Lost in the Woods E-Book

Deborah Wilde

• Herausgeber: Te Da Media
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Sometimes, you need the Big Bad Wolf to make it safely through the woods.

Dr. Raisa Montefiore, magic scientist, is on a mission to find the woman who messed with her research to create the world’s first wolf shifter.

Unfortunately, her first move lands her in handcuffs for murder. Oops.
But Raisa won’t let a little setback stop her. With a new job and her deathbed promise to her sister on the line, she sets out to convince Gideon Stern, bossy werewolf and ex-cop, to quit ghosting her and join forces. Together, they’ll hunt down their common adversary and put an end to her dangerous schemes, once and for all.

As they venture deeper into treacherous magical realms, each with a deadly smart female in charge, Raisa is torn between admiration and wishing #girlpower wasn’t quite so literal. She’s always championed intelligent women, but this is ridiculous.

Amidst the chaos, Raisa must confront her thirst for vengeance and the sizzling attraction blossoming between her and Gideon. Talk about a high-stakes experiment with an unpredictable outcome.

Will Raisa find her way back to herself, or will she forever be lost in the woods? And hey, with a hot wolf cop by her side, maybe being lost isn’t so bad after all.

Love, danger, and magic collide in the conclusion to this action-packed urban fantasy, featuring witty banter, a shifter romance, and a clever Red Riding Hood retelling.

Join the hunt now!

Leseprobe

LOST IN THE WOODS

An Urban Fantasy Fairy Tale

DEBORAH WILDE

Contents

Be Part of the Magic—Join Us Now!

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Sneak Peek of Throwing Shade

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Be Part of the Magic—Join Us Now!

Bestselling author Deborah Wilde presents a razor-sharp urban fantasy packed with:

• A brilliant magic scientist and total geek whose love of facts and formulas gets hilariously scrambled when the scientifically impossible shows up wearing fur.

• A richly woven world where cutting-edge science meets exciting magic, with dangerous consequences waiting to unfold.

• Romance, witty banter, and a clever Red Riding Hood twist that will keep you turning pages.

LOST IN THE WOODS is the sixth book in The Jezebel Files series.

Deborah has a chatty newsletter where she shares what’s warming her cold, dead heart, gives sneak peeks and insider information, and holds giveaways.

Join the Wilde Ones today!

Chapter1

Einstein said that insanity was “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Having my entire professional career dictated by the scientific method, with its controlled constants and carefully adjusted variables, I was no stranger to that way of thinking. I was as likely to re-run an experiment the exact same way and expect my outcome to change as I was to click my heels together three times and say “There’s no place like Perrault” to achieve my desired hypothesis.

That said, perhaps it was better to be slightly insane.

Or perhaps I already was, because here I sat, Ubering through the Toronto streets during a record snowfall to accuse my former lab colleague, Dr. Carol Shaw, of sabotage. This was the same woman who, more often than not, had at least one writing implement tucked into her frizzy hair and forgotten about, and was famous for her long-standing record of most wall crashes in our chair races down Perrault Biotech’s hallowed corridors.

The idea that she’d screwed with my scientific research by inserting wolf DNA into my rapid regeneration burn serum on behalf of a shadowy venture capital group called Golden Radial was, in the words of the great Vizzini in The Princess Bride, inconceivable.

Yet, despite that, the immunologist was the likeliest suspect. Carol had proximity to my lab to steal the vial with my serum, doctor it, and return it. She also had the genetic know-how to splice wolf stem cells together with my heat shock protein. She wasn’t a Weaver, but she was still a level four Hothead, a fire elemental with decades of experience studying the combination of magic and science.

So here I was, paying surge pricing to confront the world’s most baffling villain.

We were halfway across town now, and my impatience at our slow progress was choking me, but at least each rollover of the Uber’s odometer brought me one click closer to answers.

I looked out the window, clocking more familiar landmarks. Carol had hosted a BBQ for the staff last summer, and I’d fallen in love with her home in the central Toronto neighborhood known as Cabbagetown. The area had a small village feel to it, the homes mostly semi-detached Victorians or charming brick row housing. It looked like something out of a period film.

Kids sledded in Riverdale Park West, shaking off flakes as they trudged up the hill dragging bright plastic sleighs, while snow on the roofs and eaves of jewel-like townhomes sat like icing on gingerbread houses.

The driver dropped me off in front of Carol’s place, and I crunched through the unshoveled walkway, my breath coming out in white puffs and my nose already going numb.

Extracting answers without arousing her suspicions would be tricky, but once I did? I touched my chai pendant for good luck. Moving forward with my life and my work depended on this meeting.

I rapped on the front door, the knock keeping time with my heart pounding against my ribs.

Carol cracked it open, keeping the security chain on, her eyes growing more owlish behind her round spectacles. “Raisa? Goodness, what brings you here in this storm?” She tucked a curl behind her ear, exposing an orange crayon snagged in her locks like a fish in a net.

