I smiled at my mother, remembering how she’d come to my rescue in cat form several months earlier. She smiled back, but only with her mouth. She was too worried for anything more than that.“I know.” Kaci shifted on her bed, trying to sit up, so I put one arm behind her and gently pushed her forward. “But I want you to Shift with me.” She stopped to catch her breath, winded by mere speech. “Alone. Just in case. I can’t hurt you if you’re in cat form, and I can’t get out if the door’s closed, right?”
“Probably not…” I hesitated to admit. The doorknob was the plain round kind, which cat paws can’t manipulate easily. “But, Kaci, that’s really not necessary. You’re not going to hurt anyone. You’re probably going to be so exhausted you’ll fall right back to sleep for several more hours.” Though she’d need a good meal as soon as she woke.
But she was standing firm on this one. I could see that in the hard line of her jaw, a strange sight alongside the exhaustion evident in her posture, and the breathless way she spoke. “You Shift, too, or I won’t.”
There was no more time for arguments, so I nodded decisively. “Okay, let’s do this.” I stood and peeled off my outer shirt on my way to the door.
“I don’t like this, Faythe,” my mother whispered, and for a minute, I thought she’d refuse to leave the room. Over her shoulder, Jace looked equally unconvinced.
“I know.” I reached down to pull my shoes off one at a time, dropping them just to the left of the thresh-old. “But she needs to know she’s not going to hurt anyone, and right now she trusts a closed door more than she trusts herself.” I stepped into the doorway, forcing my mother back slightly by sheer proximity, as Jace scooted to make more room.
“But what if she can’t Shift on her own?” She took another hesitant step into the hall, but only because I was pulling my tank top off and she had to either back up or get hit.
I lowered my voice until I wasn’t sure there was actually any sound coming out of my mouth. “I won’t completely Shift until she’s gone too far to back out. If anything goes wrong, I’ll call you. But don’t come in unless I do call. In either form.”
We can’t vocalize specific thoughts in cat form, but my mother would recognize distress in my voice, no matter what shape I took.
“Okay,” she said finally, and I smiled to reassure them both as I closed the door.
I unhooked my bra as I turned to face Kaci, and to my surprise, she already had her T-shirt halfway off, though it looked to be caught on her head. “Here, let me help.” I dropped my bra and took the hem of her shirt in both hands, lifting it gently until it cleared her skull, and her hands fell from the inside-out sleeves. Kaci was shivering when her face came back into view.
“You okay?” I asked, hoping she was just cold, in spite of the sweat drying on her face and in her hair.
“I should have done this before now,” she whispered, refusing to meet my eyes, as if she were ashamed. Or embarrassed. “A long time before. I think I’m going to throw up again.”
Spinning, I grabbed the big metal mixing bowl from her nightstand and set it on her lap, just in case. But after a full minute of deep breathing and closed eyes, she nodded and I removed the bowl. The urge had passed.
I finished stripping and helped her out of the rest of her clothes and onto the floor, where we knelt, side by side. I’d put her close to the bed, so she’d have something to hold on to in case she started to fall over, which looked to be a definite possibility.
“This is just like the last time, right?” she asked, her teeth chattering.
A jolt of surprise shot through me, tingling even after I remembered that she’d only voluntarily Shifted once before, and that was into human form. Her first—disastrous—Shift had been brought on by a merciless onslaught of hormones, during which her inner cat practically ripped its way free from her human body, with no regard for her physical or mental well-being.
I was suddenly glad all over again that we hadn’t told her about Ethan. His death would not help convince Kaci that her own cat could be controlled.
“Yeah,” I said, trying to keep my thoughts from showing on my face. “This is just like that, only in reverse. You need to visualize your cat-self. Your fur and the pads of your paws.” I intentionally avoided mentioning her claws and teeth to keep her from thinking of her cat-self as dangerous.
Kaci nodded and lowered herself carefully so that her palms were flat against the floor.
“Picture your wrists and ankles lengthening, and your tongue growing tiny barbs. That’s what makes it so rough.” I knelt with her, still talking as I watched her body tense, arching viciously.
