Blood's Shadow: The Lycanthropy Files, Book 3 by Cecilia Dominic Page A

both of them. Go on. I’m still not convinced LeConte’s death is your fault.”
    “That morning after staffing, he asked me to walk with him to his office. He said he had something to ask me. I was afraid of what he’d say, he looked so hopeful and afraid all at the same time. I said no, I had things I needed to do before your visit. The next time I saw him, he was dead.”
    “What do you think he was going to ask you?”
    “To go out with him, I guess. I don’t know what else it could have been. But don’t you see? If I’d gone to his office with him, he might not have been killed or he would have had warning that something wasn’t right. You know we hear and smell better than humans do.”
    “Or they might have gotten you too,” I reminded her. “Did you go to his office between his request to you that morning and when we found him?”
    “I…” She looked down at her now empty wine glass. “I didn’t.”
    I knew she was lying, but I didn’t want to confront her and spook my only link to the murder’s witness into running for the States. That she opened up to me even minimally gave me hope she would continue to do so as she came to trust me. “Do you remember anything else unusual about him or his behavior that day?”
    “No, only that he was excited about getting the applications. He had a project on the side tracing the family records of known lycanthrope lines, and he was looking forward to putting it all together to see how the subjects’ lines intersected with the ones we know about and to isolate another genetic marker to maybe figure out why Chronic Lycanthropy Syndrome fully expresses in some people but not in others.” She shrugged. “That’s all I can remember.”
    “I appreciate your coming to visit me today, but was it really necessary?”
    “I needed to talk to you outside the Institute. I don’t feel comfortable there anymore.” She shuddered. “It’s like I’m being watched.”
    I thought about the letter in the kitchen. “I know the feeling.”
    She stood, and I did as well. “Thank you for the wine,” she said and held out her glass to me.
    “My pleasure.” Our fingertips brushed when she handed the crystal over, and again, I got the image of her as a wolf looking into a pool of water, not unlike where David and I had stopped and been shot at that afternoon.
    She looked up at me with a smile she tucked away, and again, I wondered what she’d seen. It was unusual enough for such strong visual images to come through with scent, and for them to do so with touch puzzled me. Was it part of me coming into my full power?
    “I should be going,” she said.
    I followed her to the front door. “Be careful,” I told her. “You don’t know who or what is out there watching.”
    With a quick nod, she walked to her car and went to the passenger side before sighing and going to the driver’s side. She must not have been in the country that long if she was still trying to drive from the wrong side of the car. I hoped she would remember what side of the road to use.
    After she left, I double-checked all my security measures to ensure nothing had been tampered with. All looked secure, and I took a hot shower. When I got out, I saw something scrawled in the mist on the mirror: 204, the number that had been scrawled at the edge of the photograph of my father’s mangled corpse.
    A chill chased away the heat from the shower, and I hesitated to wipe the fog from the rest of the mirror. Would another face besides my own stare back at me? I licked my lips and tasted salt. Tears?
    I wiped the fog from the mirror, but what faced me wasn’t my father’s or even my face, but a scene from the past. It was the kitchen of my parents’ flat in Lycan Village, where a lot of the Council members lived if their own houses were too far away.
    “No, I’m not doing this,” I said and turned to open the door. The knob stuck. “Dammit, the past is in the past. I have no desire to relive that