Hurt wasn’t a big enough word to encompass every sensation in my body, I opened my eyes to a dark-blue ceiling and faint hum of the telemetry at my bedside. I wasn’t in any hospital I knew. Belmarais didn’t have a hospital, and Tuttle had the closest level one emergency facility. This was definitely not Tuttle Medical and Community Care. Carefully, I patted around the sides of the bed for the call button, wincing as I pulled on the IV I hadn’t realized was in the back of my hand, the layers of tape telling me I had probably tried pulling it out at some point earlier, some point I couldn’t remember. My head swam when I turned it to one side, looking for some indication of date, time, location, and finding only a blank blue wall. The pillow under my cheek was far too smooth and soft to be hospital issue. I closed my eyes again and immediately felt the tug of a soporific in my system, the edge of drug-induced sleep still so close that even a long blink seemed able to pull me under again. Forcing myself to keep my eyes wide open, I shifted my head to the other side. There was a door in that wall, a pale blue against the stark white. A small window was set around eye level, metal mesh sandwiched between glass—no, I knew better, it was Plexiglass. Designed to keep patients from breaking through it, trying to escape from an otherwise locked room. I gingerly craned my neck to peer at the IV bag. There were no markings, and the fluid was clear. I hoped it was just saline or Ringer’s solution.
The machines at my bedside definitely registered my changing vitals, but no one came to check on me. I shifted carefully, my muscles sore like I’d been running for miles. The bed was soft, almost too soft, and even though it lacked the typical controls of a hospital bed, it had rails along both sides, fully engaged and locked to keep me from getting out easily, and a railing at the foot where a glossy white tablet was perched on a stand. Who needs paper charts when you’re apparently a very well-funded, expensive private clinic? Short of having some Alice in Wonderland level lucid dream, I had to be in some private facility, I realized, letting my head fall back—albeit carefully—against the way too nice pillow. “Hello?” I tried. My mouth felt sticky and raw. The word grated at my throat, and I had the disturbing realization I must have been intubated at some point. Shit. Okay, take stock. What happened first?
I hit my head.
No, wait… I didn’t hit it. Something hit me.
Aunt Cleverly leaning over me. Did I get a bee sting?
What happened after that?
I tried to remember, retrieving only snatches of sound, the impression of a dark, bumpy ride in a car, muffled voices, then nothing.
Had I been kidnapped? What happened to my aunt? Shit… Ethan! Was he okay? It had to be Waltrip. I was an idiot, and this was my fault. He’d done something while he was in the house, maybe sneaked in one of his friends from before, someone who was waiting for me. For both of us, because I couldn’t imagine them leaving Cleverly behind if she had seen what they did to me. Fuck… she’d been there… I pushed myself up to sitting and groaned as my head swam. Nausea roiled hot and acid in my gut, threatening to spill out. I groaned again, unable to stop myself. Eyes closed tight against the throbbing pain in my skull, I took several slow, deep breaths and ran a mental checklist on myself. Headache, nausea, dizziness, light sensitivity: Concussion, probably a pretty decent one. Also signs of being drugged. No indication of breaks or sprains. Thank the powers that be, no catheter so they must not have been expecting me to be out very long. No hospital gown, but this is definitely not what I was wearing earlier. The gray scrub set looked like the ones I’d seen morgue attendants wearing at Tuttle Medical, but they were softer than any scrub set I’d ever owned. They felt like super-luxe cotton and possibly angel hair and the tears of virgins. Same with the sheets. If I wasn’t in the throes of panic, I’d have been trying to find out where to get my own. I opened my eyes and peered at the window in the door again. No sign of life on the other side. I tried to keep myself calm, or at least close to, as I gently slipped the cannula from my arm and pressed against the well of blood that rose through the puncture.
“Doctor Babin,” someone chided from somewhere behind me. “That’s not very smart, is it? You’re quite dehydrated.”
I was proud of myself; I managed not to squeak, but I did jerk, my head screaming in protest. “Hello? Where the hell am I?”
“A private clinic,” they a few seconds later. Score one for me, guessing that one correctly. I twisted carefully on the bed and spotted the intercom set in a discrete panel just beside the headboard. It was flush and painted to blend in with the wall, making it easy to miss. What else was hiding in plain sight? Cameras? “Your aunt is doing well,” the voice added. “You can see her soon.”
