Second Nature (47 page)

Maybe it was true. Maybe Griffin would be happy to let her live if things went well. But if push came to shove and whatever Griffin had planned didn't work out, would she kill Jorie or let her be killed?

"If you don't kill me, you have to rely on my goodwill not to reveal your existence. So wouldn't it make sense to become friends with me? Let me get to know you so that I don't want to betray you to my fellow humans anymore?" Jorie cocked her head and looked at Rhonda with a sly grin, not bothering to hide her blatant attempt at manipulation. She was using the Wrasa's biggest fear against them.

Amusement glittered in Rhonda's eyes. "Oh, I don't know. Maybe I'll keep you as a guest at my house forever," she teased back. "You'd fit right in with the pride."

"I don't think your partner would be very happy about that," Jorie answered. Leigh clearly wasn't happy about Griffin bringing a human to Rhonda's house.

"My partner?" Rhonda repeated with a confused shake of her head.

Oh, come on. Surely she hasn't missed how much Leigh dislikes humans?
"Yes. Or maybe you use another word." Jorie wondered whether the Wrasa had their own language or had been hiding for so long that they were now using only human languages.

"Another word for what?" Rhonda asked.

Is she stalling on purpose? Do Wrasa have a problem with relationships between two women, so she doesn't want to admit she and Leigh are a couple?
What Griffin had told her about her parents' reaction to her coming out had indicated otherwise, but maybe Griffin had been lying. "Another word for what you and Leigh are," Jorie said.

"Friends?"

Oh, shit. Did I misunderstand?
"Oh. You mean you aren't...?"

"Aren't what?" Rhonda asked, frowning in confusion.

Jorie's cheeks burned. "Lovers."

"Oh." Rhonda was blushing too, but she didn't appear angry or horrified. "You thought we were lovers? What made you think that?"

"I'm sorry. I guess I misinterpreted your body language." Apparently, her skills in reading human body language were misleading when it came to the Wrasa. "If two humans interacted the way you and Leigh do, everyone could safely assume that they are lovers, but now I'm guessing you aren't, huh?"

"No," Rhonda said, lowering her gaze to the floor, "we aren't."

Ah.
Sudden realization hit Jorie, and she smiled. "But you'd like to be." She made it a statement, not a question.

Still looking down, Rhonda nodded. "I've been in love with her for fifteen years, but she only ever thought of me as her sister," she murmured.

Jorie very much doubted that was true. Leigh didn't treat Rhonda the way she treated Griffin.

Rhonda's head jerked up. Her gaze was glued to the door as she listened to something that Jorie couldn't hear. Two quick strides and she pulled open the door.

Leigh's tall form was looming right on the other side of the door. Barely suppressed anger darkened her green eyes. "So," she said, her voice sounding like the drawn-out hiss of a cat, "you're in love with Griffin?"

"W-what?" Rhonda stared at her. She was starting to tremble, clearly not knowing what to say, how to explain. "No. I-I... I'm not..."

Leigh didn't listen. She whirled around and stormed away.

Rhonda stood frozen to the spot. Tears formed in her eyes.

Oh, no.
Jorie's attempts to manipulate Rhonda into giving her information about Griffin and the Wrasa had backfired. Instead of making friends with Rhonda, she was destroying the friendly woman's life. Before she could stop to think about it, Jorie was hurrying after Leigh. "Leigh, wait! It's not what you think."

Leigh lunged around. Her wild eyes glowed in the semidarkness of the hallway. Her big body tensed, ready to pounce at Jorie.

Shit. Griffin should have told me that running after a predator is as dangerous as running away from them.
The thought shot through Jorie's mind as she slowly backed away.

"Leigh, no!" Rhonda shouted and ran after them.

The front door burst open, and Griffin exploded into the room in a shower of splinters from the ruined door. "Leigh!" Griffin's angry gaze zeroed in on her sister. "Step away from her!"

"Oh, now you want them both to yourself?" Leigh spat.

"I don't know what you're talking about. Now step away from Jorie," Griffin said, clearly at the end of her patience.

Leigh didn't. The two sisters circled each other, neither looking away from the other for even a second.

