Page 95 of The Turning of the Tables

“Seth, you don’thaveto go back,” Noah had told me for at least the tenth time.

I shot him a look that told him to drop it. We’d been through this. Multiple times. I love my job. I find meaning in my job. I wanted to keep my job. And that meant I had to gotomy job, even though I wasn’t even remotely ready—physically or psychologically—to go back to work.

I also looked very different. I was a lot thinner, for one thing, and I hadn’t dared try to shave since I’dgotten sick. My hands were too shaky, even with a safety razor. Noah had offered to either buy me an electric or do it for me, but I’d told him not to bother. I figured I’d put the weight back on now that I was eating enough, but I wantedsomethingto reflect the change I’d been through.

Even though I’d always shaved, I could actually grow a full Appalachian mountain-man beard, and it made me look a little bit like a wolfman, so it seemed appropriate. At least in my Arcana-addled brain. I was too tired to bother with personal hygiene beyond showering and putting on deodorant, anyway.

Noah was driving me in, because I was already completely exhausted from walking down the stairs to my car. I’d come down myself, then texted him to come down to drive me. He also tried arguing with me again as we’d gotten into the car, and once more as I dragged my aching bones out of the car on the curb in front of work.

I let out a deep breath, trying desperately to keep myself from breaking—either into tears or into fur and fangs. At that precise moment, either seemed equally likely. My eyes burned with unshed tears—or maybe because they were trying to change shape. Or possibly both. My throat was tight, my skin prickly, my lungs incapable of drawing a full breath, my heart pounding as though it were a trapped rabbit.

I pulled out my phone and sent a message to Elliot as I slowly made my way up to the doors.

Tell me I’m going to be okay.

You’re going to be fine, baby.

Thanks.

I didn’t really believe him, but I was going to take what little I could. He’d answered me immediately, despite the fact that I was sure he had a whole life that didn’t revolve around me and, in fact, probably was mostly disconnected from my existence except for the occasional messages he exchanged with me. Nothing at all like the way that I thought about him at least once every few hours.

The emotions from Elliot’s supportive text were mixing with my anxiety and fear, and that was also not helping to tame the literal beast. I swallowed a couple of times, forcing my feet to carry me forward as I gulped in air. If I stopped, Noah would undoubtedly come get me, and then I would be jobless in addition to being an absolute mess.

I told myself that if I could just get into the office, I could ask Quincy to let me sit quietly in a corner to catch my breath and reign in my anxiety and the wolf that came with it. I just had to get into my tiny office.

One step at a time.

ELLIOT CRANE

How did it go?

SETH MAYS

Awful.

Do you want to talk about it?

No.

But thanks.

You know how to reach me if you do.

Get some rest.

I knewI wasn’t going to be able to follow his admittedly very good advice. I was exhausted, but the kind of over-tired and freaked out that meant I wouldn’t be able to sleep until at least midnight if not one or two in the morning.

As awful as work had been, it could have been so, so very much worse.

Quincy liked my beard. I’d taken the mask off once I’d gotten into our shared office, because I couldn’t pass on Arcana—although at the moment she was still in the three-month bubble of immunity from her own bout with it. In epidemiological terms, I didn’t need to wear one at all, but I really didn’t feel like running around the lab advertising the fact that I was a shifter—and since I wasn’t any of the obvious types of Nid, if I hadn’t worn one, people would have either decided I was a dick or realized I was now a shifter.

I didn’t think I was in the headspace to handle that yet.

I’d kept myself in my human skin—sometimes barely—and had only cried once. Alone. In my office, after begging Quincy to go to a meeting without me and make up some reason why I couldn’t be there. I actuallycouldn’tbe there, but not because of anything dramatic, just… You don’t go to work meetings with bloodshot eyes and a snotty nose because your only choices are to cry at work or shift into a wolf and possibly maul or eat your best-work-friend.

And you definitely don’t go when you’re riding an emotional knife’s edge that would likely lead to you shifting in said meeting and then mauling and/or eating the rest of your team, too.

This whole shifter thing was absolute shit.