I repressed a relieved grin. The conclusions that led me here had to be wrong, but maybe she could point me down a better path.

“Sorry to drop in on you. I phoned yesterday but there was no answer.” I kept my voice casual and light, but with a hint of urgency underneath. My posture was relaxed, and I propped one hip out, mirroring what I could see of my colleague’s stance to create rapport. I’d researched the hell out of the science of lying last night. “I know it’s kind of abrupt, but I’ve got a job interview Monday and I’ve been really worried about it. I was hoping I could get your thoughts in person. Career advice.”

This was a lie, a pretty massive one. There’d been few places willing to even interview me when Perrault Biotech’s reputation was so tainted. And by tainted I meant that Dr. Richard Woodsman, our lab director, had blown up the place and corrupted specific backup data—including mine—which was stored off-site, on the night the cops barged in to arrest him for money laundering. After that, it was hard to list the lab on my résumé without getting a lot of pointed questions about my ethics.

“You came out in the worst storm we’ve had all season,” Carol repeated, brow furrowed, “to ask me career advice?”

“Yes,” I said with what I hoped was youthful vigor. “I wanted your insights.”

Carol shooed me into her foyer, closing the door against the harsh wind. “But your burn research! You were always so passionate about that. Why would you make a career shift?”

“After everything that went down, I don’t have much of a choice.” I sighed heavily.

Twelve years ago, when I was seventeen, I’d promised my identical twin sister, Robyn, to “make history.” I’d thrown myself into that vow, honing my magic and earning a PhD in chemical genetics, where I began my research into rapid regeneration.

I’d dubbed the serum I was working on Red Carpet, both because I imagined it unfurling through the body like a red carpet, but also because rolling out the red carpet was to give someone a special treatment. I wanted my formula to make burn victims feel like rock stars, recovering like ballers, a far cry from the slow, painful teeter back and forth between okay and very not okay. I didn’t want anyone else to hurt like Robyn had, for the hospital to assure some other family that this really was the best they could do.

Nothing could bring my best friend and wombmate back. I knew that. Was this my way of imbuing her death with meaning? You didn’t need a psych degree to answer that. But I’d like to think that she’d be proud that she still got to make a difference in the world, long after she left it.

Carol locked the door. “It would be a shame to abandon all that work.”

Frowning, I toed off a boot. Why? Because she believed in my serum or because she had a vested interest in it after she added the stem cells?

“What else can I do?” I placed my boots on the tray, snow already melting off their soles. “All my data is gone, and no one is interested in taking on work that was started at Perrault.”

“Did you have any physical samples you could analyze to re-create the data so you don’t have to switch your focus?”

Sure, if I’d pinned Gideon Stern down and stolen his blood after I first injected him when the serum was live in his veins or taken numerous tissue and bone marrow samples later to obtain a clear picture of what had been done to my research.

However, Carol didn’t know about Gideon. More importantly, Golden Radial had no idea he was the living embodiment of their ambitions, and I intended to keep it that way.

I stuffed my scarf and gloves in my jacket pockets. “There was one sample, but it was destroyed in the fire.”

“That’s such a shame.” She clucked her tongue and shook her head. With her frizzy hair, she resembled a distressed baby chick.

“Tell me about it.”

Carol led me into the living room. Oh, goody. She had a dog. The animal was asleep on one of the two sofas. It was large and sandy-colored, with a sad, saggy face.

I eyed it warily. I didn’t like big dogs at the best of times, but especially not when I’d gained entry under false pretenses. Amazingly, there wasn’t a trace of dog hair on the carpet. Carol probably had to spend half her life vacuuming up after that beast—and the other half dusting the dozens of fake tropical plants in brass stands. Wow. That was quite the commitment to plastic florals.

I took the chair farthest away from the dog and closest to the front door, ready and willing to flee into the snow in my socks if it kept me from being drooled on should the pet awaken.

After I declined Carol’s offer of hot chocolate, she perched on the edge of the smaller couch. “Are you looking to go into HIV research?”

“Not exactly.” I folded my hands in my lap. If she was innocent, I had to keep my questions vague enough that she wouldn’t have concrete information should anyone interrogate her. That would keep Carol safe if she wasn’t Golden Radial’s minion, and me safe if she was. “I always felt a kinship between our areas of expertise. I tried to instantly alleviate pain and suffering from burns, and you were looking at one-shot immunology treatments to overcome HIV. Both of us are trying to establish fast pathways to massive life-changing healing.”

I waited for her face to light up with the look of someone about to go into excruciating detail about their project. An expression I may have worn a time or two (or always, whenever anyone was unwise enough to ask about it), but Carol just smiled. It was pleasant, but it wasn’t the unhinged obsessive grin I was used to seeing from my colleagues when invited to launch into the minutiae of their work.

