Moonshifted (27 page)

It had that new-carpet smell. I hadn’t smelled that since I’d been a temp in an office complex between semesters of nursing school. It was clean, and not exactly the same as what had been there before, but I didn’t think my landlord could complain. I took a step in, closed the door, and set Minnie down.

The carpet actually had cushioning underneath. And hadn’t been downtrodden by the feet of a hundred tenants. I waddled from side to side, just glorying in the niceness of it all before turning on the lights and looking in.

A brand-new couch. Not a shitty bloodstained old one with a couch cover to hide its hideousness, but one all the way from a store somewhere—I hesitated to think where Lucas’s shady cleaning service been able to find a furniture store open at four
A.M.
—and I didn’t care if it’d fallen off a truck. Taking up most of my apartment’s wall, it was a shade of brown that matched the carpeting without being hideous—it was lovely. It was mine.

Minnie meowed, and I unzipped her carrier so she could escape. She leapt out and hightailed it to the bedroom, while I completed my short tour.

The kitchen was the same, only cleaner—all the dishes done. If it weren’t still winter, I’d open up the small window to let out the remaining scent of bleach. I went back down the hall, found my bathroom same as it’d been left, and then turned toward my bedroom. It, too, was the same. Gah. I had a suspicion that the cleaner had been too busy dealing with traceable evidence. The DNA was gone, but my trashed closet was left up to me.

It’d take me all afternoon to clean—I wondered what time it was. I dug my phone out of my purse and texted Sike—
Home now. Is this safe?
—on the off chance that she would finally be helpful or supportive, and Lucas—
Nice couch. Thanks
—even though I knew it was probably a bad idea. Then I set to picking things up in my room.

I decided to wash anything that the intruder or Veronica might have touched. So I wandered around my room, putting all the clothing he’d pulled out into a huge laundry bag, and hauled it down to the laundry. Numerous quarters later, when I came back, Jake was waiting outside my door.

My heart dropped. “Jake? Are you okay?”

“I just wanted to say hi was all.” He was carrying his new backpack and a large duffel bag. “How’s it going?”

“Busy.” We couldn’t stand outside talking forever—I wasn’t dressed warmly enough for the occasion.

“Can I come in?” he asked.

I wanted nothing less, but I said, “Sure,” and I reluctantly opened my door.

Jake let out a low whistle behind me. “What is this?”

“My landlord remodeled.” Because there’d been a dead body on my floor less than a day ago. But don’t worry, the vampire and daytimer left, so it’s fine.

“Four days after Christmas? And two days before New Year’s Eve? In the winter?” Jake asked. He walked over to my new couch. “He get you a new couch, too?”

“Don’t ask questions, Jake.”

“Why not? You get to feel high and mighty all the time. It’s my turn now.” He sat down, patting the cushion beside him. “How could you afford this, Edie?”

“Not now, Jake.”

“It’s never a good time for you, is it? But it’s always a grand time to interrogate me.” He leaned back, clearly feeling superior.

“Look, I’m not the one who stole things from you before. So I still get to have the upper hand.” He opened his mouth to say something else. I cut him off. “Why are you here, Jake?”

“I was just going to give you money for the phone bill. Like I said I would. Business is brisk.” His face softened a little. “Plus, I was worried. You’ve been strange for a while.”

“Worried about me? Wow.” I was taken aback. No drug worth selling would be handing out empathy to Jake like that. “I was worried about me, too. But things are getting better,” I lied.

He looked around my living room, and then shook his head. “If you get into trouble, you can tell me, you know. No one’s gotten into as much trouble as I have.”

“I know.” I stood a little straighter. “I’ve got a lot of laundry I have to wash today—”

He jerked his head at me. “I don’t suppose—” he began and swung his bags around, like he should set them down. After all, I did have a fabulous new couch for him to sleep on.

“Not yet, Jake, okay? After the holidays maybe.”

“Okay.”

“Can you get home on your own?”

“Yeah. See you around, Sissy.”

It wasn’t until after he left that I realized he hadn’t gotten around to pitching in for his share of the phone bill.

*   *   *

I spent the rest of the morning picking things up in my bedroom and putting them away, then I got another load into the laundry.

