Long Shadows: The Lycanthropy Files, Book 2 by Cecilia Dominic

you.”
    Her words made sense, but they also didn’t. I told myself that was because she was confused, that the heart failure had deprived her brain of oxygen, but I had to keep the conversation going.
    “I wish you had told me.” My hands trembled, and heat radiated from my chest to my cheeks. I struggled to keep my tone even, to not betray my shock and confusion. “There was a wizard, and then I got shot with something while I was…changed.” The word wolf hung in the air between us, but if she wasn’t going to say it, I wasn’t either. It would make this insane conversation mean too much. “Now I cannot change.”
    I kept my voice low in case an orderly or some other person came by and overheard us. It all still seemed crazy to me, and I’d lived it. No telling what someone else would think.
    “But do you have your guardian?”
    I closed my eyes and listened to that part of the mind where Wolf-Lonna had been, but it was like scar tissue and lacked sensation. “I cannot reach her.”
    She said one of those words in Italian that my parents had always refused to teach me, and I couldn’t help but smile in spite of the lump in my throat that grew with the realization of this new loss. “Your friend Joanie,” she said. “She was studying things that will help it make sense for you.”
    “She’s got the same problem,” I said. “She turns with the moon.”
    She waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. “Not that part—the things that are making it happen, the parts of the soul. If you have lost your other self, you have lost part of your soul, and that is not good.”
    “I don’t understand, and I need to.” Desperation tinged my tone, and I clutched the blanket so I would stop trembling. “Please save your strength. You have to hold on a little longer so you can explain all this to me.” I knew I was begging, but I couldn’t help it.
    “We are not meant to understand all of it, ragazzina , only the parts God wants us to. As for me, I only hope he does not hold me accountable for what I did when I was not in control of my actions.”
    “What did you do?” I felt guilty for my resentment and anger. She needed the comforting now. “Whatever it was, it couldn’t have been that bad.”
    She shook her head. “That secret, it will come to the grave with me.” She patted my hand. “It was the other I needed you to know. The Padre Superiore said one per generation, and you are the only one. I hoped the price would die with me, but he was a strong one.”
    “What are you talking about? Who is the Padre Superiore? What price?”
    “I fear you will meet him without the protection of your companion.” She gripped my hand tightly and looked out of the window. “Ah, now that I have told you, I see your mother. She is as beautiful as the day she married your father, ragazzina .”
    “What? Where?” I followed her gaze with my own, but all I could see was the room and the tulip tree glowing pink in the courtyard lights outside the window. A breeze made the branches shiver, and an answering chill crept down my neck. Then I felt it again, that sensation of a hand caressing my cheek like the night before.
    “All I have is yours,” she gasped, and with one last squeeze, she died. If she had been in the hospital, the medical monitors would have raised the alarm, but here, there was only the sound of the oxygen compressor, which fell silent. Only the clock on the wall persisted in its steady ticking. I studied her face to see if she had gone happily, if she had, indeed, been able to follow my mother to Heaven, but her expression was neutral with no indication one way or the other. Hopefully seeing Mama was the indicator of what was to come, not a final goodbye. I closed my eyes to say a prayer for her, and I saw the lines of the interstate, the long eternal road. I struggled to stay awake, but the toll of the early start, intense emotions, and driving all day caught me.
    The weight of Gladis Ann’s hand on