Lycanthropy Files Box Set: Books 1-3 Plus Novella

by Cecilia Dominic

  “Come into the kitchen.” I calmed my voice, but a tremble still came through. I’d wanted the events of the previous night to be a dream, and my cheeks flamed at the thought of how I’d acted the horny fool even though my wolf brain had still been mostly in control at the time.

  It seemed we had a lot to sort out, and to make things worse, the rolling pin crashed to the floor in the kitchen again.

  “We can talk about all this,” I said, “But first, would you mind taking your shoes off?”

  8

  Revelations

  “What was that noise?” Jared asked. His sunglasses had disappeared into his leather jacket pocket, and he leaned over to remove his expensive-looking loafers.

  The clams with bellies had been lovely going down, but now I tasted the acid and fat at the back of my throat. How much did he really need to know about me and my family craziness?

  “It was my grandmother’s rolling pin. She was reminding me to take shoes off.”

  “Couldn’t she just come out and tell you?”

  “Not exactly.” I tried to smile and not look crazy. “She’s a ghost.”

  He grinned like I was making a joke. “Right. This is Festival of the Dead time, after all. And you do have CLS.”

  It reminded me he didn’t know about the full manifestation of the symptoms except—oh, gods—if he realized his dream hadn’t been a dream. At least I’d had him turn around for my change. I needed to get him out of there, but he moved past me.

  “I’m going to check it out, make sure there’s nothing wrong.”

  “Thanks, but it’s fine, really. Maybe you should go.”

  He whirled around, and I bumped into his broad chest. He steadied me with his arms around me, and I had to tilt my face up to him.

  “I’m not leaving until I know you’re safe.” Now both dimples showed, and I might have melted against him.

  “And my dreaming about this place means something,” he continued. “You might be able to help me.”

  “I’m happy to help however you need me to.” I hoped he couldn’t feel my heart sprinting against his. And that he didn’t take my reply as an invitation. But maybe it was. I recalled the chemistry from that party, and the memory of his subsequent coldness made me pull away.

  “Right.” He turned too quickly for me to catch more than a glimpse of disappointment on his face. Or had I imagined it? My thoughts wobbled between witches, ghosts, and whatever was wrong with him that might have something to do with me.

  “Was this the rolling pin you were talking about?” He pointed to where it rested in its little wooden cradle on the island.

  “Yes.” My hair follicles woke, and everything stood on end at the sense that there was something horribly wrong. If I hadn’t heard the rolling pin, what was it? I glanced at the back door and saw it was unlocked and unbolted.

  “Or maybe it was something else.” I moved to the door. “Someone was here.” I flared my nostrils, wanting to sniff out the intruder, but my nose, in spite of being more sensitive than the average person’s even when I was in human form, could only catch so much—a clean, floral scent.

  So it had been a woman. But what had she done? There was a strange sense of echo—that was the only way I could explain it—in the room, like it stood slightly outside the parameters of reality.

  Jared rubbed his forearms through his sleeves, and I tried to not stare. He felt it too? But how? I looked at the door again, which stood locked and bolted, and I gasped.

  “What?” Jared asked. He rubbed his temples.

  How is this possible? I walked to the door and touched a fingertip to the deadbolt. It was cold to the touch, and I drew my hand back.

  “Headache?” I asked.

  “No, just a strange sense of pressure. Like a sinus headache about to start.” He looked up and dropped his hand to his side. “It’s better now. Wait, didn’t you say the door was unlocked?”

  “I thought it was. Did you see it?”

  “Yes.” He frowned and came to stand beside me. “I saw the chain swinging, and…” He touched it, then pulled his finger back. “It’s blazing. Don’t.” He caught my hand and showed me his finger, which blistered. I pulled him to the sink, started the cold water, and stuck his finger under it.

  “Nona used to have aloe in here,” I said. “I wish she still did.”

  “The water’s working. My finger’s not stinging anymore.”

  “Good.”

  Thoughts darted through my mind and lit up briefly like fireflies, too brief for me to latch on to any one of them. He’d sensed something strange. The lock affected him differently. And somehow he had managed to visit the house the night before through a dream.

  The last reminded me of something Charles Landover, a wise old lycanthrope in Arkansas had discovered, how some of us could, with the use of aconite, spirit-walk. I’d later looked up the concept online. The best term I could find was astral projection.

  So did that mean Jared was one of us? I would have been able to smell it if he was.

  “Tell me about your weird symptoms,” I said.

  “Now?” He drew his finger from the stream of water, turned off the flow, and dried his hand on a dish towel. “There’s too much other stuff happening.”

  “Every time something odd has happened in this house since I got here, you were somehow involved,” I told him.

  “Wait, what do you mean?”

  I shook my head. “No, sir. You are not going to deflect my question this time. You took me to lunch—thanks, by the way—to ask me about this. You know my secrets.” Well, most of them. “It’s time to tell me what’s going on.” I crossed my arms and leaned back against the island.

  “Are you sure we should stay here?”

  I would have laughed at seeing the world’s most assured man so uncertain. “Yes. Whatever it was, it’s gone.”

