"Time for what?" I asked.
"Time to mourn," he said.
I turned away from the compassion in his eyes, the pity. Shit. I still didn't believe it. "How about a blood test? That should prove it one way or the other."
Cherry answered, "Wolf lycanthropy shows up in the bloodstream anywhere from twenty-four to forty-eight hours, sometimes seventy-two. Leopard lycanthropy, most of the big cat lycanthropies, take anywhere from seventy-two hours to over eight days to show up in the bloodstream. A blood test won't prove anything yet."
I stared at them, trying to wrap my mind around it, and it just wouldn't wrap. I shook my head. "I can't deal with this right now."
"You're going to have to deal with it," Micah said.
I shook my head. "Tonight, I have to get Jean-Claude out of jail. I have to show the police he didn't murder me."
"Your pard told me that you wouldn't want to be outted. That you wouldn't want your police friends to know."
"I am not a wereleopard," I said. It sounded stubborn even to me.
Micah smiled, gently, and that pissed me off. "Don't look at me like that."
"Like what?" he asked.
"Like a poor little deluded girl. There are things you don't understand about me, about where my power comes from."
"You mean the vampire marks," he said.
I looked past him to the three wereleopards in the doorway. Something on my face made them all flinch. "So nice to know that we're just one big happy family with no secrets."
"I was in on the discussions with the doctors on whether your rapid healing could be merely a side effect of the vampire marks," he said.
"Of course it is," I said. But the first thread of doubt was worming its way through my stomach.
"If it will make you feel better," he said.
I stared into that compassionate face and felt anger wash over me in a line of heat, and with the anger came that trembling energy. Richard's beast ... or mine? I let myself think the thought all the way through for the first time. Was it my beast that I'd felt with Micah? Was that why I hadn't gotten a sense of where Richard was, and what he was doing? I'd thought of him several times during all the hoopla, but had never felt the mark between us open completely. I'd assumed it was Richard's energy, because it was lycanthrope energy. But what if it hadn't been? What if it had been mine?
Someone touched my arm, and I jumped. It was Micah, his fingers barely touching my arm. "You look pale. Do you need to sit down?"
I took a step back and nearly stumbled. He had to grab my arm to keep me from falling on the slick, wet tile. I wanted to jerk away from him, but I was dizzy as if the world wasn't quite solid. He eased me to the floor.
"Put your head between your knees."
I sat Indian fashion on the floor, the wall to my back, my head bent over my folded legs while I waited for the light-headedness to pass. I never fainted. Not just from shock--occasionally from blood loss--but never from shock.
When I could think again, I raised up slowly. Micah was kneeling beside me, all attentive and compassionate, and I hated him. I laid my towel-wrapped head back against the wall, closed my eyes.
"Where are Elizabeth and Gregory?"
"Elizabeth wouldn't come to help," Micah said.
I opened my eyes at that, turning just my head to meet his eyes. "She give a reason for that?"
"She hates you," he said, simply.
"Yeah, she loved Gabriel, their old alpha, and I killed him. Hard to be friends after that."
"That's not why she hates you," he said.
I searched his face. "What do you mean?"