The last thing he remembered was the witch hushing him yet again, and the warm weight of her hand on his face, and then a whole lot of pain burning through him like white lightning. He groaned and tried to lift his head, opening his eyes as wide as possible even though everything stayed dark.

“Wait,” said a familiar voice, and Evershaw flinched as a dim light filled the gloom. Todd crouched next to the bed, his expression haggard and exhausted. “Thank God. You’re back.”

“What the fuck happened?” Nothing seemed to work right, and he had strange pins and needles tingling all through him. “Did that witch try to kill me? Did she do something?”

Todd shook his head, though he gestured for Evershaw to be quiet. “No, she saved your ass, probably three times over. She knew you were sick before we even got back here, and dealt with the nightshade or belladonna or whatever the poison was. She also told us to bring Smith as backup, and it’s a good thing she did—she almost killed herself keeping you alive when the toxins kicked in.”

“Toxins?” Evershaw held his head and squeezed his eyes shut. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

“Apparently you’ve really pissed someone off.” Todd shifted to sit in one of the kitchen chairs that had been dragged in next to the bed, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “They managed to get rattlesnake venom into you. Smith couldn’t account for it, but his people are still looking over the car. We think that must have been the way they got to you. When we parked outside the Council building, someone got into the SUV and managed to mess with the interior.”

Evershaw tested his hands and feet, moving his arms and legs, and attempted to sit up just to make sure he could. “And you didn’t get sick, you lucky bastard.”

Todd gave him a dark look. “We’re canceling everything until we can figure out who the fuck is behind this.”

“No, we’re not.” Evershaw shook his head and talked right over Todd’s objections. “The best way to draw these assholes out is to give them another target. Now we know what we’re looking for, right? If it’s the RedCloud sons of bitches, then we give them an easy kill. Just like we will if it was actually the coyotes, or someone else entirely. When will Smith be done with the SUV?”

Todd frowned, but at least he didn’t bother to argue. “He wanted the witch to look at it before he made any judgments on who was responsible.”

“What the fuck is the witch doing that she couldn’t look at the car?” Evershaw’s lip curled in irritation. Imagine. He was housing and feeding the witch and she couldn’t bother herself to even evaluate the place he’d been poisoned.

“She’s sleeping off saving your ass,” Todd said, and nodded at the far side of the room.

Evershaw had to push up on his elbows to squint at the dark corner of the room and the cushy armchair he’d bought because it was perfect for dozing in on a lazy afternoon. And curled up on the chair was the witch, the skin under her eyes bruised and dark. It took far too long to see her chest rise and fall in a breath, and something tightened in his chest. She looked closer to death than he felt, which was bad news for them both.

Evershaw cleared his throat and turned his attention back to Todd. “Why the fuck isn’t she in the guest quarters?”

Todd’s expression soured, and Evershaw knew he deserved to be called an asshole that time. Todd pushed to his feet, muttering, “Because she thought she should stay close in case you took a turn for the worse. Go back to sleep and we’ll deal with the rest of it in the morning,” and he walked out without another word.

Evershaw scowled and lay back against his pillow, irritated a bit with Todd but more with himself. There wasn’t any reason to be so pissed off at the witch, especially since she’d figured out what was trying to kill him, but something about the witch got under his skin. And she’d been in his room before he returned, and she’d spent enough time there that the whole place would carry her scent for a while. She’d be in the air, in the drapes, in his favorite chair. There’d be no getting rid of her.

Which was precisely why he didn’t let anyone else in his quarters.

He found himself watching her breathe in a sliver of moonlight. Someone had pulled back the drapes on the windows and let in the soft glow of streetlights across the way as well as the moon. She looked very small and young and afraid, sleeping there in a chair like a defenseless refugee, and he felt even more like a dick for asking why she hadn’t gone back to the guest quarters across the building.

His legs didn’t hurt, though, so maybe her burns weren’t bothering her anymore. He sat up again, clenching his jaw against a groan as his insides threatened to make an appearance. He didn’t know what the fuck rattlesnake venom did to a person, but it hurt worse than the nightshade. Evershaw staggered to his feet and over to the bathroom, and on his way back to bed, he hesitated as he caught sight of the witch. She’d curled into a smaller ball in the chair, her brow furrowed, and he held his breath. She looked cold. Cold and miserable. And it was his fault.

Evershaw sighed and retrieved a heavy blanket from the top shelf in the closet, and limped around the bed to pause next to the armchair. He didn’t want to be nice. He didn’t want to be the guy who was thoughtful and considerate. That just invited disaster.

But he didn’t want her to be cold.

