* * *
This was her time and Lisa knew it. She’d never have McGregor all to herself again. Not that he was all hers now, exactly, since Joel was here and McGregor’s attention was monopolised by the Book he was translating, flicking back and forth between pages seemingly at random.
A deep breath. Eyes closed. Another breath. Eyes open.
Their new safehouse was another abandoned house, further south than the first but of similar quality and construction and similarly abandoned. They were stationed in the rumpus room out the back to hide the electric lantern McGregor had set up. Some of the billiard balls were missing, and there was only one cue, but the main reason Lisa and Joel hadn’t used the billiard table that consumed the centre of the room was that McGregor got there first and spread his mess all over the felt: the Book, his laptop, a tablet computer, some pens, and an ever-expanding number of messy bits of paper. Lisa stepped on a few that had fallen on the floor as she approached him.
“Hey McGregor,” she said.
He actually looked away from his Book. “Ah, Lisa. Hi. Hi. Good. Uh, something I needed to ask you, actually.”
“Ask me?”
“Yeah. About, uh… About James.” When Lisa didn’t immediately tell him whatever it was he wanted to know that he hadn’t told her yet, McGregor smoothed his red-blond goatee. Then, with a wince in his eyes, he asked, “Exactly how much time is he spending as a wolf?”
Odd question, but presumably he had a reason to ask. “Maybe an hour each morning and as much time as he can when I… turn.”
Gods, and she was about to be a wolf for six months. From any day now until the end of her pregnancy. What was James planning on doing for half a year? People were already asking questions about him, starting rumours; they knew there was something… off about him.
McGregor was staring. Did that mean he was surprised or just concentrating? “He sleeps as a wolf too?”
“When I do, yeah,” Lisa said.
“Does he dream?”
He’d never woken her with violent nightmares of tearing out throats – which was the only place Lisa could see this conversation going – but she sometimes woke before him and she’d his eyes flickering or feet twitching in R.E.M. sleep. “Yeah, he does. Look, what’s this about?” Their conversation had attracted Beck’s attention; he poked his head in from the front of the house where he’d been watching the street.
“I… The prophecy, in part,” McGregor said. “I worried that being a wolf might have some lasting physiological effects, but talking to your husband and looking at this prophecy, I’m now more concerned about psychological ones.” McGregor tapped a finger on the Book a couple of times, then stopped, stood, and faced her. “Bluntly, I’m worried that his time as a wolf has altered how he relates to the world. That he sees himself as not quite a man, but also doesn’t identify with the werewolves. That he’s… something else.”
“But he is,” Lisa said. “Isn’t that what you’re always saying? He’s not like everyone else, he’s the demon.”
“All the more reason to be concerned. If he’s meant to…” A glance to Beck. “…to kill his brother and bring about the end of days… then shouldn’t we be worried if he doesn’t identify with the world? If he thinks he’s different from everyone else – even if he is – it could – I’m not saying does, just could – make it easier for him to do something – possibly unintentionally, but still – dangerous.”
McGregor held his hands out as if to calm her, but Lisa was already calm. For one thing, it was hard uncovering the original sentence beneath that many qualifiers.
“It’s not that I don’t trust him,” McGregor said, “but there’s a lot at stake and I don’t like leaving things to chance. I don’t know how open he’ll be to me, so could you… be his emotional barometer? Let me know of anything that might alter his emotional state?”
“I’m pregnant.”
He nodded. “Something like that.” McGregor slumped back onto his bar stool and stared through space. Quite the contrast to his usual unceasing motion of translating, writing, double-checking, scratching his hair until it stuck in several directions of ginger mess from his scalp.
Now he sat so very still.
“I’d like you to be my doctor, McGregor,” Lisa said.
McGregor looked at her in surprise, then frowned, then considered, then said, “Me?” all is the space of a second.
“Unless you know someone better suited to delivering a werewolf’s baby.”
“Okay. I mean, of course. I’d be honoured. But… does James know? About the baby?”
Lisa nodded.
“Uh,” McGregor said. Then, “Right.” He thrust a hand into the pile of papers and starting searching for something: drawing sheets out, glancing at them, and tossing them onto the floor before moving onto the next.
“What’s the problem?” Beck asked, leaving his post at the entrance to the room and approaching the table. “Isn’t this good news? Congratulations, I mean.”
Gods, she was stuck with the Awkward Twins. Three-God help them if the Andrastes did attack. Fat lot of good these two would be defending her.
“Yes, it’s good news, Joel,” Lisa said.
“It’s a stress,” McGregor said, from somewhere beneath the cloud of papers.
“So? You two make it sound like you can’t trust him.”
It was hard talking to Beck sometimes, especially when he acted like he knew James better than any of them. “You don’t really know him, Joel,” Lisa said. “When he gets caught up with something, he loses perspective. Makes demands. Acts like his way is Right and refuses to bend an inch, which can be dangerous if there isn’t someone there to display a little common sense and remind him how people are supposed to behave.”
Beck shrugged his plaid-encrusted shoulders. “He’s uncompromising. That doesn’t make him dangerous.”
“But not considering the cost or consequence does. Last time, he escorted a zombie into a town full of them. He confronted an evil brute of a werewolf all by himself. He poisoned Adonis’s entire family. And this time he came wanting revenge; how much do you think he’ll risk for that? What will he be willing to lose?”
It was horrible, talking about James that way, but Beck had to know. Had to, if he really was James’s brother. No point pussyfooting around. Beck had to be on his guard around James or James would get him killed.
And afterward, he wouldn’t even acknowledge it was his fault.