Page 1 of Wolf Bane
ChapterOne
“Ithink this is it,” Reba announced, dropping a cardboard box—like the kind you’d get at a bakery—onto the front desk of the clinic.“Forget the soaps, the knitting, the macrame swings, the stained-glass wind chimes, the singing telegrams?—”
“Oh, yeah,” I mused, leaning back in the chair.“I remember your singing telegram business.That went better than I thought it would, honestly.”
Reba glowered, coming around the desk to shove her purse in the bottom drawer next to my ankle.“I got two clients and one of ‘em thought I was a stripper.Seriously.Me!A stripper!I’m not nearly graceful enough to pull that off.What stripper shows up wearing Doctor Scholls and an arm brace?”
“One who slipped and fell on her leftover stock of glycerin from her soapmaking business?”
She sniffed.“Try it.”
I took a sniff of the box before opening it.“Peanut brittle?Seriously?”
Reba beamed.“Seriously.Peanut brittle.”
I nodded at Reba, crunching through one of the pieces she’d offered me.It was like trying to chew glass, more brittle than peanut, but had a nice heat behind it.
“Did you put jalapeno in this?”
She beamed.“I’ve also made chocolate peanut brittle, pumpkin spice peanut brittle, eggnog peanut brittle, which is kind of a misnomer because there’s no egg in it and it’s vegan, and butter rum peanut brittle, and?—”
“How many flavors did you make?”I asked, finally getting the bite down without my teeth sticking together.“And why?”
“Ten so far, and because I saw how well Causey James’ brittle did at the Winter Fest in Grapevine and decided to give it a go.”Reba smiled smugly, plucking a reddish-hued piece from the box between us on my desk.“Hers is good.Mine’s better.”
“I’ve never had Causey’s brittle, so I’ll have to take your word for it.”I picked up one of the red pieces, and, after a cautious sniff, took a bite.“Holy crap.”
“Masala chai flavor,” she said, crunching.“Dane suggested it.I was thinking make little bundles, you know?Cafe flavors, spicy flavors, traditional, and then just some really out-there ones, you know?Like…” She hummed.“Oh!Grape jelly flavored because peanut butter and jelly!”
My dentist was going to hate me, but I took another piece of brittle.“I think you might be on to something,” I said.
Reba clapped her hands excitedly.
“Take this away from me or I’m gonna spend all morning eating this instead of seeing patients.”
Reba whisked the box away, and I went to the tiny employee-only bathroom in the back of the new clinic to wash my face and hands, then give my teeth a good scrub while Reba wiped down my desk and got her hands and face clean.We were only one week into the new clinic being open, causing anaphylaxis in patients who might have a peanut allergy wouldn’t be that great of an idea.Though it did make me miss working in the coroner’s office.Very little bothered my patients there.
I still went in once in a while, when they needed the help, but the state had pretty much cut most of the rural medical examiners out of the budget for the next five years, so I was adrift.Or would be adrift if it hadn’t been for Werewolves International.
Okay, that isn’t what they called themselves, but it was less of a mouthful than International Committee of Were-Shifter Relations.Or, as their business cards said: IC Mediation Group.
Because you never knew when someone outside your little group of weirdos might get hold of your information.
For all the bullshit they’d been up to for the past year—at least in my life, and God only knows what they’d been doing before then—they did have some pretty solid ideas they wanted to put into play.Like setting up accessible clinics near rural were and shifter communities.Which was pretty much all of them since, by and large, weres and shifters were clannish even when they didn’t form packs.Generations ofothernessand humans being able to justknowsomething was weird about you and yours meant they (we?) kept to ourselves a lot.Add in the fact that weres and shifters were justdifferentfrom humans—faster heart rates, higher body temperature, weird metabolism, and healing abilities are just the tip of the iceberg—it made sense to open up specialty clinics.Making the clinic bigger than a typical human clinic was an added bonus—not only did it feel less cramped for humans, the weres and shifters didn’t get as antsy.Given that the last time there was any sort of specialty clinic for weres, it had been in the form of a sort of sanitarium,according to Cullen,where weres who were out of control with something they calledmoon sicknesswith symptoms that sounded like some sort of severe mood disorderback in the day got sent..
And as one of the few were-adjacent medical professionals out there, the IC tapped me to helm one near Belmarais.Well.I saytapped.More likestrong-armed and pushed.I didn’t exactlyhateit, but I really missed forensic pathology.
But the clinic… it was okay.And I’d get used to having patients that were, you know… warm.
“Hey, Lan, Eustace Robards just called to see if we can work him in,” Reba announced, drawing me out of my navel gazing.“Said he got bit by a dog.Told him we got time now, so he’s on his way.”
“I’ll get room one ready.”
* * *
“You look awful, Doctor Babin.”
“I was up all night just hoping I’d get to see you today, Mr.Robards,” I said, flashing him a grin.
