Second Nature

by Jae

  Jorie waved away her apology. "There was nothing you could do about it."

  "Still, the notebook with your research was in it, right?"

  A frown of regret creased Jorie's brow. "Some of it, yes."

  Some of it, Griffin mentally repeated. Only some? So there are more notebooks, more research notes somewhere else?

  White teeth worried Jorie's bottom lip. She seemed more affected by the loss of her notebook than by being attacked with a knife. Griffin couldn't tell whether it was the thought of her writing in a stranger's hands or the loss of information that worried her.

  Griffin bit her own lip. Stealing another's property was a big deal to the territorial Wrasa, but it was more than that to Jorie. She had violated Jorie's privacy and stolen the most precious thing in her life — her writing or at least a part of it. "If you want, I can write down the information I gave you earlier so that you get at least that part of your research back," Griffin said.

  "If you have no other plans and you really don't mind, we could do it right now. I could write it down on my laptop; that's faster." Jorie's dark eyes had a vulnerable look that Griffin had never seen on Jorie before.

  Her writing is for Jorie what shifting, running in my animal form is for me, Griffin realized. She wants to get lost in her fictional world and not think about how close she came to dying today. "Well, since I think it would be better to cancel my plans to go bungee jumping, I have all the time in the world," Griffin said with a smile.

  An answering smile darted across Jorie's face as she powered up her laptop.

  During the next hour, Griffin repeated most of the information about big cats that she had given Jorie during their two meetings at the diner. Jorie's slender fingers flew over the keyboard. Griffin had seen her half sister, software engineer by day and Wrasa hacker by night, at work, but Jorie could give Leigh a run for her money when it came to touch-typing. Compared to Griffin's own "hunt and peck" system, she was amazingly fast and efficient. Even the cut on her forearm and the bandage that covered it didn't hinder her.

  Finally, Jorie saved the document and closed the laptop. "Thank you," she said. "And I also owe you a thank-you for throwing yourself between the mugger and me. That was really brave."

  "I thought it was stupid?" Griffin repeated what Jorie had said right after the staged mugging.

  "It was brave and stupid," Jorie said. She studied Griffin, then glanced out the window. Darkness had fallen, and it was getting late. "Do you want me to call anyone for you? Your family?"

  "No," Griffin said. "I don't want to worry them."

  A few seconds ticked by. Come on. Invite me to stay.

  "Then you should stay the night," Jorie said. "You shouldn't be on your own after the blow to the head you took."

  Yes! Griffin barely managed to suppress a Cheshire-cat grin. Finally. "If you think that's best," she said with all the subservience she could muster.

  "Will you be okay on the couch?" Jorie asked.

  "Of course." Griffin didn't plan on sleeping anyway.

  * * *

  Jorie's couch was amazingly comfortable. Griffin lay snuggled under a soft blanket. When she closed her eyes, Jorie's scent surrounded her, making her feel as if she were prowling through the forest. The images increased the yearning to throw off the old, oversized T-shirt Jorie had given her to sleep in. She wanted to shift and run, leaving this complicated mission and her guilt over Jorie's injury behind for a while.

  Her eyes shot open. No. Duty came first. Before she went out, she had to search Jorie's desk.

  A slight sound stopped her from throwing off the blanket.

  Soft footsteps padded closer, barely audible on the carpet.

  Griffin slowly turned her head.

  Her excellent night vision pierced through the darkness. What she saw made her relax her tense muscles. It was just one of the cats, stalking closer to take a look at the visitor. Not Agatha. The Somali strutted with smooth, elegant movements like a queen at a red-carpet reception. This cat — a tabby with gray fur that probably appeared red to the human eye — lollopped closer, moving more like a bunny than a feline. Griffin hadn't met Jorie's other two cats yet, but she knew red cats were most often male. Chances were she was about to make Will's acquaintance. One of his front legs is missing, Griffin realized as the cat came closer.

  She lay still, not wanting to scare him away.

