Affliction

17

By the time we got upstairs, some decisions had been reached. Neither of the women went to jail. Aunt Bertie and Uncle Jamie had been escorted out of the hospital. Aunt Jody and Aunt Bobbie were staying at the hospital with the bevy of policemen who would haunt the place until Rush Callahan either got to go home or didn't. The doctors were starting to wean Rush from the drugs that were keeping him unconscious, but as Dr Rogers had said, they were going to do it slowly because of the other patient going into shock and dying from too rapid a wake-up. We had about two hours, maybe more, so ... We were invited to go to Micah's mom and stepfather's house. It was close to the hospital and to the university where they both worked.

Micah started to protest, saying, 'I'm not going to leave.'

Nathaniel had moved close to him and spoke low. 'We all need food.'

'I'm not hungry,' Micah said.

'Your beast is, because mine is, and Anita carries more than one hunger inside her.'

We both looked at our third. I don't know about Micah, but I felt stupid for not remembering that we weren't just human. Going without enough food had consequences for wereanimals beyond just low blood sugar. We, and everyone with us, had iron self-control of our 'hungers,' but iron wasn't impenetrable.

'You are under a lot of stress,' Nathaniel said. 'It makes it harder to control everything.'

'I hate to leave him now that I'm back,' Micah said.

I took his hand and said, 'The doctors will call when he starts to come around, and Nathaniel is right. We don't want your family to meet your beast unexpectedly. Do we?'

'My control is better than that,' he said, and sounded defensive, which was rare for him.

Nathaniel hugged him one-armed so I could keep his hand. 'You have the most amazing control of anyone I've ever met, my Nimir-Raj, but no one is perfect, not even you. Don't let guilt make you stupid, not now. You have your family again; let's not scare them by a surprise shapeshift.'

His mother came up then and said, 'Beth is so excited to see you.'

I wasn't sure if it was Nathaniel's common sense or seeing his little sister again, but whichever, we won, and off we all went.

Cousin Juliet drove us, because part of our luggage was still in the back of her SUV. She was going to help us unload and then go home to her own kids and husband. She said, 'I'll give you all some time alone.'

Nicky was in the front seat beside her this time. He turned around and looked back at Micah in the center of the backseat, sandwiched between Nathaniel and me. 'We can stay in the kitchen or living room, if you want to talk privately.'

'Thanks, Nicky,' Micah said. 'I don't know what I want. I can't get past the fact that Mom sold the house five years ago. I've never seen the house we're going to.' He sounded sad when he said it.

I squeezed his hand. 'It would be weird if my dad sold the place I grew up in.'

Nathaniel leaned his head against Micah's hair. 'I don't remember much about the house I lived in until I was seven, and after that I never had a home until now.'

Juliet asked, 'What happened when you were seven?'

Nathaniel raised his head from Micah and said, 'My mother died of cancer, and my stepfather beat my brother to death.' He told the information as if there were no emotional content to it, dry, just facts. I told about my mother's death when I was eight the same way - most of the time.

'I'm so sorry, Nathaniel; I wouldn't have asked if I'd known.' She glanced back at him, her face showing what most well-socialized people look like when a simple question gets a tragic answer.

'It's okay,' he said. 'There was no way for you to know.'

'Car,' Nicky said.

'Turning in front of us,' I said, pulse speeding.

'What?' Juliet said, turning back in time to swerve around the front end of the car that was pulling out. She got the car back under control and said, 'Sorry.'

'No more looking back at us,' I said. 'Just drive, okay?'

'It's just ...' I watched her hands clutch the steering wheel. 'It's just so sad.'

'There's a lot of sad in the car,' I said.

'What do you mean?' she asked, using the rearview mirror to glance behind at us this time.

I sighed. I had started it, damn it. 'I lost my mother when I was eight.'

I waited for Nicky to give his contribution, but he stayed quiet and looked studiously ahead into the darkened road. His background was as tragic as Nathaniel's, but it was his to share. I wouldn't make him tell.

