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By Root 1396 0

sex. The screams had been violent enough that everyone assumed it had been a bloody battle, a near thing. The fact that both Nathaniel and I came out bloodier than when we started helped. Mary had sat him down in her very own office chair. She was laying out bandages, while Nathaniel cleaned the wounds on his hand. They were deep, bloody nail marks. Once I would have said that it looked like a leopard ripped him up, but I’d seen the damage that real leopards could do, and I knew better now. I was sort of amazed that I’d done that much damage, though.

I went to stand near him. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“I’m not mad.”

This close I could see that the front of his knuckles on both hands were raw as well. I frowned. “I didn’t do your knuckles.”

“Carpet burn,” he said.

I looked at the bloody scrapes and made a face. “Ow,” I said.

“I don’t mind,” he said.

Mary looked up at me. “That woman and man are in with Bert. They wouldn’t leave without their son’s things.” She looked pissed. “I cannot believe that they abused you like that.”

I licked the edge of my lip where Steve Brown had belted me and realized that it was healed. I’d put on lipstick and it hadn’t hurt. Shit, and wow. A very positive side effect. It’s nice that there were positive ones.

I touched my cheek where Barbara Brown had sliced me, and it still hurt. I hadn’t seen it in a mirror, but it had probably looked worse an hour ago.

“I’ll help you clean that up, when I’m finished with your friend,” Mary said without a trace of sarcasm. Friend, without any double meanings. It wasn’t just her typing skills that had kept Mary on as our daytime secretary. She had a real gift for taking things in stride. She had Nathaniel hold a gauze pad over his hand while she taped it. She hadn’t put plastic gloves on. I couldn’t remember if I’d told her what Nathaniel was, or not.

In human form he wasn’t contagious, but she probably had the right to know. Almost as if Nathaniel read my mind, he said, “I tried to get her to let me clean it up myself.”

Mary glanced back at me. “He told me”—she seemed to search for a word—“he told me, and I told him, that you can’t catch lycanthropy from a human being.”

Nathaniel looked up at me with those big eyes. The look said, I tried.

“You’re right, Mary, in human form there’s no contagion.”

She smiled at Nathaniel in a very motherly way. “See?”

“Most people don’t want to take the chance,” he said, softly.

Mary finished bandaging his hand and patted him on the shoulder. “Most people are just silly.”

He smiled at her, but it left his eyes wounded. Most people are just silly. She had no idea. I guess I didn’t either, not really. I’d just begun to get the reactions from people who thought I was a lycanthrope. I hadn’t lived with it for years the way Nathaniel had.

Mary turned to me, touching my cheek gently. She was shaking her head. “I wanted to call the police on them. It’s enough to file assault charges.” She started dabbing at the scratches. There must have been some alcohol in the stuff, because it stung.

I took a deep breath so I wouldn’t wince. “I don’t want to press charges.”

“You feel sorry for them?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“You’re a better woman than I am, Anita.”

I smiled, and the cheek was a little tight for it. “I’ve been hurt a lot worse than this, Mary.”

“Never by a client,” she said.

I let that go. There were stories that Mary didn’t know, and we all stayed out of jail that way.

She was frowning at me. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re healing.”

“It’s clean enough, Mary, thanks.” I went around her to the desk and the bandages. I’d need a gauze pad bigger than the one on Nathaniel’s hand. Of course, my scratches would probably be healed by dawn, and his hand wouldn’t be. Damage that I caused seemed to heal as if another lycanthrope or vamp had cut them up. We’d noticed that just lately.

Mary turned me around with a hand on my shoulder. “You hold the gauze in place, and I’ll put the tape on, just like I did for your friend.” The look in her eyes said plainly that I was being silly, too.

I let her tape up almost the