CHAPTER 14

Wednesday, Josie decided, was a gift from God. Not only had the day started with an amazing bout of lazy, sleepy sex, but by ten o’clock the sun beamed down, the sky and attained the color of a Tiffany’s box, and a late-season surge of warmth brought the temperature up to a glorious sixty-five.

If it hadn’t been for the two wild Lupines locked in her storage room, Josie might have assumed her epidemic of bad luck had run its course. Still, she had definitely had worse days.

To top it all off, on Wednesdays the clinic opened late as a trade-off for their Saturday-morning hours, and on this particular morning, her last appointment before lunch called to cancel, giving her an unheard-of extra twenty minutes all to herself.

Well, all to herself and the stack of paperwork she needed to catch up on.

And the large, hairy, drooling mass at her feet.

She nibbled a sandwich while she worked, so she had her mouth full when Leah, her receptionist, paged her from the front of the clinic.

“Dr. Barrett?”

Josie grabbed the receiver. She hated talking into a speaker. “What’s up, Leah?”

“There’s someone here to see you. She doesn’t have an appointment, but she says you’re expecting her? Her name is Mary Applewhite.”

For a minute Josie stared blankly into space. She didn’t know anyone by that name, did she?

Through the intercom, she heard a rustling and some muffled voices, then Leah spoke again. “She said to remind you that Sheriff Pace asked her to come to the clinic to consult with you on some patients.”

Another vet? Josie thought briefly, then the lightbulb clicked on and she almost smacked herself in the head. Not a vet, a witch.

“Right,” she said, dropping her sandwich and dusting her hands off on her lab coat. “I’m sorry, Leah, I should have told you she was coming. I’ll be right there.”

Mary Applewhite, Josie decided as they shook hands in the clinic’s bright and sparsely furnished waiting room, looked a little like a witch and a little like a coffee house barista. Her face had that sort of ageless look that said she could have been anywhere between twenty-seven and forty-seven. She wore her strawberry-blond hair very short, in a spiky modern pixie cut, and a series of six earrings decorated her left ear. In the right, she wore only two—one dangling from the lobe, the other a ring around the cartilage at the very top of the auricle. Those things made her look like a barista. The warm smile, silver pentacle necklace, and glint of ageless wisdom in her slate-blue eyes made her look like a witch.

Josie liked her immediately.

Especially since she wore her pentacle and earrings with a pair of faded blue jeans, a snug T-shirt the color of rhododendron leaves, and purple high-top sneakers.

“Come on back,” Josie invited, turning to lead the way. “I’m so glad you were willing to drive all the way out here from Portland.”

“It’s a pretty drive,” Mary said. Her voice sounded more barista than witch, rough and quick, as if she might be a smoker, or had grown up with them. “And it gave me the chance to do a last little bit of wildcrafting before the frost sets in.”

Josie looked her question.

“Collecting wild-growing plants and herbs,” Mary explained. “Always responsibly and always in authorized areas.”

“Don’t worry,” Josie said, grinning. “I grew up here in Oregon, but I’m not a member of the environment police. I swear.” She gave Mary the stool from the desk and grabbed another for herself from the other side of the room. Bruce ignored them completely. “So, um, I’m not entirely sure what Eli told you—”

“Sheriff Pace? He said that there was a concern that two people from your town might have been cursed somehow, or maybe enchanted, and he asked if I would be able to tell if that were true if I met them.” Mary watched Josie calmly, her gaze steady and gentle. “I told him I would. And I will. If there’s some sort of unnatural magic around, I can find it.”

“I apologize, but we don’t have that many witches here in Stone Creek, so I’m not sure how you do what you do...”

“Don’t worry. It’s not complicated. Usually, I just have to be in the same room with the person or thing that’s been affected by magic. I can give you a yes or a no based on the energy the thing gives off. Then I can try to tell you what kind of magic was used, and sometimes I can try to trace it back to its source, but I can’t make guarantees about that. That’s a lot more complicated, and it usually requires that I touch whatever has been cursed.”

Josie held up her hands and shook her head. “No, we’ll have to do without that because touching isn’t going to be possible in this case.”

“Fair enough.” Mary nodded and tilted her head to the side as if trying to figure something out. “Why don’t you tell me a little more about what’s going on? Or we can get right to the scrying, if that makes you more comfortable.”

“No. Well—” Josie paused and pursed her lips. “Well, I can’t let you go in blind, but I kind of assumed that Eli had told you a little more about our situation. The problem that we’re having has to do with two Lupines, both members of the local pack.” She raised an eyebrow. “You don’t have a problem with shifters, do you?”

The witch grinned. “I might be human, but I’m not exactly Ms. Average American. Don’t worry. I don’t get all het up over the idea of people getting furry occasionally.”

“Good. Um, these two Lupines both seem to have the same problem, and we’re trying to figure out the source. Each of them shifted from human into wolf form at some point this past weekend, and between then and today, neither of them has been able to shift back. They’re stuck. Now, my theory is that they have some kind of disease—not one that’s transmissible to humans, so don’t worry—but that there’s some sort of bug infecting their systems and making them too sick to shift. Unfortunately, other than one abnormal test result, we’re having trouble finding any evidence about what that bug might be. The leader of the local pack said that the only other thing he thought could be preventing these Lupines from shifting for so long was a curse. And that’s where you come in. We don’t have any experts on that kind of magic in Stone Creek, so we had to look somewhere else for help, and you were recommended to us.”

Josie watched Mary’s face as she spoke. The witch’s sympathetic demeanor never changed, but her expression grew more and more solemn as the story went on. When Josie finally fell silent, the other woman shook her head.

