Shapeshifted

is actually a doctor friend of mine’s phone.” I glared at Hector. In case my parents called back to check on me, he’d better cover for me. “Yeah. Tell her I love her, and not to worry, okay? Okay. Thanks.”

I hung up, a small portion of my guilt lifted, and gave Hector back his phone.

“If I’d known, Edie—” he said, his voice heavy with apology. “What about just taking it easy for a week? Letting the news settle in?”

“Because. I suck at being alone with myself. And I’m the most alone person I know.”

He looked down at me. “I find that hard to believe.” His arms were open, palms facing up. I could step into them, just for human contact, for human warmth.

I took a step back so I wouldn’t do anything foolish. “Believe what you want. It’s true.” I couldn’t let him hug me, so I hugged myself. Now that we were outside, it was cooler, and the shirt Hector had picked out for me was thin. Oh, God, he’d put my bra on me. Yes, he was a doctor and all—I knew that for me penises were a dime a dozen, I’d seen so many at work—but he was still my boss. Ugh. “What happened to me?” I touched my neck, where the claw marks had been. They were still there now, but fainter, and they didn’t hurt to touch.

Hector’s arms dropped; our moment was gone. “Susto. In layman’s terms, some of your spirit leaked out. The curandero caught it, and put it back in.”

I snorted. “Is there a cork on me somewhere I should know about?”

“No. But you need to go easier on yourself.” He stepped nearer and stood quietly, as if by being calm he could force me to be still. He didn’t have his coat on, and from this near I could smell him. Deodorant, and the sweat it fought. He smelled like a man. The night was cool and I would bet his hands were warm.

“How’d you know to check on me the other night?” I looked up at him, without stepping away.

His eyes searched mine, and I didn’t know what question he was trying to answer there. “I just had a feeling.”

“At eleven o’clock at night?”

“I’m like Olympio. I see things.” He shook his head and looked away from me. “Sometimes when an addict comes in, I can see their addiction, like a black snake tied around their chest. Not every addict—and it’s not always a snake. Sometimes I see other diseases. When I see those people, I do what I can, and then I tell them to go see the curandero. Their problems are not entirely of this world—and they’ll need more than medicine to solve them.”

I looked down at myself. “So all those times he told me I needed healing, you saw it too?”

“To a lesser degree. I suspect he’s got stronger sight than I do. And better training. I’m sorry—I didn’t know it would get so bad so fast with you.”

“Heh. Don’t feel too bad, you’ve still got all of Western medicine on your side. And penicillin. Which is what I was pretty sure I needed. Or Cipro. Bactrim. The big guns.” I looked back up at him, and he was still too near to me. He was close because he wanted to be. “What do you see when you look at me now?”

He was still for a moment, and then tapped my breastbone. “There was a black flower here. Unfurling, like an anemone.” He waved his fingers in the air. “Sucking your life away. You were already barely hanging on—you didn’t have any strength left to fight it.”

“Is it still there?” I asked, my voice small.

Hector nodded, and held up his fingers, an inch apart. “He shrank it, but it’s not gone. It’ll just grow until you solve whatever causes it.”

My life? I wondered, and then laughed aloud. He opened his mouth, like he was on the verge of making a confession, and then he looked hurt.

“You don’t believe me?”

“No—I’m not making fun of you. I already know there are strange things in this world.”

“Like vampires?”

I nodded.

“Why do you want to meet a vampire?” he went on.

“To help my mom. Their blood can heal almost anything.”

A gamut of emotions ran over Hector’s face, from wisdom to disgust. I wasn’t sure how he’d wind up feeling—if despite his seeing things he’d think that I was insane or if he knew better and would finally break and tell me.

“You give that extra blood to someone, right?” I pressed, hoping I could help him decide.

He nodded, slowly. “Yes. I do.”

“?Medico! Doctor! You forgot your coat!” Olympio came running out of the building behind us, yelling for us to stop, like we’d been going somewhere. We turned to watch him, and he drew up short, wide-eyed, pointing behind us. “Donkey Lady!”

He dropped Hector’s coat and ran back inside.

I looked over my shoulder and there was Jorgen, reared up on two legs. 

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I didn’t think he looked like a Donkey or a Lady at all—but I knew what he’d once been.

Standing made him at least seven feet tall, with an angular wolf-like head, looming over me. I should have known he’d find me again. That’s what a Hound was for. He jumped after Olympio, and I threw myself into his path.

“Jorgen!”

The Hound drew up short. “Are you here for the kid? Or for me?”

Jorgen tilted his head down, and oh, how I wished for a doorway between us. He took a step forward, shoveling his nose at me, as if to push me back. I held my ground.

Hector whispered. “What … is that?”

“You can see it?” I wasn’t sure if Jorgen’s powers to hide depended on his proximity to Dren, or if he was generally hidden. Jorgen looked over to Hector, and then back to me.

I could see him running after kids to scare them since they could see him, like a bored junkyard dog. “You don’t eat them, do you?”

He looked at me through one of his too-human eyes. He didn’t blink.

“I don’t want to know. Why are you here?” I asked Jorgen. He came very near, slowly, and it was hard to steel myself not to back away. He was even more grotesque up close, and since my shun hadn’t protected me from him so far, I wasn’t sure what he was capable of. I stood very, very still as lips, slightly more human than Hound, grabbed my wrist and tried to pull me down the street.

“Hey!” Hector said in warning. I gently pulled my wrist away from Jorgen’s mouth and wiped it on my shorts.

“Jorgen, I have no idea what you want—or how I could even help you.”

Jorgen growled, a human-sounding expression of frustration. He reached for my wrist again, and Hector stepped up. Jorgen eyed him with pure hatred, and his lips curled into a snarl.

“What is that?” Hector asked, trying to stand in front of me to protect me.

“It’s a Hound. I didn’t always work at your clinic—or the sleep clinic before.” Now was the time to lay all my cards on the table, if I was going to get the truth. “I used to work on a floor for supernatural creatures that needed help. The Hound belongs to one of them.” Not the entire truth, but enough. “He belongs to a vampire. Which I wish I could find right now.”

At this, Jorgen stopped growling.

“That’s what you want from me, isn’t it?” I asked Jorgen. “To follow you.”

Jorgen’s oversized wolf head bobbed, the patches where he was missing fur gleaming in the streetlight.

“Where?” Hector asked.

“I don’t know. To Dren, I assume.” Jorgen bowed down at this, and his teeth slunk toward my wrist again. I pulled it away.

Dren was a vampire; finding him would solve my problem, right? Maybe. “I’d rather find a vampire that