Shifting Selves (23 page)

I wasn’t sure how to respond to a daughter admitting that her mother lived a completely separate life. I had plenty of issues with my own mother, but lack of attention had never been one of them. Hell, I’d needed to move a thousand miles away to get some freedom. I suspected Dana rarely had to go further than her own bedroom.

I tried to hide my pity, but wasn’t successful. “It’s not that bad,” she said. “Mom and Pamela have their thing, but I’m daddy’s girl. I still get to see him most weekends.” I didn’t think she was trying to convince me. It sounded like she needed to convince herself.

Sera studied a small cat figurine sitting on the mantle. “Where’s Carmen now?” She walked around the room, excess energy pouring from her. She casually picked up one object after another, setting them all down in a slightly different place. Candles, remote controls, magazines, all found themselves moved a couple inches for absolutely no reason other than Sera’s inability to sit still.

“She’s with Pamela. She’s hoping that being in the forest will remind her who she is and convince her to shift.” The words were layered, filled with a depth of emotion I struggled to identify. Concern dominated, but threaded through her fear was resentment and guilt.

It was a volatile emotional stew, and it reminded me that despite her seeming softness and gentle spirit, this was a teenage girl sitting before me. I might have spent my own teen years on an isolated island, but if pop culture and its slew of teen movies had taught me anything, it was that teen girls were capable of just about anything.

Sera seemed to have the same thought. She stopped pacing directly in front of Dana, her jittery movements ceasing immediately.

Dana recognized the moment the getting-to-know-you portion of the proceedings ended. “What do you need to know?”

Will sat beside her, effectively blocking her in, but somehow his large, warm presence calmed the girl, offering comfort and security. I wondered if that gene ran in the family. Mac always had the same effect on me.

“Just tell us what you did, Dana. It’s okay. We’ve all made mistakes.” He even had the same warm, gentle voice. If this was a family trait, maybe there was hope for Brandon yet.

Dana met his eyes. Hers were also brown, though not the golden tone of her mother and sister. They were a dark brown, nearly the same shade as Will’s, and they latched onto his eagerly.

As she spoke, she watched Will carefully, looking for any sign of anger or recrimination. He offered neither, but he also didn’t offer forgiveness. Once I heard her story, I wasn’t sure she deserved it.

“I didn’t know, not at first. She said she wanted to go back to work, and she was interested in a local nursing program, so I should ask Aunt Diane about the hospital where she works. Just general stuff, you know. What it was like, how busy, how crowded, that sort of thing. I told her I could introduce her, and she could ask the questions herself, but she said she didn’t want to be a bother.”

None of us missed her consistent use of vague pronouns. Sera raised one sharp eyebrow. “Nothing about that seemed odd to you? An adult asking a teenager to do her research for her?”

Dana’s eyes slid toward Sera, hearing the dubious tone in her voice. “Maybe. I don’t know. It just felt good to be useful. To be wanted for something.” Again, she spoke in that direct, even tone, like her belief in her mother’s neglect was a fact of life rather than a wound that cut to her core.

“Go on,” urged Will. He brought her gaze back to his. Sera flopped down on one of the armchairs, expelling her breath in a heavy sigh. This interrogation obviously wasn’t moving fast enough for her.

“Patience, grasshopper,” I muttered, a quiet aside, and was rewarded by one expressive finger. It might have been completely inappropriate to rib each other at that moment, but sometimes it seemed such behavior was coded in our DNA.

“Aunt Diane gave me all the information. I think she was just happy someone in the family was interested. She’s kind of like me. More guns, sure, but she grew up like I did.”

“You mean she was human in a family of shifters,” I clarified.

She nodded. “She gets it. Maybe she thought I wanted to follow in her footsteps or something. Make a career of being useful, of being wanted.” That time a note of bitterness definitely crept in.

I thought back to Carmen’s intense protective instincts. It might be easier for Carmen to relate to her shifter child, but I couldn’t believe she loved Dana any less. I suspected this family was in desperate need of some family counseling—not that anyone in the Brook-Blais clan was in any position to offer advice on family drama.

I tried to let Dana tell the story in her own way, giving her the time to explain her actions, if not justify them, but she seemed in no hurry to get to the point. I was beginning to feel every bit as antsy as Sera and knew I needed to speed things up. I couldn’t have a repeat of what happened in Reno. “When did the questions turn to medical techniques for scrambling shifters’ brains, Dana?”

