Shapeshifted (11 page)

Being the good kid never brings any rewards. A good life is its own reward, people tell you, and you in turn try to tell yourself that, but when you’re the good kid and someone else is the black sheep, and they get all the extra attention and energy—it’s hard not to be jealous of them.

I waited until she was done, and we were both quiet. I took a washcloth from the cabinet over the toilet, got it wet with the faucet wedged beside my ass, and wrung it out to hand down to her.

She took it and ran it across her face. “I hate being like this.”

“I hate it too. The cancer,” I clarified, after a second’s extra thought. “I could stay in here with you puking all night. Not that I’d look forward to it, or anything.”

She laughed and coughed, and handed the washcloth back up to me.

“Isn’t there anything they can do?” My voice was smaller out loud than I thought it’d be, in my mind. Now that we were alone in here, no Peter, no Jake, I wanted my mommy to tell me everything was going to be all right. Even if it wasn’t.

“I’m sorry to do this to you, Edie.” She gave me a bittersweet smile.

“It’s not your fault or anything. I just want to be sure—”

“I’m sure.” She looked around at our bathroom’s close walls. “I’m tired of being like this.”

“The whole thing is so unfair.” She was supposed to be the one protecting a sick me. This role reversal felt wrong. “In my head, it only happens to grandparents. Not parents, you know?” She gave me a pointed look. “I’m not going to have a kid just because you have cancer, Mom. Sheesh. You’ll get one someday. You just have to survive this is all.”

She gave me a weak smile. “I’ll try,” she said. For the first time, I realized
I
was being unfair. Telling people to survive terminal illnesses was kind of a dick move. Like telling addicts to just quit their habits already.

“You just … do what you have to do,” I said, leaving things open-ended. She would do what she had to do, and I’d keep searching for something that could heal her. Really heal her, all the way.

She sat on the bathroom floor now, her back against the wall, and reached up to put her hand on my knee. “You don’t even have to have a kid, Edie. Just promise me that you’ll be happy,” she said, and I nodded. I could do that. “And that you’ll try to look out for Jake.”

That was easier said than done. I didn’t want to make promises I had no interest in keeping. Looking into her face, though, what else could I say? “I’ll try.” The same promise she’d made me. It was the only thing I could say that wouldn’t stick in my throat.

“Thanks, honey,” my mom said. She opened the door and pulled herself upright by its handle. Leaning back in, she kissed my cheek with her sour stomach-acid breath and then walked out, leaving me alone.

*   *   *

After I’d said good night, I got into my car. First thing, I checked through my purse—which I’d unwisely left in the hallway alone while I’d been taking care of my mother—to make sure all my cash and ID were still there. They were. Maybe even the great and selfish Jake had been humbled into pure living by Mom’s cancer. Or, more likely, he’d already shaken down my mom for money before I’d gotten there, and she’d leniently given in.

I drove home and got ready for bed. Today had been too long. I’d showered earlier, so all I had to do was brush my teeth and crawl under my sheets.

I still took an Ambien. My body wasn’t used to switching to days yet, and if you could harness the power of sleep into a convenient pill form, you’d take it too, wouldn’t you? Especially if you didn’t want to lie there and think. None of the things I had to think about were good.

*   *   *

I was woken by a thump outside my door. A glance out the window proved it was still night—the middle of the night even. Full streetlight, no haziness of dawn. I closed my eyes. It was nothing, or a neighbor. Sleep had released me momentarily, but if I waited here quietly, it would retake hold.

Another thump. And then a third. They weren’t knocks—definitely thumps. I reached for my phone. It was three
A.M.

I still felt bleary from the Ambien. People saw things on Ambien, and drove cars up telephone poles. Was this Ambien, or was it real?

Another thump. I looked down, and Minnie was at the foot of my bed, standing up, looking into the hallway with concern. The sound was real. She leapt off the bed and dove underneath. That sealed it.

I got up and went as quietly as I could to the door, which actually wasn’t very quiet as I stumbled along in my hall. Walking on Ambien was like walking on a boat. I didn’t have any windows out to the second-floor landing, just the peephole. I pressed my hands to the door and leaned forward.

