Under Her Skin (4 page)

People don’t like snakes. I actually get that—there’s something viscerally appalling about an animal so different from oneself, made of muscle and scale rather than skin and bone. Snakes aren’t fuzzy or cuddly or cute.

Not that I feel that way, of course. I love spending time in Dad’s herpetarium, the small outbuilding that had formerly served the old house as a garage and now housed Dad’s entire collection. When I’m there, I can close my eyes and listen to the gentle swish of scales over sand, the slight hiss of my brethren—or at least distant cousins—testing the air around them. I find it soothing.

As a child, I used to like to shift in the herpetarium and sun myself under the heat lamps. I couldn’t often shift and go out into the real sun, because, Dad said, I had a dark secret to keep, and people would want to lock me up, study me, keep me caged for the rest of my life. The herpetarium was a nice alternative.

But I’m basically an okay person. I give loose change to homeless people, volunteer in a food bank, work to give hurt children a voice. My entire life has been about developing my human side—the side of me that is kind of cuddly and cute.

I hadn’t ever imagined that my mere existence would be cause for someone to hunt me down and kill me in cold blood. So to speak.

I blinked hard and shook my head, hoping to dispel the sense of unreality that had been fogging my thinking since Emma had told me she
changed
her hand.

“Why would anyone want you to kill me?” I asked. “I’ve never hurt anyone.”

“You shouldn’t have come to the hospital last night,” Nevala said. “It’s dangerous for someone like you.”

“You can’t kill me. That’s insane.” A moment ago, all I had wanted was to get into my office. Now all I wanted was out.

“Wait,” he said. “I can explain.”

“No, you can’t. You’re a crazy man who assaulted me and then threatened me.” Reaching behind me with one hand, I felt around for the door.

Nevala crossed his arms over his chest and glared at me. “I didn’t assault you.”

The assertion brought me to an abrupt halt. “You dragged me into a dark room and kissed me.”

“I was checking to see what you were.” His eyes flicked away from mine as he spoke.

Liar.

“Oh, really?” I squinted at him, hoping to see a telltale flush creep up his neck, but I couldn’t tell if he was blushing—neither the ambient light in my office nor his own dark complexion gave me much to go on.

He sighed, and I flinched at the movement.

“I’m sitting down,” he said, holding his hands up in surrender and taking his own step backwards until he could drop to the nearest chair. “I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you. Please, let me explain.” He focused those intense eyes on me, their hypnotic gold flecks holding me prisoner—almost as much as my own desire to learn what he thought I was.

Because God knows, I have no idea.

“And what you learned told you that you’re supposed to kill me?” I finally asked.

“Supposed to,” he said. “But I won’t.”

I had spent more time than I would ever admit to my adoptive parents searching for any indication of what I might be. I knew they would understand—but I think we were all afraid of what I might discover.

Like I was afraid now.

But Emma had known as soon as she’d seen me that I was a shapeshifter.

Nevala seemed to know more about me than I knew about myself.

Crap. I was going to have to hear the crazy man out.

“Okay,” I said, pulling my hand away from the door and taking a half-step back into the room. “You have three minutes. Talk.”

* * *

He started over. “You shouldn’t have come to Kindred last night.”

I took a deep breath. Might as well call his bluff. “Emma Camelli says Kindred Hospital is where all the shapeshifters go. Why would I care if they knew I went there?”

“Because you’re not like other shapeshifters.”

“How so?”

His golden brown eyes started to glow. I realized I was leaning over my desk toward him, again almost hypnotized by those eyes. “You’re supposed to be extinct.” He paused for a long moment. “If the rest of the shapeshifters knew you were still alive, they would expect me to take you down.”

My hands started to shake as the bitter taste of adrenaline flooded my mouth. “Still alive?” I asked. My voice stayed steady, but from the way Kade’s nostrils flared, I suspected he could smell the pre-shift chemicals surging through my body.

He closed his eyes, gathering his thoughts. “How much do you actually know about your past?”

A short bark of laughter escaped me. “Nothing. Not a damn thing.”

“Then how did you end up at Kindred?”

“I told you. I was on call the night Emma Pack killed her father. She and her mother insisted we take her to your hospital.” I gestured widely, taking in the whole building. “That’s it.”