  The cat paused, then jumped onto the low coffee table, scrambling until he was safely on top. Griffin couldn't help admiring how he was able to take that leap with just three legs. Will sat on the coffee table, looking down at her with his glowing eyes. His white-bibbed muzzle opened to breathe in Griffin's scent, which was mixed with Jorie's because she was wearing her shirt and was covered by her blanket.

  Despite that scent camouflage, Griffin was sure he could smell she wasn't human anyway. There was no way to fool a cat and no sense in acting human. She had to let him know that she was a fellow cat and a friendly one at that. Squinting slowly, she looked at Will through half-closed eyes, then made a soft chirruping sound.

  Will's ears swiveled toward her.

  Griffin gave a short purr even though it was difficult to manage in her human form.

  The cat stood. The tip of his tail twitched while he was making his decision. Griffin saw his muscles tense, and she closed her eyes in disappointment, knowing he was preparing to back away.

  Instead, his small body landed next to her on the couch.

  Griffin opened her eyes.

  The cat was carefully balancing on three legs. He craned his neck and sniffed Griffin's shirt-covered chest, then down to her bare arm, where Jorie's scent didn't mingle with hers.

  Barely breathing, Griffin held still. She smiled when Will's rough tongue laved the skin of her arm. Very slowly, she extended her hand and let him lick that too. She rubbed his neck and the side of his face, marking herself with his scent and him with hers.

  After a few moments, Will began to purr and settled down next to her.

  Griffin continued her gentle stroking, looking down at Will in amazement. No cat had ever warmed up to her so quickly. She trailed her hand down his chest but was careful not to touch the place where his fourth leg should have been. Finally, she understood: very likely, a human had hurt him badly when he was younger, and now he trusted her because she wasn't human. Her scent wasn't associated with pain.

  I wonder how Jorie managed to gain his trust. That thought reminded her that she was here to spy on Jorie, not to bond with her cats. She waited until Will had dozed off, then slipped out from under the blanket.

  The drawers of Jorie's desk were her first stop. She copied all the names and phone numbers from Jorie's address book. It didn't take long. Jorie's circle of friends was small. Leigh would need to check them out later.

  Beneath boxes of text markers, she found three more notebooks, full of notes for stories titled 'Port of Call,' 'Antara's Throne,' and 'Strange Stars.' Griffin recognized them as the novels Jorie had published in the past, but there were ideas for future stories too. Nothing about Jorie's shape-shifter novel, though.

  Griffin's frustration rose. The pounding in her head increased. In human form, a Wrasa's healing abilities were only slightly better than a human's. It was the shifting process that stimulated healing.

  After riffling through every piece of paper in the living room, including the crumpled pages in the wastebasket, she gave up. Either Jorie kept notes on the inside information in the bedroom, or she relied on her memory. Maybe she knew writing down information on the Wrasa would be dangerous. Or maybe there is no informant.

  She gathered her clothes to take them outside with her. Standing next to the door, she listened into the darkness. Everything was quiet. Jorie was sleeping. It should be safe for her to slip out for a while. But just in case, she wrote a quick note before she left the house.

  Nippy air, much cooler than she was used to, made her shiver as she stripped off Jorie's T-shirt in the cover of the trees. T
hen the burning of her skin chased away the goose bumps, and she allowed the change to take hold of her. Fur rippled over her body. Her muscles spasmed painfully, and she dropped to all fours, gasping for breath through an elongating mouth.

  She felt her senses sharpen. There was no way to block out the popping of joints and the crunching of bones as her spine became more flexible and lengthened into a tail. Her hands and feet morphed into paws, and she scraped the earth with long claws when a fresh wave of pain hit her.

  She groaned through a throat that was no longer human.

  Finally, the pain lessened and soon disappeared. She stretched her front paws, then her hind legs. Lifting her head, she breathed in the scents drifting on the night air.

  A leaf rustled deeper in the forest.

  Her ears pricked forward along with her whiskers. Her muscles tensed. Then she was off, hunting through the forest without looking back.

