“If you are what you claim,” he said, “there are ways of showing it.” He glanced around the tent. “Tell me what is in that chest.”
She looked at the painted wooden trunk. “I don’t—”
“Tell me what you smell.”
Her eyes widened with comprehension. Not shock, or fear, or amazement, but recognition.
“A test,” she murmured. “Very well.” She closed her eyes again and breathed in deeply. Her brow puckered in a frown.
“There are a number of items in the chest,” she said slowly. “Something… made of flowers. Dried flowers, and straw. A hat. Caitlin’s.” She breathed in again. “Yes, it belongs to Caitlin. And there is also a piece of leather—very worn—that is also Caitlin’s, but it has been used with horses. Metal… a buckle, perhaps. A bit of harness. And… yes, the smell of an old book, one that has been damp too many times. Like an old, musty library. I think it is Ulysses’s. And something of Harry’s. Wool. Some article of clothing.” She opened her eyes. “I hope you do not expect me to identify the specific garment?”
Morgan stared at her face. He knew she could not have seen the contents of the chest, yet she had described them accurately and without hesitation.
She had a werewolf’s senses. If he bade her listen to some distant sound, report a fragment of conversation from the big top, he was sure she would oblige him. But if he asked her to stalk a buck in the deep wood, or run tirelessly for hours on end, or strip herself naked…
He worked his fingers into fists. “Impressive,” he said. “But there is a surer form of proof. Change.”
He might as well have struck her. She paled, and then the color returned in a rush. “You mean change into a wolf, as you did?”
She spoke as if the very idea was unthinkable. “What is wrong, Miss Munroe? Have you never done it before? Or is it that those who live as you do are above such things?”
“As I do?” She tried to push up on her elbows, thought better of it, and lay down again. “I do not understand you.”
“Here, in the city. Among those people.”
She was too practiced at the games of her kind to reveal any hurt, but he sensed it in her nonetheless. “Those people?” she said with a brittle smile. “You mean my friends? My brother? Those with orderly lives and assets and connections?”
“If you were anything like me,” he said, “you could not deny your blood. And if you did not deny it, you could not tolerate the pretty cage you live in.” He leaned forward, holding her gaze. “You know what I am. You must know others. Why did you choose this time to admit your nature if you prefer your safe and easy life? Why tell me at all?”
She let the blanket fall to her waist and made a Herculean effort to prop herself up. Morgan moved to help her, but her eyes flashed such proud disdain that he fell back.
“I confess that I know little of… our kind,” she said. “I have only known of one other like me—”
“Your brother?”
“My mother. She… went away when I was born.”
A peculiar feeling came over him, a desire to ease the sorrow he heard in her voice, to protect her from future unhappiness. Insane, unaccountable emotions.
But it was instinct—deep, reliable instinct—that told him to believe her words. To accept her claims.
To trust her.
“And your father?” he asked, more gently.
“He was not like my mother, but he knew what she was. When I was old enough to understand, he gave me a letter she had written before she… went away. It explained a few things, but so much was left unsaid. I was not even sure if there were others like us, or how many. Until now—”
“What about your brother?”
“He has a different mother—” She paused, weighing her words. “He knows what I am, but he is like Papa.”
Human. Human father, human brother, absent mother. Raised in sheltered privilege in the heart of a human city. Alone.