'I can't imagine losing my mom when I was so little.'

Micah put his arm around my shoulders and pulled Nathaniel's hand onto his thigh, in that casual couple way. It made both of us snuggle into him.

Juliet was turning into a neighborhood of older, modest houses. Most of them were ranch-style with larger-than-normal yards for a suburban neighborhood, but others had smaller yards, because they were tucked up against walls of rock. It reminded me that there were mountains up there somewhere in the dark.

'It seems so weird to be in a neighborhood I've never seen and be on the way to Mom's house,' Micah said.

'I guess that would be weird,' Juliet said as she turned into a cul-de-sac of larger houses.

'My own fault for not staying in touch,' Micah said.

Nathaniel and I hugged and snuggled him from both sides. 'You did what you had to do,' I said.

'You were protecting them from the crazy,' Nicky said.

'Thanks,' Micah said with a smile.

Juliet might have asked what crazy Nicky was referring to as she parked in a driveway, but the door to the house opened, and Micah's mom was framed in the light like an ad for some heartwarming movie. I felt him tense beside me, but not in a bad way. Nathaniel reached for the door on his side.

Nicky said, 'Wait, and let the others get into position.'

'No one is waiting to jump you at Aunt Bea's house,' Juliet said.

'Probably not,' Nicky said, 'but it doesn't hurt to be cautious.'

'Bodyguards are supposed to be paranoid. We sort of pay them for exactly that,' I said.

'I wouldn't have believed you needed them until I saw what Bertie and Jamie did; that was so awful of them.'

Nicky unbuckled his seat belt. 'No one get out until someone has your door.'

'Me, too?' Juliet asked.

'No, you aren't our job,' he said.

'I'm glad,' she said, and reached for her door.

He touched her shoulder. 'Not yet.'

'You said I could get out.'

'I said you didn't have to wait for a guard to have your door, but I don't want you opening your door yet.'

'Why not?'

'You'll illuminate the inside of the car and make a target of everyone in here.'

Juliet's shoulders slumped, and you could almost feel her rethinking the world from a much scarier and more dangerous perspective. She turned in the darkened car and looked at Micah. 'Is this how you have to live all the time?'

'It's a precaution,' he said.

'Is this why you didn't want to come home? You thought you'd endanger everyone?'

'Partly, but now I have enough people to make the bad guys hesitate. They'll see Nicky and the others and know that I'm not unprotected. They'll know that if they harm my family, it won't be without repercussions.' Micah's voice was very calm as he said it, so reasonable. I liked that about him, that he was as ruthlessly practical as I was.

'Do you mean ...' Juliet said, but Dev was at my door, Ares was at Nathaniel's, and I could almost feel Bram near the back of the truck. I'd noticed that sometimes with Micah physically close to me I could sense the other wereleopards in our group. They opened our doors; we got out and started walking toward the opened door. Micah's mother had already walked down the steps and was partway to us. I wasn't surprised that Bea Morgan was an impatient woman, not after seeing the fight at the hospital. People with tempers are rarely patient. I should know.

We entered the new-to-us house in a circle of bodyguards, with Micah's mother reaching out to lead him inside. We let him go forward to meet her. Ares stayed at his side. Nathaniel and I held hands, with Dev and Nicky on either side of us. Bram brought up the rear, looking back into the darkness. It probably wasn't the welcome home Micah had planned, but if we could pull off some kind of miracle for his dad, it wasn't half bad.

18

We'd had time to see the great room - living room/dining room with the kitchen off to one side, with just half-walls and bar stools around two sides - when a young woman stepped in through the open doorway of a distant hallway. Her curly, dark auburn hair fell around her shoulders. She was maybe five foot four, slender, and dainty except for one part. She had breasts the way Micah had more manly attributes, as if nature had decided to make up for their looking so delicate. But at least Micah could hide his under clothes; Beth, and this had to be Beth, would have more trouble hiding hers.

