Page 39

Elliot Crane

Come see me today?

Seth Mays

If the doctor clears me to drive.

Hart busy?

Apparently when a local cop tries to eat your face, there is a lot of paperwork.

Imagine that.

When’s your doctor’s appointment?

As soon as they call me back.

I’m in the waiting room.

It was another twenty minutes before someone came in to check my knee, and fifteen after that I had a shiny—literally—new brace that actually let me bend my leg enough that I was given clearance to drive, especially because it was my left knee.

Not that I actually had a car.

Humbolt was helping me get the paperwork I needed from the Sheriff’s Department in order to file a claim on the FJ Cruiser as a total loss, which—in theory, anyway—would cover a replacement. Or part of one, anyway.

Humbolt had also joined forces with Gwen Walsh, Noah’s lawyer, to file a suit over the criminal destruction of property perpetrated by Deputy Mosby, who was currently under arrest and had been taken by Hart and Raj to the FBI’s Charlottesville offices.

Walsh was also working on a motion to dismiss the charges against Noah based on police corruption of evidence and general incompetence. I really hoped it worked.

Hart had given me his keys when he’d left with Raj that morning, assuming I would be allowed to drive his precious Charger, with a dire warning that if his car got set on fire on the side of a highway, he was going to be really, really annoyed.

I used it to drive out to the house after texting Elliot that I was on my way.

I was looking forward to seeing him again.

To updating him with all the satisfying details about Mosby’s ill-fated attempt to shift and attack…

I wasn’t actually sure who he was trying to attack.

Me? Cabell? Hart? About the only thing that had been clear is that he wasn’t going after Raj, which meant he wasn’t entirely without brain cells.

I was thinking about Elliot, about what I wanted to say to him, the fact that I wanted to kiss him—well, I wanted to do more than kiss him, but I was going to settle for that—and failed to notice that there were three people on the porch until I’d levered myself out of the driver’s seat with my crutches.

None of them were Elliot—or the Hills.

I narrowed my eyes at them, trying to remember faces and names from sixteen years ago.

There was one older man, my parents’ age, but I didn’t recognize him as an Elder.

The other two were younger, the woman maybe Elliot’s age or a little older, the other man…

Simon Ellis. He was a year older than Noah and me.

We’d been in school together, and I remembered that Simon had struggled with math—the basics, not calculus.

We’d barely even learned algebra in the Community school.

He’d been better at memorizing doctrine and divine law. Enthusiastically better.

This did not make me feel better about the fact that they were clearly waiting on my porch for someone—presumably me—to show up.

I made my way over to the stairs, then looked up.

Now that I’d identified Simon, I recognized his father, Peter Ellis. I’d also worked out who the woman was—Martha Pannell. She’d still been in school when Noah and I were little, eight, maybe nine years older than we were. She looked older than that.

It was Peter Ellis who stepped forward. “Seth Mays?”

“What do you want, Mr. Ellis?” I replied, trying very hard to keep my voice even. I hadn’t missed the flare of Simon’s nostrils, the slight nod at his father. Or the fact that Simon was staying a few paces away and upwind.

I could still smell him, anyway. Faint, but it was there.

“Have you come back to us, Seth?” Peter Ellis asked me, and there was something in his voice that might have been hope, although I wasn’t sure what for. It was pretty clear to me that the Elders were firmly convinced that I deserved death.

“There’s nothing for me here,” I answered. Nothing but death . And that wasn’t what I was looking for.

“You have been chosen by God,” Peter Ellis said, sounding awed. “ Chosen . You must accept the gift for what it is. You must become worthy of it.”

I met his gaze squarely, his grey eyes wide and unfocused with religious zeal.

“I am worthy of it,” I answered him, and I was surprised to find that not only did I sound confident, but I actually felt it.

I’d been distracted from my hatred of being a shifter by loving Elliot, and, somewhere in there, I’d actually started liking it.

I pulled myself up to my full height, meeting Peter Ellis’s gaze squarely.

“Now get off my property.”

All three of them stared at me.

“This—this is Bartholomew’s property,” Simon argued.

I wanted to cross my arms over my chest, but given that I had crutches under them, that wasn’t going to happen. I settled for a glare. “Then he can come and claim it.”

