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it, she lay down
in her cat form and closed her eyes.
    Images flooded her, as sharp as if the events
were happening in front of her. The vividness surprised her. She
hadn’t known she’d get such a clear reading. Three men stood in the
room, garbed in hospital green and masked like doctors. They were
huddled around a table with raised steel edges that formed a tray.
A child perhaps a year old lay in its center. The child was on its
back, sleepy but awake, dressed in clean blue pants and a striped
short-sleeved top with a cartoon fox on it. “I’m Tricky!” the shirt
declared. The barely scuffed condition of the child’s leather shoes
said it was only just walking.
    The child seemed unalarmed by its strange
surroundings. Its big brown eyes gazed around, its chubby legs and
arms wriggling. The movements had caused its T-shirt to ruck up
over its navel.
    One of the doctors pulled the shirt down and
patted the child’s belly. “He needs to die without violence, and
with as little fear as possible.”
    His voice was low and soothing, nothing to
alarm the child. The other two doctors nodded behind their masks.
The one who’d spoken brought out a small pillow, the kind
stewardesses hand out on planes.
    Evina’s astral tether gave a sharp tug,
trying to snap her back into her physical body. The part of her
that was a mother didn’t want to see what came next. The part of
her that faced whatever her job required countermanded it
ruthlessly.
    “Hold his hands,” the first doctor said.
    The other two complied, gently rubbing the
dimpled fingers with their milky white latex gloves. The first
doctor pressed the pillow over the child’s face.
    The little boy laughed at first, thinking it
was a game. When he finally began to struggle, realizing he
couldn’t breathe, his back arched like a bow off the steel table.
His short arms and legs flung out, his entire body straining to get
air.
    No , Evina thought, correcting her
misimpression. The baby wasn’t straining to get air. He was
straining to change forms. Young though he was, instinctively he
was hoping to defend himself or escape.
    This child was a shapeshifter.
    The shock catapulted her into her human form,
which was bent over and moaning. Nate had dropped to his knees,
though she hadn’t been aware of him moving. His arms wrapped her
from behind, not tightly but close enough that his wolf warmth sank
into her. She needed it. She was shivering violently.
    “I’m okay,” she said through clenched teeth.
She didn’t sound okay, even to herself. “Jesus.” Taking three slow
breaths, she pushed herself around to face him. His dark eyes were
wide, his supportive hold on her arms cautious.
    “Let me tell you what I saw right away,” she
said. “I don’t want to forget details.”
    ~
    Nate let her go through the story once while
her memory was fresh, then took her out to the car. His digital
memo pad was there, and he wanted an audio record. He kept his arm
around her all the way down the stairs, her weight leaning on him
more heavily than he suspected she realized. Once she was settled
in the passenger seat, he dug out the micro-recorder and had her
repeat what she’d seen.
    She was steadier now, her telling more
organized, though it didn’t change appreciably.
    As she described what had happened in the
room, Nate ignored how cold the back of his neck had gotten. No
matter what he’d felt when he found the shoe, her story was
sufficient to chill his blood. “You sure you didn’t see the
doctors’ faces? Maybe their hair or eye color?”
    She shook her head, her lips pursing in
frustration. “I know I should have tried. I thought I was
paying attention. The truth is, as soon as I saw the little boy,
all my focus went to him.”
    “That’s natural,” he soothed, rubbing her
pants’ now-black knee. The floor of the blanket factory had been
filthy. She must have transferred the dirt with her hands. A pang
ran through him for getting that stain on her. “You