“I know.” She smiled. “This is a freebie.”

“I don’t need therapy.” It sounded hypocritical the moment it left my mouth. “Okay, so maybe I do, but I don’t…I don’t know.”

“This doesn’t have to be a therapy session,” she said. “This could be just the two of us talking. We could talk about Deb and Carrie and their conduct in your parking lot.”

I stared at her. “How much did Ascanio tell you?”

“He didn’t say anything about your past,” she said. “Except that you have had a hard time, and there was abuse and it was bouda-related. He did want me to go to Aunt B and explain to her that boudas couldn’t keep trespassing in your territory, because they would push you too far. In his words, ‘They’re trying to punk her in her own place.’ He’s worried you’ll kill someone.”

“He’s right,” I told her.

Martina took out a small recorder. “I made this for you.”

She pressed the button. Aunt B’s voice sounded from the tiny speaker.

“…I said to go over there and find out what they talked about. I said to be slick about it. Did I say to rough anybody up?”

“No, ma’am,” Carrie said quietly.

“So why would you take it upon yourselves to improvise?”

“We thought…” Deb started and fell silent.

“I wouldn’t do so much of that, if I were you, dear. When you think, you end up with broken bones. Besides, it makes me so happy when you let me do your thinking for you. You do want to make me happy, don’t you?”

“Yes ma’am,” two female voices chorused.

“I’ll explain things to you now, because I don’t want you to feel left out. You thought that because Andrea is beastkin, you could easily dominate her. Andrea is a survivor. Never underestimate that. She learned to kill, she trained for it, and she’s had practice. You fight for fun and dominance. She fights every battle as if it’s for her life. If you attack her, she will pull you apart like a badly sewn dress. Andrea also understands how the forces that uphold human law work. And we all know how important that is, don’t we?”

Another chorus. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Do you understand now why she would be an asset to the clan?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I was an asset. That was news to me.

“I don’t care if she is beastkin, elephant, or platypus, we need her. She’s like a pine. She won’t bend, she will only break. I’ve spent months trying to convince her that joining us was in her best interests and the two of you decided to throw a wrench into my plans.”

“I’m so sorry,” Carrie said.

“Me, too,” Deb echoed.

“Go away and do try to stay away from me for a day or two, yes?”

“Yes ma’am.”

The door closed. A terrible screech followed, the sound of metal being tortured.

“It was a very nice bookend,” Martina’s voice said.

“Well, now it’s a very nice piece of junk,” Aunt B said.

I glanced at Martina. “Was that an owl?” It was one of a gorgeous pair of bookends, metal and finished in pale bronze, with large amber Swarovski crystals for the eyes. Aunt B used them on her desk to keep the files from falling out of the file holder.

Martina stopped the recording and nodded. “She squeezed one in her hand. If you crushed a jelly doughnut in your fist, and the filling spilled out? That’s what it looked like.” She pushed the button.

“Did Ascanio say what Andrea and Raphael spoke about?” Aunt B asked.

“No. He did bring Rebecca there.”

The recorder fell silent.

Aunt B sighed. “Why is it that we sacrifice and work so hard to keep our children from making our mistakes, and they insist on ignoring everything we say?”

“Probably because they are our children and at their age we ignored our parents also.”

Aunt B sighed again. “Are you going to see her?”

“Yes.”

“Will you tell me how it goes?”

“You know that anything she says to me is confidential,” Martina said.

“I know. Just tell me if it’s salvageable or not. We need her.”

Martina shut off the recorder and put it down between us.

“This doesn’t change anything,” I told her.

Martina looked at me. “What’s the alternative, Andrea? Where do you see this situation going? You slapped her, in public.”

“She backhanded me down the stairs.”

“That was a gentle love tap compared to what she could’ve done. You challenged her. She can’t ignore you. You wouldn’t, in her place.”

No, I wouldn’t. I would’ve gone after me. Quick, too.

“You can leave,” Martina said.

“I’m not leaving. This is my home now. Why should I leave?”

“Then joining the Pack is your only choice. You can’t be unattached, Andrea. It is our law and you are subject to it, because you are a shapeshifter. You are one of us.”

I clenched my teeth. “I could fight her.”