“Nice. Can I brag to Carmichael about your top-notch interrogation skills?” Without taking my eyes off Dana, I returned Sera’s earlier finger to her.

Of course, when Dana immediately tensed and started babbling nonsensically, I had to admit Sera might have a point. “It wasn’t like that! I didn’t know that’s what would happen. If I’d had any idea, I never would have... I just wouldn’t. I love my sister, I do, and James is—” She abruptly stopped speaking, and I knew my original instincts had been correct. Whether he knew it or not, she saw James as something other than her sister’s boyfriend.

Will cast a single, exasperated look my way, then turned back to Dana. He didn’t pursue the comment about James, letting the unspoken words hang in the air. “We want to understand. Tell us what it was like.”

“She said she just needed information. Where to get certain equipment, some medications. She said it wouldn’t hurt them.”

“Did you know what she was planning on using the equipment for, Dana?” Will’s voice was still warm and calm, but I saw his hand clench into a fist and press hard against his thigh. He was fighting for his own control.

Despite the tension that coiled through the room, I think we all expected her to shake her head, to claim innocence of her unknown partner’s motives. We’d never truly believed Dana was anything other than an unwitting patsy, and our chief goal was to find out who this mysterious “she” was. And so, when Dana nodded, slowly but deliberately, and finally let the tears she’d been holding fall, we were all too shocked to speak.

“I knew. I asked her why she wanted this stuff, because by now I knew it had nothing to do with a nursing program. And she told me. She thought she’d found a way to reverse the gene, but it wasn’t the kind of experiment where you can apply for a grant or run it through some corporation’s lab. She needed to learn where the hospital kept the equipment she couldn’t just order directly. So I visited a couple times with Aunt Diane, and I paid attention to the security measures, and I told her what to do. How to get in the hospital and get what she needed.”

She stopped speaking, her tears already drying up.

“Why would you do such a thing, little cat?”

Her eyes flared, the dark brown instantly alive, full of emotions she rarely spoke. “Cause I’m not a cat, am I? Never have been, and they’ll never let me forget it. All their late nights in the woods. Hunting, they say. Can’t have helpless little Dana along. And dad off in the city, selling stupid pharmaceuticals to support some big corporation, and forgetting I need support seven days a week, not just the two that he feels like showing up. Sometimes, I’m not sure they even know I exist.”

My heart ached at the depths of her loneliness and her absolute certainty of her isolation. I wasn’t sure it was as terrible as she thought it was—there’s something about being a teenager that amplifies every alienated feeling one could possibly have—but it was clear she believed her words were absolutely, painfully true. She thought she was alone and unloved. She’d attempted to change that state, and those actions had led to an unspeakable series of events.

I knew guilt weighed heavily on her. As she continued to speak, her words contained both self-loathing for her actions and the desperate longing that had led her to them.

“She said she wouldn’t hurt them, but she needed subjects to see how the drugs worked. She said that, worst case scenario, the shifter metabolism would just power through them and they’d be fine in a couple days. No harm, no foul. But if everything worked the way she thought it would, they’d be human. They wouldn’t be shifters anymore.”

“And this was a choice you thought to make for them?” This time, Will’s voice definitely lacked the warm and comforting tone he’d used earlier. As I watched, a small trickle of blood escaped from his clenched fist. He was doing his best to hide it, but he was fighting the shift, his claws starting to elongate.

Dana shook her head, miserable. “I thought then Pamela would be like me. She wouldn’t be mom’s favorite anymore. We’d all just be equal. And maybe, if we were all human, me and Pamela and James, things would be different.”

She didn’t specify just how things would be different, but I crept inside the head of a lonely, insecure fourteen-year-old, and I thought I understood. As long as she was human and Pamela was a shifter, he’d always choose Pamela. Maybe, if Pamela was just another girl, he’d finally see all Dana’s human charms that he’d previously overlooked.

It was the sort of dramatic, impossible fantasy many people told themselves but rarely acted upon. Somehow, Dana had come to believe the problem with her life was her humanity, and once she evened the playing field, all her problems would resolve themselves.

She wouldn’t look at any of us. She fixed her eyes on her knee, showing through a small tear in her jeans. She plucked at the torn threads, a pointless distraction that, for just a moment, delayed the need to face what she’d done.

