Accidentally Catty Read online

  Wanda knelt before Katie, placing a hand on her knee. It was warm, reassuring, allowing her to let at least two inches of her vertebrae relax. “I know all the crazy thoughts running through your head right now, Dr. Woods, but I promise you, we can help. As this unfolds, you’ll need people like us with experience in this phenomenon. I don’t mean the kind of experience someone who’s read a bunch of books on the subject or watched some paranormal movies has, but the kind of experience that can only be garnered by living it.”

  Wanda’s pause, the one Katie regarded as a moment to allow her to let that information sink in, only served to re-create the tension in her spine. Clearly, this woman, though quieter, sweeter, all round less crass than the other, was in need of psychiatric attention, too.

  Katie snatched her hand back, tucking it under her thigh, absorbing the cool leather of her office couch against her overheated skin. “You have to go.” Yes. They had to go. She was good at giving instructions. Surely these women would follow them if she used her doctor voice. All of her patients’ owners did . . .

  Wanda’s slender shoulders lifted then slumped in a sigh of “she’d heard this before.” “Dr. Woods, you’re disoriented due to the changes in your body’s chemistry, and if we go, you’ll go through the rest of the changes alone.”

  “There’s more?” Ingrid squeaked, still tucked behind Nina.

  “Shit, yeah. This is nuthin’,” Nina said over her shoulder. “Wait. Didn’t you say that the doc’s incident happened earlier tonight?” she asked Ingrid.

  Ingrid’s lower lip trembled, her face pale. “Yes, just after it happened.”

  Nina shook her dark head in clear wonder. “Damn, that was fast. Usually takes at least twenty-four hours before shit starts happening.”

  Ingrid’s breathing hitched. “So there might be more . . . uh, changes . . .”

  Wanda nodded. “Yes, there could be more physical changes. Dr. Woods’s turn was the quickest I’ve ever seen. That could be due to her . . . um, species. But there’s also more in the way of emotional issues. So much more. Now, I think it’s time for some realism. I hate to do it, but being a doctor, I’d bet you’ve been trying to put this all into some kind of medical file in your brain. You’re a logical woman. That stands to reason due to your profession. However, what’s happened to you defies logic and the science you think you know. I’m going to give you that first dose of the unreal with me as your support. So I’ll need you to trust me just a little. Ingrid and Kaih can come with us, but I’d like it if you’d give me your hand and come with me.”

  Katie shrunk back against the couch.

  “Oh, hellz no. I’m not going in there with you!” Ingrid yelped from around Nina’s arm.

  Exactly, Katie thought. She wasn’t going anywhere with these women. They were unstable.

  Kaih gave her receptionist a disgusted look. “Ingrid, the big kitty’s asleep. Don’t be such a coward. Suck it up, already. Can’t you see Dr. Woods needs us? If it weren’t for her, you’d have nowhere to live. The least you can do is be there for her in her time of . . . whatever time it is.”When he turned to Katie, his dark eyes pleaded. “You really need to at least see what’s in the other room, Doc. I’ll go with.”

  Her perpetual state of disorientation cleared for a brief second. “Wait. What’s in the other room that wasn’t in the other room to begin with?”

  Wanda held her hand back out. “Come. I’ll show you.”

  “You’ve seen it?” Katie asked, allowing herself to be hoisted up by Wanda’s unusually strong grip.

  Wanda tucked her hand under her arm reminiscent of the nurturing way a grandmother would. “Oh, the things I’ve seen. You’d laugh and laugh if you weren’t so fragile right now. I’m hoping, someday when all is said and done, we’ll have a cup of coffee and do that laughing. That is, if you still drink coffee after . . .” She shook her head as if to clear it. “Never you mind. That’s neither here nor there. Yes, I’ve seen what’s in the other room, and apparently, things have changed drastically since you last saw it. But no worries,” she assured. “It’s all fine. Or at least it will be.”

  Wanda used her shoulder to push open the heavy oak-stained door a crack. “Okay, now, take a deep breath.”

  Katie complied, ignoring the rumbly growl from just beyond the door.

