CHAPTER TWELVE

Bigby-Archer Memorial Hospital was a sprawling mass of modern architecture, with wings that spread out like the tentacles of an octopus from a pulsing oculus center, full of cameras and security. It had the added bonus of being within walking distance of the St. James Academy, so Verity could enjoy visits from the nuns that worked there and raised her and Viola, as well as some of the school chums she’d made who had stuck around. Viola hadn’t made any school chums; Viola often remarked how nobody liked her very much, except for Verity.

It was always obvious that they were sisters and had, on more than one occasion, been mistaken for twins. But Verity was the softened version of Viola. They shared the same stark coloring: ink black hair that fell in gentle curls over their slender shoulders; skin pale and unblemished as fresh milk; eyes the limpid blue of a summer sky. But Verity’s kindness and sweet disposition warmed her features, and Viola always looked rather severe when next to her. Viola was kept sharp by a kind of perversity, her insistence on living a life outside the norm and keeping most people at a comfortable arms-length distance. Perhaps it was the illness, but Verity was open wide to life and experience and any person who showed the slightest bit of interest in her. She had an endless supply of love to give, and she would look at her companions when they spoke as though they were the only other people in the entire universe. It was addictive, the weight of her attention.

Verity had lost her virginity before Viola had, despite being two years her junior. Verity had snuck into the boy’s dorm one night at St. James when she was fourteen years old, and then had crept silently back. Viola stirred when her sister returned, and Verity had climbed into bed with her sister and whispered the whole story into her ear: His name had been Martin, he had been fifteen, he had put his hands on her face and told her she was the loveliest creature in the world. She had opened herself to him with a dozen other boys sleeping all around them.

And when Viola entered her sister’s room at Bigby-Archer, she had to agree with that young boy: Verity was the loveliest creature in the world.

Verity was sitting up in bed, reading a book in a beam of morning sunlight. She didn’t stir right away when Viola entered the room, didn’t register her presence for several moments. But when she did, her face glowed with the force of her happiness. “Viola!”

“Hello, sweet girl.” Viola strode into the room, a sleek and modern corner suite with floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides, and climbed onto the bed with Verity, who immediately encircled her in her thin, sleep-weak arms. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” she said, and pressed a flutter of kisses to her forehead. “What are you doing here so early?”

What a question. “I’ll tell you all about it, I promise. But first, I need the full update.” This was always phase one of garnering as much information as possible about Verity’s condition. Typically, she underplayed how things were going, brushing it off as not-as-bad-as-it-sounds. But she also sometimes told her about the stranger symptoms that she didn’t bring up to the doctor. Like how during one attack, she had lucid dreams of forests every night for a week before it happened, or how another time all she could stomach to eat was rare steak. Well, Viola thought, it all makes a little more sense now, doesn’t it?

“Oh, everything’s pretty standard,” Verity said. “Medically induced coma to reduce brain swelling. Apparently, it worked since my brain isn’t leaking out of my ears.”

“Any headaches?”

“Only right before bed at night.”

“Swollen limbs?”

“Nope, not since before the coma.”

“And, like…weird…stuff?” Viola examined her sister’s face, which was pale from lack of sun exposure, but otherwise just as lovely as ever. Verity arched a shoulder in a shrug.

“Not really this time. I’ve been sleeping well; my appetite seems healthy. Mostly, I am just ready to go home, but they want to keep me here till the end of the week.”

“I think that’s best,” Viola said, reaching up to brush a few strands of hair out of Verity’s eyes.

“Ugh,” Verity said, swatting Viola’s hand away, “I don’t. My appetite isn’t the only thing that’s healthy.” Viola furrowed her brow, eliciting a tinkle of laughter from Verity. “My libido…?”

“Ah.” Viola smiled. “I see.”

“But so anyway…” Verity nudged her gently in the ribs with her elbow, trying to catch her gaze. “What’s with the early morning visits, Vi?”

Where did she even want to begin? It was hard to say. All Viola knew is that she wanted to tell Verity everything. The whole sordid story, from start to finish. Verity knew that Viola had been conscripted into the Somnus Sacrae Assassins Guild, knew that she killed people for a living and that it was this line of work that kept Verity in the fine hospitals and seeing the best doctors. And in return, Verity absolved her of her sins, let her come to her bed and lay her head in her lap, and reveal all of the awful stories of the things she had done, so that when it was all over, Verity could gently run her fingers through Viola’s hair and say, “There, there. Everything’s all right. It’s all right.” It didn’t matter what Viola did: Verity loved her anyway, and through that love, she was absolved.

