Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson(61)
He was fully dressed and human, but Anna knew that was impossible. It had been less than five minutes since he’d gone into the bathroom, and a werewolf took a lot longer than that to change back to human form.
She cast a frantic glance at Kara—but her neighbor was too busy staring at the man in the bathroom doorway to take note of Anna’s shock.
Kara’s rapt gaze made Anna take a second look as well; she had to admit that Charles, his blue-black hair hanging free to his waist in a thick sheet that made him look strangely na**d despite his perfectly respectable flannel shirt and jeans, was worth staring at. He gave Kara a small smile before turning his attention back to Anna.
“I seem to have misplaced my hair band. Do you have another one?”
She gave him a jerky nod and brushed past him into the bathroom. How had he changed so fast? She could hardly ask him how he’d done it with Kara in the room, however.
He smelled good. Even after three years it was disconcerting to notice such things about people. Usually she tried to ignore what her nose told her—but she had to force herself not to stop and take a deep lungful of his rich scent.
“And just who are you?” Anna heard Kara ask suspiciously.
“Charles Cornick.” She couldn’t tell by the sound of his voice whether he was bothered by Kara’s unfriendliness or not. “You are?”
“This is Kara, my downstairs neighbor,” Anna told him, handing him a hair band as she slipped by him and back into the main room. “Sorry, I should have introduced you. Kara, meet Charles Cornick, who is visiting from Montana. Charles, meet Kara Mosley, my downstairs neighbor. Now shake and be nice.”
She’d meant the admonition for Kara, who could be acerbic if she took a dislike to someone—but Charles raised an eyebrow at her before he turned back to Kara and offered a long-fingered hand.
“From Montana?” asked Kara as she took his hand and shook it firmly once.
He nodded and began French-braiding his hair with quick, practiced motions. “My father sent me out here because he’d heard there was a man giving Anna a bad time.”
And with that one statement, Anna knew, he won Kara over completely.
“Justin? You’re gonna take care of that rat bastard?” She gave Charles an appraising look. “Now, you’re in good shape, don’t get me wrong—but Justin is a bad piece of business. I lived in Cabrini-Green until my mama got smart and married her a good man. Those projects, though, they grew a certain sort of predator—the kind that loves violence for its own sake. That Justin, he has dead eyes—sent me back twenty years the first time I saw him. He’s hurt people before and liked it. You’re not going to frighten him off with just a warning.”
The corner of Charles’s lip turned up and his eyes warmed, changing his appearance entirely. “Thank you for the heads-up,” he told her.
Kara gave him a regal nod. “If I know Anna, there’s not an ounce of food to be found in the whole apartment. You need to feed that girl up. There’s bagels and cream cheese in those bags on the table—and no, I don’t mean to stay. I’ve got a week’s worth of work waiting on me, but I couldn’t go without knowing that Anna would eat something.”
“I’ll see that she does,” Charles told her, the small smile still on his face.
Kara reached way up and patted his cheek in a motherly gesture. “Thank you.” She gave Anna a quick hug and pulled an envelope out of her pocket and set it on the table next to the bagels. “You take this for watching the cat so I don’t have to take him to the kennels with all those dogs he hates and pay them four times this amount. I find it in my cookie jar again, and I’ll take him to the kennels just for spite because it will make you feel guilty.”
Then she was gone.
Anna waited until the sound of her footsteps reached the next landing, then said, “How did you change so fast?”
“Do you want garlic or blueberry?” Charles asked, opening the bag.
When she didn’t answer his question, he put both hands on the table and sighed. “You mean you haven’t heard the story of the Marrok and his Indian maiden?” She couldn’t read his voice, and his face was tilted away from her so she couldn’t read that, either.
“No,” she said.
He gave a short laugh, though she didn’t think there was any humor behind it. “My mother was beautiful, and it saved her life. She’d been out gathering herbs and surprised a moose. It ran over her and she was dying from it when my father, attracted by the noise, came upon her. He saved my mother’s life by turning her into a werewolf.”
He took out the bagels and set them on the table with napkins. He sat down and waved her to the other seat. “Start eating and I’ll tell you the rest of the story.”
He’d given her the blueberry one. She sat opposite him and took a bite.
He gave a satisfied nod and then continued. “It was one of those love at first sight things on both their parts, apparently. Must have been looks, because neither one of them could speak the other’s language at first. All was well until she became pregnant. My mother’s father was a person of magic and he helped her when she told him that she needed to stay human until I was born. So every month, when my father and brother hunted under the moon, she stayed human. And every moon she grew weaker and weaker. My father argued with her and with her father, worried that she was killing herself.”