She walked across the room, face already starting to crumble into tears. Micah went to meet her halfway. She half-fell against him, wrapping her arms around his neck, and started to sob. He held her, patting her back, trying to soothe her.

I heard her saying, 'I knew you'd come. Jerry said you wouldn't, but I knew you would.'

A small voice called, 'Bethy, are you all right?'

Beth pulled away, wiping at her eyes furiously, trying to hide the tears, as she turned around for the little boy in the hallway. He had a halo of golden curls that spilled out around his head and that perfect skin tone that certain mix-and-match genetics can give you. His eyes were huge and shaped like Jerry's and their mother's, but the color was a pale brown, much lighter than the dark brown of Beth's eyes.

'I'm fine, Fen, just happy that my big brother is home.' She half-laughed as she said it, still wiping tears away.

'But you don't cry when you're happy, Bethy.' He said her name like he couldn't quite pronounce Beth, and wasn't exactly saying Betty, but something in between. He walked farther into the room in his footed pajamas trailing a stuffed toy in one hand, like a modern version of Christopher Robin, except it wasn't Pooh Bear in his hand. I couldn't tell what it was, but it wasn't a bear.

Beth went and picked him up, cocking her hip to one side so he sat better, as she carried him back to us. 'Fen, this is my big brother, Mike. Remember I told you about him?'

The little boy gave solemn eyes to Micah. 'Are you my big brother, too?'

Before Micah could answer, there was a shrill little-girl scream from the hallway. We all looked up and the screamer raced toward us in a Disney Princess nightgown, long, dark gold braid flying straight out behind as she ran shrieking toward us. An older boy with short brown hair was running after her, yelling, 'I am going to kill you!'

Bea said, 'Hawthorne!'

Hawthorne? Oh, right, I remembered. Second husband was a literature professor. Poor kid.

The little girl flung herself into her mother's arms as Ty Morgan said, 'Hawthorne, that is not how we talk to each other in this house.'

'She spilled Kool-Aid all over my backpack! She's not even supposed to be in our room!'

'I did not!' the girl said, with her little arms around her mother's neck and her face buried in Bea's hair.

'Liar, I saw you. If I hadn't had to save my homework, I'd have caught you before you hid behind Mom!' His face was flushed with that peculiar rage you reserve for siblings. He looked like he had a light permanent tan, and his hair was cut very short and old-fashioned, like a 1950s boy cut. He looked about eleven or twelve years old. His bright blue eyes glittered with his anger. He was seriously pissed. I wondered if he had a bad temper normally or if it was special for what was happening at the hospital. Then I realized that Rush wasn't his daddy. His dad, Ty, was standing there, all good as ever.

Micah's mom was stroking the girl's long gold braid. 'It's okay, Frost. Did you spill Kool-Aid on Hawthorne's backpack? Tell the truth; no one will be angry.'

Frost raised her face and looked behind at her brother. All we could see was the back of her head. 'Hawthorne is mad now.'

I thought she had a point.

'You know you're not allowed to drink or eat in the bedrooms,' Bea said.

Frost hung her head. 'I'm sorry, Mommy, I forgot.'

'Apologize to Hawthorne,' Ty said.

She mumbled her apology.

'That's it?' the boy demanded. 'She spills shit all over my school backpack and some of my homework and gets off with an apology?'

'Don't use vulgarisms,' Ty said automatically. 'Frost is going to help you clean off the backpack, and we'll think of something else suitable to remind her she's not allowed to take food back to the bedrooms.'

Hawthorne rolled his eyes. He looked up at us as if we'd just appeared before him. Anger will blind you to a lot, but seven strangers in your living room seemed like something you'd notice. Emotions flowed over his face, and he finally settled on arrogant defiance, but his eyes were wary, almost nervous. He'd looked us over and done a quick assessment of physical potential, which made me put his age up a bit, at least twelve, and he was in some sport that made him aware of physical potential. He'd done the math and knew that there were a lot of other males in the room who could kick his ass.

'What sport do you play?' I asked.