“Are you interested in working with stem cells?” she said.

I suppressed a shiver. I’d worked with modified heat proteins, and Carol’s research involved a lot more than stem cells, so why jump to that question? “There are exciting new possibilities in that area, but the background reading I’d have to do to even begin to explore them would be immense. It’d be a very different concentration than what I’ve focused on so far.”

“Stem cell research is such a good fit with your Weaver magic,” she enthused.

Her face radiated with the fervent gleam I’d expected earlier, and my heart sank. Carol wasn’t passionate about her own work; she was passionate about enticing me to do Golden Radial’s bidding. There was no two ways about this. Looks like this didn’t lie.

A wave of nausea rolled over me. “Could I use your bathroom?” I said faintly.

“Of course. Down the hall, second door on the left.”

I got out of there without throwing up. Once at the bathroom sink, I splashed cold water on my face and blotted it off with a towel while I stared at my reflection in the mirror.

The last time I’d seen my mentor, Woody had given me a flash drive with my data and his notes on wolf DNA. He’d experimented with it to enhance human characteristics including strength, speed, heightened senses, and, for the final shot in the werewolf-creating cocktail, enhanced muscle mass.

His research had been top secret, undertaken at the behest of a venture capital firm called Golden Radial, over years and a series of tiny asks—all for the good of humanity of course—that had ended with Woody laundering money for them and nuking the lab.

Dig into Golden Radial and they were as advertised.

Would a reputable venture capital firm provide funding for medical research? Sure. It wasn’t weird for them to have invested in Perrault Biotech when patents could yield big dividends.

Would a reputable firm have directed said research into the illegal creation of supernatural beings in private trials in Switzerland where the records were tightly sealed?

Not in a million years.

That’s why despite pressure from Golden Radial to further his research, Woody had, instead, tried to destroy all the data in spectacular fashion.

Sadly, the officer in charge of the money laundering investigation, Inspector Gideon Stern, had almost died in the lab fire that Woody set. I’d used the single physical manifestation of my serum to save him, but whoops! I’d turned him into the world’s first wolf shifter. Though that was very hush-hush and not going on my résumé.

Who said the sciences weren’t exciting?

I replaced the towel on the bar.

Despite Carol being a powerful fire elemental, I’d assessed the risks before I came over and determined I had nothing to fear. The weeks following the lab’s destruction had been a wild ride to find Woody and a backup of my data so I could fulfill a deathbed promise to my twin.

However, with each passing day since I’d retrieved my research, I grew more confident that the fiction of it being destroyed in the fire held firm. I didn’t feel like dangerous people were watching me anymore.

As for Carol herself, not only was she forty pounds lighter than me, but she was also the type of person who took spiders outside rather than step on them. I was even surprised she had such a big dog. She’d probably faint if it ever brought her a dead animal or anything, but knowing her, her pet had probably been a senior animal who’d lived years at the shelter. She was just that kind of person.

Apparently, she was also the kind of person to betray a colleague.

I pinched my cheeks to get some color into them and returned to the living room, prepared to obtain a detailed analysis of what she’d done to my serum and the name of who had given the order, before hailing another hilariously overpriced Uber.

Except the living room wasn’t as I remembered it.

I did a double take.

There was no longer a dog on the sofa.

I blinked. Once. Twice.

The plants were on the ground, their stands overturned and the meticulously dusted pots smashed to smithereens. Blood dripped onto the coffee table and down the skirt of the sofa, plopping in cruelly cheerful drops on the ground.

Carol’s lifeless eyes stared back at me, her body exactly where the dog had been. Her tan sweater was slashed to ribbons and splattered in blood like a paint-by-numbers picture with only one color. The violence of the scene was shocking.

Personal.

A distant logical slice of my brain whirred through my fog of horror. She couldn’t have been killed while I was in the bathroom, could she? No. This wouldn’t have happened in silence or in the couple of minutes I was in there.

I stuffed my fist in my mouth to stifle a scream. If Carol had been dead this entire time, then who had I been talking to?

Was the killer still here, hiding and watching me?

I spun around on leaden legs, my shoulders tight and high, expecting the killer’s breath to tickle the back of my neck and their fingers to ghost across my back, but the room was empty.

Boots thudded up the front stairs. “Police!” The cops banged on the door demanding entrance.

Thank God. I just had to make it to the front door, and I’d be safe.

Unless they were in on it? I froze, my heart slamming against my ribs. I hadn’t told anyone I was coming over.

I had to get out of here. Get somewhere safe and call for help.

The front door shuddered with the sound of a body thudding against it.

I grabbed my boots and jacket, planning to run out the back door.

Little did I know that instead of listening to Einstein, I should have been taking advice from the world’s foremost traveler and survivor of many a dark path: Doctor Who.

