Chapter
Fifteen
Zoey contemplated writing an article on the
life-giving properties of a hot shower. Her head still hurt but she
felt considerably revived as she wandered out of the room and found
the kitchen. Fletcher padded over to greet her, his tail wagging
steadily. “I’m glad to see you’re feeling more like yourself
today,” she said as she buried her hand in the dog’s thick yellow
fur.
“Looks like you’re feeling more like
yourself, too, girl.” Jessie came in the back door with an armful
of herbs from her garden. “Bill said to go on over for breakfast if
you had a mind to. He’s doing the early shift at the diner this
morning. Are you hungry?”
“Not yet, thanks, maybe later. I do
want to thank you for letting me sleep over, though. Appreciate the
clothes too.”
“Thanks for not screaming when you woke
up. Bill’s mum used to live with us, and she had a thing for
cabbage roses and bright colors.”
“Especially yellow.”
“Definitely yellow. That bedroom
practically glows in the dark. Ada’s been gone six years now, and I
keep meaning to redecorate that room because it hurts my eyes, but
Bill doesn’t want me to. Now and then he sits in there for a while.
I think he feels close to her amid all that, all
that—”
“Splendor?”
“That’s one word for it. How’s your arm
feel this morning?”
Zoey snorted. “I have an arm?
Everything else hurts so much today, I can’t tell. I intended to
drink, but I don’t usually drink so darn much.”
“It was likely because you were with
Devlin. I’m sure he showed off his bartending abilities to the
max.”
“I remember him putting some pretty
exotic mixes in front of me.” Zoey rubbed her head. “At least I
remember some of them.”
“He gets carried away demonstrating all
his latest concoctions. I should have warned you.” Jessie chuckled
as she poured coffee for both of them. “Connor gave me an earful
about it this morning, I can tell you.”
“He has no right—”
“He cares about you and just like a
man, he figures that gives him every right.”
“I know he cares about me, but the way
he disappeared last night was a pretty weird way of showing it.”
Zoey sipped her coffee and nearly whimpered with the welcome
pleasure of it.
“He wanted the wolf stopped. We all do.
It’s dangerous if it’s going to keep coming into town. You already
know how dangerous it is.”
“Connor said he
left me so he could protect me. But—” But he had left her in the
middle of some pretty passionate making out. Walked away without a
word. What the hell was protective about that? “Look, Jessie, I’m
having real trouble with this. He took off before the wolf howled,
you know. Before Fletcher started barking, before anyone knew there
was something wrong, yet he claims he already knew the wolf was
there.”
Jessie leaned back against the counter
and looked at Zoey over folded arms. “Is that really so strange?
You have gifts of your own.”
“What?”
“G-I-F-T-S. As
in abilities that are out of the ordinary, abilities that
few others have. For instance, you know when things are going to
happen, you see things that are hidden.”
Zoey froze, unable to think of a thing
to say. How on earth did Jessie know?
Her friend put her hands up. “Relax,
girl. Your secret’s perfectly safe with me. I have my own little
talents. Like often recognizes like, don’t you think?”
It was something that her mother had
often said, but Zoey hadn’t experienced it before. She wasn’t sure
she was experiencing it now—her so-called gift was offering no
particular intuition at the moment. She sighed, both at the seeming
flakiness of her ability and also because there was no point in
denying the truth to Jessie. “Okay, I have a little bit of psychic
ability. But it’s totally unreliable.”
“Well, Connor has some gifts too. And
they’re very reliable. That’s how he sensed
the wolf was there before anyone else did. He senses a lot of
things. It makes him a damn fine vet for instance. You’ll hear a
lot of people tell you he has an uncanny way with animals. He knows
what they’re feeling, communicates with them.”
Connor was
psychic? Zoey could hardly believe her ears. “He never said
anything about it.”
“You haven’t had much time together to
share things like that. Have you told him about your little hobby yet?”
“Well, no, not yet. There
hasn’t—”
“There hasn’t been an opportunity,”
finished Jessie. “And you probably don’t share something like that
with just anyone.”
There was an understatement. She’d
spent most of her life deliberately not
sharing it with anybody. Trying to ignore her abilities. Trying to
be normal. Trying to outrun the names she’d been called as a young
teen. The Weird Kid. Creepy Girl.
Freakazoid. All undeserved because she’d worked so hard not
to stand out in any way. But it had been impossible—everyone in the
frickin’ free world seemed to have heard about her psychic
family.