  “Good. Where are the glasses?” He opened the cabinet nearest him.

  “Why? Are you trying to put this off with the old ‘I need a glass of water’ trick? Small children have been using that as an avoidance tactic for centuries.”

  “No, to show you. Ah, here we are.” He pulled out one of the juice glasses Nona would sip jug wine from. It seemed small and fragile in his large hands, and I remembered how Nona wasn’t physically intimidating, but she kept the people around her in line.

  As if I needed another lesson in how appearances could be deceiving.

  I watched as he filled the glass halfway with water and set it on the island.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “Just watch.” He picked up the glass and cradled it in one hand. The water inside first clouded, then swirled, and finally bubbled.

  “What are you doing?” I couldn’t look away.

  “I’m thinking of the weather outside, what I’d like it to do.”

  I looked up at him. His eyes had taken on a particularly green hue. The sense of echo returned, but only around him. Is that what it feels like to be around magic?

  “So what are you thinking of to make it bubble?”

  He grinned at me. “Being with you in a hot tub under the stars on a chilly night.”

  “That’s not weather.” But my cheeks heated under his smoldering gaze. Dear gods, I wanted that desire of his to come true. I grabbed a glass from the cabinet and poured some water for myself from the pitcher in the fridge. The sand from outside must have gotten into it in spite of my attempts at rinsing it because something crunched between my back teeth.

  He placed the glass on the island and leaned on his hands. “And now the headache.”

  “You didn’t have to hurt yourself,” I said and swallowed the grit.

  “I had to show you. I couldn’t do it at the restaurant in case the waiter walked in or there was a camera in the room. And that’s only the smallest of the strange things I’ve found I can do.”

  While part of me wanted to drag Jared upstairs and help part of his fantasy come true, he was obviously hurting, and t
here was only one person I could think of who could help him.

  “Luckily I know someone who can help,” I said. “She’s a witch.”

  “Really, here in Salem?”

  My first thought was that he couldn’t be hurting that much if he was snarky, but that was also his MO—to deflect people seeing his true weakness with a joke.

  “Yes.” I whacked him on the arm. “She’s a real witch, not one of the poseurs.”

  He straightened. His eyes had returned to their normal hazel color—dammit—and I stood beside him, ready to support him. This close, I could see the dark tinge to the delicate skin under his eyes. That little demo had taken a lot out of him. Or maybe it hadn’t been the first spell he’d done that day. It had started out cloudy and cool, but by the time I met him, the clouds had seemed to magically disappear.

  Nah, I’m just making things up.

  Before we walked into the front hall, I gave the rolling pin one last look. Someone had been in here, but I didn’t know why. I didn’t smell them in the hall, so I guessed the kitchen had been the only place visited. But again, why? Unless someone had a fascination with a ridiculously large collection of Italian juice glasses and hand-crank pasta machine attachments, I couldn’t think of what they’d want to steal in the kitchen.

  It was more likely we’d surprised whoever it was.

  I couldn’t justify calling the police, though, since the door had locked itself behind the intruder, so there was no sign someone had been there. Or the intruder had locked it. But how could someone lock a chain bolt behind them?

  None of this made sense. Well, it did, but only in a magical way, and my mind pulled back from magic as an explanation in spite of what Jared had just shown me. Sure, I was a werewolf, but my lycanthropy was a genetic disorder from a tainted vaccine.

  But what did that make Jared?

  He held the door open for me, but the tightness at the corners of his lips told me he still wasn’t feeling well. I couldn’t help but draw the contrast between then and when I’d found him on the dock. Then he’d seemed full of the life and sunshine around him.

  We opted to walk into town since parking in October was especially tricky. He didn’t say much until we’d passed a few houses and joined the throng of tourists on the sidewalk. Then he took my hand, and I let him. The contact felt safe, his hand a warm spot in the autumn chill.

  “I haven’t forgotten that dream I had about you,” he murmured.

  I could have denied any knowledge of the dream, but my traitorous skin heated in what I knew was a blush.

  “And what was that?”

  “That you were a wolf who turned into a beautiful woman in a scandalous state of undress. They would have had some things to say about you back in the day.”

  “They do in this day, too,” I couldn’t help but flirt back.

  “Too bad your grandmother interrupted us. By the way, I saw her picture in the hallway. She looked exactly like she did in the dream.”

  I tried to pull my hand away, but he held tight.

  “You’re not telling me everything, Kyra, and I’ve been completely honest with you.”

  When I looked up at him, I expected to see anger, not the hurt that turned his eyes dull. The crowd moved us along toward town, and when he released my hand, I had to struggle to keep up with him. It felt like his letting go created a cloud of cold around me, not just the loss of warmth from his hand.

  “Some secrets are more dangerous than others,” I told him and rubbed my arms through my jacket.

  When we reached the gallery where Veronica’s shop was, the crowds thinned out, most of the people staying outside and hitting the tourist attractions like the witch museums and the statue of Elizabeth Montgomery in Lappin Park. The tables by the coffee shop were full, though, and Veronica’s shop had more than a few people in it.

