Long Shadows: The Lycanthropy Files, Book 2

by Cecilia Dominic

“I don’t think you’ve lost her,” Joanie told me and smoothed my hair back from my face. It was a soothing gesture.

  “Then where did she go?”

  “She’s being blocked by something. She’s there but not accessible.”

  “What?” I looked at her and frowned. “Like a suppressed memory? Or a secret wish?”

  She shrugged. “You’re the mental health professional. What happened last night, or what can you remember?”

  It all came rushing back to me, the man in the clearing and Matthew on the trail. “Matthew! Where is he?”

  “Leo figured out what you meant, followed your trail back into the woods, and got him with the four-wheeler. He’s sleeping it off downstairs. Was there someone else?”

  I frowned. “Didn’t Leo smell him, too?”

  Joanie shook her head. “No, just you. It’s amazing you made it that far if you were drugged.”

  “There was a wizard. He could manipulate fire. He knew how I’m torn, how there’s two parts of me.” I pressed my heels to my forehead. “I can only remember in bits and pieces, it’s a jumble of images and conversations. But it was that guy, Doctor Fortuna. He wore gray glasses, and he said I could trust him.”

  “What did he say to you, exactly?”

  “That what had happened to Matthew was because they mistook him for someone else. There was more, but I can’t remember.”

  “The drugs are still working out of your system. Leo took some blood so we can figure out exactly what the man gave you.”

  “I can’t stay here. I’m putting the two of you in danger.”

  “Yes, you are, but we don’t know if what happened to you and Matthew is only because of you or for other reasons, if maybe our little pack is being targeted because of how we were made.”

  “Or how I was made. I’m the different one.”

  She didn’t disagree with me, and I took a deep breath to calm the anxiety constricting my chest. “Just help me learn as much as I can about wizards and how they operate, and then I’ll leave you alone,” I said.

  “I’ve already started in the library,” she told me. “Come down once you’ve showered and dressed.”

  Joanie had lost her grandfather’s books in the fire that took Wolfsbane Manor, but hers had still been en route from her place in Memphis, so she had more than enough to fill Peter’s large library/office. Yes, as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t stop thinking of the house as belonging to the sorcerer who made me what I was. Anyway, I was sure she’d added to her collection as her experiences as a werewolf created new avenues for research. When I arrived in the library, she already had a stack piled on the corner of the desk.

  “Are you giving me homework?” I asked and perched sideways in one of the armchairs facing the windows and away from the desk, my legs dangling over the side. “I’m a bit past school, you know. That’s for nerds like you.”

  Her lips twitched like she tried not to find my joke funny. “You could look at it that way. I’m pulling anything that could contain information about someone being un-cursed as a werewolf.”

  My vision blurred when I reached for the presence I’d grown accustomed to in my head and didn’t find her. “Other wolf-ectomies, you mean?”

  “It’s not something I’ve heard of before.” She sighed. “Not that there’s been anyone to talk to about this besides Iain, and he’s gone from somewhat busy researcher to overwhelmed expert consultant with the Cabal-Hippocrates case. I’d never admit this to Leo, but I wish I knew how to get in touch with Gabriel.”

  “You think he’s plugged in to the werewolf network? Wouldn’t Iain know the same people? They were at Stirling together.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Gabriel was a lone wolf, a rogue without a pack, but he must have still been in touch with family or friends.” She flopped into the tall black leather desk chair. “It’s amazing how little I knew about him in spite of feeling like I knew him well. People don’t just disappear without help, and Iain and his people were looking for him to testify. Did they approach you?”

  “There was a deposition.” I shuddered. “Iain couldn’t make it, and the assistant he sent wasn’t very reassuring. I thought those corporate lawyers wanted to eat me alive.”

  Joanie grinned. “Did you give them a full dose of the Marconi charm?”

