The Skin She's In by Margo Collins (online e book reader .txt) 📕

been left alone with for days on end. In the background of the conference room, a uniformed officer sat quietly, working to remain unobtrusive.

I paused, then rewound again.

Gloria shook her head. “Sounds like a fairly standard boyfriend-did-it scenario to me.”

“Not the boy. Listen to the background noise.”

Snakes technically don’t hear anything—so unlike many mammal shifters, my hearing isn’t enhanced in my animal form, much less in my human form. But even I could make out something deep and rhythmic being picked up by the camera’s microphone.

“Who else was in there with you?” I asked my boss.

Her brows knitted. “Just the boy, the officer, and me.” She closed her eyes in order to better listen. After a moment, she opened them again and stared at me in horror. “Is that. ...” She paused, as if to shake away the idea, but then came back around to it. “Is that someone breathing?”

“I think it might be. We need to see if we can find someone tech-savvy enough to strip out the sound and enhance it.”

With a nod, Gloria sprang into action, picking up my office phone and hitting one of the saved numbers. “I hope you’re wrong,” she said to me, just before asking to be transferred to Detective Daniel Moreland.

I HADN’T MEANT FOR the strange noise behind the recording to take attention away from my late reports but waiting for Detective Moreland to get back to us did have the beneficial effect of allowing me to catch up on my work.

Even if I did catch myself trying to think of what might have made that creepy breathing noise.

During my lunch break, I called and left a message on Kade’s voicemail. I wanted to get another shifter’s take on the breathing sounds I’d picked up. Preferably a shifter with better hearing than mine.

He wasn’t anywhere to be found, though. I was guessing some emergency had come through the ER at Kindred Hospital—mostly a facility for shapeshifters, but sometimes used by the unwary general public, as well.

By two o’clock, Gloria and I were ensconced with the detective and a sound tech in some kind of recording studio—the twenty-something guy wasn’t an official police contractor, but Moreland said he had the best ears in the business.

I half-suspected he was a shifter from the way his scent buzzed on my tongue, but if so, he wasn’t of a type I had encountered before. His movements were quick and sharp, and alternated with moments of perfect stillness as he listened to the sounds coming through his headset.

“I’ve boosted that background sound,” he said, flipping a toggle on the switchboard in front of him, “and dropped down everything else as much as possible.” The sound came out of speakers all around us, heavy and deep—and definitely breathing.

“Can you tell anything about where it was coming from?” Gloria asked. “What part of the room?”

“And why the recorder picked it up but no one in the room heard it?” I added.

Moreland squinted into the distance, considering. “Was the breathing closer to the recording source than they were?”

The tech nodded, even as Gloria shook her head. “Not possible,” she said. “The recorder is built into the wall.”

My phone buzzed against the inside of my purse. When I saw it was Kade calling, I murmured an excuse to step away from the group and into the small anteroom.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Marta’s been attacked.” His words were clipped, hurried, and I could hear the noises of the hospital in the background. “They’re bringing her in, but the EMT thinks we’re going to have to take the baby now.”

“Now?” I tried to do some quick calculations, but my mind wasn’t working right. “It’s months early.”

“Twenty-eight weeks. In humans, that would give the child a 90% shot at survival in a top-notch neo-natal facility like ours.”

Out of habit, I lowered my voice, even though no one else was around. “And a lamia child?”

His shrug came through his tone. “No one really knows.”

“Who did this?” I paused as a thought struck me. “Was it someone who knew what kind of child Marta was carrying?”

“No idea.” I hadn’t thought it possible for Kade to sound any more curt until he clipped out those words. “They’re pulling up now. I’ll be in touch.”

“I’ll be there.” Sheer rage at that thought of someone attempting to harm Marta and her baby slipped into my voice, but I didn’t know if Kade heard it—he was already gone, his voice barking orders to his medical staff the last sound transmitted through the phone as he swiped it off.

I stood perfectly still for a moment, trying to calm my breathing, but instead, all I could do was think of the last time I had met her for an ultrasound, when she had held my hand and squeezed it as she watched the screen. “I can’t keep the baby,” she had said without looking up at me. “But you’ll make sure she’s okay, right? Not like...” Her voice trailed off, but I knew what she meant.

“I’ll make sure.”

Remembering my words now, my anger swelled again, and the colors of the room blinked out, muted in an instant to shades of black and white and gray.

If I didn’t control myself, I would end up doing that insta-shift thing I’d pulled the other night with Eduardo and wind up exposing the whole were community.

Even as the thought crossed my mind, I heard the door to the recording studio room open behind me and closed my eyes to concentrate on pulling the shift back down inside me.

“You okay?” Gloria asked, coming up beside me and placing one hand on my shoulder. The warmth of her hand seemed to pull me back into my human body. One long shudder traveled down my spine, leaving me oddly calm in its wake.

“Seriously, is something wrong?” my boss said. Opening my eyes, I checked out of the corner of my eyes.

Color vision.

My pupils should be back to normal now, human-round rather than serpent-slitted.

With a deep breath, I nodded