Caged, page 12
“Get around him?” I asked.
“Sort of. It’s not like Liam had a choice about knowing what she was up to. Enhanced senses can be a gift and a curse when you can smell someone’s emotions, as well as where they’ve been and who they’ve been with. But as a therapist, Bren had special permission to use the alum.”
“Alum?” I echoed.
Blake hesitated, but just for a second. “Alum interferes with our senses. It makes it harder to tell if someone’s lying, and it masks the body’s usual tells as far as emotions go.”
“So it’s emotional deodorant for werewolves,” Peasblossom offered.
Blake rolled his eyes as he opened the front door to the apartment complex. “Sure. Anyway, Bren was only supposed to use it during therapy sessions, but I think she must have used it to hide her reaction to some of the single wolves.” He gritted his teeth. “And she definitely used it to hide the fact she was having sex with St. John.”
We got into his SUV, and I settled into the backseat, leaving the front passenger seat to Sonar. Sonar accepted this without hesitation, but Blake gave me a weird look.
“What?” I asked, suddenly unsure.
“Nothing.”
I frowned as he fastened his seatbelt and slid the key into the ignition. “What?” I asked again.
He shrugged. “You automatically let Sonar sit up front.”
“She’s not actually a dog,” I said, feeling odd that I was reminding a werewolf that another werewolf was a person, not just an animal.
Blake rolled his eyes. “I know.”
“And even if she was a regular dog, she’s still your partner. Which would mean this is her vehicle too.” I flopped back in my seat. “It would have been rude to assume she’d sit in the back.”
Blake started the car and pulled out of the parking lot.
“But you know that would have been rude,” I continued thoughtfully. I narrowed my eyes. “Which means you expected me to be rude.”
“I expected you to put yourself above a dog in the hierarchy. And yes,” he added before I could speak. “I know she’s not a dog. But that’s how most non-shifters treat her.”
I nodded. That made sense. I looked from Blake to Sonar and back. “I’ve never seen her in human form. Does she spend most of her time like this?”
“When she’s on duty, yeah.”
“Do you see much of her in human form?”
Blake tensed, then immediately relaxed. “She’s pack, of course I see her outside work.”
Peasblossom paused in the middle of hauling a honey packet out of the pouch, squinting at Blake before looking up at me. She let go of the honey and climbed up my shirt, heaving herself onto my shoulder before grabbing each side of my ear and leaning in to breathe on my eardrum.
“I think he sees a lot of her human form.”
I coughed, trying to cover the pixie’s voice. Blood and bone, when was she going to learn they could hear her no matter how quietly she was talking?
Peasblossom tugged on my ear. “I mean, a lot—”
“Yes, I understand what you mean,” I hissed.
Blake turned on the radio. If the volume was anything to go by, he was suggesting we’d had enough conversation. I didn’t have a shifter’s enhanced senses, but his ears had turned several shades redder, and I had a good idea what that meant. What I didn’t understand was, why would a grown man be embarrassed about having a romantic relationship with his partner? I suppose a workplace relationship would be frowned on, but his boss was a shifter. Liam had to know about the relationship. So why be nervous about it?
I turned that over in my mind, mostly to distract myself from sad thoughts about Brenna and the stolen poison. Then we arrived at New Moon, and there was no putting it off any longer.
One look at Sam the check-in clerk told me that things were not going well. Their eyes were wide, and they shared a knowing look with Blake as he passed by, drawing a quiet string of swear words from Blake. Sonar tensed too, padding along beside Blake to keep pace as he broke into a run.
Neither of us bothered to wait for the elevator, instead opting for the stairs. As soon as we hit the second floor, I heard it. Liam’s voice.
Shouting.
The second floor of New Moon was shaped like a giant H, with each of the sides forming a wing of hotel-style rooms for individual members, and the counselors’ offices set in a hallway perpendicular to the horizontal bar of the H. Crowds of shifters had formed at the entry to each wing, and Blake pointed at one group, then the other.
