Monster

by Jennifer Blackstream

  I leaned forward, bracing my forearms on my knees. “If you don’t want to talk to me, that’s fine. I can call Liam right now, and we can all sit down and chat about Oliver’s police friend together.”

  A muscle in Stephen’s jaw worked as he clenched his teeth. “If you call Liam, he’s going to be pissed you came here and tried to talk to me without his permission.”

  “Then he’ll be angry with both of us,” I said. I met his eyes. “The difference is, when this is all over, I’m going home to tell my mentor I did what she asked me to do. You, on the other hand, will remain here. With an alpha you lied to.” I tilted my head. “Do you really think he’s going to have that collar removed if you don’t tell him the truth about what happened?”

  There. In his eyes. I could see Stephen’s fear now, see the knowledge that I was right. Liam wouldn’t have the collar removed as long as he believed Stephen was lying.

  “Stephen,” I said softly, “let me help you. Tell me what happened—everything that happened. Tell me why you did what you did. I promise you, I will help if I can.” I shook my head. “You do not want to wear that collar longer than necessary.”

  He looked away, but only for a second. Then his gaze was back on mine, boring a hole right through me. “The deal you made with your mentor. Do you have to tell Liam the truth for it to qualify?”

  “I—” I frowned. “No. I have to solve the case, but she didn’t say anything about telling Liam.”

  “You don’t have to report it, don’t have to see that formal charges are filed? There’s nothing about punishing the guilty party?”

  There was a hint of desperation in his voice now, but I didn’t understand why. It didn’t matter if I told Liam or not—the fact remained that Stephen wouldn’t get that collar off until his alpha believed he’d come out with the whole truth.

  He pressed his hand against the arm of the couch, gripping it until the metal frame groaned. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll tell you what happened, but in return, I want your word that once I tell you, you’ll leave. You’ll leave, and you won’t say anything to Liam. And you’ll tell me who told you.”

  He wanted to know who’d told me about Oliver’s “friend” on the police force. And he wanted me to leave without sharing the information with Liam. I bit my lip. It would satisfy Mother Hazel. And it wasn’t as if I owed Liam anything. He’d made it clear he wanted me gone anyway. But Anthony…

  “I will agree,” I said slowly, “but with the stipulation that if someone else is charged with this crime, and if they are in danger of being punished for something they didn’t do, then I will share what is necessary to clear them.”

  Stephen pressed his lips together. “Fine.”

  I nodded, my pulse racing as I leaned closer. “Tell me what happened.”

  “You need to understand the context first,” Stephen said. He leaned back against the cushions, rubbing his hands over his thighs. “See, Oliver was a big shot in high school. Football star, good looks. He had it all, and his classmates worshipped him. Charmed life doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

  He met my eyes then. “The problem is, high school isn’t real. It doesn’t prepare you for real life, and when you’re treated like a god, it prepares you even less. For some people, that means depression afterward, this deep hole you fall into when you realize that no one cares you were a star athlete in school. For others, it means they get a taste of power, a taste of what it’s like to believe you’re better than everyone else.” He jabbed a finger at me, tension squeezing the muscles between his shoulders. “Those are the people who become dangerous.”

  “Oliver Dale was dangerous?”

  Stephen stared at a random spot on the carpet. “He was never a nice person, even in high school when he had everything going for him. Everything came too easily to him, and when he realized that wasn’t the case for everyone else, it gave him an inflated sense of self-importance. He treated people like shit, and most of them didn’t even care. Being near him gave them a contact cool, so they let him get away with it. And when he graduated, he expected that adulation to keep coming indefinitely.”

  “But real life isn’t like that.”

  Stephen snorted. “No. But he didn’t even get to real life before he learned that. He went to college and they put him in his place. He may have ruled North Olmsted, but college is full of high school stars, and Oliver wasn’t even in the top ten. He came home with his tail between his legs.”

  I held my breath, afraid to interrupt lest I stop him from continuing. We were getting to the heart of it. I could feel it.

