The Turning Season (20 page)

The last thing I do is text Joe.

Hope your trip is going well. Feel a migraine coming on, so don't worry if you don't hear from me for a few days. Pat Jinx on the head for me.

Then I slip the phone inside and hunker down, waiting out the increasingly violent waves of nausea and sledgehammer attacks against my skull. Just when I really think I can't bear it any longer—when I'm thinking I'd rather die outright than suffer this agony—the release comes. The pain evaporates, my body snaps into place. I am whole, I am perfect, and I am beyond emotions like worry and fear. I simply am.

Scottie trots over to inspect me, and I scramble up to offer a friendly bark. That's when I realize I'm not the marmalade cat this time, but some breed of dog. My paws are thin and sinewy, covered with clipped black hair, and I'm not as big as Scottie. Beagle, maybe, or some kind of terrier.

Not one of the animals I've included in my most recent concoction. I know I should be concerned about that—my body is outmaneuvering its chemical overrides—but I just can't be bothered at the moment. The air smells fine, there is much to explore, and this body was made for running. I race across the central space of the compound—Scottie in more leisurely pursuit—and head for the open land beyond my property.

What's the point in fretting, after all? I can't answer e-mails, I can't update client reports, I can't wash dishes or paint the barn or tend the garden. I can chase squirrels and bark at passing cars and live in the moment. I can be happy.

*   *   *

B
onnie comes out the next day to check everything over for me and to leave Alonzo behind. “Although I don't know how much help he'll be,” she tells me before she departs. “His schedule's been erratic lately, but I wouldn't be surprised if he shifts sometime in the next couple of days. So you might all just be living in one big wild game preserve before too long.” She pats me on the head and tells Alonzo, “I'll be back on Sunday,” then heads on home.

He spends a couple of hours working in the barn and corrals, though I follow at his heels, trying to convince him to come play with me instead. He pauses a moment at the enclosure where the puppies used to live, eyeing the empty space with what looks like regret before turning away without comment. There are baby bunnies in the hutch, though, and he spends extra time with them, his big hands unexpectedly gentle as he holds their small, quivering bodies on his lap and strokes the long silky ears.

He divides the evening between doing homework, playing a video game, and watching a movie, this last activity being the only one I find marginally entertaining. He doesn't speak a word until my cell phone rings at nine and he sees Celeste's name, so he picks up. Their conversation is brief—apparently she offers to come out and help but he tells her he's doing fine. His voice sounds cheerful enough, so I don't think he's sulking that he's here. He just hasn't felt compelled to share any of his thoughts with me.

Which, actually, is typical of Alonzo.

Wednesday is pretty much exactly the same, down to the phone call, except Alonzo watches two movies instead of doing any homework.

I wake up early Thursday morning to find myself lying on top of my bed, shivering with cold. I'm human, which delights me, but freezing, so I crawl under the blankets and fall back asleep. It's probably ten in the morning before I wake up again, embued with that restlessness that usually stalks me whenever I've shifted back to my natural state. I'm hungry, I'm craving a shower, and I'm desperate to know what's transpired in the real world while I've been in my own private alternate dimension.

Shower. Then food. Then phone calls and e-mails until I reconnect.

I'm standing in the kitchen—barefoot and with my wet hair dripping down the back of my sweatshirt—when Celeste calls. My mouth is full when I answer the phone and mumble, “I'm too hungry to talk.”

She laughs. “All right, I'll talk. Alonzo texted me at midnight, said he thought he was shifting, he was going outside. I let him know I'd come out today but now I see I don't
have
to, since you are back among us again.”

I swallow. “I haven't had a chance to go looking for him yet. I just got up. But he isn't immediately visible, so I guess he did change. I'll see if I can find him.”

“Bonnie says he's been bigger animals lately. Like, the other day he was a mastiff. Took up a lot of room in the house.”

“Maybe that's why she wanted him out here this week.”

“Maybe. I think she's starting to worry about it. Like—is it time to think about moving somewhere a little more private? Or closer to woodland?”

I take a long swig of milk while I think that over. “They've been in that house for fifteen years. I'd hate for them to have to sell it.”

