“Glad you caught me too,” Katie lied. “How have you been?”
Since the battle a month ago with Hiram Lars, the region elders had been setting the table nonstop, trying to sort order from chaos. While they’d suspected Lars of overreaching for twenty years, they hadn’t been walloped with the proof until now. It would take years to untangle everything Lars had wrought, and his spy network—which had not been approved—had gone to ground.
Thank Goddess the elders had taken Lars into custody, saving Katie from the moral dilemma of a straight-up execution.
“I’m good.” Shirl had been her main contact with the region elders. “I wanted to let you know that we’ve voted to increase the salary and benefits package for the directorship position.”
“How nice for the future director.” Katie eyed her workspace critically, components laid in neat dishes and the Bunsen burner flickering. Two hours left to restock their heal-all stash. Give or take interruptions like phone calls and aggravating wolves. “I’m not changing my mind. It’s not about the money, Shirl. I don’t want that life.”
“It doesn’t have to be like it was before,” Shirl said. “It can be what you and the region elders, working together, feel is best for all shifters. We need someone we can trust to manage the keepers, and we believe that person is you.”
Vern, thirty years ago, had been sent to clean up the council. Unfortunately, he’d underestimated Lars, and the elders’ plan had blown up in their faces. The elders, wary of open warfare, had begun guiding covens to handle more wolf issues themselves to reduce the council’s clout—at the same time Lars had pretended his teams could no longer locate renegade wolves. The overall workload reduction for the keepers had enabled Lars to pursue his purist interests and experiments aggressively. The egregious covenant-breaking he’d committed in pursuit of Katie and Marcus had given the region elders the kick in the ass, and the proof, they needed to lower the boom.
Katie didn’t want the boom lowered on her. The region elders had been at her for the entire month to take over the council.
“If you agree to alter your policy regarding transformed wolves, I may be willing to negotiate.” Her recent experiences, and everything Marcus had discovered, had changed her perspective. Perhaps Tonya—whom Katie missed desperately—had been right all along. She was a sympathizer at heart.
And perhaps she simply wished she could send her father on a very long vacation with anyone who wasn’t her, but she’d agreed to be personally responsible for him if the elders allowed him to remain cognizant now that he was a wolf.
Shirl sighed. “That isn’t possible. We have to consider the good of everyone, not what a few of us might prefer. Dr. Delgado can’t replicate his achievement at this time, and we aren’t in a position to introduce ourselves to the packs. Transformed wolves are a security risk.”
“Marcus is working on it,” Katie said. He’d expended all the energy in his cayenne permabrand during the battle with the keepers. There were no traces left beyond silvery markings on his front and back in a lattice design. When he wasn’t making love to her, he was in his lab testing benign ways to evolve a witch or wolf to dual state. “Don’t rule him out.”
“We haven’t ruled out Dr. Delgado,” Shirl assured her. “He has our support as long as he keeps us apprised and accepts a few commissions and, possibly, interns in the future.”
“He’s still looking over the proposals.” They were stacked somewhere in the office. He’d scheduled time to read them once he completed a side project, which he’d hinted he might resolve tonight. “Anyone who wants to intern with him has to be comfortable with exceptions to the transformed wolf policy. He doesn’t need to deal with prejudices.”
“Of course. Speaking of wolves, how is your father?”
The registered exceptions to the elders’ transformed wolf policy, which had been updated in the latest coven newsletters, were Harry Travis, Marcus Delgado and Zhang Li. Wolves aided by the freedom program weren’t publicly acknowledged, and the sympathizers had gone deeper undercover, deactivating their hotline after the elders had tried to contact them for help with the keepers.
Katie just prayed Tonya and Vern were with the sympathizers instead of dead. Their continued absence was one of her biggest concerns.
Her other concern was her father. She was beginning to think he was never going to regain two-legger form. He’d been a wolf since the incident.
“He’s hairy. Would you like to talk to him? I can put you on speaker phone.”