My heart lurched painfully with relief. “Was she hurt?”
“She’s fine,” the man soothed. His voice was oily, sending twists of unease through my belly whenever he spoke. “Just stay calm, and a nurse will be there in a moment to assess your condition, Doctor Babin.” There was no audible click to let me know he’d turned off the intercom, so I decided to function on the principle that he hadn’t, that he was listening to me move, and I decided, looking quickly around the room again, probably watching as well. The room itself had no other doors but the one, no sink, cabinets, or even a shelf for personal items. I took a slow, deep breath and smelled nothing. Not nothing as in ‘this place doesn’t smell bad’ or ‘eh, it smells like a hospital but nothing out of the ordinary.’ I smelled literally nothing. Not my own sweat, no antiseptic medical smells, not even the faint tang of my blood dripping along my forearm, which I knew should be flooding my senses by this point. I laid back against the pillows, my brain going completely blank for several long moments. Panic, I realized. Confusion. Time for my brain to reboot. Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again? It must be the head injury, I decided, it had to be. For all my bitching and moaning about being broken somehow, my abilities being a burden, the idea of living without them made me panic. The monitors at the bedside bore this out, my heart rate shooting up, my blood pressure climbing even as I clawed at the cuff fastened around my upper arm. I ripped it off just in time for a short, pale-eyed woman to throw open the door and click her tongue at me.
“Really, Doctor Babin! You should know better!” she scolded, bustling to my side, and grabbing the leaking IV tubing, pushing the entire rig away from the bed.
“Sorry,” I gasped out, my chest tight, “I tend to work with people who are past the need for a BP check.”
She giggled, her entire face crinkling up like an amused bunny. “Oh, your aunt said you were funny!” She whipped out a penlight and grabbed my chin in a firm grip. “Now you know the drill, right? Even if your patients don’t need this, either!”
Obediently, I followed the light with my eyes. She brandished a tongue depressor at me, then ran a fast read digital thermometer across my forehead. A quick pulse check later, she smiled again and patted my thigh. “While you were out, they did a quick scan of your noggin. No bleeding, so that’s great!”
“Um, yeah, definitely.” She had no name tag on her pale pink scrubs, no indication of the clinic name or her position or anything that could identify her as a medical professional. “I’m sorry, what’s your name?” A frown flitted across her face, her happy bunny nose crinkle gone in a heartbeat. “I’m just really confused,” I added, making my tone a little more pathetic (not that it was difficult to do). “I don’t know where I am, and I’m worried about my aunt. Were we robbed or something?”
The nurse smiled again, but this one wasn’t a cute, crinkly, happy woodland creature expression. It was cold, sharp. “I’m Rosamund. You’re at the Garrow Clinic.” A shock of recognition shot through me. I started to struggle up, but she pressed me back down with the flat of her hand. “We’re a subsidiary of Bluebonnet Biomedical these days. You were brought here at the request of…” She trailed off, shook her head a little, then patted my knee. “Well, at the request of someone high up on the food chain, let’s just say!” Her laugh was grating, not even a little like the silvery giggle of just moments before. “Give me just a few minutes, and we’ll take you down to see your aunt.”
I nodded, and she left me alone again, a definite, loud thunk telling me she had just locked me inside. High up on the food chain? A private clinic… The only person I knew who was high on any food chain was Ethan, but even as a clan leader, I doubted he had the resources to get me into a private clinic, much less my aunt. And even if he had, I wasn’t flattering myself when I thought that he would be right by my side. Swinging my feet off the bed, I discovered a pair of slip-on canvas sneakers were waiting for me, ugly white but new, still stiff to the touch as I carefully slid my feet inside. Standing was an adventure in and of itself, leaving me clutching the foot of the bed as my head tried to decide whether or not to kill me for a few minutes. By the time I managed to stand straight and not want to puke my guts out, Rosamund had returned, professional smile firmly in place. Behind her, a young man with dark hair pushed a wheelchair, narrowly avoiding running over her toes as he eased it into the room. She shot him a swift, brutal glare that he seemed to ignore, bringing the chair to my side. “Well, Doctor Babin,” she caroled. “Your aunt is ready to have visitors! We’ll be taking you to the day room just down the corridor. Have a seat and let Jeremy give you a ride.”