“Go back to your rooms. Everything is under control.”
A murmur of voices followed the groups as they dispersed, but Blake didn’t waste time chasing them back to their rooms. We both headed toward the sound of Liam’s voice, following it to the office Ruth shared with Brenna.
“No one was hiding anything from you.” Ruth’s voice was firm and even, a very reasonable tone. “You know we can’t discuss anything that was talked about exclusively in therapy.”
Blake stopped in the doorway, abruptly enough that I bumped into him. He didn’t look back at me, but he did step aside enough for me to see into the room.
Ruth sat behind her desk, her palms pressed against the surface. Green eyes fixed on Liam, projecting honesty and confidence, while she remained seated to keep her head lower than his. Not that standing up would have changed that, but I knew protocol when I saw it. There was a set of keys on her desk next to her hand. I assumed one of them was the key that would open St. John’s room.
“Where is St. John?” Liam snarled.
“I told you, I don’t know,” Ruth said. “I told him to hide. He’s somewhere in the building, but I don’t know where.”
My eyebrows buried themselves in my hairline. Blood and bone. Ruth was braver than I’d given her credit for.
Liam took a step closer to the desk, hands flexing for all the world as if he intended to flip it over and crush the woman sitting behind it. If I’d been Ruth, I’d have moved.
She didn’t.
“How dare you hide this from me?” Liam seethed. “She’s my sister. And don’t say patient confidentiality.”
“Why, because you don’t want to hear it?” Ruth said. “We agreed on this from the beginning. If we’re going to expect the people entrusted to our care to trust us, then they need to believe they can be open with me. They can’t do that if they’re afraid I’ll run and tell the alpha when they’ve been naughty.”
“She’s my sister!” Liam bellowed.
“That doesn’t make her love life any of your business,” Ruth shot back.
“There was wolfsbane in her apartment! He stole wolfsbane, and he used her to hide it.”
“You don’t know that,” Ruth said quietly. “You don’t know it was St. John—”
“You think it was Brenna?” Liam scoffed. “You think she stole May’s medication? Gave it to Kevin? Used it to kill Paul?”
“You don’t know that those two things are connected,” Ruth argued. “Kevin overdosed, he took the poison willingly. And we don’t know that it was May’s medication he took, he could have convinced one of his friends to buy aconite at any drugstore. He was new, we still don’t know who all his associates were—we couldn’t possibly know them, he was living on the street for two months before he was bitten. We need to wait for Kylie’s analysis before we draw any conclusions.”
Liam grabbed his shirt sleeve and jerked it up another inch, first one then the other. “She’s been missing for two weeks. Two weeks. For all we know, she’s been a prisoner all this time, and you had information that might have been relevant, and you kept it from me!”
“I don’t know anything about Paul or May being involved with Brenna, and I have no reason to believe her relationship with St. John has anything to do with her disappearance,” Ruth insisted. “If anything, her relationship might have explained why she ran away. Maybe she found the pills and confronted St. John. If they had a fight, that would explain why she needed time to herself.”
“We agreed that if someone told you something in therapy that put their life at risk, you would tell me.” Liam’s voice had gotten quieter, and somehow that was much, much scarier than when he yelled. “You should have told me.”
Ruth must have sensed the change in him too. She dropped her eyes to the desk’s surface, clasped her hands in front of her, and let her shoulders fall. I didn’t move, didn’t even breathe as she tilted her head to the side, silently baring her neck as Liam fumed in front of her.
“A little late for a submissive pose,” Peasblossom muttered.
I didn’t bother to shush her, it didn’t matter.
Liam took a step toward Ruth.
“It wasn’t her,” Kristine said quietly.
I jumped. I hadn’t even seen her in the corner. The small blonde had all but blended into the background, sitting on the couch on the other side of the room. She stood and edged closer to Liam, looking like she wanted to be anywhere other than here.
Liam whirled. “What?”
