Thank You For Not Shifting (Peculiar Mysteries Book 2) Read online

  Holy shit. A lycanthrope’s mate. How the hell did I explain that to my parents? And, crap, I’d never hear the end of it from Sunny. That bitch was never going to let up with all the I-told-you-sos and the happiness talk. What was I getting myself into?

  He kissed me, and I swear to God I felt as if he were filling me up like an empty gas tank on payday.

  He smoothed back my hair, still wet from our shower. “Let’s get dressed. We’ll talk in the kitchen,” Billy Bob said. “If we stay in the bedroom, I can’t be responsible for my actions.” Billy Bob’s hand trailed down my back, making me shiver in all the right places.

  Whatever I was getting into, I knew for certain, I didn’t want out.

  While he ran to get my clothes out of the sweat lodge, I hurried to the car and retrieved the star.

  By the time I dressed and got into the kitchen, Billy Bob had tea and sandwiches ready. I was starving now—lycanthropes had big appetites.

  I sat across from him and said, “Okay, spill.”

  “Brother Wolf is an animal spirit. He began talking to me after my grandfather died. He taught me the ways of healing the soul. I went to med school because my calling to heal was so strong, I wanted to be able to help people in all ways.”

  His altruism made me feel inadequate. “My only goal was to open a restaurant with my best friend so we could hang out all day together. I’m a total asshole compared to you.”

  “True,” he said without a hint of humor.

  “Hey!”

  “I’m kidding. Brother Wolf was my grandfather’s spirit guide. He was a shaman for our people.” Saying “our people” pained him.

  “Other lycanthropes?” I realized I knew nothing about the way wolves lived. Other than Billy Bob, I’d never met anyone of his kind. “Did you live in a pack?”

  “Of a sort,” he said. “We live in groups, but it’s not like fiction books where there is one alpha for each pack.”

  “It rarely is.” I laughed. “I’ve seen what stories get made up about therians. Hell, most writers don’t even get the language right.” I drew him in close to me and relished the feel of his hands on my back as he wrapped me in his arms. “You mean you aren’t going to go all he-wolf-alpha on me? Wait. You already did.” I matched his wicked grin with one of my own. “Okay. Tell me about Brother Wolf.”

  “He’s a guardian.” He shook his head. “Of sorts. He can’t intervene with the mortal plane. He can only interact. The fact that he chose you…”

  “Because you prayed for me.” And he’d done that before he loved me. It really did say a lot about Billy Bob as a man.

  “I wish I—”

  “We can’t turn back time,” I interrupted. When he didn’t say anything, I asked, “We can’t turn back time, right?”

  “No. We can’t turn back time, but if I could, I would kill them all. I would do it with my bare hands.”

  “You’re a healer, not a killer. I like that about you. I don’t want you to change because you’re angry on my behalf.”

  “But these killers, whoever they are, I’m afraid, Chavvah. I’m afraid for you. It’s why I want you here.”

  “So you can babysit me?”

  “Yes.”

  His bluntness threw me. “I’m not a baby, Doc. Bad things happen. If anyone knows it’s true, it’s me. But I can’t hide from evil. It finds us no matter where we are. I won’t pretend to understand everything going on with me. These changes. You say I turned into a wolf, and I believe you. You’re stubborn, egotistical, and a general pain in my ass, but you’re not a liar.”

  “You have the sweetest way with words.”

  “You say this voice in my head that showed up as some dark shadowy figure is a spirit guide named Brother Wolf, I’ll allow it. We both saw him and heard him, which means unless you were burning drugs in that sweat lodge fire pit—” I tucked my chin for a second then tilted my head back to glare at him. “You didn’t put hallucinogens in the fire did you? That shit is still illegal in this state.”

  “No, Chavvah. No drugs,” he said, then muttered, “not this time, anyhow.”

  I let it go. “So we can discount mass hysteria. The stuff about me being a spirit walker.”

  “Spirit-talker.”

