Neon Blue by E Frost (best book reader .TXT) 📗

into the parlor, which is the only room in the house that’s really for public consumption, and takes a seat on the couch when I wave at it with my free hand. I drag the shifter through the pocket door into the dining room, where I heave him up onto the table. Good thing he isn’t very heavy.

The antique table groans and I can almost hear my grandmother’s ghost hissing in my ear.

I blow at the corners of the room. They blaze with witch-light. In the strong, golden glow, I examine the shifter’s wounds.

His side is a mangled mass of meat. When I spit into the wound, the blood sizzles. Poisoned.

I grip the shifter’s shaggy hand. The pads of his palm are rough against my fingers. “You’re going to be okay.”

Green eyes focus on me. “Hurts . . .”

“I know. I can heal you. Stay here and lie quiet. I need to deal with the human in the other room.”

The paw contracts painfully around my hand, the points of his claws pricking my wrist. “Don’t go.”

He looks very scared. And sounds very young. “How old are you?”

“Seven . . . teen.”

“Is this your first year?”

The furred head bobs. Shit. A brand-new shifter. Bleeding to death on my dining room table.

“You know the second law?”

He nods again, and his brilliant green eyes glaze.

“I uphold the Therian laws.” Because if I didn’t, one clan or another would probably eat me. “So I need to deal with the human. And then I will help you.”

“The human is listening to all of this,” Peter says from the doorway. “And he’s getting concerned.”

Shit. Shit, shit and shit.

Chapter 8

I blow into my coffee and glance across the kitchen table at my guest. He looks tired, which is understandable, since it’s nearly three in the morning and neither of us has been to bed yet.

That fact is particularly disappointing, given how cute my guest is. Even at three a.m., covered with blood.

He also looks like the world has rocked on its foundations. Which is also understandable, given what he’s seen in the last few hours.

I glance at my other guest. Not the werewolf, who is now peacefully sleeping on my dining-room table under a hand-woven blanket imbued with all the healing charms I could weave into it, but the tall, hawk-nosed woman leaning against my sink, sipping from her own cup of Swiss Chocolate Almond.

“I liked the Mocha better,” she says.

“Sorry, I’m all out.”

“Can we talk about something other than the coffee?” Peter asks hollowly.

I stifle a giggle. I don’t want to laugh at him. I was raised knowing about the Secret World and I still find shifters a little alarming. No wonder he’s in shock.

“Professor Buselli,” Ana says, and I can tell she’s trying to be gentle. “Don’t you think you’d prefer to take the potion?” She nods at the small, green vial sitting on the table.

Peter looks at it like it’s a scorpion. “No.”

“What do you want to talk about, Peter?” I ask.

He hunches over his steaming cup. “How many of you are there?”

I figure that question’s directed at Ana, so I let her field it.

“Wouldn’t it be better if you didn’t know?” she says.

I wince into my coffee cup.

Peter’s eyes lift to meet mine. They’re glassy, like blue marbles. Dazed. Hurt.

“Which kind are you?” he asks. He sounds sullen.

“I’m not a shifter—”

Ana stirs against the sink. Ruffling her feathers. “We prefer therian.”

“Right, sorry. I’m not a therian.”

“Then why.” I hear him force the next words out between his teeth. “Is there a werewolf sleeping in your dining room?”

“We prefer—” Ana begins.

I hold up a hand. She’s really not helping. “Lycanthrope. They like to be called lycanthropes. And there’s a lycanthrope sleeping on my dining room table because I’m a healer.” Ana clears her throat with a noise that sounds remarkably like a caw. “Among other things.”

“What other things?” Peter grits.

“She’s a sorceress,” Ana says.

“I prefer witch.” She’s beginning to get on my nerves. I generally get along pretty well with shifters, even shifters as arrogant as Ana, but anyone can rub me the wrong way at three in the morning.

Ana shrugs one shoulder. “Witch has such negative historical connotations.”

As opposed to sorceress. “Whatever. I can heal most injuries.” Although I discovered my own personal limitations with spinal injuries. “I brew potions, I speak with the dead, I can do a little sympathetic magic, and I hang out with therians. And the occasional fae.” I add hastily, because Lilliwhite has yet to make an appearance tonight, but she often stops in if she sees my lights on after midnight.

“And she makes a mean cup of coffee,” says a small voice from near my coffee-machine.

Cue Lilliwhite. “Help yourself,” I say to the pixie.

Ana casts a disapproving glance at the little fae. “I cannot see how this concerns you.”

“Tsara’s my friend. I can visit when I like. And everyone knows you’re a bitch.”

Pixies not being known for their tact.

“Okay, okay.” I rise from the table and interpose myself between Ana and the pixie, before the Horai decides to take a snap at the fae.

Lilliwhite decides that discretion is the better part of valor and retreats across the kitchen after I pour a few drops of coffee into her thimble-sized cup. She alights on the kitchen table and examines the memory charm while she sips her coffee.

Peter watches her with a mixture of shock and terror.

I rub my gritty eyes. I’ve seen that expression too many times tonight. When Toby-the-Werewolf first showed up. When he began gouting black blood out of every orifice. When his patroness Ankhenaten appeared and changed from a hawk to a woman in my dining room. When I had to ask Peter to help Ana hold Toby down while I poured Naga antivenin into his wounds.

It’s been a long night.

“Peter, that offer is still open if you want to take me up on it,” I say.

Unfortunately, that offer is just to sleep in the spare bedroom. I wouldn’t mind him sleeping elsewhere, but between