by Raci Ames
“Thank you,” Pia said, when she could talk again, and Jeremiah nodded.
“Truly it was my pleasure,” he said, standing up. “Why don’t you take a minute to sort yourself. I think Heart’s trying to tell us there is someone at the door.”
• • • •
Clark growled, furious that someone had dared to approach when they weren’t yet open, when Pia had been enjoying herself, and vulnerable.
He hadn’t understood what would happen when Pia had let Jeremiah tie the scarf. But once he saw them kissing, he couldn’t look away. He had, momentarily when Jeremiah had pushed up Pia’s shirt, but that went against his rules about her and clothing, so he had turned his entire body away from them. That meant he could see Jeremiah’s face in the mirror, and he watched as the other man masterfully turned Pia into a puddle on his fingers. And he felt jealous, not of him, but of her.
A noise outside made him growl, and Jeremiah had looked up to the mirror. “Don’t move a muscle,” he’d mouthed. Clark met his gaze, and listened, but he couldn’t look away. Neither could the other man, who was staring into Clark’s eyes when he finished. Only when he nodded did Clark look away, get up and cross the room.
Clark rushed to the door where a small woman waited. Jeremiah came over, put a hand on the wolf’s head and called him a good boy. Normally, that would piss him off, but he felt a little differently after everything he’d just witnessed. Clark had noticed more than Pia and Jeremiah coming tougher. He’d seen the man’s nails change while he was just sitting there at the table. He was willing to bet everything on the fact that Jeremiah was a shifter too. He just needed to find a way to prove it. He wondered if Jeremiah knew the truth about himself.
In the meantime, the woman began to cry. “You need to help us please,” she said. “My daughter is in labor, but she’s stuck in antelope form. I can’t take her to the hospital in order to deliver.
Clark and Jeremiah looked at each other, thoughts pinging back and forth between man and wolf.
“Why do you think I can help you?” Pia said gently, emerging from the bathroom.
“Your grandmother delivered my two of my sons that way. I heard you were reopening the Apothecary, so I came here to beg you to do the same.”
DISCOVERIES
“You’re almost there. You can push just a little more. C’mon love, you know you can.”
Pia was absolutely exhausted. After a night of no sleep and Jeremiah’s sexy attention, Pia found herself crouched on the floor of an old metal van. Sweat dripped from her brow, and someone - she couldn’t tell who at the this point in the process - gave her a cold towel to wash her off.
Twelve hours. The woman in the van had been there twelve hours, with Pia at her side the whole time. She had invited them into the store, just to be kind, but really there was not a place to make the animal anymore comfortable then she already was. At least the small parking lot in the back of the building provided a bit of privacy and access to the store when they needed it.
Pia had tried everything she could think of to get the breeched baby turned around. But nothing worked.
She closed her eyes in exhaustion, and pushed her hands into the animal one last time. She imagined that she could see the mother’s uterus expanding in and out with every breath. When she added what she knew about the body to what her fingers could feel, information burst into her brain and she could see a picture inside her head that combined skin, blood, bone and tissue, like a living x-ray that was three dimensional. Suddenly she knew exactly why the baby was breech, and didn’t even thing before stretching the mother a tiny bit in exactly the right place. With one final push, the baby was out.
And Pia fainted on the floor.
• • • •
"Cori says it's the black one with the purple stripe on the spine,” Pia called out. She was on the phone the other room trying to get details from her friend about the journal they had used to bake the licorice biscuits. Jeremiah had found a basket of journals under some old cleaning supplies in the closet. He couldn’t find the one Cori spoke about, but there were many more. He thumbed through them carefully, looking for any information to help them discover what Pia was going through.
Pia walked into the room just as he found a book of sketches from her grandmother’s younger years. “These are drawings of herbs, and lists of their uses, all in your grandmother’s perfect handwriting. They’re so lovely. Here, feel.” He handed her the journal and helped her trail her finger over the pen indentations on the page.
Just touching her, even innocently, sent his blood pressure rising. He’d barely come down from the high of his orgasm when he’d had to handle supporting Pia through a totally crazy birth experience. She’d scared him when she passed out, and he’d carried her upstairs, forced her to take a quick shower, and then he put her in bed and climbed in as well. When they’d woken up this morning, she was nestled tightly in his arms, and he couldn’t help but hope this was the first of many days when they would get to wake up that way.
But in the early morning light she’d confided something to him that sent them rushing down to the store for information. She’d described the way she was seeing things, the three dimensional medical images that weren’t made up from knowledge she’d learned from textbooks. This became clear when she’d known exactly how to help the antelope, exactly which millimeter of muscle needed to get released in order for the baby to come out.
This wasn’t easily accessible knowledge, and when combined with the way the woman had come searching for her grandmother, Pia wondered if there might be more to this than her being blind. She knew her grandmother was successful with her store, and she knew that the people in town thought her grandmother had incredibly unique skills. But she’d always passed off their admiration as good marketing, instead of truth.