  “Whatever. Can we push pause on all this mystical hoodoo voodoo monkey magic until we can figure out whose killing people around here? This is making my brain hurt. I wish the Jubilee had never come to town.”

  His face held a look of disappointment. “If that’s what you wish.”

  “I wish. Definitely.”

  “Okay.”

  Speaking of the killer. “Having sex with you wasn’t the reason I drove out here tonight.”

  “No?”

  “Oh, don’t look hurt. You were a pleasant bonus.”

  “That’s a consolation.”

  “Sheesh.”

  “Why did you come tonight, Chavvah?”

  Every time he said my name, my heart skipped a beat. I think he knew it too. “I want to get a look at the second body. Maybe the first one as well. And I wanted to show you something.”

  He dropped his gaze to my T-shirt.

  “Ha, ha. No, I mean something else. But first, did you smell sassafras on them?”

  Billy Bob blinked. “Yes,” he said.

  “On the second guy as well?”

  “Yes.” He tapped his chin. “And little else, other than blood and meat. There’s been a lot of it going around the fair. I didn’t think much of it.”

  “Could the killer have used it to mask his own scent?”

  “It’s not a bad deduction. I didn’t smell anyone else on the bodies. Just their own stench and the light smell of sassafras.”

  I pulled the star from my sweatpants’ pocket and held it out for him to see. “Roger Messer found this while he was cleaning the restaurant for me. It feels important.”

  “What is it?” When he reached for it, I pulled it back. He didn’t try to touch it again.

  “An eight-point star,” I told him. I turned it in my hand, my fingers tracing the twisted edges.

  “It could be something to do with religion or rituals, or it could be some kid’s trinket,” he said.

  I clasped the star in my fist, and I swear I felt it pulse again. “I can’t shake the feeling that it has to do with the killings. Do you know who the second victim is?”

  “Jerard Blackwell.”

  “Blackwell?” I’d heard that name, but where? “Jerard? As in, Jerry? A woman was asking about him this morning at the police station. A chick named Willy Boden.”

  Billy Bob groaned. “I’ve met her.”

  I grinned. “She’s feisty, for sure. Anyhow, she was looking for this guy. Said he’d gone missing.” Once again, I was relieved that the victim wasn’t someone I knew and loved. “Was it the same as the first one?”

  “Yes. He’d been skinned while still alive, his throat cut after.”

  I shuddered. “It takes a sick, sick mind to come up with some heinous crap like that.”

  “I’ve seen worse.” He closed his eyes for a moment as if shaking a memory. “I was a war medic during Vietnam.”

  I met his gaze, and I could see he meant it. Even though he didn’t look it, Billy Bob had to be close to sixty-years-old. Undoubtedly, he’d seen a lot over the years.

  “Come sit with me in the living room. I don’t want to be apart from you.”

  I followed him to the couch, and we cuddled on it like two love-struck teenagers. I touched his cheek with my non-star clutching hand. “I’m sorry for your pain. I’d take it from you if I could.”

  “My father never believed his dad could really talk to spirits, so when I began my journey as a spirit talker, he made my life in our community miserable. I joined the military as a way to escape my family.”

  “Seriously?”

  He smiled sadly and stroked my cheek. “I figured I’d rather face an enemy that I didn’t have personal or blood ties with. I walked over one hundred miles t
o the nearest recruiting station. A week later I was sent off to basic training. I became a combat medic because I wanted to heal people. To help.”

  “And that’s why you became a doctor?”

  “Yes, when I returned to the states, I made my mind up to the go to medical school.” His silvery hair spilled forward, tickling my face as he kissed my forehead. “There were times when I thought Brother Wolf had abandoned me, and it took me many years to get to a place where I really trusted him.” He shook his head and chuckled. “Now I find out that you can talk to him any time you want.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Am I envious? Yes. Am I happy for you? Yes. I am glad Brother Wolf is with you. I’d spare you all this horror if you’d let me, but knowing our spirit guardian is with you, at least gives me some comfort.”

