Page 18 of Witchbane
How word had gotten out about my episode at the bakery, I wasn’t sure, but my mother showed up shortly after 10:00 a.m. insisting I go to the doctor. She was demanding enough that I agreed, but delivered a glare to everyone as we passed. Someone had betrayed me, and that pissed me off.
It was probably Carl, even though I hadn’t seen him all day.
The final straw was waking up on the floor of Liam’s office, teetering on the edge of a hole in dimensions. His desk was gone, half the carpet gone, and I’d woken gasping, terrified, and about to fall in. Liam must have sensed the trouble because he’d opened the door to his office and grabbed a hold of my arm, yanking me away from the swirling darkness.
It hadn’t looked like Underhill, but I knew I hadn’t seen all of Underhill. Not by a long shot.
The portal vanished, leaving part of his room swallowed up and empty, walls bare, carpet cut in half. Everything else looked untouched. No structural damage from what I could tell, but who knew what the missing desk contained. I clung to Liam in terror and he said comforting things I couldn’t really make out.
Then the tiny demon in mother shoes had shown up.
My mother tried to pull me out the door without Liam. I insisted on waiting. Last time I’d been in the hospital the fae had tried to kidnap me. They had wanted to marry me off to some fae keeper. Then I’d done this whole dumb reveal to the world thing that had only barely been covered up by some clever media spin. Bad things happened when Liam wasn’t there to ground me. I admit a lot of that was my fault as I tended to be a bit irrational all by myself. So I wasn’t going anywhere without Liam. It was like leaving the house without common sense; plain stupid, no matter which way you looked at it.
When Liam appeared, free of his apron and holding out a hand to me, I couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. Yeah, it was crazy to need him this much, to find so much comfort in his presence, but I planned to enjoy all of that as long as it lasted.
He gripped my hand, squeezing it lightly as we walked to the SUV. He’d already tried to get my mother to stay behind. Wasn’t working. She glared holes in his back as he walked away from her and I didn’t get it. Couldn’t she see we were a thing? Why wasn’t that enough?
Once we were in the SUV, I could feel the tension, like barbed wire, floating in the air around us. Turn the wrong way and it would hurt.
“Was there anything important in the desk?” I asked Liam, trying to focus on something other than the tension in the vehicle.
“Nothing I don’t have copies of.”
“Your computer?” There was a tablet that everyone signed in to and out of work.
“Replaceable. I already called to get backup of the punches for today and a new tablet.”
“What desk?” my mother asked. She had not been in Liam’s office. No one had, other than Liam and me.
“It’s nothing,” I said.
“It’s obviously something.”
“Mom…”
“You’re sick. I thought you were thin when I first arrived, but you’re sick,” she said it like I was hiding some horrible secret from her. Like cancer or something. “And you’re worried about his desk and a tablet? Did you throw up on his things?”
“No. And it’s not what you think. It’s nothing,” I said.
“I made an appointment with a highly recommended doctor. Took several calls to get anyone to listen, but I found a great clinic,” she informed us, and handed a slip of paper with the address written on it to Liam. It wasn’t in Maple Falls, which meant we’d lose part of the day to the drive to Bellingham. I swallowed back my irritation and wished the SUV weren’t quite so roomy as to make touching Liam across the console awkward.
“Mom, you know I’m not like regular guys.”
“I don’t care what you do in bed, Sebastian,” she snapped back, as if my being gay was the bigger issue here.
“I’m talking about my fox, Mom. Not my sex life. Like I’d share that with you. Wolves don’t do normal hospitals. Shifters don’t normally do hospitals at all.”
“So, you’re saying, what? That the doctor will be able to tell you can change? None of the ones at the hospital when you were born did. You didn’t change until you were a few months old. Xander told me that was unusual for a baby of any kind.”
I’d been in the hospital enough in the past year that I had thought that was true, that nothing in my blood or DNA read differently than regular people. But I’d recently learned that a fae by the name of Wesley had been altering my records.
I pulled out my phone and sent him a text, expecting no response, since he’d been irritatingly silent since I’d decimated theHunt. Did the other fae blame him for that? Maybe that was why he’d been silent, busy dealing with more fae bullshit. He claimed we were related in a roundabout way; I still wasn’t sure what that meant. And it hadn’t made him any more forthcoming with information.
A text appeared a moment later, surprising me.One of ours. Don’t worry.I flashed the screen at Liam so he knew we were headed for fae trouble, whatever that meant. Maybe this would be the contact to help me control the portals? Or perhaps another attempt to marry me off to someone else. I sighed, hating this whole thing.
“What was that?” my mother demanded. Did she always yell this much? I kind of preferredApa’s silent apathy over all the noise.
“The doctor you picked is one of ours,” Liam said.