Kade’s whistle was low. “Holy shit. So you really just happened to end up there?”

Tension coiled in my chest, getting ready to burst out in a full-blown snake-shift if I didn’t get information right now. “Will you please quit quizzing me and tell me what it is that you know?” I tried to push the questions down, but they popped out faster than he could possibly answer them. “Do you know who my parents are? Are they still alive? Why did they abandon me? Who am I?” The last question came out on something of a wail, and I slapped my own hand over my mouth to stop myself from continuing to speak—or possibly cry.

Kade blinked his golden eyes in surprise. “You really don’t know?”

Clenching my teeth against further exclamations, I gritted out, “Tell me what I am.”

“You’re a lamia,” he said.

“That’s a snake shifter?” I thought I had dealt with all of my abandonment issues in my training to become a counselor—in order to gain my license, I had to go through hours and hours of therapy myself, both to learn the techniques and so my professors and mentors could be sure I wasn’t too messed up myself to work with others.

I had never tried to hide the fact that I had been adopted as a child—just that the parents who abandoned me had been able to turn into snakes. That kind of claim can get you banned from working with anyone at all, at least as a professional counselor.

Despite the hours of counseling, though, I apparently still had deep reserves of abandonment issues, because instead of asking Kade, “What else do you know?” I burst into tears.

Some part of me expected Kade to move into his professional persona—don’t pediatricians have to deal with weepy patients on a fairly regular basis?—but his ability to deal with sobbing weresnakes apparently matched mine to stay as cool and calm as I had intended during this encounter. He stared at me, open-mouthed, then managed to pat me on the shoulder.

It took a few moments, but I finally pulled myself together enough to speak again. “Tell me everything.”

Kade nodded, and drew in a deep breath.

“Like I said, you’re a lamia, and traditionally, it would be my job to kill you.”

“You’ve said that already,” I noted.

“Yeah, but it seemed like a good idea to go back to the beginning.” A slight smile quirked up the corner of Kade’s mouth. “I wasn’t entirely sure you’d heard all of that last bit.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “If it’s your job to kill me, then what are you?”

“I’m a ...” Kade paused, chewing on his bottom lip a bit, then shook his head. “Might as well say it. I’m a mongoose shifter.”

“A what?” My tone almost conveyed the disbelief I felt.

He held his hands up in front of him as if shielding himself from my potential ridicule. “I know. It sounds stupid. But if you think about it, it’s no stranger than a snake shifter.”

Suddenly, I flashed back on Jason saying we would have to “ferret out the information,” and it made me want to giggle.
Or mongoose out the rest, anyway.

I considered the possibilities for a moment. “So if there are were-snakes and ...” I paused, shaking my head. “And were-mongooses ... mongeese? Anyway, if you and I exist, then ...”

“Then what other types of shifters are there?” Kade crooked one eyebrow up at me, and I nodded rapidly, just in case the expression meant he was about to turn the potential for ridicule around on me. He shrugged. “Just about any kind you can think of, probably. I don’t know all of them, though we get our fair share through here.”

I hazarded a guess. “Werewolves?”

“Oh, yeah. Probably more of them than anything else, though not as many here as in other parts of the country, I understand.” He began ticking them off on his fingers. “And the other major predators—various big cats, like lions and tigers.”

I couldn’t stop myself. “And bears?”

He blew out a sigh, but he grinned as he said, “Yes. And bears. But others, too—mostly mammals, like raccoons and badgers. More rabbits than you’ll ever realize. They’re good at hiding.”

I could tell he was skirting around something that was going to be unpleasant, so I prodded him. “And non-mammals?”

“Fewer of them—I suspect it’s from a basic incompatibility of human and non-mammalian systems, though I’m not certain.”

Letting myself get sidetracked for a moment, I asked, “Aren’t you their doctor? Shouldn’t you know things like that?”

“Probably. But until recently, the elders just called it magic and left it at that. There was no such thing as shifter science until the last few decades.” His lips twisted wryly. “And the truce among the shifter species is even more recent than that—so even if we wanted to study the shifter mechanism, we could only study our own kind.” He paused. “Or the bodies of the enemies we killed.”

