Lycanthropy Files Box Set: Books 1-3 Plus Novella

by Cecilia Dominic

  “No.” He frowned. “Did I tell you Cindy was the one who wanted me to come to Salem to meet you? She encouraged me after you ended up at my condo, said she could tell I was interested in you.”

  “No, you didn’t mention that.” I folded the afghan. The moonlight buzzed in my blood.

  “And she had also bought a strange present for me, an antique book, but I only flipped through it.”

  “Wait, what?” I turned from the couch. “That’s why you looked so odd when Veronica asked.”

  He nodded. “I didn’t think anything of it, but things kept dragging me here to Salem, like the call about the murder.” He rubbed his temples. “And we went to lunch, and we surprised whoever was putting the poison in your water pitcher. This is all too connected to be a coincidence, but I can’t see it clearly.”

  “I’m sorry,” I told him. “But I’ve really got to indulge my wolf side. Would you mind giving me a lift somewhere I can roam for an hour? That should do it for me.”

  It would be like an appetizer when I wanted a full meal, but it would have to do. I wanted to spend as much of our last allowed night together engaged in other animal activities.

  “Of course.”

  “Great, I’ll be down in a moment.”

  I went up to my bedroom and wished I was changing into something more comfortable. As it was, I hoped my fur coat was at least glossy after my illness of the day.

  The power of the moon helped me to change smoothly, and I trotted downstairs. Jared stood by the front door with it open, and the scent from the mat hit me. It was the same scent from the kitchen—the clean, floral smell of a woman with mischief on her mind.

  But the only female person who had stood there was Cindy.

  “Jared, does your sister have any special talents like yours?”

  “Not that I know of, but we haven’t spent a lot of time together aside from recently.”

  “Does she have any reason to want to hurt you or the business?”

  “No. In fact, she is a partner in addition to having her own small firm, so if the business does well, so does she.”

  His phone rang, and the screen showed who it was—Max. Jared answered it.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt you on your special night,” he said, “but I was just looking at the bank statements we dug up from the dead woman’s yard, and there’s a suspicious large transfer into her account. It turned out to be an offshore account for a company called CS Holdings. Isn’t that your sister’s investment company?”

  “Yes,” Jared said. “And I’m not sure whether to be more disturbed that you’re able to rush autopsies and get through layers of financial security or that my sister is involved in this, which I’d already suspected.”

  “Energy wizards are great hackers. Do you know where she is?”

  “Yes, she called me about getting together with her this evening.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, and I wished I could hug him or otherwise physically support him. I’d been hurt enough by my siblings’ rejection, but none of them had ever betrayed me.

  “Then we should probably find her before she decides to disappear.”

  14

  And the Witches Watch

  We met Max, Lonna, and Veronica at the store. Lonna was in wolf form, and Max had a couple of extra wizards with him. I wondered if they would be the ones to whisk Jared away at the end of what was supposed to be our night together. It took all my human willpower to keep from baring my teeth at them.

  “What’s the battle plan?” Jared asked.

  I gave him a baleful look. “You stay out of the way and let the trained wizards handle this. Plus, Cindy is your sister. Do you really think you could hurt her?”

  He glanced around, then down at me. “When you talk in my head like that, I forget you’re a wolf.”

  “With big, pointy teeth.” I yawned to allow him a glimpse of them.

  “And you should stay out of the way since you’re recovering from the false cure,” he told me.

  I wanted to argue, but Max held up a hand. “We will likely all be needed, although Jared, you should not demonstrate what you can do. I don’t want an international magical incident on my hands. You’ll go talk to her. Kyra and Lonna, you wait in the shadows. Kurt, Merlin, and I will stick with Jared and apprehend her when it’s time.”

  “How will we know it’s time?” Jared asked, and then with a child in a Disney World commercial-sized grin, “Merlin?”

