Comfortable-looking couches and chairs were intermixed with handcrafted bird's-eye maple tables and bookcases. The oil painting of a waterfall surrounded by a pine forest could have hung in a museum and, she calculated, probably cost more than she'd earned in her entire life.
From the doorway she could see straight into the kitchen, where subtly glittering light gray granite countertops contrasted with dark Shaker-style oak cabinets that were just irregular enough to be handmade, like the furniture in the living room. Stainless-steel appliances trimmed in black should have looked too modern, but somehow it all blended together. It wasn't a huge kitchen, but there was nothing in it that would have looked out of place in a mansion.
She stood dripping melted snow on the highly polished floor and knew without a doubt that she and her box didn't belong here. If she'd had anyplace to go, she'd have turned around and left, but all that awaited her outside was cold and snow. Even if they had taxis out here, she had four dollars in her wallet, less than that in her bank account. The check still in her pocket might get her halfway to Chicago if she could find a bank to cash it at and a bus station.
Charles had brushed by her and padded on into the house but stopped when he realized she wasn't following him. He took a long look at her, and she tightened her arms around the wet cardboard. Maybe he was having second thoughts, too.
"I'm sorry," she said, dropping her eyes from his yellow gaze. Sorry she was a bother, sorry she wasn't stronger, better, something.
Power flared over her skin and jerked her eyes back to him. He'd dropped to the ground and was starting to change back to human.
It was too soon, he was too badly injured. Hastily, she shut the outside door with her hip, dropped her box on the floor, and hurried to his side.
"What are you doing? Stop that."
But he'd already begun, and she didn't dare touch him. Changing either way hurt-and even a gentle touch could leave him in agony.
"Damn it, Charles."
Even after three years of being a werewolf, she didn't like watching the change-her own or anyone else's. There was something horrible about seeing someone's arms and legs twist and bend-and there was that stomach-churning part in the middle where there was neither fur nor skin to cover the muscle and bone.
Charles had been different. He told her that either his mother's magic or being a werewolf born made his change quicker: it had also made it almost beautiful. The first time she'd seen him change, she'd been in awe.
This time wasn't like that. It was as slow and horrible as hers. He'd forgotten the bandages, and they weren't shaped right to change with him. She knew that the bandage would tear eventually, but she also knew it would hurt.
So she slid along the wall to avoid touching him, then ran to the kitchen. She pulled open drawers, searching frantically until she found the one where he kept his sharp and pointy things, including a pair of scissors. Deciding that she was less likely to stab him with scissors than a knife, she grabbed them and went back.
She cut as he changed, ignoring his rumbling growl as she forced the blade under too-tight cloth. The additional pressure would hurt, but it would be better than waiting until the stress on the fabric finally tore it to pieces.
The speed of his change slowed more and more as it continued, until she worried that he was going to be stuck halfway between: she'd had nightmares about being stuck in neither one form nor the other. At last he lay curled on his belly at her feet, fully human.
She thought he was through, but then clothing formed around his naked body, flowing over his skin as his skin had flowed over flesh as he changed. Nothing fancy, just jeans and a plain white T-shirt, but she'd never known a werewolf who could do that. This was real magic.
She didn't know how much real magic he could do. She didn't know a lot about him other than he made her heart beat faster and nudged her usual state of half panic away.
She shivered, then realized it was cool in the house. He must have turned down the heat when he'd come to Chicago. She looked around and found a small quilted throw folded over the back of a rocking chair and snatched it up. Careful not to brush too hard on his oversensitized skin, she laid the blanket lightly over him.
He lay with one cheek against the floor, shuddering and breathless.
"Charles?" Her impulse was to touch him, but after a change, the last thing she wanted was touch. His skin would feel new and raw.
The blanket slid off his shoulder and when she lifted it to cover him again, she saw a dark stain growing rapidly on the back of his shirt. If his wounds had been of the usual sort, the change would have mended them more than this. Silver-inflicted wounds healed a lot slower.
"Do you have a first-aid kit?" she asked. Her pack's first-aid kit was equipped to cope with wounds dealt in the half-serious fights that broke out whenever the whole pack got together. Impossible to believe that Charles wasn't as well prepared as her...as the Chicago pack.
"Bathroom." His voice was gravel-rough with pain.
