Chapter 26
26
SETH MAYS
Did you ever shift in your sleep?
ELLIOT CRANE
It’s happened once or twice.
Not particularly fun, and I destroyed the sheets.
Why? You okay?
I definitely destroyed the sheets.
But are you okay?
I don’t think I’ll ever be okay again.
The phone buzzed, and I ignored it. I wasn’t in the mood to talk to Elliot—to explain the horror of being ripped from a nightmare mid-shift, panicking, panicking again because that made the shift hit harder, and then losing any sense of who or what I was. I must have gotten tangled in the sheets, because I had ripped them to bits.
It was all murky in my head, but I was pretty sure Noah had shifted and come in and beat the shit out of me in wolf form, if the number of bruises, scratches, and one really clear bite mark on my shoulder were any indication. I assume he’d had to in order to get me to stop panicking or keep me from doing something worse to myself.
He’d also helped to clean all of them and bandage both of us, since my hands were too shaky—once I had hands again—to do either.
I did not want to explain any of that to Elliot.
And I didn’t want him to hear how awful I sounded.
Are you hurt?
Nothing serious.
The phone buzzed again. I ignored him, again.
Seth, please talk to me.
I need to get ready for work.
It’s fine.
Most of the bruising and scratches—and the very obvious bite mark—were hidden by my clothes. Or they would be if I wore long sleeves. It was warm enough in early May that I normally wouldn’t have, but I’d put on something light and hoped I didn’t overheat rather than answer questions about why I looked like I’d gotten in a fight with a wolf. Because I had.
Noah had immediately shifted back into human form when I had, and while he wasn’t in perfect condition, he looked a hell of a lot better than I did. Scratches mostly, no bites, and one elbow that looked like it was a little swollen.
Clearly Noah was a better fighter than I was. At least in fur form. It made sense, I supposed. He’d been a wolf for fifteen years longer than I had.
Moving slowly, I put on a clean, non-ripped, non-bloody pair of underwear, then pulled on a white undershirt to go under one of my long sleeved button-downs.
My phone buzzed again.
And I kept ignoring it.
Until I looked over and realized that this time it wasn’t Elliot, it was Maginot, and then I tripped over my own uncoordinated feet trying to get to the damn phone and came down hard on the corner of the platform bedframe.
“Goddamn shit!” I cursed at the pain—sharp and new, rather than achingly old and familiar.
The wooden corner had cut into my hip deeply enough that there was a smear of blood on my palm, which I’d instinctively slammed down over the sting. Having determined that I was, in fact, bleeding, I put my hand back over the wound.
The sound of running feet drew my attention to Noah, who rushed into the room, barefoot and wearing only a pair of boxers.
“Seth! What happened?”
I grimaced up at him from the floor. “I tripped over myself,” I replied a little sullenly, pulling back my palm to show him the now-somewhat-larger smear.
“Jesus,” came his muttered response. “Can you call in sick today?”
My phone started ringing again. Maginot, a second time.
“I really don’t think so,” I told him, grabbing the phone with my other hand and awkwardly sliding the little green circle. “Mays,” I said into it.
“I need your nose, Mays,” Maginot said. “Because I have a viable suspect, and I need to confirm that chemical on our last vic.”
“I’ll do it first thing when I get in,” I told him. I didn’t have to be at work until nine, and it was currently just past six.
“I need it sooner,” Maginot informed me. “Meet me at the coroner’s ASAP.”
“Okay,” I replied, wincing and swallowing back a hiss as Noah crouched down beside me with rubbing alcohol to clean out my newest wound. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“The hell you will,” Noah chided as soon as I hung up the phone.
“I have to, Nono,” I replied, and I knew I sounded as pathetic as I felt.
“Like hell!” he argued, color high in his cheeks, hands on his hips.
“Noah, please,” I all-but-begged. “I need to go in, so please just help me.”
He blew out a breath, his chest heaving a little with the sigh. “I am trying to help you, even though you clearly won’t help yourself,” he argued.
“I don’t want to lose this job, Noah,” I argued. “I get that I should be resting or eating or whatever, but to keep this job, I have to go to work. So I have to go to work .” I paused, bit my lower lip, then winced, because I was emotional, which meant that my teeth were currently a lot sharper than they should have been and I’d just drawn blood in my own mouth. “Besides, they might be able to catch the killer if I do this.”
Noah blew out another breath, then rubbed at one of the long scars on his chest, something he only did when he was really agitated. “Fine,” he said, finally. “But I’m driving you, then I’m coming back at lunchtime and making sure you eat properly, and then I’m coming back after exactly eight hours and taking you home.”
“Okay,” I agreed, because I would have agreed to pretty much anything to get him to take me. Even if I wasn’t actually going to get to leave at three in the afternoon. I’d have that argument with Noah later—either over lunch or by text.
I dressed as fast as I dared, clenching my teeth. Noah watched me, his arms crossed over his slim chest, for a few minutes, clearly unhappy, but then went to get dressed so that he could drive.
I confirmed that chlorhexidine was in fact what I’d smelled, sniffing both the victim—who was still unidentified—and a clean sample Maginot had brought with him. This time, with a nose that wasn’t congested and burned out, I was certain they were the same thing.
Maginot rubbed his hands together. “Good. Very good.”
Both Cindy Browne, the assistant ME who was scrambling to cover Tierney’s cases as well as her own, and I shared a glance. Browne was the acting ME now that Tierney had been forced—according to Quincy—into actual retirement by the combination of lingering Arcana symptoms and the severity of his physical injuries from the explosion. He would recover, eventually, but he was still in a rehab facility, undergoing intensive daily physical therapy.
