Long Shadows: The Lycanthropy Files, Book 2 (14 page)

Chapter Eleven

I awoke with a whimper to the feeling of being tied down and a needle in my arm.
Not again!
I pulled at my bonds and tried to dislodge the needle, but whoever had done it to me knew what they were doing, and I could barely move a centimeter. With every bit of mental effort I could muster, I evened out my breathing and opened my eyes a slit to see where I was and who was with me. The familiar surroundings—my bedroom at my aunt’s house—calmed me slightly, although I did wish I could change or at least spirit-walk to punish whoever invaded my personal and family space to do this to me.

The sound of footsteps coming up the stairs made me close my eyes, all other senses on alert. It was a man, and he smelled of fuchsia and tea.

Tea?

“You can open your eyes, Lonna, I know you’re awake.”

My eyes snapped open, and I glared at Max, who wore a white lab coat and stood in my door holding a steaming cup of tea. The little red English Breakfast tag hung over the side. I focused on that impossibly normal detail to keep the panic from rising.

“My file says this is your favorite,” he said. “But I don’t know how strong you like it or how you take it.”

“Fuck the tea, Max.” His wince gave me a little jolt of satisfaction. “I’m lying tied to my bed with a needle in my arm.”

“Right,” he said, “how rude of me.”

He put the tea down on the bedside table and pulled a gauze pad out of the white box beside it. He removed the needle from my arm with swift, expert motion, and he loosened the cuffs that immobilized my wrists and ankles so I could move freely.

I pulled my right hand from its cuff and slapped him. Then I picked up the tea cup and held it tilted slightly forward.

“What was that for?” He held a hand to his cheek and moved backward.

“For tying me up,” I said. “And if you get any closer, I’m going to slosh this burning hot tea in your face.”

“It was necessary. You had been poisoned. I needed to flush it from your system, and you were thrashing about.”

“What the hell? It was aconite. I’ve got a good tolerance for it.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Right, the tolerance you built from your spirit-walking kept you alive. You missed the sedative. With the combination, you wouldn’t have lasted much longer.”

I wrapped my fingers, which had suddenly gone cold, around the mug. “So you saved me again. How did you know? And are you…you?”

He smiled. “After I was kicked out of your kitchen yesterday, I alerted my superiors, and they chartered a plane and got me here. In the nick of time, apparently. So yes, I’m me. May I?” He gestured to the bed.

“Sure.” I scooted over. My mind danced around his words and found the truth in them. I’d gotten myself out of the situation, but I was lucky he’d arrived when he did. I’d focused too much on the aconite and missed the other substance, which must have been in the wine.

He sat beside me, and, leaning close, unbuttoned my blouse, revealing the tops of my breasts, which rose and fell faster under his gaze. With a smile, he took a stethoscope from his pocket. I narrowed my eyes, and his grin widened. He listened to my heart and lungs, and then he checked my eyes and throat with a light, his strong fingers a caress on my jaw. When he stood, I shivered from the sudden cold and distance.

I covered up with my usual sarcasm. “Guess this means I don’t need to see you this week.”

He shrugged. “I suppose not, although we do need to discuss your blood work at some point.”

I rolled my eyes. “Can’t I have breakfast first? By the way, you suck at medical flirting. No follow-through.”

His shoulders slumped. “It may surprise you to find that I would love to carry things further, but I’m familiar with the after-effects aconite has on you. I don’t want to take advantage of any impulses that may cloud your judgment.”

I blushed and re-buttoned my shirt. “I’m a grownup, Max. I can make my own decisions.”

“Yes, but that would be taking advantage of you and violating my professional principles.”

“What principles? You know an awful lot about me, Doctor Fortuna, and I hardly know a thing about you.” My stomach growled.

“Well, one thing I’m comfortable revealing to you is that I make a spectacular omelet. Get cleaned up, and I’ll have breakfast ready for you.”

“Fricking professional principles,” I muttered, but I did as he suggested. I made the shower a lukewarm one. I’ve never been able to stand cold, but this morning, I was tempted.

When I got out of the shower, there was no sign of the leather cuffs or the medical paraphernalia Max had set up in my bedroom. I blinked, dizzy and wondering if he had been a dream as well. But the mug of now cold tea, the red tag hanging sadly over the side, was a sign it all had been real. The effect he had on me certainly wasn’t my imagination—or maybe that was the aconite, as he’d suggested. Funny, I’d always thought the change and accessing my animal side led to increased sex drive the following day.
Maybe it’s both.

When I got to the landing, the smells of eggs, ham, onion, green pepper, and cheddar cheese reached me. And coffee, blessed coffee. My stomach really gurgled then, and I hurried down the stairs and into the kitchen.

Max stood at the stove. He’d traded his white coat—which hung on the back of one chair—for an apron. I took the coat into the hallway and put it on a hook.

“I’m not worried about getting something on it,” he said. “That was more for your protection this morning.” He didn’t say them, but the words
professional distance
came to mind.

“After my cave experience, I can’t see lab coats without feeling nervous. Hence my high blood pressure reading at your office last week.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything about that, just wait and see what it was when you came back in.”

“Thanks. Where’d you get the food?”

“Support staff.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Now I really want to know what you do. I’d love a job where someone would go grocery shopping for me, especially after how yesterday’s trip ended up.”

He halved the omelet and put it on to two plates along with some whole wheat toast.

“Wow, that’s a light-colored omelet.”

“Egg whites,” he said. “And the cheese and ham in it are reduced fat.”

I poured some coffee and added cream and sugar. “Is this all going back to the blood work you mentioned?”

