Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson(127)

She wanted to help, but she didn’t know how. She was out of work, possibly about to be arrested, and Ben was changing into a scary beast right in front of her. And that was something else he’d given up to try to help her. If he’d wanted people to know what he was, he’d have told them before this.

“I won’t tell anyone,” she said. “About your being a werewolf. At work, I mean. Not that I have a job anymore.”

“Ssst.” He interrupted her nervous babble. “Won’t matter whom you tell; Duffy will announce it to the world. Now shut up a moment and let me get this out because I don’t have much time. If you are fired, I can find you work while you sue for sexual harassment. I and the rest of the DBAs will be happy to testify. Duffy has squat on you.” He looked up again, and she wished he hadn’t. His face was . . . wrong. “Unless you have been selling secrets?”

“No,” she said.

“Thought not. Whatever he has is made up—and he’s not good enough with computers to make a convincing case. He can barely open his own flipping e-mail.” He bent down again, his fingers whitened as he took a stronger grip on his calves. “Full moon tomorrow, luv. And apparently I’m not man enough to stave off the change. I’m about to go werewolf on you so listen up. I have help coming, should be here in about a half hour. You go into your bedroom and shut the door like a good girl, and don’t come out for about fifteen minutes.”

He breathed hard and with obvious effort, but he didn’t stop talking until his whole body tightened up and shook. When it stopped, he took a deep breath. “Right. I won’t hurt you, but watching someone change is pretty gross for you and painful for me and we’ll both be happier if you tuck yourself away until I’m done.”

“Okay,” she whispered, but her feet were frozen to the floor, and she knew exactly how a deer felt, stuck out there in the middle of the road with a truck bearing down on it but too shocked by the bright lights to run.

He looked up and snorted. His face was distorted by sharp teeth that looked too big for his mouth. She covered her own mouth with her hands.

“Now,” he growled.

She did better than just shut the door. She crawled onto her bed and pulled the blankets up around her ears so she didn’t have to hear the noises he was making. The TV made it sound so romantic to be a werewolf. It didn’t sound romantic. It sounded scary, and it sounded like it hurt.

•   •   •

Ben stretched and glanced at the shreds of his pants. He’d managed to shed most of his clothes after Mel had rabbited into her bedroom, but the pants had stayed on and suffered the beast’s wrath. He shook himself and looked around for a place to wait for Mercy, who’d promised to hurry to Mel’s house as soon as he’d called, but she was all the way out in Finley, and it would take her a while to get here.

He took a step and his hip hit one of the kitchen chairs. He stepped back and bumped into the cabinets. The house was small, tiny even. There wasn’t any place he could see in Mel’s house big enough for him to sit down except the love seat—and even it would be iffy.

He hopped up, careful not to dig his claws into the faded, floral-print fabric. The arm made a nice chin rest.

Mel’s house was like her: small, not too bright, but warm and uncluttered. Safe. His secretary. His.

He snorted and wondered what the other DBAs would say if they realized that he thought of them as his people. He wiggled a little to get more comfortable while he waited for Mercy to pick him up.

•   •   •

Mel sat among the DBAs who had tried their best to get front row. They hadn’t succeeded because the security team had made it to the auditorium ahead of everyone else.

Lorna Winkler took the stage first, and all the men around Mel straightened in their chairs and brushed dandruff off their shoulders. Mel exchanged a rueful look with Amanda, one of the few women in the DBA division. Lorna might not be brilliant or even know much about computers, but she was able to get the IT department all aimed in the same direction when she needed to if only because all the men in IT would do anything she asked of them as long as she did it in her beautifully modulated voice. And the men outnumbered women in the IT department by better than three to one.

As Lorna spoke of how impressed she’d been with their performance last quarter, Mel imagined her practicing it in front of the mirror. There were bets about how often “world peace” would come up in the speech; the most in a previous speech had been six, though Mel hadn’t been there for that one. Rumor was that once she hadn’t said those two words together, but no one believed it. Mel was glad her mother had never sent her out to be scarred from too many beauty pageants at too young an age.

“I believe that we must, all of us, strive every day to become better people,” Lorna said, smiling so that everyone could see her perfectly capped white teeth. “Small steps lead to great ones, like world peace and liberty for all. In that vein, I have to tell you that it pleases me to encourage you by presenting one of your own who has overcome a very bad habit. He has agreed to speak to us today about how he accomplished that and how you might improve yourselves. I give you Ben Shaw”—she smiled—“IT’s favorite werewolf.”

A polite applause arose and stopped.

Ben got up and put an empty decanter of whiskey on the side of the podium.