Once he got to go home, Quincy and I were planning to go visit him, but that was weeks away yet. Assuming I didn’t accidentally turn feral and maim somebody.
That possibility was a source of constant anxiety, made worse today by my nighttime shift. I also suspected that a lot of Noah’s worry about me had more to do with my lack of control over myself—and my body—than the fact that I wasn’t eating enough or that I was still tired.
“All of our known victims went through the surgical center at St. Mary’s,” Maginot remarked. “Different doctors, different surgeries, but all of them scheduled in the same center.”
“Huh,” Browne commented, a small furrow appearing between her dark brows. Behind her thick glasses, brown eyes were thoughtful. “And we didn’t notice that before?”
Maginot shook his head. “Without the hint that this might have been related to a surgical or medical complex, we wouldn’t have thought to check,” he replied, almost cheerful despite the cool temperatures and sanitized tile of the morgue. “Because none of them shared the same doctor or ailment—a knee surgery, a hip, a torn wrist tendon, and so on. The fact that multiple offices go through the same surgical center actually made tracing the connection much harder, since they’d have scheduled through the offices, not the center.” He smiled—or something like it—the corners of his eyes crinkling. “They all came in, took their test, and then were sent home again because of a positive Arcana test. The surgical center wouldn’t have a specific date for them to reschedule, they’d just wait for the patient’s office to call in… or not.”
“That,” I said, “and they would have had to list who was driving them and their relationship—so choosing people who listed friends, rather than spouses.”
Maginot’s eyes crinkled again. “Precisely,” he said, sounding pleased.
“Do you know who it is?” Browne asked, her latte-toned forehead furrowed .
This time, Maginot’s expression was a frown. “Not yet,” he replied. “But now I know where to look.”
Noah brought lunch for both me and Quincy, stopping to pick up fried chicken sandwiches from Buttermilk and Honey. He’d gotten three each for me and himself, plus one for Quincy, as well as copious quantities of fries and sauces to dip them in.
“God, this is good,” Quincy spoke around a mouthful of her sandwich, a little ranch dressing—which mine did not have—staining the corner of her mouth.
Noah grinned at her. “Right?” It was one of his favorite places. They fried good chicken—Noah liked it because pretty much everything normally came with bacon, and Noah is a bacon fiend. We used to make bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches, bacon and cheese omelets, BTLs… We still did a lot of that with turkey bacon, but it wasn’t quite the same, and I would sometimes make a point of getting real bacon for Noah when I was feeling guilty or for a special occasion.
The fries were good, too. Thick, cross-cut. More potato taste than fried-taste.
And I was starving. Perhaps not literally, but my stomach had been nibbling at my insides for several hours, and I strongly suspected that I should have managed to eat something—which Noah had tried to insist on—before going to work. Shifting used a lot of energy, kick-started the metabolism. In biological terms, I understood this. I’d done research into shifter biology as soon as I’d gotten my hands on the books, visiting every library branch that would let me in to learn about what had happened to my brother .
I knew I needed more food, more protein, especially after a shift. And yet I’d ignored that when it was me. Maybe it was denial, maybe it was because it felt like if I didn’t take care of this new shifter body, then it would stop being a shifter. Which of course wasn’t how it worked at all. If I didn’t eat enough or the right things, I would sicken and eventually die. It was one way to stop being a shifter. One way to stop the pain.
It was a way I wasn’t yet willing to take.
I’d been willing once, but I had been dragged back. Not in the way I had wished, or by people who understood me, but it had led me here. And even with as much pain as I felt, and the dissatisfaction with my body and my conditions, I wasn’t there yet.
I took another bite of my second sandwich, chicken, honey, lettuce, tomato, and pickles. The honey was spicy, and the heat of it rolled through my mouth, making the salt and tang of the other flavors that much stronger. There was joy in the flavors of the food still—in the sound of Quincy’s laughter as she reacted to something Noah said, in the smile on his face as he let go of worrying about me for a little while.
I had cost them both a lot—I knew this.
Quincy was working harder than she should have been to cover for my failures—mistakes, clumsiness, slips of memory that I hoped would eventually stop and return to my pre-Arcana normal. Noah had taken off work—mostly. He was trying to do some work from home, put in a few hours while I was at work, all so that he could keep making money to support both of us.
I, meanwhile, was contributing loads of stress, extra work, and an increased food bill. And medical bills that no doubt the state would not completely cover, despite the fact that I had contracted Arcana on the job, at a crime scene, as the result of criminal activity for which I was not at fault, in the course of my duties, while wearing overkill PPE.
“Seth?” Quincy asked me, and I shook myself, swallowing a mouthful of sandwich.
“Sorry, what?” I was also struggling to focus. On anything. Case in point.
Quincy and Noah exchanged a look.
I sighed. “What?” I repeated.
Quincy fidgeted a little. “I asked if you felt like things were coming back. Because my first few weeks back were hard. I was tired, slow, my mind in kind of a fog. I asked how it was for you.”
I snorted. “No,” I answered her honestly. “I don’t feel like it’s coming back.”
“It has only been three days,” she said, clearly forcing optimism. “It took me two weeks, and I didn’t have it as…”
“Bad as I did?” I finished for her.
She nodded.
“No,” I agreed. Even by the most basic metric—number of days spent sick, days spent in the hospital—mine had been worse. Nevermind the fact that my body, my DNA, had been reshaped. Of course I was exhausted, weak, clumsy.
It made sense. But the world I lived in did not care whether body, mind, or soul were healed. The state of Virginia cared only that the cogs of its machinery continued to turn, regardless of the people crushed between them, only to be replaced, then crushed again. I did not have the time to make myself whole again. I had only scattered pieces barely held together with weak glue and tape.
I was afraid it would not be enough.