“No,” I was saying as I moved into the tiny kitchen, “the doctor says he thinks she might do better at home with me.”
I tilted my chin up in greeting at one of the new interns we’d recently hired from a counseling program at one of the local colleges. She waved and kept walking.
“You just got to your office, didn’t you?” Kade asked.
Balancing the phone between my chin and my shoulder, I opened a tall cabinet and pulled out a slightly chipped, weathered mug.
“How could you tell?” I asked. I stared at the cup for a few seconds before deciding to get one of the better ones out of the cabinet instead.
“Your voice goes from incredibly direct and straightforward to kind of cagey, like you’re hiding something.”
I laughed. “Well, I am.”
My parents had always focused on using what we had rather than looking for new things, but this morning, I decided, I wanted a better mug, dammit. I was having a trying morning.
“You don’t think your colleagues would be thrilled to know that you can change into a giant snake at will?” Kade was asking.
“I don’t think it’s anybody else’s business,” I said, shaking my head and filling the mug from the coffee pot. “So, what’s your take on Serena? What should I do?”
“Oh, no,” Kade said. “This is all yours. I don’t actually have any stake in this beyond being a very supportive...” His voice trailed off.
“Yes?” I said. “A very supportive what? What would you call yourself?” I kept my tone teasing, but to my surprise, a flicker of anger curled through me at his response.
“I think I’ll stick to ‘a very supportive... whatever’ for now,” he laughed.
I’d thought I was fine with Kade’s disinterest in helping me raise the babies. Apparently, I was not as okay as I’d assumed.
Unlocking the door to my own office, I bumped it open with my hip, juggling the coffee I’d poured for myself in one hand and the files I was carrying in the other.
“I’ve got to go. I have a client coming in. I’ll talk to you later.” Without waiting for his response, I hung up.
I HAD DUMPED EVERYTHING onto my desk and was staring at the jumble trying to determine where to start—the state of my desk seemed to mimic the state of my mind at the moment, and I needed to work on finding my way into the case files for the day.
I picked up my appointment calendar, to double-check that I didn’t have anything scheduled specifically until this afternoon.
No.
Good. That should allow me to catch up on some of the paperwork I have pending.
I had opened up my computer and started typing up one of the intake forms I had completed at the women’s shelter, when Gloria poked her head around my door. At the same time, she knocked on it lightly.
“Hi, Lindi.” She stepped partway inside my office, flashing one of her trademark smiles at me.
If anyone I knew in my normal, human life was going to figure out my secret life as a shapeshifter, it would be Gloria, with her sweet, round face that hid a sometimes frighteningly sharp mind.
Right now, she had her unnervingly incisive gaze focused directly on me. I worked not to squirm under that steady regard.
“When you were walking down the hall a minute ago, did I hear you say something about Serena’s doctor considering sending her home?”
Oh, hell. I really didn’t want to talk to her about this yet. I knew I would have to eventually, especially if I put Serena on my health insurance—another odd thought, since when I was a child, my parents had avoided taking me to any doctors, too afraid that someone would see something abnormal in me. But the Kindred Hospital, where Kade worked, was a full-service medical facility, and though it didn’t say so on its promotional materials, it offered a complete range of services to both human and shifter patients.
After several beats of silence too long, I finally answered Gloria. “It’s under discussion.”
“I have a client leaving,” she said. “Would you be willing to come in and talk to me in about fifteen minutes?”
No.
That was the last thing I wanted to do.
“Sure,” I said.
Under normal circumstances—anything before three months ago—I would not have hesitated to tell Gloria about everything going on in my life.
Then again, back then, my world had been neatly separated into different segments. I’d had my human job, my shifter secret, and my entirely human—if not exactly normal, given the fact that they were both absent-minded professors and scientists—parents. I had rarely dated, and then only casually.
From Gloria’s perspective, it must have looked like my life was spinning crazily, maybe out of control, and definitely in some new and unexpected directions.
I just know she’s going to suggest I get treatment for PTSD after the whole Scott debacle.
Watching the clock for those fifteen minutes to pass distracted me from getting anything useful done. When I made my way to her office, she was waiting for me, sitting at her desk. She very carefully had not placed anything in front of her—a notepad would make it seem too much like a counseling session, even though she and I both knew that that wasn’t far off from what she was about to do.
It wouldn’t be an actual counseling session, of course. It would be unprofessional for her to practice counseling on a colleague—or anyone with whom she had a dual relationship.
But it’s not all that easy to quit being a counselor. And we both knew it.
I slid into the seat across from her.
Gloria’s eyebrows pulled down into a V over her nose as she studied me, trying to decide how to begin this conversation. I withdrew into my usual wait-and-see mode, despite wanting to jump in to forestall whatever was coming.
“I think it’s great what you and Kade are doing,” she finally said, “helping out with some of the unwanted babies at his hospital.” She paused for a long while as she tapped her fingers together in her lap. “But I have some concerns about the thought of you actually adopting any of them. Or even fostering them.”
Crap. Here it was. The lecture I’d been expecting ever since she’d figured out our plan.
“You know as well as I do that PTSD comes in a number of different forms.”
PTSD. I knew it.
And she didn’t know the half of it.
“Gloria,” I began.
And then I paused, having no real idea of where to go from there. If I told her that she didn’t have all the information, she would ask for more, and I couldn’t give it to her. Not without the Council’s approval. It struck me for the first time exactly how strange that was. I had spent all my life believing I was the only shifter around and dealing with the inherent loneliness of that. I had resented it. What I had never done was realize exactly how much freedom it gave me. Until I had joined the Shields and agreed to take a place in the shifter world, I hadn’t had to answer to anyone other than my family—and since I had moved out on my own, not even them.
Gloria was still waiting for a response, using my own silence technique against me.
“I understand that this seems odd,” I said. “But I want you to know that it’s nothing I am taking lightly. It’s nothing that I’m doing without considering any number of ramifications.”