Moonburn (16 page)

“Can I ask you something, Red?”

“Course.”

I twisted the chamois pouch in my hands. “That bear man … manitou … I saw. Was it … was he … real?” I swallowed. Talking about magic gave me the same queasy feeling in my stomach that talking about LSD
did. It evoked bad memories of solid things dissolving into colors and colors becoming tangible.

Red leaned against the door frame, and I could feel him weighing his words. “Depends how you look at it. There’s different kinds of real, I guess.”

“But he wasn’t even Native American. He looked a little like a young Nick Nolte. Tell me that’s not a hallucination.”

Red lowered his chin, trying to hide his smile. “Manitou’s the Indian name for them,” he said. “But they were around before the Indians got here. My guess is that the way they look depends on who’s seeing them.”

Annoyed at Red’s casual attitude, I blurted out, “He attacked me, you know.”

Red’s smile vanished. “I know. Did he … did he hurt you?”

I looked at my lap again. “No. I sort of spat at him, and he just took off.”

Red gave a whoop of laughter. I guess it was probably relief. “Did you, now? That’s the perfect thing to do, you know—saliva and excrement, scares off a lot of the Liminal creatures. They’re not of the flesh, not like we are, so things of the flesh can work against them. Menstrual blood, too, if you’re ever in a bind.”

Lovely thought. “You think he’ll come back?”

Red nodded his head slowly.

“So what can we do, Red?”

Red put his arm around me, and I didn’t fight it. “Hell, that’s what you’ve got wildlife removal operators for.”

I just nodded. “Okay.” I wasn’t going to press for more answers right now. I wasn’t sure I liked the ones I’d already gotten.

Red cleared his throat. “Doc? You hungry? I could make you a grilled cheese.” There was a banging sound
from the kitchen: Clearly, our food-addicted raccoon had decided to help himself to a late-night snack.

“Hey!” Red grabbed the raccoon around the middle, extricating the squirming animal from the pantry closet. “Stop that. You’ve already eaten, you fat bastard.”

Rocky chittered loudly at Red, as if giving him some passionate explanation, but Red just smiled and put the raccoon on his shoulder. “How about I take you outside for a last romp, little guy?” They left the cabin, and I sleepily thought about Rocky’s addiction to junk food. We needed to get locks for the cabinets. And then it hit me: I wasn’t hungry, but I should have been starving. According to the calendar, I hadn’t eaten in days, but I felt as though I had just had dinner with my mother at that diner a few hours earlier.

As I got up to look for something to eat, I looked out the window, and saw Red illuminated by bright moonlight. He was hunkered down on the ground with Rocky, looking for all the world like an indulgent dad playing with his toddler.

Then, with his breath visible in the frigid air, Red stood and abruptly pulled off his shirt, revealing the howling coyote tattoo on his right biceps. He pulled off the bandage, then knelt to unlace his hiking boots while Rocky climbed up onto his head. And then he unbuttoned his jeans.

I knew what he was doing. Unlike me, Red could change at will. Well, almost at will. All it required was that he be in an ecstatic state. But that didn’t look like it was going to come easy tonight. As I watched his lean, tightly muscled body, I could see the tension in the line of his arms and thighs. He was one of those men who seem scrawny until the clothes come off. Naked, he was a throwback to another age, when men worked with their bodies and became sinewy, instead of soft, with age. Red placed Rocky on the ground, and I saw that
while the scratch he’d made on his arm this evening had already healed, the older manitou scratches had left scars. Usually shapeshifters heal completely. I wondered what that portended for my leg, but when I stretched it, it felt better already, almost normal.

Red threw back his head and the raccoon lifted up on his hind legs, sniffing in curiosity. Red rolled his shoulders, stretching out his muscles, trying to relax himself, and despite the lingering pain in my leg, I felt a surge of warmth that started between my legs but stretched up to my chest. The moon must be nearly full, I realized, and then I wondered how I could have missed the signs in my own body. My breasts were tender and ached, and I could feel the low cramping in my abdomen, the tension in my bones. The change was coming. The words to an old Rolling Stones song popped into my head: The change has come, she’s under my thumb.

I put my hand on the glass windowpane as Red ran his hands roughly, almost angrily over himself, trying to force the feeling and the transition. I hadn’t wanted Red this much in ages. I put my hand on the glass pane and half rose to join him, forgetting all about my injured leg until a sharp burst of pain reminded me. Sitting back down, I watched as a spasm seemed to ripple through Red’s back. He crouched down so abruptly that it looked as though he had collapsed in on himself. I could see his chest heaving, and I stood up, thinking, Something’s wrong.

And then, as if he knew I was watching, Red turned, and his eyes glowed with a strange, amber light that I had never seen before. There seemed no trace of the gentle man in that hard, assessing, feral stare. But that’s ridiculous, I corrected myself. He’s a shapeshifter, not a lycanthrope. He always retains full consciousness. I was about to go out to him when he broke off, swiveling so fast that the little raccoon gave a sharp squeak.

And Red snapped his jaws shut, centimeters away from the baby he had helped save. I gasped. Rocky was squeaking, but holding his ground, unable to believe his adoptive father could seriously mean him harm. He had seen Red change before. Whatever skin he wore, he was always the same.

Until now.

With a bound, Red took after the raccoon, which darted away into the woods behind the outhouse. I had my hand on my chest, as if I could calm my pounding heart. Was it possible that this was part of some reintroduction to the wild? As much as I wanted to believe that, I wasn’t convinced.

I waited for an hour, fixing myself a cup of hot cocoa, eating a bowl of raisin bran. But Red didn’t come back, and in the end, before going to bed, I fastened the latch on the bedroom door. Not that it would keep him out if he really wanted in, but it would buy me time.