He looked startled at having to drag his attention away from the bodyguards who towered behind us. 'Football and jujitsu.'

I nodded. 'I figured some kind of martial arts.'

'Why?' he asked, blue eyes narrowing.

'The way you sized up the men.'

'What do you mean?'

'You know what I mean,' I said.

He looked at me, and he saw me not as a woman, or a grown-up, but as a person. He was almost my height exactly. 'What martial art do you do?'

'I started out in judo, but now I do mixed martial arts.'

'You do MMA?' he asked, and couldn't keep the suspicion out of his voice.

I nodded. 'I do.'

He looked behind us at the other men again. 'What do they do?'

'Same thing,' I said.

'She trains with us,' Ares said.

Hawthorne looked suspicious again. 'Really?'

'Really,' Nicky, Dev, and I said at the same time.

Hawthorne looked at Micah next. 'You're Mike, aren't you?'

'Yes,' Micah said.

Hawthorne studied his face, then nodded. 'You look like Beth.'

'I know.'

'Do you work out with them?' Hawthorne asked.

'No.'

'Why not?'

'Because in my job my life doesn't depend on my fighting skills.'

Hawthorne looked back at me. 'What's your job?'

I moved my jacket so he could see the badge at my waist.

'U.S. Marshal. Are you here to help catch who hurt Rush?'

'I'm here with Micah, Mike. I'm his fiancee, but yeah, since I'm already here I thought I'd help out.'

He looked at Nathaniel. 'Who are you?'

'Hawthorne,' his mother said, as if he'd been rude.

'What?' he asked.

'I'm Nathaniel,' he said, and offered his hand to the boy.

Hawthorne was obviously surprised, but he took his hand and they shook. 'Do you work out with them?'

'No.'

'Why not?'

'Same reason Micah gave.'

The boy looked him up and down as if trying to figure out what, or who, he was to everyone else. 'They don't all look like marshals,' he said.

'Hawthorne, why don't you take Frost and Fen back to clean up your backpack?' Ty said.

He gave a sullen look to his father. 'Fen is four. How is he going to help with anything?'

Fen rose up from Beth's shoulder and said, 'I can help.'

Hawthorne gave an exaggerated sigh, rolled his eyes again, and said, 'Fine, I'll take the little kids with me, but I know you just want me to stop asking questions and talk grown-up stuff.' He looked worried then, and it was real. 'Did something else happen to Rush?' He suddenly looked younger, the kid peeking through the almost-teenager.

'No, Hawthorne, nothing else has happened,' Ty said.

'Promise,' he said.

'I promise,' his father said.

Hawthorne nodded, flashed us another worried and speculating look, then held his hands out for the kids. 'Come on, brats, I'll supervise while you clean up the Kool-Aid.'

Bea set the little girl on the ground. Frost turned around to face us, hands on hips, elbows out defiantly, and gave us a clear view of her delicate triangular face. Her eyes were small, almost almond shaped, and a deep, solid brown. Except for the hair color she looked like Beth had cloned herself. I was looking at what Micah's daughter might have looked like.

'I am not a brat,' Frost said, stamping her foot.

'Are too,' Hawthorne said.

'Are not!'

'Go with your brother and clean up the mess you made,' Ty said.

I looked at his bright blue eyes, and then at Bea's blue-gray ones. Micah had actually gone pale. How did two blue-eyed parents end up with brown-eyed children? Somehow Fen's golden-brown eyes hadn't seemed so obvious, but these were Micah's and Beth's eyes staring out of a face that didn't look like their mother or her new husband. What the hell was going on?

Beth said, 'I'll go with them and make sure they don't kill each other.' She gave a look to Micah that I think was sympathetic. 'I'm glad you're home,' she said, and carried Fen off after Hawthorne and Frost.

Fen called back over her shoulder, his arms wrapped around her neck, and asked his question a second time. 'Are you my big brother, too?'

Micah turned to look at his mother as he answered the little boy, 'Yes, I think I am.'

Bea Morgan reached for her husband's hand and looked guilty.