Jeremy, bless his heart, snorted softly. If I’d felt better, I’m sure I would’ve joined him in the conspiratorial wink he slid my way. As it was, I half sat, half collapsed into the wheelchair and leaned back, letting him flip down the footrests and take off the wheel brakes. “Just brace yourself,” he muttered. I didn’t miss Rosamund’s sharp look between the two of us before she held the door wide and plastered a smile back on her face. “This way, y’all. I must say, Doctor Babin, your aunt is a lovely woman! Very kind to us worker bees!” The corridor was long, surprisingly wide, and had an ornate carpet runner down the center, covering a polished wood floor. Doors to either side of the corridor looked the same as the one to my room, but I had the feeling we were in a house rather than a place built to be a clinic.
“She’s like that,” I muttered. The movement of the chair was making me nauseated all over again. Not being able to smell set me off-kilter, and I found myself breathing too deeply, making myself dizzy as I tried to catch any trace of a scent, even the soapy tang of hospital antiseptic would do. Rosamund kept up a steady chatter about how amazing my aunt was, how she hadn’t given them a speck of trouble even when she was worried about my injury. Jeremy grumbled under his breath, nothing I could make out clearly, but he seemed less than thrilled to be there. Not that I blamed him—I wasn’t too excited, either. We reached a set of double doors, heavy wood with intricate knotwork carved over virtually every inch of the damned things. “Holy shit,” I breathed, unable to stop myself. “Um, out of curiosity, did y’all make sure you’re on my insurance plan because I’m really doubting I can afford this place.” And I didn’t just mean financially. This was it, the place that was the center of the shitstorm, I thought, trying hard not to let it show as my stomach turned itself into knots. RunRunRun!
Rosamund laughed again and reached for the brass panel beneath one of the doorknobs. She slid it to one side and began punching in a long series of keystrokes. “Garrow Clinic was, at one time, the home of Lucas and Delilah Garrow. They had it built during the railroad boom in the late nineteenth century here in Texas, and it’s been in the Garrow family ever since. Forty years ago, Nelson Garrow converted it to a convalescent home, then later a private clinic. All of this,” she gestured back down the hall, indicating the hospital-like doors on the rooms, “is courtesy of the Garrow family’s generosity.” She raised a brow and, for a second, I thought she was challenging me to disagree, but no, she was looking over my shoulder at Jeremy. He grunted in response, and she stared hard for a moment more before pressing in a few more keystrokes and turning the doorknob.
My aunt was sitting on a peacock blue divan beneath a picture window that took up most of the wall. Outside, it was dark, and I could make out the shapes of trees through the ambient light cast by the clinic’s lights. She looked up as Jeremy pushed me in, Rosamund falling back to stand by the door. “Oh, thank God!” Cleverly gasped, struggling to her feet. Wearing dark scrubs that looked a lot like her work uniform but lacking in insignia, he looked otherwise just like she did every day of the week: heavy but neat makeup, her hair twisted back into a soft twist, gold chain around her neck, and all of her rings on round fingers. Cleverly rushed to me and grabbed my face in her hands, pressing pink-painted kisses all over my cheeks and forehead. “I was so worried! They told me you have a concussion!” She lifted her head to find Rosamund by the door, narrowing her eyes at the nurse before she whispered, “Are they lying to me, hon? Is there anything else wrong? Don’t be afraid to tell me!”
“I’m…” I didn’t want to lie. I wasn’t fine; I wasn’t okay. “I’m sore,” I admitted. “And kind of freaked out. How the hell did we get here? And who did it?”
She nodded toward the divan, and Jeremy, whom I’d forgotten was still behind me, pushed me to join her by the window before stepping aside and doing a piss poor job of trying to blend in with the furnishings. “Bluebonnet does some work for the clinic,” she admitted after a tense bout of worrying her lower lip between her teeth. “I called in a favor when I saw how badly you’d been hurt.”