“This is unfortunate. I’ll definitely take a look at the Lupines and let you know if I can sense a curse around them, but it’s not a good sign that they’ve gone so long without changing. Remaining in a nonhuman form for many days can have serious consequences.”

“I know. Eli told me, which is why I really want to do whatever we can to help Rosemary and Bill before it’s too late.”

Mary stood and brushed her hands on her jeans. “I’m ready if you are. Should we go and have a look?”

Josie led the way down the short hall and into the isolation room. The minute the outer door opened, two enormous heads turned and four feral amber eyes glared at the intruders. The larger, lighter wolf—Bill—lunged immediately toward the front of the partition, as if he could throw himself through the metal barrier and take the humans down like deer. Behind him, Rosemary’s salt-and-pepper fur stood up straight between her shoulder blades. She remained near the center of the enclosure, her legs spread and braced, her head down as she snarled low in her throat, her feelings about the other women plain.

The witch stood directly in front of the kennel gate and stared intently at the wolves for all of thirty seconds. Then she blinked, turned around, and headed back the way she’d come. “I’ve seen enough.”

Wondering what exactly Mary had seen, Josie followed her back to the triage room and waited anxiously.

The other woman stood in the center of the room, breathing as if she’d just sprinted the length of a football field. Her head was down until her chin rested nearly on her chest, and she had planted her fisted hands on her hips while she struggled to catch her breath. Josie couldn’t pretend to understand it, but she stayed back and watched until the witch exhaled deeply and resumed her seat on the stool.

Josie joined her, perching on the very edge of her seat and leaning forward.

“It’s not a curse,” Mary said without prompting. “I’m sure of that. There’s no magic in that room, aside from what is naturally part of the makeup of a shapeshifter. Their being is a kind of magic, after all.”

“Oh, but that’s good, right? I mean, we don’t actually want them to be cursed.”

Mary laughed in a way that indicated absolutely no amusement. “Believe me, there are worse things than curses out there. Much worse.”

A strange flush of dizziness made Josie blanch. She could actually feel herself going pale. “What do you mean?”

“I am a practicing witch, and I do have a fairly extensive knowledge of curses, but that isn’t my only talent,” Mary admitted. “I’m psychic.”

“Psychic?”

“Clairvoyant. I can look at people and see things, things that happened in the past, situations they’ve been in, people connected to them. And sometimes things that might happen in the future.”

Josie felt like she might be having a premonition of her own. She knew that Mary had seen something bad when she’d looked at the Lupines. And Josie knew that she had to ask what it had been.

When she did, the words emerged as a whisper.

“There’s no black magic associated with the Lupines,” the witch reiterated, “but there is something very wrong attached to them anyway. Something negative and... malevolent. I can’t see exactly what it is, because—”

“Because why?”

“Because there isn’t much human left inside them.”

“You mean—”

“They don’t have a lot of time before they’ll be trapped. They’re already three-quarters of the way there. Maybe more. You said they first changed this weekend.”

Josie nodded.

“What time? Specifically.”

“Uh...” Josie racked her memory. “Bill said Rosemary left after they had a fight in the middle of the afternoon, and that she usually shifted and went to the woods to work off her mad, so maybe... between two and four on Saturday? And I was there when Bill shifted. I think it was a little before ten on Sunday night.”

The answer made Mary frown. “I’m surprised, because the male is farther gone than the female. I would have guessed that he’d shifted first.”

“No, it was definitely Rosemary. But... she was unconscious longer. For the first day, from Saturday evening right through until yesterday, Rosemary was completely out. Could not being awake have made a difference?”

“Maybe. I wish I could say for certain, but I just don’t know. This doesn’t happen all that often, so I’m hardly an expert.”

Josie tried to conceal her disappointment. She swallowed a sigh. “Well, I do appreciate what you were able to tell me. At least now we know it’s not a curse. Which leads us back to my pet theory. It’s got to be some kind of infection.”

She could see a flicker of hesitation in the witch’s expression. And she jumped on it.

“Are you saying it’s not an infection?” Josie demanded. “Can you see things like that? Can you tell if they’re sick?”

“Of course they’re sick. Even if they don’t have some exotic virus, it’s obvious that something that compromised the wellness of their minds, at least.” Mary sidestepped. “It’s just—”

“Just what?” Josie had sensed that the other woman was holding something back, and she went after it with the determination of a terrier.

“It’s just that there’s something very deliberate about it. About that malevolence,” the witch finally admitted. “Something about the negative energy that surrounds them doesn’t feel like it came upon them by chance. When I looked at them, I got the impression that this was something that had been done to them. The impression seemed especially strong for the female. To me, that doesn’t jive with an illness. Illness is random; a creature randomly encounters a germ, the germ causes the illness. That’s just not the feeling I get from the Lupines.”

Frustration nearly made Josie howl like one of the Lupines in question. “Can you be any more specific?”

Mary shook her head and looked sincerely regretful. “I’m sorry. I’ve told you everything. They are hard to read because so much of them is animal now, and the impressions I did get seemed lightly removed from them. Distant. It’s probably because they can no longer think in the same way that you and I do.”

And she would have to content herself with that, Josie told herself as she escorted her guest out of the clinic a few minutes later. The witch couldn’t tell her what she didn’t know.

Unfortunately, no one else seemed to know, either.

Exp. 10-1017.03

Log 03-00137

Stage 4 product goes into the field tonight. The one brief in vivo laboratory trial demonstrated rapid uptake, successful loading, and desired end point. Will consider a complete success.

NOTE: Laboratory test subject did demonstrate violent tendencies and unpredictable behavior with infliction of both internal and external damage. In a sustainable population this might be seen as a weakness and an undesirable trait in the product, but I believe that this will only enhance the end goal of the experiment—a final solution to the single greatest problem currently facing mankind.

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