  “I’m glad too, but I hope you know I wouldn’t thank you for treating me as if I couldn’t handle it.”

  “I know.” He sighed. “It’s two in the morning. We should try to get some sleep. Are you going to open the restaurant tomorrow?”

  “Today, you mean.” I made a mental note to text Sunny before going to bed to let her know I was okay. Ugh. I did not want to deal with her innuendoes, especially now that they would all be true!

  He smiled.

  “Yes, oh, wait. It’s Sunday.” The last three days had melded into one awful blur. “We’d planned to open for breakfast only.” I flinched as another thought occurred to me. “I have a lunch date with Dominic Tartan.”

  Billy Bob’s lip curled, and his body began to vibrate with agitation. “No.”

  “He might have some insight into the victim. He’d seemed to know the ex-girlfriend, Willy Boden, when she came into the police station. I think I should keep the date.”

  “No.”

  I patted his chest. “I’ve never seen you act this way, Doc. Don’t you trust me?”

  “Fine,” he said, instantly changing his demeanor. “I guess I’ll keep my lunch date with Bethany Hilliard as well. She might know something about Blackwell too.”

  “If she touches you, I might have to kill her,” I said.

  “Same goes for Tartan,” he said without humor. The blazing intensity in which he stared at me made my heart race and my palms sweat.

  “Oh God,” I groaned as a highly developed sense of possession overtook me, and I leaped up and wrapped my legs around him. I let him kiss me until I was light-headed, and when he said, “I’m taking you to bed,” I said, “Take me right here, and then take me to bed.”

  The delicious roar that tore from his chest when he bent me over the coffee table made me cry out in triumph. After two spectacular orgasms, he took me to bed, where he made love to me, slower, gentler, as he whispered how much he loved me over and over until I cried.

  Chapter 10

  I’d never been in Billy Bob’s cooler. In here, he kept things that needed refrigeration, like certain medications, burn treatments, and, apparently, dead bodies. He kept the room at thirty-six degrees. In other words, ass-crack cold. It was five in the morning, and he finally agreed to let me see the corpses.

  He had three body drawers. Frankly, I thought it was odd he even had one, but as the only medical doctor in a therian community, I guess he had to be ready for anything. Seeing a skinned person in the stark, fluorescent light took away any mystery that might have remained for me. Without shock to protect me, I could see the muscle striations, the bones where the killer had cut too deeply into the flesh as he filleted the skin. I sniffed, sifting through the myriad of aromas on the corpse. There was the expected blood and meat, the sassafras, which seemed to cover his entire body, not just in his mouth, but there were other things as well.

  “Do you notice the burnt smell?”

  “Yes,” Billy Bob said. “I believe it is thyme.”

  “The herb?”

  “Some cultures believe it purifies the soul. Not that this is part of a ritual, but…”

  “It all feels ritualistic, like what I’ve seen on some of the crime dramas on TV.” I thought of the star in my pocket. “Whoever is doing this, I don’t think they’re done.”

  “I agree.”

  “What can you tell me about Blackwell?”

  “A thirty-six-year-old therian, born and raised in Oklahoma, moved to Kansas to join a community when he was twenty-two. His father was bear, his mother coyote.”

  “So he was mixed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mike Wares was mixed too. Bear and Raccoon.”

  “Hmmm.” Billy Bob tapped his chin. “Probably just a coincidence. Two doesn’t make a pattern.”

  With my armchair degree in criminology thanks to the Investigation Discovery channel, I thought the killer was too confident for these to be his first murders. He displayed both bodies at places where the possibility of getting caught was high. “I bet if the sheriff looked, he’d find similar murders somewhere. And with people in from Kansas and Arkansas, he should start inquiring there as well as Missouri.” I crossed my arms and stared at a metal shelf across the room as the smell of disinfectant began to overtake all others. “I’d read in an article that there are serial killers all over the place, and most never get caught because they don’t have any real motive other than to kill.” I glanced back at the bodies. “These poor guys probably never even saw it coming.”

