Shifting Selves (15 page)

I felt an unexpected softening toward her, which I quickly beat back. I knew I loved her, and I didn’t expect that to change in the foreseeable future. That didn’t mean I was ready to forgive her.

“Do you need a control, Fiona?” I started visibly and let out an undignified squeak. Once again, Carmen had appeared seemingly out of thin air.

“There’s a reason some cats wear bells, you know,” I muttered.

Carmen wisely chose to ignore me. “A control brain,” she repeated. “I’ll have similar neural pathways as my daughter. Would that help you identify what’s been changed?”

“It will,” my mother said, her face thoughtful. “I’ll have to put you to sleep, as well.”

Carmen shook her head vehemently. She was putting a lot of faith in my mother, but even her trust had its limits. “I’ll be fine,” she insisted.

My mother looked skeptical, and somewhat unimpressed by the woman’s stubbornness. “We’re discussing the equivalent of non-invasive exploratory brain surgery on a conscious patient. It could be unpleasant.”

In answer, Carmen stretched herself out beside Pamela. She flicked her amber eyes toward my mother. “She’s my daughter.” My mother nodded, understanding, and I felt that damn rush of affection again.

My mother sat at both women’s heads, somehow appearing regal despite her casual, cross-legged pose. She placed one hand on the back of each woman’s neck, fingers pointing gracefully down the spine. She closed her eyes, and the entire room waited.

I, for one, used that time to feel like an absolute ass. I’d known my mother was in town when I’d learned James couldn’t shift. If I’d simply called her at the time, she might have been able to fix him already. I’d been so determined to ignore her that I completely overlooked the help she could provide—and now James and Pamela were paying the price for my obstinance.

Sitting in the house didn’t provide nearly enough opportunity to wallow in my self-loathing, so I quietly excused myself and headed to the front porch. I sat down gracelessly on the steps, in no mood to attempt anything requiring delicacy or lightness of movement.

“Vivian is out of surgery.” I hadn’t noticed Simon already sitting on the porch, but even so, I didn’t jump at the sound of his voice as I did with Carmen. Then again, I never did for Simon. Whenever he appeared, it felt like he was in exactly the right place at the right moment. There was no need to be surprised. “I convinced the nurses to put Sera on the phone, and she assures me Vivian will be fine, and so long as she can immerse her hands in pots of earth, she will be discharged in a matter of days.”

I exhaled, releasing at least some of the fear and anxiety that had been building since the Bronco went over the cliff. “That’s good. That’s really, really good news.”

“It is. And yet you still look miserable.”

“Shut up. I’m happy. There’s just a lot of other stuff going on in there.” I gestured behind us. “I made a pretty big mistake.”

It was a good thing I wasn’t expecting any sympathy, because that wasn’t Simon’s way. “If a mistake was made, do what you can to repair it, then let it go. Or are you berating yourself for that which you cannot change?”

“Hey, this is changeable. I could stop being so stubborn. It’s within the realm of possibility.”

“So is a winning lottery ticket, but I do not suggest you rely on that as a feasible life plan,” he said. “There is always room for improvement, but I imagine your basic nature is what it is. You do know the fable about the cat and the frog, right? In which it is the cat’s nature to kill the frog?”

That didn’t sound quite right. “You mean the scorpion and the frog?”

He shook his head, exasperated. “Do not be ridiculous. A scorpion would be an inferior character to a cat. My version is much better.”

“But doesn’t the scorpion cross the river on the frog’s back? How does that even work in your version?”

He shrugged. “It was a large frog. The point is, while you are unlikely to kill any frogs, you are equally unlikely to stop being unnecessarily stubborn. Plus, you had a good reason this time. Your mother failed you. It is entirely reasonable to hold a grudge, at least for a month or two. After that, it becomes self-indulgent, but for now you are safely in the window of allowed sulking.”

I looked at him, and fought the familiar urge to ruffle his hair and scratch behind his ear. “You do have a way of knowing what to say, Simon. Maybe you should talk to Viv’s mom about becoming a therapist.”

He sniffed. “Listen to strangers moan about their problems all day? Hours of talking in which we discuss things that have nothing to do with me? How tedious.”

