Second Nature (15 page)

Instead, his small body landed next to her on the couch.

Griffin opened her eyes.

The cat was carefully balancing on three legs. He craned his neck and sniffed Griffin's shirt-covered chest, then down to her bare arm, where Jorie's scent didn't mingle with hers.

Barely breathing, Griffin held still. She smiled when Will's rough tongue laved the skin of her arm. Very slowly, she extended her hand and let him lick that too. She rubbed his neck and the side of his face, marking herself with his scent and him with hers.

After a few moments, Will began to purr and settled down next to her.

Griffin continued her gentle stroking, looking down at Will in amazement. No cat had ever warmed up to her so quickly. She trailed her hand down his chest but was careful not to touch the place where his fourth leg should have been. Finally, she understood: very likely, a human had hurt him badly when he was younger, and now he trusted her because she wasn't human. Her scent wasn't associated with pain.

I wonder how Jorie managed to gain his trust.
That thought reminded her that she was here to spy on Jorie, not to bond with her cats. She waited until Will had dozed off, then slipped out from under the blanket.

The drawers of Jorie's desk were her first stop. She copied all the names and phone numbers from Jorie's address book. It didn't take long. Jorie's circle of friends was small. Leigh would need to check them out later.

Beneath boxes of text markers, she found three more notebooks, full of notes for stories titled 'Port of Call,' 'Antara's Throne,' and 'Strange Stars.' Griffin recognized them as the novels Jorie had published in the past, but there were ideas for future stories too. Nothing about Jorie's shape-shifter novel, though.

Griffin's frustration rose. The pounding in her head increased. In human form, a Wrasa's healing abilities were only slightly better than a human's. It was the shifting process that stimulated healing.

After riffling through every piece of paper in the living room, including the crumpled pages in the wastebasket, she gave up. Either Jorie kept notes on the inside information in the bedroom, or she relied on her memory. Maybe she knew writing down information on the Wrasa would be dangerous.
Or maybe there is no informant.

She gathered her clothes to take them outside with her. Standing next to the door, she listened into the darkness. Everything was quiet. Jorie was sleeping. It should be safe for her to slip out for a while. But just in case, she wrote a quick note before she left the house.

Nippy air, much cooler than she was used to, made her shiver as she stripped off Jorie's T-shirt in the cover of the trees. Then the burning of her skin chased away the goose bumps, and she allowed the change to take hold of her. Fur rippled over her body. Her muscles spasmed painfully, and she dropped to all fours, gasping for breath through an elongating mouth.

She felt her senses sharpen. There was no way to block out the popping of joints and the crunching of bones as her spine became more flexible and lengthened into a tail. Her hands and feet morphed into paws, and she scraped the earth with long claws when a fresh wave of pain hit her.

She groaned through a throat that was no longer human.

Finally, the pain lessened and soon disappeared. She stretched her front paws, then her hind legs. Lifting her head, she breathed in the scents drifting on the night air.

A leaf rustled deeper in the forest.

Her ears pricked forward along with her whiskers. Her muscles tensed. Then she was off, hunting through the forest without looking back.

CHAPTER 8

 
J
ORIE JERKED AWAKE. She struggled to lift her hand out from under the twisted sheet and flinched when the movement pulled at her wound. Finally freeing her hand, she pressed it against her chest. Her T-shirt was damp. Her heart hammered an urgent staccato of fear. For a few moments, she lay there, listening, staring up at the dark ceiling. She drew in a few long breaths until her racing heartbeat calmed.

Slowly, the familiar, soothing shapes of her bedroom furniture formed before her adjusting eyes. The room lay in peaceful silence. Whatever had frightened her had stayed behind in dreams she couldn't remember. Just vague feelings of panic and images of running and being chased remained.

What did you expect? You could have been killed yesterday, and since you chose to ignore and not deal with it, of course it hits you in your dreams.
She drove the last images of her nightmare from her mind, pushed the sweat-drenched sheet off, and sat up.