Zoey downed the rest of her coffee in
silence and thought of the career she’d left behind in Vancouver.
Thought of her present publisher, Ted. Sharing any mention of her
ability with him would likely get her fired on the spot. She
supposed she could keep that in mind if she ever really wanted out
of her job in a hurry. She glanced up as Jessie leaned over and
refilled her cup, then set a plate of toasted bagels on the table
and sat down.
“Sorry to be so pushy. But I couldn’t
let you think badly of Connor. True, like a typical male, he
thought he was being protective by leaving when you no doubt felt
he ought to have stayed with you. But even his ability couldn’t tell him what the wolf was going to
do. All of us were surprised by what happened.”
Zoey nodded but something still
bothered her. “Hasn’t anybody else noticed that the wolf population
has doubled? I mean, do we have a whole damn pack roaming the
streets when the sun goes down?”
Jessie stirred her coffee for some
moments before replying. “Yes, there were two wolves, and believe
me, I’m not happy that the pair of them ran right through the
middle of my party. Because of the talents that I have, however, I
know that the only wolf to worry about is the gray one. The other
was there to protect you.”
What? “You’re
kidding, right? I thought it was competing for drumstick
rights.”
“Trust me when I say that it was there
for one reason only, and that was to defend you.”
“Why on earth would a wolf want to protect me?”
“I’ll leave it to Connor to explain
that one.” Jessie smiled, and pushed the plate of bagels toward
her. “He knows a lot more about it.”
“Because he’s a vet?”
“Sort of. Ask him.”
“You bet I will.” Zoey added it to her
mental list.
“You like him, don’t you?”
“I like him a lot, but I don’t know him very well yet.” She hoped she
wasn’t blushing. She’d wanted to know every inch of him last night.
Still did.
“Well then, as a friend, I should list
all of Connor’s virtues for you. He’s compassionate and caring,
honest as the day is long, and a heck of a lot of fun. And he’s a
big, strong, good-looking man, sure to get a gal’s blood going. But
you already know that,” she added with a grin.
Zoey did blush then. “You saw, didn’t
you?”
“I may have noticed the pair of you
waltzing off to a more private venue. But I was more than glad to
see it. Connor’s been alone for a long, long time. He needs
something else in his life besides his work. Someone. And so do you, I think. Maybe that’s why you’re
here.”
She snorted. “It wasn’t fate that
brought me here, Jess. I had to get away from the city. I needed to
get away from the violence, the crime, the politics.
Everything.”
“Makes sense to me. You only have
man-eating wolves to deal with here.”
“Right. Piece of cake compared to the
city.”
Jessie chuckled and stirred her tea.
“That may well be. But I hear you left a successful career
behind.”
“I did,” sighed Zoey.“That little gift
we talked about? It’s become more pronounced in recent years. I
mean, it still comes and goes when it damn well pleases, which
pisses me off. I wish it would either be useful or go away and just
let me be normal. Still, when the gift decides to show me
something, it’s for real.” Usually. Seeing a
wolf in Connor’s face had been just too weird for
words.
“You distinguished yourself as a
journalist. Surely psychic talent would come in handy in that line
of work.”
“I’ll concede it was handy at first.
But then I started arriving earlier and earlier to the scenes of
accidents, murders, robberies. Never soon enough to stop anything,
help anyone. Just always the first to break the
story.”
“I see. And that got to you after a
while.”
“God, yes. I
wanted so much to prevent those things, but this stupid ability
doesn’t seem to work that way. I broke the story on some city
scandals too, corruption by elected officials, stuff like that. My
peers figured I had inside sources in the police department and in
local government, feeding me information. Every reporter cultivates
sources, but I guess they saw it as some sort of unfair advantage.
They quit talking to me after a while.”
“Sounds pretty lonely. And you couldn’t
explain, either.”
“How could I tell them that I had seen
a picture in my head? Or had a dream? And the information was
seldom complete. Usually I just received clues—I’d see a building,
a face, an item, a document. Or I’d know if someone I was
interviewing was lying, or what they were really thinking and
feeling. Most of the time, I still had to put the puzzle pieces
together myself.” Zoey shook her head. “My boss was furious that I
wouldn’t tell him who was giving me information, but he didn’t dare
fire me. He couldn’t risk losing me to another
publication.”
“So there must have been a final straw,
something to make you leave on your own.”
