Chapter 6
6
Elliot Crane
At the grocery store and taking requests.
Seth Mays
Anything is fine.
About to do a phone interview.
Good luck!
I’d thrown myself into the job hunt, applying for things I had no business doing, half out of desperation and half because I was trying to avoid Elliot. We’d finished the garden boxes, and I’d done my best to not look at him.
Unfortunately, Elliot Crane isn’t a stupid man. He knew there was something going on, and he wasn’t terribly pleased that I didn’t want to talk about it.
But I couldn’t tell him. Not yet.
Not as long as I was completely dependent on him for, well, everything.
I was also currently jacked up about the phone interview, which was actually with the Shawano County Sheriff’s Office. I needed this job. I also actually wanted this job, as opposed to any of the others I’d applied for.
I hadn’t been what Annello’s had been looking for—according to Elliot, because I wasn’t female enough. I’d gaped at him for a second, then remembered having met an older man when I’d come through who had given me a little bit of a stink-eye. They’d said I wasn’t what they were looking for, which, if they were looking for attractive younger female servers—which is a description that matched the half-dozen or so who’d been there when I’d gone in—then I really wasn’t what they were looking for.
Disappointing, but only because I needed the money. I didn’t really want to be a server.
I wanted to work crime scenes. Or even accidental death scenes. Anything that would let me use my forensic muscles. To provide answers so that people would know what happened to their loved ones—so that the dead could rest in peace and the living could move on with their lives. Could get justice, in some cases.
My phone started buzzing.
I swallowed, letting it ring a few times so I didn’t seem too eager. Then I thumbed the green button.
“This is Seth Mays.” I tried to make myself sound pleasant. Cheerful. But not too cheerful.
“Mr. Mays, my name is Lacy Krinke. I’m calling from the Shawano County Sheriff’s Office—I’m in charge of the crime scene investigation team. Is now a good time?”
“Now is great.” I told myself not to be too agreeable. Not because I wanted to be difficult, but because I know being too agreeable can be annoying.
“Fantastic.” She sounded relieved. “Are you still interested in possibly becoming a technician with us?”
“I am,” I replied.
“And you last worked in… Virginia?” She sounded a little surprised. “What brings you to Shawano?”
“I have a friend up here,” I answered. Hopefully Elliot would be okay with the designation of ‘friend’ if anyone asked. “I was looking for a change, and he mentioned that there might be a position open.”
“Oh? Does he work for the Sheriff’s Office”?
I grimaced. It had sounded good in my head, but I realized—too late—that it raised all sorts of questions. “No,” I answered. “But he…” I swallowed, then figured they’d find out eventually, anyway. “His father was killed last year,” I told her. “And when they needed some evidence collected, the investigating detective ended up calling me because everyone was busy at other scenes.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone. Then, “That was you ?”
Apparently I had a reputation before I’d even applied for the job. “Yeah. Yes.” You should always be more formal during interviews. “Detective Smith was working with someone who used to work with me in Richmond.”
“Mr. Hart?”
I didn’t bother correcting her, given that Hart’s title-change to ‘Agent’ was extremely recent. “Yes, that’s right.”
“Would you be available for an interview on Thursday?”
I blinked, my heart rate immediately shooting up. I forced myself to take a single, slow breath, to bring down the adrenaline. “Absolutely.”
“Great!” The relief in her voice was palpable. That probably wasn’t a good sign if I were looking for a laid-back, slow-paced work environment. But I work in crime scene investigation, so that’s not really on my list of job qualifications. I couldn’t help the smile that curved my lips upward—not that it mattered to Lacy Krinke, since she couldn’t see me. “Does nine a.m. work for you?”
“It does.” I didn’t tell her that I had literally nothing else going on in my life.
“Then I will see you then. Have a good day, Mr. Mays!”
“You, too,” I told her, and then the phone beeped, telling me she’d hung up.
I stared at the phone in my hand for a good thirty or forty seconds. It was hard to believe, after everything, that something, anything was going my way.
But it was—for now, anyway. With my luck, I wasn’t going to hold my breath that the rest of this was going to go the way I wanted it to.
“Seth?”
Elliot had just come in the door. I was in ‘my’ room—I didn’t really feel comfortable moving around the house when Elliot wasn’t here, unless I had a reason to, like making dinner or something. I’d been pacing—the phone call had left me with a lot of nervous energy, and I wasn’t doing a very good job of keeping it under control. My skin itched, and while I didn’t feel like I was going to lose control, I felt, for the first time, like I wanted to shift.