  CHAPTER 8

  JORIE JERKED AWAKE. She struggled to lift her hand out from under the twisted sheet and flinched when the movement pulled at her wound. Finally freeing her hand, she pressed it against her chest. Her T-shirt was damp. Her heart hammered an urgent staccato of fear. For a few moments, she lay there, listening, staring up at the dark ceiling. She drew in a few long breaths until her racing heartbeat calmed.

  Slowly, the familiar, soothing shapes of her bedroom furniture formed before her adjusting eyes. The room lay in peaceful silence. Whatever had frightened her had stayed behind in dreams she couldn't remember. Just vague feelings of panic and images of running and being chased remained.

  What did you expect? You could have been killed yesterday, and since you chose to ignore and not deal with it, of course it hits you in your dreams. She drove the last images of her nightmare from her mind, pushed the sweat-drenched sheet off, and sat up.

  A light throbbing started in her arm and in various other parts of her body that had been smashed against a parked car. She groped around for the bottle of painkillers that she kept on her bedside table. After a few seconds, she gave up and turned on the light.

  The place on her bedside table was empty.

  Only then did she remember that she had placed the painkillers on the coffee table before she had gone to sleep, just in case Griffin stopped being stubborn and decided she wanted something to help with the pain after all.

  Jorie massaged the back of her neck. Her alarm clock told her it was almost five. There was no way she would manage to go back to sleep now.

  Might as well get up and get some writing done. But first she would check on her guest. She slipped out of bed, careful not to jostle Agatha, who had slept at the foot of the bed and was now lifting her head. Her bedroom door creaked as she slowly opened it, and Jorie held her breath. She listened into the darkness.

  Everything was quiet in the living room.

  On her tiptoes, Jorie sneaked into the dark room and circled the couch.

  Jorie stopped abruptly.

  The place on the couch was empty. Will lay curled up on top of the comforter, but there was no sign of Griffin.

  Had the mugging really happened? Had she really taken Griffin home with her, or had it all just been a dream? She shook her head at herself. While she did have an overactive imagination and often had vivid dreams, even she couldn't have dreamed all of that.

  "So where did she go?" Jorie gave Will a gentle scratch behind one ear. Checking the bathroom and the kitchen unearthed no sign of Griffin. An empty plate and glass sat in the sink, but otherwise nothing hinted at Griffin's presence in the house. Maybe she couldn't sleep either and decided to go home. Maybe she didn't want to wake me to let me know. Still, a note or something would have been nice. And sneaking out without being able to lock the door... not good. After being mugged, Jorie wanted her front door firmly locked. She walked to the door to lock it — and found that it already was. A small note was taped to the door, and Griffin's nearly illegible handwriting told her that Griffin was out, taking a walk, and had borrowed her keys.

  "She went for a walk in the middle of the night? Well, apparently, her head was not as bad as Dr. Saxton thought. And she took my keys?" Disquiet crawled up her back and made the hairs on her neck stand on end. Jorie glanced out the window.

  Her car was still there and so were the two five-dollar bills she kept in a bowl on the side table next to the door. Tense shoulders relaxed when Jorie blew out a breath. Whatever was going on, Griffin Westmore was not a thief. Come on. Calm down. Stop being so paranoid. I bet she'll be back in a minute.

  With a sigh, she snatched up the bottle of aspirin from the coffee table and returned to her bedroom. Her laptop quickly powered up, and she started by rereading what she had written the day before, as she always did. There wasn't much to read, though. Writer's block still had her firmly in its clutches. Even finishing this one scene was a major battle.

  She read the two paragraphs again, more slowly this time, then went back, added a hyphen, and deleted a comma. Her gaze swept back to the top of the page to read it all again. Still no brilliant idea on how to finish the scene.

  Frustration added a pounding in her skull to the pounding of her arm. Without looking away from the screen, she fiddled with the childproof cap of the aspirin bottle. It refused to budge. Jesus! Why can't I figure anything out tonight? Annoyed, she jerked around to glare at the brilliant invention of modern medicine.