“Well,” Viola took a deep breath, “it all began with a mark, like any other…” And she launched into the story of how Rowan had sent her after Graham McCallum, how McCallum had wooed her and taken her to bed. How she’d felt a closeness with him that she’d never felt with any other man before, but how he had known who she was. She told Verity, swore to the fact, that when she’d attacked McCallum, he had shifted into a Kodiak bear and had begun to rage; how she’d darted, naked, from his home and into Rowan’s waiting arms. How Rowan had tried to calm her, explain everything to her, but how he couldn’t make her understand until he himself had shifted, shifted into a sleek, black panther. How he had taken her to meet his father at the clan headquarters, how she had slept for a day, how she and Rowan had made love, and how he’d confessed his affections for her. How Graham and Rowan had confirmed that Viola’s parents had both been shifters, one panther and one bear. How Graham wished to broker a peace. How they had spoken to the council, how the council had seen her as treasonous, how she’d been imprisoned. How Rowan had let her escape, how she’d run, and why she was there, so very early in the morning.

Verity was silent for a long while after the story ended, and it utterly deflated Viola. “You don’t believe me,” she breathed, “do you?”

“Of course I believe you, Vi,” Verity said quietly. “You’ve never ever lied to me. I have no reason to believe that you would start lying to me now.”

“But it explains some things, doesn’t it?” Viola said, bolstered, and shifted so that she was on her knees on the stiff hospital mattress. “Some of your weird symptoms? Maybe this is why you’re sick at all.”

“Sure,” came Verity’s easy reply as she reached out to clutch Viola’s hand. “Maybe.”

“You really don’t believe me.” Viola pulled away and crossed her arms over her abdomen, sulking.

“It’s not that, Vi,” Verity gently intoned. “I believe that you are telling me what you know to be the truth. I’m just…wondering about the origins of that truth.”

“Oh my God, you think I’m crazy!”

“Well…can you blame me?” Verity had a desperate sort of expression on her face, and it mirrored Viola’s. She hadn’t considered the possibility that Verity would question her story, even once. Now, she thought, that makes her crazier more than anything else does. Of course Verity would question the insanity Viola had just revealed: she’d be mad not to.

Viola heaved a sigh and hauled herself up off of the bed. “Where are you going?” Verity demanded.

“I just want to talk to your doctor,” she said, “that’s all. Then I need to figure some stuff out.”

“You aren’t mad at me?” Verity asked.

“No, sweet girl. I get it.” Viola leaned over and kissed Verity’s forehead before turning around and exiting the room, heading down toward the nurse’s station. They knew her there. They knew that the term “visiting hours” didn’t apply to her, and that she would come and go as she pleased, and that her sister, their patient, was always better off when she did.

Viola’s favorite nurse was on, and she spied her full mass of blond curls even from down the hall. She couldn’t help but smile as she approached and the nurse, one Winifred Caplan, came out from behind the nurse’s station to throw her arms around Viola’s neck.

“Ain’t you a sight for sore eyes,” Winnie said, in her languid drawl. Viola grinned down into her cherubic face: Winnie was a solid five inches shorter than Viola, and plump where Viola was all angles. Winifred had big brown eyes, the color of sunlight coming in through a crystal glass full of port, and pert cupid’s lips, and eyelashes that went on for days. Viola and Verity had both immediately warmed to her.

“It’s good to see you too, Winnie.”

“Was wonderin’ when you’d get your little butt back here,” she drawled, poking at Viola’s ribs before moving back around to fetch Verity’s chart.”

“Been busy,” she muttered, “Work.”

“Mmhm.” Winnie flipped through a few pages, nodding her head, then angled that warm pair of eyes on Viola. “She’s doing well. That’s the good news—the swelling went down at about the pace we anticipated. She’s healthy—her appetite is strong, she seems antsy, eager to get out.”

“What’s the bad news, then?” Viola inquired, crossing her arms in front of her.

“The bad news is that there ain’t been any real long-term improvement. She’s exactly the same as the last time she was in, and the time before that, and the time before that.”

“What doctor is she working with right now?” Verity had seen every doctor within a hundred-mile radius; Viola could hardly keep them all straight.

“Well, now, let me see.” Winnie perused the chart once more, casting little smiles to every colleague, patient, or visitor that passed by the desk. “It says that Dr. Milner was on call last night, so she’ll just be finishing up her shift. You wanna talk to her?”