The bathroom was behind the first door she opened, a big room with a claw-foot tub, a large shower stall, and a white porcelain pedestal sink. In one corner of the room was a linen closet. On the bottom shelf she found an industrial-sized first-aid kit and took it with her back to the living room.
Charles's usually warm brown skin was gray, his jaw was clenched against the pain, and his black eyes were fever-bright, glittering with hints of gold that matched the stud he wore in his ear. He'd sat upright, the quilt pooling on the floor around him.
"That was stupid. Changing doesn't help silver wounds," she scolded him, her sudden anger fueled by the pain he'd caused himself. "All you did was use up all the energy your body needs to heal. Let me get you bandaged up, and I'll find some food." She was hungry, too.
He smiled at her-just a little smile. Then he closed his eyes. "All right." His voice was hoarse.
She would have to take off most of the clothes he'd put on. "Where do your clothes come from?"
She'd have assumed they were what he'd been wearing when he'd changed from human to wolf, except she'd helped strip him so the Chicago doctor could examine him. He hadn't been wearing anything except bandages when he'd changed into his wolf.
He shook his head. "Wherever. I don't know."
The jeans were Levi's, worn at the knee, and the shirt had a Hanes label. She wondered if there was someone somewhere who was suddenly running around in his underwear. "Sweet," she said as she carefully peeled up his shirt so she could get a look at his chest wound. "But this would be easier if you hadn't dressed."
"Sorry," he grunted. "Habit."
A bullet had pierced his chest just to the right of his sternum. The hole in the back was worse, bigger than the one in his front. If he'd been human, he'd still be in the emergency room, but werewolves were tough.
"If you put a telfa pad on the front," he told her, "I can hold it for you. You'll have to hold one on the back. Then wrap the whole thing with vet wrap."
"Vet wrap?"
"The colored stuff that looks sort of like an Ace bandage. It'll stick to itself, so you don't need to fasten it. You'll probably have to use two pads to get enough coverage."
She cut his T-shirt off with the scissors she'd found in the kitchen. Then she ripped open the telfa pads and set one against the little gaping mouth on his chest and tried not to think about the hole that ran inside him from his front to his back. He pressed the pad harder than she'd have dared to.
She sorted through the kit, looking for the vet wrap, and found a full dozen rolls on the bottom. Most of them were brown or black, but there were a few others. Because she was angry with him for hurting himself more when he could have just stayed in wolf form for a few days, she grabbed a pair of fluorescent pink rolls.
He laughed when she pulled them out, but it must have hurt-his mouth thinned, and he had to take shallow breaths for a while. "My brother put those in there," he said when the worst of it was over.
"Did you do something to annoy him, too?" she asked.
He grinned. "He claimed that was all he had in the office when I restocked the kit."
She was ready to ask a few more questions about his brother, but all desire to tease him died when she looked at his back. In the few minutes she'd spent organizing her bandaging efforts, the blood had pooled in the area between his skin and the top of his jeans. She should have left his shirt alone until she had everything ready.
"Tarditas et procrastinatio odiosa est," she told herself and cut open a package of telfa pads.
"You speak Latin?" he asked.
"Nope, I just quote it a lot. That was supposed to be Cicero, but your father tells me my pronunciation is off. Do you want a translation?" The slice from the first bullet, the one he'd taken protecting her, burned a puffy red diagonal line above the more serious wound. It was going to hurt for a while, but it wasn't important.
"I don't speak Latin," he said. "But I know a little French and Spanish. Procrastination sucks?"
"That's what it's supposed to mean." She had already made things worse; he ought to have a doctor for this.
"It's all right," he said, answering the tension in her voice. "Just get the leak plugged."
Grimly, she set about doing just that. She gathered his waist-length, sweat-dampened hair and pushed it over his shoulder.
There weren't any telfa pads big enough for the wound in his back, so she got two of them and held them in place with judicious pressure from her knee while she reached around him with the roll of vet wrap. He took the end for her without her asking and held it to his ribs. She used that anchor to wind the rest of it around him the first time.
She was hurting him. He'd almost quit breathing except in small, shallow pants. Giving first aid to werewolves was fraught with danger. Pain could make a wolf lose control like he'd done this morning. But Charles just held himself very still as she pulled the bandage tight enough to hold the pads where they needed to be.