A light throbbing started in her arm and in various other parts of her body that had been smashed against a parked car. She groped around for the bottle of painkillers that she kept on her bedside table. After a few seconds, she gave up and turned on the light.

The place on her bedside table was empty.

Only then did she remember that she had placed the painkillers on the coffee table before she had gone to sleep, just in case Griffin stopped being stubborn and decided she wanted something to help with the pain after all.

Jorie massaged the back of her neck. Her alarm clock told her it was almost five. There was no way she would manage to go back to sleep now.

Might as well get up and get some writing done.
But first she would check on her guest. She slipped out of bed, careful not to jostle Agatha, who had slept at the foot of the bed and was now lifting her head. Her bedroom door creaked as she slowly opened it, and Jorie held her breath. She listened into the darkness.

Everything was quiet in the living room.

On her tiptoes, Jorie sneaked into the dark room and circled the couch.

Jorie stopped abruptly.

The place on the couch was empty. Will lay curled up on top of the comforter, but there was no sign of Griffin.

Had the mugging really happened? Had she really taken Griffin home with her, or had it all just been a dream? She shook her head at herself. While she did have an overactive imagination and often had vivid dreams, even she couldn't have dreamed all of that.

"So where did she go?" Jorie gave Will a gentle scratch behind one ear. Checking the bathroom and the kitchen unearthed no sign of Griffin. An empty plate and glass sat in the sink, but otherwise nothing hinted at Griffin's presence in the house.
Maybe she couldn't sleep either and decided to go home. Maybe she didn't want to wake me to let me know. Still, a note or something would have been nice. And sneaking out without being able to lock the door... not good.
After being mugged, Jorie wanted her front door firmly locked. She walked to the door to lock it — and found that it already was. A small note was taped to the door, and Griffin's nearly illegible handwriting told her that Griffin was out, taking a walk, and had borrowed her keys.

"She went for a walk in the middle of the night? Well, apparently, her head was not as bad as Dr. Saxton thought. And she took my keys?" Disquiet crawled up her back and made the hairs on her neck stand on end. Jorie glanced out the window.

Her car was still there and so were the two five-dollar bills she kept in a bowl on the side table next to the door. Tense shoulders relaxed when Jorie blew out a breath. Whatever was going on, Griffin Westmore was not a thief.
Come on. Calm down. Stop being so paranoid. I bet she'll be back in a minute.

With a sigh, she snatched up the bottle of aspirin from the coffee table and returned to her bedroom. Her laptop quickly powered up, and she started by rereading what she had written the day before, as she always did. There wasn't much to read, though. Writer's block still had her firmly in its clutches. Even finishing this one scene was a major battle.

She read the two paragraphs again, more slowly this time, then went back, added a hyphen, and deleted a comma. Her gaze swept back to the top of the page to read it all again. Still no brilliant idea on how to finish the scene.

Frustration added a pounding in her skull to the pounding of her arm. Without looking away from the screen, she fiddled with the childproof cap of the aspirin bottle. It refused to budge.
Jesus! Why can't I figure anything out tonight?
Annoyed, she jerked around to glare at the brilliant invention of modern medicine.

Seconds later, she dropped one of the white tablets into her hand and dry-swallowed it. If only she could solve her problems with the scene that easily. She did a word count, even knowing she was procrastinating.
Eighteen thousand, five hundred and twenty. Great, I'm stuck not even one-fifth into the story.

A sound from the living room stopped her from reading the scene for the fourth time. She climbed out from under the laptop and opened the bedroom door.

For a moment, she thought that cat eyes were glowing back at her; then she turned on the light and the illusion was lost.

Griffin was standing in the middle of the living room, fully dressed, staring back at her. The borrowed T-shirt was twisted around her big body, and her sneakers were tied carelessly as if she had dressed while still half-asleep.

"Where have you been?" Jorie asked.

"I... I couldn't sleep, so I thought I would go for a walk," Griffin stammered. It was amusing to see the big woman so flustered. "I took your keys so I could lock up, and I left you a note. Nighttime walks always help me clear my head. I'm sorry if I woke you or —"

"No." Jorie softened her voice. "You didn't wake me." Griffin's excursion and her sudden reappearance had startled her, and she was annoyed with herself for allowing her overactive imagination to intrude into her life.
Glowing eyes, really.
She rolled her eyes at herself. There was no reason for taking out her frustration on Griffin.