“Should I?”

Winnie bounced both shoulders in a shrug. “Don’t much see the point, honey. Dr. Milner’ll tell you exactly what I told you. And she’ll say there ain’t a whole lot else to do, ‘cept treat ‘er when you bring ‘er in and send ‘er home when she’s better.”

Viola nodded and gave Winnie’s arm a gentle squeeze. “Thanks, Win,” she said.

“Any time, honey. Just wish I could give you some better news, is all.” Winnie proffered a thin, purse-lipped smile and fell into a lean against the nurse’s station counter.

“I appreciate it,” Viola breathed, shoving her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “See you in a month or so,” she muttered, resigned.

“Yeah,” Winnie said on the wings of an exhale. “See you.”

Viola turned to head back down the hall toward Verity’s room, her feet dragging a little. She always held out hope that there would be news of some phenomenal discovery, and there never was. But maybe now, knowing what she did about their origins, she was in a position to really help Verity for the first time in their lives.

Nearing the end of the corridor, something made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She couldn’t put her finger on why she felt this sudden panic, why her senses were going haywire, but she followed the instinct and darted at top speed back to Verity’s room.

And a good thing she did, because there in the corner by the windows was a full-sized Kodiak bear. The bear sat still on its hind quarters, breathing shallow breaths, careful not to move lest it disturb anything in the small, corner room. Its furry backside was pressed up against one of the floor to ceiling windows. Verity, for her part, was frozen in stunned silence, her mouth hanging agape with a mixture of shock, horror, and awe. Without thinking, Viola placed her body directly between Verity’s and the bears, and she locked her eyes on the creature’s. They were familiar: warm, like tea and honey. She squinted at the bear, who exhaled sharply out its nose, its head canted gently to one side.

“Graham…?” Viola said at length. And the bear began to vibrate, like God himself had reached down to smear the image across the air, and from out of that blur emerged the man she’d named.

“I’m sorry,” Graham said, scrambling to don his boxers and jeans. “I didn’t mean to startle her; I was just trying to…I wanted to…I…” He looked past Viola to Verity with such an expression of concern that Viola turned to look at her sister. Verity was still frozen.

Viola gave her a little shake, wanting to ensure that she hadn’t suffered some kind of stroke, and Verity eventually snapped out of it.

“It is true,” she stammered, lifting one thin arm to point at Graham. “He was a bear. I saw it. You were right.”

“I told you,” Viola said, feeling slightly self-satisfied. She turned her eyes then on Graham, who was tugging a green flannel over the exquisitely chiseled contours of his shoulders. “And as for you, what are you doing here?”

“I got your message,” he explained. “I figure you wouldn’t be able to make it to the apartment as we’d discussed, so I figured this was the most logical place. When I came in, I saw that Verity was awake and thought I would…introduce myself.”

“He said he was a friend of yours when he got here,” Verity explained. “And then I sort of…” She cast her eyes down to her hands, where she was picking at the beds of her nails, abashed.

“What?” Viola urged. “You sort of…what?”

“Well, he said, ‘I’m a friend of Viola’s,’ and I sort of jokingly said, ‘the bear or the panther?’ And then…he…”

“Ah.”

“He turned into a bear.”

“I’m Graham McCallum,” he said, extending his hand to Verity in greeting. She took it, shook it limply, and withdrew her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise, I’m sure,” Verity muttered, her eyes never once leaving him, not for an instant. Her curiosity had been sparked, that much was obvious.

“I imagine that Viola has given you a bit of information about our situation,” he continued, tugging on his socks and brown boots before he moved to button the flannel.

“Yes, but,” Verity hesitated, her eyes wide, “but when she was speaking, I was trying to decide if I shouldn’t…call someone from the psych ward. I’m sorry,” she turned her attention to her sister, “but you have to understand how it sounded.”

Viola grinned; she couldn’t help it. “No, I know how it sounds,” she said, shoving her hands deep into the pockets of her jeans and meandering absently from one side of the room to the other, careful not to disturb any of the delicate instrumentation that surrounded the bed.

“In any event,” Graham went on, “she’s in a bit of trouble with Clan Felidae and will require our protection while we figure out our next move.”

“I’m not leaving Verity unattended,” Viola immediately asserted, her expression as pointed as her words.

“I can go with you,” Verity said, flinging the blankets off of her and swinging her legs over to the edge of the bed. She hoisted herself gingerly up, her bare feet landing on the cool linoleum floor.