  Seconds later, she dropped one of the white tablets into her hand and dry-swallowed it. If only she could solve her problems with the scene that easily. She did a word count, even knowing she was procrastinating. Eighteen thousand, five hundred and twenty. Great, I'm stuck not even one-fifth into the story.

  A sound from the living room stopped her from reading the scene for the fourth time. She climbed out from under the laptop and opened the bedroom door.

  For a moment, she thought that cat eyes were glowing back at her; then she turned on the light and the illusion was lost.

  Griffin was standing in the middle of the living room, fully dressed, staring back at her. The borrowed T-shirt was twisted around her big body, and her sneakers were tied carelessly as if she had dressed while still half-asleep.

  "Where have you been?" Jorie asked.

  "I... I couldn't sleep, so I thought I would go for a walk," Griffin stammered. It was amusing to see the big woman so flustered. "I took your keys so I could lock up, and I left you a note. Nighttime walks always help me clear my head. I'm sorry if I woke you or —"

  "No." Jorie softened her voice. "You didn't wake me." Griffin's excursion and her sudden reappearance had startled her, and she was annoyed with herself for allowing her overactive imagination to intrude into her life. Glowing eyes, really. She rolled her eyes at herself. There was no reason for taking out her frustration on Griffin.

  "No?" Griffin came half a step closer but was still careful not to encroach on her personal space. "Is it your arm?"

  "No. The arm is fine," Jorie said. Having Griffin's concerned gaze rest on her was making her uncomfortable.

  "Then it's the muse keeping you awake?" Griffin asked.

  A sigh escaped before Jorie could hold it back. "I wish."

  "Still having problems with the story?" Griffin's voice held nothing but honest interest.

  Jorie was used to people reacting with interest when they learned she was a writer. Some of them were interested because they were convinced they had a novel in them too and thought Jorie could help to make it the great American novel. Others were voracious readers and hoped that she was writing just what they preferred to read. Most quickly lost interest when they realized that she didn't want to be their mentor or their personal writing slave. Jorie nodded vaguely.

  "Can I help in any way?" Griffin asked. "Want me to put a radio collar on your unruly muse?"

  A part of Jorie's tension dissipated as she laughed. "I don't think that would work. Muses have their own union and refuse to work if you chain them to the desk. And you? What's keeping you up tonight? Are you
in pain?"

  "No. After my refreshing walk, my head feels fine."

  Jorie studied her, trying to find out if Griffin was playing the hero again, but Griffin was indeed looking much better than she had just a few hours before. Her auburn eyebrows, one of them bisected by an old scar, weren't wrinkled in pain; the golden skin showed no sign of the earlier flush, and she was again moving with the easy grace that always surprised Jorie. Her eyes were clear and alert.

  Her eyes... Maybe it was the soft light in the living room, but Jorie discovered that they had the same color as her father's favorite whiskey — and the same effect. Soothing, but intense, with a glint of hidden danger and temptation.

  Shaking off the disturbing feeling, Jorie asked again, "Then what's keeping you up?"

  "I guess I'm just a light sleeper," Griffin said, "and when the cat jumped up on the couch..."

  Jorie's gaze darted over to the orange tabby that was still rolled up into a ball on the couch. "Will really jumped up there while you were lying on the couch?" Of all her cats, he was the one who was most timid around people.

  The cats were all behaving strangely. The inquisitive and affectionate Agatha, who always followed people around in doglike fashion, had hissed at Griffin every chance she got while Emmy had stayed away from the house since Griffin had arrived. It made Jorie a little more careful around Griffin too, but now Will had declared his trust in Griffin.

  Griffin nodded. "He came in earlier and sat on the coffee table, staring down at me. It took him a while before he decided I was a safe bedmate." Her long fingers affectionately slid through Will's fur, telling Jorie that Griffin loved cats as much as she did. "What happened to him?" Griffin trailed her hand along the dozing cat's chest and belly, stopping before she reached his missing front leg.