“What?” Words had stopped making sense. Maybe my concussion was worse than I’d thought. “The nurse said someone, er, high on the food chain got us in here? And you! Are you okay? I was sure…” I shook my head carefully, still wincing at the sloshing feeling it produced. “Aunt Cleverly?”
“I don’t know how to tell you.” She sighed, her eyes bright and shining. I hated it when my aunt cried and braced myself for one of her loud, wailing outpourings, but it never came. Instead, she inhaled deeply and took my hand in hers. “Your friend, the one that came by today? Mr. Waltrip? Well… I’ve seen him around quite a bit. And Lolly, from the café, she stopped me before I headed home and mentioned someone had been asking about you. Described a big ol’ red-headed guy, and when I saw that Mr. Waltrip, well, I got worried. Why would this guy who’d been lurking around my work want to come out and see you? I thought maybe it had something to do with your dad…”
I winced. My father, whom I hadn’t seen since I was two, had been a prolific gambler and drug dealer in our little corner of Texas. When he disappeared, everyone had assumed the inevitable had finally happened, and he was at the bottom of the bayou or drifting in pieces in the Gulf. But every once in a while, my aunt would get a phone call she’d take in hushed tones, locked in her room with the radio turned up so I couldn’t overhear a thing. I had wondered, over the years, if it had something to do with my father, her brother. “Why would Waltrip have anything to do with him? He’s been dead for half my life! And that still doesn’t tell me how we got here!”
She smiled sadly. Before she said the words, I knew what was coming. Slick, thick nausea settled in my veins, and I wanted to cover my ears so I couldn’t hear Cleverly’s next words, but I was frozen, numb. “Honey, I know this is gonna be a real shock to you, but he’s not dead. We just thought it best you didn’t know. He’s… he’s not a good man, baby. Your dad’s been asking me for money for years. He’s not dead. I think you already knew that, didn’t you? In your heart of hearts. I’ve been sending him cash once every few months since you came to live with me. After your mama and grandma passed.”
“Okay, so, full disclosure, I am not entirely sure I can deal with this information at the moment.” The headache that’d come with my concussion now had a thrilling undercurrent of what fresh hell is this levels of tension. “So. Dad’s not dead.”
Her tiny huff of laughter almost made me smile, it sounded so familiar and homey. “I think you’ve known, haven’t you? In your heart of hearts?”
I shrugged. “I… maybe suspected. Wished, when I was younger. But when I couldn’t find any sign of him back when I looked in high school, I figured it must be true. And… and I made peace with it, I think.” I thought. Maybe. Or maybe I just shoved it down so deep inside me, it was easy to ignore.
“He’s always been very troubled, my brother.” She sighed. “And we—I, really—thought it for the best if we kept him away from you. You were doing so well, and I knew he’d use you for leverage…” Cleverly smiled wanly. “I think maybe someone he pissed off is trying to kill you.”
I let my head rest against the back of the wheelchair and closed my eyes. Not a great idea since that made my stomach swim, but at the moment, that was preferable to trying to parse everything out. “Okay,” I said again. “One thing at a time. Your… boss? Supervisor? Manager? Just let us come here? Pulled some strings? Why is that?”
Cleverly blustered like she did that time I caught her all cozy with Doctor Mitchell at the church social. Just talking about Jesus, my ass. “Well, not… exactly,” she hedged, not meeting my eyes when I finally managed to convince them it was okay to open. She sent a pointed glance Jeremy’s way. He rolled his eyes again (at this point, I was kind of worried he was going to roll them so much, they’d pop out) and took a few steps back, in the direction of the still open double doors. Nurse Ratchet had her back to us, but there was no doubt in my mind she was listening. “I pulled some strings,” Cleverly said, sotto voce. “As soon as we’re home, I’m gonna have a lot of fires to put out so I don’t get my butt in trouble!”
I nodded thoughtfully. It didn’t seem too unlike Cleverly to do something like this, and Lord knew she was a huge fan of dramatics. She was the most practical person I knew when it came to raising me and making sure I didn’t fall in with the bad shit that tended to happen to teenagers in our little town, much less gay teenagers in Texas, but she did love her flights of fancy in her personal life. “When we get home,” I said, endeavoring to sound perfectly calm and not at all like I wanted to tear my hair out, “we’ll have a nice, long talk about dear old Dad and just why you’ve decided we live in an episode of Magnum PI or something. For now, let’s see what we can do about being discharged and calling an Uber or something. How far are we from home, anyway?”
