patient, and it was time for a reward.
He stretched. He didn't really need to—he always woke energized and hungry and raring to go—but enjoyed the sensation. Yes, they would go shopping and she would bully the sales clerks and it would be delightful. Then back to his place for a light lunch and some energetic lovemaking, and possibly a nap, or more of Salem's Lot. Yes, it was all—
Where the hell was Janet?
He'd been groping absently for her while he'd been thinking, but she wasn't in his bed, and the bathroom light was off. He could hear her on the floor, gasping in—pain?
Was that pain?
In the second before he looked, it seemed like every malady mortals were prone to raced through his brain. She had appendicitis. He'd knocked her up (it was supposed to be impossible, but who really knew?) and she was having a miscarriage. She was having a heart attack. A brain embolism. A kidney shutdown. God help him, he was as afraid to look as he was afraid not to.
He looked. Janet was on her knees beside the bed, panting harshly, and her back—it almost looked like the knobs of her spine were moving. Her hair was hanging in her face in sweaty tangles, and her nails were sunk into the carpet. His feet hit the floor with a double thud and he reached for her. "Janet, I'm getting a doctor. I'll be right—"
A low, ripping growl froze his hand in mid-reach. And then—so fast, it was so quick, he blinked and it was done—she sprouted hair and her nose turned into a long snout and her eyes went wild and she was leaping for the door.
She bounced off it, but he was alarmed to see it actually shudder in its frame. She coiled and leapt again. And again. He remained sitting on the bed—he was afraid if he stood he would fall—and stared at her. Janet was a dun-colored wolf with silver streaks running down her back. Her eyes were the same color as when she was a biped, but now they were glittery and homicidal. He remembered how she paced when he read, how she couldn't seem to sit still for long, and realized that in this form she was claustrophobic.
Chunks of the door were leaping off the frame and falling to the carpet each time her body hit the door, but at this rate it would take at least ten minutes and she was likely to damage herself. He got up and walked to the door on legs stiff with shock, fumbled with the lock, dropped his key twice (all the while dodging her small wolf's body—she never stopped, she completely ignored him, he doubted he was even a cipher to her now), and finally swung the door open.
He ran after her to do it again, and again. Then she spotted the bank of windows facing west and lunged toward them. He dived, and managed to catch her back left leg just as she was coiling for a leap that would take her through the window. She spun and he had a dizzying glimpse of what looked like a thousand sharp teeth as she growled.
"We're three stories up," he panted, clutching her while at the same time trying not to break her leg. "You'll never survive the fall. Well, you might but—Janet, don't go!"
She snapped at his fingers. Wrathful growls bubbled up out of her without pause, or breath.
"Please don't leave! I was wrong and you were right—God, you were so right, I was a blind fool not to see it. Please don't leave me."
She snapped again, her jaws closing about a centimeter from his flesh. A warning.
Probably her last warning.
"I can't bear it without you. I swear I can't. I thought I was content before but it was a lie, everything was a lie, even why I was keeping you was a lie…"
His grip was slipping. He talked faster.
"…but you were right, and you never lied, not once, not even to get away, and Janet, I will spend the rest of your life making it up to you…”
She was almost free, and he was afraid if he let go to get a better grip, he wouldn't be fast enough.
"…but please…don't…go!"
She went.
He lay on the floor in his study a very long time. It seemed too much work to get up, find the broom, and start sweeping up the broken glass. He owned the building anyway, so who cared? Who cared about anything?
He couldn't