“Brenna came to me.” Her voice came out hoarse, and she had to clear her throat before she could continue. “After she found the pills. Ruth is right. She confronted St. John.”
My heart fell. “St. John gave the pills to Kevin, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” Kristine whispered.
Anger warred for control of Liam’s face, mixed with a struggle to stay calm long enough to get the information he wanted. When he finally managed to speak, it was Ruth he addressed. “You didn’t know.”
Ruth didn’t look up. “No.”
Liam turned to Kristine. “You knew St. John gave Kevin the wolfsbane that killed him.”
“Yes,” she said her voice so tiny I almost didn’t hear her. “But it was too late to do anything about it. St. John felt awful. He blamed himself for Kevin’s death.”
“Because it was his fault,” Liam snapped.
“No,” Ruth broke in. “No, Kevin’s death was Kevin’s fault. He was an addict, Liam, and he was desperate to get high. He would have found a way. You need to understand how convincing an addict can be. He manipulated St. John.”
Liam didn’t look at her. His full attention still rested on Kristine. “Did she also mention that she was building a new pack?”
Kristine tried twice before she could meet his eyes. “I can’t tell you what she said. But,” she rushed to add, “if she was starting a new pack, she wasn’t breaking any rules. As long as she didn’t approach any members of your pack, only those wolves who hadn’t chosen a permanent alliance yet, then there’s nothing wrong with what she did. Allegedly,” she added.
Liam looked back at Ruth who had raised her head, her eyes wide and lips parted. “You didn’t know that either.”
Ruth shook her head, unblinking. “She wouldn’t have told me. I couldn’t have said anything, but I would have stopped her.”
“What’s the problem?” Kristine asked, her voice tight with frustration. “So what if she wanted a new pack, her own pack?”
“She lost a patient, Kristine,” Liam snapped. “Someone who relied on her, someone she was responsible for. Someone she talked about personal things with, someone vulnerable. And now we find out she bit someone. She turned someone.”
Kristine’s brow furrowed. “I don’t understand.”
Shock made my knees weak as I realized what Liam was getting at, and I put a hand on the wall for support. “You think she… You think she was making her own pack…from humans.”
Chapter 12
Ruth’s lips parted, and she rose out of her seat in slow motion, her gaze locked on Liam. “It makes sense. There are case histories of female shifters who lose a child suffering from a type of psychosis, a need to displace those maternal instincts somewhere else. The new pack replaces the child they lost. The same logic could hold true for a patient-therapist relationship. Especially… Especially if the therapist were new.”
Kristine’s face had gone white. “I didn’t know. I’ve never heard of that. I didn’t realize…”
Ruth shook her head, waving a hand at Liam, then at the room in general. “Wait. Wait. Let’s not get overexcited. Yes, these things can happen, but even in those cases when a mourning shifter has made their own pack, they don’t undergo a complete personality change.”
She came around the desk to stand in front of Liam—which made her a braver woman than me. Liam’s aura writhed like a nest of fire salamanders, and I wasn’t sure I could get closer if I wanted to.
“Brenna wouldn’t have turned Paul against his will,” Ruth said calmly. “And she wouldn’t have left him there if she did. In fact,” she added, jabbing a finger at Kristine, “that would contradict the psychosis theory. If she had turned Paul out of some need to replace the patient she lost, she would have taken him with her, cared for him and made sure he was all right. She certainly wouldn’t have left him alone with Varca.”
Hope flared in Liam’s eyes, and his shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch. I wanted him to calm down, it was in the best interest of everyone involved. But…
“What if she bit him before today?” I asked quietly. “As I understand it, there’s variation in how long it takes someone who’s been bitten to turn. Some don’t turn until the next full moon, some change right away. And I’m assuming Brenna hasn’t done this before, so what if she didn’t realize it would take him so long to turn?”
And just like that, Liam was ready to explode again. I forced myself to keep talking. It had to be said, had to be put out there.