She darted a glance toward the windows and looked distinctly guilty. “About sixty miles.”
There went my fake calm. “Sixty miles? Good God! How the hell did we get here?”
She reached out to pat my hand again. “An ambulance!”
“Oh, Christ on a Pogo stick…” I was revisiting my opinion of Aunt Cleverly’s common sense. I motioned to Jeremy. “Hey, so we’re ready to get out of here. Who do we see for the discharge papers?”
Jeremy’s dark eyes went wide, and he shook his head minutely. “I’ll, um, ask,” he said, the words halting. He gave Rosamund a furtive glance and murmured, “Don’t freak out yet, okay?” before turning away and hurrying to speak with her in hushed tones just outside the doors.
My head still throbbed, but my awareness was starting to unfuzz just enough to feel that distinct kind of uneasy that had nothing to do with the weirdness of the place, of the entire day, but everything to do with my senses twigging to something. I wanted out. Now. I’d see my own doctor on Monday, thank you very much, one who wasn’t working in some weird clinic that was probably the setting for some horrific hauntings. Cleverly was futzing with her rings, twisting them around on her fingers, tugging them, and pushing them as she worried her lower lip between her teeth. Jeremy was huddled with Rosamund, seemingly folding in on himself like a soufflé in a cupboard—arms tight around his middle, shoulders slowly hunching ever higher as his back bent in a painful-looking slouch. Rosamund was pinch-lipped and stiff-backed, rage pouring off her. Without even looking at her, my body had picked up on it. I was feeling the urge to run-no, need, not urge—and it was becoming increasingly difficult, with each passing moment, to keep myself still. I shifted uncomfortably in the chair—I was sure I’d be able to walk, albeit slowly thanks to the headache, but I didn’t want to rock the boat too much just yet and staying in the damned thing seemed like a good way to appear compliant. I wasn’t as subtle as I’d hoped when I moved, though, because suddenly, three sets of eyes were fixed upon me, each with varying levels of annoyance. Cleverly just looked miffed and embarrassed, but Rosamund was downright livid. Jeremy frowned at me but quickly erased the expression and had a very bland, neutral look on his face when Rosamund turned back to him. Rosamund said something to him in a tone so low, not even I could make it out and strode back to my side as Jeremy disappeared into the corridor. “I’ve sent Jeremy for the paperwork,” she said through a tight smile. “If you’d like to dress, I can see you back to your room. You’ll find your personal effects stored under your bed,” she added, patting my shoulder. What the hell was it with these people and patting? She turned her attention to Cleverly, and her smile grew a shade more frosty. “You know how to get to yours, yes?”
Cleverly nodded, getting to her feet with a grim set to her jaw. “Yes, Rosamund, I do know my way around here.” She gave me one of her sweet smiles and stopped just short of patting me herself. “I’ll see you in a little bit, Landry.”
I nodded. Rosamund hummed tunelessly as she unlocked the wheels to the chair and started pushing me back toward my room. We passed several other rooms on the way, their doors closed and the inset windows dark. “Is everyone else asleep?”
Her hum became a curious sound rather than a made-up song. “Oh, no, you and your aunt are the only guests with us right now.”
“Ah.” Okay, yeah, time to go ASAP. “Do you know if my phone made it with me? I’d like to call a friend to come pick us up.”
“Oh, that won’t be necessary! Arrangements have been made!” She stopped at my door and reached past me to slide open another panel and press in a quick code.
“With whom?” I had a brief, fleeting hope she’d say with Ethan, that they had decided the sheriff of our little town was the best option to come all the way out to Middle of Nowhere, Texas and pick us up. “And what time is it, anyway?”
