The Baby Shift- New York Read online

  Cassandra

  Thomas was an unusually heavy and deep sleeper. Cassandra supposed that she should be thankful for that. Her only time off was Saturday nights and Sundays when Lucius hired the original temporary caretaker to take those times. But, it meant that Cassandra had a lot of free time on her hands as she waited between Thomas’ nap.

  She started a research file for planning Thomas’ education in the future. She researched the best ways to raise Shifter children in human environments, a rare thing in itself. She sometimes played cards with Annie when the woman could be convinced to take a short break. Finally, Annie told her about the library on Lucius’ side of the mansion.

  “He won’t mind you using it if you ever want to grab a book. There’s plenty of interesting things in there, not just books. A computer too, although I suspect you have a laptop being young,” she explained over lunch one day. “He’s never in there. Always in the downtown office or working in his study on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

  “Any reason for working from home on those days?” Cassandra asked. Thomas was enjoying his bottle.

  “Gets itchy around busy human environments is my guess,” Annie said. “Richard says he thinks it’s the traffic being worse on those days. We’ve got a bet for ten bucks going.”

  “You all enjoy working for Lucius,” Cassandra stated. It was obvious. Annie laughed.

  “He pays great, and he’s rarely in a bad mood if you keep everything how he wants. Best client I’ve ever worked for.” Her voice held a high note of pride. Cassandra smiled. She was beginning to understand Lucius’ employees’ affections for their boss. But…there was always such a strange cold feeling around her boss. At first, she thought it was odd that he wasn’t married. Handsome, rich, successful. But he was always shut up with his work. She understood it better now, she thought.

  “Cassandra,” Annie asked suddenly. “Have you ever been in love?”

  Cassandra laughed by accident. Maybe out of nervousness. She put a hand on her cheek as if she’d suddenly become hot despite their shade from the tree. “I don’t know about love. I’ve dated my fair share of men. Especially in college. I dated a coworker from the bank I used to work at, but it didn’t work out…I suppose.”

  “You suppose what?” Annie asked with a sneaky smile.

  “I guess I always imagined that I wasn’t the sort of girl to fall in love,” Cassandra replied with a shrug. Annie let out a bellowing laugh that was mixed with a groan.

  “Oh, no, darling! Don’t say that. Your life is just beginning. Why, if we were in some nineteenth-century novel, gentlemen suitors would be lining up to take your hand in marriage.”

  Cassandra smiled, taken by the older women’s dreams. “Perhaps. Marriage has never been important to me, but…” She trailed off as her eyes came to Thomas, who was dozing quite happily in the baby seat they’d brought out for him. “I’ve always wanted children.”

  “You can have both,” Annie was happy to remind her. She laid out their sandwiches carefully on plates. She’d taken great care to cut them. They chatted as they ate, about the weather and Annie’s brief childhood in England. But, Cassandra couldn’t help thinking about Lucius in his office. Could he see them down here? Was there a reason that he didn’t want to join them?

  When Thomas woke up, Cassandra put away her own finished dish and began to feed him from a bottle. She chose this moment to bring up Lucius again, hoping it sounded casual.

  “Does Lucius ever come down for lunches? It seems like a shame to waste such a gorgeous property and this weather.”

  “Lucius isn’t one for fun outdoors or much else, I’m afraid. He keeps to himself and his work,” Annie said with a note of sadness. “The most energy I get out of him is breakfast, which he only has in the dining room occasionally.”

  “Like today?” Cassandra asked. Annie nodded.

  “Yes,” she replied and then dropped her tone into a more hushed breath. “It’s odd. He’s so handsome and yet, I’ve never seen him go on a date. We get plenty of calls from beautiful women to the house, and we send them all away.”

  Cassandra raised her eyebrows. “Does he like women?”

  Annie laughed. “Yes, I think so. There’s nothing wrong with him if he didn’t, of course, but he’s made comments about pretty women with the servants around. We’re confident about that. Cassandra smiled. She liked Annie’s good nature. Thomas babbled happily after finishing his bottle, and Cassandra wiped his face.