“Fair enough.” I let him pretend to be selfish, though I knew otherwise. For those he considered his people, Simon was as loyal and kind as any human or animal I’d ever met, which had made his announced exit all the more unexpected. I’d made the mistake of assuming, now that I’d found friends I wanted to stay with forever and ever, they’d feel the same.

“Are you really going to leave?” I asked. I hadn’t planned on mentioning it, but I found myself unable to stay quiet.

Simon, however, didn’t have that problem. He sat in silence for a long time, long enough that I began to think he was consciously avoiding giving me an answer.

“I do not know,” he finally admitted. “Though I am glad to be here, I never planned on this becoming my permanent home. It felt like the choice was being made for me.”

I knew there was more and quietly waited. “I’ve never known any other cats,” he said at last. “Though my mother has been understanding and supportive—far more than yours, I might add—I was still adopted, and she is still human. I did not even know other shifters existed until the day I ran into a group of coyotes mid-shift. I was in cat form at the time. It was an unfortunate introduction to my kind, and it taught me a whole new appreciation for my ability to climb trees. After that, I started to seek shifters out, but I never found as many as I would have liked, at least until I moved here. Tahoe appears to be crawling with shifters.”

I nodded. I still felt like a blooming idiot for not knowing shifters even existed during my previous time in the area. The damn furballs were everywhere.

“Carmen and her family might be my only chance to learn more about who I am. Certainly, they are far larger than I am, but the basic anatomy remains the same. She has offered to introduce me to the local cat community. Now, I feel like I have a reason to stay for myself, and not simply because I like my roommates. I am making the choice to stay.”

“Are you moving out? Will you live with the cats?” With those words, I finally named the dread I’d felt ever since Carmen had expressed an interest in my friend.

I’d thought it was because I feared the intimidating mountain lion, but that was never it. I’d feared Simon was drifting away from me, that if he met the cat, he’d have less interest in being my friend. Shame at my own selfishness lay heavy in my chest and brought heat to my cheeks. I didn’t want to be that kind of person.

At least this was a mistake I could still correct. “It’s okay if you do. Really. Just visit us often, okay?” The words were slightly awkward, a forced lightness covering my underlying dismay, but Simon nodded, seeming to accept them at face value.

The door behind us opened, and Eleanor stepped out. She took several gulps of air, then shook herself from head to toe, releasing whatever nerves she was still holding. When she noticed us watching her, she quickly calmed herself and tried to pretend she hadn’t stepped outside to have a low-level freakout.

“Fiona—your mom—she is not normal,” she said.

“I’m guessing she just withdrew blood without a syringe?”

“Yes! What the hell is that about?”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Out here, away from the Parlor of Despair that Will’s living room had become, Eleanor looked both lighter and younger. She was, I realized, only in her early thirties, at least a decade younger than her sister.

“She takes a drop or two from several organs and compares them. It’s a way of learning what the kidney and liver are filtering out.” I’d never made it that far in my training, mainly because I’d had much the same reaction as Eleanor to drops of blood floating above the patient’s skin.

“And she can’t do that inside the body?”

“She says it’s easier if she isolates the blood.” I shrugged. “She learn anything yet?”

“She just finished. All she did was shake her head at Carmen and lay down herself. I think she’s napping.”

I knew she wasn’t sleeping, but my mother often needed a few minutes to recharge immediately after a procedure. I nodded and felt an awkward silence descend. I really didn’t know this woman well and had no idea what to say to her while we waited for my mother’s report. Simon showed no desire to help me out, either.

“Have you lived in Tahoe long?” I asked. Small talk, that was the ticket. Especially if the small talk told me whether she might have known Brian and therefore had access to his drugs. My suspects kept refusing to be guilty, and I really needed to find another possibility. Plus, someone had helped James and Pamela escape. It might as well be Eleanor.

Eleanor looked at the towering pines that surrounded her with something akin to gratitude. “I was born and raised here, but I left the minute I graduated high school. Lots of us do that. We think we can get away from the mountains, from the forest. See the world.”

