Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91636 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91636 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
“Break up with her?” Conroy snorts.
“That’s the default advice for everything from a partner who won’t do dishes to one who kills your whole family.”
“From who?”
“From singles and divorcees.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“We should see the doctor,” I repeat.
This time, he agrees.
That same afternoon, the three of us are taking up all the space in the waiting room. When Mandy comes bustling in, her eyes run across all of us. “None of you seem to have any bullet holes in you, which is a good thing. Which one of you wants to go first?”
“We’re not here for us,” I say.
“You’re not?” she says. “Usually patients come here because they need treatment.”
“We think there’s something wrong with Kita.”
“Oh? Has she been nauseous?” She takes a shot in the dark and misses entirely. Strange. I imagine if a doctor had to guess the reason for someone’s visit it would take them a very long time. Highly inefficient.
“Uhm. No.”
“Okay,” she says, seeming surprised. “What is wrong with her?”
“We think she might be possessed.”
Her lips quirk in an odd way, and her eyes seem to sparkle.
“Possessed?”
“Yes.”
“Well, fortunately, possession is not a medical condition, so I think we can rule that out.”
Conroy starts. “She’s been behaving very…” We look at one another.
“Temperamentally,” I explain. “She doesn’t seem like herself.”
“In what way?”
“She has the temperament of a rabid badger,” Tailor says.
“She’s drawing blood,” I add. “And she’s eating a lot. Quite a lot.”
The doctor nods. “Any weakness? Dizziness?”
“The opposite. I’ve never seen her so strong.”
“Alright, well, she sounds healthy and what you’re saying her is quite normal given her situation.”
“What situation?”
The doctor looks surprised for a moment, then clamps her mouth shut, her lips forming a thin line oddly reminiscent of a vault. Whatever she was going to say will never be said.
“If you have any real concerns about your partner, bring her in for a checkup. In fact, bring her in,” she says. “But possession is not a medically diagnosable condition, though behavioral changes are sometimes linked to hormonal shifts.”
“I don’t know if she will come in.”
“Tell her I would like to see her tomorrow for some monitoring,” she says.
“She won’t like it.”
“Just tell her. Now, boys, I have other patients to see. Don’t worry, a little moodiness is normal.”
Conroy
“She’s not telling us something,” Damon says after we are shooed out of the clinic.
“No. She’s not.”
“She can’t. She has to keep medical things confidential,” Tailor says.
“She has to keep them confidential, but there’s nothing Kita needs to keep from us. We should know everything about her.”
“I don’t know about that,” Tailor says. “She’s allowed privacy.”
I look at Damon. Damon looks back at me and gives a light shrug.
“Why don’t we just tell her that the doctor wants to see her and let her go see the doctor. If there’s something wrong, we will find out then,” Tailor says. He’s being the voice of reason again. He loves to do that. Loves to be the one who makes sense. He handled all the money at the old port, and the logistics. I managed leadership issues. Damon handled surveillance and underhand activities.
With Kita, things have settled into a similar pattern, but I am not as happy to just leave the outcome to him when it comes to her. I want to know what is happening. Every detail. I want to know what’s going on with Kita. I want to know it now.
I am realizing that Tailor was wrong and the doctor was right. We need to talk to our mate. We need to go home.
Kita is waiting for us when we arrive. She is standing at the front door, arms folded over her chest, and an expression of true irritation on her pretty features.
“Where did you all go?” She asks the question in demanding tones.
“We were in town,” Tailor says.
She looks at all of us, visibly annoyed. “Well, you didn’t tell me, did you? I’m not allowed to go anywhere without telling you anything, but you get to all just disappear without saying a word. I didn’t know what had happened. For all I knew, a vampire had come and eaten you all.”
“You were asleep. We didn’t want to wake you. You’ve been very tired lately.”
She flinches away from Tailor’s soothing hand and practically growls at him. “Don’t touch me,” she hisses. “I didn’t know where any of you were. I thought we weren’t allowed to do that. I’m not allowed to just go out, you’d all chase me down and beat me if I did that, and you did it as if it didn’t matter. Such a fucking double standard.”
She pushes past all of us and goes stamping out the door.
“Kita! The doctor wants to see you.” I call out.
Kita whips around, her eyes narrowed, her face pale and pinched with annoyance. “Why?”
“We don’t know. She just asked us to let you know on our way past.”