“I just—” Without any warning, the
memory burst into Zoey’s mind, full-blown and raw. The wail of
approaching sirens seared her consciousness as the sounds of
traffic surged around her like the ocean. Screams and sobs emerged
from the crowd that still hung back in shock and her own throat
closed on a gasp. Omigod, it’s a
child.
A little boy of about eight years old
lay crumpled on the pavement beside his bike. The pool of blood had
trickled over the curb like a tiny cherry waterfall. His eyes were
open, beautiful blue eyes with long lashes, doll’s eyes.
Jerrod Matthew Copeland, the youngest victim of a
gang-related shooting . . .
“Zoey? Are you okay?”
She shook her head and came back to
herself. “Sorry, Jess. Some things are still a little too fresh.”
She swiped the angry tears from her eyes with the back of her
sleeve before they spilled over. “I just don’t understand. What’s
the goddamn point of being psychic if you
can’t stop horrible things from happening?”
“Maybe there isn’t a point, hon,” said
Jessie, handing her a napkin.
“What?”
“Think about it. Maybe there isn’t
supposed to be a point to being psychic anymore than there’s a
point to being freckled. It just is. It’s
just part of you.”
“Well, it’s a part I’d like surgically
removed.” Still, she’d never thought about her psychic ability in
such simple terms. She’d always assumed it must—or should—have some
greater purpose. Did it make it better or worse if it didn’t?
“Anyway, I decided to go somewhere where horrible things don’t
usually happen. Somewhere small where the crime rate is low, and my
so-called gift can’t show me things I’d rather not see. I thought
maybe it would, I don’t know, go into
remission or something. I’ve never wanted to have it—I just
wanted to leave it behind.”
Jessie nodded. “What you have is not a
comfortable gift. TV shows glamorize psychic ability, but it’s not
that much fun to live with. However”—she put her hand on Zoey’s
arm—“you’re talking about it like it’s a disease or a curse. To
deny your gift is to deny your very self. It forces you to live out
of harmony.
“Even in the middle of our peaceful
little community, I doubt that you’ll find much peace until you can
discover a way to accept this part of yourself and who you really
are.”
“I don’t know if I want to. Accept it,
I mean.”
“It’s your choice, always. But strength
comes out of wholeness. And when you truly need your strength, all
of your strength, you’ll need to draw on your whole self. Including
those gifts you wish you didn’t have.”
Bernie’s cabin was deserted. Connor had
driven there with Culley right after leaving Zoey. The scent in the
small gray building told them its owner hadn’t been there for
several days.
They searched the outbuildings and the
barns but found no trace of their quarry. Finally, Connor spotted
something in the trickling streambed a hundred yards from the
house. A few prints in the mud. Lupine. Two toes missing on the
left hind foot cinched the identification. Bernie had lost them to
a trap a few years ago. The Changeling ability to heal declined
with extreme age—hence the scars on his face—but even in a
Changeling’s prime, the regeneration of limbs was
rare.
“About time we found something,” said
Culley as he glanced around quickly, instinctively making sure they
were alone. A moment later, a pair of massive wolves trotted
upstream, one black, the other silver with a blanket of black.
Their noses to the ground, they followed the stream until it
disappeared into the woods beyond.
Hours later, the brothers gave up and
headed back to town. The trail was cold and they hadn’t happened
across anything fresher. Not a print, not a hair,
nothing.
“He’s obviously got a new hideout
somewhere,” said Culley. “I don’t think he’s coming back to his
house again, not now that he’s revealed he can still Change. Now
that you know the silver was fake the first time, he knows you’ll
be coming after him with the real thing.”
“We need to check on
that.”
At the North Star Animal Clinic, Culley
and Connor inspected the pharmacy shelves. The brown glass jug of
silver nitrate was in place, but the contents proved as
disappointing as that of the little bottle in Connor’s pocket. The
tall vet realized that there was something else wrong.
“This is the very same jug with the
very same silver nitrate that nearly burned a hole through my
finger. See that spot of dye splashed on the label? I dropped a
slide I was preparing and splattered everything on the counter with
blue stain, including this container.”
“So it wasn’t any mistake at the
factory then. Someone’s deliberately filled the jug with water
right here in your clinic,” Culley pointed out. “One of your
assistants? Most of them haven’t been with you long.”