“I think they'd hate it, too, but I don't think they'd hesitate,” Celeste answers.

“We shape-shifters certainly don't make it easy on the people who love us,” I say.

“See, you're just not paying attention,” she says. “Nobody makes it easy on anyone. We're not difficult just because we're shape-shifters. We're difficult because we're people.”

I laugh. “Maybe. I don't think I know enough regular people to judge.”

“You know
one
,” she says in a meaningful voice. “How's the romance going with the bouncer-slash-truck driver?”

“Fine, I think. I really like him.”

“I think I need to check him out.”

“You met him already.”

“Once! For five minutes! Before I knew you were going to get all gooey over him.”

“I don't want you to meet him. You'll say something embarrassing.”

“I won't. And I won't bring embarrassing pictures, either. Like, say, the one of you in the striped dress—”

“Celeste!”

Our talk goes like this for the next fifteen minutes. I continue to eat the whole time I'm on the phone, so I'm pretty much finished with my meal by the time we hang up. I head outside to do my chores and to look for Alonzo. But I don't come across him the whole time I'm working. Not a squirrel or a raccoon or a small creature then. Something bigger and wilder and more predisposed to roam.

I'll leave some clothes on the edge of the property, a blanket on the front porch bench, so he'll have something to cover himself with when it's time to come home. Celeste and even Ryan and I are pretty cavalier about turning up naked around each other, and Cooper was never particularly shy, either, but Alonzo doesn't like anyone to see him undressed. I figure that would hold true for any fourteen-year-old boy, not just one who's covered with battle scars. Though my experience with teen boys is pretty limited.

I spend the afternoon mixing up new serums for Ryan and for myself, and answering electronic and voice mail. Janet's mother has sent me a short note, talking about the great weather in California and a new recipe she's tried, and my intention is to send back a reply that's just as breezy and superficial.

But I find myself telling her about Joe. I type out:

He's not like other guys I've dated. He's low-key and not very focused on a career and not the sort of guy you look at and think, “Oh, he's so cute.” But when I'm with him, I feel so good. I don't know how else to explain it. I feel like my hand fits inside his hand.

I hesitate a moment before I send it; the sentiment is so girlish and uncertain that I can't imagine Janet would ever have come up with the words, and surely Nina Kassebaum will realize that. But I feel like I want to confide my thoughts to
someone
, and it's hard to think who else to tell. Celeste is too bawdy, Bonnie too brisk, Aurelia too sharp, to trust with such timid and wondering emotions. Janet's mother is the closest thing I have to a mother of my own.

I hit send and then log off my e-mail account immediately. Time to think about other things.

*   *   *

F
riday I entertain a long stream of clients—three dogs, four cats, and a pair of pet rats with respiratory problems—so I'm glad when the day comes to an end. Gladder still that I've finally emptied out the waiting room by the time Joe calls, so I have time to sink to a chair and talk for a few minutes.

“Just about to leave for the Y, wanted to say hi and see how you were doing,” he says. “Headache still better?”

We've talked twice since I shifted back, and each time he's asked after the migraine. I'm thinking I might have to come up with other reasons to explain my sudden absences. “Headache still gone,” I say.

“Still up for having me come out Sunday afternoon?”

“Absolutely. Unless you'd rather have me come into Quinville?”

“I hate you making that long drive back at night.”

“You're going to have to get over that. I drive at night
all the time
when you're nowhere around.”

“Oh, sure. Give me something else to worry about.”

But the truth is, I'm just as happy to have him come out to my place. I've never been the kind of girl who particularly enjoyed fancy dinners and loud entertainment. A fire, a pizza, a video, a bottle of wine—good times.

“Anyway, I owe you a meal,” I say. “Let me cook for you.”

“It's a deal,” he says.

I can't bear to wish him good luck when he goes hunting the next day, but I do give him a generic benediction: “Hope you have fun on Saturday.”

As I hang up, I comfort myself by thinking he might have fun even if he doesn't bag his deer. He'll be out with his friends, tramping through the woods, communing with nature. Who wouldn't enjoy that, even if the experience isn't completed by murder?

