Kelly Meade - Black Rook

“What is it?” Brynn asked.

“Nothing.”

“No? Then why do you look so startled?”

He didn’t want to lie, but he also couldn’t tell her the truth. “How certain are you that the poison will only affect loup garou physiology?”

“I have no reason to doubt what I was told.”

“Weren’t you also told you’d be killed if we discovered you’d entered our town with a deadly weapon?”

“Yes.”

“Has that happened?”

She blushed. “No.”

“So how can you say for sure that it won’t affect you in some way? You had it all over your hand, too.”

She squirmed in her chair, fingers twisting together in her lap. “Why are you trying to scare me?”

“I’m not trying to scare you, Brynn, I promise. I just think that letting Dr. Mike check you out might not be a bad idea.” He stared to reach for her hand, to give it a comforting squeeze, but stopped himself. She probably didn’t want his comfort or his touch, even though he wanted hers. Wanted to know if that connection he’d felt when he grabbed her hand was a fluke. He needed it to be a fluke, because any attraction to her was wrong and impossible. “I won’t let Dr. Mike hurt you.”

Her silence worried him, and they sat that way for a while.

Rook listened to the sounds of the auction as Butch called the next lot. They’d moved along from the table items, and the auction had split. The furniture in the back row was up now, while the boxed lots in the next room were being sold simultaneously. Doubling up kept the auction from taking too long, and the target buyers for the two were usually very different. The antique furniture dealers didn’t often want the miscellaneous items thrown together in the boxed lots. The entire auction should wrap up in about ninety minutes, and then they’d begin the process of cleaning up. Buyers had two hours from the end of the auction to get their purchases out of the building—no exceptions.

The more minutes that passed, the clearer his head became. The ketamine dose hadn’t been large, but it had thrown him for a loop. Rook didn’t like the fuzzy-headed loss of control he’d felt. He had faked it well in the music scene for years, and he couldn’t imagine actually existing like that as his band mates had. He struggled every day to control his temper as a Black Wolf, and the ability to achieve actual intoxication would have made that control impossible. He’d have never survived college, never reached his dream of playing in a locally recognized band—never been so close to stardom that he could actually see it in his head, laid out for him like a fantasy come true.

He’d have never had to humiliate himself and let his band down—giving it all up to keep the secret of his loup garou heritage.

Brynn’s anxiety compounded with each silent minute that ticked by, marked by the antique Coke clock on the wall. She didn’t understand why Rook had put those doubts into her head. Doubts about the toxin and its likelihood of affecting not just loup, but her as well. Why would her father have designed a ring that distributed the toxin in such a way if it wasn’t safe for Magi? Rook’s concerns were illogical, and yet his sincerity made her doubt herself.

By the time Knight returned with the doctor, Brynn was ready to climb the walls. She twisted around in her chair to observe the oldest man she’d ever seen in her life walk into the office. He was completely bald, with layer after layer of wrinkled, leathery skin that nearly hid his actual facial features. Sharp eyes peeked out through the folds and from beneath two bushy white eyebrows. He was thick, without being overweight, and his ancient body still hummed with the power of his loup garou blood.

“Hello, young one,” he said. “Dr. Michael Abraham, but everyone ’round these parts calls me Dr. Mike.”

Brynn stood and forced herself to shake his outstretched hand, not surprised by the strength of his grip. “Brynn Atwood. A pleasure, Dr. Mike.”

He held her hand a bit longer than necessary, and the way his nostrils flared betrayed the fact that he was smelling her—something she’d come to expect from the residents of Cornerstone. They probably didn’t get a chance to sniff a Magus very often. Dr. Mike released her hand, then moved to stand in front of Rook.

“All right, son, present yourself,” Dr. Mike said.

Rook stood up slowly, using the arm of the chair for support. “Knight fill you in?”

“That he did, yes. And if it was ketamine in the syringe, then the logic is sound.”

“It was,” Brynn said. Her annoyance level rose at the constant questioning of the syringe. She had been nothing but honest and cooperative for the last hour.

“We’ll see. Knight?”

Knight placed an old-fashioned black doctor’s bag onto the desk, and Dr. Mike snapped it open. Brynn took the opportunity to approach the window and watch the auction for a while, keeping half of her attention on the things being said behind her. The sale seemed to be winding down, the crowd thinning out and dividing up, and she was sorry to have missed so much of her first auction. She’d like to know more about how Rook’s family business was run. History and its artifacts fascinated her—it was one of the reasons she’d become a teacher.

“I’ll have to do some blood work to be certain,” Dr. Mike said, “but you seem to be just fine. The ketamine will be out of your system soon, and barring any unknown side effects of the poison, you should be in top form again by tomorrow.”

“Good, thank you,” Rook said.

“Your turn, young miss.”

Brynn turned—too fast, she suspected, because the room tilted. She grabbed the window ledge with her left hand, and pressed the palm of her right to her forehead. A warm body appeared by her side in an instant.

“Brynn?” Rook said. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, fine.” She blinked hard, surprised by the dark spots floating in her vision. “I just got dizzy for a moment. I moved too quickly.”

“Okay. Come sit down.” He slipped an arm around her waist, and Brynn didn’t push him away. She clung to his warmth, and the strength of the muscles that shifted beneath his t-shirt. Her skin didn’t crawl from contact with a loup. It tingled in a pleasant way. This close, she could smell him—the musk of his aftershave, the sharpness of sweat, and the deeper, damp leaves scent of his loup garou nature. She had never smelled anyone so acutely in her life. Of course she’d spent almost her entire life around other Magi. Perhaps the loup simply had stronger body odor?

The silly thought almost made her giggle.

He helped her sit on the edge of the desk, but the faint dizziness didn’t dissipate. Dr. Mike held her chin loosely in his hand and looked into her eyes. She stared back at him, alarmed and confused and somewhat loopy.

“Her pupils are dilated,” Dr. Mike said. “Are you feeling any sort of numbness or shortness of breath?”

“No, just dizzy.”

“Heart palpitations?”

“Not really.”

Dr. Mike took her wrist and held it, then glanced over his shoulder at the clock. “Your pulse is close to one hundred. That’s much too fast for a woman your age at rest.”

“She’s probably nervous,” Rook said.

“Mind your own health, son.” He spoke with a fond gruffness that made Rook smile, but it did nothing to ease Brynn’s nerves. “Miss Atwood, I don’t want to alarm you, but it’s possible you’re having a reaction to your own poison.”

“No, I can’t be.” She shook her head, which turned out to be a mistake. Her vision blurred, and perspiration broke out on her forehead and upper lip.

“Brynn?” Rook said. He grabbed her hand, squeezed it. The shock of his touch grounded her briefly, before being broken again by dizziness. She tried to press back and couldn’t manage it. Something was very wrong.