Like Carmen, I remembered. And Pamela, who dreamed of getting out of Tahoe, and James, who wanted to leave his shifter life behind. “Where did you go?”

“Every university in every city I could find. I racked up one degree after another, trying to make a home in libraries instead of the woods. It didn’t work. I lasted as long as I could, but we can never stay away. It’s our blessing and our curse. We belong to the land. I was already heading back when Celeste called me. James was talking about leaving Tahoe, and she wanted me to talk some sense into him, to explain why it could never work. I tried, but there’s no talking sense into a teenage boy.”

I nodded. I understood what it was to have that connection to the land. “Wasn’t it worth it, though? You got to see some of the world, meet other people.” I was hardly a world traveler, but my insistence on leaving the island was the best choice I’d ever made.

Eleanor didn’t look convinced. “I saw a world intent on destroying the nature it needs to live. The few places where nature was revered, where I might have found some peace, I was scorned by those that lived there. Some even denied my very existence.” She didn’t elaborate, but I knew she spoke of elementals. I fought the pointless desire to apologize on behalf of every narrow-minded old one in existence.

“Celeste tried to tell me, but I didn’t listen. What younger sister wants to acknowledge the wisdom of her sibling? Long ago, she told me we had no choice. As long as we were bears, we would return to the forest, over and over again. Our human face may allow us to walk in the outside world, but it doesn’t allow us to live there. She was right, of course. It just took me a little longer to figure out.”

And strike one more suspect from the list. This didn’t sound like a woman who would help others escape, not when she considered it a futile effort.

I was completely out of ideas. It was, I decided, time to hit the refresh button and try to put the pieces together in a new way. Also, pancakes. It was always time for pancakes.

My mother finally exited the cabin, followed by Mac, Will, and Josiah. Somehow, even while surrounded by shifters, my father was able to ignore them. He made eye contact with me and my mother and simply paid no attention to any of the others.

I’d forgotten Josiah was even still there, and that concerned me. If my father was choosing to be quiet and unobtrusive, I assumed he had some ulterior motive for doing so.

Eleanor and Will cast barely-concealed looks of loathing his way. They might slowly be accepting my presence, but it helped that I wasn’t a prejudiced asshole. My father couldn’t make the same claim. He was exactly the kind of old one the shifters resented, and with good reason.

Even my mother received little more than civility from the two bears. They would accept her help because they had no other choice, but they would not forget she was a full-blooded elemental.

In return, she wasn’t rude, but her bland politeness never veered into anything that could be mistaken for warmth.

At that moment, I was certain that, had it not been for Mac vouching for me and Sera, we’d never have been invited into their home.

I couldn’t worry about any of that now, however. My mother looked worn and thin. For once, I saw the weight of the centuries in her eyes, and the tiniest lines of stress threatened to crack her perfect skin. She’d be heading directly to a water source once she shared her news, of that I was certain. “The women are resting,” she said. “They will need peace for several days. I had to explore much deeper than I anticipated.”

“Were you able to heal her so she could shift? What about James?” The pained silence that greeted my question was answer enough. “We need to find the person who did this, don’t we? They must know how to reverse this. What did you learn? Did Pamela remember anything about being captured?” The questions poured forth, one desperate hope piling onto another.

I was really tired of not knowing anything.

Sadness scored my mother’s face. “I think pure instinct brought Pamela home,” she said. “She knows nothing, Aidan. She remembers nothing.”

“Not her attacker? Not where she stayed?”

Will shook his head. “Pamela remembers nothing. Not even her own name.”

I looked around the circle, the other faces reflecting the shock I knew was on my own. “Amnesia?” It didn’t even sound real. It was the sort of thing that only happened in soap operas.

“I’m afraid so, little water.” Josiah’s face snapped toward Will when he used the diminutive term. It appeared he wasn’t comfortable with any paternal figure granting me a nickname. Because I was petty, that made me like Will even more. “She doesn’t know a thing. James knows his own family, but he remembers nothing about where he was, who took him, or what they did to him—and he’s only getting worse as the beast takes over. It’s been a full week since he shifted.” Will’s anger built steadily as he spoke. The only reason he wasn’t dismembering someone right now was he had no idea where to begin.