  I smiled at the memory. “By the end of it, they were sweating. One even asked me to dinner afterward. You know, to apologize for giving me such a hard time. They believed me about the kidnapping and being held against my will, but they didn’t seem convinced about the werewolf bit. They thought I had been drugged.”

  “That’s it!” Joanie snapped her fingers.

  “What?”

  She darted among the shelves, looking for a certain volume. “It’s around here somewhere. An old Book of Shadows from the eighteenth century.”

  “Why do you have something so old and valuable in your bookshelves? Isn’t it falling apart?”

  She shook her head. “It’s not the original. It’s been typed up and printed.”

  “That’s boring.”

  She glared over her shoulder at me. “That’s not the point. Don’t you know not to judge a book by its cover?”

  “Groan.” I rolled my eyes. It was almost like old times, but with the addition of werewolves and sexy men. I missed Giancarlo. He was good for a cuddle before he passed out and left me to my hunting. What was I going to do now that I couldn’t change or access my inner wolf? I would actually have to sleep or something.

  She hopped down from the ladder, book in hand, and grimaced.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I stepped on a thorn or something last night.” She stood on her right foot and rotated her left ankle. “That’s one of the problems with actually changing—injuries don’t translate as well with the spirit wolf form.” She opened the book on the desk to the table of contents. “Here we are. ‘On making and unmaking of shapeshifters.’”

  “Okay.” I joined her and peered over her shoulder. “It’s like a recipe book.”

  “It’s an old herbal from colonial times. Families had their own books, and the ones with a bit of folk magic in them are called Books of Shadows, or spell books, but most healing women considered them family recipes.”

  She turned to the chapter on shapeshifters, werewolves and were-cats.

  “Were-cats?” I asked. “Meow?”

  “There are legends of shifters all over the world, all kinds of different animals, even snakes and dolphins.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. She had the dreamy “I’m only half paying attention to you while I read” tone I’d gotten so familiar with when we were college roommates and just after, when we were both in graduate school, her for epidemiology and me for social work.

  “What?” She looked at me, startled. “Did I miss something?”

  This close to her, I could see the dark circles under her eyes, and guilt bloomed like a black flower in my chest. She’d been keeping watch over me. I could vaguely remember some argument between her and Leo, which explained why he wasn’t in evidence.

  “No, sweetie. Keep reading. Tell me if you find anything useful.”

  “You’re not getting off that easily.” She grabbed my wrist when I turned away. “Here are some books for you to look through.”

  “Let me read, and you go get some sleep.” I took the book from her. “Thank you for watching me, but you need your rest.”

  “Yeesh, you get pregnant, and suddenly people go from saying how tough and resilient you are to ‘you need your rest.’”

  “The shadows under your eyes agree with me.”

  “Fine.” She yawned. “I’ll go grab a quick nap. Dinner’s in the slow cooker. It’ll be ready about six. Come get me if I’m not up by then.”

  She left me at the desk with a big stack of books. There were more entries on the making of werewolves than how to unmake them. Each culture had their own take on it, but nothing could explain what had happened to me, either when Peter tur
ned me or when Max unmade me.

  But do I think it was Max? I asked myself. My instincts say no. They say he saw the dart in my leg, realized I’d probably collapse inside, and didn’t want to stick around for an angry Leo to confront him, especially right after the hunt and with his pregnant mate nearby. So where did he go, and where is he now? And how did he not leave a scent?

  As if my thought had conjured Leo, I heard him open the side door, and I jumped. I’d been staring at the same page for twenty minutes, thinking but not reading. His footsteps came to the library.

  “Can’t you do anything quietly?” I asked him, half kidding. “Joanie’s napping.”

  The face that appeared in the door wasn’t Leo’s ruggedly handsome dark one, but rather one I had become all too intimately familiar with the year before. Blond hair, ice-blue eyes, a long, straight nose, and narrow, aristocratic features—Peter.

  My heart danced a Tarantella in my throat to the point I couldn’t speak around its tapping. I wasn’t sure if the sweat that came to my palms was a sign of fear, anger, joy, something else, or a mixture of all of it. He walked toward me, his hands out in a placating gesture.