“I shouldn’t,” Shirl said. “This is a business call.” Katie and Marcus had taken Zhang Li to see Shirl two weeks ago in hopes it would inspire him to shift. While he’d been happy to see his old girlfriend, lounge on her couch and eat her pot roast, he’d stayed four legged.
“Our business is concluded,” Katie said. “I’m not going to rejoin the council.”
“We did vote to establish a reeducation program regarding public opinion of convex witches,” Shirl said encouragingly. “You shouldn’t be segregated from the rest of the coven network, and convex witches shouldn’t be coerced in any way to enlist in the council.”
“It sure feels like you’re coercing me.” Katie heard the tic-tic of her father’s claws in the hallway outside her stillroom. He must be done with the movie she’d put on for him.
“Not because you’re convex. Because you’re the right person for the job. We want to work with you.”
“I’m truly not interested,” Katie insisted. “Once you locate Vern and Tonya Applebaum, you can get him to fill the position again.” Her friends had definitely been at the council stronghold when all the shit had gone down. The keepers willing to speak to the council reported seeing them.
“I wish your father would communicate with us about what happened,” Shirl said. “He still won’t use the alphabet rug?”
Katie and Marcus, after Dad had entered his third day with no return to upright position, had purchased a preschool ABC rug so her father could spell words if he wanted.
He didn’t.
“No, he won’t use it. Surely the region elders can find out what happened at the stronghold? You have access to the council’s files and the remaining keepers. Are you not allowed to tell me about any leads on Vern and Tonya or do you not have any?”
“You have pretty high security clearance,” Shirl said. “The files weren’t informative, and none of the keepers know what happened. We finished the interviews last weekend. Lars isn’t giving us any lucid information, but there’s evidence to suggest he repeatedly poppied keepers who weren’t in his elite group. We also know he maintained a wing of the stronghold where only he and his team went—where the experiments took place.”
Both during Katie’s time and after, Lars hadn’t involved the whole council in his purist endeavors. Marcus’s stint there and the experiments had been off the books. The young keepers Lars had employed for his less covenant-friendly goals were nowhere to be found.
“Lars broke covenant and poppied fellow witches for selfish purposes? Color me shocked.”
“There are probably caches of files elsewhere,” Shirl said. “Most keepers only vaguely remember anyone on Lars’s elite team. Since the deceased members died as wolves, no one recognized them. DNA has proven inconclusive. The analysis of that DNA is one of the commissions Dr. Delgado may receive in the future. Do you think he’ll take it?”
Shirl was trying to sucker Katie into more conversation. Not going to happen. The elder would continue to badger her, guilt her, flatter her, bribe her and level with her in hopes something, anything, would change her mind. But Katie wanted to be left alone to tend to her wounds and her two wolves in peace. “I really need to go, Shirl. Got herbs to pick and cayenne to prime.”
“I understand. Give my best to your father.” They exchanged a few actual pleasantries before Katie hung up the phone.
Finally, she could get back to brewing. She wanted to be done when Marcus got back. They hadn’t vocalized many affe
ctions or intentions since their near-death experiences had prompted all the confessionals. Marcus wasn’t chatty, and she wasn’t particularly emotive herself.
But they’d certainly restarted their bedroom activities—minus any experimental regimen. Marcus had somehow wound up living with Katie and her father in the new house. She helped whenever he needed a boost from a witch, and hoped the sex and magic weren’t the only reasons he’d stuck with her.
It sure as hell wasn’t her cooking. Though she knew damn well taste buds in wolf form weren’t equivalent to taste buds in human form, even her father didn’t like Katie’s cooking. June’s care packages of baked goods improved the cuisine in the Zhang-Delgado household exponentially.
Katie slid a fresh latex glove on her bare hand, popped goggles over her glasses and returned to the components. It was hard to quit living as if everyone wanted her dead. If she continued to stockpile components, maintain go bags and use June’s expensive wards on her house, that was her business.
If she continued to track down Tonya’s acquaintances with the information she’d scrounged from the tattoo parlor, doing anything she could to find Tonya and Vern, that was her business too.