  “He came home a lot meaner than he’d left. He wasn’t just arrogant now—he was angry, and he was cruel. People tried to cut him a break—I think they realized he’d had a hard awakening—but he didn’t appreciate it. One by one, people stopped trying to help, stopped caring.”

  He fell silent, staring into space as if he were looking into the past. He clasped his hands around his knees until his knuckles turned white. I waited, but when the silence dragged on, I gave him a little prod.

  “Not everyone stopped caring,” I said gently.

  Stephen’s gaze lifted to my face, and the intensity there shoved me back in my seat. “He didn’t deserve it. He had a hundred chances, and he blew them all. You know how many times his tantrums could have got him arrested?” He shook his head in disgust. “There’s no reason for a good person to lose everything they’ve worked for just because they didn’t give up on someone. Didn’t see him for the monster he was and just leave him to deal with his own mess.”

  “I agree.” I sat forward in my seat, my forearms braced on my legs. “I’ve seen it, what you described. People who fight to find the good in someone and suffer an unimaginable price. I’ll admit, I did the same thing for Oliver at first. I thought he can’t be all bad. Mother Hazel assigned me his murder; there must be good inside him, a reason she cares.” I shook my head. “But now I think you’re the reason. I think she put me on this case so I would be here to listen to you. To understand.”

  Stephen rubbed a hand over his jaw, scratching at his beard. “And if someone did shoot Oliver to stop him, shoot him because he was a danger to others—what sort of punishment would that person deserve?”

  “That won’t be up to me.”

  He sat on the edge of the couch, leaning closer. “But you see that he had to be stopped? It was only a matter of time before he killed someone. He was hanging a dog.”

  “Is that what finally pushed you over the edge?” I asked. “Seeing him trying to hang Gypsy? Is that when you decided enough was enough?”

  Stephen went still. The emotion on his face drained away, and he looked at me from the same empty mask he’d worn before. “What do you mean?”

  Frustration curled my hands into fists. I was losing him. “You said you tried to see good in him. You clung to that hope for a long time; you helped him get out of all those charges. What changed? What happened that night that pushed you over the edge?”

  Stephen stood, rubbing his hands on the sides of his jeans. “This was a bad idea.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” I said, standing to match his stance. “You want the truth to come out, I know you do. Tell me, and I’ll try to help.” I took a step closer. “I saw the yearbooks. He used people, and you’re right, he treated them as if they existed only for his convenience.” I thought of the pictures in the yearbook, the little notes. “He seemed particularly crass with women. Was it Emma? Did Oliver try to hurt her?”

  Something snapped inside Stephen. Every muscle in his body tensed, and he half ran for the door. “You need to leave. Now.”

  “Wait, why?” I held my ground, refusing to move when he jerked open the front door. “Stephen, talk to me. Is that it? Did he threaten Emma?”

  “I need you to leave. I have to think.” His grip shifted on the doorknob, and he shifted his weight from foot to foot.

  “Stephen, I know you care about Emma. If Oliver threatened you, no one would b
lame you for protecting her. You have to understand that.”

  He snarled at me then, lips pulling back to reveal white teeth. He didn’t shift, couldn’t shift, but my brain was all too willing to remind me of what he really was. What those teeth would look like as soon as that collar came off.

  “Get out,” he said, his voice a low rumble.

  I came around the couch, moving as slowly as I could without making him angrier, as my mind whirled to think of some way to reach him, to make him talk to me. He’d been so close. So close to telling me what really happening, confiding in me. What had happened to make him change his mind?

  Pain traced lines across his face, a sign he was losing his temper, and the collar was reminding him of his new limitations. “I won’t ask you again. Get out.”

  He couldn’t hurt me. I knew it, and he knew it. I closed my hands into fists, fighting my frustration, my desire for the truth that was within my grasp. I had magic at my disposal. There were plenty of things I could do to him, ways I could make him talk.

  If I wanted to be that kind of witch.

  I left before I had to decide.

  Chapter 16

  “Peasblossom, at what point would you say the panic started?”

