CHAPTER 9

Despite all evidence to the contrary, Josie did have a practice to run and other patients waiting to see her, so she had to veto Eli’s suggestion that they meet with Rick Cobb over lunch to talk about the situation regarding Bill and Rosemary. And possibly Sammy Paulson.

From what Eli had said, it sounded like Rick Cobb had intended to show up at the clinic first thing this morning to see his packmates for himself. Eli had insisted that he wait to talk to Josie first. If this little problem of Rosemary’s was contagious, as Josie now had no choice but to suspect, she couldn’t let any other Lupines into the clinic and risk exposing them. Bringing the local Alpha into the site of a possible infection wouldn’t do anyone any good.

Meeting at Josie’s apartment for dinner was a better idea all around. The middle of the day was when Josie normally caught up on her charting and returned phone calls, and she couldn’t spare the time. Besides, there had been no change in Rosemary’s condition, and Josie had pumped Bill full of enough sedatives to keep an elephant unconscious. In fact, she’d be happy to keep the Lupine tranquilized into the next decade if he planned to act like a rabid wolverine when left to his own devices.

Yes, she probably would be holding a grudge for a while over this morning’s incident.

Either way, she had to tell Eli she couldn’t spare any time for anything until after the clinic closed at six. And that really meant seven. At the earliest. So he suggested he bring Rick to her apartment upstairs, along with a pizza, at seven thirty.

She stepped out of the shower at precisely seven twenty-four, dried herself hurriedly, scraped her hair back into a soggy ponytail, and was pulling a UC Davis T-shirt on over her yoga pants when her doorbell sounded at exactly seven thirty, sending Bruce into a fit of barking. Breathless, she jogged across the apartment to answer the door.

She grabbed the pizza boxes first. Bruce, clearly no fool, shot one last disgruntled glance at the intruders, then followed the pizza.

“Come on in,” Josie invited over her shoulder, already halfway to the living room. She’d laid out plates and napkins on the coffee table before her shower.

“Hungry?” a male voice drawled, and since Josie didn’t recognize it, she figured that would have to be Rick Cobb.

Had he been holding the pizzas when she snatched them out of his hands? She hadn’t really bothered to check.

“Starved.” She dropped the boxes on the end of the coffee table, flipped open the lid of the one on top, snagged a slice of what looked to be topped with half a farmyard, and took a huge bite. A pointed glare at Bruce had him settling himself like a sphinx on the floor directly in front of the warm, fragrant boxes. Taking a minute, she chewed, swallowed, uttered a happy sigh, and then looked up at her guests. “So, you guys want something to drink? I’ve got diet soda, milk, juice, wine, or beer.”

Both men eyed her with respect.

“Beer,” they chorused.

“Coming right up. Make yourselves comfortable.”

Josie continued to munch as she padded into the kitchen and pulled open the refrigerator. She knew her mother would keel over dead if she could see this display of bad manners, but Josie had missed lunch. Too many phone calls and an emergency involving a six-month-old basset hound, a porcupine, and a lesson well learned. She really had been starving.

She snagged three bottles of beer by the necks and balanced them against her hip so she could continue to devour pizza on her way back to the living room. When she got there, she saw that Eli and the man she assumed to be Rick had taken her at her word. They each sprawled in a corner of her chocolate microfiber sofa—which meant they took up the whole thing—with their mouths stuffed full of pizza. Neither had bothered to take a plate, and the stack of napkins appeared untouched. She really had set a bad example.

Figuring it was never too late to remember the social niceties, Josie passed out the beer and took both a plate and a napkin for herself before sinking into the overstuffed armchair across from Eli. “Thank you, guys, for bringing dinner.”

Like a professional waitress, it appeared she’d caught both of them mid-chew. Amused, she twisted the cap off her beer and took a sip while they exercised their jaw muscles.

“You’re welcome,” Eli said, finally grabbing a napkin as a dribble of olive oil snaked down his chin. “Thanks for letting us share and not running away with both pies.”

“My mother raised me better than that. I wouldn’t have run; strolling is more lady-like.” She ignored the flutter in her belly caused by his quick grin and turned to the other man. “I’m Josie Barrett, by the way. Since the sheriff hasn’t seen fit to introduce us.”

Rick Cobb wiped his fingers on a napkin as he extended his hand across the table toward her. “You can’t rely on him. Cats never think about anything but themselves. I’m Rick. I think we’ve run into each other before, but this is the first time we’ve actually met, which seems like a shame to me.”

The grin he flashed was both charming and wicked, and Josie liked him even more when he took the napkin he’d soiled with him on his hand’s trip back to the sofa.