  “I’ve sent off blood samples for analysis. I think they were drugged, or at least paralyzed while the perpetrator did this to them. I don’t know how, but I think they might have been forced to partially shift.”

  I cringed as I remembered the way the hunter’s guards had tormented me, trying to force me to shift. There were so many sick fucks in the world. Billy Bob put his arm around me and kissed my temple. “Seen enough?”

  “Yes. More than.” I rubbed my upper arms. “I better get back into town. Jo Jo and Sunny are opening.”

  “I’ll tell the Sheriff about the sassafras. You really should give the star to him—it’s probably evidence.”

  I nodded, even though I had no intention of handing over the star. I didn’t know why, but it needed to stay with me.

  “Sunny is going to be unbearable,” I said. My not-to-worry text sent at 2 a.m. didn’t mention Billy Bob, but after the night I spent with the doc, she would know! And not because she was psychic. My BFF had a gift for reading me as easily as a Doctor Seuss book.

  “Tell Tartan hello for me,” he said.

  “Tell Bethany to go to hell for me,” I said back.

  He smiled. “We’ll meet up at three. Your apartment?”

  “It’s a plan.” I rose on my tiptoes and kissed him. I’d meant it to be chaste, but he encircled me in his arms and commanded me with his lips, conquering me where I stood.

  When he finally let me go, he said, “Remember. I’ll kill him.”

  I shivered all the way down to my toes as he and his fine ass walked out of the cooler in a grand exit. Until I realized he’d left me alone with bodies. Son-of-a-bitch!

  I swore under my breath and fled the room with all the grace of a deer on ice.

  * * * *

  Sunny’s Outlook was slow for breakfast. After we’d closed the day before and news of the murders had gotten around, we apparently declined in popularity for Jubilee attendees. Granted, the body had been left outside, but still—it wasn’t exactly an appetizing image to associate with a restaurant.

  The bridge out of town had been manned with guards because the town council and the Tri-State council had voted to close off the town, nobody in or out until the murderer was found.

  The sheriff’s office was busy tracking down everyone in town both residents and visitors to take their information. Sunny volunteered us to help man the intake booths to get initial information from folks in the afternoon. I wanted to smack her, but I couldn’t very well say, “No,” now. I told her I couldn’t do it until after four. I had lunch with Dom, and no way was I missing my meet-up with Billy Bob at three…not that I told Sunny about it
. As a matter of principle, I had avoided proximity with my bestie all morning.

  I wasn’t ready to answer questions about what was going on with me and the doc, especially since it involved more than just my heart. Was I really turning into a lycanthrope? How was that even possible? Yes, there was wolf blood in my family dating back several generations, but Ruth had been right the night before when she’d talked about how therians were always only one animal, no matter their parentage. Jo Jo was a coyote like his dad, not a mountain lion like his mom. This was how our biology worked. So how could this be happening to me? Billy Bob was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a liar. If he said I turned into a timber wolf, no matter how incredulous, I believed him.

  It is my doing, sister, the voice in my head said. I dropped the plate I was washing.

  Now that I knew the voice was real, I replied back. “How? And for fuck’s sake, why?”

  I can only communicate with my children. Coyotes are not mine.

  “I thought I was your sister.”

  You are my sister, my daughter, my mother. Where I am, we are all.

  “That’s some real philosophical shit there, Brother Wolf.”

  I could almost feel his smile. Good, then we are accepted.

  “How did you manage to make me into a lycan?”

  It was already in your blood, little wolf. I just called to the part of you that I knew would answer.

  “That explains everything.” Not really. I still didn’t understand everything about this spirit talking, but I thought it strange that I could talk to Brother Wolf while doing the dishes, while Billy Bob needed a sweat lodge and a whole bunch of ritual.

  You did not call to me, sister. I called to you. The summoning is mine.

  I wanted to get it, but I didn’t. “So, you find me. Is that what you’re saying?”