As long as I could stand to sit through a lifetime’s worth of meetings like the one with the Beaumonts. To say that the meeting with Paige’s parents the next day did not go very well would have been an understatement.
Or an outright lie. Like all the ones they sat there and told me about how the arrests were a mistake and they would never do drugs. Ever.
I knew something was off the instant Mary Catherine, the receptionist, showed them in. She gave me a significant look from behind their backs as she showed them in, then shut the door as she shook her head.
That can’t be good.
Lori and Hale Beaumont were high, to begin with. Even if I hadn’t been able to tell from the way they twitched jerked, I would have smelled it on them.
When they arrived, I had already shifted the inside of my mouth, so I could taste their responses. I’d learned early on to sift out truth and lies from the way people smelled. Only complete psychopaths could hide their chemical responses.
Drug addicts, I was discovering, couldn’t hide anything.
I also discovered that meth smells oddly like cat urine.
Lori Beaumont sat close to her husband on the sofa I had pushed up against one wall—the seating option with the best view of the rest of the room, and one that Hale Beaumont had chosen.
As I explained my role in this process, she twitched, and he glared at me, a flat, baleful stare.
“So,” I said, opening the conversation with a pleasant tone, “tell me the main reason you’d like to keep Paige with the two of you.”
“Because she’s ours,” Hale snarled. “That bitch doesn’t have any right to her.”
“You mean Courtney?”
“Yeah. She can’t just come in and take our baby,” he continued, his tone suggesting he was already getting himself riled up. “We can take better care of her than anyone else can.”
He leaned forward aggressively as if daring me to contradict him, his very posture a threat.
I didn’t take my gaze off him. Instead, I waited until his twitchy wife was distracted, and I blinked once, a long, slow blink that allowed my eyes to shift underneath my eyelids.
When I opened them again, I knew I stared at him through reptilian eyes, because my vision had gone black and white.
Hale gasped and jerked back away from me, his aggression lost in the surprise of my stare.
His wife wheezed at his sudden movement and pulled away from him, then made a strange squeaking noise and dropped her hands down into her lap.
But Hale couldn’t quit looking at me—the mammal predator suddenly finding himself the prey of the reptile. He was frozen in my gaze, and I knew I could hold him there as long as I wanted.
The smell of warm urine filled the room, tinged with cat-piss-scented meth chemicals.
Lovely.
I blinked again to let him go and willed my eyes back to their human shape. And then I continued speaking as if nothing strange had happened. “What would you two be willing to do to make sure Paige is safe and happy with you?”
Shaking, Hale stood up and held a hand out to his wife. “Come on, Lori. We’re leaving. This bitch isn’t going to be on our side.”
The thing is, he wasn’t wrong. Truthfully, I knew everything I needed to know at this point. Anyone who would come into a meeting as important as this as strung-out as they were could not be the best caretakers for the child. Especially not when there was a loving, caring, willing caretaker available to Paige.
And okay—I shouldn’t have frightened him with my snake eyes. But I hated being threatened. Even nonverbally. Maybe especially nonverbally. It engaged my snake-self, completely bypassing all my careful human training.
I knew I should work to avoid being so thin-skinned, so quick to anger. I hoped that would come with time. I was already better about it than I’d been when I’d started my training as a counselor.
I blew out a breath as they stormed out. As the door slammed behind them, I rubbed my hands over my eyes.
At least I won’t have to deal with them again.
Yeah. I actually thought that.
Chapter 3
I was foolish enough to assume I’d be able to write up my report to the attorneys, who would send it back to me for any corrections before they took it into the court, and I’d be done with the Beaumonts forevermore.
Courtney Mingus would get Baby Paige, and we would all live happily ever after.
Except for the Beaumonts, but in my mind at that point, they were the villains of the piece. And also except for the couch in my office, which actually had not one, but two pee-stains on it.
“Oh, yuck,” I muttered. I checked under the sink in the office bathroom and then in the supply closet of the tiny kitchenette. Nothing that would even come close to cleaning out something like that.
I need upholstery cleaner.
I blew out a breath and checked my watch.
They’d been my only appointment of the day. I needed to write my report and begin reviewing other case files. But there was no way I was going to be able to work in my office. Not with my shifter-enhanced sense of smell.
With a shake of my head, I ducked into the front to let Mary Catherine know what had happened and that I was headed out to get cleaning supplies.
“Oh, that’s disgusting. They both had accidents on your sofa? How horrible.”
“I know. And I can’t stay in there until I do something to clean it up.”
“Okay. Let me know if we need to have it professionally cleaned, as well.”
“Oh, I’m sure we will,” I said. “Anything I do today will be a stopgap measure.”
Mary Catherine laughed and brushed her long, straight dark hair back. “My job is never boring.”
“And I bet mine won’t be, either.” We both chuckled as I headed toward the back exit that led straight out to the tiny