My outside light was on, casting something gray in shadow. The peephole’s refraction made it hard to see what was really there; it kept focusing in on individual parts instead of the whole. Or maybe that was just me, woken against my will, the Ambien refracting my vision. I concentrated, hard.

Another thump, and I jumped back. Dammit. I still couldn’t see. And I didn’t dare open my door.

There was a whuffling sound of disgust, a massive indignant snort, the sort of thing you’d think a
T. rex
would do. And then one final angry thump, and the sound of something padding down the stairs.

I assumed it was the last thump. It’d had that sort of pissed-off quality. But really, there was no way of knowing. I waited for a time, and neither the sound nor the creature came back.

I made a short list of things that would be able to find me, cross-matched with things that looked like what I’d partly seen outside my door, and came up with an answer I didn’t like very much.

Jorgen.

Fuck me.

On my way back to bed, I pulled my decorative silver cross off my wall.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

It would have been easy for Jorgen to find me, no matter where I moved. He knew what I smelled like. He was a vampire’s Hound now—it was his job.

He hadn’t started off as a Hound, though—he’d been a minor werewolf, a human bitten on a full moon night. This past winter he’d been involved in the same confrontation over vampire blood that’d gotten me shunned, and this was his punishment. He wasn’t a free wolf anymore. He couldn’t even go back to being human. Trapped as a Hound, he was enslaved to a particularly frightening vampire named Dren.

And it was my fault he was a Hound now, if you went back far enough. I’d been the one who’d stopped his pack’s plan and destroyed all the extra supernatural blood. I had no idea what he wanted to see me for, but I couldn’t imagine any reason that was good.

He was a piece of my old life, the one I was so foolishly, desperately trying to get back to. I pressed the cross to my chest and it chilled me through the fabric of my nightshirt.

“Goddammit.” The reason I’d moved was so things like this wouldn’t happen to me. At least at this new place, I’d never given any vampires permission to come aboard.

It was a good thing, though, right? If Jorgen wasn’t shunning me … what did that mean for me? Did it mean I was allowed to talk to vampires and other supernatural creatures now, and they to me? Or was I in trouble for refusing to accept my shunning? Was his visit a punishment, or a warning? If Jorgen was here—could Dren be far behind?

I tossed and turned until dawn.

*   *   *

My alarm went off at six thirty and I woke up and showered without much enthusiasm. At least today was Friday. It was easy to forget about Jorgen in the daylight—if I hadn’t woken up with the cross beside me and Minnie still under the bed, I might have brushed the whole thing off as a bad dream.

I rode the train in and walked down the stairs, half expecting Dr. Tovar, my recalcitrant chaperone, to be waiting for me at the bottom. He wasn’t there, though. I waited a minute, and then prepared to make the walk in myself.

Yesterday’s shirt stall was still gone, but another clothing store had taken its place. Pink scrubs with a purple trim hung flat, straight as day, without any wind. They looked familiar …

I started walking quickly to the clinic.

The front of the building was covered in graffiti, looping swirls of complex writing that I couldn’t decipher. The front door was open. I went inside and found it empty.

“Hello?” I looked around and realized all the chairs in the waiting room were gone, and the walls were painted with huge multicolored crosses. The room reeked of fresh paint. “Is everyone okay?”

Hell, was anyone but me even inside? The door to the back had been busted through. “We’re not seeing patients today!” came a yell from beyond. Dr. Tovar followed it, his coat finally off. He was wearing a white T-shirt with his normal dark slacks. When he came out his hands were tight in rage, which made the muscles of his arms stand out. When he saw me he relaxed a little. Without his coat he looked surprisingly human, and more frail.

“What happened here?”

“We were looted last night. We’re lucky they didn’t burn the place.”

Suddenly my urge to help that woman yesterday—this attack put it into focus. My mouth went dry. “Did I—”

“No. This is about them, and me.”

“The Three Crosses?” I guessed.

“It’s not like they tried to hide it,” he said, pointing to the walls. “They took all the chairs, and anything left out in the break room. They broke into all the lockers. And they cut up an exam room table, autopsy-style.”