  The wizard in question, who looked like he was in his mid-thirties but who smelled older—not in an old man sort of way, but rather a sun-warmed marble statue way—shrugged. “No relation to the famous one, I’m afraid,” he said with an English accent.

  Lonna and I exchanged glances. I could tell she didn’t buy it, either, but neither of us said anything. If he was the Merlin, I would feel much better about the upcoming encounter.

  “Remember,” Max said, “we’re dealing with someone who’s already killed one person and would likely not hesitate to do so again. Plus, if Jared’s abilities are any indication, they have very strong magic in their family. Be ready for anything.”

  No one spoke as we walked to The Purple Toenail. As promised, it was out of the way enough and through a sketchy enough area that we managed to shed the tourist crowds, which grew thicker as we approached Halloween itself.

  We found Cindy sitting with a guy by a firepit on the patio. Another couple sat with them, and the air shimmered around all of them more than one would expect from the firelight.

  “All wizards working some sort of magic,” Lonna said. “Max, be careful.”

  “We will,” he said. “Merlin, hang back so you’re not caught if it is a trap.”

  “Aye.” He disappeared into the shadows as though he had been born to them. Lonna and I exchanged another glance.

  Cindy glanced at her watch, then out into the dark. The humans stood behind a wall, but Lonna and I crouched in the dark and could see everything. During a full moon change, our human eyesight augmented our wolf sight so we had the best of both and then some.

  The three wizards approached the group on the patio. When Cindy saw Jared, she stood, her expression stricken.

  “Omigod, is Kyra okay? Why isn’t she with you? Did she take a turn for the worse?”

  The trio on the patio who had been sitting with Cindy exchanged sly smiles, and I wanted to bite all of them.

  “She’s resting,” he said. “I’m going to check on her later.”

  “Oh, good.” But she sounded disappointed. “Who’s this?”

  Jared introduced Max and Kurt, and they all sat.

  “So you’re Maximilian Fortuna,” Cindy said and stirred her drink. “Y’all had some big news recently. Are you looking for an American partner?”

  “Yes,” Max said. “But I’d rather discuss that privately, as we’re still working out the kinks in the process. I have a place where you, Jared, and I could meet.”

  “Now?” Cindy gestured to the people she sat with. “I’m afraid I’m not in the best frame of mind to talk business. My friends and I have been having a good time. Why don’t you join us, and we can talk in the morning?”

  Jared’s fist clenched under the table, but his expression remained neutral. Make that tired. I wondered what he’d done to me that afternoon. It seemed to have drained him, and being in the presence of the wizards appeared to make him fade faster in spite of his being outside.

  “I’m afraid time is of the essence,” Max told her. “A competitor here is already working on their own attempt at a cure.”

  “Oh?” She looked at him coyly. “And how would you know this?”

  “Corporate secret, ma’am,” the taciturn wizard named Kurt said.

  “I see. Jared, could you join me for a second?” She rose and left the table. Jared followed her to the edge of the patio near where Lonna and I crouched.

  “What is this?” she asked without any pretense of niceness. She touched him on the arm, and he tried to jerk back, but
she held on. “Tell me.”

  The two words echoed in the air between them. His face took on a sheen of sweat.

  “Oh, crap, she’s a lock wizard,” Lonna whispered in her mental voice. I barely registered this due to the effort it was taking to stay silent so Jared could keep Cindy talking.

  “Why don’t you tell me?” he ground out from his clenched jaw. “You pushed me toward Kyra and then tried to poison her.”

  “You mean cure her. I was doing it for you, dear brother, and your business.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  A chill, damp gust of wind ruffled her short blonde hair. She smoothed it with her free hand but kept hold of him. I recalled her touching him at the party where he forgot about me, or seemed to.

  “I need to stop her. She’s going to make him forget me again.”

  “Wait,” Lonna told me. “She can’t wipe his memories, only lock them.”

  Suddenly the strange events in my grandmother’s kitchen made sense. “Can she get into and out of locked houses?”

