Chapter 9
Lydia
Things are back to normal, I think. Simon hasn’t turned into anything since his experience in the woods.
I think that scared him more than he will ever let on.
The way he looked when he came out was frightening.
He was so vulnerable. I could see in his eyes that he’d had an experience he was not easily going to come back from.
Not that he’s truly come back from it. His research is indicating that he’s several percentage points more wolf than he used to be.
You don’t need a background in advanced genetic science to tell that, though.
Everything about him is wilder. His hair is thicker and seems to grow faster, his body is broader and stronger, his voice is deeper. He’s even hotter, basically.
If anybody but him gets their hands on this technology, they’re going to market it as some kind of looks-maxing beauty treatment for men, I can guarantee it.
He comes to my apartment one evening about three days after I turned Veronica into a cat. Nobody has reported her missing yet, but I’m pretty sure they’re going to tomorrow because that will be her third day of not clocking in and the company will have to address it.
* * *
Simon
She looks guilty. She smells guilty. And she’s gotten a cat.
I register all three of these things within moments of entering her apartment. I’ve been trying to get her to come over and stay at mine for the past couple of days, but she has been uncharacteristically reticent about that.
So I’ve come to hers with a bag full of Chinese food and an ample curiosity.
Sometimes I get too hung up in my work. I know that.
I wonder if she thought I was ignoring her.
Or if she’s just angrier at me for taking the substances than she’s letting on.
Women can be that way sometimes. You turn into a wolf for the better part of a month just once and they get all weird about it.
“Hi,” she says. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I thought I’d drop in, bring something to eat. You’re probably hungry, right?”
“Right,” she grins. The smell of the food is doing a lot of heavy lifting right now. I think if I’d come empty-handed she might have tried to fob me off with an excuse. But I’m inside her house now, and she’s searching for some forks.
“Come and sit down,” she says graciously.
We settle in on the couch together and enjoy a succulent Chinese meal.
The conversation is light and she starts to relax.
I’m glad for that, though I do still want to know what had her so tense in the first place.
She has been through a lot lately, and I’m now sure more than ever that she’s avoiding me because she starts yawning almost as soon as she’s finished her meal.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m just so tired.”
“Is Veronica working you hard?”
She blushes immediately and looks away from me and I know something is up.
“What’s that about?” I reach out gently and redirect her gaze to mine with my fingers on her chin.
“Nothing,” she says. “I’ve just been so busy and I think everything got on top of me before I realized, you know? Sometimes you get stressed but you don’t think you’re stressed until your body just shuts down. I think that’s what happened maybe. I just need some down time.”
It’s a good lie, but not good enough.
Just as she says those words, there’s an ungodly sound from the bathroom, like a wild animal is trying to escape from inside.
“What on earth do you have in there?”
“Cat,” she says. “I got it from the shelter. It is going to need some time to calm down. I’m just going to ignore it for the moment, let it get used to being here, all the sights and smells and things.”
“It sounds like it wants you dead,” I say as the creature yowls from the bathroom. I have heard annoyed cats before. This one sounds like it is ready and willing to take out her entire bloodline. “Why did you adopt an aggressive cat?”
“Well, I don’t have anybody to look after the apartment when I’m not here,” she smirks. “And, frankly, I felt sorry for the thing. It was older and hard to handle and the shelter said it might be at risk, so…”
“That was really nice of you,” I say, while my spidey senses tell me something is definitely up here. Something is going on with her and this cat.
“What shelter did you go to?” I ask the question casually.
“Oh. Um. Animal Lives,” she says.
“The shelter was called Animal Lives? That’s a weird name.” I put it in my phone, and nothing comes up. “Where are they based?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I might have gotten the name wrong.”
“Yeah,” I say. “You might have.”
“Does it matter what it was called?”
“I’m just worried for the kitty,” I say. “It doesn’t sound very happy.”
“It’s dramatic,” she reminds me.
“Not really how animals work,” I respond. “Let me see her…”
“I think you should go,” she says. “You being here might be what is disturbing the cat.”
I stand up, more certain than ever that something very strange is going on.
I haven’t put two and two together yet, but I can tell that mathematics are going to come in handy very soon.
