. “Or if people are open about why they’re approaching you.”

  Joanie tucked her legs up under her. “That’s very true. But getting back to your mystery, you said this new doctor had a scent similar to what you smelled when you were being toyed with at your apartment. Medical practices don’t just hire physicians without a long interview and vetting process, even if they are temps. Too much fear of being sued.”

  “Do you know anyone you could ask there?”

  “Hmmm… I mostly know the pediatrics people since we looked at kids’ medical records, but I’ll think about it and check through my contacts.”

  “So how’s Leo doing these days?” I was tired of talking about my problems.

  She couldn’t hide the happy blush that came to her face. “He’s doing well. He passed his internal medicine boards earlier this month, and he’s also going to take the pediatric ones, so he’s setting up a family practice clinic up here.”

  “That’s good. It’ll keep him busy.”

  “Yes,” she said, “he doesn’t like the idea of being a kept man. He gets grumpy if he’s stuck in the house for too long, anyway, even aside from hunting.”

  “Hunting…” My inner wolf perked her ears up. “Can we hunt tonight?”

  “So are you hunting in your current condition?” I asked. “Or is it forbidden like sushi and alcohol?”

  She laughed. “I can do it for now. I’ve not taken the aconite since we found out, and my body seems to accommodate the internal rearrangement, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to once I get huge.”

  “It sucks that there’s no one to ask.”

  “Yes. You’d think that there would be a community of people like us, maybe very underground, who knows these things or whose family legends could give us some hints as to how this is supposed to go.”

  “That would be great. I have a few questions for them myself. No one’s approached you?”

  “Not a one.” She fiddled with her tea bag string. “Not even after, or maybe because of, all the press the raid on the cave got.”

  “Did they actually say werewolves?” I hadn’t read any of the articles. I didn’t want to.

  “No, but they did mention a ‘unique strain of Chronic Lycanthropy Syndrome,’ which, if someone had been reading between the lines, they may have picked up on. I mean, we can’t be the only ones.” She hit the couch cushion with one small fist. “We just can’t!”

  There’s a psychological principle that misery loves miserable company. I wondered if that’s what she was feeling, if the five of us left in the Crystal Pines pack and the six pups, who had been created as a result of being tested on and not through natural processes, just wanted to know we weren’t unique. Not that she wanted to make other people miserable or suffer, but the inner scientist wanted more data.

  “What have you heard from Iain and your other research friends?” I couldn’t name Gabriel—the one who had driven the wedge between us the year before. He had disappeared, but his name hung in the air.

  “Iain is still busy consulting with the government. I’ve asked, but he said he hasn’t been approached by anyone. As for Robert…” She didn’t flinch like I expected her to. “We’re not speaking. He still owes me for trying to ruin my career.” The fierce expression in her eyes made me almost feel sorry for him. Almost.

  A car pulled up in front of the house outside, and I heard footsteps and a door opening and closing. My hand trembled as I put the water glass down. Part of me had been pretty sure Joanie would welcome me back. As for her mate Leo, whose temper had been a problem from the start, I wasn’t so sure.

  “I’m blocking your driveway,” I said and stood.

  “Yes, you are.” Leo Bowman strode into the room. He never just walked anywhere—he always had more momentum than a simple stroll. After Joanie met him the first time, she called him “a ball of dark energy,” and at the moment, he hurtled to her and gave her a tender kiss. My stomach sank.

  “I can’t ever see Giancarlo again. It would be too dangerous for him. But can I really stay here and be constantly reminded of what I’ve lost?”

  “You don’t have anywhere else to go,” Wolf-Lonna said, “and Giancarlo was pretty and convenient, but not your destined mate.”

  “Hi, Leo,” I said and tried not to sigh at him or the internal argument with my wolf self. She’d never liked Giancarlo, seeing his alcoholism as an unforgivable weakness rather than a disease. At least she was keeping me from showing fear to Leo.

  He pulled away from his mate and studied me with more clinical than male interest. “You look well.”

  “Thank you, Doctor. You do too. Shall I get my car out of your way?”

  “Oh, is that your Mini? What happened to the Jeep?” He sat beside Joanie and put a casual but protective arm around her shoulders. I got the message: to hurt her again would mean bad consequences for me.

  “Long story. Joanie can fill you in.” I stood.

  “Where are you staying, Lonna?” Joanie asked. She’d always been good at reading my face.

  “Well, since I fled Little Rock in a hurry, I didn’t have time to plan ahead.”

  “You can stay here,” she said. “I still have the stuff you accidentally left at my place last year.”

  “That would be great. Where should I park?”

  Leo had run into Matthew in town, and they’d decided to have a post-full-moon hunt to celebrate my return to the pack. I was afraid Leo would be upset at hosting me and my drama, but a few words from Joanie reassured him, and he later told me he could tell she was excited about a new puzzle to solve. We ate a light dinner and waited for it to get dark.

  “Are you physically changing or using the aconite?” Joanie asked. “I have extra if you need some since I’m not using any right now.”

  “I brought some, but I’m reluctant to take it. It’s taking longer and longer for it to wear off,” I told her. “Did your grandfather say anything about that?”

  The tears returned to her eyes, and I regretted my direct question.

  “Pregnancy hormones,” she said again and wiped at her eyes with the backs of her hands. “No, he didn�
��t say anything about tolerance or withdrawal effects. I don’t know how much he’d studied it in others.”

  “Hey, don’t do that,” I said and took her hands in mine.

  “What?”

  “Pretend you’re not grieving. It’s important that you allow yourself to.”

  “So says the social worker.” But she allowed a tear to drip off her cheek without catching it. “I really miss him. I lost him right after I found him again, and I have so many things I wanted to ask him and tell him.”

  “That’s normal. Not that it makes anything better.”

  “No, but you’re right. I can’t approach everything like a research question, especially my own emotions.”

  “Exactly.” I looked at my hands, which, if I had been physically changing regularly, would be rough and calloused. “I’ll physically change tonight, and then let’s get manicures tomorrow. We need some girl time.”

  She laughed. “Deal.” She stood and gave me a hug. “I’m glad you came back.”

  “Me too.” As a hunter, I knew that the respite from being the prey would be short, and I had to get what I needed here quickly and move on. I only wished I knew how much time I had before they found me. It was only with strong effort that I kept myself from shivering.

  I hope you’re still glad tomorrow. I hope I am.

  Chapter Four

  I hadn’t physically changed since the first time six months before. Then, in a trance, I had opened the front door to my apartment, taken off my clothes, and changed into a wolf with the world watching. Okay, not quite the world. It was pretty late, and my apartment complex was quiet. Since then, I had spirit-walked with the aid of the aconite, which caused me to create an astral projection of my wolf self rather than physically change. Somehow I could still eat what I hunted, and I hoped that wouldn’t translate into bad blood work. Who knew how much wild critters would raise one’s cholesterol? A stupid concern, I know, considering everything else. It’s funny what the mind latches on to.