The door crashed open, wood splinters flying, and a female cop raced inside with her gun pointed at me. “On your knees!”

Geronimo.

Chapter2

Two days earlier with nary a dead body in sight…

Red and green Christmas lights strung along the ledges of the tower across the street shone in through Dr. Nakahara’s office window, festively tinting the rush of falling snowflakes. The scientist had warmed up the bland space in this university hospital building with a richly colored landscape by a local Toronto artist, while her celebrated career as a microbiologist and immunologist was evident in her crowded bookshelves and framed awards.

Even though she wasn’t Nefesh like me, a person who possessed magic, the Mundane cancer research expert had worked with the intersection of magic and science in her field for decades. My hope was that she would put Red Carpet under the auspices of her well-funded and well-documented research and away from anyone seeking to continue perverting my serum’s uses and create more wolf shifters.

Not that I could tell her that part.

She’d been excited to help me, however, she’d insisted on determining the serum’s viability before she got approval or publicly mentioned it.

That made sense, and I had my own reasons for agreeing to keep it secret a bit longer, namely our safety. Golden Radial could not get wind of our talks before our position was bulletproof. Literally.

However, a bit longer was not supposed to mean two months since the Marrakesh debacle, with endless conversations about the viability of my rapid regeneration serum while we ran and re-ran my digital simulation. One without wolf stem cells coded into it, since even if I had the know-how to add the sequence digitally, the point was to make a furry-free version of the serum work.

I should have taken up knitting before spending all this unpaid time sitting in the office watching the screen, and made myself some new footwear. I knit magic into people, how hard could a pair of socks be?

For those of us working with magic and science, clinical trials on people were forbidden until the digital results could be flawlessly replicated, at which point they were scrutinized and approved by a special governing body. I’d have given my left kidney to present my work to them because my entire interaction with Dr. Nakahara, while not exactly an exercise in Einstein’s insanity, was coming pretty damn close.

I swiveled my chair from side to side, calculating the odds of Dr. Nakahara jumping out of her ergonomic marvel at the end of this latest simulation and yell, “Eureka! It worked!”

They were not in my favor.

She scratched a hand through her short silver hair, the glow from the large monitor on her desk casting a bluish tint over her dark copper skin. “I congratulate you, Dr. Montefiore, I really do. You’ve achieved the perfect balance of Weaver magic and science with your Hsp60 heat shock protein. Your serum heals all burn-related wounds, whether in the internal organs, muscles, or bone. You’d spare people the trauma of multiple skin-grafting surgeries, even lung damage or death from smoke inhalation. All this would happen in mere minutes without surgical intervention. It’s astounding. However…”

“No one wants a burn treatment, no matter how miraculous, if the trade-off is rapid terminal cancer,” I said quietly.

She tapped a key and Pumpkin Spice, my virtual 3D lab subject, stopped spinning, reduced to nothing more than a dark outline.

Watching my baby hang lifeless against a black void made my throat grow thick and my chest tighten. I’d gone through hell to rescue Pumpkin Spice.

My shoulders slumped. I’d spent years refining this serum to be administered on-site. The tumors that the serum induced in the digital simulations were the final stumbling block, yet I’d been certain that Dr. Nakahara would have a solution to take my work to the next important stage.

“Maybe if the tumors showed up in a single spot in the body,” she said, “we could, with time, find a way to combat their sudden and explosive growth. But this cancer is unpredictable and doesn’t present in the same manner twice.”

If we’d run the same experiment, gotten the same results, and expected something to be different, we’d be the insane ones, but this was worse because no matter what variable we changed up, the end was the same: yay! No burn injuries, but boo! Spontaneous lethal tumors.

I gnawed on the inside of my cheek. “There’s no way to nuke the turbo cancer, is there?”

“Is that the technical term?” One side of Dr. Nakahara’s mouth quirked up as she pointed with a 2B pencil at the screen. “But to answer your question, there isn’t. The issue is encoded into the heart of your serum. Since it magically knits into the body at a cellular level, you can’t expect cells to regenerate at the amplified speed required for the burn injuries, while not exhibiting an out-of-control cellular division.”

“Is using another protein as a damping switch to attack the cancerous tumors totally off the table?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” she said. “It was an inspired idea, but I’ve examined it from every angle and coded all the best protein candidates into your formula.” Her statement gave me hope because she wouldn’t have put all that time and work into this if she didn’t think something would come of it. “There’s nothing that will work fast enough to whack-a-mole the tumors out of existence.”

Well, that dashed that.

“That’s the technical term, is it?” Despite my defeated posture, I gave her a wry smile. Okay, I was down, but not out. Time for my Hail Mary pass—or whatever the Jewish equivalent was. A chai score? I scratched my chin, hoping my next idea sounded off-the-cuff and not carefully rehearsed. “What if we took an entirely different route?”

