Page 35 of Wolf Bane (Marked #3)

Mal grunted, leaning against my porch railing to join me in observing my grass. “Sometimes I think maybe… Maybe I should just pack up Mariska and move so far away from any clans or packs or what the hell evers, just let her live life as a normal little girl. you know?”

“Do you think she’d let you?” I asked gently. “Do you think she’d be okay denying that part of herself? Hiding it away just to fit in?”

Mal rested his forehead on the railing, heaving a deep and long sigh. “No. And I know it. I just don’t want her to grow up constantly on alert.”

“Speaking as an adult constantly on alert who was once a kid then a teenager constantly on alert, I won’t lie and say it gets easier,” I allowed. “But I promise you, at least for me, it was worth it.”

Mal tilted his face sideways to look up at me. “Are we talking about the whole forced werewolf thing or the queer thing?”

That startled a chuckle out of me. “Both I guess. Mostly the queer thing though. I didn’t find out I was even remotely were until pretty recently.”

He nodded, returning his attention to the grass.

Inside, pizza had won out (as we all knew it would) and Ethan rattled around the kitchen, heating up one of the frozen pies from the deep freeze in the in the carport.

I wanted to promise Mal it would be okay, that this would be it and once we sorted this out, there’d be no more overt danger for Mariska, for any of us. But I didn’t want to be a liar.

* * *

If Sunday was a dumpster fire, Monday was a dumpster fire with raisins in it, to bastardize Dorothy Parker.

Gina Perrin, Reba, and I met at the vandalized clinic.

Reba had been able to reach out to all of our scheduled appointments for Monday and put them on the schedule for the rest of the week and into next week, but we still needed to take an inventory of the place, determine what was missing, and meet with the representative from the council and the insurance rep to have all the i’s dotted and t’s crossed.

I’d tried to get hold of Tyler to come out with us—figured it might help to have some clan representative on hand—but neither he nor Justin were answering their phones.

So it was just me, Reba, and Gina Perrin facing down the Mondayest Monday to ever Monday.

“I’ve only been here one day,” Gina Perrin pointed out. “I have no idea what’s gone or not, but I can help take notes and run interference with the owner’s rep.” She darted me a significant look. One that said we need to tell her.

Reba, still fretful and uneasy as she peered into the heavily damaged clinic, made a sad, annoyed whimpering sound and shook her head.

No, we don’t , I mouthed back. Not yet .

Gina Perrin rolled her eyes, marching over to join Reba. “Come on. Let’s start in the waiting area. Probably easiest. Tell me what’s missing and I’ll put it in the notes app on my phone.”

I followed, kicking carefully at some fallen papers and a destroyed computer monitor.

My office door hung from the hinges. On the wall, someone had spray-painted mongrel in the same angry red slashes as they had out front.

Deep gouges—claw marks—destroyed my desktop, some so deep they nearly broke entirely through the wood.

“Jesus,” I muttered, covering my nose with my shirt. “Seriously? Piss?”

“The instinct is there, even in humans, to mark territory and assert dominance.”

The man in my ruined office doorway was obviously council. A watch that cost more than my yearly mortgage, khakis, a polo shirt that were definitely not from Target, and shoes far too expensive to be standing that close to a puddle of rancid werewolf piss.

He gave me a small, polite smile. “Nelson Embry. A colleague of Tim Cullen’s.”

“Charmed,” I drawled, motioning for him to take a look around.

He remained in the doorway, keen gaze drifting over the desk, the puddle, all of the papers and files. My diplomas and the picture of Ethan and I that had been on my bookshelf.

The spray-painted slur.

“The local authorities are focusing on teenage vandalism,” he said after several quiet moments. “I assume you’re aware that’s bullshit.”

“Yes, I do have basic awareness.”

“Hm. Your office manager. She’s fully human. Is she…”

“She has no idea. At least not as far as I know.”

“Hm.” He finally took a step in, mindful of the puddle, fixated on the spray-paint. “It doesn’t have the same sting for you, I imagine, that it would for someone raised in a clan or pack. You lack the context.”

“Oh, I think I got it,” I bit out. “Why wouldn’t I? It’s clear what the intent is here, and I’m sure who did it.”

“Come now.” He sighed, and I wondered if everyone who worked at the council went through some weekend course on how to sound condescending or if that was just a hiring requirement. “If you’re going to tell me you think Garrow is behind this…”

“I just think it’s very weird that this disease starts to spread in some very specific populations, and I’m being targeted here after he escaped and, oh yeah, no one let us know.

” Out in the front office, Gina Perrin and Reba had gone quiet.

My voice had been too loud, I realized belatedly.