*   *   *

S
aturday I have two clients in the morning, but the afternoon is free, and I've resolved to clean up one of the trailers. Until about six months ago, a young couple lived there—both of them shape-shifters—along with their baby girl. She had been sickly and frail and obviously having trouble dealing with her shape-shifter genes. One day she would be all human except for her left arm, which would have claws and fur like a cat; another day there would be a human head on an animal's body. When she died in her sleep one night, I wasn't sure if she'd been suffocated by her own ungainly body or by one of her distraught parents who couldn't bear to subject her to such a bizarre and nightmarish life. We buried her on the edge of the property, where there are dozens of unmarked shape-shifter graves. The next day, the parents were gone.

I'd done a superficial cleanup of the trailer in the following week, but I'd always planned to really scrub it down, disinfect any lingering germs, and wipe away what I could of the concentrated sorrow. I'm a believer in sunshine and fresh air. They don't always dispel the ghosts, but they soothe those grieving spirits, robbing them of some of their bleak power.

The day is chilly but bright, and I almost enjoy my task. I'm humming to myself as I swab down the tiny bathroom surfaces, spray Windex on the glass and tiles. I'm elbow-deep in a bucket of soapy water when there's a commotion outside. A car horn blaring repeatedly, becoming louder and more frantic as the vehicle grows closer—tires rattling on the rocks, a car door slamming—a hoarse voice shouting my name.

I rip off my rubber gloves and burst out of the trailer to find Joe's truck parked haphazardly on the gravel, both doors wide open. Joe is racing toward me, carrying a limp and bloody body in his arms.

It's Alonzo, and there's an arrow through his chest.

M
y stainless-steel operating table isn't big enough for Alonzo's body, so Joe holds him in place while I run to find a card table as an extender. I don't have time to hear Joe's explanation first, though he looks as if he's witnessed the apocalypse and he's murmuring, “He just—he just—” so I'm betting I can guess what happened. On a bone-deep level, I'm utterly terrified, but on what I consider my conscious level, I'm gripped by professional calm. My hands are steady, my brain is functioning at a furious rate, and I know exactly what to do.

“Here—keep his chest and hips on the metal table, move his legs to the card table—that's right,” I say as I return to the operating room and start setting things up. It's a small space at the best of times, and exceedingly cramped now, but Joe has also forced himself into a professional mode—officer in crisis—and he works with efficiency. “You might have to restrain him while I examine him.”

Alonzo's awake, his wide, dark eyes watching me, but he doesn't speak. I've already ascertained that the arrow is in an optimal place—high up on the shoulder, not through the chest as I first feared. I don't think it's even cut through an artery, since he's already stopped bleeding.

Thank God he's stopped bleeding. I don't dare give him a transfusion.

“You doing okay, buddy?” I ask him. “I'm gonna give you a shot to help with the pain, then I'm gonna get this thing out of you. Still going to hurt like hell.”

He just gives me the briefest of nods and continues to watch me.

Most of my medicines are designed for animals, of course, but I've been using them on shape-shifters for five years now and never had a problem. So I get to work with the supplies I have at hand. A little lidocaine to numb the area, a twilight cocktail to induce drowsiness, some antibiotic cream where the arrow pierces the skin.

“Cut off the tip then pull it back out,” Joe suggests.

I nod. “Yep. As soon as I'm sure the drugs have taken effect. And when I can figure out what to cut it with.” The arrow isn't wood, as I would have expected, but metal. A modern improvement to the traditional hunting method, I suppose.

“I've got clippers in the truck,” Joe says. “If it's safe for me to leave for a few minutes.”

I nod. “Go.”

Alonzo is semi-unconscious by the time Joe reappears, and I move quickly to remove the arrow, flush the wound with disinfectant, then suture it up. While I work, I can't help but notice all the other scars cutting across his dark, supple skin. Burn marks. Knife wounds. Knobby lumps that might be souvenirs of untreated broken bones. One long, thin scar starts over his left rib cage and makes a jagged track toward his pelvis, disappearing under the blanket I've thrown over the lower half of his body.

Being shot by an arrow probably isn't the worst thing that's happened to this kid.

Now that he's sewed up, infection is my biggest worry, so I pump him with antibiotics. I
think
he'll be okay. I
think
Joe got him here in time. But oh my God, to have come so close to losing him . . .