Dr. Nakahara sat back in her chair and crossed one denim-clad leg over the other, gesturing for me to continue.

“Use induced pluripotent stem cells to create a vaccine. Approach the problem of the tumors from a preventative rather than a reactive basis. Vaccines are the new frontier in cancer research.”

Dr. Nakahara shook her head. “There’s room to make new ideas work, yes, but most people, even at a very desperate time in their lives, aren’t willing to take that kind of a risk. They want more certainty in their treatments. As a result, there’s less interest in funding those cures.”

I held up a hand. “Hear me out. Please. Studies done over a hundred years ago reported that transplanted tumors were rejected in animals immunized with embryonic tissue. The vaccine in those tissues allowed for cellular immunity against transplantable and carcinogen-induced tumors.”

“That was a controlled experiment with a specific type of transplanted tumor. Your serum induces multiple cancers in multiple sites of the body. It’s a far more complex problem.”

“I know, but carcinogens increase the risk of cancer,” I said, “because they damage cellular metabolism or damage DNA in cells. Right?”

“Correct.”

“Consider my serum a carcinogen and tell me if it’s possible to tackle the tumors it produces with induced pluripotent stem cells that were enhanced in the lab for a boosted immune system. A vaccine with a short-term intense impact that would be injected right before the burn-healing serum.”

The wolf DNA added to my serum had exceptional regenerative abilities thanks to its stem cells. It had been powerful enough to counteract the cancers brought on by my original formula.

Too bad it turned the one person I’d given it to into the world’s first healthy wolf shifter. Golden Radial had, up to that point, managed to produce only mangled hybrids, but I’d pulled off the real thing. A perfect specimen.

I’d be proud of that except for the fact that Gideon Stern was a tool. A cancer-free tool, mind you, but Stern didn’t exactly look on the bright side when it came to occasionally becoming a wolf.

I had to stop these tumors from occurring without creating another wolf shifter, hence the idea I’d been tossing around: amp the immune system on a short-term basis. Just long enough for the serum to heal the patient without inducing tumors.

Dr. Nakahara pursed her lips in thought.

I touched my chai pendant.

Science was at the point where we could take a simple gene from an animal and graft it into a human. For example, we could take the gene that made jellyfish glow and give ourselves a cool party trick under black lights. However, anything more complex involved entire systems with multiple cells addressing various functions. Graft all those into us and our system would attack and kill them.

Unless…

They had a magic delivery system knitting them in at top speed at the cellular level.

That’s where my serum came in. After years of trial and error, I’d landed on an edited protein derived from the Hsp60 gene as the best partner for my magic. Proteins were incredible large complex molecules that did the heavy lifting in cells. Without them, our tissues and organs wouldn’t have structure, function, or the ability to regulate.

I magically knit the heat protein into the fabric of the affected cells to achieve accelerated wound healing throughout the body—in the digital model at least. I had no doubt the serum would work on a person. I just had to crack this final, admittedly huge, tumor-shaped obstacle.

“Theoretically, it’s possible.” Dr. Nakahara jolted me out of my thoughts.

“Okay.” I sat up a bit straighter.

Her office landline rang, and she reached for the receiver. “Sorry. One moment. Hello?”

I turned away to give her some privacy, schooling my frustrated grimace into a placid smile.

Humans had two types of stem cells, embryonic and adult. Embryonic ones were naturally pluripotent, meaning they could become any kind of cell: liver, blood, brain, etc. Their versatility made them perfect for repairing and regenerating damaged organs and diseased tissues, but their source, embryos, made the ethics of using these cells a hotly debated topic.

Adult stem cells weren’t pluripotent, so an adult stem cell from, for example, blood vessels, would regenerate only the same kind of cells. However, they could be modified, reprogrammed in a lab, to become pluripotent.

The trouble was, I didn’t know if the stem cells that had been added to Gideon’s dose of my serum were embryonic or adult. Had they been modified to become pluripotent or were they specific adult stem cells with only one regeneration outcome? Had a scientific process or a magic one been used?

It wasn’t like stem cells could be dumped into the physical serum either.

Woody didn’t even know the stem cells had been added successfully to my serum until I told him about it. Had he intended to place the wolf stem cells into the sole physical sample of my cure at some point? All he’d said was that he would never have handed it over to the bad guys, which I believed. He wouldn’t have blown up the lab that he’d sacrificed his entire life for if he meant to give Golden Radial my work and carry on.

Would he have added them at some point to satisfy his scientific curiosity and then destroy all traces?

He claimed not, but the jury was still out.

Regardless, I was convinced of his innocence in this matter. He wasn’t the one who doctored my sample. When the cops showed up that night to arrest him for money laundering, Woody wasn’t at the lab, but he wasn’t far away either.

