"Are you ready?" Kent asks me. He's sitting at the kitchen table in my villa, drinking a cup of coffee from the fancy espresso machine on the countertop and scrolling through his phone. He hasn't even looked up, and I clear my throat impatiently.   "What?" he asks, finally raising his head. "You look great. I told you that you would – you don't need me to approve your outfits."   "Well, excuse me for being a little nervous on my first day a

A week later, I'm woken up in the middle of the night by someone roughly shaking my shoulder.   "Nicole, get up," Kent says frantically, shaking me relentlessly. "Hurry. It's Ty."   I snap to attention immediately, throwing off my covers and scrambling for my robe, years of medical training having honed me to be instantly alert under these circumstances.  

Marcus checks his watch again. Lydia subscribes to the idea of being "fashionably late," a concept that Marcus personally cannot stand. His mother does it, too, and it drives him up the wall.   In Marcus's view, a dinner reservation is for seven, you should arrive at the restaurant by seven at least, if not a few minutes before. To do otherwise is disrespectful to the establishment and the workers' time.   However, he can't seem to get the rest of h

Marcus drums his fingers on his knee, resisting the urge to also tap his foot. My god, he's not in the mood for this tonight. He doesn't know why his mother insists on hosting so many of these society fundraisers in their private ballroom; in fact, it seems insensitive to do so right now, given his father's poor health.   This one is for some charity or another – Marcus believes it's for underprivileged werewolf youths in northern Scotland. Wolves went extinct in that country in the 1800s, if Marcus recalls correctly, and the werewolf population there was greatly affected.

I have no idea what to do with the information I just overheard. I sit at my desk until lunchtime, just staring out the window and mentally running through my options. They are few and far between.   Nobody is going to believe me. That's the start and the end of it. Who would believe me? Marcus? I ran into him once, and he definitely didn't recognize me. As far as he knows, I'm just the random witch doctor/probable charlatan who is here to exploit his father's illness for money.