Connor shook his head. “No, this has
got to be Bernie’s work—I threatened him with the silver nitrate
after he ran amok and took down a dozen heifers from Ralph
Wharton’s herd. Maybe he was making a preemptive strike so he
wouldn’t get injected with silver, so he could still
Change.”
“I can see the logic, but not the
method. There’s no way Bernie could get in here without you
catching his scent the next day. Hell, if he’d so much as set a toe
on the property, Birkie would have known and turned him into a
goldfish or some damn thing.”
That was true enough. She wasn’t a
Changeling but her command of magic went far beyond even Jessie’s.
Even Connor’s own father, Ronan, couldn’t compete with Birkie
Peterson. But Birkie was in Scotland, had been there since . .
.
Connor went to Birkie’s desk and
searched through piles of papers. His young assistants had been
taking turns handling the reception duties, but they hadn’t kept up
on the filing. Finally he found an invoice from AgriPharm. The
veterinary pharmaceutical company came regularly to restock the
clinic.
“They were here two weeks before the
attack on Zoey. But Dave Anderson is the representative who makes
the rounds, and this isn’t his signature.” He closed his eyes and
brought the paper close to his face. He could scent the young woman
who had held the paper—Joanne. But the other scent was male, and a
mystery. “I don’t recognize this guy.”
“You weren’t here?”
“No. I was on a farm call. One of the
assistants signed off on it. She’d have no way of knowing that
anything was wrong.”
“So maybe Bernie paid someone to get
rid of the silver nitrate? Who would he know? Nobody in town would
do it for him, and I can’t see him setting up something with an
AgriPharm rep on his own. I mean, that would take some real
research and planning, wouldn’t it? And probably a lot of
money—you’d have to bribe somebody. Bernie might have the funds but
not the connections.”
“No, nobody in town would do it . . .
so we’re looking for somebody who doesn’t
live around here.”
“And right now, the only stranger in
town is that goddamn reporter who attacked Zoey.”
“Helfren,” spat Connor. “I don’t know
his scent, but it has to be him. Still, I don’t understand why the
guy would stick his neck out. Why go to all the trouble to get rid
of some silver nitrate? And how would Bernie get him to do it—I
mean, what kind of reason would he give him? Silver nitrate is
pretty harmless stuff for humans.”
“Why is easy
enough—Helfren gets a story. He’s already shown us he’ll go to
extremes when he put his hands on Zoey.” Culley looked around.
“Maybe he didn’t get rid of the stuff at all. What if Bernie told
him exactly what you were . . . wouldn’t Helfren’s next step be to
try and prove it?”
A sudden chill went down Connor’s spine
as the realization dawned. A waterlike substance
could be hidden anywhere there was water. The two men split
up and moved slowly through the clinic, checking everything from
the water cooler in the waiting room to the emergency eyewash
station in the X-ray lab.
Culley found it first. A small water
cooler stood empty in the corner of Connor’s office. It was safe,
but there was a tall refill bottle on the floor beside it.
Carefully Culley opened the lid and touched the rim. Instantly his
fingertip was on fire. “Dammit to hell! Right here waiting to
poison you. You’d have been throwing up blood for
weeks.”
Connor suppressed a shudder. The effect
of certain substances all depended on how you used them. Rubbing
alcohol had been commonly used for decades to swab skin before a
medical procedure. It didn’t hurt. But the very same substance in
the membranes of the eye or the nose was excruciating, even
damaging.
Silver nitrate burned the skin of a
Changeling, any skin that would produce fur during the Change. The
substance produced no such sensation on the mouth or tongue, just
as it produced no discernable sensation when injected into a vein.
An injection of silver nitrate prevented the Change, with little
other effect. But silver in the digestive system of a Changeling
was a different story. . . .
Thank God he’d been far too busy in
Birkie’s absence to refill the damn cooler. He often came in hot
and thirsty from surgery, from farm calls, from the clinic corrals.
He likely would have filled up his water bottle and downed it
before the taste registered. Agony would have followed rapidly. If
he survived the internal bleeding, recovery would have taken many
months. “Bernie would have gotten his revenge,” he said
grimly.
“And what would Helfren
get?”
Connor frowned. What did any reporter
want except a story and—
In an instant, Connor was on top of his
desk ripping the grating from the heating duct. A moment later he
tossed a handful of fine wire and a tiny silver box to his
brother.
“There’s what Helfren wants, Culley,”
he said, his voice hard and cold. “Live footage.”