e Mira worked days and the clinic was not open until eight. She had a mug in one ha

an who slept in hi

t in my

purp

behind the door and did not look at her. "

be making phone calls." She pushed the mug toward me. It was cof

ht at a yard sale, and the bell had a crack in the top that made the ring flat. There was a poster about handwashing on the wall and

or opened and N

th the broken zipper pull. She looked at me the way a person looks at a stain on a good shirt

he said. "I am Nadia.

are," Mira said.

arly. It is a

e length of the clinic and looked at the treatment room, the supply cabinet, the back door with the deadbolt, and she made a sma

nd every time she moved the pacing got worse. Her scent was all over the room now, that frost and birch

she came out of the treatment room a

records,"

art I was not really re

nothing at all until last Tuesday. A clinic cannot run without r

dy spilled co

er eyes were on my face and not on the empty file drawer behind me. "I checked

as lazy. I told you he called in sick. H

" she said. "You

. He was the ot

nt dry. It was not a hospital badge. It was a small silver shield with a design stamped into it that I knew the way I knew my own

up and did not

said. "Are yo

d up the chart again. "

d that a

id

ll mercy. "You also said you were the nurse, and that the night man was the

with question

going to look at the supply cabinet. If the records are gone, the inventory

the door shut behind her, Mira leaned

to have to be b

kno

ver account, and when she does, she is going to ask why a c

a suppl

Mira said. "And it is

in the cabinet, the small clink of glass, the scrape of a box being pulled off a shelf. She was meth

mes did. Not words. Just the sense of her standing close and the smell of her in a pla

and cleared my head for about six seconds, and then the door op

aid. "Fourteen ounces in October that do not match an

and the sky was the color of old pewter and t

nature is

. She had been suspicious of me since the inn. This was worse. She looked like a woman who had

e said. "That is yo

not

. "Why would an Alpha sign for silver nitrate? And why

ed up the steps with his hand wrapped in a rag, and Nadia turned to him the way

rwork now. She h

was the man I