Her actions were horrible, her logic more so. And someone, I was certain, had helped her get there. Someone had fed her fears, adding kindling to the fire that always burned deep within, that certainty that she was second best in her mom’s heart, invisible to boys, unimportant, unnecessary. The fire that said Pamela ruined everything, and everything would be better if she were more like Dana.

Someone convinced Dana not to come forward when blood had been found outside her window, told her that Pamela was just fine, and to wait. And when Pamela and James had been returned, their minds and magic ruined, someone told Dana that it was too late to speak up, and if she did, she’d be blamed. She’d lose the little bit of love she could still claim as her own.

And because Dana was still just fourteen, and scared, and lonely, she’d agreed to stay quiet.

“Who was it, Dana? Who did this?” She met my gaze for the first time since she began telling her story.

Her eyes were clear and dry, and for once they were devoid of uncertainty. I think she knew this was the only way she could start making things right again, or maybe she just didn’t care who knew anymore. She rested her hand lightly on the dog’s neck, seeking comfort in its warmth and unchanging adoration.

Quietly, unable to meet Will’s eyes, Dana spoke a single name.

CHAPTER 21

Sera didn’t even speak. She simply held her hand out, and Will dropped the keys in her palm. I guessed he’d heard about her driving skills from Mac. Will’s house wasn’t far, but at this point teleportation wouldn’t have been fast enough. Besides, Will still looked shellshocked, too lost in his own thoughts to see the road directly in front of him.

“Who do we tell?” I asked from the back seat, phone already in hand.

Will didn’t answer. His own phone was pressed to his ear, and by his conversation I gathered it was Carmen on the other end.

“We’re going to need whatever help we can get,” I insisted. “So, Josiah and the agents?”

“So they can both meet us? At the same place?” Her tone suggested my earlier adventures in fire-starting really had damaged my sanity. “I thought you liked the agents.”

I took a moment to picture how Josiah might react to the two humans who knew too much about our world. Every scenario I ran through ended with an FBI agent bonfire. I had to give this one to Sera.

“Which one, then?”

Sera took a turn at a speed that would cause a Formula One driver to blanch and still responded in a conversational tone. “The agents could actually be useful. If they can handle bears and mountain lions, they can handle shifters. They carry those guns for a reason right? And they have access to lots of information.” It all sounded reasonable, but there was still a note of doubt in her voice. “But our father is, well, he’s Josiah.”

I knew exactly what she meant, and though it pained me to admit it, our father was the better choice. The agents would be hampered by such pesky considerations as the law and morality, two qualities Josiah was happy to redefine on a case-by-case basis. He was the sort of man you wanted on your side, just because having him on someone else’s team was too terrifying to contemplate.

Reluctantly, I keyed in his number—I stubbornly refused to add it to my contact list, but that hadn’t kept my subconscious mind from memorizing it—and told him to meet us at Will’s. I avoided all small talk and explanations, but he still sounded pleased to hear from me. He hadn’t given up on me yet, or at least not on his plans for me.

The Explorer drew to a sudden stop in Will’s driveway. I don’t remember unbuckling the belt or opening the car door, but a moment later I was flying up the porch.

My mother still slept, in the exact position I’d left her. She was alone.

The breath expelled from my lungs in a long, slow hiss, relief battling with a delayed anger I was only now allowing myself to feel. She might not be in immediate danger, but she was by no means safe. On a hunch, I examined her neck, looking for the same small wound I’d seen on Pamela’s. It was tiny but obvious, once I knew what to look for. It wasn’t her work on James that had knocked her out. It was a needle.

On my way back downstairs, I peeked in on James. He still slept, and he still dreamed.

Nothing had changed, and yet it was completely different. Now, I knew who needed to pay.

“All clear. No one’s home,” I called, stepping onto the porch.

Will was already dialing. “She’s not answering.” He clenched his fist tightly around the cell phone, as if he longed to crush it into pieces, then deliberately returned it to his pocket. “Celeste isn’t answering.”

“Is she with Eleanor?”

“She isn’t answering, either.”

“Are they together? Just running errands or something? Celeste doesn’t know what Dana told us, so why would she leave now?”

“Dana could have warned her.” Will didn’t seem to believe his own words. When we’d left Dana, she’d looked horrified by her actions, but she also looked relieved to finally be free of the secret. I couldn’t believe she’d let herself be drawn back into Celeste’s treachery.

“You didn’t tell her or Eleanor you were visiting Dana, right?”