“Like lamia?” I asked.

“Exactly.” He leaned over and brushed his fingertip against the tops of my fingers. At some point during the conversation, I had interlaced them tightly without noticing. Now a shiver ran up my arm and down my spine at his touch.

I couldn’t tell if he was trying to distract me or comfort me. Or maybe something else altogether.

More to the point, I couldn’t tell what I wanted him to do.

I chose to ignore it. “So if there’s some huge shapeshifter truce, why would everyone still want you to kill me?”

“Because,” he said, “the lamia were the last of the shifters to hold out on the truce. Until a little over twenty years ago, they were still hunting down and killing other shapeshifters.” He quit stroking my hand and leaned back in the chair. “It’s as true in the shifter world as it is in the human world.”

I nodded. “Snakes are feared and misunderstood. That’s what my father always says, anyway.” At Kade’s look of surprise, I corrected myself. “My adoptive father.”

“Well,” Kade said, “they’re feared, anyway.”

I rubbed my hands across my eyes. “None of this tells me anything about what you’re doing here, right now, in my office.”

The grin that had been playing around his lips since he’d entered the room finally dropped off his face. “Seriously, I’m here to help figure out how to protect those kids.”

I stared at him for a long, silent moment. “Okay,” I finally said, matching his own serious tone. “If you mean it, then let’s get started.”

An hour and half later, I was ready to pull my hair out.

It had taken us at least thirty minutes of that time to figure out how to cross-reference the materials that I wasn’t allowed to look at with the CAP-C files. After far too much negotiating, we had finally arranged a system: I read off names, he checked them against his list, and we either moved on or flagged the file for a more detailed examination later. The whole comedy-of-errors process wasn’t helped by the fact that being trapped in a room with Dr. Mongoose only heightened my awareness of him. Combined with the memory of the kiss the night before, it was a wonder I didn’t crawl out of my own skin.

Literally.

Every time he leaned over to take a file from me, his spicy scent washed across me on a wave of body heat that sent chills racing across me, bringing my nipples to attention and tightening the muscles of my back until I wanted to coil around him, writhing closer and closer to the core of that warmth.

It wasn’t merely sexual attraction. I had felt that before. While lust was obviously a component of this strange compulsion to touch him, there was more to it. Something primal, and dangerous.

From the way the golden highlights in his eyes sparked whenever our gazes met, he felt it, too.

But neither of us mentioned it.

I didn’t bring up any of my questions about shifters, either. Hoping to keep this meeting more professional than the last time we had been shut in a room together, I left the file-room door open so that anyone walking down the hall could see us. Although it kept the sexual tension down to a dark simmer, it kept me from quizzing him, as well.

Worse, we hadn’t found anything useful yet. No CAP-C clients who were also Kade’s patients. No siblings, either.

Granted, we were only partway through the client list. But it had been tedious, frustrating work.

So when Scott stuck his head in through the door a little before noon, I was pathetically grateful for the reprieve. “Ready for lunch?” the DA’s investigator asked me.

“God, yes.” I stood up from my chair and stretched my back.

Snagging my purse from the back of my chair, I turned to Kade. “I’ll meet you back here around 1:30, okay?” Without waiting for an answer, I tucked my arm in Scott’s and tugged him down the hall toward the lobby.

I’d known Scott Carson for about a year. He joined the DA’s office six months after I started working for the CAP-C, and we’d been paired on a few cases. What had started out as a necessity—grabbing something to eat on the way to interview a child—had turned into a ritual. We had lunch together whenever he was in the building, at least once a week.

He was interested in something more, I suspected. I could smell it on him—the hint of desire and anxiety that human men exuded as they geared up to ask me out. The fact that he hadn’t worked around to it yet was a bit of a surprise.

I couldn’t decide if I was disappointed, or glad. Something about him bothered me, though I’d never been able to pin down exactly what it was.

Maybe it was just that human relationships were a problem for me.

Not the basics. I had companions, friends, even lovers.

But inevitably, I kept some distance in those relationships. I had yet to meet anyone I trusted enough to tell my shapeshifter secret.

And even if I wanted to share that information at some point, it led to a whole host of other concerns. I didn’t even know, for example, if I could have children with a human male.

