Page 97 of The Turning of the Tables

Give it time.

I don’t have time.

I have to be able to work or I’ll lose my job.

Be careful.

Will your partner be there?

Quincy?

Yeah.

Let her help you.

Okay.

I did.I leaned on her far more than I ever had before—even the day after I left Devin. I had to.

I hadn’t anticipated getting called in, though. It just hadn’t occurred to me that anybody would try to make me go to an actual crime scene on my second day back, but Quincy and I were sitting in her lab, divvying up the day’s tasks into what I could do and what I couldn’t, which meant that Quincy was going to be taking on a lot.

And then her phone rang.

“Quincy,” she answered, then froze, her eyes skimming over to me. “Um. Yeah, but…” The guilt in her expression was more than enough to tell me that I was its cause. Because I was going to be more of a liability than an asset at a crime scene. “Are you sure you want usboththere?”

Another pause while a voice that I suddenly realized was Maginot told her that yes, he did in fact want usboththere, especially because we weren’t susceptible to Arcana anymore.

And because I might be able to smell or see something a human couldn’t.

I swallowed. He wasn’t wrong—I could hear him perfectly well, even though Quincy hadn’t hit the speaker button.

“Okay, on our way,” Quincy told him, then hung up and turned a nervous expression to me.

“I heard him,” I told her, trying to convince both her and myself that this would be fine. That I could sniff or whatever and then just sit in the van or something. “But you have to drive.”

“No problem,” she said immediately. “Seth…”

“It’s fine,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. It wasn’t fine. But hopefully I was the only person who needed to know that.

I had completely forgotten about the blood.

The smell of it hit me like a slap to the face when I gingerly lowered myself out of the high seat of the CSI van. My knee throbbed—it hadn’t stopped aching since my first shift, even though I hadn’t shifted in a week—as I stumbled at the stench. Thick, coppery, a little meaty. Nauseating, yet at the same time, it made my mouth water.

“Shit,” I hissed.

Quincy came around the front, reaching out. “Seth, are you okay?”

I closed my eyes, breathing through my mouth to try to get myself under control. Feeling my teeth filling my mouth, my arms breaking out in gooseflesh as fur tried to push its way through my skin.

No.

I didn’t know if thinking the word helped or not, but I was doing my absolute damnedest to not turn into a wolf at my first crime scene back on the job.

“Yeah,” I half-hissed at Quincy. “Just landed wrong on my knee.”

“Do you need help?” She took another very dangerous step closer.

“Nope. Just give me a minute.”