Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson(123)

“Ben, I was talking to Mark Duffy about your admirable attempt to stop swearing, and he suggested that we organize something for the whole division. It would raise morale if we could encourage people not to drink, smoke, or to lose ten pounds—and perhaps lower our health-insurance costs. I’d like you to spearhead the project.”

Various responses occurred to him.

“No,” he said mildly when he was sure that was what would come out of his mouth. Then he gave her his back and started typing random lines of code.

“No?” Winkler’s voice was shocked, as if she thought she’d misheard because no one would refuse her suggestion.

He didn’t look around when he said, “I’m a DBA, not a motivational speaker.”

“Thank God,” someone said. Ben heard them, but Winkler wouldn’t have.

“But—” she said.

He slowly turned his chair around so he could see her. He met her eyes. “Ms. Winkler,” he said, “you pay me a lot of money to be a good nerd, which I am. There is not enough money in the world to make me be in charge of a company morale-improvement exercise.”

She backed away from the expression on his face and left. He wondered, as he returned to work, if he was going to be fired. He hadn’t threatened her with words, but she and he both knew that there hadn’t been happy happy joy joy in his eyes. There might have been not-human stuff in his eyes, which was something he usually avoided because he had no intention of advertising to the world that he was a werewolf. The wolves who were out were expected to be exemplary and well behaved, which he was not. But his mood was so black that he couldn’t find it in himself to care one way or the other about the job or the wolf.

He worked a while more, surfacing now and again because of the dream about his mother in a cold shaking sweat, imagining that he’d gotten a whiff of her perfume or heard her voice. But he was deep into the heart of Spock, who was at 84 percent capacity, when he was yanked out again.

“I have that address for you, Mr. Duffy.”

The voice belonged to one of the women who worked in human resources, though it wasn’t her voice, but Duffy’s name, that jerked Ben out of his databases. He blinked and saw that it was dark out. Really dark. As soon as he noticed, the moon’s song lit him up from the inside, and his monster was ready to tango.

It wasn’t full moon yet, but he usually changed for the nights on either side because fighting it was tough. No use at all fighting if the moon was full, she called his wolf right out. It was dangerous to be at work this late, this close to the full moon.

“Thank you, Karen,” Duffy said. That was the human-resources woman’s name, Karen Sinclair-Ramsay.

If Ben could trust his ears, Duffy was somewhere near the elevator. If there had been more people in the building, Ben would never have been able to hear him so clearly.

“I forgot to ask Mel before she left,” Duffy was saying smoothly, “and she said she’d get the figures worked up for me for Monday if I got her the information tonight. I think I’ll stop and get her a bottle of wine for putting up with me.”

The wolf that was Ben lunged to the fore with a snarl. His human half pulled him back. Mel was no concern of his despite what Adam had said. Ben cared for no one and nothing. No one had watched out for him, and he’d survived, hadn’t he? That’s what he’d had that dream for, to remind him about people.

Karen Sinclair-Ramsay sounded a little uncomfortable when she said, “I’m sure she’d appreciate a bottle of wine.” Maybe it was only now occurring to her that Mel was the DBA secretary, that Duffy had his own secretary. That a bottle of wine was just . . . not quite the right thing to be bringing a secretary who’d agreed to work the weekend.

No. It was none of his business. Mel wasn’t pack, wasn’t his. It wasn’t his job to watch out for her.

Benjamin, your father wants you. He could almost see her sitting in front of him, his beautiful mother sipping her tea as she read a magazine about the latest fashion. He could see, as if it were right before his eyes instead of decades in the past, the high-heeled black-and-white sandals worn by the model on the cover of the magazine. Be a dear and go to the study. She didn’t look at him when she spoke, her reading apparently absorbing his mother’s attention.

She didn’t need a reply. Back then, he’d been a good kid. He’d done exactly what he was told. The destructive anger and black despair that drove him now, that hadn’t affected him much yet.

Ben had almost opened his mouth, almost asked her if she knew what his father wanted him for in that study. But he was afraid, so afraid, that she knew. And if she knew . . . his world would self-destruct and take him with it.

But even as he walked down the stairs to his father’s study, some part, the hidden, angry part that was growing inside and would, eventually, consume him, understood that she had to know. She was such a good mother, everyone said so. Her son was well mannered, well-groomed, and did well in school. Wasn’t he lucky to have such a good mother?

•   •   •

Ben left work with his head down and with quick strides aimed at letting people know that he didn’t have time to talk. He smelled Karen Sinclair-Ramsay in the parking lot and deliberately looked up at her. She was dressed in a business suit that looked good on her without being inappropriate. She had her hair braided back to display nicely shaped ears and dangly earrings. She was pretty in a well-cared-for, comfortable way.