“Oh, I’m not sure of their name,” she fluttered, pushing me to the bedside and resetting the wheel locks. “There you go, nice and safe!” She moved to the foot of the bed while I pushed myself carefully to my feet. As she entered information into the tablet perched on the footboard, I gingerly reached beneath the bed and found a plastic bag tucked into a wire mesh shelf beneath the mattress. Inside were my jeans, t-shirt, socks, shoes, and underpants I’d had on that morning. Missing were the contents of my pockets: a few folded twenties I was in the habit of keeping handy and my phone. That can’t be good. “I’m missing some things,” I murmured. Rosamund stopped typing and frowned up at me.
“What’s in the bag is what you were brought in with,” she said, her tone brooking no argument.
Oh, I was gonna brook it, all right. “Yeah, no. When I was attacked, I had several items in my pockets, and not a single one is in this bag. Frankly, all I care about is my phone.”
Her smile was supposed to be sympathetic, I think. “I’m sorry, Doctor Babin, but when the attendants brought you in from the ambulance, you only had your clothing on you. It’s possible someone, ah, absconded with your possessions. If you’d like, I can bring you a complaint form with the other paperwork?”
I felt like I was being mocked. “I am honestly not sure if you’re serious right now.”
“The Garrow Clinic, though founded and maintained largely through a trust arranged by the Garrow family, also relies on financial and material support from Bluebonnet Biomedical and several private donors. If we allowed petty theft among contractors and staff, we would lose our supporters once word got out.” She sniffed imperiously. “I’ll be sure to bring a form for you to fill out in order to file a complaint regarding your missing items, Doctor Babin.” She tapped at the tablet screen viciously before giving me a curt nod and striding for the door. “I’ll be back in about twenty minutes, once the paperwork has been prepared.”
I waited for the thunk-click of the door locking before I started pulling off the borrowed scrubs. My clothes felt stiff and a bit weird after the cloud-like softness of the scrub set but putting them back on was like a touchstone for my muzzy thoughts. A bit of normalcy, it helped brush away some of the mental fog and let me think a bit more clearly while I waited for Rosamund to return. Something wasn’t fitting right in this entire jigsaw puzzle. I couldn’t pinpoint why I thought so, but the idea that Cleverly was lying had sprouted to life at some point between the day room and my door and was sending out little runner-roots. I like to think that I’m not a stupid man, but I knew I could be blinded by loyalty at times, and I wanted to think the best of people I cared for. It’s why I defended my mother and grandmother even long after I knew they’d abandoned me like a bag of trash, that they weren’t just ‘getting themselves together’ somewhere. It’s why I’d refused to believe my college boyfriend was cheating on me even after I’d caught his sidepiece naked in my apartment. Twice. Oh, God, maybe I was more stupid than I thought… I sat down on the edge of the bed; the breath virtually knocked out of me as I started to reorganize my day mentally. Waltrip had claimed his client saw me with Ethan and that I had been seen returning to town the night before. Cleverly said someone had mentioned Waltrip (or a man who looked a lot like his description) had been asking around about me. Ethan had… Well, he hadn’t been lying to me, not really, more of a sin of omission. But had he known before Waltrip’s visit to Cleverly’s house that someone was trying to say he’d been failing as a clan leader? That he was at fault for a rogue were killing the Raymonds?
Wait.
Someone else knew it was a werewolf attack.
Someone else knew it was not just a werewolf attack, but a rogue were, not one of the clan members in the area, not someone they already knew even from one of the other communities, but rogue. Or at least that’s what they were claiming. That’s what they wanted Waltrip to prove, that Ethan was negligent and had caused the deaths by refusing to do his job as clan leader.
They claimed the Raymonds were weres. But I would have known, wouldn’t I? I could tell when someone was. I knew. And Ethan… he’d grown up near the Raymonds. Hell, the Raymonds had been in Belmarais since it was founded, one of those old families that had come from a bit of money but never really rose up in the world, just sort of gently moldered more and more with each generation. There’d always been Raymonds in Belmarais, and none of them had ever been weres. The Stones would have known, would have either folded them into the clan or would have marked them as lone wolves (sue me—I can’t resist a pun even when I’m in panic mode).