I don’t know where the aggression came from. Anger, maybe, at the fact that Noah was still in prison and that my father— my own fucking father —had tried to have me killed and nearly killed the love of my life while letting his other son rot in jail for what he’d done.

And Simon was suggesting that this land belonged to him.

Fuck him.

And fuck Simon.

And Peter, too, for that matter.

And the Elders.

The whole damn Community.

Fuck all of them.

I snarled at the three figures on the porch, baring teeth that I knew were too big for the mouth they were in. I was getting much, much better at control. “Get. Off. My. Property.”

Martha grabbed Peter’s arm, her fingers tight on the translucent white of his sweaty button-down shirt. “Come, husband. He’s not willing to listen to God’s truth.”

Husband . Peter Ellis was easily twenty years her senior. Martha was much closer in age to Simon and I than she was to Peter. I didn’t bother keeping the disapproval off my face, moving back out of the way to allow them to walk down the stairs and past me down the gravel drive.

I kept my eyes on them as they rounded the bend, and I kept staring after them long after their forms had disappeared.

I smelled him first, then heard the telltale shuffle of badger paws on gravel accompanied by the soft grunting that Elliot always made when moving at speed in badger form.

“You didn’t let them see you, did you?”

A grunt—the kind I knew meant assent.

I sighed. “Did you hear the whole thing?” I asked him.

Another grunt. The same kind.

“You think I should have bitten them, don’t you?”

Another grunt, this time followed by the funny chuffling sound that I knew was Elliot’s badger-laugh. Despite my anger, it made my lips twitch.

I sighed, then slowly climbed the stairs to the porch and unlocked the door, holding it open so that Elliot could precede me inside, his claws clacking on the floor, leaving behind muddy smudges.

Part of me felt compelled to clean up after him, but the rest of me recognized that nobody actually cared about the floors of the house and that I was still on crutches, so mopping was probably not the best use of my time.

I might be allowed to drive, but I wasn’t yet allowed off the crutches, which I was supposed to keep using for at least another nine days.

I was supposed to make a follow-up appointment at that point, too—except I wasn’t sure what state I was going to be in, so I didn’t want to make one with my usual doctor, since they liked to charge me when I missed them, which happened all too often in my line of work.

I really didn’t want to still be in Virginia in nine days.

But, as had become abundantly clear, what I wanted clearly had very little impact on what ended up happening to me.

I made my way to the bathroom, then pulled a set of clothes out of Elliot’s backpack—which I’d brought with me—to set on the counter. Elliot had left the door open while he showered off the mud.

“That you, baby?”

“Were you expecting someone else?” I asked him.

“Always good to ask,” came the reply. “Just in case I was about to suggest to Helen or Ray or Val that they come in and join me.”

I snorted. “Ray might take you up on that.”

Elliot laughed. “He’s not really my type.”

“What, too old?”

“Just a little.” The water shut off, and he pushed the curtain open, not bothering to cover himself as he reached for a towel. “I like them a bit younger.”

I snorted again. “Planning on trading me in for a newer model?” I teased. I was joking, but there was a tiny part of me that did worry that he might get tired of me, regardless of age.

But Elliot frowned at me. “Why is it that you can’t believe that I love you?” he asked me, his voice serious and a little hurt as he looked up from drying his face with the towel.

“I do,” I protested.

“Then why ask me that?” he wanted to know, stepping out of the shower and wrapping the towel around his waist.

“I was kidding,” I protested.

He grunted, then ran his fingers through his hair. I pulled his brush out of the backpack and handed it to him. “You were, and you weren’t,” he replied, starting to run the brush through the long black hair with its white streak.

I sighed. I didn’t want to fight with him. I also really didn’t want to admit that he was right.

He paused in his brushing, meeting my gaze through his reflection in the mirror. “Seth, I’m not going to get tired of you.”

I looked away from the sharpness of his gaze in the mirror, studying one of my own hands, the nails split and uneven from neglect. “I didn’t say that.”

“Baby,” he said softly, setting down the brush and coming over to put both warm, damp hands on my waist. “You didn’t have to.” He stood on his toes to press a kiss to my cheek. “But I promise you that every day I get less and less tired of living with you.”

I frowned down at him. “That makes no sense.”

“Are you sick of me?” he asked.

“Of course not!”

“Then why would I be sick of you?” I stared at him.

“You’re the one who didn’t even want a relationship to begin with,” I pointed out.