And it would help everyone, including the region elders, if her father would shift back.
What had happened to him while he’d been with Hiram Lars? Did he still have the amnesia? Did he know what had happened to Tonya and Vern?
And would he ever let her work uninterrupted for more than twenty minutes? If she had to quit what she was doing to open the back door for him one more time today, she was going to—
From the den—the room with the back door—she heard him scratch and bark.
Katie thought about ignoring him, but if she did, he’d come into her stillroom and bite her. Because he was an asshole.
“Old man,” Katie said, stripping off both gloves and her lab coat, “don’t you want to have opposable thumbs again? And shit in toilets and use the TV remote and eat off plates?”
She tossed her gloves into the waste bin and laid her coat across the back of a chair. Growling like a wolf, she stomped down the hall to the den.
Her father, tail wagging, lifted a paw and scratched the painted wooden doorjamb, leaving long claw marks.
“What do you need out for?” Their house was in the country, near Marcus’s lab, but they did have neighbors. And those neighbors had cats and chickens. “If you’d cooperate with the letter rug, we could communicate like people. We need to know what happened while you were with the keepers.”
Zhang Li didn’t want to communicate. But he did want in and out the door. A lot.
As she lectured, he wagged his tail and panted.
Katie stormed to the back door, jerked it open and booted his ass out. “If I hear one more thing from the neighbors about our dog chasing chickens, I’m going to put you in a coop. Don’t think I won’t.”
All she saw was the saucy wag of his tail as he disappeared into the woods behind the house.
She sighed and checked the clock. Marcus would be home soon. Good. He’d said he was close to a breakthrough. Maybe he’d had a miraculous brainstorm for how to motivate Dad to shift. The hell. Back.
Marcus had run some tests on Zhang Li, who was as cooperative as a wolf as he had been as a witch. He couldn’t determine anything magical or physical blocking Zhang Li’s shift. It was possible to prevent a wolf from changing forms with certain spells, but there were no traces of those components on her father.
And who’d have put that spell on him? Not her.
Katie had barely finished her afternoon work when she heard the crunch of Marcus’s truck in the gravel drive. She tossed her last gloves for the day into the trash and brushed off her oversized T-shirt and jeggings. Before she reached the door to greet her scientist, she heard Marcus talking. He fumbled with the door latch as if he only had one free hand.
“I think you’ll like it here.” His deep, calm voice resonated inside her, as always. She loved how he could be so calm and so passionate simultaneously. His control and intensity thrilled her—in and out of the bedroom. “You may not be allowed out for a time, but we can grant you the permission of the yard after your prove yourself.”
Who in the world was he talking to? He rummaged with the many locks on their door. Katie got tired of waiting and opened it for him.
Marcus, poised on the porch with his keys out, had wedged a grocery bag under one arm and carried a large, plastic case in his hand. Closer inspection revealed the case was an animal carrier, the size used for small dogs, rabbits and cats.
Katie squatted in front of the blue plastic case. “You got a cat?”
“I did.” In the grocery bag, he had several cat-care items. “There’s a pan and litter in the truck. Could you fetch them? I need to introduce the animal to her new home, and she’s used to me.”
“Sure.” Marcus had never displayed any interest whatsoever in pets. Witches often kept them, but wolves rarely did—especially not cats. It wasn’t that they disliked cats or cats disliked them, but many wolves seemed to feel cats were the antithesis of wolfhood. Though Marcus wasn’t a born wolf, he didn’t seem the cat type.
But he did surprise her sometimes…like the other night in the shower when he’d joined her for a lengthy cleansing session.
They hadn’t used antibacterial soap, but she’d definitely felt refreshed afterward.
Katie retrieved the desired items and set them up in the washroom. A cat. She’d never had a cat. Pets didn’t lend themselves to a clandestine, drop-everything-and-run lifestyle. But if Marcus wanted a cat, she was agreeable. A pet was a domestic, settled kind of decision. If domestic and settled was how he was starting to feel about her, she’d happily become the crazy cat lady. She didn’t want a drop-everything-and-run lifestyle anymore, and it wasn’t as if he was asking her to brand him with cayenne.