I was a little surprised that she seemed to be flowing into the Shift so quickly, if not exactly serenely. But it made sense. Her body craved the Shift as badly now as it had that first time, back in Canada with her family. She’d only been able to hold out so long this time because she knew she had that option. That first time, she’d had no idea what was happening to her, or that she could control the Shift, rather than letting it control her.
But this time, she didn’t need to worry about control. I wanted her to let it come. To just let the cat take over, because she’d feel so much better once it had. And once she’d seen that she wasn’t dangerous.
As I watched, still speaking to her softly, listing the body parts in the order they were most likely to change, her feet began to bulge, her ankles and wrists buckling. I felt a mirrored pain in my own legs as my Shift began, and still I spoke, almost crooning to her now.
Kaci’s arms and legs started to twist, and a high-pitched keening leaked from between her almost closed lips. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and fresh sweat was beading on her forehead. But this sweat had a clean, healthy scent, and I knew then that she would be okay. That Doc Carver was right—Shifting would go a long way toward restoring her health.
When my own Shift reached my head, speech became impossible. My teeth grew pointed and curved backward, my nose and jaw elongated into a muzzle, and whiskers sprouted on both sides of my nose, growing with the eerie speed of time-lapse photography.
On my left, Kaci shuddered, and I watched as her spine stretched beyond the end of her back and became a tail clothed in pale, bare flesh. Next, fur began to ripple across her sides, and her brand-new claws dug into the carpet. She clenched her long jaws against the pain, then yelped when her canines lengthened in a sudden short-term growth spurt, forcing her teeth apart.My own ears traveled up the sides of my head—a decidedly odd feeling—and felt kind of pinched as they drew to points at the top.
Two minutes later, it was all over. For both of us. Kaci lay curled up on the floor by the bed, her tail wrapped around her body, as if she were giving herself a hug. She blinked at me, tears standing in her eyes, which looked more green than hazel in cat form.
But her tears didn’t fall, and that was a very, very good sign.
I stretched, raising my rump and waving my tail lazily, relishing those first few minutes in cat form, when everything felt new and different. All my senses were heightened, most noticeably my sense of smell, and I could now make out scents my human nose had been blissfully unaware of. Such as residual vomit in the metal bowl and the sick-sweat that had soaked into Kaci’s sheets.
But Kaci herself smelled fine now. She was still breathing a little quickly, and her pulse was racing, but I was confident those would both even out soon. They might even have been caused by the stress of the Shift.
I crossed the scant foot of carpet between us and Kaci raised her head. Our eyes met and she whined, asking me wordlessly if everything was all right. If it was okay to relax.
I nodded and rubbed my cheek against hers, reassuring her. She rubbed back against me once, then stood and hopped onto the bed, only wobbling slightly. I jumped up beside her and curled up at her side, sniffing her to reassure myself that she was fine.
And she was.
So I groomed her until the fur on her head and shoulders lay flat. Then I fell asleep beside her.
Twenty-Two
I woke up some time later to find afternoon light streaming through the slats in Kaci’s blinds. I turned my head toward the clock on the nightstand and frustration sparked my temper. Two-oh-four. They had let me sleep for nearly two hours! I didn’t have time for a nap!
But I’d certainly needed one.
Shaking the bed as little as possible, I stepped onto the floor and gathered my shirt and underwear into a pile so I could pinch an edge of each piece between my teeth. Then I padded to the door, which someone had kindly left open for me. Probably my mother, when she’d checked on us.
I Shifted in my own room to keep from waking Kaci, then put on my shirt and underwear and grabbed a fresh pair of jeans from my dresser, since I hadn’t been able to carry the other pair in my mouth.
Dressed and as well rested as I was going to get, I headed straight for the kitchen in search of…anyone who could tell me what I’d missed during my nap. But the kitchen was empty. In fact, the house was quiet all around me, and only when I stood still and listened closely did I hear my mother’s calm, even sleep-breathing from my parents’ bedroom. But I heard nothing from the guys. They must have gone to the guest-house—including Dan.