Nearly Human (Marked Book 1) Read online

  Was I mistaken or did he sound a little hopeful? I flatter myself.

  “Look, I’ll do what I can with the Raymonds,” I said, pointing to the exam room and extinguishing the brief flare of hope in his eyes. “But I’m not going out to the scene. Not right now, not while things are still too high risk. You’re right. You’re not the only were I’ve seen today.” It wasn’t even close to quitting time, but I needed privacy for this conversation. “You got a few minutes before you need to head back to town? There’s something I need to tell you, and I don’t need Reba hearing.”

  Chapter Two

  “So… Sheriff Stone…”

  “No.”

  Reba made a hmming noise as she handed me the stack of death certificates to sign. “I need to get these out by tomorrow morning, so get your rubber stamp warmed up.” She added a few cremation release forms and an autopsy request to the pile before turning back to her monitor and bringing up her transcription program.

  I knew better than to say it, but I said it anyway. Her refusal to pursue the matter was just plain weird. “That’s it?” I asked after she fiddled with the headset for a moment, took a sip of her coffee, and squished around to get comfortable in her seat. “You’re not gonna bug me about Sheriff Stone?”

  “What’s to bug you about? You said no. And you also said you barely remember him from high school.” She flashed me a sunny smile, shrugged, and hit play on the recording to transcribe.

  “Okay,” I drawled. Five, four, three…

  “And, I mean, the fact you turned the color of skim milk as soon as you knew the sheriff was Ethan Stone, this guy you barely remember… who doesn’t even bear mentioning.”

  Here we go. It was a bit of a relief, to be honest. I needed to vent, damn it, and Reba was great at this. I just couldn’t let on the real reason why I was so annoyed with Ethan fucking Stone. Well, the current reason. I was sure there’d be more reasons soon.

  When I told him about the three weres from earlier in the day, he grunted ‘huh’ and said he’d ‘check into it.’ He stopped just short of patting me on the head and telling me to be good and stop worrying. Okay, maybe he wasn’t going to do that, but the idea that he might sure did take root fast and hard. “It was a long morning,” I said, raising a brow. “And I’m naturally pale. I can’t help it. My body freckles instead of tans.”

  “Hmph. Okay, then. I guess I don’t need to mention him fishing for your relationship status.”

  Whoa there. “He what now?” The files could wait a minute. My patients weren’t going anywhere.

  Reba managed to restrain her smile to a bare smirk as I sat down in the chair across the desk from her. “When he showed up after your lunch break, he asked if you were back yet or still out to lunch with, and I quote, your ‘boyfriend or husband or whatever.’”

  My wince was mostly unintentional. “Yikes. Real smooth, sheriff.”

  “Don’t you want to know what I told him?”

  “The truth? That I was back and in the exam room?”

  “Of course!” She pressed her pink-tipped fingers to her breastbone, the very picture of affronted professionalism. “I said, ‘Well, sir, he’s back there with the Raymonds waiting on you.’”

  I nodded. “Good, good. That’s good. I mean, whether or not I’m attached has no bearing on his visit, and it was really out of line for him to even try to find out.”

  “Mmhmm.” She waited until I was back on my feet again and almost to the door adjoining the lab area before adding, “Oh, and I also mentioned that you were out to lunch alone because you just hadn’t found someone to share your sandwich with.”

  Ugh. My face grew hot at the thought of that exchange. I could imagine Ethan’s smug little smile, how it would crinkle the corners of his eyes. The beard was new to me, though. I wondered if that would soften the smugness at all, or just make it worse.

  “You know, compared to you, Sheriff Stone’s fishing expedition was smooth. That was awful, Reba!”

  “Maybe so,” she trilled, “but he damn near got a cramp in his jaw from grinning so hard at that.”

  “Get back to work!” Her laugh followed me into the lab, the heavy thunk of the door closing behind me cutting off the warm, liquid sound of her amusement. We only had the Raymonds on site and, until their next of kin made arrangements for their move to the funeral home or crematorium, there was nothing else I could do for them. Even with the drawers closed and locked, I could smell the faint tinge of were that had been on the bodies. It was nothing like Ethan’s scent or even that of the handful of other weres I’d met over the years. It was sour. Wrong. Like someone had tried to synthesize the smell of a werewolf and missed by a margin.