  “I just hope,” she confided to Annie as they began cleaning up their picnic. “I hope he can gain some affection to young Thomas, eventually.”

  Annie smiled. “I’m certain that there will be plenty of surprising things happening this year.” She didn’t expand on her strange comment, so Cassandra said nothing. She laid Thomas down for a nap after changing his diaper and burping him. With the baby monitor in tow, she went searching for the library that Annie had mentioned.

  When she found it, she nearly bumped her nose right into Lucius’ chest as he was coming around the corner. A few papers flew out of his hand as he let out a sound of surprise. She dropped to the ground to grab them, her cheeks pink with embarrassment.

  “Sorry, Sir.” She handed the sheets over as they clambered upwards. He smiled, smoothly and without a hint of any nervousness, she noted with some jealousy.

  “No worries, Cassandra,” he said, waving the papers as if to show they were still in perfect shape. “And you can call me Lucius, remember?”

  “Right,” she muttered. “Lucius.”

  His eyes darted to the entrance of the library, a gorgeous set of double-doors with wide windows that allowed one to look at the immense selection of books inside. “Have fun in there,” he said. “Good day.”

  “Bye,” she said and watched as he retreated down the hall and then down the stairs. The baby monitor crackled in her hand, but it was only Thomas’ snoring. She couldn’t work out quite why her heart was beating so wildly.

  Lucius

  It was the scent of roses that haunted Lucius for the rest of the week. Absolutely maddening, he thought, as he typed on his computer. He called Annie up to see if she could search for a few candles.

  “I cleaned in here yesterday,” she mentioned with a frown. “Is it the lemon scent?” He frowned. Couldn’t she smell those roses? The ones that his new hire had seemingly brought in?

  “No, no,” he said. “The lemon is fine, but do we have anything vanilla? I read a recent study that it might help with productivity.” That was a fat lie, but it was the kind that someone would buy from a Shifter like him. One wholly obsessed with how quickly and effectively he could do something.

  She smiled and put her hands on her hips. “How delightful! I’ll see what we have in storage.” His housekeeper was about to leave when she hovered at the doorway. “Sir, I noticed that tomorrow is the full moon. Shall I warn Miss Cassandra about your nightly activities?”

  He contemplated that for a moment, his lips pressed into a fine line. “No, no, it’s fine. Maybe in a few months. Don’t want to scare her.”

  She smiled and left, humming a pleasant jingle as she did. He hoped she would find the strongest-smelling candles in existence in their storage room. He returned to work, but the damn scent kept haunting him. And worse, he was beginning to think of Cassandra’s mouth. The way it curled up when she watched Thomas eating his breakfast. The way she laughed when Thomas made a mess. How could she have all that patience for that baby?

  It was hard to remember his brother. Harder to remember his family’s disapproving faces when he left, so young, but determined.

  “How can you leave your clan?” his father had asked, ashamed. But, there wasn’t anything more logical to Lucius. He had no interest in maintaining his status as a Greylord. He wanted to build businesses and make money. What was the use in holing themselves up in unforgiving fortresses in the forests? Albany had offered him a perfect closeness to the forest if he so desired and access to a city.

&nb
sp; But…he was becoming more distracted. He told himself, over espresso that he grabbed himself from the kitchen, that this always happened before he Shifted. The night of the full moon demanded a transformation from a wolf Shifter, always, no matter how civilized that Shifter was. He sipped the bitter liquid from his small cup, planting himself on the window’s ledge of the dining room to stare outside. It was drizzling. A door sounded behind him, and he turned.

  Cassandra, dripping of slight dew from the rain, her hair thrown every which way and clutching a book beneath her rain jacket. She brought the smell of rain-covered roses. He debated gifting her the most potent perfume he could find at some luxury department store. Why did she haunt him so? She was out of breath, and her eyes dragged over, nearly jumping when she saw him there.