I’d called Noah to update him on my phone interview, and had then sent texts to both Quincy and Hart. Quincy had sent back a long string of hearts. Hart had reminded me that he would provide me with a gushing reference if I wanted it. I’d assured him that his name was already on the application.
“I’m here,” I called back. I got up and padded out of the room, finding Elliot standing in the hall, three tote bags of groceries on his shoulders, his shoes having been toed off by the door.
His expression was… well, I wasn’t sure what expression he was wearing. Curious, maybe?
Right. Because I’d had a phone interview.
“I have an in-person on Thursday,” I told him.
He grinned at me. “That’s great!”
I nodded.
That lopsided smile dimmed. “But?”
I shrugged. “Nervous, I guess,” I replied. “I…” I swallowed, suddenly feeling oddly shy. “I really want this,” I admitted. I meant the job—but I also meant more than that. Not that I would admit it to Elliot, even though the other half—okay, more than half—of what I wanted was him.
Elliot’s smile turned understanding. “I get that,” he said. “I’d… suggest shifting to work out some of the nervous energy, but?—”
“Actually,” I jumped on the offer. “I’d like that.” I was even more jittery now. It might not help, but I felt like it couldn’t make it any worse.
Elliot frowned. “I—I don’t like that it causes you that much pain,” he said.
I sighed. I wasn’t particularly a fan of the pain, either, but I was used to it—well, I was used to pain. Maybe not precisely what I felt after shifting, but I’d get used to it. I’d have to. “I don’t like it, either,” I told him. “But it doesn’t hurt to be a wolf.” At least not any more than I already hurt on an average day. “Just to shift.”
Elliot huffed out a sigh and walked toward the kitchen with his bags. I followed him. “I still think you should tell a doctor,” he told me.
“I told them at St. Cyprian’s. Nobody seemed to think much of it.”
“I don’t think much of them,” Elliot retorted, heaving the bags up onto the island counter.
I pressed my lips together. I didn’t want to argue with Elliot—he was being generous with his time, his money, his house… I didn’t want him to regret that.
He sighed again. “Sorry,” he grumbled. “I just—shifting shouldn’t be painful. Not like it is for you.”
I shrugged, then started helping to unpack the bags. “A lot of things are more painful for me,” I replied.
“Because of the Lyme.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah,” I said anyway, putting away a carton of almond milk.
“And you still want to shift?” he asked. “Not that I think that’s a bad idea, necessarily, but what made you change your mind?”
I felt my neck heating up. “I’d just… never done it on purpose before. Or been aware of what was going on. Every other time was always just me panicking.” The heat spread. “I—I didn’t like the idea of losing control. So I think I fought it, and that…” I trailed off.
“Made it worse?” Elliot finished.
“Yeah, I think so.” My face was hot now.
“You don’t need to be embarrassed about that,” he said gently, accurately reading the flush of my skin.
I shrugged. “It—Noah never seemed to have the same fear of it. And you’re not.”
“I’ve been shifting for thirty years,” he reminded me. “And your brother transformed as a teenager, right?”
I nodded.
“So he’s got at least a decade or so of shifting, too.”
“I know,” I said. “But I lived with Noah when he first shifted.” I shuffled my feet, looking down at my toes. “It wasn’t like… me.”
“Well, I don’t have Lyme. Does Noah?”
“No,” I admitted.
“That might have something to do with it,” Elliot replied calmly. “If shifting hurts, when you first transformed, it might have increased your panic-response.”
I blinked. “What does that mean?” I asked him.
“When we’re shifted,” Elliot said, taking a loaf of bread and pulling out half the slices. “Especially when we’re just learning what we are and how it all works, we operate mostly on instinct. It’s why we’re fully feral when we first turn. Instinct takes over and the logical parts of our brains shut off.”
“We become animals,” I said.
“We’re already animals,” Elliot replied, pulling turkey, cheese, and non-dairy cheese out of the fridge, along with mayo, lettuce, tomato, pickles, and onions. “Human beings can be just as feral as any non-human animal—or Nid,” he said pointedly. “The only difference is in strength and power of claws or teeth.”
“People don’t go feral,” I pointed out.
“The hell they don’t,” he retorted. “Berserkers, blood rage, fog of war, whatever you want to call it. How many homicide scenes have you worked? And you wanna tell me that people aren’t feral?”