Like two cats who are trying to find the best place to put their teeth and claws,
Jorie thought, pressing herself against the wall. Her eyes widened when she heard the straining of fabric and realized Leigh was close to shifting into her animal form. As much as she wanted to witness the change, she didn't want to find herself caught in a narrow hallway with an angry lion.

Someone rushed past Jorie.

Rhonda!

Jorie grabbed the surprised woman's arm and, using Rhonda's forward momentum, shoved her at Leigh, forcing her to catch the smaller woman. She tugged on Griffin's arm in the hope of getting her to follow her into the guest room before Leigh could disentangle herself from Rhonda. But it was like trying to move a mountain. No matter how much she pushed and pulled, Griffin didn't move an inch. Jorie felt the muscles in Griffin's arm ripple as Griffin's body prepared to shift too. "Griffin!" she yelled at her.

For a few seconds, Griffin didn't react.

Then, finally, she looked away from Leigh and met Jorie's gaze. The hazy whiskey-colored eyes slowly cleared.

"Come with me," Jorie urged, tugging on Griffin's arm again.

Maybe it was that Griffin, as a soldier, was used to following orders, or maybe she was clear-headed enough to realize if she stayed, she would have to fight and maybe kill her sister. Griffin finally moved.

They stumbled into the guest room, and Jorie closed and locked the door behind them. After what Griffin had done to the front door, she knew locking the door didn't have much more than symbolic value, but it still made her feel better. She pressed her ear to the door.

Was that snarling and growling from the hallway?

God, has Leigh shifted and is now attacking Rhonda? Do they know friend from foe when they are in their animal form?
Jorie hadn't thought about it when she had used Rhonda as a distraction. The two women shared a special bond, so Jorie had been convinced that Leigh would never hurt Rhonda. Now she wasn't so sure anymore.

Griffin pulled her away from the door. Her large hands were gentle but still trembled. Or maybe it was she who was trembling. Jorie wasn't sure.

"Rhonda," Jorie said. "We have to help her, make sure Leigh doesn't attack her!"

"Rhonda is fine. They're talking," Griffin said after listening to the sounds outside the door for a moment. "And now tell me what in the Great Hunter's name happened? Don't tell me Leigh flipped out just because I'm ten minutes late. I thought she was going to kill you."

Jorie's knees started to shake — or maybe they had been shaking all along and she was only now becoming aware of it. "She might have — until she saw you barge through the door. Then she was much more interested in killing you." Jorie still couldn't believe how fast the situation had escalated. She was now fairly sure that getting angry was what made the Wrasa shift shape, and it seemed as if they could control it only up to a certain point.
Maybe other strong emotions cause them to shift too. I think it was my hitting her with the laptop that caused Griffin to shift that night.

"What happened?" Griffin asked. "Not that we were all warm and fuzzy with each other before, but why was she so angry with me? Why did she attack you?"

Jorie wearily rubbed her eyes, half of her attention still on the door, just in case Leigh decided to come after them. "Rhonda told me that she's been in love with your sister for a lot of years."

"And that made Leigh so angry that she chased you through the house?" Griffin shook her head as if to clear it from the haze of her almost change. "Did she want to keep their relationship secret?"

Oh, it seems my interpretation of Wrasa body language wasn't so far off after all. Griffin believed they were in a relationship too.
"That's just it. They don't have a relationship. And Leigh thought Rhonda was talking about you." It would have been funny if it hadn't ended with her being attacked by an aggressive shape-shifter.

The muscles of Griffin's face twitched as if she was close to bursting into laughter. "Leigh thought Rhonda is in love with me? And here I thought the Kasari were better at this relationship thing."

Griffin sat on the edge of the bed, and Jorie sank down next to her as the adrenaline wore off and her legs started to buckle. Compared to the angry Leigh, Griffin didn't seem so dangerous anymore. Maybe it was seeing Griffin stand up and fight for her, but for the first time, Griffin seemed more like an ally than an enemy.

"You all right?" Griffin asked, studying her from head to toe.

Two shaky breaths helped Jorie to calm herself. "Yes. Although I have to say this being chased by a predator thing is getting old."

A smile danced along the corners of Griffin's mouth. "Oh, yeah. Seems I can't even turn around and leave you for a second without you finding a Wrasa to chase you." She reached out a hand and plucked a few slivers of wood off Jorie's sleeve.