  I walked to my car, the skin between my shoulder blades itching with the need to turn and see if Stephen was glaring at me through the window. If anyone but Mother Hazel had created that collar, I’d have readied a spell. What had scared him? Why was he so angry?

  “When you mentioned the yearbooks,” Peasblossom said immediately. “You said you saw the yearbooks, you know how he treated people, and then you asked him if Oliver tried to hurt Emma.”

  “If Oliver tried to hurt Emma, then Stephen would have told Liam that, and that would have been the end of it. No one would blame him for defending her, even if they weren’t dating.”

  “If Oliver…hurt Emma,” Peasblossom said slowly, “then maybe Emma doesn’t want anyone to know.”

  I considered that. Emma had looked like a wreck when I’d seen her the next day. Very upset. I’d assumed it was just the reaction of a dog lover to almost seeing a dog hanged, but what if that wasn’t it?

  “If that’s true, and Emma really doesn’t want that to come out, then we need another way to tie Stephen to Oliver. The way he was talking, it sounded personal.” I unlocked the car and opened the door. “I must have missed something in those yearbooks.”

  Peasblossom fluttered in to sit on the dashboard. “If you did, then he knows it.”

  I froze with the key halfway to the ignition. “He’ll go after the yearbooks.”

  “Yes, he will.” She leapt from the dashboard down to the passenger seat and grabbed the GPS. “We have to get them first.”

  The GPS screen lit up as Peasblossom prepared to enter Oliver’s address, her tiny palms flat as she pressed the buttons. I reversed out of the driveway with my attention still on those front curtains, looking for the werewolf.

  “He can’t leave,” I murmured. “He’ll get someone else to fetch them.” The mechanical voice gave me instructions, and I turned out of Stephen’s allotment.

  “What do you think you missed?” Peasblossom asked, leaning against the seat with the GPS balanced in her lap.

  I pressed my lips together and shook my head. “Werewolves age slower than humans, but that doesn’t mean they don’t change at all when they age. A lot of people look nothing like their yearbook picture. I could have looked right at him and missed it. And a lot of werewolves don’t show up for picture day, just so they can avoid having a record of their face next to their name.”

  “Makes it harder to say it’s a relative and not them if someone notices,” Peasblossom said. “So maybe he’s in one of the student-submitted pictures?”

  I bit my lip. “You could be right. Whatever the reason, he tensed when I brought up the yearbooks. There’s something in those books he doesn’t want us to see.”

  “Someone might have written something about him,” Peasblossom suggested. “Humans like signing books, and that one had all sorts of scribbles in it.”

  I gripped the steering wheel, teeth gritted in frustration. “Damn it, that means we need Oliver Dale’s books. We can’t just find another copy. If the person he calls to retrieve them is closer than we are…”

  “Don’t drive faster!” Peasblossom said. “Safety first!”

  “Yes, yes.” I eased my foot off the gas. She was right; getting in an accident certainly wouldn’t get us there any faster.

  “I wonder why he liked Oliver?” Peasblossom put the GPS down and climbed onto the armrest. “Stephen doesn’t strike me as the friendly, ever-optimistic sort.”

  I winced as she grabbed my shirt, tiny fingers stabbing me through the thin cotton weave. “He doesn’t, does he?” I drummed my fingers against the steering wheel. “Which means it probably wasn’t something as simple as being classmates. We’re missing something, something important. Something connects him to Oliver; we just have to find it.”

  We stopped at a red light, and I mentally ran over everything I knew about Stephen and the victim. Which wasn’t much. “Everyone has been telling me since I first showed up that Stephen is a good man. I thought it was a general opinion, but what if it’s something more? What if Stephen did something that impressed his peers?”

  “Like saved someone’s life?”

  “Perhaps. Say he did save Oliver’s life. If he risked his life to save him, then it would make sense he’d want to believe Oliver Dale was a decent person. Even need to believe it. Remember two summers ago when Susan pulled George out of the river?”