And suddenly I remembered what Malachy had said.
He made a deal. That’s how it works, I believe
.

In the morning, when I unlocked the door, I wondered what I could say to Red. Sorry, I thought you might attack me? Or, more to the point: What kind of deal? With whom?

But an hour later, when I left for the train, he still wasn’t back.

And neither was Rocky.

I knew that taking a trip into the city so close to the full moon wasn’t exactly the most conservative course of action, but when I checked the lunar calendar, I could see that I still had a good twenty-four hours before I was out of my safety zone. Even so, I kept checking my watch, which had a little calendar window that displayed the phases of the moon. January nineteenth was gibbous, not full, but still, that moonshadow was growing awfully thin.

I don’t know about other therians, but Magda, Hunter, and I all kept track of the lunar calendar with the devotion of Orthodox Jews and deer hunters. And we really hated the deer hunters, who had started clomping through the woods during the best hunting days in autumn, when the deer were in rut and giddy with lust.

Since there was a good week when the moon was full enough to keep us wolfish, and the days immediately before and after weren’t the best time to schedule a major event like a wedding or a business trip, having lycanthropy meant knowing when you were safe, when you were out of commission, and when you were borderline.

I was borderline, but I knew that I needed to talk to a female friend. So even though I’d been hoping to conceal my current state of romantic chaos from Lilliana, I
decided that my need for help overrode my desire for dignity.

In books and movies, women always seem to be unburdening themselves to their friends without the slightest compunction. Me, I have compunction. The way I see it, there’s an unspoken agreement in most friendships, a sort of quid pro quo of emotional support. In the time we’d been friends, Lilliana and I had never made any serious demands on each other. Of course, we were work friends, which meant there remained a certain formality between us, although we knew we could depend on each other in a crisis. And that was important. I may not have known everything about Lilliana’s life outside the Animal Medical Institute, but seeing how a person reacts when the surgery’s not over and the dog starts waking up from sedation is a pretty good indication of character.

And, to be honest, I hadn’t kept up with most of my high school and college pals, and I couldn’t face the thought of trying to fast forward through the past five or ten years before explaining my current predicament. At least Lilliana knew where I was living and whom I was dating, even if she didn’t know that once or twice a month, I could have been mistaken for one of my own patients.

I was already on my way to the train station when I called Lilliana on my cell phone, figuring that if she wasn’t available, I’d ask to use her apartment, and if that wasn’t possible, I’d get off at the Pleasantvale station and suffer through my mother’s abrasive brand of kindness. But Lilliana answered on the first ring, and before I’d said more than “Lilliana, hi, listen, I know this is short notice,” she’d told me that she’d been looking for an excuse to take the day off. Sometimes I wondered if she was psychic.

At a quarter to eleven, I was standing in front of her
Upper West Side apartment. Lilliana opened the door, effortlessly elegant in a maroon tunic and black yoga pants, her black hair pulled back in a French twist and her café au lait complexion flawless without makeup.

I kissed her cheek, inhaling a scent that would be un-detectable to a human nose. My sense of smell was the only thing that changed before I did—hormones, I guess. This close to the full moon, my elegant friend smelled cloyingly sweet, like some overripe flower, and I had to turn my head aside to muffle my sneeze. “Sorry, Lilli. God. I feel like a refugee, showing up on your doorstep like this.”

“You don’t look like a refugee.”

“Liar.” In an attempt to make myself feel less pathetic, I’d put on mascara and blush and was wearing what I thought of as my city clothes, a pair of vaguely nautical navy trousers and a cream-colored sweater. My leg still felt a little sore, but I wasn’t limping. Whatever else was changing about Red, he hadn’t lost his healing touch.

I sank down onto her couch, which looked like it belonged in some upscale East Asian yurt, along with a samovar and some yak milk. The blue-tiled kitchen, however, owed more to Morocco, and none of this should have matched the wooden African chairs and animal carvings, but somehow it all came together, the epitome of boho indigenous chic.

“Now I feel like an upscale refugee,” I said. “And I didn’t even have a chance to explain why I wanted to see you.”

“If you’re worried that I had a day of museums and shopping planned, relax.” Lilliana brought out a plate of fresh zucchini bread, still steaming from the oven. “You didn’t sound like this was going to be an impulsive day of fun. Now, what can I get you to drink? Some
juice? Coffee? Tea?” She looked at me more closely. “A double vodka?”

“Don’t tempt me.”

Lilliana took this in as if she had been suspecting as much. And maybe she had. She had a kind of sixth sense in dealing with both people and animals, which was why Malachy had plucked her out of the Institute’s social work residency and added her to his team. Or maybe it had all been Lilliana’s idea; she was pretty masterful at the art of subtle influence. “What’s going on, Abra? You look like you’re about to jump out of your skin.”

I gave a strangled laugh.

Lilliana looked at me carefully. “Are you pregnant?”

I shook my head, and told her everything. At first, I tried to leave out the part about being a therian, because it felt both preposterous and a little embarrassing. But Lilliana kept asking me astute little questions, and pretty soon I realized that none of what I was saying really made sense when I left out the fact that I turn into a wolf once a month. Up until that moment, I hadn’t realized how isolated my condition had made me. I’d thought I could just confide in Lilliana without going into the gory details, but now I saw that omitting the fact of my lycanthropy was like glossing over the fact that you’d cheated, or were really gay, or had been e-mailing an ex-boyfriend. Maybe men could be friends without divulging critical details, but it didn’t work for women. “You don’t seem as shocked as I would have expected,” I told her when I was done.