Free Animal Instincts (Entangled Ignite) by Patricia Rosemoor Page A

see you, too.”
    I waited until he straightened and focused on me before I asked, “Where do you go when—?”
    He shrugged. “Don’t know. I must kind of fade in and out, I guess. As far as I’m concerned, I’m still here. At least part of my consciousness is. Ethan was here with a team.”
    “He saw you?”
    “Afraid not. I tried, but nothing. So I eavesdropped on them. They didn’t find anything but two sets of prints. Undoubtedly yours and mine.”
    I nodded but my mind was already elsewhere. “Why didn’t you tell me about Nuala Lazare?”
    “Who?”
    “Beautiful. Dark hair and eyes. Intense. Sound familiar?” Shade continued with the blank look, so I said, “I thought maybe she was your snitch, maybe even the one who got you information on what I thought were dogfights, but apparently you had a thing with her. At least according to her brother Luc.”
    His expression accepting, Shade threw out his hands. “Okay.”
    “Okay? You were seeing someone and you didn’t tell me. And she’s part of a crime family that runs a questionable operation hidden beneath a legal casino. They’re probably responsible for the fights you were investigating.”
    “Sorry, I don’t remember any of this.” Shade’s forehead pulled tight. In the end, he shrugged. “I got a couple of flashes, but nothing I can hold on to.”
    Throwing myself onto one of his leather chairs, I regaled him with the twenty-five cent tour of my night, including its thriller ending.
    “I don’t understand what’s going on in the lower level of that casino boat.” I shook my head. “I’ve never before heard anyone’s thoughts, and my communications with animals has always been through images and emotions. Then there was all that mind-control stuff going on.” At least Luc Lazare had been trying to control me. “How is any of this possible?”
    Shade perched on the arm of a chair and Boomer settled at his feet. “I don’t know. I don’t seem to know much anymore.”
    “The thing that keeps ringing in my head is Luc Lazare asking me ‘What are you?’ as if I were something other than a human being. What could he have meant, Shade? What could I …we …be?”
    “Uh…”
    I didn’t think it was possible, but my ghostly brother went even more pale. He appeared ready to fade into the shadows behind him. My breath shortened as I stared at him.
    “What?” I asked, certain there was something he knew that I didn’t. “Tell me.”
    “It’s not much. Dad saying something like that to Mom when she was so sick. He said if she was what she claimed to be, then surely she could make the cancer go away, that she could find the answer in that book of hers she was always reading and scribbling in. I remember her telling him it didn’t work like that. Despite the gifts she was given, she was still susceptible to human ills.”
    Wishing there had been some way she could have saved herself, I said, “If only she was here to give us some answers.”
    “Maybe she still can,” Shade said. “Maybe we’d find answers in that book.”
    Frowning, I only vaguely remembered the book. “Does it still exist? I haven’t seen it since she died.”
    “Remember, Dad gave a bunch of Mom’s stuff to Grandma.”
    “The basement.” When we’d inherited this building two years ago, there’d been what seemed like a lifetime of possessions stored in a room down there, but we’d never taken the time to go through it all and dredge up old memories. “I’ll go look.”
    Normally I only used the basement to do my laundry. I hadn’t been in Grandma’s storage bin since we’d first moved in. The eight-by-ten-foot room was filled with boxes and old furniture laden with dust. I was looking around, trying to figure out where to start, when an old trunk drew my attention. Certain I recognized it, I stood staring at it for a moment. That trunk had been in the room where Mom had spent a lot of time alone.
    My pulse fluttered and I was drawn straight to