  There must have been some of the wolf in me somewhere because the anger won out, and I snarled and slapped his face. Or tried to. My hand went right through him, and the momentum made me stumble into the desk, bruising my hip. I rubbed the spot and took a deep breath. He watched me, arms folded and with a puzzled look.

  “Am I dreaming?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “I might be. It’s night where I am. You called me.”

  “No, I didn’t. I don’t even have my phone with me.”

  “Not like that. With a spell. What were you reading?” He walked to stand beside me, and I shuffled over. He hadn’t felt cold like a ghost, but I wasn’t sure what he was.

  “I was trying to figure out what happened to me in the woods. I got shot with something, and now I can’t access my wolf side.”

  He studied me, then, a puzzled expression on his face. “You’re one of them?”

  “Because you made me.” Now I really wished I could hit him. “You did something to me that first day when we went to lunch and made love.”

  “I… I didn’t know it had worked.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “What did I do? It’s been so long, and so much has happened, I can’t remember.”

  I opened my mouth to tell him, then shut it. Not so fast there, Buddy. “I don’t remember it all, either.”

  “You’re lying. I don’t blame you.” He smiled, but not in a friendly way, and his wolfish side came through. “Don’t worry, I do remember certain details of that day. You were quite compelling in your efforts to get information out of me.” He caressed my cheek with one finger, his touch feather-like.

  Heat rose through my chest and into my cheeks. “It helped us solve what was going on here, and you got your son back. You made out better than anyone here.”

  This time, the anger on his face made me step back, but he followed me, a dangerous dance with a partner I wasn’t even sure was real.

  “I would say your little friend the fake doctor came out better than anyone,” he told me. “Marguerite left with Lance once we got to France and is hiding with her family. I can’t even see my son.” The anger on his face melted into pain, but then the fury was back.

  “Joanie was turned too,” I said. “It hasn’t been easy for any of us.” Something Max had said in the woods came back to me. “I was told by someone that the way I was turned into a werewolf made me different, and I have attracted some dangerous attention. Do you know anything about that?”

  “No, but I will look into it for you. I have made some powerful friends among the European wolves.” He looked up. “I must go, but I will visit you again now that I know how to find you.”

  That didn’t reassure me. He disappeared, and I came to myself sitting in the desk chair, the old spell book open in front of me to the “Nocturnal Travelings” chapter.

  “Maybe it was a dream.” I stood to get a drink of water, and my hip twinged where I’d hit it. “Or maybe not.” My gaze wandered to the woods outside. “But he said European werewolves! We aren’t the only ones.”

  Chapter Six

  Joanie appeared for dinner looking much more lively and rested than I felt. I’d tried to read the books she left for me, but the strange terms and language only danced around in my head. We sat down at the kitchen table to camp stew and fresh baguette.

  “The best thing I ever learned in graduate school was how to nap,” she told me. “How did your reading go?”

  “Oh, it went.” Although the sore spot in my hip made itself known every time I moved my leg, I still couldn’t convince myself that Peter had been real. Maybe I bumped it while I was asleep, or it’s from the tranquilizer dart. “Where’s Leo?”

  She shrugged. “He’s in town in the clinic with Matthew. They’re working on safety precautions since we don’t know who or what is hunting us.”

  “Does he think it’s Fortuna?”

  “That’s one possibility, but he had plenty of opportunity to capture you, especially after you’d been tranked. Instead, he brought you home.” She shook her head. “Not that we were thinking clearly about it at the time. He was smart to disappear, but I’d love to know how he did it without leaving a trace.”

  “I was wondering about that too.” I swirled my wine. She, of course, wasn’t having any but had opened a bottle for me. “Leo’s mad at me, isn’t he? I admit I don’t remember a lot of our conversations from last summer since I was getting sick, but I do recall his temper, especially after hunting.”