  “Yes. Is that how she poisoned you?”

  “I think so. She put the stuff in my water pitcher.”

  “Stop fighting me, Jared,” Cindy said. “If Kyra is ill, then either she will be cured or dead, and we don’t need the ILR if the former is true. And if she dies…” She shrugged. “This is huge, and you don’t need the distraction of a relationship.”

  “I’m allowed to have a life,” Jared told her and jerked away. He scrubbed his hand over his face. “You stopped me from following up with her before after that one holiday party.”

  “You and Ted wouldn’t let me have a boyfriend. Why should I let you have that happiness?”

  “Now you’re not making sense.”

  “Have you forgotten so soon, big brother, how ignored I was as a child, the surprise after the infertility-breaking miracle babies came along? The only time our parents paid attention to me was when I tried to forge my own identity, especially when I started dating. Our strange family curse meant any time I got serious about someone, one of you would show up and ruin it.”

  “We only responded when we felt you were in danger.”

  “In danger of what?” She got louder with each question. “Growing up? Ending up with a broken heart? Being my own person?”

  “She’s not making any sense, is she?” I asked Lonna. Admittedly, my brothers hadn’t cared who I dated, or hadn’t seemed to.

  Lonna nudged me so I turned to her. She held my gaze as she said, “That’s what happens when a wizard isn’t trained. The magic warps their mind.”

  Hint taken – don’t insist that the wizards leave Jared alone. With a shiver, I returned my attention to the scene.

  The young man Cindy had been sitting with came over. “Is everything all right?” he asked with a French accent.

  “Yes, Thierry. I was just telling my brother how things are going to be. Now, let’s catch us an energy wizard who can show Jared how to do blood magic so we can make our own CLS cure.”

  Lonna sprang from the shadows, and, finally able to give voice to my anger, I followed with a snarl. I went for Cindy and Lonna for Thierry, but a gust of wind knocked me backwards, and Lonna and I tumbled into a furry heap. I looked up with surprise at Jared, but he frowned at the couple Cindy had been sitting with. Now they stood side-by-side with hands clasped and their free hands aimed at us.

  “Air elementals,” Max warned us, but it was too late—we were trapped by a swirling cage of wind.

  “Ah, so there she is.” Cindy picked herself up and peered through the invisible wall that held me and Lonna. “She looks fine. What did you do to her, dear brother?” She stood and clapped her hands. “Did you manage to perform the magical step? No, because then she would be cured. But you did something. And the other wolf must be Lonna Marconi-Fortuna.”

  “Leave her alone,” Max said. He tried to approach, but Thierry put up a hand, and Max stopped.

  “You are not the only energy wizard here,” Thierry said. “If you come closer, I will add lightning to their wind storm, and they will both perish.”

  “Um, can he do that?” I asked.

  “’Fraid so.”

  Lonna and I huddled together inside our little whirlwind. The swirling air confused my nose with a myriad of scents under the overpowering ozone smell. A fog crept up and surrounded the porch.

  “Is that you?” I asked Jared. He stood with arms crossed and eyebrows drawn into a frown.

  “No,” he told me. “But it’s not natural fog.”

  Indeed, the temperature dropped by several degrees, and I thought I saw shapes moving through the fog, but it was hard to make out specific details through the air distortion caused by our windy cage. My fur stood on end again, and I remembered the feeling of being watched in the woods behind Crystal’s apartment.

  “Here’s what we’ll do,” Cindy said. “We’ll hold the two wolves in a safe place until Doctor Fortuna gives us the formula and magical secret to curing CLS and Jared signs the company over to me. Then we’ll let everyone go, assuming you cooperate.”

  The teenager I’d seen previously stalked through the fog, and I glanced around, but no one seemed to see her. Indeed, a closer look revealed she stood about three inches off the concrete slab that made the floor of the patio.

  “Poor doggies,” she said and bent down to look at us.

  “Do you see that?” I asked Lonna.