“You would lose. But suppose you won,” Martina said. “Then what? I won’t follow you, Andrea. You didn’t fight beside me; you didn’t prove to me that you deserve to lead. I don’t know you and I don’t trust you. If you succeeded and killed Aunt B, we would all gang up on you. I don’t know where Raphael’s allegiances would lie, but he would have to choose between the woman he loves and his family. It is a lousy choice to make.”

“Raphael and I are at a complicated place.”

“I don’t doubt it. We’re boudas, after all.” Martina shrugged. “If a woman sees her boyfriend in a restaurant with another woman, she may march over and confront him there. She may wait and confront him later. But if a bouda sees another woman with her mate, she would throw her drink in his face, and then the table, and then perhaps an unlucky member of the restaurant staff if one happened to be nearby. We make dramatic statements, in fight and in love.”

“Life would be easier without the drama,” I told her.

“Not for us. We have to vent, Andrea. That’s the way we’re wired. But back to the clan. B’s current second isn’t fit to be in charge of the clan. She is beta, because nobody else wants the job and responsibility. We would be left leaderless and have to fight it out. Would you really be that selfish, Andrea?”

She was right. I wouldn’t be. I didn’t want to be governed by shapeshifter laws, and some long-forgotten teenage part of me wanted to stomp my feet and scream that it wasn’t fair. But it was. A citizen of the country was subject to its laws, and while some people thought it was unfair, they still had to obey them. When they didn’t, people like me arrested them.

I didn’t want to be treated special because I was beastkin. But I was, because I had forced the situation into a corner, and now everyone was making special allowances for me.

What did I really have to lose by joining the clan? B was right, I did have the proper tools. I could join, take a position of responsibility, prove myself, and when the time came, I would take the boudas away from Aunt B.

I puzzled over this thought, turning it this way and that in my mind. “Logically I know you are right. Everything you said makes sense. But it feels like giving up somehow.”

Martina nodded. “You feel like your hand is being forced, and you have to join the Pack not because you want to, but because you must to do it to survive. This is your home and you want to live here on your terms, not the Pack’s.”

“Yes.”

“What is it you want to do in life, Andrea?”

I looked at her. I had no idea how to answer.

“Each of us selects a purpose,” Martina said. “Mine is to help people heal themselves. What’s yours?”

“I’m not sure,” I told her.

Martina smiled. “Something to think about.”

I was a shapeshifter. Nobody could take it away from me. Nobody could force me into early retirement and the boudas needed me. But I had no idea what my goal in life was. I had never thought about it in grand terms.

“Thank you for coming by,” I said. “Will you tell Aunt B I will be visiting her in a day or two?”

Martina nodded. “I’ll let her know.”

I catnapped after Martina and Ascanio left and heard the phone ring through my sleep. By the time I made it downstairs, the answering machine had kicked in.

“Andi, it’s me,” Raphael said.

I stepped away from the phone.

“I went to see Garcia Senior,” he said. “He says that they were approached by Gloria Dahl and asked to bid on Blue Heron. I thought maybe Gloria and Anapa were working together. It would make sense: he would put in a bid and she would put in the second-highest bid, so in case something went wrong with his bid, he’d still get the building. But Garcia said that Gloria’s bid was almost eighty grand below mine, which would make it one hundred and fifteen thousand below Anapa’s. Basically, she had no chance. If they were working together, their bids would be closer together. Anapa bid way too high and she bid way too low.”

Huh. I could’ve sworn Gloria was Anapa’s flunky. Well, showed what I knew.

“I hope you went home,” Raphael said. “I’ll be driving by later. Don’t do anything stupid without me.”

Don’t do anything stupid without him. I wouldn’t be doing anything with him, stupid or otherwise.

I checked the world outside the window. It was a few minutes past nine and the evening sky was vast and dark. Perfect.

I had to go back to Gloria’s crime scene. It was highly likely that Gloria, whoever or whatever she was, and her pals must have murdered Raphael’s people. That explained both the wide fang spawn and the location of the bite wounds. But I had no concrete proof. I didn’t have access to Gloria’s corpse, so I couldn’t measure the exact distance between her fangs and I still didn’t know where her associates were or what she was after.