  I wanted to ask Ethan about that, if the wrongness of the scent had anything to do with the bodies themselves or if it was particular to the were who had killed them. Ethan had taken off like a shot, though, once I had dragged him out to my tiny little hatchback for privacy and given him a rundown of my lunch break. I’m not sure what I’d expected, but it was sure more than the response I got. Thinking about it made me angry all over again.

  He came all the way out here from Belmarais, I thought, signing off on the cremation release forms, then took off like a bat out of hell before we could really discuss the Raymonds. I had questions, damn it! Like why didn’t he twig to the fact that was no dog attack? If I could smell the wrong, so could he! I wasn’t even a real werewolf, and I could tell one of them had been all over those poor kids. And why wasn’t he more worried about that fact?

  There were a handful of werewolves living within an hour’s drive of Belmarais, last I knew, and even if he was related to most of them, they should all be suspects when two were victims turned up in the vicinity. Weres could be aggressive with one another, especially over perceived territory and clan wrongs or rights, sometimes dating back decades or more. But it was almost unheard of for them to kill another were. There were so few as it was, Ethan had explained to me once, that no matter how wronged a were was, the instinct to preserve what was left of the clans usually meant the most aggressive, violent fights ended in minor bloodshed and broken bones rather than murder.

  I grabbed my stamp and began reviewing the death certificates, double checking the information against the files saved to the database. Three strange weres show up the day I get two were victims in my morgue, my ex (fine, yes, my ex; even though we’d never been officially anything, we’d been something) who also just happened to be a damn werewolf comes barreling into town and says he had no idea I was the new coroner on staff. Okay, to be fair, I had no idea he was the sheriff back in Belmarais, but I’d only just moved back a few months before and the job was kind of sudden and unplanned.

  But Ethan had been just so weird about the three weres. Werewolves are rare. I mean, obviously, otherwise everyone would know about them, and they wouldn’t have to be all sneaky and shit. But they’re rare to the point of running into more than one outside of clan territory is downright unheard of. And the clans themselves are tiny. The one Ethan belonged to only had twelve members.

  Running into a lone wolf (ha, I am so funny) wasn’t necessarily unheard of, but again, rare. So rare that the very few times in my life it had happened, I wasn’t sure who was more shocked: me, noticing a werewolf nearby, or the were knowing they’d been spotted. The few weres I’d run into outside of Ethan’s clan had been experts at diversion, pretending they had no idea I’d recognized the wolf in them, acting like I wasn’t a curiosity myself. Lots of tight-lipped smiles, careful not-touching, quick exits.

  Except when they weren’t. Except when they decided I might be something fun to play with, a human that recognized them for what they really were.

  That’s what was so off about the weres that morning, I realized. They hadn’t been surprised. Not really. Curious, surprisingly aggressive, but not surprised to be recognized. In fact, they’d done nothing to deny it when they’d realized they’d been made. Red had been about ten seconds from piss-marking the
deli from the looks of things. His two quiet buddies would have bared teeth and growled if they could’ve gotten away with it.

  I pulled the Raymonds back out from their temporary resting places, unzipping them both where they lay on the metal trays, side by side. After a moment’s hesitation, I took my desk chair to the exam room door and wedged it under the handle. The building was old, only retrofitted in some places with security measures and nice lab equipment (well, as nice as a small county in East Texas could afford).

  The door to the exam area didn’t have a good lock to it. One solid push from someone strong enough could pop the latch easily. Reba wouldn’t be able to shove the door open even if she got a full head of steam from across the waiting area and really threw her back into it. Still, I needed to hurry. There’d be no way to explain what I was doing if she did manage to open the door to check on me.