"While you never get into any trouble at all," Jorie answered, pointing at Griffin's swollen lower lip. "That happened before you decided to break down the door, didn't it?"

Griffin nodded and said, "I ran into an old acquaintance."

"And quite literally, it seems." Jorie took a tissue from the bedside table and handed it to Griffin. "Why do the people around here, including Leigh, hate you so much?"

Sighing, Griffin tried to rub blood from a spot on her upper lip where no blood was. "It's..."

"...a long story, I know," Jorie interrupted. She took the tissue from Griffin and gently dabbed at the blood in the corner of Griffin's mouth. "Is it because you're somehow different from them? A different kind of shape-shifter?"

Griffin jerked back from Jorie's touch and the tissue. "Who told you that?"

"No one. I'm not blind. And it's quite obvious that the Wrasa are afraid of anything that is different," Jorie said. "That's why they hate and fear us humans so much."

"Then maybe we're not so different from humans after all," Griffin said. "Humans fear what they don't know or understand, and they kill what they fear."

There was no point in arguing. History provided many examples and proved that Griffin was right. Still, the Wrasa were guilty of the same thing. "So you're hiding your existence because of some mutual paranoia?" Jorie had already suspected something like that. "You decided to kill me just because of some remote possibility that I might know about your existence?"

Griffin flinched, and this time, it wasn't because Jorie's touch hurt her lip. "My kind has suffered a lot at the hands of humans. Some of them think it's better to be safe than sorry."

"Meaning, when in doubt, kill the human?" Jorie said bitterly. Was her life worth less to Griffin than the life of one of her fellow Wrasa?

Suddenly, Griffin scrunched up her face and covered her ears with her hands, looking as if she wanted to pull the bed covers over her head too.

"Griffin?" Jorie asked. "What's wrong?" Griffin was acting as if she had a sudden strong earache.
Did she hurt herself when she burst through the door to rescue me?

One of Griffin's hands lifted from her ear. Griffin listened for a moment, then slapped the hand over her ear again. "Ew!" She shivered. "It seems my sister and Rhonda found something better to do than fight."

"You mean...?" Jorie cocked her head and listened, but she couldn't hear a thing. To her human hearing, the house was silent. "You mean they're making love?"

"Ugh," Griffin said, confirming it. "And we're caught here, forced to listen to it."

"You could go out for a run," Jorie said. "That should take care of your lip too."

Griffin's eyes widened. "Rhonda can't keep her muzzle shut, no matter if she's making love to my damn sister or talking to a human."

Jorie had to grin. "Rhonda told me nothing. Like I said, I'm not blind. I saw that Leigh's eye was much better, almost healed, after her 'run.'"

"But apparently, you're deaf — and you should be glad about it," Griffin grumbled.

Griffin's dilemma was secretly amusing Jorie. "You don't need to listen to it either. I told you to go for a run."

"And leave you here without any supervision, just with these two cats in heat?" Griffin shook her head with her hands still covering her ears. "No, thanks."

A sudden, daring thought shot through Jorie's mind, and she couldn't force it back. "Then take me with you," she said.

Griffin stared at her. "What? No."

"You don't want to leave me here all alone, and you don't want to have to stay here, so taking me with you is the perfect solution," Jorie said.

"No, it's not," Griffin answered. "Going for a run doesn't mean I'll put on my running shoes and pound the streets."

"I know what it means." It meant prowling through the forest in her animal form. The thought of seeing it fascinated Jorie. "You keep saying that you want and need me to trust you, but you don't trust me at all."

Griffin shot her a dark glance. "Of course I do."

"So it's a sign of your trust that you keep me prisoner here, that you don't trust me to stay on my own without one of you to stand guard — and don't tell me it's for my own good!" Jorie said before Griffin could interrupt. "You don't tell me anything about yourself or your people. Is that what trust means to you?"

A few seconds ticked by in silence. "You're right," Griffin said. "If I want your trust, I need to trust you too. But coming with me could be dangerous." Her expression was serious. "In my cat form, I react on instinct. If you get scared and run..."

"I won't," Jorie said. "No running when you're around a predator. I learned that lesson."