Sera and I shook our heads simultaneously. “No way,” I said. “Everyone’s on a need to know basis. I have trust issues these days.”

“So she’s probably out for groceries or something and will be back in a bit.” Will sounded doubtful, not believing his own words.

Sera ignored him and strode to the Explorer, dropping to the cold ground and examining the wheel well. I knew exactly what she’d find, and a moment later a GPS tracker sailed through the air, landing with a loud thud on the porch.

“She knew exactly where we were,” I told Will as Sera rejoined us. “She’s been tracking us all along. All of us. She knew whenever we got close. She blew out our tire when Pamela returned, probably so I couldn’t read the clothes. My mother ended up doing it, but it was delayed. She said the clothes seemed like they’d just been washed. With the crash, Celeste had time to do that. Anyone who’d commit attempted murder on a carload of people just to prevent me from catching a hint of her essence on a t-shirt isn’t going to think twice about threatening a fourteen-year-old girl. She tracked us, and she knows we were with Dana.”

Will stared at the GPS with rage, the small electronic a surrogate for the woman who put it there. She was his wife, and he might still love her, but I thought he might also hate her at that moment.

A dark sedan pulled into the driveway, and for a moment I hoped it was the agents, after all. They might be less prepared to deal with magical conflicts, but I was a lot more prepared to deal with them than with my father.

Unfortunately, the black car drawing to a slow stop was a luxury model rather than a Crown Vic, and it was driven by a familiar lackey. Jonathan put the car in park and watched our group with barely hidden curiosity as Josiah walked toward us.

Before he reached us, I pointed at the Explorer. “You should check your car for explosives, Will. If she put one on the Bronco, she might do the same to you.”

Without another word, Will studied each of the SUV’s tires, then popped the hood and examined the motor’s components. He worked in silence, his brow knit so tightly I swore he was creating three new forehead wrinkles just for the occasion.

“He won’t find anything.” Josiah chose to ignore the complete lack of greeting he received and dropped himself directly into our conversation. “He’s not her target.”

“Maybe not before,” said Sera. “But now he knows. He could be a threat to her.”

“She always intended for others to know eventually.” Josiah spoke simply, as if to a child. Of course, given our age disparity, maybe we always would be children to him.

I studied him, trying to follow the direction of his thoughts. I failed. So, apparently, did Sera. “That makes no sense.”

I nodded. “Why would Celeste want others to know? If the families found out, well, enraged, grieving shifters functioning outside the law would lead to one dead kidnapper damn fast.”

“Unless she gives them a reason to keep her alive,” he noted, waiting for the light bulb to go on with exaggerated patience.

Sera and I stared at him with dropped jaws at the exact same moment, both of us finally grasping his meaning.

“The first-borns,” she muttered. “From all the local shifter clans.”

“If she controls the children, she controls the entire family. No one will hurt her so long as she holds their children’s lives in her hands.” I finished her thought. “Which means—”

“There needs to be a way to reverse the effects. She has no leverage if all the children are permanently mad. And if Fiona figured out how to undo the effects, Celeste would also lose that leverage.”

I thought of my mother upstairs and the small mark on her neck. “Which explains why she was given a needle full of drugs when she was close to finding the answer.”

Sera and I stared at each other, feeling excitement build as the pieces finally fell into place. For the first time, these kidnappings almost made sense.

Josiah nodded. If one can look both condescending and proud, he did at the moment. “It’s only a theory, of course. She may just be the shifter version of a mad scientist.”

“No,” I shook my head. “We’re right.” I didn’t know to what extent my certainty was due to the actual facts of the case and how much to my need for Mac to be safe, but either way, I was running with it. “Which means we need to find her lab, wherever she’s doing this. Mad scientist or not, she working somewhere. If there’s a way to reverse the procedure, it’ll most likely be there.”

Sera grabbed my phone out of my hand and pressed several buttons before stopping abruptly, her face tight. “Fuck.” The single word contained an entire universe of frustration. “That’s the sort of thing Vivian does for us. Real estate records, tracking the money. But she’s not here.”

“I may not be up to your earth friend’s standards, but even I can find out if Celeste bought or rented a medical facility lately.” Josiah rolled his eyes at Sera, and for the first time ever I saw myself in his face. That was my expression. My mother would never be so uncouth as to roll her eyes.

Unsettled, I found the compartment I used for all my conflicting feelings about my father and shoved that thought deep inside, then locked the box securely. This wasn’t the time. I wasn’t sure if it would ever be the time, and I was okay with that.