  Wanda’s smile was pleased and warm. “Good. Now here goes. First, look at your left pa . . . uh, hand.” She reached for it, holding it up with her delicate fingers, and relieving Katie of the incredible weight of it. “Do you see what I see, Katie?”

  Oh, Jesus, oh, Jesus, oh, Jesus! Her wince was riddled with painful acknowledgment. “I—” She cleared her throat. “I see.” She saw. Oh. Lord. She saw.

  Wanda’s smooth complexion and clear eyes wrinkled at the corners. “That’s not a hand, is it, Katie?”

  Her stomach lurched. “N—no.”

  “It’s a paw, Katie.”

  Well, now that she’d said it out loud, fine—it was a paw. She knew a paw when she saw one. She’d treated all sorts of paws in her fifteen years of practice. Infected paws, torn paw pads, paws, paws, paws.

  Here a paw, there a paw, everywhere a paw-paw.

  And it was a heavy one, too. Each time she lifted it, it fell back to her side like some sad, limp brick.

  Wanda tilted her chin up, and Katie supposed it was to refocus her straying thoughts. “Katie?”

  “Yes. It’s a paw.”

  Her smile acknowledged her pleasure. “Good job! Now, I want you to use your non-pawed hand to run a finger over your teeth. Can you do that?”

  Instantly, Katie’s fingers went to the source of the trouble she’d had clamping her jaw. A tentative finger ran along the lower set of teeth in her mouth. Had she already called the Lord’s name in vain? She didn’t want to abuse the privilege, but Jesus!

  “Do you feel that, Katie?”

  She did. She felt the elongation of two of her bottom teeth. “I do.”

  “That’s not normal, is it, Katie? I mean, when you woke up today, you didn’t have those, did you?”

  No. No, and no. These were a magically delicious surprise as of early this evening. Katie shook her head in confirmation.

  Wanda’s smile was of approval—the kind you gave small children when they said “please” or “thank you” appropriately. “Good. Okay, now we’re going to go into this examining room. We’ll talk about all the other things that have occurred in due time, but for now, I think we need to talk about the potential source of your troubles. You good with that?”

  No. Yet, stoic reserve took over. “Okay,” was all she managed.

  Wanda gave her a tug, a gentle one she refused to lean into. “It’s okay, Katie. I promise. Nothing will hurt you. Trust me when I tell you, Nina and I can handle whatever might arise. Now c’mon,” she coaxed. Wanda’s tug was harder this time, making Katie, whose legs were like soft-serve ice cream, cave. Kaih was right behind her, bracing a hand against her waist.

  Katie’s eyes grew wide, her mouth falling open. Which was okay, considering all that extra enamel between her lips had become a lot to manage without drooling.

  “Do you see what I see, Katie?”

  Well, sure. “Yes.”

  “What do you see?”

  Nina knocked Wanda in the arm, her impatience obviously getting the better of her. “Lay off the show-and-tell, Wanda.”

  Katie reflected on what she saw. When this had all gone down earlier this evening, the animal she and her two loyal employees had all but dragged into her clinic and hoisted into a large cage with much grunting and moaning had been . . . Oh. My. Hell.

  “Nina,” Wanda said in a strained warning. “Clamp it. Tell me, Katie, when you helped the animal outside your clinic earlier this evening, did it look like this?”

  “No!” Ingrid shouted, jolting Katie’s nerves from head to toe. “We helped a cougar. We thought he was an injured cougar. He was unconscious, but otherwise unharmed. Dr. Woods had us haul him in here so sh
e could examine him because she thought he looked malnourished. We were sure he came from the exotic animal park down the road. They’re horrible people—horrible! They mistreat those animals. I know it!” She gave them all a quick, vehement glance before saying, “Anyway, we managed to get him up on the table, and when Dr. Woods was helping by holding up his front paws, he jerked and she nicked herself on her arm. After that, everything went kaplooey.”

  Nina and Wanda gave each other knowing glances.

  Glances Katie didn’t much cotton.

  “Is that true, Katie?” Wanda inquired.

  Her nod was slow—words were something she was incapable of as the reality of what had come to pass began to worm its way deep into her brain.Yes. Everything Ingrid had told them was true.