“Can you carry him upstairs?” I ask Joe quietly. “I keep a room for him here. Just put him there.”

He nods without speaking and gathers Alonzo in a careful lift. I grab my cell phone so I can dial Bonnie's number as I follow Joe through the house. She doesn't answer and neither does Aurelia, so I leave identical messages. “Call me as soon as you can. Everything's going to be okay, but . . . call me.”

Upstairs, we settle Alonzo in his bed, and I check to make sure the jostling of relocation hasn't caused the wound to start bleeding again, but everything seems fine. I lay my hand on his forehead even though it's too soon to check for fever. I just want a reason to touch him again. His skin is warm and smooth. His eyes don't open, but his breathing is steady.

“Okay,” I whisper to Joe, and he follows me out of the room. We go downstairs and I head straight to the kitchen, straight to the refrigerator, and pull out two beers. I drink about half of mine in one long, greedy pull before I sigh, lean against the counter, and give Joe a level look. “Tell me what happened.”

He hasn't touched his beer, though he holds the bottle in his hand as carefully as if it's a nuclear warhead. His face is pale and his eyes are haunted. This is a man who has just witnessed the end of the world as he knew it.

“I don't
know
what happened,” he says in a low voice. He's staring down at the bottle in his hand. “I can tell you what I saw, but I—I think it's true, but I—”

“Tell me,” I say more gently.

“My buddies and I had split up. None of us had hit anything in the morning, so we took a break for a few hours in the afternoon, then they went off together and I went a different way. I'd found a good spot, and I'd been in place for a while, just waiting, when I saw the deer come through. Four of them—buck, doe, a couple younger ones. I had sighted on the buck when one of the other ones kind of leapt forward. Right in the way of my arrow. My first thought was,
Damn, ruined my shot.
I knew I'd only wounded him, knew I'd have to track after him to kill him clean. And then—and then—”

He lifts his eyes and stares at me. “He started flailing. Thrashing around. And he fell to the ground and he—he was a deer but then he—he was a
person
. He was a
child
. I saw a deer change into a human being, and it was Alonzo.”

“Yeah,” I say. “He does that.”

He holds the stare for another long minute. “So it's true,” he says at last.

“It's true.”

“There are really people who can turn into animals.”

“Hundreds,” I say. “Maybe thousands.”

“Your friend—the one at the bar—who turned into a mountain lion. She really did that.”

“A bobcat actually, but yeah. She really did.”

“So is that what—does it happen when they're in danger? Suddenly they find themselves transforming?”

I shake my head. “It's different for every one of them. Celeste can actually choose when to shift between states, though I wouldn't have said she picked a good time that night with Bobby Foucault. Alonzo's on a sort of unpredictable schedule, which is often what happens with teenagers. He'll be human for a few weeks, then animal for a few days. Different kinds of animals. I haven't seen him be a deer before.”

“Why did he become human when I—when I shot him?”

“I can only guess. Most shape-shifters I know die in their human state. If they're dealt a mortal blow while they're in animal shape, their bodies transform during their last moments of life. I think Alonzo's body didn't know how desperate the wound was, so it automatically began the transformation.”

“I didn't mean to hurt him,” Joe whispers.

“I know. He knows.”

“When I saw it—when I saw him—when I knew what I had done—”

“Terrifying. Horrifying. I know.”

“All I could think of was I had to get him here. To you.”

“I'm glad you were so close. I'm glad I wasn't in Quinville.”

He focuses on me again. “At first I wasn't sure if you knew. About him.”

I take another swallow of my beer, but my throat is tight. I know what's coming next. I nod.

“But then I remembered your friend. Celeste. And I was pretty sure you knew about her.”

“That's right.”

“So I figured you knew about Alonzo. And then I thought—”

I wait.

“Your migraines,” he goes on in a thread of a voice. “What if that's not what they really are?”

I want to lie. I want to reassure him that I'm normal, a little sickly, maybe, but perfectly human. I'm not a strange, fantastical creature whose hybrid body appears on ancient temple walls as the manifestation of evil. But the secret's already out in the fresh air and bright sunshine. Like a ghost, it can't survive long without the dark.

