“Thanks.” She touched Nik’s arm and held the clipboard in front of him. He nodded and tossed another brick aside.
They worked another thirty minutes. Robin would hand a brick to Nik; he’d hold it for two seconds, or four, or half a minute, sometimes with his eyes closed. Then he’d hand the brick to Cage, who’d set it aside and wait for the next one while Nik took the clipboard and sketched furiously.
Finally, Nik stared at the last sketch a few seconds before thrusting the clipboard at Robin, struggling to his feet and lurching behind the building. Where, by the sound of it, he was retching his guts out.
“You need to help him?” Cage asked Robin. Whatever kind of abilities Nik had, he paid a physical price for them.
“No, he’ll need to sleep it off. He hasn’t done this in a while.” She scooted next to Cage and held out the clipboard. “You might need more light to study these, but he gets images off things he touches—things that happened in the past. Here’s what he got from your bricks.”
The top drawing was an amazing likeness of Max Jeffries, laughing. “This is Max,” Cage said, “the other Ranger living in Penton. Rob was his best mate.”
Several drawings appeared to be from the brick manufacturer. Another one showed Mark, and another showed Rob himself, looking happy and very much alive. There was a scathe member Cage didn’t know well, but the guy was bonded to Mirren.
He flipped to the last drawing, an image of a wild feline—a mountain lion, maybe, or a jaguar. There was no context, so it was hard to tell how large it was.
He held it up to Robin. “What does this mean?”
Before she could answer, Nik stepped back around the corner, looking like death’s last victim. “If you don’t recognize it, I’d say it means Penton has a shape-shifter you don’t know about.”
CHAPTER 6
Melissa sat hunched on the sofa of the community house she shared with Mirren and Glory—and, after tonight, a couple of new Ranger members from the Omega Force project. They needed people, especially feeders, but she was tired of new faces.
The noise of a car engine reached her from the street, and she tugged back the ugly light-blocking black curtains that Will had installed in all the community houses. He claimed it was to prevent the vampires from frying in case any of them got stuck upstairs, away from the safe spaces, during daylight hours—but she’d overheard him assuring Mirren the fabric was both fireproof and bulletproof. So much for rebuilding without the shadow of danger hovering over them.
The car passed without stopping; she recognized the driver as Shawn Nicholls, one of the vampires who’d come into Penton just before everything fell apart. Both Shawn and Britta Eriksen had been bonded to Will, but Melissa knew virtually nothing about them except that both she and Shawn fed from Glory because Mirren wouldn’t let another man near his mate.
Damn it. There had been a time when no one moved to Penton without Melissa Calvert taking the time to invite them to lunch or introduce them around town so they’d feel at home. Aidan teased her about “snooping,” but she’d always thought of it as friendly interrogation. She knew everybody, and everybody knew her. She had enjoyed being seen as a direct link to Aidan. She liked it that people would come to her in order to get an issue or problem in front of him. And she liked helping people settle into life in Penton, especially the new human familiars.
She’d learned a lot about people in those lunches at the no-longer-standing Penton café, and she thought she’d been a big part of why Penton worked so well. People were friendly and open, and it started with her.
No more lunches for her now. At least not unless they involved a vein at 3:00 a.m. She didn’t want to feel bitter about what had happened to her, but she didn’t know where she fit in anymore. She was no longer Aidan’s fam. No longer Krys’s daytime help at the clinic.
No longer Mark’s wife, at least not technically.
Where are they? Krys had called from the clinic to tell her about Mark’s injury and assure her it wasn’t life-threatening. Still, Melissa wanted to see him for herself. She knew him better than anyone; just by watching him get out of the car and walk to the community house across the street, she’d be able to tell where he hurt and how badly. She knew his facial expressions better than her own: the way he’d grit his teeth, suck in a breath, and turn his head to the side with his eyes closed if something hurt; the way his mouth would quirk up on the left side two times—never once, never more than twice—just before he burst into laughter.
Old habits, and all that.