A Canadian Werewolf in New York

Chapter Eight

When I opened the door to my room, I wasn’t surprised to see Gail sitting in the armchair, despite the fact that we’d broken it off a few years ago. 

I picked up that familiar scent again when I got off the elevator.  As I moved towards my room I realized why I’d had difficulty placing it.  She’d switched perfumes.  That, combined with it having been so long since I’d last seen her had thrown me a bit of a curveball.

     Knowing that she was there on the other side of that door was one thing, but it was surprising to me that she was there at all, especially given the way our relationship had ended.

     Her heartbeat started racing the moment I opened the door.  I glanced at her, at the brunette beauty with cool green eyes, her sunglasses tucked just above bangs that framed her cute face in a gently curving cascade down past her shoulders.  She wore clothes that were uncharacteristic for her but showed off her body quite nicely.  A white cut-off shirt revealed well-toned abs and a slender waist.  Hot black with yellow stripe short-shorts showed off tanned legs that went on forever.

     She was a beautiful, incredible woman.  I’d been lucky to even be seen in her presence in the past, never mind sleep with her.  My own heart started racing, wishing it hadn’t ended, wishing I could pull her close right there and make sweet love to her.

     But there was something in her scent I’d never detected from her before.  Defiance like she often got when in confrontation or argument.  But underlying it, a fear of sorts.

     She was afraid.

     Afraid of me.

     Her heart raced even faster as I took in all these things, and I didn’t even have the door completely opened before she properly surprised me.

     “I know the truth about you Andrews,” she said, throwing a copy of that morning’s New York Press at my feet.  “I know you’re a werewolf.”

     I gazed at her, then looked down at the floor as if I would find my jaw there somewhere.

     I looked back up at Gail and suddenly felt a pang in my heart.  This beautiful woman whom I’d loved, this cherished beauty whom I’d laughed with, danced with, made sweet love with, suddenly knew my most intimate secret.

     “You bastard,” she said, getting up from the chair and pacing toward the window.  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

     As she moved within the shadow between the desk lamp and the light coming in the window, I reflected on this remarkable woman whose company I never thought I would grace again.   

     I had first met Gail three years ago when I was writing Tome of Terror, the novel in which Maxwell Bronte is framed for the murder of the owner of a highly controversial rare edition of the Necronomicon.  Gail was my field expert in the realm of the occult.

     It was the end of a long, exhausting day of research when I met up with her for our early evening appointment.  I’d gotten her number from Anne Lee, Mack’s executive assistant and made the contact earlier in the day, and arranged to meet her for coffee at about 6:00 PM.

     I remember walking to the appointment, a quick jaunt from the Algonquin to the Starbucks nestled within the Barnes and Noble book shop on Fifth Avenue, more excited about the thought that I’d be able to browse the new releases section of the store after our meeting than about the meeting itself.

     That changed the moment I spotted her.

     And I knew exactly who she was when I walked into the coffee shop.  Even if she hadn’t been wearing an outfit that screamed “occult” to me -- a black cotton shirt with a lacy frill from her neck to the top of her cleavage, a black collar studded with silver rivets, not unlike a dog’s, tight black leather pants and a shiny black leather jacket -- I would have been able to guess who she was merely by the way that her heart skipped a beat as I walked into the room.