“I mostly have wolf clients but not all. Most human medicine is ineffective on Breed. It’s weak and, in some cases, doesn’t work at all. I’m basically your average medicine man. Nothing exciting about that.” Graham sipped his drink and grimaced. “I’m a milkshake guy myself.”
“Sorry. No milkshakes in this house,” I informed him. “What about Ensure? I could throw that in the freezer.”
He frowned. “What’s Ensure?”
I chuckled. “A human drink with vitamins and protein. Never mind.”
“Why would you have human drinks in your house?”
“This isn’t my house. It belongs to… a friend.”
Graham blanched and looked over his shoulder at the hallway behind him. “Are we alone?”
“Want me to give you the tour?” I offered. “I don’t want to jeopardize your reputation or career for helping us. I promised you a private location, and this is it.”
He shook his head, looking at the papers with a chicken wing still in his hand. “This is scandalous research. Scandalous! If you can’t find a connection and any of these Shifters find out what you’re researching, they could file formal complaints.”
Blue and I shared a look. Formal complaints were the least of our worries after a night battling bears and wolves, then rescuing a child.
“Some of the packs bury the bodies on their land,” I said. “What if we dig up a few and run some tests? You might find something in their blood.”
Graham choked on his chicken. “You must have a death wish. They’re not going to let you dig up the dead. Do you have anything on the rest? Anything new that was overlooked? If not, you should drop it.”
I shook my head. “I’m not dropping this. I’ve made a decision, and I think this is worth pursuing.”
Blue folded her arms on the table. “It could ruin us, Raven. Some of these look really fishy to me, but he’s right. If anyone gets wind of why we’re really asking questions, and they think for a second it might have something to do with a virus, that’s going to set off a panic.”
“One you can’t undo,” Graham added. “The higher authority lost a lot of credibility after that recent scandal. Even if the reps made a public statement that the virus gossip was a misunderstanding, no one would believe it. You could inadvertently start a war. That might dissolve the only law organization we’ve got, and nobody wants that. Nobody!”
I spread out the papers. A young woman found dead in her sleep, an older woman dead in a chair, a young boy who drowned, several young men who had all collapsed. And as much as I wanted to rule out the bear on the motorcycle, I couldn’t. I got up and unwadded the papers Graham had discarded on the kitchen floor so my father wouldn’t find them. “What about the Donner pack?” I asked Blue. “The one you saw yesterday afternoon.”
I felt a sharp stab of guilt when I remembered that they were the ones she had a run-in with.
Blue held a look I couldn’t discern. “The victim was a young man—eighteen, I think. They said he collapsed while repairing a broken window. They’re saying it was dehydration or a heatstroke, but I wouldn’t rule out foul play. They were in a rush to get us out of there. Something fishy was going on in that pack. Not many women, but a whole bunch of little girls.”
Graham heaved a sigh. “Some people shouldn’t be allowed to breed.”
I stared at the papers. It was so random. None of them had anything in common except that they were Shifters. Different ages, genders, animal types, and even causes of death. The only thing we could trace to some of them was that they died unexplainably. “Could it be a genetic mutation instead of a virus?”
Graham sucked the sauce off his thumb. “What do you mean?”
“What if some Shifters are born with a mutation that kicks in at random times, like an autoimmune disorder? Except instead of making them sick, it just kills them.”
“I don’t think that would go over well in the Shifter community either. Unless we can prove it, we can’t even suggest it.”
Blue rubbed her temples. “If it’s true, they have a right to know. Someone will have to organize a task force to research it. They’ll have no choice but to dig up the bodies since it’s something that would affect the entire population.”
Graham shrugged. “Sure. Tell everyone that their pack might have a genetic mutation and see how many of them start killing or kicking out relatives who might carry the gene. You need to think about it this way—if we can’t cure it, we can’t suggest it. It’s better if they just accept the deaths as part of nature. We don’t have specialized hospitals for Breed. We don’t have organized research teams who come up with cures for defects. We accept them. Otherwise you’d see more of these interbred children getting attention—the ones born with both gifts canceled out. Maybe in a few hundred years but not now. It’s possible they were born with a genetic flaw. That’s something I can’t rule out as a science man. But if so, there’s nothing we can do but protect the stability of the community.”
I folded my arms on the table and put my head down. The human side of me wanted to do all the things we would do in the human world. But that wasn’t my world anymore. Everything had an impact. The stability of the Breed world was as thin as a sheet of ice over a lake. One wrong decision would cause fractures far and wide. The ramifications for spreading rumors or slander were substantial, and because it would affect our organization, I had to tread carefully.
Yet Remi’s words resonated, and I felt compelled to see this through. Even if we could never publicly disclose our findings, I needed to know where this road was taking us. Maybe nowhere, but maybe we could save a few people along the way from bad situations.
“Do you have any potato salad?” Graham inquired politely.
I needed to end this meeting before he cleaned out Crush’s fridge. I lifted my head. “Can we schedule another meeting with you when we have more information?”
“Absolutely. I want to help in any way I can, but I just don’t see anything suspicious.” He continued reading a few more papers while finishing his chicken. “You spoke to the Freeman pride?”