  She’d thought surely he’d somehow escaped from the exotic animal farm four miles down the road. Katie had always been suspicious about the kind of care animals, who in her opinion should be free to roam the wild, received there. She’d made her position on such clear to anyone who would listen in the small town of Piney Creek where she’d set up her practice in the hopes of rebuilding her now-tarnished career.

  So she’d made the executive decision to give him a thorough examination before contacting anyone, even though large breeds and exotics weren’t her specialty. If she could find proof the animals were undernourished and mistreated, maybe she could have the place shut down for good. Katie Woods wasn’t afraid of a good fight when it came to an animal’s right to humane care.

  Just ask her ex-husband, George . . .

  However, what slept so soundly in a tight ball in the biggest cage Katie had was, most assuredly, not what she, Ingrid, and Kaih had dragged into the clinic.

  On the contrary. This was a whole different breed of animal than the one from earlier this evening.

  A long, lanky, muscled, naked breed of animal.

  Hysteria rose like cream in her morning coffee.

  He was naked.

  He was a he.

  He was a full-grown man.

  CHAPTER 3

  Katie wobbled, but Wanda held her firm. Her strength was uncannily male and in stark contrast to her very feminine appearance. “I don’t understand . . . he was a . . . and now he’s a . . .”

  “A man,” Nina crowed with some sort of sick delight. “A big, hunky, not to mention naked, tigerlicious—”

  “Cougar, brainiac,” Wanda corrected with a wrinkle of her nose.

  Nina waved a dismissive hand at her. “Fine, cougarlicious man. So nom-nom, Doggie Doctor. You done good. We’ll knuck up your coup later after you fully shift back to your human form and when that thing on the end of your arm . . . uh, your paw isn’t such an eyesore.”

  Katie’s eyes glassed over as did her mental ability to add yet another entry to her paranormal glossary. However, she steamrolled ahead in search of clarification anyway. “Shift?”

  Wanda narrowed her eyes in Nina’s direction while she held a near-hyperventilating Katie upright as though she was lighter than a feather. Her lips pouted in a sour form of disapproval. “Thank you for trampling all over what was, up until this very moment, a rather calm approach to a frightening situation, and turning it into Paranormals Behaving Badly, Nina. How about you don’t say another word? In fact, I have a job for you. Why don’t you get on that snazzy BlackBerry you text your husband with until it vibrates like some seedy sex toy in need of fresh batteries and create the beginnings of a Ten ThingsYou Should Never Do in a Paranormal Emergency pamphlet?”

  Nina narrowed her eyes at Wanda. “How the hell am I supposed to know what kind of crap we should put in something like that?”

  Wanda cocked a lovely arched eyebrow. “Here’s a clue, and this should be easy, Nina. Just write down every stupid, insensitive, in-your-face comment you’ve ever made or considered making when we’ve been in a situation just like this, and we’ll label them the ten things you should never do when in paranormal crisis. Now be quiet. Don’t say another word. Don’t even breathe.”

  “I already don’t do that, Wanda,” was her reply in that tone laced with devilish delight intentionally meant to poke at Wanda.

  In that moment, in the midst of all this chaos, Katie made a strange, completely unwarranted, totally unexpected observation. Often, due to her love of animals, she matched human personalities with the traits found in dogs. Nina was a Rottweiler. Just looking at one could inspire bone-chilling fear for some. Yet they were loyal, fiercely so, and incredibly loving once they knew they could trust you.

  Nina, in your face and totally without inhibition, didn’t know how to be anything other than truthful to the point of excruciating. She was what she was, and she owned it. She enjoyed pushing your hottest button, but she didn’t do it to hide some insecurity. She didn’t do it to deflect her own faults. She did it from a place that was as honest and, while painfully brutal, cut to the chase.

  For a moment, Katie admired that gem of a quality. If only she’d spent more of her life using brutal honesty as her armor . . .

  Then she frowned, capturing Nina’s black, fiery eyes with her own, undoubtedly, panicked ones. “You don’t do what?”

  “Breathe,” Nina said with satisfaction, dragging a chair from the corner of the examining room and straddling it backward with a casual lift of her long, shapely leg. She pulled out her BlackBerry and chuckled to herself.