When she went looking for Marcus and his new friend, she found them in Zhang Li’s room. Her father liked to sleep on a double bed in a pile of ratty comforters. Marcus sat on the edge of the mattress, watching the cat.
She—Marcus had said the cat was a she—sniffed the blankets and twitched her tail. She was…
She was scroungy as hell. Dirty white with gray spots, the half-grown kitten, while not emaciated, had not lived her days with a silver spoon serving her tuna.
“That cat’s mangy.”
The kitten sniffed a spot on Dad’s favorite blanket before rubbing her whiskers on the fuzzy cloth. Then she rolled onto her back and wiggled as if whatever she smelled had transported her to a happier place.
“Actually, no.” Marcus loosened his tie, one she’d bought for him as a joke, which had wolves all over it. After she’d given it to him, he’d worn it two days out of five. “But she does have fleas and common ear mites called Otodectes cynotis. I got her all her shots.”
“She was a stray?”
“Yes, near my laboratory. I’ve been feeding her. I suspect some human dumped her in the woods near the building. She’s quite friendly.” He reached out and scratched the kitten under the chin, and she began to purr loud enough for Katie to hear from several yards away. “She enjoys this, but don’t touch her stomach.”
“Does she have a name?”
“If she does, she hasn’t told me yet.”
Katie opened her mouth to remind him cats weren’t shifters, but when she looked at him his eyes were twinkling. “Gotcha.”
“Smart ass. You do realize Ba has been chasing the neighbor’s cats, right? Are you going to bring home chickens tomorrow?” Maybe it would keep Dad from harassing the neighbors, though she wasn’t sure how she’d feel about him tormenting animals that lived with them.
Marcus rubbed the cat affectionately several more times before he rose. “I think she’s going to solve our problem for us.”
“With Ba? How is a cat going to convince him to turn back into a person?”
“I don’t know if it will work, so I don’t want to get your hopes up.
” He shut the cat in Zhang Li’s room and slid his tie out of his shirt collar.
Katie pressed a hand to her mouth in mock-surprise. “You have doubts? I am so disappointed in you.”
Marcus eyed her as if considering whether she was being serious. “Where is Zhang Li?”
“Out. Probably until well after dark.” She suspected, in addition to chasing cats and chickens, he’d been making rounds. Marking their territory and memorizing all the people in it. They cast a masking spell on him daily, so there was no fear the closest pack would take objection to an indie wolf poking around, but old habits probably died as hard with her father as they did with her.
Always know everyone around you and every escape route. Always be ready to run.
“Dusk falls in an hour,” Marcus said. “That’s enough time.”
“For what?”
Without a change of expression, he unbuttoned his shirt, and she recognized the lightening blue shade of his eyes. His wolf was rising. And other things. “For me to repair your disappointment in me, of course.”
“Is that a bay leaf in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?” she asked, before helping him undress.
* * *
Later that night, after she and Marcus had made love, eaten dinner, discussed some of his proposals from the council, fed the cat, brushed the cat on Zhang Li’s bed, which Katie found a bit odd but didn’t question, let Dad into the house, let Dad out of the house, let Dad into the house, threatened Dad with the coop if he wouldn’t quit growling at the cat, fed Dad, fed the cat again, made love more quietly since Dad was in the house and gone to sleep, Katie became aware of an odd noise emanating from her stillroom downstairs.
Glass clinked. Drawers open and slammed. The sink gushed.
Nobody was supposed to mess around in her stillroom. Marcus had his lab, she had her stillroom and Dad had his entertainment center. She shouldn’t have to drag all her shit to another location in order to keep people out of it. Of course, that wasn’t why Marcus had a lab—some of his decontamination and electrical needs weren’t suited for this house—but Katie had no desire to leave her space every day just to work.
Witch Interrupted Page 37
