Promises to Keep

chapter 6


HE REACHED SINGLEEARTH shortly after dawn, while the winter sky still had that gray-and-purple tone, as if it weren’t sure if it wanted to stay dark, get bright, or catch on fire.

After pulling up to the main entrance, Jay left his car running while he went inside to get help. The shapeshifter’s body temperature had returned to normal during the trip, but he still hadn’t been able to wake her, which meant this was a case for doctors and witches trained in healing, instead of a hunter with a rudimentary knowledge of magical and mundane first aid.

“Can I help you?” the receptionist asked as Jay looked around, hoping to find Caryn loitering conveniently nearby.

“I have a woman in my car out front,” he answered. “She’s a shapeshifter, she’s unconscious, and I can’t wake her.”

The receptionist pressed a button on her desk and said, “Medical needed at main entrance.” Two of SingleEarth’s EMTs appeared within moments. The receptionist echoed what Jay had just told her, looking at him only to ask, “What breed?”

“Not sure. You need a witch to look at her, though.”

“Bring her in,” the receptionist told the EMTs. To Jay, she added, “We have plenty of trained doctors on staff. If it looks like she needs magical care—”

“Where’s Caryn?” he interrupted. Jay had napped a couple hours at Xeke’s place, but he still needed real sleep, of the variety that he liked to regularly engage in for six to eight to twelve hours. He didn’t have patience for a bureaucratic runaround from a receptionist who normally dealt with things like shapeshifter obstetrics, minor human injuries and illnesses, and non-critical mystical mishaps.

Winter Village, her mind answered, as she said, “Ms. Smoke is not—”

“Never mind.” Though few shapeshifters and fewer witches celebrated Christmas, enough SingleEarth members did that Haven #2 had set up a “Winter Village” in the events hall.

Sure enough, Jay found Caryn there, arranging brightly wrapped presents around a half-dozen evergreen trees whose piney scent had filled the large room. While Caryn meticulously adjusted wrapping and ribbons, her mind raced through thoughts of schedules, dance lessons, and food. Something about a caterer and cake.

“Caryn?”

She turned with an expression that was half smile and half frown. “What’s up?” she asked.

“Medical needs you,” he said.

“They haven’t paged me.”

“Trust me.”

“Jay …” Caryn shook her head and bit back an explanation of why the triage process Jay was trying to circumvent existed. Caryn was the only witch regularly at this haven. If she were called for every skinned knee and headache, she would never have time to sleep or eat. “Fine,” she said. “What’s the issue?”

She followed him toward the medical wing as he explained.

“Was she with the others you called in earlier?” Caryn asked as she waved aside the triage nurse and started checking the shapeshifter’s vitals. Pulse was steady, though slow. Breathing even. Temperature slightly elevated for human norms but well within most shapeshifter norms.

“No. I went to a Christmas party and stayed with a friend after.” And Kendra’s house was … hmm. The name of the town was on the tip of his tongue. “Well, I found her in the woods, a bit ago.”

“Which woods?” Caryn asked.

Behind the apartment complex, which had been named … nope.

“I’ll have to get back to you on that,” he answered.

Caryn took a deep breath, mentally counting to ten, before she said, “Well, she’s in good hands now. Why don’t you go get some sleep? Your usual room is empty.”

Finally—permission to sleep! Jay didn’t need to be told twice. He picked up the key at the front desk, stretched out on the sun-streaked bed the moment he entered his room, and then let his mind settle into the shape of cat.

His body didn’t change, but mentally he was cat. A house cat, who lived only to laze about in the sun and be pampered. And one of the things cats liked most was to sleep long, long hours, which was why cat was one of Jay’s favorite things to be.

The Jay-cat dreamed of forests. Of pouncing on butterflies and stalking motes of dust as they drifted in the warm air. Bit by bit, though, he realized something bigger was hunting him.

He crouched low, trying to hide. He swiveled his head slowly, looking around, but couldn’t find the source of his unease.

Grass rustled like bones creaking back to life. The rocks themselves groaned in response, making his body ache and his skin twitch. He growled.

He woke grumpy, sore, and more tired than he had been before his nap. His sunbeam had left with the morning, his headache had returned, and he knew the mysterious shapeshifter from the woods was somehow responsible.

Jay had too much magic to mistake outside power for a mere dream. Something was trying to communicate with him, something powerful enough that even in cat form, his unconscious mind had instinctively wanted to hide.

Well, whatever it was had ruined his attempt to sleep, which as far as Jay was concerned was a hangable offense.

Hanging.

He still couldn’t get Brina out of his head. Could this dream have been a manifestation of her pain, or an impression from the mind of someone else he had encountered at Kendra’s? His dreamscapes often echoed lingering bits of the strongest minds he encountered.

No. Vampires didn’t rattle him like this. This was something more powerful, more alien.

His stomach rumbled. Still lost in a strange jumble of kitty and witch thoughts, he sought the kitchen.