"No?" Griffin came half a step closer but was still careful not to encroach on her personal space. "Is it your arm?"

"No. The arm is fine," Jorie said. Having Griffin's concerned gaze rest on her was making her uncomfortable.

"Then it's the muse keeping you awake?" Griffin asked.

A sigh escaped before Jorie could hold it back. "I wish."

"Still having problems with the story?" Griffin's voice held nothing but honest interest.

Jorie was used to people reacting with interest when they learned she was a writer. Some of them were interested because they were convinced they had a novel in them too and thought Jorie could help to make it the great American novel. Others were voracious readers and hoped that she was writing just what they preferred to read. Most quickly lost interest when they realized that she didn't want to be their mentor or their personal writing slave. Jorie nodded vaguely.

"Can I help in any way?" Griffin asked. "Want me to put a radio collar on your unruly muse?"

A part of Jorie's tension dissipated as she laughed. "I don't think that would work. Muses have their own union and refuse to work if you chain them to the desk. And you? What's keeping you up tonight? Are you in pain?"

"No. After my refreshing walk, my head feels fine."

Jorie studied her, trying to find out if Griffin was playing the hero again, but Griffin was indeed looking much better than she had just a few hours before. Her auburn eyebrows, one of them bisected by an old scar, weren't wrinkled in pain; the golden skin showed no sign of the earlier flush, and she was again moving with the easy grace that always surprised Jorie. Her eyes were clear and alert.

Her eyes...
Maybe it was the soft light in the living room, but Jorie discovered that they had the same color as her father's favorite whiskey — and the same effect. Soothing, but intense, with a glint of hidden danger and temptation.

Shaking off the disturbing feeling, Jorie asked again, "Then what's keeping you up?"

"I guess I'm just a light sleeper," Griffin said, "and when the cat jumped up on the couch..."

Jorie's gaze darted over to the orange tabby that was still rolled up into a ball on the couch. "Will really jumped up there while you were lying on the couch?" Of all her cats, he was the one who was most timid around people.

The cats were all behaving strangely. The inquisitive and affectionate Agatha, who always followed people around in doglike fashion, had hissed at Griffin every chance she got while Emmy had stayed away from the house since Griffin had arrived. It made Jorie a little more careful around Griffin too, but now Will had declared his trust in Griffin.

Griffin nodded. "He came in earlier and sat on the coffee table, staring down at me. It took him a while before he decided I was a safe bedmate." Her long fingers affectionately slid through Will's fur, telling Jorie that Griffin loved cats as much as she did. "What happened to him?" Griffin trailed her hand along the dozing cat's chest and belly, stopping before she reached his missing front leg.

"I'm not sure." Anger and sadness still gripped her when she thought about how badly Will had been hurt. Jorie sat down on the other end of the couch and softly stroked Will too. "He was already missing his leg when he came to the animal shelter where I worked. But whatever it was that happened to him, it made him distrust people. It took me weeks to get him to relax while I was in the same room with him, much less sitting on the same couch. That's why I'm so surprised that he seems to trust you."

"Maybe he can still smell the bobcats on me and thinks I'm one of his bigger cousins, not one of the evil humans who hurt him," Griffin murmured.

"Maybe," Jorie said. She slowly stood. "Do you want a cup of tea or hot chocolate?" The two meetings at the diner had taught her that Griffin was not a coffee drinker.

"Tea is fine, especially if it's herbal," Griffin said.

They walked to the kitchen side by side, and Jorie realized what was so different about the way Griffin moved: she was walking on the balls of her feet instead of placing her heel first. Small children sometimes walked that way. She had never seen it in an adult, though, and now wondered why she hadn't noticed it before.
Did she walk like this when we met at the diner? It's almost... catlike.
An idea flashed through her mind.
Maybe I could have my cat-shifters walk like this.