Free Under Her Skin by Margo Bond Collins Page A

doing here? How did you even find me?”
    He unclamped his clenched jaw only long enough to respond. “I’m on the evening shift tonight at the hospital. I thought I’d drop by your office to see how you were doing. Everyone was returning from lunch, so I followed them in. Instead of you, I found a note announcing that you were coming out to visit some of the very people you were supposed to be avoiding.”
    “Avoiding? You’re working with her?” Rita Bryant stepped in close enough to keep from being cut out of the conversation. Part of me was glad she no longer felt threatened by my presence. The rest of me wished she’d shut up so I could have it out with Dr. Mongoose.
    “Let’s all have a seat and talk about this like rational humans.” Kade’s voice was back to being warm and coaxing. My head spun with his changing verbal cues.
    “Do you know what she is?” Rita Bryant demanded again.
    “Yes. And I know something about who she is, too,” the doctor replied. He took another step inside, and I followed him. The Bryant family fell back at our inexorable approach, but not in fear. I tasted the air, found something buttery and smooth flowing between Kade and the Bryants.
    It was respect, I realized. They respected the doctor, this strange mongoose shifter who had followed me out to their home. I might have frightened them, but if he said I was trustworthy, they were going to believe it.
    At least somewhat. The bobcat still carefully kept himself between me and the children, and when Rita tried to step forward, he sat down on her feet. We all stared at one another for a long moment. “Johnny,” Rita finally said, “why don’t you go on back and change. Dr. Nevala is here, and he’ll watch us. We’re okay.”
    After a long, hard look at me, the cat padded away. “Y’all have a seat,” Rita said, gesturing toward the living room area. “I’ll get us something to drink. And Johnny’s going to need food. You want anything?” Her words were directed at the doctor. She wasn’t comfortable enough to speak directly to me, at least not in any hospitable way.
    But Kade glanced at me, taking in the short shake of my head before answering for both of us. “No, thanks.”
    The children sat huddled on the couch, staring at me as if we hadn’t spent hours together in my office working through the trauma of Preston’s kidnapping.
    A sudden thought made me sit up straight, and the children both jerked a little. “Last year,” I said. “The man who held you hostage?” It had taken us two weeks to come up with a term Preston could live with—something that allowed him to deal with his trauma, but did not, as he said, make him “feel like a baby.” Thus “kidnapped” had been eliminated. “Besides,” he had said, “he didn’t take me anywhere. We were right in my living room.”
    This living room , I realized, looking around with new eyes.
    “What about that man?” Rita said, her tone riding the line between polite and hostile.
    “Was he a shapeshifter, too?” I held my breath, waiting for the answer. Would the knowledge have changed anything about how I had counseled Preston? Probably not.
    “No.” Rita’s reply was short.
    “But he saw Preston shift,” Kirstie offered. Rita shook her head at her daughter, but in the irrepressible way of children, Kristie burbled on. “Mr. Vazquez moved in next door without getting the clowder’s permission first, ‘cause he didn’t know he needed it, and by the time they found out, it was too late, but then he was out in his back yard, and he seen Preston turn cat.”
    With a sigh, Rita moved toward the kitchen.
    Kirstie leaned forward, confidingly. “Mr. Vazquez was peeing. Outside. In his own human shape.”
    “He didn’t have any other shape, dummy,” Preston said, bumping his sister with his shoulder.
    I had heard the part about the kidnapper’s tendency to urinate outside. No one had mentioned any other shapes in our counseling sessions.
    This