Long Shadows: The Lycanthropy Files, Book 2 Read Online Free PDF

I told her, the need to make everything right with my pack mate foremost in my mind.
    “Apology accepted.” She smiled and sipped her tea. “To answer your questions, I’m about eight weeks along, and I’m due in September. It’s too early to know the gender or even to be telling people, but there’s no keeping something like this from the pack.”
    I flared my nostrils, wondering if I caught a hint of fuchsia in her scent, but I shook my head.
    “What’s wrong?” She leaned forward and put her tea on a coaster. “You’ve gone pale.”
    “I never answered your question.” I looked into my water glass. “I’m here because I’m being hunted.”
    Her hand went to her stomach in that age-old protective gesture, and she got the patented “Stony Joanie” look on her face. “By what?” Her tone had gone from concerned to clinical.
    “I don’t know, but I took precautions to make sure I wasn’t being followed.”
    She relaxed then. “I trust they were good ones considering you’re a private detective who knows how to follow people. I noticed you didn’t drive George up here.”
    I nodded. “My pursuer has his plate number, courtesy of the weasel who’s my boss. He doesn’t know about this car. I never registered it with the deck I park in.”
    She drummed her fingers on the tea mug. “Start at the beginning.”
    I told her everything from Paul having called me in to ask me about my clubbing and me suspecting it was Kyra to the strange electrical incident and dream at my apartment to Paul’s strange shift in attitude and his phone calls.
    Joanie listened like a scientist, asking questions to draw out more details. “You were smart to get out of there,” she said once I finished. “Do you think it’s Peter?”
    I shook my head. “I would have recognized it if it had been. A monster knows her own creator. Sorry,” I added, remembering that she was a monster as well.
    “You’re definitely shaken up. I’ve never heard Lonna Marconi apologize so much in a day. Besides,” she said with a sad smile, “I’m still trying to decide if this is my family curse or my family legacy. It’s put me in the position to help people directly, which I never did with my research.”
    “It only works if people want to be helped,” I said, thinking about some of my tougher cases at work, and then what had drawn me up here originally. “Or if people are open about why they’re approaching you.”
    Joanie tucked her legs up under her. “That’s very true. But getting back to your mystery, you said this new doctor had a scent similar to what you smelled when you were being toyed with at your apartment. Medical practices don’t just hire physicians without a long interview and vetting process, even if they are temps. Too much fear of being sued.”
    “Do you know anyone you could ask there?”
    “Hmmm… I mostly know the pediatrics people since we looked at kids’ medical records, but I’ll think about it and check through my contacts.”
    “So how’s Leo doing these days?” I was tired of talking about my problems.
    She couldn’t hide the happy blush that came to her face. “He’s doing well. He passed his internal medicine boards earlier this month, and he’s also going to take the pediatric ones, so he’s setting up a family practice clinic up here.”
    “That’s good. It’ll keep him busy.”
    “Yes,” she said, “he doesn’t like the idea of being a kept man. He gets grumpy if he’s stuck in the house for too long, anyway, even aside from hunting.”
    “Hunting…” My inner wolf perked her ears up. “Can we hunt tonight?”
    “So are you hunting in your current condition?” I asked. “Or is it forbidden like sushi and alcohol?”
    She laughed. “I can do it for now. I’ve not taken the aconite since we found out, and my body seems to accommodate the internal rearrangement, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to once I get huge.”
    “It sucks that there’s no one to