“I don't really have migraines,” I say quietly. “I'm a shape-shifter, too.”

For a moment, he doesn't move or speak. Then he lifts the beer bottle to his mouth and swallows down most of the contents without pausing for breath. The whole time he doesn't take his eyes off my face.

Then he sets the beer on the table, pulls out a chair, and drops down, gesturing for me to take a seat as well. I warily comply, though I'm tense as hell. Waiting for what he'll say next.

It's simple. “Damn. Tell me about it.”

*   *   *

T
here's not that much to my story, after all. “I was born to a couple of shape-shifters who lived up in Chicago. My own transformations were so erratic that I couldn't be in public much. My mom died when I was young, but my dad moved heaven and earth to find someplace where I could live in safety.” I glance around the kitchen, but I'm really indicating the whole property. “He met Janet, who was studying to be a vet. She was human, but she was in love with Cooper, who was a shape-shifter, and he needed a safe place, too. So my dad and some friends bought this place and set Janet up in her practice, and I came to live here.”

“How'd you get the schooling you needed to be a vet?”

I smile. “I didn't. I learned everything from Janet. I'm not licensed. I'm not legal. I live in terror that Sheriff Wilkerson will find out and shut me down.” I rub a hand across my forehead. “Well, it's just one of the many things I live in terror of.”

He's gone to the fridge to get another beer for each of us, and he unscrews the cap before handing mine to me. “What else?”

I exhale a breath that's almost a laugh. “That someday I'll be out in public and I'll need to change and I won't be able to get to a safe spot. That some crazy fear-mongering bastard will find out I'm a shape-shifter—or that my friends are—and start hunting us the way you were hunting deer. That something will happen to Alonzo or Celeste or”—I manage to stop myself before outing Ryan—“or any of the others.” I glance at him. “That you'll find out. And you'll hate me.”

He shakes his head. “That won't happen. I won't hate you. But I'm still trying to get my mind around it.”

“A process that might take you a while,” I say.

He settles back in his chair and takes a meditative sip of his second beer. “So Bonnie and Aurelia. Are
they
shape-shifters?”

“No.”

“But they know about you—Alonzo—all of you?”

“Yeah. There are always some—some—normal people who know about us. Usually they're family members or lovers or people who just somehow find out. Well, most shifters I know try very hard to keep the secret, because they're all afraid. They know that once the world starts asking questions, life could get very dicey.”

“Seems pretty dicey anyway. I mean—” He gestures toward the door, in the direction of the woodland some miles away where the hunting accident occurred. “If you're running around as an animal half the time, people could kill you. Like I almost killed Alonzo. I mean,
anything
could happen.”

“Believe me, I've thought about every possible terrible scenario,” I say ruefully. “Each one scarier than the last.” I produce the barest laugh. “I suppose the only good thing is that I won't have that long to be afraid.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

I'm already sorry I said it, so I try to speak lightly. “Oh, you know. It's a hard life, and lots of shape-shifters don't live that long.”

Now his attention, which has been pretty diffuse as he tries to chase down all his chaotic thoughts, suddenly concentrates on me. “What's
that
mean? You don't live long?”

I just say it straight out. “Every shape-shifter I've known has died before turning fifty. Some a lot sooner. Cooper wasn't even forty. A girl Janet was treating a few years ago—I think she was twenty-two. They didn't come down with diseases—we don't seem to get cancer or diabetes or pneumonia. Our bodies give out on us. We die of old age when we're young.”

His eyes still fixed on mine, he frowns. “That's terrible. I hate to hear that.”

I manage a light shrug. “Lot of ordinary people die young, too. Children. Babies. Young mothers with everything to live for. Newlyweds. None of us is guaranteed a long life. I try to remember that. I try to make peace with that—with all of it.”

He leans back in his chair. Still watching me. “That sounds like you don't much like being what you are.”

“I hate it!” I burst out. “I hate being
different
and
strange
. I hate the fact that my body is completely out of my control, that these transformations will take me over whenever they want to, and I can't guess when and I can't stop them. I hate living in fear. I hate lying to everyone I know. I want to be normal and ordinary.”