I threw clothing in willy-nilly—there wasn’t a single thing I owned that couldn’t be laundered on high—and heard something clink. I reached in and felt around.

The vials of Luna Lobos that Jake had given me. Goddammit. I had to convince him to get off this stuff. Selling energy supplements wasn’t going to give him a normal life. I put the vials into my purse so I could take them to work and put them in the incinerator box.

Lucas had been right, it wouldn’t be the safest thing ever to sleep at my house right now, but the locks on my door worked. I latched it—the dead bolt and the chain bolt. Then I took my step stool and unfolded it underneath the door handle to block further entry, and slept with my phone nearby.

*   *   *

I didn’t wake up till eight
P.M.
There was a lump on my mattress where the strange were had knifed through it, and I could feel it under my left knee. Minnie was sprawled alongside me, the trespasses of the night before seemingly forgiven.

I got up, showered again, and got ready to leave. I needed to eat, and I needed food for late dinner tonight. I didn’t look in the parking lot for a guard, but a black foreign car followed me from my lot to the grocery store, and out again from it, until I found myself on hospital grounds.

*   *   *

I was in the locker room when Gina came in, humming a happy tune. I confronted her. “You’re cheerful tonight.”

“And you’re not. It’s like we traded places.”

“I had a long night off.”

“Me too. But in a good way. I talked things out with Brandon. He doesn’t care if I don’t change.”

“For how long?”

“He says, for forever.”

“For real, forever?”

“For long enough.” She smiled at me. “I knew I didn’t screw up falling for him, Edie. I knew it.”

I found a smile somewhere deep inside me—probably pulled it out of another fucking dimension—to share with her. “I’m really glad for you, Gina.”

She hugged me tight and let me go. “Come on. Let’s have a great night.”

*   *   *

I walked out to the floor without her to see who we were getting stuck with tonight.

“Meaty—is there any other possible assignment?” Gina and I were with Winter. Again.

My charge nurse shifted behind the desk to give me a look. “Charles gets the daytimers, you two get the weres. It’s only for two more nights, Spence. Suck it up.”

I muttered, “Fine.”

I braced myself to go around the corner and see Lucas there—but he had to fight again tonight. Of course. I peeked around, and for once there were no visitors. None at all. I felt myself relax, and Gina joined me for report.

Everything we were doing now for Winter was entirely for show. Either the moon would heal him—right down to his cavities, apparently—or it wouldn’t. I checked orders with Gina and co-signed all the changes. We didn’t bother to use the rifle anymore, not even when she was near. The Domitor was turned off—if the moon was going to work, we didn’t want to prevent his change—but there was nothing frightening about him now. The bleed in his brain had taken care of that.

*   *   *

At three
A.M.
Gina was on break in the extra corral next door, and I was reading a book outside Winter’s room. Things were peaceful. I should have known it wouldn’t last.

“Incoming, Edie!” Meaty shouted from around the bend. I put my book down and tried to look official.

Lucas came around the bend, wearing his hoodie again, looking rough, smelling like sweat. He seemed bigger than he had last night, and he was breathing hard. When he saw me he stopped, his face hard to read. “I just want to talk to the old man.”

“Okay.” I pushed my desk out of the way and let him go inside. Technically, he should have put isolation gear on, and technically I shouldn’t have let him go in alone. I stood to hover near the door where I could see them both.

Lucas went over to Winter’s bedside, staring down at the king in repose. “No wonder my father hated you, Uncle. He knew he’d never feel like this.” He touched his own chest. “I can feel their hearts, beating inside me. This is what it feels like to lead a pack.” He moved his hand to Winter’s chest, and I took another step inside the door. “I can feel it coming—the moon has chosen me.”

“Lucas—”

He looked over to me, and the shadows in the room made his eyes glow copper, like an animal’s in the night. “Don’t worry. I won’t hurt him. He’s already as good as dead.”

He patted Winter’s chest again and came back toward the door. Instead of passing me, he grabbed my shoulders and spun me sideways to press me against the room’s wall, pinning me there. To call for help would be humiliating at best, injurious at worst. I remembered Charles’s story about weres saying they didn’t know their own strength afterward, and completely believed him.