Or if I should, even if it were possible.

Yet another reason to find a way to corner Kade Nevala and force him to answer my questions.

For now, though, I would simply enjoy Scott’s company.

As we reached the building entrance, a wave of hostility thudded against my back and I stumbled. Scott, still holding my arm, caught me up against him. “You okay?” Nothing but concern showed in his voice, but as I leaned against him, I licked my lips, and I could taste his physical reaction in the air around me. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Kade standing at the end of the hallway, arms crossed as he scowled at me. Again I was struck by his sheer physical presence. Scott was physically bigger, but everything about Kade radiated power.

Right now, he also oozed anger—the remains of that animosity that had hit me with such force moments before.

“I’m fine,” I muttered, but I threw a quelling look at Kade.

It did nothing to quash his antagonism, if the continuing waves of heated spice pouring off of him were anything to go on.

As if kissing me once—against my will—gave him any right to be angry when I went to lunch with someone else.

We were seriously going to have to have a talk about that alpha-male bullshit. Alpha-mongoose.

Whatever the hell it was.

In any case, I planned to ignore it for the moment, despite the surge of rage that followed me out the door.

* * *

Lunch reminded me why I enjoyed Scott’s company so much. His straightforward conversation and easy laugh soothed me—and after a morning spent in the company of The Brooding Mongoose, I needed that.

“So what’s up with Nevala?” Scott asked as we strolled into our favorite Mexican restaurant in downtown Fort Worth. “He seemed fine this morning, but when we left, I sensed some tension.”

Wow. If Scott could feel it, then I knew it was rough. I was used to being attuned to human emotions, sometimes even more than the individuals experiencing them.

My ability to sense what the people around me were feeling made me a better counselor in some ways.

In other ways, it was a problem. My snake half sometimes prompted me to strike out when I sensed weakness.

It was a trait my parents had worked with me to overcome, and part of why Dad had steered me toward working with children.

“I’m not sure,” I hedged. “Have you worked with him before?”

Scott shook his head. “I think he’s pretty new to the area. Not that we work with Kindred Hospital much, anyway.”

“Not our clientele,” I agreed. In oh, so many ways. Kindred had a reputation of catering to wealthier patients. And apparently, to shiftier patients, as well. Most of CAP-C’s clients were from families who either couldn’t afford private counseling, or who needed short-term help while they arranged for something more permanent. Most of the cases that involved trips to hospitals—rape, physical abuse—came to us either through Brinks’ Children’s or the local emergency rooms.

“What do you think of these cases?” I asked once we were seated and the waitress had taken our orders.

“Off the record?” Scott grabbed a tortilla chip and dunked it in his tiny salsa cup. Crunching into it, he stared off into the distance, his green eyes narrowed. I waited, used to his thinking process. “I think they’re connected, either through Kindred or CAP-C.”

“And?” I dumped sugar into my iced tea, then dropped the lemon wedge from the edge of the glass into Scott’s drink. He nodded his thanks.

“We’ll figure it out, eventually. Whatever the connection, it’s not obvious. There’s no other commonality, not in the method of killing or in the choice of victims. Hell, it wasn’t even one case until Nevala brought it to us two days ago.”

I froze. “Two days ago? Kade has known for two days that he was going to be working with us?”

“Well, one day. Jason called him yesterday afternoon.”

Kade had known I worked for the CAP-C. Why the hell hadn’t he said anything?

The waitress brought our plates, and Scott smiled at her. She flushed in pleasure, and I was reminded of how attractive Scott really was, with his sandy blond hair and his green eyes.

I was suddenly tempted to ask him out myself, but I couldn’t tell if the urge came from an actual desire to go on a date with him, or some competitive desire to claim him before the waitress could.

Or maybe to show Kade Nevala that his anger didn’t have any impact on me.

I tamped down the impulse.

Better review that one before acting on it.

I could almost hear Dad’s voice.
Control, Lindi. Remember, you’re in charge of you.

Anyway, for all that I enjoyed Scott’s company, something had always kept me from asking him out on a real date before.

I should probably pay attention to that instinct.

Control.

I was going to have a full afternoon, and who knew how long after, to practice maintaining control around Dr. Kade Nevala.

Might as well start now.