My friend and the lab’s office manager, Ella Fortose, told me that Woody had read the texts she’d sent him about the police arriving with a warrant. He could have easily returned, gotten into my lab, and stolen the vial with my physical serum; instead, he’d burned it all down.

I suppressed a shiver. Woody could protest that he’d been careful, but the fact remained that it was a miracle no one had been killed.

However, it’s not like there were tons of people on the short list. Perrault Biotech wasn’t a huge corporation.

One of my colleagues knew how to use wolf stem cells to prevent the tumors. Once I, too, had that knowledge, I’d extrapolate a way to create the short-term immune system booster, pair it up with the serum, then Bob’s your uncle.

No burns, no cancer, and, best of all, no more wolf shifters.

So, who had doctored my work?

Dr. Nakahara hung up the receiver. “A rescheduled budget meeting. The good times never end. But to get back to your idea.”

“Yes. I was thinking about how there are mammals like whales, elephants, even bats who are cancer resistant. If we used their stem cells⁠—”

“Dr. Montefiore.” She shook her head, her tone impatient but not unkind. “You have the kind of mind that I’d love to have on my team, and this is worth pursuing. I would love to see an on-site application for burn wounds, and removing the need for painful grafting surgeries and the loss of life due to smoke inhalation would be revolutionary.”

I held back my excitement like riot police running crowd control. “But…?”

“I simply don’t have the resources to go down this road. It would have been one thing to bring your burn serum into official channels, if we solved the problem of the tumor growth, since the serum itself is already viable and ready for clinical trials, but what you’re proposing might take decades. If it’s ever achievable at all.”

My dream felt as impossible to achieve as traversing the entire board of Snakes and Ladders in a single turn. I’d been so certain of my path for so long, an open book with a single narrative of fulfilling my promise to my sister.

Now I kept dangerous secrets from friends, colleagues, and the world at large about shifters, and the one person I longed to speak to refused to have anything to do with me because I’d ruined his life.

I took a deep breath and sat up. All it took was one answer to set me back on the right road to keeping my promise. “I firmly believe that my mastery and understanding of Weaver magic, along with my chemical genetics background, is exactly what’s needed to team up with the immunologists here and create an intense immune system amplification,” I said. “One that would not only work in conjunction with my serum to prevent lethal tumors but have huge ramifications for the future of cancer research.”

Dr. Nakahara leaned back in her chair and stared up at the ceiling, the seconds crawling by at a glacial pace.

“I was the only one to bring a rapid regeneration serum into existence for burn victims,” I said insistently, “and I’m certain that I can do the same for this particular shot.”

Provided I found that damn scientist who’d inserted the wolf DNA and got some answers. I notched my chin up a bit more. One thing at a time.

“My thinking has gotten too inside the box lately.” She exhaled, looking at her pockmarked lab ceiling tiles and fluorescent lights. Something quirked at the edge of her mouth, then she nodded. “It’s time to shake things up again.”

My heart fluttered in my throat like a butterfly had taken up residence in my esophagus. Which sounded poetic and uplifting until you remembered that human hearts are the size of our fists. I was choking on anticipation. “You mean…?”

“You start Thursday, January 4.”

Today was December 21. I had two weeks to find the scientist and get answers, but I’d do it. I might not achieve my dream of being in human clinical trials by thirty, but my work was still moving forward. I was still honoring Robyn.

Dr. Nakahara unmounted my flash drive and handed it over. I’d been careful during all our meetings to make sure I retained the only copy of my information. “We’ll announce your position after the holidays,” she said.

“No mention of the serum though, right?”

Luckily, she took my terse tone of voice for disappointment, and not unease.

Dr. Nakahara patted my arm. “Not yet. Best not to tip our hand before all the official paperwork clears.” She winked at me. “Once we have your background checks complete and your paperwork all submitted, it’ll be too hard to get rid of you. Trust me.”

This was actually happening. My cheeks tingled with a hot flush and my eyes prickled with tears. Dr. Nakahara had my back. Both me and my work would be in good hands with her.

Make history, Red. The voice I heard wasn’t my sister’s, but Gideon’s raspy growl. I shook it off. It didn’t matter who said it. I was, indeed, going to make history.

Dr. Nakahara stood up and extended a hand. “Welcome to the team.”

I shook it with a smile that I didn’t have to fake. “I can’t wait.”

Chapter3

“Don’t give up your day job.” Ella gamely swallowed her bite of lemon biscotto, setting the misshapen treat on the unchipped plate that was reserved for guests.

“Especially when I just got mine yesterday.”

I was still getting used to this version of my friend, a sixty-something who wore jeans and sweaters (still somehow more elegant than any I owned), instead of ironed silk blouses and tasteful skirts. Despite our age difference, the two of us had clicked, and during our time as colleagues, we’d gone for lunch on a semi-regular basis. I’d also visited her in the hospital when she was healing from the injuries that she’d received the night of the fire.