  Katie looked to Wanda. “She doesn’t breathe? That’s impossible . . .” Yes. That was definitely an impossibility. You couldn’t be vertical and not be breathing.

  Nina never glanced up from her BlackBerry when she said, “Just you wait until you find out how possible your impossible really is, Doc. Hoo boy, you don’t know, but you will.”

  “Oh, look, Marty. Nina’s already welcoming poor Dr. Woods into the paranormal fold with her usual grace and elegance.” Yet another woman, short, curvy, with medium brown hair pushed back with a stylish hair band, poked her head around the door, glaring at the top of Nina’s head. Katie was able to note, she bore a striking, if not fuller in the face, resemblance to Wanda. “Did you remember to shake her up real good and show her your fangs, Mistress of the Dark? Maybe you decided to take the gentler approach and just uproot a skyscraper with your pinky finger instead, huh?”

  Nina’s eyes lifted to meet the smaller woman’s, menace lurking in them. “You wanna go?”

  “You wanna be bald?” the shorter Wanda look-alike challenged.

  “You both wanna be my lunch?” a pretty blonde with a small, white poodle tucked under her arm asked. “Both of you, just this once, let Wanda do the talking. No fighting, no interruptions, no insensitive comments if we’re not moving at a pace that satisfies your lust for full-on hysteria, Nina. Please. I’m exhausted, my feet are killing me in these new shoes, and my Spanx are too tight. Now quiet.”

  She sauntered into the already packed examining room and held out her hand to Katie. “I’m Marty Flaherty. This is my dog, Muffin, and the missing link that came in before me is Casey Gunnersson, Wanda’s sister. It’s nice to meet you, even if the circumstances are difficult. And lovely area, by the way. Very rural and quaint.”

  When Nina and Casey remained quiet under the watchful blue eyes of Marty, Wanda turned back to Katie, her eyes filled with concern. “So where were we?”

  “Shifting,” Kaih chimed in, a gleam of anticipation in his eyes. “I’m so totally down with that, too. I can’t even believe all those crazy stories I was raised on at the reservation are true.”

  No. They weren’t true. The half of Katie that was still a veterinarian, a woman who believed in science, resurfaced. She shook her head with a vehement no. She didn’t understand what was happening, but this was not true. “They’re not true, Kaih.” Not true. It was all myth, folklore, and in general, superstition. Not fact.

  Kaih nodded at her disfigured hand and popped his lips. “Oh, yeah.Your sudden onset of elephantiasis says different.” His confirmation landed in the pit of her stomach.

  Ing
rid whimpered, stuffing a fist into her mouth.

  Wanda grabbed hold of Katie’s shoulders and turned her, forcing her to look into her tastefully made-up brown eyes. “Katie, they’re true. Now listen to me. I’m going to go all businesslike on you because we, as a paranormal whole, have found if you linger on the ledge of disbelief for long, you try to talk yourself out of what’s right in front of your eyes. So it’s cold-turkey time. What we’ll show you will shock you, amaze you even, and yes, horrify you all in the same breath, but we need to get you to the point of acceptance, and then find a way to help you get situated. We know absolutely nothing about being a cat—”

  “Werecat. She’d be a werecougar, more specifically,” Casey stated again.

  “Priceless,” Kaih muttered.

  Wanda nodded her acknowledgment. “Yes. Casey’s right.You’d be a werecougar. We don’t know the specifics about your new condition. We do know about what’s called the shift. In that way, we’re all almost fundamentally alike.You are now officially a shapeshifter. That means you can essentially shed your human skin and don the shape of a cat, er, cougar.”

  Yay!

  Wanda looked as though she were allowing Katie the opportunity to let that sink in by her pensive gaze and pursed lips.

  And sank it did.

  Right to the bottom of her pit of despair.

  “A werecougar . . .” Katie murmured.

  “Yeah. Irony, huh, Doc? We haz it. We have so much of it, we own that bitch.” Nina snorted, cracking her neck from side to side. Marty flicked Nina’s hair, making a face of disapproval. “Nina, not now.” She approached Katie with cautious steps. “I bet once you shift you’ll be beautiful with all that platinum blond hair you’ve worked so hard to contain in that braid that does nothing for your facial features, FYI.”