Shit. Reba would have questions, but I’d need to try and spin that later.

For now… “I’m curious as to how the council has been addressing, or not addressing, an obvious attack on some of the populations. ”

“That’s a very bold accusation, Doctor Babin. Baseless, one might say.”

“One might be full of shit,” I seethed. “I’m not a puppet for y’all to yank around and make dance when you need something.

Neither is Ethan. I agreed to this job because it was necessary.

It was presented as something that would benefit the community and bring help to the clans and packs as well as the human contingent.

I’m thinking now it was just a way to keep an eye on me and make sure I was staying out of y’all’s way while you dicked around with Garrow and let him and his besties get away with their fuckery again. ”

Embry stared at me for a long moment, almost too long by human standards.

Unblinking, his pale amber eyes were predatory.

Too assessing, too intense. “Why would Garrow turn heel and decide you’re a mongrel ?

” he asked, the weight on the slur heavy and pointed.

“Why would he decide his life’s work was suddenly worthless? ”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t. And it’s just me he’s after.”

“Maybe,” he said with a small, sharp smile, “it’s just you who’s paranoid.”

Embry gave me a little salute and turned back towards the front office, walking away without a backwards glance.

Fucker.

I followed at pace, catching up to him just a few yards down the hall. “What’s going to happen next,” I demanded. “You’re here. You see the damage. Now what? What do we do here?”

“You wait. You make house calls, I suppose,” he added with a raise of his brow. “See the ones you can. The t-shacks will be set up this evening, but it will be very basic. Any lab work needs to be sent directly to the approved facility.”

Reba staggered over, dodging broken things and slippery paper in her kitten heels. “We haven’t met. I’m Reba Summers, office manager.”

Embry’s hesitation was barely a flicker of an eyelash, but I noticed it.

So did Gina Perrin. Reba, though, thankfully, did not.

Embry shook her hand politely and started asking questions regarding the office space, making all the right commiserating noises that seemed to take the edge off Reba’s simmering panic.

By the time the rep left and Embry, after reminding us that the trailers would be set up that evening but not really ready until Thursday— you do want furniture, don’t you Doctor Babin? Or do your patients prefer the floor? —it was nearly noon and Reba was back in a knot.

“This sort of thing just doesn’t happen, Landry. Not here. I mean, there was the time the Thompson girls set fire to the Micky D’s but that was an accident!”

I smiled tightly. “Wasn’t that the fire that started when Becky Thompson drove her car through the front window because her boyfriend was talking to her sister Nicole inside?”

“Yeah, but she didn’t mean to start the fire! And no one died!”

I redirected Reba before she could get too far into the Ballad of the Thompson Girls.

“We need to reach out to the patients on the schedule for later in the week and see which ones are willing to have a home visit. We can triage those today and start making arrangements for the others to be rescheduled, or if it’s urgent, I’ll… I’ll figure something out.”

Gina Perrin cleared her throat. “I don’t have any patients on the roster yet, so I can help Reba out with the triaging if you want to see a few patients today, Doctor Babin.”

I started to protest; who would I go see, I couldn’t just go door to door like I was trick or treating but offering healthcare instead. Then my brain kicked over another cog and some of the fog lifted.

The Clemens family.

“Right. I have a few already lined up,” I said with forced cheer. Reba pursed her lips, eyeing me warily. “What?”

“Already? Landry, you can take a minute and just breathe, hon. You were runnin’ all over hell’s half acre this weekend, now this.

” She spread her arms to take in the wreckage of the clinic.

“And a thousand other things before the day’s even over.

And your man is finally in town for a few days?

Landry. Hon. Go home. Breathe. See your fella before he has to take off out of her again. ”

“Ah, well…” I glanced at Gina Perrin, who was barely managing to hide a smile. Reba’s mother henning came for us all eventually, and it’d be her turn soon. “I think you’re right. Maybe just a quick nap or something before I have to meet up with the folks for the t-shacks later.”

“Or something,” Reba said with a sore of tired slyness. “So long as Ethan’s in town, make hay while the sun shines, hm?”

Gina Perrin and Reba set up shop near the ruined front desk, the broken computer pushed to one side and the files loosely collected.

Reba assured me it’d be too much of a pain in the ass to try and get them in order right then and there, and she could access everything she needed from the cloud, so she and Gina Perrin waved me off.

Gina Perrin with a knowing tilt to her head and Reba with a teary smile and the promise of more peanut brittle once she got her nerves in working order again.

“Go on.” She scooted me out the door. “Don’t come back till you’ve gotten some rest. Or something,” she added with a knowing smirk.

I smiled thinly in return. “Definitely something.”

Her amused chuckle followed me to my car.