“I’m thinking about something other than myself right now,” Eli grumbled, but the Lupine just grinned and took a swallow of beer.

“I think you’re right.” Josie ignored Eli completely and flicked her denuded pizza crust through the air toward Bruce. The dog snapped it up with the grace of a ballet dancer and the ferocity of a starving crocodile.

Reaching for a second slice, Josie blinked when she realized that in the time she’d been in the kitchen grabbing beer, each of the men had apparently inhaled one slice and gone for a second. Either that, or they’d started eating in the car on the way over.

“It’s amazing in a little town like Stone Creek how you can still not get to know everyone,” she continued, settling back into her chair. “You didn’t go to school here. I’m sure I’d remember if you had.”

“My parents sent me to private school in Portland. For all the good it did them. I still turned up back here, like a bad penny.” Rick grinned. “But even if I had gone to the local schools, I’d have been years ahead of you, sweetheart. I’m sure you wouldn’t have even known I was alive.”

“Oh, you’re not that old,” she said, laughing. “You’re... what? Thirty-seven? Thirty-eight?”

“Good guess. Thirty-seven.”

“And you won’t make thirty-eight if you don’t cool it,” Eli snapped.

Josie raised a brow in his direction. The sheriff sounded almost jealous. Of a little flirting? Because it was clear to her that flirting was Rick Cobb’s stock in trade. He had that air about him, like a man who had never met a woman he didn’t like. Josie knew better than to take a guy like that seriously. And besides, she and Eli hadn’t even been on a real date yet. He had no right acting jealous.

Which was why she stomped hard on the tiny little part of herself that tingled over the fact that he had.

She took another sip of beer. “I’ve only been back in town a few years, so forgive my ignorance, but when did you take over the Clan? When I was growing up, the Alpha was Ed Tarbridge.”

Rick nodded. “My uncle. He died about ten years ago now. A heart attack. I stepped in for him right away.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I don’t remember him well, but I know my dad thought highly of him.”

“Thank you.”

Eli cleared his throat at a conspicuous volume. “So I told Rick a little bit about what’s been going on over the last couple of days,” he offered.

The pizza had put Josie in a generous mood, enough so that she allowed the obvious attempt to pull her attention away from the other man and fed Bruce a second crust. “Really? What parts did you leave out?”

He frowned. “Mainly your professional opinion as to what the hell is going on.”

“Right. Well, since I really don’t have the slightest idea, I’m sure he has a pretty complete picture.”

“I hope you’ll accept my apology on behalf of my pack member for what happened, Dr. Barrett.” Rick’s face and tone were serious now. “That’s never the kind of image we want to present of ourselves.”

“Please, call me Josie. And I don’t blame your pack at all. I might specialize in treating full-time animals, but Stone Creek is my hometown. I’ve met enough Others not to have some crazy idea that they’re monsters. Clearly there’s something going on here that we haven’t figured out.”

“That’s why I wanted the three of us to get together and talk,” Eli said. “We need to know if you have any idea what might be behind all this.”

The Lupine made a face. “This would be easier if I could take a look at Bill and Rosemary, of course, but off the top of my head? I can’t think of a damn thing.”

“What would be easier would be if we knew a little more about Sammy Paulson and whether his case was definitely related to Bill and Rosemary.” She saw the flash of pain behind Rick’s calm facade and sighed. “I didn’t mean it that way. I know that the pack always burns its dead, but did anyone see him in his last twenty-four hours? Was he acting normally? Did he look ill?”

“No. According to his mother, when she saw him last night, he seemed just fine.”

“I think we have to assume that everything is related at this point,” Eli said. “I’d rather be wrong and paranoid than wrong and responsible for a disease outbreak we could have prevented.”

Rick nodded his agreement. “The problem is that I haven’t heard anything about pack members being ill or anything else out of the ordinary. Until this afternoon, I would have said everything was fine. Things have been pretty quiet lately. It’s nothing like last summer.”

“Last summer?” Josie almost felt her ears pricking forward. Unlike Bruce, who had decided to digest his pizza bones via a good long nap.

“August before last. Don’t you remember?” Eli tilted his head in inquiry. “There were some anti-Others demonstrations in Seattle and Portland. Skinheads, mostly, looking for one more group to hate. Well, a bunch of them rented at the campground out on Seven because they thought it would get them a bunch of press and win them some support if they spread the hate to the ‘most famous mixed-species community in America.’ ”

“No, that must have happened while I was away. I went to two veterinary conferences back-to-back that August. My dad even came up from Arizona to fill in for me at the clinic, because I had to be away so long. I was gone almost three weeks.”