“It doesn’t need to be a dedicated facility,” I clarified. “She got the equipment from the hospital, at least most of it. Can we track her recent purchases, see if she sent them to another address?” I doubted she’d helped us by ordering large quantities of cotton swabs and rubbing alcohol on Amazon, but one could always hope.

Josiah nodded, already sending a note to one of his minions. “How big are we looking for? How many shifters does she have at this point?”

“I don’t know. Mac, for sure, and at least one bobcat child. Mac was going to check with some other shifter families this morning, but I don’t know what he learned.”

I stopped speaking and only just resisted the urge to smack myself in the head. All the shifters had been taken near water, to quickly disperse their scent and throw any pursuers off the trail. If Mac had managed to speak to them before he was abducted, they might have still been around—and seen where he was taken, or at least in which direction. It was their river, after all.

“Otters,” I announced, already considering how to lure the shy creatures out of hiding. “They’ll know what to do.”

They both nodded, and Sera offered a tiny smile, the first I’d seen in hours. “You know we’re just pretending you don’t sound nuts, right?”

“It doesn’t matter. Josiah, just look for a building big enough for several shifters, a boatload of medical equipment, and one crazy woman living on borrowed time.”

He looked highly amused by my attempts to order him around, but he also started making phone calls, wandering to a quiet spot on the porch.

Sera spoke quietly, glancing toward both Josiah and Will. “Even if he finds the building, it’s not enough. We can’t infiltrate anything with these guys.”

She was right. Between a growling, seven-foot-tall bear and an elemental happy to incinerate anything that interfered with his plans, we weren’t dealing with a particularly stealthy crew. “Even Carmen’s too large. We need Simon.”

She smiled at me again, a little wider than before. “Get the band back together?”

“Damn straight. I don’t care what Vivian says. We need her, and apparently lack of respect for someone’s stated boundaries is a family trait. It’s time to see how good she is when doped up on painkillers. Grab the laptop from the cabin, and don’t take no for an answer.”

“Have I ever?”

If Sera listened when people said no, I’d never have come home. I’d never have been a part of this world, a part of these people’s lives. Some days it wasn’t easy. Some days I felt my entire world crumbling around my ears, but I would never regret saying yes to Sera.

This was what she did. She brought people together, and she kept them there. It was time for her to work her magic again.

We didn’t say a word to the men, knowing any explanation would lead to a long argument that would delay our work. We just got in the car and started driving, windows up and Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger” blaring too loudly for us to hear Will or Josiah protest as we drove away.

I stood alone at the river’s edge, the cabin behind me. No sign remained of the earlier snow, but the night air was still needle sharp, the chill pricking my exposed ears and throat. Through the trees, the gleam of distant homes beckoned, their lights a welcome glow against the dark pines. Tomorrow, I vowed, I’d be safe inside my own warm home, and I’d have Mac at my side.

Tonight, there was still much to do.

I watched the river flow past, simply taking the time to say hello. It had been a long, exhausting day, and there was little sign it would end soon. I knew the situation was urgent, that each moment I wasted put Mac and others in danger, but I also knew better than to rush into a dangerous situation with half a plan and little control. So I sat easily on the bank, legs crossed, and let the river fill me, giving me the energy and peace I needed to make it through whatever the night had planned.

When I felt whole and rested, I reached out to the water, sending my magic gently through the stream. I found all the expected creatures, the trout and frogs, a few birds tucked away in the protective plants that drifted along the banks, and, not far away, a larger, warm-blooded creature hovered in the water, watching me. It was familiar, and I knew it had watched me before. It seemed to be drawn to my quiet moments, to my communion with the water. Maybe it sensed that, in our own ways, we were both creatures of the river.

Of course, I had no idea if that particular animal was a shifter or just a plain old river otter. One way to find out. “Good evening.” I felt a slight stirring at the sound of my voice, a definite awareness of my words. Shifter, then. “I don’t mean to startle you. Please don’t go.” I kept my words low and even, though I longed to speed through my explanations and learn what they knew.

A moment later, others joined the first, quietly positioning themselves in the river to better hear my words. “I want to know if you spoke to a man this morning. A bear shifter named Mac. He’s missing, and I hoped you witnessed someone take him.”

I waited, feeling the distress that fed through the water, a deep concern among the otters. They seemed to be arguing.