The Raymonds couldn’t have been weres. It doesn’t just pop up randomly in families. You have to be born were, with at least one were parent. No amount of biting or scratching from a were would turn a regular human. It’d hurt like hell and was just plain unsanitary, but I’m not going to yuck someone else’s yum if they’re into that with their were partner. But the Raymond kids being were after generations of non were family? It was impossible. Biologically impossible. Ethan’s father, head of the clan for decades before his stroke, would have known the second a new were had come into the area, and if that were had married Jessup Raymond, then the family would have been watched extremely closely, just in case the offspring showed signs of the condition and needed to be brought into the community.
The Raymonds themselves didn’t live like weres or even like someone who’d had weres in their lives. Weres tended to be fastidious to the point of obsession when it came to their living spaces and would never have lived in such squalor. Thinking of the Raymonds reminded me of the box I’d snagged from their bathroom. Bluebonnet Biomedical’s creation. I needed to talk to Cleverly about it, see if she knew the name, if it had come across her desk in the phlebotomy lab.
Something was missing. Something really big and jagged, leaving a gaping hole in the puzzle.
The door swung open, and a jaunty Rosamund brandished a clipboard at me. Jeremy lurked behind her, lips pressed tight, eyes narrowed. “What’s the matter, Doctor Babin?” she laughed. “You look like you’ve been caught with your hand in the cookie jar!”
“Just ready to go,” I said. “Are those the discharge papers?”
“Mmmhmm. And your ride should be here soon. Jeremy arranged it for you.”
I glanced at Jeremy, whose expression had gone from tense to downright miserable all in the span of a second. “Who did you call? Did Cleverly give you a name and number or something?”
Rosamund’s expression didn’t change, but Jeremy flinched as if she’d pinched him. “We have a driver,” he murmured I wasn’t sure what he was doing with his eyebrows, but it didn’t look good. On any level. Great. Now I needed to figure out eyebrow semaphore before I got murdered.
“Ah. You know, if you don’t mind, I’d really rather call someone I know personally.” I stood, taking the proffered clipboard from Rosamund, and smiled as if she wasn’t trying to flay my skin from my bones with her glare. “I’m just really particular about getting into cars with strangers.”
“Oh.” Rosamund sighed, clicking her tongue behind her teeth. “The driver is already en route, and there’s a strict policy about answering calls while driving. It’s too late to cancel.”
I looked up at Jeremy again. He was back to being blank faced, but nervous energy was radiating off him. I wanted to hide, scurry away and tuck into some safe corner. Despite my best efforts, something must have shown because Rosamund’s expression shifted from downright angry to amused and predatory in a heartbeat. “That’s too bad,” I said carefully, unable to keep the faint tremor from my voice, “but I’m really not comfortable getting in the car with a stranger. This entire night’s been weird already.” Rosamund’s hard stare made my skin crawl. I looked at the paperwork in my hands and flipped through the first few pages, pretending to be unbothered. “Where’re my labs? I’d like copies to take with me so I can show my GP back home.”
“Jeremy, please go ask Franklin for Doctor Babin’s lab results.” She flashed teeth at me, not even bothering to pretend to smile now. “It will take a bit, as I’m sure you know, Doctor. Even on a slow night like this one.”
I nodded. “Of course.” The paperwork was all boilerplate stuff, nothing complicated or out of the ordinary in terms of discharge information and permissions. The facility’s name was added in afterward, judging by the looks of things. Anywhere it appeared in the paperwork, the font was just a bit off, the positioning askew. Like someone did it in a hurry. “Did my aunt already sign herself out?”
“She’s waiting for you in the day room.”
“Still?”
“She enjoys the view.” Teeth again.
“Ro,” someone called from out in the corridor. She scowled, jerking around to face the door as a very tall, very built man filled the doorway. “Jeremy’s asking for…” He trailed off, face coloring a nice shade of eighties pink. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. He was taller than your average person and striking to look at, almost too pretty, and someone I was sure I would have remembered.
“Doctor Babin’s labs,” Rosamund said tightly. “I’m aware.”
“Um, are you sure?”
“Yes,” she ground out. “Very.”
He nodded, backing out into the corridor. He turned his face away for just a moment, looking back the way he came, and my stomach dropped to my knees. The profile flared my memory to life.
“How’s Mr. Waltrip?” I asked, unable to stop myself. Yeah, I officially revoked my early statement that I wasn’t stupid. I was pretty damned stupid.