“That explains it. But compared with a mystery virus and a Lupine being shot, that summer was a walk in the park. We had lots of yelling and sign waving, a couple of shoving matches, but no real violence.” Eli nodded at Rick. “And I still owe you for helping make that happen. Without the volunteers from the pack agreeing to serve as temporary deputies, things could have been a lot worse.”

Rick grinned, the expression suddenly less charming and more... feral. “The boys enjoyed it. Especially the parts where they got to break up those shoving matches.”

“I appreciate that you did it without breaking bones.” He turned back to Josie. “Anyway, it was a tense time for the pack—for all the Others in the area. Somehow it always seems that as soon as the unrest over the Unveiling starts to die down, something happens to stir it all up again.”

“It’s almost enough to make you a conspiracy theorist,” Rick agreed. “But like I said, this year had been quiet. No protestors, not death threats, not even any poisoned-meat traps left in the woods. I’m starting to think that no one loves us anymore.”

“Well, I’m happy to hear that—not that you’re not loved, Rick, since I’m sure that’s nowhere close to the truth,” Josie said, “but I don’t see what anti-Other activists or the lack thereof has to do with Bill and Rosemary. They have an illness. I mean, what else could explain what’s going on? They have physical problems that, at least in Bill’s case, can’t be explained by poison or some kind of attack.”

“Why don’t you give Rick the complete picture on their condition?”

Josie shrugged helplessly. “They’re both sick. I just can’t figure out why. Rosemary presented—unconscious—approximately forty-eight hours ago with an external wound and extensive internal bleeding. Eli brought her in and said he’d found her like that, so we have to assume the injuries predated my seeing her by at least a couple of hours. There was no evidence of healing at the wound site, and the bleeding was still active when I took her into surgery. I had to remove her spleen to get it stopped. Since I first saw her, she hadn’t regained consciousness. She had minimal awareness when I first evaluated her, but since we knocked her out, nothing. We took her off all sedatives and knocked her pain meds back to the minimum that I’m comfortable giving her at this point, and still... nothing. I’m thinking that’s not exactly normal, right?”

Rick’s brows came together in a deep furrow of concern. “Far from it. The first thing a wounded Lupine does is get out of danger and shift, especially one who’s seriously injured. It’s almost reflexive. Not to mention the best health insurance program in the world.”

“That’s what Eli told me, and it makes sense to me. The only thing I can think of is that the injuries left Rosemary too weak to shift. I mean, I imagine that takes a lot of energy, a lot of strength.”

“It does, but still...” He paused. “Could you tell from your examination whether the gunshot wound and the internal injuries happened at the same time?”

“If you mean did the bullet cause the internal injuries, the answer is no; that’s not possible. But if you mean did she get kicked in the stomach and shot at precisely the same moment, there’s no way to tell. Judging by the amount of blood in her abdomen and the time line pieced together from Eli and Bill, I can estimate that they happened at roughly the same time, but roughly could mean simultaneously, or it could mean within fifteen to thirty minutes of each other. I suppose they could be unrelated incidents.”

Eli held up a hand. “Wait. Back it up a minute. Kicked in the stomach? What makes you think someone kicked Rosemary?”

“It’s just an example of what could have caused the internal bleeding. I told you when you brought her in that it was related to a blunt-force trauma. A kick is an example of that, but so is a baseball bat, the front end of a car, a bongo drum, and a comet hurtling down from the sky. It could be almost anything.”

Rick looked at Eli. “You think whoever shot her also took time out to beat her?”

“I don’t know, but it’s possible, isn’t it? I still can’t figure out why anyone would have taken a shot at her in the first place. If someone was crazy or stupid enough to do that, who’s to say he wasn’t crazy and stupid enough to stomp on her some before he left?”

Josie saw a glimmer of tightly controlled fury in the Lupine’s eyes and suddenly felt very thankful that she hadn’t done anything to harm anyone in his pack. She watched very cautiously as he visibly reined in his temper and worked to form a reasonably level sentence.

“Is there any way that you would be able to tell how she sustained the injuries that caused the internal bleeding?”

“Like I told Eli, not without shaving her down, which I’m hesitant to do.” She wrinkled her nose. “The bruising under her fur might tell me what kind of weapon was used, but then again it might not, and I don’t want to stress her out if I don’t have to.”

“If we can’t think of anything else that will point us toward finding who did this—”

“If it comes down to that, I’ll do it, but at the moment I’m more concerned with making Rosemary and Bill well than I am with finding out who shot her. Because I seriously doubt that it was that bullet that’s been keeping her unconscious.”

“No, that would be kind of a stretch,” Rick admitted. “She should have turned as soon as she felt the bullet.”