“Should I call the police?”

“Already called. I have to report this, for insurance’s sake.”

I pointed back outside. “I saw Catrina’s scrubs at the station. Should I go get them, and report who the seller is?” Maybe there were other chairs there for sale.

“No. I doubt Catrina would want them back. They took things to trash them. That person probably just picked them up out of the trash. That’s where the receptionists and MAs are, looking for the waiting room chairs.”

“Ugh.” I would sit down, only there was no place to sit. I spun, looking from wall to wall—and the front wall, the one visible from reception, had looping numbers written on top of the crosses. It took a moment for my mind to resolve them into a date. Seven-seventeen. Like I’d seen on the mural on my computer map, that first day on the phone. “Why the date?”

He flushed darker. “No reason.”

I pressed my lips together. I didn’t want to refute him, but they hadn’t written a huge date on the wall for their own health. Today was Friday, the eleventh of July. The seventeenth was next Thursday. What would happen then?

He started stalking back and forth, and finally answered my silent question. “They want me to make a tithe. To openly join their cause—to take their side.”

“What side is that?” I couldn’t see Dr. Tovar under some gang leader’s thumb. “They don’t want you to help anyone but their people? Or work for free?”

“It’s more complicated than that.” He stopped and got a pensive look. “They didn’t go in back this time. Or burn us down. This was just a warning.”

“And the seveneenth?” I tried again.

“It’s meant for me.” He walked over to the wall painted with the numbers and planted his hand against them. He rubbed against it and the top layer of wet paint smeared. He sighed and rubbed his hand against his pants.

“But why you?” I had my suspicions. Perhaps they wanted him to stop giving blood to vampires. “The crosses, and the blood,” I slowly began. I’d seen Jorgen last night—I knew there were vampires around. I was sure of it.

He cut me off with a shuddering sigh. “Stop it.”

He looked so exhausted and angry—exhausted by being angry—that I had to. It was my turn to take pity on him. I walked around the room. The two flanking crosses were ornate multicolored affairs, part Celtic, part Greek Orthodox, elaborately colored and twisting. The center cross was stick-straight and stark gray. I wondered if they hadn’t gotten a chance to finish it, but its lines were crisp and the edges were shaded. Maybe its simpleness offsetting the others was the point?

I opened my mouth and inhaled to ask him a question, but he cut me off with a gesture. “Please. Go.” He waved me out of the waiting room, and went in back.

*   *   *

I sat down on the front stairs, not sure where else to go. If I went out very far I’d only get lost, and I didn’t have any paint to begin covering the crosses up.

I felt bad for him, even if he was a doctor. This clinic was his baby, and Three Crosses had gone and ruined it—not just for him, but for everyone. That’s why they’d hurt him here and not at his home, wherever it may be. Violence done to him personally, he’d just shrug off or take silently—he was that kind of man.

But violence done here, to his place and his people? It was the lowest kind of blow.

I’d never once seen him do the wrong thing, not where his people or patients were concerned. And it dawned on me that I was among their number, another wayward chick tucked under his wing. He’d hired me to protect me. And he’d been walking back and forth to the station with me. Normally that sort of thing would chafe, but I was having a hard time minding. It was nice to feel like someone else gave a damn. It made me feel safe.

What if this was the page of the Choose Your Own Adventure novelization of my life where I just picked to forget everything that came before and take everything at face value, as it was told to me? And not pry and just let sleeping dogs lie and not feel bad for realizing my boss sort of seemed interested in me, and also was hot? Apart from the part where my mom died, it sounded nice.

Eduardo returned holding a waiting room chair. “Chair delivery,” he announced, and I scooted over to let him in, saving me from any more strange thoughts.

*   *   *

One by one, chairs filtered in throughout the rest of the morning. They’d been left in odd spots: on roofs of buildings, in deserted lots. My co-workers had put the word out, asking anyone who found a chair to bring it in.

The insurance adjustor came surprisingly quickly to take pictures of the place. After that, I spent the rest of the day laying drop cloths on the floor—reams of the paper we used to keep exam room tables clean—and putting coat after coat of white paint on the walls.