  Peasblossom snorted. “Not that he deserved it. He only fell in because he was trying to push little Joseph in and Joseph moved at the last minute.”

  “Exactly. Susan saved his life, but he was still a bully after that, wasn’t he? Always picking on kids. But she wouldn’t hear a word spoken against him, always insisted that deep down he was just scared. Part of her needed to believe he was a good person, otherwise all the trouble he caused after she pulled him out of that river would have felt like her fault.”

  “Did we look at the teachers’ photos?” Peasblossom asked.

  I almost smacked myself in the head. “No. No, we didn’t. Blood and bones, what was I thinking?”

  “Seems like you weren’t thinking much at all, if you ask me.”

  I ignored the insult. I might have deserved it.

  Every mile stretched into an eternity. By the time I pulled into the parking lot of Oliver’s apartment building, I was jumping out of my skin. Peasblossom squeaked a protest as she tumbled off my shoulder in my haste to get out, her legs scrabbling against my upper arm as she tried to regain her perch. I didn’t bother to remind her—again—that she had wings. Her complaints were nothing but white noise as I dashed up the stairs to Oliver’s apartment.

  It took three attempts to pick the lock this time, my hands shaking from the rush of adrenaline. When the door swung open, I half fell into the small entry hallway, my heart pounding so loud that I didn’t even hear Peasblossom anymore. I fought back a sneeze as the scent of silver polish assaulted me again and stumbled inside toward the bookcase.

  A quick glance told me I was too late.

  “No, no, no.” I ran to the bookcase, staring in dismay at the large gap where the yearbooks had been. They were gone. I removed the biographies that had fallen over into the vacated space, some small, irrational part of me praying that the yearbooks had fallen over, all four somehow hiding themselves behind a different book. No such luck.

  “So someone is helping him,” Peasblossom said. “But who?”

  I put my fingers to my temples, trying to concentrate. Think, think, think. My gaze landed on the eagle holding the football, and I stared at it, letting it hold my focus while my mind spun down all the different possibilities. Someone was helping Stephen. Someone had taken the yearbooks for him. He’d called them, told them to take the yearbooks. Phone records? No, that would take too long.
Who would he call? Why didn’t he want me to see the yearbooks?

  The stuffed eagle stared at me.

  “He couldn’t have asked anyone from his pack,” I said. “They would think he was covering up evidence. So who would he trust to help hi—” I shot to my feet, eyes widening. “Emma.”

  “Emma?”

  “I would find out if anyone there had a connection to Oliver Dale. I’d look at church attendance, gyms, even high school. I would keep looking until I found a connection.”

  Emma’s words came floating back, and I cursed and headed for the door. “She tried to tell me. She didn’t want to turn him in, but her conscience got the better of her. She told me everything I needed to figure it out, and I was too dense to listen.”

  “She must love him to help him get away with murder.”

  “Romance is never irrelevant.” I closed the door to Oliver’s apartment, hesitating a second before leaving it unlocked. I took a few steps down the hallway, then paused when I heard voices coming from inside Anthony’s apartment. On a hunch, I knocked on the door.

  The sound was louder than I’d intended, thanks to my frazzled nerves. The door opened and Rosie stood there, eyes wide with surprise.

  “Shade, hi.” She gave me a quick once-over. “Um, are you okay?”

  “Rosie?” I leaned back and checked to make sure I had the right apartment. “What are you doing in Anthony’s apartment?”

  “She’s helping me,” Mia said.

  Peasblossom slid deeper into the neck of my shirt, hiding from Rosie as Greg’s mom came out from the back bedroom. Mia gave me a tired smile and hefted the box she held in her arms. “I’m keeping Gypsy until Anthony…gets things straightened out. He insisted that she have all her things.”

  I followed her gaze to a pile by the door. Huge dog bed, stack of toys, boxes containing a wide selection of treats. Gypsy had more luggage than me. “Oh my.”

  “I told you, she is a very spoiled dog.” Mia sighed. “But we all love her. I guess you do crazy things for the ones you love.”