  “Thank goddess you’re here,” she said when she saw me, and then, “oh, I didn’t know you were bringing some extra help.”

  Jared looked confused for a moment, then smiled. “I’m just a visitor, ma’am.”

  “Then I hope you won’t mind if I borrow Kyra for a moment.” She turned to the older woman who held a stone in each hand. “That’s it, just close your eyes and feel which one is friendlier to you.”

  I took the register and rang people up while Veronica helped others and Jared wandered around the store. Finally we hit a lull, and Veronica locked the door and turned the sign to “Will Return—Joyriding on My Broomstick.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I should have known it would be busy this afternoon with the nice day.” She turned her attention to Jared and studied him with pursed lips. “And what have we here?”

  “He’s—” I tried to say, but she held her hand up.

  “No, no, that’s not possible,” she murmured and walked around him. “The last one died over a century ago.”

  “Uh, the last what?” he asked. He shot me a look that was half-panic, half-pleading, but I also thought I caught an amused glint to his eyes.

  “You can consider me a crazy old woman, young man, but that won’t stop me from seeing what’s right in front of me.”

  Now his face flushed.

  “I should have warned you, she can read minds,” I said. I shouldn’t have been as amused as I was by his discomfort, but it was nice to see someone else on the hot seat. “So what is he?”

  She clasped her hands. “Oh, he’s very special. He’s a weather wizard.”

  “A what?” he and I both asked.

  “A weather wizard. Someone who can manipulate water, air, and energy. One of the most powerful kinds of wizards there is.”

  9

  More Revelations

  Jared looked at Veronica with the expression one would reserve for a wild animal that had one cornered but that he didn’t want to spook. He especially drew back when she asked, “Tell me, have you heard of the Wizard Tribunal? Because they’re going to be sending someone to talk to you very soon.”

  “I’m not a wizard,” he said. “I’ve learned an interesting trick or two, that’s it.”

  “From where?” Veronica waved her hands. “Your power was subconscious for the first three decades of your life. Why do you think it’s emerging now?”

  He backed toward the door. “Look, I’m not sure what you think I am, but I’m not magical.”

  “Has anyone given you a book?” Veronica pressed. “Something with spells in it? Or old recipes that don’t look quite right?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” But there was a flicker of something in his eyes.

  I emerged from behind the counter to stand beside him. “Veronica, stop. He’s overwhelmed.”

  She narrowed her eyes, which had taken on the color of a cold, cloudy winter sky. “He’s lying.”

  He stiffened, but he didn’t refute her accusation.

  “Young man, you need to come clean with me. The Wizard Tribunal will not be so gentle when they find a rogue weather wizard has been running around wreaking havoc.”

  “I’ve done no such thing,” he said.

  “Are you sure? It was supposed to rain today. There was a ninety-percent chance.” She gestured out of the store to the gallery, where sun poured through the glass ceiling. “What happened to it?”

  “Weather changes, especially this time of year,” he said. “I wouldn’t change the weather even if I knew how. That could be dangerous.”

  “And it gives him a headache,” I added.

  “But only if he does it inside, I would guess,” she murmured. “What happened to your headache when you walked outside?” she asked him.

  “It went away. Fresh air has always helped me feel better. You two are playing a joke on me, aren’t you? Trying to scare me because it’s close to Halloween.” He looked at me, then her. “I know a trick with water, and I get headaches, but I’m not some all-powerful wizard. This isn’t Harry Potter. I thought you were going to bring me to someone who could help me, Kyra.”

  His disap
pointment pricked me, and I quickly said, “I thought I was, too. Veronica, can’t you do something?”

  “He’s under the jurisdiction of the wizards. I can help him to learn to manage his power, but I dare not do too much because they’ll want him properly trained. I’m sure they’ll be here soon.” But she didn’t sound sure or reassuring.

  He turned to me. “Do you believe all this? About wizards and tribunals and powerful magic?” His grin faltered, and his expression begged me to say no.

  “What if I told you I did?” I held my hands palm-up. “And you’ve seen it. You came into my grandmother’s house last night.”

  “Astral projection, or spirit-walking, is one ability wizards have,” Veronica told him.

  “That was only a dream.” But I could tell he didn’t believe the words he said, particularly since he’d seen the pictures of my grandmother and recognized the house.

  I knew how he felt. The realization of what my first change had meant had hit me with the same force. Once the knowledge that you’re a strange, magical creature doomed to forever be outside the bounds of human society explodes in your brain, it can’t be unknown. I’d found that denial is the first reaction, the mind’s attempt to cushion the blow, but it’s dangerous. If I had accepted and adjusted sooner, I might not have lost everything to my CLS.

  And that realization hit me full-force, peeling back another layer of denial. At least I was a different person now. It was too late for me to have the life I missed, but I could still help him.

  “It wasn’t a dream.” I held his hand. “You were there, and you were trapped in a circle of binding her ghost somehow made.”

  “But there was a wolf.” He jerked his hand away. “You were the wolf. But how is that possible? CLS is a neurological disorder.”

  “You need to show him,” Veronica said.