  “I do.” Her wolf eyebrows, if we could be said to have such things, dropped, and I would have laughed at her almost squint if I hadn’t been so afraid.

  Something about the girl was eerie and off.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “My name doesn’t matter, doggie. The important thing is that there are strange wizards in our territory sapping the energy of the land, and we don’t like it.”

  “Who is ‘we’?”

  She stood and gestured around. More figures coalesced out of the fog, women in robes and a few men who looked like they came from…

  “Oh, gods, you’re one of the witches from the seventeenth century. You’re a ghost.”

  “Now that’s not very nice. I’m simply not the same kind of alive as you are. But then, you’ve only half a life in that you haven’t embraced your full self.” She wagged a finger at me. “Bad doggie, not realizing the gift you’ve been given with the magic you have.”

  “It’s not a gift if it ruins your life.”

  She shook her head. “You have no idea what it means to have your life ruined, spoiled doggie. It’s selfish of you not to accept all of your parts and live all of your life. You need to learn that lesson.”

  Well, that was some perspective. True, I’d lost my career and been turned on by my pack, but I still came out of it with my life. It was more than the witches of Salem could say.

  The girl continued, “But since you are on our side in this conflict and you were kind to my many times great niece, I will offer you a choice. If you vow to accept your magical side and help others to do the same so that events like those of the past will not happen again, then we will spare the man you love and your friends. If not, we shall drain all of you of your magical energy and destroy you all.”

  “That’s quite the threat.” Even as a wolf, I couldn’t keep my smartass side from coming out.

  Was this what it had come to, that I would have to choose Jared’s life over mine? But if it hadn’t been for my lycanthropy issues, we wouldn’t have reconnected. He might have continued in his fog, and I would have always wondered what had happened to make him not call me. And he would understand my magical restrictions as he learned his own.

  It dawned on me that even if the witch-girl hadn’t made her threat, I would choose the same. I’d always hate the loss of control, but I’d come to discover a different kind of power and beauty in my wolf. If I didn’t have it, I would miss it, especially the heightened senses and the freedom of running through wild places. Plus, I had found someone who really liked all of m
e including that part, whereas my family hadn’t even accepted human me. I’d originally wanted Jared to connect me with a CLS cure, but I realized he had given me a different kind of hope—that I could be fully me.

  I couldn’t help a tail wag as I said, “I accept. I will embrace my wolf side.”

  “Good doggie.” She reached through the swirling wind to pat my head, and the cage disintegrated.

  The figures around us grew taller and darker, and I only had time to do one thing—I mentally yelled, “Run!”

  15

  The New Not-Normal

  With a blast of something that glowed to my wolf vision, Kurt knocked the confused air elementals over. Jared reached for Cindy, but a wall of fog blocked her, and lightning crackled in what had been a clear sky. The air smelled of ozone, sulfur, and something that tingled in my nose like I’d snorted sparkling water. All my fur stood on end.

  “Cindy!” Jared called, but a roaring wind snatched the word from his lips. I wanted him to just leave her, to run, but knowing that he wanted to save his sister in spite of everything she’d done made me admire him even more. My brothers would have already left.

  Max and Kurt grabbed Jared and pulled him away from the patio. He continued to look over his shoulder, but he went with them. His agony showed in the tilt of his eyebrows and the set of his jaw. The stupid girl didn’t realize what she’d had in a brother who cared for her so much.

  Lonna and I darted after them. Merlin seemed to be in conversation with one of the shadowy figures, and after he nodded as though settling something, followed us. The wind blew my fur in different directions, and the entire atmosphere unsettled like it was being ripped apart on the most basic of levels. The thunderclaps grew closer and closer together until they sounded like a tornado, and when I looked back, I saw the strobe light of a lightning storm where we had been. A chorus of screams provided a high-pitched counterpoint to the storm’s roar. A howl built in my throat, but I bit it back into a whimper, and Lonna made a similar sound.