I poked the cookie on my saucer. The ribbon of raw dough really made the burned edges pop. “That said, I won’t audition for The Great Canadian Baking Show in my spare time.”

My nonna’s recipe had seemed easy enough to follow when my cousin, Levi Montefiore, texted it to me. I wasn’t sure how I’d gone so wrong, and I wouldn’t be responding to his requests for photos of how they turned out until I’d visited an Italian bakery and artfully plated their product.

Golden boy did everything well, including bake. Levi wouldn’t gloat, necessarily, but why give him the ammo? Baking was basically chemistry. Chemistry was a science. How was I supposed to know that my favorite thing would betray me so epically?

Ella pushed a polished lock of dark brown hair behind her ear and picked up her steaming mug of tea, cradling it between her hands. Damn, her cuticles looked so soft and supple.

I folded my jagged, cracked disasters into my palms and out of view.

“I’m thrilled about your new job.” She blew on the tea. “And statistically, the chances of working at two labs that explode are infinitesimal, so it bodes well for job security.”

“Your optimism is wasted in retirement.” I spooned my tea bag out of my mug and dumped it with a splat next to the inedible biscotto. “You should take up life coaching.”

The radiant heater in my living room made banging noises as it turned on. Since heat rose, my fifth-floor apartment was usually warm without having to often use my heater, even with thin windows, but it had been colder than usual this December here in Toronto. In addition to the snowfall, we’d had freezing rain and daytime temperatures inching into the minus teens Celsius.

Ella shuddered. “No, thank you. I’m done mothering people to help them get shit done. Present company excepted.”

“Nice save,” I said wryly.

She winked at me.

When I returned to Toronto after my visit to Vancouver to see Levi, Ella and I tried to arrange a coffee date, but this was the first time she’d been free, given her busy retirement schedule. It was nice to just hang out.

“Did you book that Caribbean cruise yet?” I said.

“Just working out the details with my friend. What about you? Did you talk to your mom about moving in with her or is that off the table now that you’re employed?”

“I could, but that would mean more time for her to hound me about working in her security firm. Like I spent all those years getting my PhD to weave wards for shady rich people and soulless corporations.”

“Sadly, help often comes with strings,” Ella said. “Especially with mothers.”

I saluted her with my mug. “I’d rather lie down in the middle of the 401 and let eighteen-wheelers crush the life out of me than live with Mom.”

“Dr. Raisa Montefiore,” Ella teased, “always with a plan.”

Like now. I felt guilty inviting my friend here under the false pretenses of celebrating my hire, but I couldn’t be honest with her. The people who’d been looking for Woody after the lab explosion had magic and guns.

I rubbed the goose bumps that broke out over my arms. If Gideon hadn’t taken the bullet intended for me…

Yeah, well, Gideon Stern, injured ex-cop, erstwhile partner, and reluctant wolf shifter, had also abandoned me that night in Morocco.

It was pretty easy for him to ghost me, since he’d holed up in Hedon, the magical alternate reality ruled by the Queen of Hearts and Moran, her decapitation-happy second-in-command.

I’d sent Gideon one text about a month ago. It’s not like Moran had any authority over me, and for all his bluster over the Black Heart Rule, Ash had assured me that a simple direct message from here on earth wouldn’t violate it.

Seconds later, I received a message from an unknown number. There were no words, just an image of a heart and a scepter: the Queen’s personal logo.

I hadn’t gotten truly close to anyone since my sister’s death. Hell, my Red Carpet serum, my life’s work and the single physical embodiment of my deathbed promise to my twin, lived in Gideon’s blood. How was I supposed to let all that go?

I’d typed two choice words in response, then deleted it all with an angry sigh.

Since then, I’d heard through the grapevine that Gideon had healed nicely, but that was the extent of the updates. Whether he was still in Hedon or off doing business here on earth for the Queen remained a mystery, but I doubted she’d released him from their bargain where he’d offered his police experience and shifter abilities in exchange for her permission to search for Woody in her realm.

Focus, Raisa. I unclenched my jaw and, returning fully to the present, sipped my grocery store brand—and frankly far below mediocre—orange pekoe. No fancy name brands until I turned my financial situation around. My bank account was down to single digits and the unemployment benefits I’d finally been approved for barely covered rent and ramen.

I studied Ella speculatively through my lashes. I’d met with Dr. Nakahara yesterday. If Ella could help me with this one hurdle, I’d have the rest of the winter break to analyze the wolf stem cells.

“There’s a caveat to this job.” I balanced my mug on my knee. “With my research gone, I’m switching my area of focus.”

“You’re giving up your promise to Robyn?” Ella leaned forward, her brow creased with worry.

I nodded, hoping she read my blush as shame that I’d failed my sister and not that I was lying about the demise of my life’s work. Half lie. White lie?

“Is there really no way to re-create your data?” she said.