  I returned to the Raymonds, closed my eyes, and tried to open the small space inside myself where I kept my otherness, the weird part of me that was not really a werewolf but sure liked to act like it could be. Those prey instincts ratcheted up, the first twinge of hunter skittering across my awareness as I bent close to Jessica and inhaled slowly, deeply.

  The scent was even fainter than before. The odor of death and nascent decay barely held in check by the morgue’s refrigerated storage drawers. I shifted to Thomas and repeated the scenting, memorizing the trace odor. The desire, the damn near need to run burned in my muscles, making them ache from forced stillness. I needed to run. The prey part of my brain was screaming. Get away from whatever did this, run like hell and don’t stop till I couldn’t smell this wolf, this thing, anymore.

  Swallowing down hot bile and acid, I closed the bags back up and returned the Raymonds to their places in the storage unit. My skin was clammy, and I knew I stank to high heaven with fear-sweat, that slick and oily sheen that comes on when humans are truly afraid. Heart hammering dangerously fast, I sank down to the floor and put my head between my knees. The chair needed to be moved, I reminded myself. No time for hiding. Still, I thought, closing my eyes and trying to calm my breathing, it could wait a few more minutes.

  “I thought you’d died in there,” Reba muttered. A few more minutes had become sixty, and I’d only lurched to my feet when Reba had tried to open the door to ask me to walk her to her car. She’d glanced at the chair sitting where I’d shoved it aside before yanking open the door she was pounding on and grunting under her breath something about sniffing the embalming fluid.

  “We don’t have embalming fluid in the exam room,” I reminded her, grabbing my bag and coat with hands that still shook a bit. My shirt stuck to my back with dried sweat, and the smell of the were was stuck in my sinuses as we locked down the office for the evening. Hitchens County was small enough where we got by with one coroner (that would be me), and Justin DuBois, who was technically my assistant but only took the weekend shift and occasional afternoons when the paperwork got overwhelming, and we needed more hands.

  “So, you tell me,” she snapped, though there was no real heat in the words. “C’mon, I’m late to meet Brian and I don’t want to hear about how dinner got overcooked waiting on me.”

  We fell into step beside one another, saying goodbye to the night guard at the front desk as we exited onto the sidewalk. Despite being a small town, all things considered, Tuttle was fairly busy for a Thursday evening. Every parking spot on the street was taken, and knots of people were already moving between the few restaurants the tiny downtown area had to offer. It was early evening, barely six, but music drifted from the small venue at the far end of Hyssop where it ran into Center Street. Reba was going on about Brian’s newfound love of Kitchen Challenge, her voice soothing and a nice distraction from the sick feeling that had been crawling through my body after scenting the Raymonds. I couldn’t do much, but at least I could know their killer if I ever ran into them.

  It was something I could do that Ethan and most other weres I’d met couldn’t. They might be able to scent one another, tell in broad strokes information about a fellow were, but they couldn’t get the details like I could. It was one of the first things Ethan noticed when he realized I was haunting his steps at the end of our junior year. Not only could I smell him, but I knew things about him just from how his scent changed. I thought it was kind of gross and sad that my weirdness made me a good stalker. He thought it was adorable.

  Reba and I reached the parking lot on Hyssop a few blocks down from the office and paused near her car. “You okay, Doc? I mean, really. You’ve been kind of twitchy since lunch, and… well. The exam room earlier…” She fidgeted with her purse strap, not quite meeting my eyes. “There’s no shame in admitting something’s wrong. Trust me. I know it’s hard but… well.” She glanced up quickly, nothing but concern and sympathy in her eyes.

  “I’m fine,” I lied.

  And she knew it was a lie. Her worried expression pinched a bit, her lips pursing and eyes narrowing. But she didn’t call me on it.

  “I just need more rest. Still getting my feet under me. It’s been kind of a big change, going from working as an assistant to the medical examiner in Little Rock to being the official county coroner back home.” There. Redeemed the lie with a little truth. I tried a smile, and it must have looked as bad as it felt because she sighed and shook her head at me.

  “I’m not telling you what to do, but I know for a fact this job came with some sick days built in, so if you decided to call in tomorrow and just have a mental health day, I’m not gonna say that’s a bad thing.”

