Page 59 of Wolf Bane
I redirected Reba before she could get too far into the Ballad of the Thompson Girls.“We need to reach out to the patients on the schedule for later in the week and see which ones are willing to have a home visit.We can triage those today and start making arrangements for the others to be rescheduled, or if it’s urgent, I’ll… I’ll figure something out.”
Gina Perrin cleared her throat.“I don’t have any patients on the roster yet, so I can help Reba out with the triaging if you want to see a few patients today, Doctor Babin.”
I started to protest; who would I go see, I couldn’t just go door to door like I was trick or treating but offering healthcare instead.Then my brain kicked over another cog and some of the fog lifted.
The Clemens family.
“Right.I have a few already lined up,” I said with forced cheer.Reba pursed her lips, eyeing me warily.“What?”
“Already?Landry, you can take a minute and just breathe, hon.You were runnin’ all over hell’s half acre this weekend, now this.”She spread her arms to take in the wreckage of the clinic.“And a thousand other things before the day’s even over.Andyour man is finally in town for a few days?Landry.Hon.Go home.Breathe.See your fella before he has to take off out of her again.”
“Ah, well…” I glanced at Gina Perrin, who was barely managing to hide a smile.Reba’s mother henning came for us all eventually, and it’d be her turn soon.“I think you’re right.Maybe just a quick nap or something before I have to meet up with the folks for the t-shacks later.”
“Or something,” Reba said with a sore of tired slyness.“So long as Ethan’s in town, make hay while the sun shines, hm?”
Gina Perrin and Reba set up shop near the ruined front desk, the broken computer pushed to one side and the files loosely collected.Reba assured me it’d be too much of a pain in the ass to try and get them in order right then and there, and she could access everything she needed from the cloud, so she and Gina Perrin waved me off.Gina Perrin with a knowing tilt to her head and Reba with a teary smile and the promise of more peanut brittle once she got her nerves in working order again.
“Go on.”She scooted me out the door.“Don’t come back till you’ve gotten some rest.Or something,” she added with a knowing smirk.
I smiled thinly in return.“Definitely something.”
Her amused chuckle followed me to my car.
ChapterFifteen
The Clemens’ house was far enough out of town that it was practically in Dallas.It was far enough for me to have an entire conversation with Ethan while I drove, the rumble of the tires over rutted blacktop road making it hard to hear him even with the volume turned all the way up and the sound coming through the speakers thanks to the Bluetooth thingy.
“Did you say Benoit called?”
“I calledhim,” Ethan corrected, raising his voice just a little.“Keeping him peripherally in the loop.His right-hand guy, Daniel?—”
“I remember,” I muttered.“That asshole.”
“Well.He’s gone back to working in Dallas for the rest of the month, and apparently that started a huge to-do between the two of ‘em.Rambled a good twenty minutes about duties to the clan, how could he fuck off while this is going on.By the time I dragged him back to the point, he was in a lather.Benoit’s pissed about your plan still, but there’s not much he can do about that.”
“He’ll live,” I muttered, flipping on my turn signal for the oddly out of place neighborhood, a sprawling old VA home development that, if it had a name, had long since been lost to county paperwork and the memories of the original inhabitants now long gone.It had mid-century charm, and I’d looked at buying there when I first moved back to Belmarais, but it was inconveniently located in the middle of acres upon acres of defunct farmland that had never really picked back up after the Depression.Sometime in the fifties, someone had a vision of a suburb and this neighborhood was going to be the centerpiece.
Now, it was a mix of seniors and families, a dusty-looking bus stop at the end of the main drag for the kids who couldn’t or wouldn’t ride their bikes the six miles to the local public school complex.A gas station that still had posters in the window for some movie that came out six years ago held anchor across the street from the entrance, giving off very strong serial killers work here vibes.
“Well, Benoit’s a problem,” Ethan said with more than a hint of irritation.“Thanks to him, I have some new duties for the council.Instead of going to Minnesota at the end of the week and meeting with the Rooker clan, I’m batting cleanup on this whole situation with Lugaru.They rejected council oversight a few years ago, but I think they’re not gonna have a choice right now.They’re starting to get attention from the human communities.”
I braked yards away from the buckshot-pocked stop sign, stomach twitching anxiously.“Howmuchattention?”
“The usual rumors, the shit you hear about rural enclaves.Cult activity, militias, that sort of thing, but there’s been a few humans reporting sightings.”He sighed.“Benoit was hesitant to admit anything, but last week, one of their afflicted reached the uncontrolled shifting stage and got loose, terrorized someone’s fish camp.They reported it as feral dog but…”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me.“Shit.”
“So far, it’s just a lot of talk, but the council wants to get ahead of it.Hell,Iwant to get ahead of it.Even if I weren’t working for them, this is something I’d be throwing myself at as a clan leader.As someone who wants to keep us safe.”Ethan blew out a harsh breath through his nose and shifted, the rustle of fabric making me wonder if he was stretched out on the bed, trying to snatch a nap while he could.It’d been foolish to think we’d get a few hours for ourselves—we’d be busy till doomsday, I was pretty sure.
Because this was something that never seemed to end.
Anger, hot and greasy, spread through my chest and down my abdomen.It was aimless, encompassing, and nauseating, driving me to rest my head on the steering wheel for a moment and catch my breath.Not at Ethan, or even the council.Justlife, the way things were spooling out.The way choices had been taken from all of us.And how someone was now moving around in the dark, poisoning weres and shifters.Aiming at the most vulnerable of an already small population.
Someone behind me honked and I glanced up to see a scowling woman in a champagne-colored SUV jabbing her finger at me through her windshield.Go, go, go!
Wordlessly, Ethan still breathing down the line, I took my foot off the brake and moved forward.“If this ever ends,” I said, turning left onto Dogwood Petal Lane, the street I’d wanted to begin with, “let’s take a long vacation somewhere there’s no weres or shifters.”
“If we’re there, there’d be weres.”