I squeaked out, “How were the fights?” like a normal conversation with him would be possible now.

His face an inch away from mine, he said, “Easy.”

He kissed me like he owned me. My head was pressed against the wall behind me, and his tongue ran deep inside my mouth. He only pulled back to tease, his hot breath gentle on my lips, before kissing me again.

Half of me wanted to leap outside my skin and run away, or scream. The other half wanted everything else from him, here, now, forget propriety, forget the disgusting hospital floor.

He planted his hand against my mouth so I couldn’t scream, and licked up the side of my face. His other hand trailed down my body outside my thin cotton scrubs, stroking my breast, diving between my legs.

“You still want me,” he said, finally letting me go.

I wiped his spit off my cheek. “People often want what they can’t have.”

“Sometimes it makes them want it all the more.” He took a step back from me, inhaled, exhaled, deflating, becoming less of a monster, more of the Lucas that I knew. “We’ve found five of Viktor’s men. We’re on the hunt for the rest of them.”

“That’s good, I guess.” I was breathing heavy, scared and turned on, mad at my body for betraying me.

“I have pack business from now until the moon. But after it, Edie—”

“You’ll be a pack leader then.” I wasn’t going to fall for another guy who would have to leave me. I pushed him away, and he took an obliging step back.

“Don’t think that this is over, Edie.” And then he looked past me, back at Winter. “And as for you, old man—your pack is mine.”

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

I waited near my desk for five minutes, and then went out to the bathroom to wash my face and clean myself up. Luckily I’d started the evening looking disheveled, so Lucas mauling me didn’t make a huge change.

Meaty was standing, yelling into the phone on my return. “We’re a hospital, not a prison—no, I don’t care, that’s not what you pay us for.”

By the time I got to the nursing station, Meaty’d hung up. “What happened?”

“Edie—go wake up Gina. Tell her we’ve got to open the extra were-wing.”

*   *   *

Waking Gina was easy—convincing her that’s what Meaty’d said was harder. “You’re kidding—why?”

“I don’t know.” I didn’t want to repeat half-heard conversations, but, “Something about us being a prison?”

“Oh, God.” Gina flung herself out of the empty room’s bed.

I followed Gina back into the hallway. She went to the back wall, which had a keypad and a metal doorplate set up beside it. She ran her badge over the doorplate and entered a combination on the keys. What I’d assumed was a wall for my entire career at Y4 lifted up, like a garage door.

“How many rooms will we need, Meaty?” Gina hollered.

“Half a dozen or so!” came the shouted answer from the main floor.

“Extra help, girl,” Gina said, addressing me. “Linen and supplies for six rooms. Stat.”

“You got it.”

*   *   *

I ran back and forth, putting supplies into the six nearest rooms—the ones at the end of the hall were covered in dust.

“When’s the last time we used these?” I asked on one of my treks back and forth.

“Last were-war,” Charles said with disgust from his post at the front desk.

I had just about everything done by the time our occupants arrived. Jorgen led them in, one by one.

Each of them looked more forlorn than the last—unwashed, shuffling men and women who said nothing and kept their eyes locked on the ground.

“Who are they, Jorgen?” They all looked homeless to me.

Jorgen waited awhile before speaking to me, as though he had to muster up the strength. “These are your attackers. Viktor’s mob. They attacked some of us too—only they didn’t get very far.”

The women who’d attacked me had been well dressed and able to drive a car. The people Jorgen led in, whom we placed in rooms one by one, didn’t look like they could manage to take an escalator.

Gina emerged from the third room with her arms crossed. “Are they under custody?”

“Until we get some answers, yes,” Jorgen answered.

“They can’t stay here indefinitely just because you’re mad at them. None of them is sick.”

“Humanity at large needs to be protected from them, and the moon is near. Do you want all these unmanaged new weres out on the streets?”

“So your pack’s assuming control of medical decisions for them? If something goes bad?”

“Sure. Why not?” Jorgen said with a shrug.

“I need to talk to Meaty.” She walked back to the main floor while I stood in the hallway with Jorgen. As soon as she was out of earshot, he turned to me.