To a cat, scents were more powerful than sights, and the scents in SingleEarth were always exciting. There were humans and witches and shapeshifters of every kind. Some SingleEarth havens were huge complexes where hundreds of individuals lived, but Haven #2 was small, just a few buildings. Residents mostly cooked for themselves.

People said hello as he opened the refrigerator, trying to figure out if there was something he could make quickly and easily.

Bacon … mmm, that had promise.

He tossed four strips into a frying pan and turned the knob on the stove, listening for the click-whump sound of the gas going on.

As he waited for the bacon to begin crackling, a nagging feeling at the back of his neck whispered to him, warning, There is something out there, something big. It’s creeping up behind you, and you’re making bacon?

Food is important, he thought, trying to reason with his own mind.

Survival is critical.

Okay. Fine. He would look in on the shapeshifter, see how she was doing, and maybe figure out the stupid mystery of the ominous lurking power. Maybe she was a hyena or lion or some other predator that his cat mind had sensed and blown out of proportion in his subconscious?

Jay lay his bacon on top of some napkins and carried it with him as he returned to the medical building. The strange shapeshifter was being examined by a human doctor whose mental patter gave him away as Caryn’s fiancé. Underneath his forethoughts, which were mostly concern for the still-unconscious woman, he had dance steps on the brain. What was it about dancing?

“Have you tried asking the serpiente?” Jay suggested.

The human jumped, spinning around. “What?”

Why did so many of his conversations begin with people asking, What?

“About dancing. You and Caryn are both so stressed about it. Why don’t you ask the serpiente? They’ve danced professionally for thousands of years.”

“Thanks, but we’re going for a more traditional—I mean, traditionally human—well, traditionally— We’re not going for serpiente style dancing, um …” He trailed off when he realized he didn’t know who he was talking to.

“I’m Jay Marinitch,” Jay provided. “We’ve met, but only once.” Jay wouldn’t have had the foggiest idea what this young doctor-in-training’s name was, either, if it weren’t for the convenient name tag reading Jeremy Francisco, Medical Assistant. “How is she?”

“Nervous enough to shatter,” the human answered with a shake of his head. “We’re supposed to go by my mother’s this afternoon—for Christmas, you know. It’s the first big family event Caryn’s come to, and—” He broke off, looking sheepish. “You meant the patient, didn’t you?”

Jay had meant the patient, yes, but now— “You don’t really think they’d hurt her, do you?”

“What? No, I … Wait. Jay. I remember you now,” he said, thinking, Caryn was right. He is always this way. “One of my uncles had a bad run-in with a shapeshifter psychopath a long time ago, and now most of my family is of the opinion that not-human equals bad. When I first told them I was in SingleEarth and marrying a witch, a lot of them talked big and bad. Some of the worst of that still goes through my mind when I’m worried, but I would never bring her anywhere I thought she would be in danger.”

“Physical danger isn’t the only kind,” Jay pointed out.

“Right. But, see, this holiday is my mother’s big effort to show her support before the wedding. If we don’t go, we might as well write off my whole family, and I’m not willing to do that as long as they’re halfway trying. I already told my mom flat out that if anyone gets nasty with Caryn, we’re leaving.”

Jay knew he was a little late to take on the role of big brother. Time to change the subject.

“So, how is the patient?” he asked.

Jeremy’s frustration with his parents blended seamlessly with his frustration with this patient. “Physically, we can’t find anything wrong with her. Even magically, Caryn says she is stable now. I was about to hit the library, to see if I can identify her breed or where she might have come from. Want to help?”

“No, thanks,” Jay said automatically. He could read just fine, but given a choice, he preferred not to. Books were just words to him, flat and static and frustratingly slow to reveal themselves.

“Okay. I’ll let you know if I learn anything,” Jeremy said. “Mer—um, have a good day.”

“Thanks. Merry Christmas,” Jay answered, since Jeremy apparently celebrated that holiday. Most of Jay’s kind didn’t, though some had picked up some neo-pagan leanings and had started claiming holidays celebrated by human witches in the last few decades.

Once Jeremy had left, taking his anxiety and wedding obsessions with him, it was easier for Jay to focus on the other mind in the room. If the problem wasn’t medical or magical, then it was probably psychological. That meant Jay was better equipped to deal with it than the doctors. It was silly that they hadn’t asked him yet.

Skin-to-skin contact made mental contact stronger. Jay reached out to take her hand.

Yes, the shapeshifter slept, but not in any normal or healthy way. In sleep, people’s minds still worked. Even when they didn’t dream—even if they were medically brain-dead—they let off sparks from unformed thoughts and neurological impulses. A telepath might hear nothing unless the person were dreaming, but Jay could pick up on the basic static that was life.

This woman’s mind was as silent as a corpse’s. Either there was absolutely nothing happening in her mind, in which case her body systems should have stopped, or else something very powerful was keeping Jay out.

Normally, he would have taken that as a challenge to which he must rise, but this time he hesitated. Back in the woods, this had gone badly, and he couldn’t help but remember the presence that had stalked him in his dreams. Did he want to seek this woman’s mind?