Cassie Alexander - Moonshifted

The final draft of Moonshifted owes a particularly large debt to the acumen and understanding of my editor, Rose Hilliard, who saw where I was going and helped to get me there. The 1st–13th drafts would not have been possible at all without the oversight, encouragement, and late-night phone calls from Daniel Starr. I also had the good fortune to run it (such as it was, at the time!) through the Blue Heaven 11 workshop where Sandra McDonald and Deb Coates provided invaluable feedback on it. And this book would not be here at all had not my lovely agent Michelle Brower sold it, or if my husband Paul had forgotten to feed and water me while I was sitting at my desk. I would also, belatedly, like to thank my copy editor Laura Jorstad, and the people who are translating me into other languages for their patience and time.

Veterinary advice was helpfully provided by Dr. Kim Carlson, although any mistakes are mine. And I’d also like to take a moment to thank the nurses on my opposite weekend (who accurately point out that they also have never let me kill anyone on accident, either)—especially B and C. B for making nursing look easy in a way I’m awed by, even when she’s doing CPR, and C for the good stories and being a fan of mine right out of the gate. Eternal thank-yous to both of you for introducing me to my second home.

And thanks to you, reader, for coming back for a second book. Thanks for taking a chance on the first one—I can’t wait to show you the third.

“Who knew a Code Silver isn’t when an old-timer tries to beat you with their walker?” Charles said as he double-looped his scarf around his neck.

I grinned at him as I pulled my gloves out of my pocket. “Technically, a walker’s still a weapon.” We’d been trapped in a cold, dark room watching safety-refresher videos all morning, an exquisite torture for nurses used to staying up all night. I wound up my scarf and pulled on a cap. “Why don’t we get any cool codes, Charles?”

“We do. Code Fur. Code Fang.” He patted through his pockets, maybe looking for his own set of gloves.

I hadn’t been in on any admissions since I’d been hired as a nurse at County a few months ago. But the vampires, weres, and other assorted casualties our floor catered to had to come in from somewhere. Not that the rest of the hospital knew that we kept vampire-exposed humans—daytimers—in our beloved County Hospital’s basement, but we must get advance notice somehow. I just wasn’t sure how that happened. There was a lot of information I wasn’t privy to yet.

I inhaled to ask another question, and then looked up at him. I could tell behind his scarf he was cracking a smile. “Awwww, you liar. Code Fang. As if.”

“Nurse Edie is Code Gullible.”

“Whatever, old-timer.”

Charles laughed and held the building’s front door open. “After you.”

I braced myself and headed outside.

Winter air was like a slap in the face—the portions of my face that it could still get to. We were two days before Christmas, and the skies were bleak. My hairstyle had been hat head for what felt like weeks now, and I was swaddled up in my warmest coat. Between my own hips and the three layers of clothing I had on underneath my coat, I probably looked like a Jawa from the original Star Wars, only with blue eyes peering out.

Charles and I were going out to the Rock Ronalds for lunch. It was in front of the hospital on the next cross street down, and it was where our recently released patients would take their legally prescribed methadone to trade for illegal heroin and crack. I wouldn’t go there alone at night, not even the drive-through, but during the day with a male co-worker I felt safe—plus I desperately needed caffeine if I was going to make it through the afternoon.

“So what really happened, anyhow?” Charles asked as he double-tapped the signal-change button on the light post.

“Um.” I rocked up and down on my toes, watching the orange stop hand across the six-lane street. I knew what he was asking but I didn’t want to rehash the past, so I shrugged without meeting his gaze. “You know. I got stabbed by vampires. My zombie boyfriend ditched me on his way out of town. That sort of thing.”

“Too fresh?”

“Yeah.” I inhaled and looked up. He was smiling again; it gave him crinkles around his eyes. Charles was a good nurse and maybe even a better friend, in a wholesome father-figure kind of way, if I’d let him be. He’d been working at Y4 for longer than I’d been alive. I couldn’t help but smile back. “We have advanced life support recertification coming up together in four months. Hit me up then.”

“Gotcha.”

The light changed, and we both looked both ways twice before crossing the street.

The bell over the door of the ’Ronalds rang as we walked in, and a color-coded height sticker measured us as we passed through the door, just in case.

Charles ordered fries with a side of fries at the counter, and I took off my gloves to hand him money for my Diet Coke. I realized this was the first time I’d ever hung out with a co-worker outside of work. It was our lunch break, but still, it counted for something. I grinned at him as I returned from the soda fountain.

“Code Fang,” he said, and laughed. “You totally bought it.”

“Yeah, yeah, make fun of the new kid.”

“We don’t get enough new people for me to tease.”

“Maybe if so many new hires didn’t die—which no one ever told me, by the way—you’d get more chances.” I followed him to the nearest table and sat across from him.

“Would you have believed us if we told you?”

I drank a deep gulp of my soda and considered this. “Probably not.”

“For the record, I told you not to go back into that guy’s room.” He glanced meaningfully toward my left hand. It had a semicircular scar across the back of it, from where I’d been bitten by a vampire. It didn’t ache, except for when it was cold—which, since we were in the depths of winter, was all the damn time.

I rubbed at my scar. “If in the future you have a choice between blatantly warning me about possible death, versus vaguely warning me in a smug fashion, please go with the former.”

He nodded. “Duly noted.”

At my last job my biggest fear was being coughed on by someone with active TB. But at County, particularly on floor Y4, where Charles and I both worked, the opportunities to screw things up and maybe get killed were endless. Floor Y4 catered to the supernatural creatures that no one else knew about: werecreatures in their mortal phases, the daytime servants of the vampires, the sanctioned donors of the vampires, and shapeshifters that occasionally went insane. And sometimes zombies, whom nurses occasionally dated, with poor outcomes. At the thought of my now twice-dead love life, my urge to make small talk chilled.

Across from me, Charles was starting in on his second cone of fries. Funny how knowing exactly what a ton of salt and fat could do to your heart didn’t stop you from wanting to eat them. Like nurses who worked in oncology and still smoked. Charles watched me watching him eat, and tilted the cone toward me. I waved away his offer—it still felt too early to eat, my stomach was on night shift even if I was awake—and he shrugged.

“You sure you don’t want to talk?”

“Yeah.”