  “Oh, hello, Lucius,” she said with a slight smile. She set down her messenger bag in the chair. “I was on a walk when it started raining.”

  Ah, yes, it was her day off. All his days ran together now. He worked every day, after all.

  “How was it?”

  “The walk?” she asked, not looking at him as she carefully shook out her raincoat over the carpet. “It was nice. Until the dark clouds came.” She looked at him. “Lucius, I hope this isn’t rude, but I don’t think I ever see you go outside.”

  He let out a dark laugh. It seemed like the cheeky thing a friend would say to him. She flushed, and he waved his hand as if to say that her boldness was nothing but a joke between employee and employer.

  “I do, sometimes,” he promised. He thought of the nights he went running around as a wolf. If only she knew! “How’s Thomas doing?”

  She perked up immensely. “Wonderful! He’s so smart! And strong! Are all Shifter babies like that?”

  He shrugged. “Increased appetite, strength…sometimes intelligence.”

  She smiled. “I hope so. He seems like a smart baby already.”

  “Have you always liked children?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she replied. “Funny because I only have one other sibling. Nobody in our family has had children yet, but I started working at a nursery in high school for spending money and kept on through college and even after.”

  “Wow,” he said, raising his cup. Her cheeks turned pinker, and she tucked a hair behind her ear. The rose scent became stronger. He bit his lip hard, hoping not to think about the way that her wind-kissed face looked delectable in the dining room light. “Good for you.”

  “You know,” she said. “He reminds me of you.”

  “Who?” He blinked.

  “Thomas,” she said with a laugh. “Thomas reminds me of you.”

  “Why?” he asked. He couldn’t imagine why…or how a baby could imagine her of him.

  “He does the same thing with his eyes,” she said. “When he doesn’t understand something, he blinks three times. I’ve seen you do it before.”

  “Are you watching me?” he asked with a playful smile. Her cheeks went red.

  “I-no, absolutely not.” She gathered her things quickly. “I’ve got to run.” And she was gone, out the door and up the stairs probably to her room.

  He stared at the open doorway. Was it something he said? He set down his espresso cup. She’d left behind that ghostly scent of roses again. When Annie came to him in his office later that day, toting in a box of candles with a proud face, he turned to her.

  “What shampoo and conditioner does Cassandra use?”

  She stared at him, her mouth hung open. “How on Earth would I know that?”

  “Don’t women know those sorts of things?” he asked with a furrowed brow. She let out a loud, echoing laugh. He watched her set down the box of candles and leave, offering no answer to his question.

  Human women and baby Shifters continued to confound him, he thought, leaning back into his office chair.

  Cassandra

  Cassandra couldn’t sleep. She was running over the day in her mind. Lucius’ comment was haunting her. She groaned into her pillow. Are you watching me? She’d meant for it to sound cute! Like, oh, I noticed your nephew takes after you despite you wanting nothing to do with him for some reason. She was hoping it would inspire some delightful familial bonding. Those hopes had been dashed, but her anxiety was higher than ever.

  She stared at the ceiling. In the Greylord mansion, the ceilings seemed sky-high, stretching towards the heavens themselves. She tossed and turned for half an hour in bed before resigning that she was up and would stay up. Quietly, she slipped out of bed. She’d forgotten to draw the heavy curtains before bed, and there was moonlight slipping into the room. She padded over to the window and reached to shut the drapes when a movement of silver caught her eye.

  Her breath caught in her throat. Down below, in the sprawling greenery of the Greylord estate, she saw the same silver again. It was moving. A majestic hulking thing running through the garden, just towards the edge of the red brick and carefully curated blooms. She gasped as the creature stopped, pausing to sniff the air. Was it a dog? Her feet ran before her mind could catch up. She went to the kitchen windows, which were the largest and closest to where she’d seen the animal.

  The beast was still paused at the edge of the garden, the cropped grass and manicured flowers waving in the soft breeze of the night. She couldn’t tear her eyes away. The beast was so beautiful. The sky had blessed them with a cloudless night.