“I don’t think so,” Viola said. “You still need to be under observation.”

“I’m fine,” she insisted. “I can manage.”

“No, you’re staying here until the doctors say you can leave,” Viola said, her voice rather a bit sharper than she’d intended. Verity looked chagrined but said no more about it. She remained standing, crossing her arms under her breasts and adopting a posture that looked a lot like Viola’s. except, of course, that Verity was wearing a pale blue nightgown instead of Viola’s jeans and a tee shirt.

“You’ll be safe here,’ Graham said to Verity, “We have people on staff.”

Viola blinked owlishly, her gaze fixed firmly on Graham as a small smile played at the corners of his mouth. “Who?” she asked.

“Just…people.”

Viola let it slide as she turned her attention to her sister. She moved forward and gripped Verity by the shoulders, staring intently into her face. “You don’t make a move without letting me know, ok?”

“Fine.” Verity stood up on tip toe to press a kiss to Viola’s forehead.

“Oh, shit,” Viola said. “My cell phone…I stole this guy’s—long story…”

“Just,” Graham interjected, plucking his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans, “call me. I won’t leave her side. My cell phone number is on the back.” He handed Verity his card, white linen with embossed green letter.

“Thanks,” Verity said, taking the card and turning it over in her hands like something precious. “Fancy.”

Graham smiled. “It was nice meeting you, Verity. I’m sorry about the whole turning into a bear…thing.”

“It’s ok,” she said, still somewhat dazed. “I liked the part where you were a naked man after.” Verity could say things like that without coming off as odd or perverted, because it was so direct and so earnest. It made Graham McCallum actually blush.

“All right, that’s enough of that,” Viola said, ushering Verity back toward the hospital bed. She hugged her tight and let her go. “Take care of yourself, sweet girl. I’ll be back to see you when this is all over.”

“Bye bye, Vi,” Verity said as she climbed back into bed, tucking the business card into the spine of the book she had been reading: Jane Eyre.

Graham gently directed Viola out the door of the hospital room as though she needed extra urging to get moving—and perhaps she did. She hated to leave her sister alone in a hospital, even a nice hospital. The rubber soles of Graham’s boots were squeaking against the hall tile as they moved, and Viola waggled her fingers to Winnie by way of farewell as they passed.

“Later, honey,” came Winnie’s lilting timbre. Then: “Good morning, Mr. McCallum.”

Viola paused and saw him smile and nod at Winnie. “Winifred,” he said, “lovely to see you.”

And she could tell, then, what Winifred was: another ursine shifter, with those warm honey brown eyes, a little too luminescent to be human. Rowan had mentioned that Clan Felidae had eyes on Verity as well and wondered who among the employees of the hospital was in the pocket of the panther clan. She hoped very much that Winnie would stay close to Verity, in case the panthers issued some sort of call to action. But they weren’t after Verity. No, Clan Felidae was after Viola.

Graham pushed through the front entrance of the hospital and held the door open for Verity, who hugged close to the hinges, allowing a team of paramedics to dart through and head toward emergency, a man splayed on a gurney held between them. Safely outside, she walked close at Graham’s side, glancing up at him every now and again as they made their way toward a side parking lot. “Where are we going?” she asked as he fished a set of car keys out of his pocket.

“To the dwelling,” he said, as though that would make absolute sense to her.

“The dwelling?” she echoed.

“Yes, er…it’s the headquarters, essentially, for Clan Ursus. The elders will be convening there.” Viola wondered if the clan elders were anything like the Felidae council and hoped very much that her meeting with them went better than the other one had.

Viola stopped dead on the pavement. “I left a stolen car, a gun, wallet…all that stuff in the back parking structure,” she said, hooking her thumb over her shoulder. “I shouldn’t just…leave it…should I?” For an assassin, she had precious little experience in other forms of crime and had no idea what to do with stolen wares. She wasn’t a thief—or, at least, she never was before today.

“I’ll have someone take care of it,” Graham said, stopping by a Ford F150 in hunter green.

Viola smirked. “Of course you drive a truck,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“What?” He asked in mock defensiveness as he unlocked the doors.

“You are just really playing into this stereotype, you know that?” She said, opening the passenger side door and climbing up and into the cabin.

“And what stereotype is that, Miss St. James?” He got in next to her and slammed the door shut. The engine roared to life like some great and untamable beast.

“Lumberjack woodsman bear shifter man,” she said lamely, and grinned.

“I am what I am,” he said, throwing the truck into reverse, “nothing more, nothing less.”