She was silent, and he thought she was thinking about what a fool he'd been. He concentrated on what he was doing. Fingers on the wound on her shoulder, lightly, lightly, spreading a thin, shining layer of antibiotic cream.
"I was fourteen," she said, speaking as from a great distance. "I thought I was dreaming the first few times. And then I thought I was hallucinating. I thought I had . . . I don't know. Seizures or something. I used to imagine that my parents were two mental patients who'd had me and had smuggled me out of the madhouse so I could be raised on the outside."
He laughed despite himself and she turned to look at him, her expression grave. Not offended, just grave.
"I don't think there were any mental hospitals like that in the 1980s," he said. "Where they kept the children of the patients locked up along with the parents. Were there?"
Kyrie shook her head and smiled again, a smile fractionally warmer than the ones she gave the customers. "Not in this country, no, I don't think," she said. "But I was very young. Just a kid. I thought . . ." She shrugged. "Actually at first I thought someone was putting datura in my food or something."
"Datura?" he asked.
"A hallucinogenic. At least, Agatha Christie has a mystery in which someone is putting it in a man's shaving cream to make him dream that he's a werewolf, and I thought—"
"I read Christie too," he said. Often her books were the only thing available in safe homes for at-risk youth or whatnot, where he sought temporary refuge. That and the ever-yellowing pile of National Geographic. It was Tom's considered opinion that National Geographics were alien artifacts routinely bombarded down onto the Earth. "But isn't datura something Indian, something . . ."
"I didn't tell you I was rational, did I?" Kyrie asked.
He shook his head and reached for the gauze, cutting it to fit the area on her shoulder, and laying it gently atop the wound.
"I thought someone was trying to make me think I was crazy. Perhaps my foster parents. They get more for special-needs kids, you know? And then I read up on it, and I decided I was schizophrenic. I couldn't tell what I did while I was under this condition, so I started hiding. At first I was lucky that no one saw me, and then when I realized what caused it—the full moon, a feeling of anger. Anything. I was damn careful over the next four years. Always slept alone, even if arrangements called for other kids in the room. I'd take a blanket and go sleep on a tree, if needed. It . . . made for interesting times and made me change families even more often. And then I was on my own, and I've been careful. Very careful. But I still thought it was all in my mind. Till tonight."
Tom shook his head as he started taping the gauze in place. He couldn't imagine not knowing the shift was true. But perhaps it was different for dragons. He saw the city from above. He saw things happen. And, of course, within a month of his first shifting, his father had seen him shift and had shouted at him and . . . ordered him out. For shifting. Hard to tell yourself it was all in your mind after that.
"How many of us are there?" Kyrie asked. "I mean—there's you and the triad, but . . . You've known about this more and have been more places. How many shifters have you met?"
* * *
She had to talk to keep her mind off what he was doing. He wasn't hurting her. On the contrary. His fingers, touching her skin ever-so-lightly were a caress. Or the closest to a caress she could remember.
It had been too long since she'd even let anyone touch her. Certainly not since she'd started shifting. Before that there had been foster siblings who'd got close, some she'd hugged and who'd hugged her. But not since then.
Tom's touch was very delicate, as if he were afraid of breaking her. It felt odd. She didn't want to think of him, back there, being careful not to hurt her.
And she really wanted to know how many shifters he'd seen in the five years since he'd left his house. She hadn't been out much. Well, not out on the street and not out while aware of being in a shape-shifted body. She hadn't been looking for other shifters. But he might have been. Hell, considering his thing with the triad, he probably had been.
He paused at her question. He'd been taping the gauze down over her wound, and he stopped. For a moment she thought she'd offended him.
But he sighed. "I don't know for sure," he said. "I wasn't counting. Including the occasional enforcer for the triad or not?"
"The enforcers for the triad have been trailing you all this time?"
She was sure he'd smiled at that, but she wasn't sure how. His fingers resumed their gentle touch, taping the gauze in place.