Lydia and I might not have known each other for long, but my enhanced senses can detect the shifts in her pheromones and such that arise from lying.
I go to the bathroom door, and open it.
“Don’t!” she calls out. “She’ll escape!”
The cat rushes out immediately. I see a streak of white, and that’s about it. The little beast bounces around the apartment, then somehow hits the handle of the front door and manages to free itself from her domicile. For a homeless beast, the cat is clearly not very grateful.
“Fuck! You fucking idiot!” Lydia curses at me, turning almost as feral as the cat instantly. “I’ve got to get her back.”
She dashes out after the cat as fast as she can go, which is fortunate for her, because being called a fucking idiot is not on the list of behaviors I tolerate.
Lydia comes back a couple of minutes later.
“She got out the front door,” she says. “Someone was coming in with a delivery and now she’s lost. I can’t believe this. It’s such a mess. Why did you do that? Why can’t you listen to anything?”
I wait until she has closed the door behind her before addressing things.
“You didn’t even try to help!” She squints her eyes at me. “You just opened the door and let her out! What’s wrong with you?”
I wait for her to stop asking me aggressive questions, which takes a while.
Lydia is in full rant mode, commenting on how poor a listener I am, what dubious decisions I make, how she just wanted a little time to herself but I had to show up and ruin everything…
the list goes on for quite a while, and is exhaustive.
When she finally realizes she is not getting the reaction she expected, she stops and looks at me, waiting for me to say something.
* * *
Lydia
He is so annoying. I don’t know how I didn’t notice that before. I guess when he was in charge at work and with all the intense sex, his disappearance, and the fact that he can turn people into animals, I failed to notice he can’t follow simple directions like ‘don’t open that door.’
“Lydia…”
I don’t like the way he says my name. It is too calm. Too quiet. My stomach starts doing nervous flips.
“Yes?”
“Did you turn Veronica into a cat?”
Those words are like a wrecking ball smashing through the walls of my annoyance to find my guilt.
“What makes you think I’d do that? Or that I could do that?”
“I asked you the question first.”
He’s being insistent, and I can’t just ignore him. Though it would serve him right if I did. Apparently listening to each other isn’t high on our list of priorities.
“Lydia, if you don’t tell me the truth, I am going to go into your kitchen, take out a wooden spoon, and spank your bare bottom with it until you confess,” he says.
The threat makes me blush furiously. Dammit. It is not fair that he is this hot and dominant, and smart. How did he guess? There are so many cats in the world; she should really have been able to stay hidden in plain sight.
But then I think maybe he’s bluffing. He can’t know what I did. And he might even be trying to cover for letting the cat out. So if I just act some variation of normal, this might actually all blow over.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lie. “Assuming that Veronica is a cat is a crazy leap.”
“Veronica hasn’t been at work in several days. That’s why I came here to see you, because you haven’t either. HR has been looking for the pair of you.”
“Why didn’t you say that up front?”
“Because I didn’t want to make you worried,” he says. He’s lying, but so am I, so I guess that makes us more or less even.
“I’m not going to lie,” I say deviously. “Veronica might be a cat right now.”
“Right. And how did that happen?”
“Maybe she drank a little of vial A. Maybe she drank a little of vial B. Maybe there was some cat hair in it?”
“Cat hair,” he says, the muscle in his handsome jaw twitching.
“Yes. Maybe.”
He goes to the kitchen, opens a drawer, and takes out a wooden spoon.
He comes back, takes me by the arm, sits down on the couch and pulls me over one of his thighs, all without saying a word.
My pants get pulled down by his big hand, and before I know it, that spoon is landing with devastating speed and accuracy on my exposed ass and thighs.
“What the fuck?” I scream as he spanks me.
“You know better than to touch my things,” he says. “And you should know better than to give them to others.”
“She deserved it!”
“That’s not for you to decide, and it is definitely not for you to enact,” he says sternly, gripping me more tightly around the waist as he peppers my upper thighs with that damned spoon. The pain is immediate and stinging and I’d do damn near anything to get him to stop.
“Fucking stop!” I shout.
It’s very ineffective.
* * *
Simon