“Maybe by the time she felt it, she was already being kicked.” Eli caught Josie’s glare and corrected himself. “Already experiencing the effects of blunt-force trauma.”

“It would have to be a hell of first blow to keep her down.” Rick sounded skeptical.

“That’s why I wanted to ask about the last few days,” Josie said. “Bill told us that he hadn’t seen Rosemary acting at all unusual before the shooting, but if she was already sick before she was shot, her body could have been so busy fighting off an infection that she just didn’t have the strength to shift after the bullet hit her.”

The Lupine shook his head. “Lupines don’t get sick.”

“Never?”

“Nope.”

“Never in the history of Otherkind?” she insisted.

Rick looked exasperated. “No, of course there have been incidents, but they’re rare. The illnesses that Lupines are susceptible to aren’t infections. They’re things like cancers and genetic disorders. The occasional poisoning. We don’t just catch colds.”

“What about insect-borne diseases? Things like Lyme disease, or West Nile?”

He shook his head.

“Parasitic infections? Malaria?”

“Nope.”

“Tapeworm?”

“Nope.”

“Fleas?”

That at least got a laugh. “Sorry, Doc, but Lupines have immune systems that make hospital clean rooms look like incubators of the black plague. We just don’t get human diseases.”

“What about canine diseases?”

“What do you mean?”

“What about rabies?”

Rick jerked back in surprise. “You think Rosemary might have rabies?”

Josie slumped back in her chair. “No, the symptoms don’t fit. Well, Bill’s episode this afternoon might, but Rosemary’s don’t at all. I just had to ask because you were starting to piss me off.”

“Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but I’ve never heard of a Lupine with rabies, either.”

“You know, I could really get to hate people like you.”

“Have you considered the possibility that Rosemary doesn’t have an infection? Maybe it actually is some kind of poison. Or cancer.”

“I’ve considered it, but it doesn’t make any sense. All of her organs are working normally, which pretty much rules out poisons. They generally work by shutting down one or more of those. And poison wouldn’t explain her astronomically high white blood cell count. That’s the leading indicator of infection in all living species that I know of. I mean, sure, cancer can do the wacky to your blood cells, but I’ve run the ultrasound over almost every inch of her over the last couple of days, and there’s not a tumor in sight. And again, cancer generally likes your organs, your lymph nodes, or your bone marrow. All of Rosemary’s are just fine.”

Rick drained his beer and set the empty bottle on the coffee table. “There is one other possibility.”

“I’m all ears.”

“There could be some kind of magic involved.”

Eli looked at the Alpha. “Like a curse?”

Rick shrugged. “It’s worth thinking about.”

“But I’m sure I would have smelled that. She didn’t smell tainted, and I carried her in my arms. I drove her in my car. I definitely would have smelled it if there were black magic involved.”

“Why? It’s not like you have a nose like a Lupine. Can you think of anything else that would do this?”

Josie leaned forward. “If it were a curse—and I have no idea how a curse would do that, since I know less about magic than I do about shifters—how would that explain Bill’s symptoms?”

“You’re certain Bill has the same symptoms?”

Eli nodded. “I think we have to assume it. He shifted last night so he could stay with Rosemary at the clinic, but he promised Josie that he’d shift back and leave before her staff arrived for the morning. And that clearly didn’t happen.”

“Instead he went a little crazy and tried to attack anyone who got near Rosemary’s cage.”

“Plus, when I had to restrain him later, I scratched a hole in his side, and it showed no signs of healing until Josie sewed it up.”

Rick’s eyes widened. “He had to have stitches?”

“Did we leave that out? Yeah. Fifteen of them. I counted while I put them in.”

“That’s... unsettling. It was strange enough when it was just Rosemary, but to hear that it’s happened to two members of the pack...”

“Right,” Josie agreed. At the moment, she agreed heartily. She didn’t like the current situation at all. “So would a curse be able to do that? And could it explain Sammy Paulson, too? I mean, I didn’t think that magic was contagious.”

“If you’ve ruled out illness...”

“But I haven’t ruled it out,” Josie protested. “I just can’t figure it out.”

The Lupine ran impatient fingers over his short, dark hair. “Well, I’m as baffled by the idea that it could be some sort of contagious illness as you are that it might be black magic. I can’t wrap my mind around it.”

“So what do we do now?”

“I said I didn’t smell magic,” Eli said slowly, clearly as confused as the others, “but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. Maybe I missed it. Somehow.”

Rick shook his head. “I doubt it, my friend. As much as I enjoy poking at you, I trust your senses. If you didn’t smell magic, either it wasn’t there or it was something neither of us has any experience with.”