“That’s lovely, but it’s not about her, is it?”
“No, but it would make amazing art if we blew them up to hang on the wall.”
“I love that you are always thinking about the Apothecary, and I feel so grateful to have you helping me to set it up. But I feel like there was more to this than what we saw growing up. And I’m feeling desperate to know why. What about the green journal she had, the one with the lighthouse on the cover?”
Jeremiah remembered it but he didn’t set it. Instead he found another book that was from the early days of the last century. He opened it and read the first page.
“This. I found something. It’s not the green journal. But Pia, listen...” Scratchy paper sounds filled the air as Jeremiah turned pages that were written on a hundred years ago. “This book is old. 1910s-20s, based on the dates on top of these entries.”
“What book? What are you holding?” she demanded, holding out her hand to get a feel.
“Take it for a second, but trust me, you want me to read,” he said, passing the brown leather over.
She ran her fingers over it reverently, and then returned it to him, keeping a hold of his hand. Jeremiah paused to smile at the small display of affection, and then began to read:
“To my unborn granddaughter - I don't know whether or not I'll ever see your face or get to hold you in my arms. I’m old now, older than I thought I’d be when you were born and I think the gods will take me before you come along. And so, there are things that you need to know. I’ve planned for your birth for many years, learning everything I could, building on the skills my grandmother taught me. You will be on your own, but the world is different now, people travel more, and I hope you will find others who can share information with you so that you don’t have to feel alone.
“You come from a long line of women who know how to heal, who see things that other people never will. Women who know how to read people beneath the surface, and I don’t mean this simply metaphorically, but medically. Folks will seek you out for your kindness and your wisdom and your power, and you will have to take care of them as best you can. I hope that you put these use these gifts to good use, learning ev
erything that you can from books to support what you will magically already know. The human body and the animal body will become equally important and you must study both, although most people will not understand why that is. Where we live, there are men and women who can change forms in the blink of an eye, and you must learn to look deeper, to look inside, in order to figure out who you are dealing with. These people need you and the care that only you can give, so I urge you to be generous with your gift. I can assure you thought though there will be tough days and long nights, you will bring so many blessings into your life by helping those who seek you out.
“Good travels my dear. And I hope to meet you soon, or on the other side if we don’t manage to meet together in this life. Be well, be wise and be generous. And make sure to pass this information on to your own granddaughter one day.
“All my love, your grandmother Rowena Quigley Grover 1910.”
Jeremiah finally took a breath after the last sentence and raised his eyes to see Pia’s reaction.
“That, that was my grandmother’s grandmother. She was named Ramona to honor her because Rowena died right before she was born.
"I can't believe my grandmother never mentioned this to me we were here all the time and don't you think she might've told me what was going on.”
“I found the lighthouse journal,” Jeremiah said. Seeing Pia visibly shaken from the new information, he paused before reading more. “Hey this is all good, right? You have skills that run in your family. Maybe your grandmother didn’t know.” He reached across tentatively to rub her shoulder, and when she didn’t resist, he pulled her in for a hug. This morning was so different than yesterday, and he’d done nothing but think about everything that had happened, hoping that he would get a chance to connect like that with her again. This wasn’t the time, of course, but he wanted her to know that he was there for her, not just for the store.
"Okay there is stuff about the store about inventory. It’s pretty black-and-white actually. There are details on a number of different cases; a breech coyote baby, a hawk who can only lay eggs in animal form, how to fix injuries. He flipped through quickly, seeing a page about his treatment from the night he fought with his brothers. He had a moment of guilt when he wanted to tell her all about it, but he moved along because this wasn’t the time. “Okay this is at the end. ‘My darling Pia, I owe you an apology, and I hope that it will be accepted whenever you get this. Your parents don't want me to pass this information on to you, and while I understand their sadness and forgive them for their prejudices, we still have a job to do. It’s not a choice, you see, but a responsibility, and if you don’t do your part, there is no telling how your life will work out. You may see me as an eccentric lady, who hands out herbs and love potions, but there are many things going on beneath the surface, and that is where you must learn to seek the truth. We come from a long line of women who can see beneath the skin of human beings and animals and we are especially needed here in Woodland Creek where there are many who are both.
“Your parents have forbidden me to teach you anything, I’ve them to send you to medical school so at least you’ll have a background in the healing arts. I will leave all the books that I can hidden here in the store and I hope you will find them someday so you don’t have to completely build your knowledge from scratch. It is not going to be easy for you to figure out the rest, but you must. Tap into your instincts, learn to use all of your senses, and trust what you can see in your heart. “P.S. Go find Jeremiah. That boy loves you; he just has a lot going on. You’re going to need each other to figure your lives out, so go and find him if you’re not together now.”
TEARS
“Stop it!” Pia screamed, certain they were going to tear each other apart. She’d never been with Jeremiah in his cougar form, but she could hear the way that he moved, knew he was strong and lithe and powerful. Clark had his own particular grace, due to his speed and the fact that he’d been a wolf the better part of the past year.
