Daihmler County Hospital was hectic on a usual day, but Beryl was finding today doubly so. Dr. Hawkins had come down with the flu, leaving his patients in her charge. Her morning was extremely busy with the addition of his patients added to her own, but she was checking everyone off the list in decent fashion. Walking into the room of the next patient on Hawkin’s list, she thought she might still be finished by her usual time that afternoon.

  “Good morning, Miss Leighton,” she said approaching the bedside of the young woman. “I’m Dr. Blanchard. Dr. Hawkins is sick, so I’ll be looking out for you today.”

  The young woman had been turned towards the window. As she turned to face Beryl, Beryl was not prepared for what she saw. Yes, the chart had informed her about Lana Leighton’s condition, but it hadn’t prepared her for Miss Leighton’s appearance. She must have been very pretty once, Beryl lamented silently to herself. The gauze covering her neck and most of her face was becoming discolored and did little to hide the gashes across her face and left eye. Her hair had a very noticeable bald patch with scabbing where it looked as if some of her hair had been ripped out—perhaps in struggle.

  “Who did this to you?” Beryl asked.

  “I was attacked,” Lana answered. “The police think it was the killer they’re all looking for.”

  “You are very lucky to be alive,” Beryl noted. She flipped through the chart and read more details of her injuries. “Says here your neck was partially torn open. Required a lot of stitching. One more centimeter and you might have bled to death.”

  “I know,” the patient sighed.

  “How is your pain level today?”

  “Bad,” the girl replied. “But I don’t care about that. No one will tell me the truth about how I am going to look. Doctor, you’re a woman. You know what I mean. These men just tell me to be patient. That there’s no way to know until I start healing. But Doctor, please tell me—will I look horrible?”

  She could not have been more than 21 or 22, Beryl observed. Her whole life was ahead of her and to go through that life disfigured, or with such noticeable scars across her face…Beryl knew she had to help if she could.

  “I’m going to freshen up your bandages for you, Miss Leighton. It might burn a little.”

  Beryl very carefully unwrapped the gauze from the wound. Dried blood made the layers cling a little to each other. As she removed the final layer of gauze and pulled away the cotton padding from the incision, Beryl saw beads of blood still secreting from the wound. She placed her hands on the girl’s neck, trying to summon that familiar surge of power she had used time and time again to heal countless people. Nothing happened. Beryl tried again, forcing her mind to rid itself of all thoughts except the healing of this girl. Still nothing. Surely, she hadn’t lost the power to heal. That wasn’t possible. Blanchard’s kept their gifts all their lives. The only way to lose one’s powers were if the Council bound them. Still, nothing was happening. No sign of Beryl’s abilities. She took fresh gauze from the rolling table nearby and redressed the wound, disposing of the old wrappings in the plastic bin mounted to the wall.

  “I’ll be back to check on you a little while later,” Beryl said softly.

  To be certain she had not lost her skills, Beryl ducked into the room of another patient. It was not a patient of her own, or of Dr. Hawkins. The patient was a Mr. Wyatt. Beryl had heard the nurses discussing him yesterday. He had been in a serious car accident earlier in the week. Dr. Gillis noted paralysis in his chart.

  Mr. Wyatt was on a good deal of pain killers and was fast asleep as Beryl crept in. She quickly placed her hands on his legs and summoned the power she was not able to find for her last patient. She visualized Mr. Wyatt walking again, slowly at first—taking baby steps on his own with a walker. Then she pictured him moving without aid but taking things slowly. She envisioned him climbing stairs. The power was surging and by the time she’d finished she had him jogging marathons in her mind. His legs were healing. The paralysis would not be permanent. She felt so pleased for him. But it arose again the question as to why she could not heal that poor girl down the hall.

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  “…And you say her throat was slashed?” Demitra asked her daughter late that night when they were having iced tea on the porch, just the two of them.

  “Yes,” Beryl replied. “And for some reason I couldn’t heal her wounds. I know that sometimes with outsiders it’s more difficult because I have to put a slow heal in place, which is trickier. They can’t very well just have no wounds anymore the next day or the hospital would start to ask questions. But when I couldn’t manage a slow healing for Lana Leighton, I got desperate and even tried to do an instant and complete heal on her—which is very easy for me to do because it requires little thought. But even that didn’t work.”