“I could replicate the magic process, but the chemical formula was refined so many times over the years and was so complex and specific that I can’t conjure it out of memory. Believe me, I’ve tried.” Was a full-body sigh too much? Too late. “I plan to stay in the broader field of chemical genetics because I’m not masochistic enough to throw away a PhD that I’m still paying off, but the thought of starting fresh with the serum after all that’s happened is disheartening.” My voice cracked on that last word.

“That’s understandable.” She patted my hand, her movement making my 1970s secondhand floral couch creak.

“Plus, it wasn’t an option. Dr. Nakahara’s focus is cancer research. It’s okay. There are other ways for me to benefit humanity. We tossed around some ideas, and I was drawn to preventing muscle loss in cancer patients.”

Ella frowned. “Since when are you interested in muscle mass?”

“The bigger, the better, baby.” I leered at her theatrically and she snickered. “But seriously, my preschool teacher died from muscular dystrophy. Robyn and I adored her, and Woody conducted research into enhancing muscle mass. It wouldn’t be an illogical next step.”

For years, Woody provided data for Golden Radial–funded experimental trials in Switzerland. On the surface, both Woody’s research on muscle mass (not a secret) and these trials to cure muscular dystrophy (private but not secret) were important, given that a key symptom of the disease was progressive muscle weakness.

Yeah, well, surface was all it was. Those conducting the trials had taken desperate people seeking medical help for a debilitating disease and turned them into mangled and deformed (obviously very secret) wolf shifter prototypes.

Those who’d survived, that is.

I suppressed a shudder at the memory of the poor man stuck in a monstrous human-wolf halfway state who’d attacked us in Morocco. I pray he’d been the last of this kind.

“Why would you want to follow in Woody’s footsteps?”

I blinked at Ella’s harsh tone.

“It’s his fault you lost your data.” She brushed her hand over her ankle that had been operated on. “And I can now predict when it’s going to rain.”

“Woody believed in me,” I said hotly. “He believed in all of us.”

“He broke the law and disappeared, leaving me as the one the police focused on for the money laundering when I had no idea…” A muscle ticked in her jaw. “Forgive me if I don’t share your belief in his character.”

“I get it.” I rubbed my hand over my chin. “But I’m trying to put the pieces of my life back together and I have to start somewhere.”

“Well, don’t start with him. He’s vanished and any muscle mass research he was involved in wrapped up before I came aboard.” Ella had started at the lab less than three years ago, only six or so months before I had, and while Woody remained in hiding, as far as I knew, he was safe.

Needles fell off the replacement cactus which sat on my crooked IKEA bookshelf. I rose, swept them up with my hand, and deposited them into the small trash can by my desk with a scowl. How did I keep killing desert plants? “It’s still an interesting field.”

“I appreciate that you’re grieving the loss of your research and your promise to Robyn, but this is your chance for a clean break from everything related to Perrault Biotech. Why not find an entirely new focus?” She shook her head sadly. “You can’t keep trying to fix the world because of people you’ve lost. It’s not healthy.”

“Maybe not, but humor me. Please? Were any of the other scientists at Perrault involved in similar research? They might have some advice, and as the newbie on this team, I’d appreciate any words of wisdom.”

She was silent for a long time.

I stared through the lacy pattern of ice on the outside of my single-pane window to the gloomy Toronto afternoon, glad that I didn’t have to brave the cold and slush. Though that would mean I had a life instead of chasing dreams where I had to lie to friends and put off giving Levi an answer about moving to Vancouver to be closer to him.

Huh. I guess with my new job I had a concrete reason to tell him that wasn’t happening. I rubbed the wistful ache in my chest.

It’s okay. I’d still fly out for his wedding on Valentine’s Day. I’d been surprised they’d chosen that date, but the Canadian press was all over the idea of the handsome House Head getting married on the day devoted to corporate manufactured love.

Though they didn’t exactly phrase it that way.

The wedding promised to be a lavish affair with hundreds of guests, including House leaders from around the world and even some celebrities. It felt totally out of character, especially for Ash, but Levi had an image to maintain, and she accepted that.

“Alexei,” Ella said.

“Huh? Sorry. I zoned out. What about him?”

“When I started, he was at the tail end of a study on muscle hypertrophy.”

My heart sank. “He’s not a geneticist.”

Even if the wolf stem cells hadn’t been altered before being added to Red Carpet, whichever scientist was involved required the expertise to graft the DNA both correctly and relatively quickly. Not only was the gene-splicing equipment popular, there was only a single physical sample of the serum and a limited quantity of wolf DNA so the person had only one shot.

Alexei didn’t have the know-how.

Ella stood up and stretched. “Sorry, kiddo. That’s all I’ve got.”

I told her I’d deal with the mugs and walked her to the door, waiting as she bundled up to brave the weather.