Read Online Shapeshifted by Cassie Alexander - Free Book Online Page B

had from Olympio. I’d have to wait and ask Dr. Tovar about the blood tomorrow.
    I couldn’t overlook the irony that I was grasping at anything to give me hope when my mother had already given up. Personally, I blamed her belief in a happy afterlife.
    When I left the clinic, Olympio was gone. But I could hear the whispering sound I’d heard in the morning. I looked both ways before crossing the street and crouching to look into a storm drain.
    “Drop something?” I startled. Dr. Tovar was locking the clinic door. “Or lose a gun? I’m sure there’s half an armory down there, rusting away.” He stood stiffly, his hands in his pockets, wearing his tweed coat on even this hot day.
    “I thought I heard something.”
    His right eyebrow raised in a question. “I don’t hear anything.” He jerked his head toward the station. “Care to walk?”
    While a doctor wasn’t my preferred companion, walking with him wouldn’t hurt. I made sure to stand far enough apart from him that it wouldn’t look like we were together. Even so, ladies returning from the station made clucking sounds as we walked by. I wished there was a way to signal to them that no matter how handsome he was, I was not interested in him, nor would I ever be. At all.
    “So how was your first day?” he asked.
    “Interesting, except for the paperwork.”
    “I’m glad Frank’s wound didn’t make you run away.”
    “Am I going to get hazed every day I’m here? Or is that just your regular clientele?” I asked in a way that I made sure sounded like I was joking.
    He outright laughed, maybe the first time I’d seen him pleased. I wondered what it would be like to be him, at the helm of a perpetually sinking ship, bailing water with all his might. We might have more in common than I’d thought.
    “As regular as the rising sun. Why did you even apply for this job in the first place?” His eyes tried to read me as we walked, even before I could respond.
    “If you’d told me this was going to be an interrogation, I’d have walked on my own,” I said with an obviously fake grin. He snorted and I relaxed some. “Really, I just needed a change. I thought I wanted to take it easy, and the sleep clinic was great for that. But easy gets dull.” No need to tell him about my mom’s time bomb or any legends. “Why do you work down here?” I asked instead.
    “If I don’t, who will?” He shrugged, taking his coat pockets up and down with the gesture.
    “Did you grow up here?”
    “Nearby.”
    “Where do you live?”
    His lips quirked up into a soft smile. “Nearby.”
    “How many stations away?” I asked quickly, before he could evade me.
    “Past the station. I don’t take the train.”
    “Oh.” I kept on course, hoping I was on to something. “Do you live alone?”
    He drew up short and looked at me. “Why?”
    “Because people are looking.” I indicated behind myself with a head gesture. “Either you’re very single and they’re making assumptions, or you’re very married and they’re imagining the worst.”
    He almost rolled his eyes. “I live alone. You?” he asked in a tone that made it sound like he was only asking to be polite. But in my experience men didn’t ask questions like that if they didn’t want to hear the answers.
    “I have a needy Siamese,” I told him. I tried to sound a little cute. Not that I was interested, but I could be flirtatious when the opportunity presented itself. “Did you report that guy from yesterday?”
    He snorted, the beginning of a laugh. “I see how you are—try to get me to lower my guard with personal questions, and then in for the attack.”
    I shrugged and gave him half a grin. “There’s only one of me. It’s transparent when I’m the good cop and the bad cop.”
    He eyed me and turned serious, shaking his head softly as if to say there were a lot of things I didn’t understand. “You’d probably find a lot of bullets inside that storm drain too,” he finally said, which