  “Reba, I promise, I’m fine!” My smile must have been more convincing that time around. She sighed, nodded once, and bundled herself into her car. By the time I made it back to the sidewalk, heading toward where I’d parked closer to the office, she was already peeling out of the parking lot, blasting eighties dance hits. Rolling my neck in vain, refusing to acknowledge that the knot of tension just below my skull might be lodged there permanently, I pressed the button on the fob unlock my car door, hissing as I dropped the key and had to bend to scoop it off the asphalt.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  My scream was definitely very butch and loud. Not at all a thin, terrified meep. I wasn’t stupid. I knew, despite my muscles, I would lose a fight with Big Red. He towered over me by several inches and was built enough to make Ethan look like a stick figure. He’d also managed to approach upwind so I couldn’t cotton to his approach. “The sheriff’s department knows you’ve been stalking me. I told Sheriff Stone earlier.”

  “Whoa, easy dude!” Red threw up his hands, smirking uneasily. “I know I was a huge dick this morning, and I want to apologize!”

  I pointed at him with my keys between my fingers, Wolverine-style. “Step away.” He took a giant step backward. “Keep moving. I’ll tell you when to stop.” Red rolled his eyes but took several more steps back, stopping only when he bumped against an Econoline that had seen better days. “I’m going to take my phone out and dial the sheriff. You’re going to stand there.”

  “I’m not stalking you.” He sighed, hands still raised. We stared one another down as I fished my phone out of my hip pocket, belatedly realizing that I did not have Ethan’s number programmed in. Damn it. Old habits. Shit.

  I glanced down quickly, bringing up the number for the Hitchens County Sheriff’s Department on my phone’s browser app. Red stood exactly as I’d left him when I looked back up. “I don’t care what you think you’re doing, it’s harassment. You and your friends in the deli this morning, showing up outside of my work, and now this? Hey! I didn’t say move!” He had lowered one hand to his hip, shifting his weight to one side. “Hands. Up.”

  “I’m getting out my business card.” He sighed. “I probably should have led with that, huh?” He slowly removed a brown leather wallet from his hip pocket, never breaking eye contact as he opened it and removed one card. “Here.” I hesitated. He rolled his eyes again and dropped to a squat, reaching as far as he could and
placing the card on the ground. “Read it before you hit send on that call.” He pressed himself back against the van and lifted his hands again, waiting.

  I inched forward until I could reach the card with the toe of my shoe, pulling it back across the gravel toward me. I quickly crouched to grab it and stood back up, putting distance between myself and Red again. “Oliver Waltrip, Private Investigator. Licensed in Texas. Okay. So, you’re… what? In town with your sidekicks, trying to drum up business by scaring the shit out of locals?”

  “Can I put my hands down?” He nodded in the direction of my Wolverine claws. “I mean, I know I could technically overpower you, take those away, and use them against you, but I want you to feel safe in this discussion, so I thought I’d ask before I dropped my hands and you got stabby.”

  “Just for that, I should make you keep ‘em up.” I lowered my keys, though I didn’t put them away. “If you’re a legit PI, you have a license. Show it to me.”

  He made a face, nose wrinkling and lips twisting like he’d tasted something bitter. “It’s not like a fucking driver’s license. I don’t carry it in my wallet! You can check with the state licensing authority or, hell, come to my office in Dallas and I’ll show it to you. It’s in a nice frame on the wall near the door.” Red—Waltrip, rather—swayed forward on the balls of his feet, stopping himself just before he had to take a step or lose his balance. “I know I was a dick earlier, but I had a reason.”

  Yeah, no. Not playing this. “Okay, well, that’s awesome, but I’m not interested.” I shoved the card into my hip pocket and brandished my keys again. “Stay there. You move, and I’ll—”

  “Unlock me?”

  “I was going to say stab you with a dirty scalpel but sure, let’s call it that. I’m leaving now. If I see you around here again, I’m calling the cops. I don’t care how nice a frame your license is in back in Dallas.”