Cursing himself as a fool the whole time, Evershaw carefully draped the blanket over her and made sure her feet and hands were covered before he made his way back to the other side of the bed. He sat on the edge of the mattress and stared down at the floor, scrubbing his hands over his face. What the fuck was he doing? Did it really matter if he stayed in the city? He could have just picked up the pack and moved somewhere else, somewhere they weren’t trying to kill him, and everyone would have been better off.

Instead he insisted on staying and challenging the guilty to kill him in worse and worse ways. He’d potentially exposed Todd to the toxins and poison, maybe others as well. For his pride. He got up to pace, desperate to move his muscles and expend some of the nervous energy that gripped him, and made a few circuits through the room before the witch stirred. He felt her eyes on him before he turned to face her.

They looked at each other in silence for a long time before she maneuvered her arm free of the blanket to brush the hair out of her face. “You’re up and moving. That’s good.”

Her voice rasped with fatigue and something else, and guilt struck him. It was his fault she looked so exhausted. He folded his arms over his chest. “Yeah.”

“Thanks for the blanket,” she said, playing with the hem.

“Todd did it, not me.” He couldn’t have said why he didn’t want her to know he’d done something nice, and pushed away whatever the wolf thought they should have said. The witch would leave as soon as he was cured of the poison and they could figure out who wanted to kill him. There wasn’t any reason to care about whether she’d stay in touch.

Her expression shuttered against him. “Oh. Well, I’ll thank him when I see him. Are there any remaining symptoms from the poison or the venom?”

“Pins and needles,” he said. “Stiffness, a bit of clumsiness.”

“You should drink that,” and she pointed at the glass of sludge on the nightstand.

He picked it up and sniffed in, then made a face and looked at her. “You’ve got to be kidding me. What the fuck is it?”

“Some herbs, boiled down to their essence.”

She kept watching him, not blinking, so Evershaw sighed and steeled himself to drink the nasty mix. He pinched his nose and gulped it down as fast as he could. He shuddered and put the glass down, wanting to claw the surface of his tongue off, and got a drink from the bathroom before he eyed her and the very tiny hint of a smile on her face. “So what’s that supposed to do for me? It tasted like ass.”

“I thought it might adjust your attitude, but clearly not.”

Evershaw stared at her, his thoughts still a little too muddled to figure out what the fuck she meant, and it took way too long to put the pieces together. “What was the medicinal purpose of making me drink that?”

“There was none,” she said, and clamped her lips together for a long moment as she struggled not to laugh at him. The witch shrugged and rubbed at her eyes, no longer looking quite so asleep. “It was just to get back at you for being such a dick.”

He wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled but also high five her for a prank well played. He could respect that, even if he’d taste that sludge for the rest of his fucking life. Evershaw grumbled, unwilling to admit she’d gotten him pretty good, and folded his arms over his chest. “Right. Turnabout is fair play, witch.”

The witch smiled very briefly, then turned pensive once more. “I should have thought of this sooner, but I don’t fully understand how you animals do whatever it is you do to turn into your other side. Your advanced healing properties kept you alive, certainly, but I wonder if you would be as affected if you turned into the wolf and then back.”

He sure as fuck didn’t like being called an animal. But it was an intriguing idea. “I don’t know. Are wolves affected by the poison the same way?”

“I don’t know.” She blinked.

For a long moment, they stared at each other. Evershaw snorted and shook his head. “Why the fuck not. Let’s give it a shot.”

She sat up, alarmed, but Evershaw curled in on himself and let the wolf loose. Muscles tore and bones broke, and the bright flash of pain from the transformation eliminated the slight twitchiness and tingling that remained from the poison or the venom. He shook himself and jumped onto the bed, sneezing, and waited to be paralyzed or knocked out from the bad shit still in his blood.

Nothing happened.

He sneezed again and looked at the witch. He didn’t know what he’d expected from her, but it wasn’t the shock and revulsion on her face. She’d curled up even more in the chair, huddling away from him, as she stared at him with wide eyes. The witch even looked a little green around the gills.

Maybe she’d never seen a shifter shift before. It could be pretty gross to watch, but that wasn’t any reason for her lip to curl and her nose to wrinkle and her to look so fucking…disgusted.

He shifted back and turned away, uninterested in whatever it was that caused her expression. “I’m not dead. You can sleep in one of the rooms across the way.”

Uppity fucking witch. Even if she’d saved his life, she couldn’t call him an animal and sit there judging him. He didn’t even care that he was completely buck-ass naked and she got a good view of his ass as he strode into the bathroom. Evershaw heard her fumbling around and then scurrying out of there, the door closing behind her, and he waited until he was sure she’d left to stagger back to bed and flop onto the cool sheets.

She wasn’t there, but he could still smell her in the air and in the sheets and even on his own skin. It set his teeth on edge, and it was a long damn time until he could sleep.