“She could have let him find her, let him think she was injured. Paul was an animal lover, he wouldn’t have left her lying there. Maybe that’s why traces of her were found in his SUV. She bit him, ran off. Later he gets an unrelated call from Varca, he goes to talk to him, changes, attacks Varca. Brenna finds out, maybe because she’s watching him. She tries to stop him, but she’s too late. If she took her own car, her scent would be in the trail we found from the driveway to the room.”
“Oh, crap,” Kristine whispered.
“What?” Liam barked, taking a long step toward the small blonde.
Kristine winced. “She over-empathized with Stephen. From the beginning. I was afraid of that, but I didn’t say anything because I agreed with Ruth that Stephen might be more willing to open up to Brenna. Because she was the one who took Emma in when she was first changed. But I think it worked for him and against her.”
“It wouldn’t be hard for her to over-empathize with him,” I agreed, my mind spinning. “He’s strong, he’s passionate, and he’s in love. He doesn’t come off as a bad guy, he comes off like a tragic hero.”
“A dream case for someone just finding her path in psychology,” Peasblossom added.
Ruth closed her eyes, then forced them open. “Stephen’s behavior has changed in the past few weeks. He’s been more shrewd, more…tactical. He spent a lot of time with Brenna, not just in therapy. Brenna was friends with him and Emma. If he sensed her pain, he might have taken advantage of her vulnerability to convince her to help him build a pack.”
Disgust twisted her features. “I should have seen this coming. I’m not saying I doubt Stephen’s feelings for Emma, but he always played them up when Brenna was around. He’d go on and on about how much he regretted he couldn’t be there for her after he changed her. How he wished he hadn’t made Liam so angry that he saw fit to tear them apart.”
“He was always so careful not to say anything bad about you, Liam,” Kristine added. “Nothing direct. He just kept bringing up situations that showed you in a…less than flattering light.”
“And if he spoke like that in casual meetings, I can only imagine what he said during therapy,” Ruth said grimly.
Liam turned his laser-focused stare on Kristine. “You were his therapist before Brenna took over, and you’ve been seeing him since she disappeared.”
“I can’t discuss anything he said in therapy.” Kristine’s voice was firm, but she looked miserable.
For a moment, Liam looked like he’d grab her and shake the information he wanted out of her. Every muscle in his body vibrated with tension, and the veins in his temples bulged. Bit by bit, he pulled himself together, visibly fighting the urge to yell, or possibly break something. Or someone.
“I need to know more about Stephen’s plans,” he said finally, his voice strained. He turned to the door. “I need to talk to Emma.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Kristine asked hesitantly.
Liam whirled back to her and she jumped.
“Brenna was assigned to Emma when she first changed, and Emma is Stephen’s lover,” Liam said. “She’s in the best position to know what’s going on with both of them.”
“True,” Kristine hedged, the word little more than a squeak. “But she also… Well, she…” She looked at Ruth, desperation bright in her eyes.
“She doesn’t like you,” Ruth said flatly. “And she’s not terribly fond of me.”
I sighed. “I don’t think she’d care for me either, since I’m the one who delivered and activated Stephen’s collar.”
“Let Kristine go,” Ruth suggested. “Emma will talk to her.” Ruth turned to the psychiatrist. “We need to know about Stephen’s plans for the new pack. Who have they talked to, and what part did Brenna play?”
Kristine shifted uneasily. “I’ll try.”
Liam’s eyes narrowed. “And make sure she understands it’s not a therapy session. The information will be useless if you refuse to tell us later.”
Kristine’s cheeks turned pink, but I couldn’t tell if it was embarrassment or anger. “Okay.”
“Bring her to the conference room.” He grabbed Ruth’s keys off her desk and turned to the door. “I’m going to find St. John.”
Ruth, Kristine, and I all froze, but none of us had a chance to say anything before Liam was out the door. Ruth and I hurried after him. The female shifter managed to make her stride look purposeful and strong, whereas I had to rush more to keep up. There was no dignity in the journey, but I did the best I could.
