I nodded and made understanding counselor noises. “So what will you do once you have custody?”
“Well, not let her spend too much time around meth-addled addicts, for one thing.” Courtney’s voice went tight.
“Have you considered what it would mean to bring Paige into your life full-time?” I was flying blind here—I didn’t know exactly what kinds of questions the attorneys might ask, and Yvette had pitched this as a meeting for me to get to know all the players. So in some ways, it didn’t matter what I asked, as long as, at the end of the session, I had a sense of who the aunt was.
“It would make everything so much easier.” Courtney’s eyes grew misty. “Half the time, Lori calls me when I’m already partway through my day to ask if I can change everything around to take Paige. I do it, of course, because I can’t leave the baby without somebody to care for her. But if she lived with me, I could set a schedule for her. She loves routine.” She opened her eyes wide as if begging me to understand.
“Most babies do,” I agreed.
“Right? If I could set a routine up for her that she could follow all the time, she would be much happier. And healthier, too. I’m convinced they forget to feed her when they’re high.”
I shrugged one shoulder. “It’s not uncommon among addicts,” I said. I was trying not to agree too hardily—after all, I wasn’t supposed to be taking sides yet. But I also carefully shifted the roof of my mouth just enough to create the Jacobson’s organ that was there in my serpent form. Carefully, I drew air over it, trying to parse out the scents of the tangle of emotion-chemicals Courtney was putting out into the air.
She definitely believed what she was saying—her earnestness floated in a light coating atop the general anxiety she felt about being here, combined with a dash of dark worry that splashed through her scent whenever she mentioned the baby.
By the end of our hour-long meeting, I didn’t doubt that Courtney wanted what was best for Baby Paige. I just wasn’t sure that ripping an eighteen-month-old away from her parents was the best way to achieve that.
I’d have to talk to the parents to see how that went.
I had no idea how bad things were about to get.
Chapter 2
I didn’t end up by accident working in an office with attorneys who helped kids.
I knew from early on in college that I needed to help people in some way. It was deeply important to me, in the ways of those things that make up who we are at our very core.
Because I was a snake shifter, I, of course, had a secret. The kind of absolutely enormous, life-shattering secret that in theory, all my counseling professors would have said could not—should not—be borne alone. Of course, none of those professors had ever met a snake shifter before.
As far as I knew, there were no other snake shifters besides me.
Here’s the deal. Both my parents—my adoptive parents—were scientists. Mom was an astronomer who spent half her summers out in the deserts of West Texas staring through a telescope, and the rest back in a lab dealing with computer readings.
My father was a herpetologist. That means he specialized in, you guessed it, snakes. Depending on where the research took them, they often spent their summers apart. Except for the summer I came into the lives. Don’t get me wrong, they weren’t all snuggled up together anywhere—they were too busy gathering data. But they were at least in the same part of the country. Ours. Central Texas, with some trips out to the West Texas desert.
And of course, my father was one who found me. My discovery could have made him rich beyond his wildest dreams, even as it turned me into a lab experiment for the rest of my life.
But when Daddy brought home a juvenile snake that he didn’t recognize and put it in the terrarium one night only to wake up to find me, a little, towheaded human, curled up in there the next morning, he didn’t let it make him rich.
He let it make him a father.
As usual, Mama followed Daddy’s lead, as she did on all things humanitarian. Don’t get me wrong. Mama definitely had a soft spot for animals and children. But Dad was definitely the one who taught me to be part of the human world.
It took me a good long time, too. They decided I was the equivalent of about two years old in human age when I ended up with my family. I completely nonverbal, and it was another ten years before I could control my shifting ability enough to go to school with other kids. So perhaps it’s not surprising that I would become a counselor. I wasn’t terribly well socialized, comparatively, and I was interested in figuring out how to be as human as I could possibly be.
I wanted to help other children find better lives, just like I had. I might not be able to ever track down others of my own kind, but I could channel that desire into a career that helped improve children’s lives.
So I’d looked specifically for jobs that would allow me to do that—and pay off my student loans at the same time.
I’d never be rich. But working for attorneys, I would be able to