Rosamund’s face grew shuttered. She shifted on her heels to face the man in the doorway. “Mr. Waltrip?”
“Yeah,” I said, staring him down. He was stock-still, not scared but wary. My senses screamed wolf, not just because I knew he was one from seeing him the other day but because he was radiating were like a sun. Were about to do something I’d regret, I realized, watching as his fingers slowly curled into fists by his side. “I know his… coworker? Boss? Friend? We met in town the other day, didn’t we?”
He didn’t nod, didn’t even blink, just fixed me with a penetrating, wide-eyed stare that was somewhere between fear and anger. “Oh?” Rosamund said, voice slick and low. “Have we met Mr. Waltrip?”
“You’re very invested in who he hangs out with outside of this place,” I murmured. I didn’t know what was about to happen, but I knew that I needed to be ready to bolt, to find a place to hole up until it was safe for me to find Cleverly and make a literal run for it. There had to be a major road nearby or a town or something. Though knowing my luck, we were in the Big Piney, and running on foot would just be a fun chase for werewolves before they tore us to pieces. A bit of light exercise before their evening entertainment.
“Sorry,” the man said, offering a tight smile. “I think you’re thinking of someone else. Head injury, right?” he asked, making a vague gesture toward his own head. “That’s tough. I hear the memory problems usually go away in a day or so, though.”
It was a horrible attempt at diversion. Like high school kid caught sneaking in at dawn while smelling of beer and actively smoking a joint and trying to tell their parents that they had just gone out to get the paper and found a lit doobie on the porch isn’t that so weird levels of bad. Whatever you’ve heard about werewolves being all slick and suave? It’s probably bullshit.
Rosamund’s brows snapped together so hard, I was surprised we didn’t hear the click. “I’m sure you’re mistaken, Doctor Babin. David wouldn’t lie about that, would he?”
“I have no idea what David would lie about,” I said, shrugging. I was kind of feeling the asshole vibe and running with it. “But I do know that I need my labs, I need my aunt, and we need to go.”
At first, I thought it was something I’d said. Rosamund and David both stiffened. They turned to peer down the corridor, away from the day room and back toward what I had to assume was the front of the building. If they’d had dog ears, they’d have been pricked up and swiveled forward. I was pretty sure David was just about to vibrate out of his skin. A second or two later, I heard it: the faint sounds of raised voices through closed doors. Shouting, something heavy hitting something else, and then, a crash. Voices spilled into the corridor, and I was forgotten, Rosamund and David speeding out of the room so quickly, I was surprised they hadn’t left skid marks under their feet. I started forward but froze at the sounds of voices becoming snarls.
Fuck.
Weres. Fully transformed. And my aunt… Fuck. I had to get to her before they did. The anosmia was disorienting. I had never realized how much I relied on my enhanced senses, such as they were, until the most pronounced one was missing in action. It was impossible to tell if any of the weres were ones I knew, or worse, the one who had killed the Raymonds. Edging forward carefully, I took a deep, shaking breath. Make the flight response work for me, I chanted inwardly. Run like hell, run to Cleverly. Get her and go. My head was still throbbing and sloshing, but I had to run. The fighting was loud, terrifyingly so, and close. Snarls, snapping jaws, heavy bodies colliding drowned out even my own breathing. “Now or never,” I breathed, closing my eyes for a brief second, trying to force myself to focus before opening my eyes and resolutely looking away from the sounds, down toward the day room. If I didn’t look, I reasoned, I wouldn’t freeze. I took a breath and bolted, teeth clenched hard against the pain in my skull as I sprinted toward the day room. The doors were closed—I could see that from the corridor. “Cleverly!” I shouted. “Cleverly, open the door!”
Behind me, there was a short, sharp bark. One of the weres (Fuck, how many were there? I should have looked! Fuck!) broke away and followed me. Claws clicked as it ran after me, its heavy breath louder than anything now. The day room door cracked open. I was almost at it. I threw myself forward and hit it with both arms outstretched, knocking Cleverly back as I tumbled in. I rolled onto my back and got my feet under me, lurching at the door to slam it shut as a large, dun-colored wolf tore—literally tore—down the corridor’s carpet runner toward us.