“Your cholesterol is high, especially for someone your age.”

I shrugged. “You only live once.”

“Right. So you should live carefully so you live longer.”

“Look, Max, I appreciate what you’re telling me, but we’re going to have to define some roles here.” I sat and gestured for him to join me at the table, which he did with the two breakfast plates.

He eyed me warily. “How so?”

“Well, you say you can’t have any kind of relationship with me due to your job.”

“Not any kind of relationship, just not a romantic one.”

“Okay, not a romantic one, which I get because we’re prohibited from dual relationships in mental health as well. But you need to figure out whether you’re going to be my doctor or my watcher-protector, or whatever your real job is.” I took a bite of the omelet and couldn’t help but notice how the eggs, cheese, and other ingredients balanced each other out perfectly.

“Protecting your health does fall under my orders,” he said with the assurance of a man who knows his logic is unassailable. “Sometimes we are our own worst enemies.”

I stuck my fork tines-down in my breakfast so I wouldn’t spear his hand, which was on the table. He noticed and moved his hand to his lap.
Smart man. Let’s see how smart you really are
.

“If you’re going to get all condescending and micromanaging with me, you may as well leave.”

He scoffed. Yes, he really scoffed. Until then, I’d thought scoffing was something people only did in books.

“I could leave, but what would that accomplish? I’d check in on you and find you kidnapped, dead, or worse.”

“What’s worse than… Oh, right the wolf monk things.” I shook my head. “That’s not the point. I’m not your patient. I’m not your girlfriend. I’m not even your friend at this point.”

“Then what are you?” he asked. The bastard was enjoying this. Truth be told, I was too.

“What I am isn’t important. What or who you are is. If you want to stay here with my blessing, if you want me to make watching me easy, then you need to give me some answers.” I sat back and folded my arms, daring him to evade me again.

“Fine, ask,” he said. “Just be aware that if I tell you some of the things you want to know, you’re going to end up being even more involved in this situation than you are now.”

“Hmmm, let’s see, so far I’ve had to flee my job, been shot at in the woods by a nut with a tranquilizer gun, threatened by ghostly wolf-monks, and poisoned. It seems like I’m going to be involved whether I like it or not.” I didn’t mean them to, but tears came to my eyes. “Why? Why am I so special? Why are people after me? I’m just an ordinary woman.”

He wiped a tear from my cheek. I batted his hand away.
Don’t show weakness.

“You are anything but ordinary, and a lot of people are curious about you. Some of them are more dangerous than others.”

That brought my focus back to what I needed to ask him. “So what is your role in all this?”

“I don’t want to put myself at a disadvantage, so let’s trade information. A question for a question. Fair?”

I nodded and hoped he could help me organize it all in my head.

“So to answer yours, my task is to watch you. It was supposed to be an observe and study role, but things aren’t that simple, are they? Plus, you don’t exactly stay in one spot.” He shook his head. “You were supposed to be an easy assignment.”

“No, things aren’t that simple,” I said. “That answers your first question. My turn again.”

He opened his mouth to object, but sat back and chuckled. “I’m enjoying this assignment more and more.”

I took a bite of omelet and chewed it completely before speaking again, watching him. He ate as well. To an outside observer, it would have looked like a serene domestic scene, but we were lining up our thoughts. He had me at a disadvantage, admittedly.
He
hadn’t been drugged and plagued with nightmares the night before.

A closer look revealed the dark circles under his eyes. It occurred to me that he hadn’t slept because he’d been watching over me. I squashed the sudden tender feeling—

he had tied me up, after all.

“So, my next question should be obvious: who do you work for?”

He closed his eyes. “I was afraid that would be it. I can’t tell you.”

“Good grief! Are you with the FBI or something?

“In a supernatural sense, yes. There, I get to ask you two.”

“Not so fast, buddy. You just clarified something, and you still didn’t give me a straight answer.”

He shrugged. “That’s the best I can do. My turn.”

“Fine.” I cut another bite, but his question nearly made me choke on it.

“What do you remember about your Aunt Alicia? Don’t leave anything out.”

“That’s not fair! That’s a huge question.”

“But still just one. Go ahead, I’m listening.”

I sighed but noted he’d asked what I remembered, not what I had discovered. “She was my mother’s older sister. We’d come visit her here every other summer or so. She was a great cook. She wasn’t a warm and cuddly person, but I think food is how she showed her affection.”

“Is that it?”

“You only asked what I remembered, and that was another question. My turn.”

“Fine,” he said, imitating me. “Go ahead.”

I weighed the different questions in my head. Finally, I decided to just go for it. “Who’s after me, and why? Tell me everyone and their reasons.”

His cell phone rang.

“What? Seriously?”

He motioned for me to shush and walked out of the room. The heat came to my cheeks, and I clenched my teeth.

No one shushes Lonna Marconi!

Before I could follow him out, he returned to the room. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I really need to lie down. I was up all night looking after a certain sick young lady, and I can’t do any more sparring.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Who is after me, Max? You can’t just wiggle out of answering my questions even if you did take care of me.”

“That’s the problem—we don’t know exactly who, only that they’re in the supernatural community and very dangerous.”

“Fine, you can have the guest bedroom in the other gable,” I said. “I’ll set it up for you. Just give me a moment.”

I made sure there were sheets on the bed. I also found the old baby monitor my parents had used when we stayed there. They used to think I didn’t know they were listening to me, but I knew they’d hidden the monitor in my room. I figured it was so they could get some private time on vacation. Now I wasn’t so sure. Max’s questions about my Aunt Alicia made me suspect there was something more.