  There was only a full gorgeous moon beaming down on the silver beast. She opened the door silently, unable to stop herself. The beast’s shape was a siren’s call. She had to follow it. To stroke the fur, to see its eyes for herself. When she was younger, her grandmother had told her tales of the magic and fury of Shifters and men. She didn’t know what this meant. This feeling was tugging her.

  She tried to be quiet, but her feet betrayed her.

  A branch, unseen by her human eye in the low light, snapped beneath her. She stopped, frozen as the lumbering beast turned around. If she hadn’t been able to breathe before, she lost all ability truly now.

  His eyes were wide and golden, two tumbling ember flames that sparked with strength and determination. His mouth curled upwards, intimidating but not unfriendly, she thought. They stared at each other for some moments. She breathed in the scent of the air. It smelled of wildflowers and the wet grass of her summer home. It felt like a wild spirit.

  And then, he turned and ran. His powerful limbs carried him past the edge of the estate and into the forest. Their position on the edge of Albany had allowed him complete camouflage. She collapsed onto the bricked path. The cool breeze struck her, and she shivered. Without realizing, she’d run out in only her nightgown. A voice came from behind her.

  Annie’s hand grabbed her by the shoulder. “Miss Cassandra, you can’t run around like this. There are things out at night,” the woman said. She was wrapped in a thick robe. “Things that you might not understand.”

  Cassandra’s brows furrowed, and she gave a desperate look towards the older woman. A look full of begging, so she might get some truth. “Was it…Was that Lucius?”

  Annie pressed her lips together. “I won’t say anything, but let’s get you inside. I know a tea recipe that’s good for sleep.” When they went inside, Cassandra could hear a faint cry coming from Thomas’ room, which was next to her own.

  “Can you bring me the tea in Thomas’ room?” she asked. “Thank you.” She dashed off to find Thomas, crying, but not sobbing in his crib. She picked him up and took him in her arms. She had an indescribable urge to protect the young baby. An urge to make sure that he grew up strong and brave, that he grew up to be able to control himself as that majestic beast had done.

  She shivered with Thomas in her arms. The wolf could’ve ripped her throat out. She’d heard stories of Shifters, too lost in their transformations. But, no, those eyes were in control. Calculated.

  Annie found her in the corner in the rocking chair with the side table lamp on. She took Thomas in her own arms while Cassandra sipped her tea.

 
“I’m talking to Lucius tomorrow,” she announced firmly. There was no stopping her. She could see in Annie’s eyes that the housekeeper knew better than to argue with her stubbornness.

  The next morning, Lucius was taking breakfast in his study. That didn’t stop Cassandra, dressed sharply in her ironed clothes, from marching up to his door and knocking loudly.

  “Lucius,” she called. It was more of a demand than anything. He came to the door with a pair of glasses on. She raised a brow. “You wear glasses?”

  “Sometimes,” he said and ran a hand through his coarse black hair, streaked with only a few gray specks. “Getting old.” She didn’t believe that for a second. But, his tone made her shiver. It made her nervous. It made her want to retreat.

  No.

  She looked up at him and crossed her arms. “I want to know everything about your Shifting.”

  He blinked. Three times, just like she knew he would. “What?”

  “Don’t play dumb,” she accused and drew herself up even higher. “I need to know everything. For Thomas.”

  She knew from his tired sigh that she’d won and smiled in victory.

  Lucius

  Lucius couldn’t say no. Hell, he would’ve given her anything she asked for at that moment. His money, his soul, his body. Definitely the latter…

  “Why do you want to know about my Shifting?” he asked. She flushed, a little taken aback, he thought by his proximity to her body. He moved to the side and showed her into his study. A place, he realized, where the only other person that came into the room was typically Annie on errands to drop off meals or coffee.

  She took a seat on his couch in the middle of the room; he sat part of the way on his desk. He didn’t want to scare her. Maybe.

  “What do you want to know?” he asked with a smile.

  She bit her lip. “That was you last night?”