Elise's heart hurt for him.
She summoned a bit of calming magic to her hands as she opened the cage. The fox was too weak and out of it to do more than blink at her.
"Come on, little buddy. It's alright."
If she were a human veterinarian, she would have had to pull the little guy out onto an examination table and use a stethoscope or something to hear his heartbeat. There was imaging equipment and a machine that analyzed bloodwork. All of it great.
For humans.
Elise let her magic do the work for her.
She sank into the fox, letting her magic guide her to the worst of the hurts. Her eyes closed as she narrowed in on his pulse, the way his heart pushed blood through his veins. His lungs were a mass of infection and hurt, and her own ached in sympathy. She wanted to unleash herself, to heal all of his ills and release him, to let him run free like he was meant to.
But she held herself back.
The key to getting away with secretly healing the animals was to never do itallthe way. Humans could believe that the antibiotics worked quicker than they should or that a broken bone wasn't as bad as they first thought.
But if the fox stood up tomorrow on four perfect legs and was breathing like a marathon runner, there might be questions.
So Elise focused on the infection. Tendrils of her magic seeped into the fox and chased down thewrongness. Delainy had once asked her what she saw when she healed someone, and Elise could never quite explain it. She didn'tseeanything. Usually she closed her eyes, so everything was dark. She didn't think it counted if she said the back of her eyelids.
Sinking deep into a person or animal like this was way more like touch or taste. And even then, itwasn't. Only a healer really could understand what it meant to chase down echoes of an infection and make it dissolve into something harmless.
She wondered if it was the same for werewolf healers.
Elise let out a heavy breath. That was crazy talk. Werewolves and witches didn't mix. Not unless you wanted a big fight and lots of blood. Which she didn't.
Though the subsequent healing would probably beveryinvigorating.
It was purely professional curiosity.
Witch healers made sense. They used magic, like all witches did, and they healed people with it. Now, that magic was a bitdifferentthan normal witch magic. A person was born a healer. Any witch could train to learn a few healing spells, but to do what Elise was doing to the fox, you needed the inborn healing talent.
Were werewolves like that? Or were their healers just doctors who howled at the moon from time to time?
She wished she could ask someone. But if she said awordabout wolves to her coven, they'd wrap her in bubble wrap andhide her away where her own curiosity could never dare to harm her.
They didn't seem to understand that Elise could wonder about something without being freaking stupid.
Somewhere outside the room, she heard a crash.
Her head jerked up, and her connection with the fox broke. He let out a small whimper as her magic tore away from him, and Elise winced.
"Sorry, buddy." When magic was that deep inside someone, ithurtto pull it out, and it was supposed to be done gently to reduce suffering. It wouldn't injure him in the long run, but she was a healer—she didn't want to cause unnecessary pain.
A door slammed, the sound echoing through the rehab center and making her heart rate kick up.
Was someone else there?
Elise gave the fox a magical scan and looked at the clock. It was later than she thought. She'd been working on him for more than an hour. Her skin buzzed with the remnants of healing magic sinking back into her and she shook a little.
She'd need a candy bar or something soon or she was going to crash.
And if she fainted and someone found her, her sisters would never let her hear the end of it.
Elise carefully closed the fox's cage. The infection wasn't totally gone, but she'd taken care of it enough that the drugs could clear it up in no time.
She couldn't do anything about the leg. Not if a security guard was coming.