  Joanie wouldn’t meet my gaze. “He just needs time to cool off. Being here in his brother’s house unsettles him, and he sometimes swears he can feel Peter’s presence here even though we’re pretty sure he’s not dead.”

  A chill went down my spine. “I can leave if I need to.” Not that I have anywhere to go.

  “No! That will not be necessary,” she said more calmly. “It’s my house and ultimately my decision. It’s not really about him and me, but rather our inner wolves fighting it out for alpha position. I thought we’d made progress with taming those impulses, but with the baby, they seem to have gotten worse again.”

  “I’ve heard men have sympathy reactions with hormones and stuff,” I said. “But I can leave. I have some money saved up, and maybe I’ll move to a different part of the country and disappear.”

  She took a deep breath and exhaled. “I don’t want you to. And you don’t have to worry about money—you know that.”

  “You can’t support all of us, Joanie.” Once again, I was reminded of the strength and stubbornness in her petite self. “What is this really about?”

  A tear escaped in spite of her furious blinking. She wiped it off with the back of her hand. “I’m just lonely,” she said. “I mean, Leo’s great, but ever since…” She gestured at her belly with the spoon, and I guessed she meant her pregnancy. “Everything’s changed. I used to be satisfied with my books and my research and my studies of these fascinating new CLS sufferers, but now it’s like I crave having other people around. Leo’s gone long hours at the clinic, and it’s just me here with the trees and the sounds of the forest.”

  “That does sound isolated. Is there something you could do to meet more people in town? What about the other pack members?”

  “Stop playing social worker,” she snapped, and her irritable response told me just how much stress she was under. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be snippy. The pack members are all male at this point, and even Kyra didn’t really give me the kind of female connection I need. As for the townspeople, they’re understandably mistrustful of outsiders, especially after the kidnappings and everything.”

  “But you were the one who solved what was going on.”

  “I’m still not one of them. Maybe it’s the money. Maybe it’s having the manor rebuilt. Maybe it’s because they sort of know what we are.” She shrugged. “Whatever
it is, there’s a distance that’s not going away.”

  “If I’d known, I would have come back sooner,” I said.

  She smiled then, a small but genuine one. “I can’t depend solely on you, I understand that. I’ll just enjoy your being here while you are, and I’ll help you get set up wherever you go next.”

  “Thanks.” My wheels were turning. “There’s got to be werewolf communities somewhere you can talk to, figure out some of this stuff like how to handle your increased need for community and your mate’s stronger protective urges while you’re pregnant. Maybe in Europe?” I asked, remembering what Peter had said.

  “I’ve looked online, but with the teen vampire and werewolf craze, there’s too much from people who are pretending to be paranormal creatures. I don’t even know if traditional werewolves would use the internet.”

  “Well, it’s hard to type with paws. Phew,” I said and looked in my now-empty wine glass. “What’s the ABV in this? I don’t remember wine ever going to my head like that before.”

  “It’s not that strong. Remember, you were drugged, and you slept for thirty-six hours, so you weren’t eating.”

  The room spun. “I should go back to bed.”

  “Good idea.” She helped me up the stairs and into my bedroom. I don’t know if it was our best friend link or something else, but I could feel her loneliness and months of isolation. She kept me awake while I brushed my teeth and put me to bed. It was like in college when I’d been out, and she’d stayed in to study.

  “You’ll be a good mom,” I mumbled, and the words slipped out before I could stop them. “Seriously, Europe. There are wolves there. Peter said so.”

  “Peter? When?”

  Before I could answer, I was asleep.

  In my dreams, I was back on the beach, sunning myself in that goofy skimpy white bikini. I had to admit it looked good—the hunting and changing, even in spirit form, seemed to have kicked up my already high metabolism. Both my parents had been full-blooded Italian and slender. It was a measure of how much the alcohol was affecting me because I only let the memories of them into my conscious mind rarely, and usually not by choice.