by Dani Harper
“You’ve already warned people,” said Connor, gently pulling her close.
“I didn’t tell them it was a goddamn wolf!” Why had she been so careful?
“No, you didn’t. Instead, you warned them in such a way that they’d be watchful without being panicked. Or skeptical.” He tipped her chin up so she had to look at him. “Nothing would have happened differently if you’d called the animal a wolf instead of a dog in your article. Being more insistent with the cops or the game officials or the dogcatcher wouldn’t have done any good either, just gotten you written off as crazy or hysterical.
“Besides, now the authorities know you were right. They know it’s a wolf. Fitz was at the party last night.”
“Sergeant Fitzpatrick?”
“He’s out hunting for the wolf right now. So are Culley, Devlin, and several of our friends. Trust me, they’ll find it.”
She could read the truth in his face. And she did trust him, even though she wasn’t even close to satisfied with his reason for leaving her so abruptly the night before. Zoey sighed and rested her face—albeit gingerly—against Connor’s broad chest. “It’s too damned early and I’m too hungover to be having this conversation. My brain hurts. I can’t think straight. I can’t even decide how pissed off I am at you for ditching me.”
“I didn’t ditch you. I was trying to protect you from the wolf.”
“By leaving me? I ended up facing the wolf all by myself.”
“The other wolf was there.” His voice sounded odd. Strained. “You weren’t alone.”
“Right. Lucky for me that another wolf wanted dibs on eating me.”
“It wasn’t going to—” He broke off and sighed. “Look, I need to talk to you. It’s important, Zoey. Meet me at the clinic later?”
“Maybe.” She could barely picture walking outdoors into the bright sunshine, never mind driving out to the clinic. “That’s the best I can give you. I feel like crap.”
“I know. I’d like to give you more time, but I’ve got to talk to you, tell you some things. Why don’t you come out to my place around seven? I’ve got a great hammock under some shady trees, and you can just relax while I make you some dinner. Barring a five-alarm emergency, I’ll be there.” He paused and added, “Please.”
“All right,” she said at last. It still sounded ambitious, but at least there was a chance she’d feel more alive by then.
“I’ll draw out directions and leave them with Jessie.” He kissed the top of her head and left.
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 prot
ective 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 . . .