He had a point.
I convinced him—over sandwiches and Doritos, the sweet chili ones for me, ranch for Elliot—that shifting wouldn’t actually be that bad of an idea. Running was much less painful in wolf form, and, God, the smells . I understood, now, why dogs always wanted to smell everything… although maybe I’d draw the line at other people’s butts.
Maybe just Elliot’s butt. When he wasn’t looking.
It was his idea that this time we’d just go out in fur—no clothes to carry back, and both of us could go shifted. It would be the first time I saw Elliot as a badger, and that was making me oddly nervous. I’d seen him naked, he’d seen me naked, and he’d seen me shift, so I don’t know why the idea of seeing him as a badger made me anxious.
Maybe it bothered him, too, because he’d left the room to shift—and that made me feel self-conscious, so I went back into the room where I was sleeping, stripped down, then stood there naked, staring at the mirror on the back of the door.
There were a few new scars—some small ones that I didn’t remember getting and probably related to the hospital, the bite mark on my upper arm from Noah, the small punctures in my palms from my own claws—but nothing dramatic. Nothing like the swath of white that ran through Elliot’s hair.
I’d started to put back on a little of the massive amount of weight I’d lost in the hospital, but I could still see my ribs and hipbones to a degree that I’d never been able to before I’d gotten sick—even when Noah and I had been homeless and living in foster care and Hands and Paws housing, I’d been thin, but not hollowed out. And once I’d gotten into my twenties, I’d had a little bit of padding. A little softness on my belly, a little bulk in my shoulders and arms and at my waist.
Most of that was gone, now. As was most of the muscle that had been underneath it. My arms and legs felt thinner, weaker. My back hurt more, probably because the muscle that had helped me hold it straight had atrophied or been consumed by my body while I couldn’t keep down food even though my metabolism had ramped up.
I didn’t like the way it looked. I also didn’t like the way it felt—weak and awkward in a way that I hadn’t been before. I wanted my body to feel more like mine again. At least when I was shifted, everything was new. It felt better in that body than this one, even though neither one felt familiar. But it was less upsetting for a wolf’s body to feel strange than my human one. The one I’d supposedly been living in for the last thirty years, and which felt like it no longer belonged to me.
I sighed, then took out my contact lenses, then closed my eyes and tried to focus on my heightened senses—smell, hearing, taste—using them to draw the rest of myself into the shift, the tingle-turned-itching of fur growing, the tension of stretching bones, the pain of adjusting joints, the surge of saliva as my whole mouth reshaped itself to accommodate the longer, sharper teeth.
It wasn’t until I was in full wolf form that I realized I’d stupidly shut the damn door.
I really didn’t want to shift back just to open it.
It took me far longer than was dignified, standing on my hind legs, pawing at the damn thing until it finally caught, then trying to get my furry ass out of the way so that the door could swing inward.
And then found a giant badger sitting in the hallway looking like a fur beanbag with a head making huffing noises that I was pretty sure were laughter. I stared at him—Elliot, obviously. I’d never realized that when badgers sit, they’re round . Just… a fluffy ball with a vaguely stripey head. I got closer so that I could actually see him.
Up close, his face was honestly kinda cute. Small, rounded ears, a black nose, a white stripe that started an inch or so back from the shiny black and ran up and over the top of his head straight down the middle. More white and dark stripes framing his face with longer grey fur forming a kind of ruff around the outside of his almost non-existent neck.
The rest of him was just fluff.
And then he uncoiled, short dark-furred legs emerging and raising his almost corgi-like body so that he could trot-waddle down the hall toward the living room. I followed him, loping along at an easy pace.
Elliot was clearly smarter than me, and had looped a rope around the handle of the sliding patio door, a rope he caught with his teeth and used to pull the door open so he could waddle-fall down the few stairs to the grass outside.
I followed, noticing that there was another rope out here, too. Either he hadn’t had the ropes on here before, or I hadn’t been paying enough attention to notice them. I wondered which it was. But I was going to be helpful, since I didn’t have to stand on my hind legs to reach the rope, so I grabbed it in my teeth and pulled.
It wasn’t as smooth as when Elliot had done it, but I figured it out much more quickly than I had trying to turn a doorknob with paws, and I hauled the door closed with a couple of tugs.
Elliot waited, then led us both out into the woods, his fluffy tail swishing jauntily behind him.