Hunter's Trail

We asked a few more questions after that, but we’d reached the limits of Noring’s knowledge on the subject. Jesse asked if we could call her if we thought of something else, and Noring shrugged her assent. “I won’t be here much longer, though,” she warned. “My deal with Will was to stay until Scarlett was healed or she could be handed off to another doctor. And now you have an appointment.”

“Ha!” I cried. “I knew it. You don’t actually care about getting me better; you just want to go home.”

Noring gave me a hard look, then fixed a glare on Jesse. “You. Take her home right now, make her rest for at least two hours, with ice for the knee and anti-inflammatories.”

Whoops. I had maybe been a little too mouthy just then. Jesse gave me a sidelong glance, clearly uncomfortable. “We’re in the middle of an investigation—”

The doctor snorted. “With the wolves, I know. The full moon’s still two days away. A couple of hours aren’t going to hurt. Look at her. She’s going to fall over.”

“Hey!” I protested, but Jesse was already assessing me like I was a used car he might buy. And it was true, I felt like shit. But in a way, focusing on the investigation kind of helped—at least it meant I wasn’t sitting around dwelling on the pain. I made a face at him, and he gave me a tiny smile.

“She’s right, a few hours won’t hurt. We could both use the rest,” he told me.

Noring added stiffly, “I probably won’t see you again, Scarlett.”

“But . . .” Dammit, I kind of liked having a physician on hand for when I inevitably fucked up and hurt myself. But it made sense—she’d been here almost two weeks, and she had to get back to her own life. I swallowed and started again. “I understand. Thank you for everything.”

Noring sniffed. “Tell Carling to find someone else next time. This was my last favor.” She stood to leave.

Before she could walk away, I said quickly, “What is it between you and Will, anyway? You act like you hate the guy, but you flew halfway across the continent to do his bidding.”

Whoops. Noring glared death rays at me, and I realized I could probably have phrased that more tactfully. She said icily, “Ask Will.”

“I did. Right before we came here,” I replied. “He looked pointedly at his watch and suggested we should shake a leg.”

“Or four,” Jesse muttered under his breath. We high-fived.

Noring ignored us. “Maybe he thought it was none of your business.”

“He trusted you enough to give you full access to my body while I was unconscious,” I pointed out, more serious now. “Doesn’t that kind of make it my business?”

Noring dug her key card out of her pocket and straightened her top, and I figured she wasn’t going to answer. But she relented. “Will,” she said severely, “trusts me because I was his doctor too.” She spun on her heel and marched out of the coffee shop.

Jesse and I looked at each other with matching “what just happened” faces. “Did she just . . . say that Will used to have terminal cancer?” he asked incredulously.

I nodded and mused, “I guess I’ve never asked Will how he was changed. He probably decided to become a werewolf when Noring couldn’t cure him medically. Or maybe it was the other way around—Noring’s a witch, so she could have arranged it for him.”

“Why would that make her hate him, though?” Jesse said quizzically. “I mean, if she helped him become a werewolf, why would she be pissed at him?”

I shrugged. “Maybe it’s a God complex thing, like she’s mad that magic succeeded where she failed. Or maybe she wanted him to stay in Minnesota or something, and he left.”

“Maybe . . . ,” Jesse said dubiously. “Anyway, we need to figure out what to do about the Luparii and the nova wolf.”

“Oh. I know exactly what to do,” I announced. “I’m thinking maybe we should find them and stop them.” I wiggled my eyebrows up and down. “You know. In their tracks.”

He rolled his eyes. “If you say ‘The hunter will become the hunted,’ I’m gonna throw your cane out of the car window.”

Jesse drove me back to Molly’s, where he fetched an ice pack and a glass of water, helped me up to my room, and handed me the bottle of Vicodin. After I’d swallowed two of them, there was a moment of awkwardness while he arranged pillows under my knee, the two of us in close proximity. He smelled the way he always did, like Armani cologne and oranges. The oranges had always been a pleasant mystery, since I’d never seen him eat one. “Do you need anything else?” he asked softly, and maybe I was imagining things, but I felt like there was another question beneath it: do you want me to stay?

“I’m good,” I said with cheer that fell flat. Sleeping together now would be a bad idea for a lot of reasons, even if it was just sleeping. I was sure of my romantic interest in Jesse, but not sure about pretty much everything else. And my knee hurt. It just wasn’t the time or the place—especially considering the pills I had just taken.

“But maybe you could just crash on the couch for a couple of hours?” I added. Didn’t make sense for him to go all the way home, either, I told myself.

He nodded. “If you need anything, just yell,” he told me, but my eyes were starting to droop already. I mumbled something that even I didn’t really understand, and fell asleep with the impression of him smiling on the way out of my room.