“And that leaves us where?”

“I’m not entirely sure, but maybe we should consult with someone who’s more of an expert than either of us.”

“You mean bring in a magic user?”

“I’d suggest a witch. They usually have more experience with curses, and a generally broader knowledge of unpleasant wishes directed at others. The plus side to that, of course, being that they also know a great deal about getting rid of those kinds of wishes.”

“Is there anyone in town here who could help?” Josie asked. “I know we have a couple of magic users, but of all the witches I can think of, none of them seems to fit the bill. I mean, Mrs. Harrigan has been around the longest, but I thought she mostly played around with herbs and potions.”

“She does.” Eli pulled a small pad—a cop’s notebook—out of his breast pocket and jotted something down. “No one local has the juice for this. I know a few people in Seattle, though. I can ask one of them. Or better yet, ask if they can recommend someone in Portland.”

“Please.” Josie pulled both her feet up into the chair with her and crossed her legs tailor-fashion. If she could have curled into an exhausted little ball, she’d have done that. She looked toward Bruce’s slumbering form with envy. “I’d just as soon not have two possibly contagious not-quite-wolves locked in my kennel for very much longer.” She grimaced at Rick. “It just doesn’t seem right, you know? But I don’t have anywhere else to put them.”

“Well, I’d rather that kenneling Lupines didn’t become a new trend,” the Alpha said ruefully, “but if they’re really that ill, they should stay where they are, under observation and where they can continue to receive care. Plus, we don’t want any more incidents like the one with Bill this morning.”

“True that. I’m crossing my fingers that a witch can figure this out, though. Figure it out and fix it.”

Eli looked toward Josie, and his expression softened into something somehow comforting. “The call is my top priority.”

Rick rose to his feet. “And while he does that, I’ll go bother the pack elders. Ask a few questions. Like I said, I don’t know of any contagious illnesses that infect Lupines, but maybe there’s something floating around in our history that I don’t know about. It’s worth a shot. And just in case, I’ll talk to some friends and family of Bill, Rosie, and Sammy. Maybe someone will remember noticing something odd with a little more prompting.”

Josie nodded. She knew she should stand, too, but she just felt drained. “I appreciate that. Give a call if you find anything. The number for the clinic rings up here, too.”

“I will.” He smiled at Josie, offered Eli a brief salute, and let himself out the front door.

Josie watched him go, but it wasn’t until the lock snapped closed behind him and silence descended on the apartment that she realized what his leaving meant: She was now all alone with Sheriff Elijah Pace.

Her stomach gave a low, lazy flip.

Hesitantly, she looked over at Eli, only to find his gaze already on her. He leaned back on the sofa in a lazy sprawl, arms spread on the cushions behind him, but the look in his eyes was anything but lazy. Those green, glittering pools fixed on her with an unnerving intensity, giving her the nearly overwhelming urge to touch her hair, her face, her clothes, to search for something off. What else could he be staring at with such focus?

Josie caught herself twisting her fingers together and jerked them quickly apart, shoving her hands under her legs and pinning them there.

“Um, would you like another beer?” she asked.

Eli shook his head and reached toward her, his palm up and open, a compelling invitation. “Come sit with me for a few minutes.”

She thought about saying no. Or, to be more accurate, she thought about how she probably should say no. She’d only known him for a couple of days, after all. Okay, she might have known of him for a lot longer than that, and she might have occasionally had a thought here or there about the fact that he was the best-looking man she’d ever seen within an hour’s drive of Stone Creek and how if he ever happened to trip while walking past her and land on top of her, she wouldn’t have screamed for help. But that had all been hypothetical. The sexual tension crackling between them... that didn’t feel hypothetical at all. It felt magnetic.

It might have been easier if she’d been able to say that she moved across the room to him in a trance, as if he were a vampire exerting some sort of mind control over her. That would have been a cop-out, though. Not to mention a lie. She was exquisitely aware of every movement she made as she uncurled her legs, rose from her chair, and walked slowly and carefully around the end of the coffee table toward him. She felt the wide hem of her yoga pants sway around her ankles, felt the nap of the blue-and-green area rug and then the cool smoothness of the wooden floorboards beneath her feet. She felt the way the thick sofa cushions gave beneath her as she sat beside him and the pull of gravity when his heavier weight made a deeper depression that her body rolled naturally into.

Then she felt the hardness of his muscular body beside her, felt his right arm slip off the back of the sofa to curl around her and urge her against his chest. She felt the warmth of his breath against her skin and the warm, firm pressure of his mouth pressing against hers.

And then she felt everything.

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