“Don’t do this,” thinking that he was more likely to listen, but the canine ignored her and the two of them continued to tussle. She heard a sharp howl that could have belonged to either creature. All animals react similarly to pain, and the idea that one could really hurt the other made her brave and stupid.
She jumped into the center of their fight and reached for the one that was closest to her. The bristles were new but the fur was familiar. “Stop it,” she said again, but he shook her off. “Heart!” The name that she had given him finally got his attention. He growled, but backed down. Trusting the wolf to stay still, she threw herself on Jeremiah, tackling him.
He went on the defensive, took control and flipped her onto the ground. He crouched, trapping her. His sent was darker than usual, but underneath it was the chocolatey licorice scent she’d come to recognize as Jeremiah. “Jam, please don’t,” she begged, turning her face away and shutting her eyes. He trembled with anger, and she feared he wouldn’t back off. And he wouldn’t have if Clark hadn’t shifted from wolf to man and dragged the cougar away.
FOREVER
Pia thanked the last customer and escorted them to the door, finally closing up shop for the day. She supposed that she could call the people who came to see her patients now, since she had gotten the results of her licensing boards. She hadn’t told the guys that she was now officially a doctor because the news was too good to share over a text message during the day. At the very least, it required dinner and bubbly drinks in fancy glasses, so she’d made arrangements for both.
A gourmet meal waited on the counter to be taken upstairs and heated. She sent the boys out on a run to give her time to set the table and take a bath.
But frankly it was more responsibility than she was after. Passing her boards had been a personal accomplishment, and certainly it added some legitimacy to the Apothecary. But she had done it more to be able to service the shifter community that they all were just beginning to get to know.
After almost losing Heart, she’d decided that she needed to be able to help out shifters, but even more significantly than her grandmother had done. It was a different world, and everything was so much more complicated. Being a healer from a long line of healers gave her knowledge way beyond most MDs, but she needed the degree in case of emergencies, when she needed to prescribe medication or make arrangements for other more official procedures.
She walked through the store, closing out the cash register systems and setting up the information to download for the night. She’d finally become proficient with braille but they still used most of the systems that Jeremiah had set up for the store before she’d learned to read it. Grabbing the bags of food and locked the first level, she headed upstairs on her own to relish the few minutes of silence.
Pia often sent the boys out for some exercise before they all gathered at home. Clark needed to release on the days he worked at the firehouse, and Jeremiah needed to move after sitting at a computer for much of the day to manage his staff around the world. Getting them to shift and break away insured that there would only be the good kind of tension later on. They still clashed occasionally, but not if they shifted and went exploring together.
She lingered in the big tub, let the hot bath soothe her muscles, groomed and moisturized every inch of her body and slipped into something more comfortable. She wanted to be warm enough to get through dinner, but she wanted them both thinking about undressing her while they ate. She had just finished setting the table when they came in.
“You smell like damp grass, and sweat, and is that blood?” she asked, concerned. The night that they had fought over an antelope and seriously hurt one another never fully left her mind. It had only happened once, when their natural instincts kicked in and took over bond they’d developed. No one had gotten seriously hurt, but it had been a good reminder that certain things were hard wired into both of them, and they needed to stay aware and in control if they didn’t want to hurt one another.
“Not much, love,” Jeremia
h said, wrapping his arms around her from behind and burying his face in her neck. She felt covered in the bits of woods and forest they’d brought back with but she didn’t care. She hadn’t planned on staying clean for very long.
“I tripped over a tree stump when we decided to run the last mile or so in human form,” Clark said. The tang of antiseptic and witch hazel filled the air and Pia walked over to where he sat, offering help. He continued to wash his cuts, but she put her hands on him and focused on clotting the blood and getting the swelling under control a bit.
“I thought you were so good at seeing in the dark,” she teased, soothing the muscles and examining with her hands and her mind to make sure there was nothing more serious than what he’d described.
“We knew you’d be getting out of the bath, and so we raced back to get dibs for first,” Jeremiah explained.
Pia giggled, but relished the goose bumps that rose on her skin. “Until both of you get showered,” she said. “Then we have dinner. And then you can tell me who won your little contest.”
She pushed them towards the shower, smiling at the way that she could see them in her mind. Maybe it was the intensity of their connection, or because the way she’d memorized every inch of their bodies. When the water turned on she knew they’d be pushing each other get under the spray first. Continue seconds later they be watching each other. That was something that she wished she could see, purely for entertainment of course.
Jeremiah started singing in his horrible voice, because it drove Clark crazy. They laughed and started to scuffle. It is ridiculous that she was sitting here waiting for dinner when two joyous in her life were naked and wet and together. She snuck into the bathroom quietly, peeling off the thin robe and negligée dropping them gracelessly on the floor. The energy in the room changed instantly from playful to sexy.
She jumped into the spray, not caring about the water to be in between their two strong bodies. Strong arms surrounded her on every side and kisses flooded her back and neck and lips. And she vibrated with happiness.