  “Curious.”

  “I’ve never had this happen before,” Beryl said. “Can we sometimes not be able to heal others?”

  “I don’t know Beryl,” Demitra told her eldest. “You are the only member of the family with that power. No Blanchard has held that particular ability since your great grandfather’s brother.” Demitra sipped her tea. Tiny sweat droplets from the glass fell onto her knee. She wiped them off with her sleeve. “And you say there were gashes in her face?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did they look like claw marks?”

  “I guess they kinda did,” Beryl reflected. “Three of them right in a row.”

  “I want to confide something into you, Beryl,” her mother told her. “Charlie Bennet asked for my help with this serial killer case in town. I went to a crime scene and had a vision. I think it’s a werewolf.”

  “A werewolf!” Beryl cried. “Mother, you can’t be serious.”

  “Beryl Marie Blanchard!” Demitra exclaimed. “Are you going to sit there like a little hypocrite and tell me there is no such thing after we’ve just been discussing your power to miraculously heal people?”

  “But Mother, a werewolf? That’s a bit hard to swallow.”

  “Is it? In this family?”

  “Okay. Okay. I believe you,” Beryl acquiesced. “Did you tell Mr. Bennet?”

  “Yes,” Demitra said. “He is barely tolerating my notion. But I researched and discovered this killer has a long path stretching from the Carolinas to Daihmler. Perhaps this is why you can’t cure that girl.”

  “Why should that matter?”

  “Because,” Demitra noted, “whoever is bitten by a werewolf and lives, becomes a werewolf himself.”

  Beryl looked confused. “Mother, that’s just in movies.”

  “It’s also the truth.”

  Their talk was suddenly disrupted by the startling presence of Patric standing on the top step of the porch. He smiled at them and gave a short laugh.

  “Sorry to interrupt what appears to be a deep conversation, but I am here to collect Fable. We have a date tonight.”

  “At this hour?” Demitra remarked. “It’s past nine.”

  “We have a date regardless,” he replied.

  Demitra excused herself inside to go alert Fable that her date was there. She felt apprehensive leaving Beryl alone on the porch with him. She felt even more disturbed that her other daughter had plans to leave with him, but she knew from experience there was no way to stop Fable from doing anything Fable wanted to do.

  Outside on the porch, Beryl made an effort toward conversation with Patric. “So where are you two off to tonight?”

  Patric ignored her question, or perhaps he hadn’t heard it. He had stepped back down the porch steps a few treads and was staring up at the house towards a window on a higher floor. Beryl tried again to make small talk.

  “Don’t worry. She’ll be right down. That’s not her room up there, anyway. Her room faces the back.”

  “I know which room belongs to your sister,” Patric said rather rudely, still holding his gaze above.

  “You know, a kind word every so often could take you far in this world,” Beryl said, unable to excuse his continual rudeness.

  He brought his gaze back down to meet her own and replied, “I’ve traveled far enough for one lifetime.”

  Fable sprang through the door, slamming the screen and causing Beryl to jump. “Hey cutie!” she cried to her date. “Ready to go?”

  “Yes.”

  “See ya, sis!” Fable waved as they climbed into her car to leave.

  They were already down the gravel driveway headed to the main road when Beryl felt a terrible urge to go after them, to stop her sister from leaving. On top of that, Lana Leighton’s battered face came across her mind. Beryl wondered why Patric perplexed her so. Why did she have a distinct dislike for him? True, he had no manners it seemed, but Fable had dated worse for sure. Something else was going on with Patric. The word dastardly popped into her mind. Something about the way he was staring up to the house unnerved her. He looked as if he had been planning something. Maybe just a secret liaison with Fable in the night, but he’d said he already knew Fable’s room was in back. Yasmine’s room was the only window that looked out over the roof of the porch.

  Then Beryl’s mind drifted away from Patric and the window and moved toward another puzzling question. Where was Patric’s car? They left in Fable’s. How had he come to Blanchard House? On foot? She and her mother certainly had not heard a car pull up, otherwise they wouldn’t have been so startled from their conversation. Had Patric walked to Blanchard House?