by Tegan Maher
The ambulance pulled up, lights off, and the coroner, Colleen Bennett, pulled in right behind it in her Blazer. Two guys stepped out of the ambulance and started to pull the rear doors open to pull out the gurney, but Colleen held up her hand.
“It’s gonna be a few minutes, boys,” she said, swinging her black crime-scene bag as she approached us.
Like Sam, Colleen was in the loop when it came to the existence of supernatural beings. She had to be when all of the deaths in the area passed through her office.
She tossed a humorless smile our way but went straight to work. “Same as last time?”
“Yup,” I said. “No real sense of who he is, other than a werewolf.”
“You can’t pick up anything with your other abilities?” She wiggled her fingers, indicating my witchy powers, inherited from my mother.
I pinched my lips shut and shook my head. “You know they’re spotty on the best of days.” Turning so that my back was to the medics, I pulled the bag of fur out of my pocket and showed it to her.
I opened my mouth to say something, but a tingle of electricity ran through my body, and I got a glimpse of a woman screaming. It was over before it even really started, and I swallowed, trying to fix it in my brain before it wisped away, but I lost it. Speaking of shorted-out witchy powers.
“What did you see?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at me. Like Sam, she’d known me since I was young.
“Nothing of use,” I replied, frustrated. “Just a quick glimpse of her”—I nodded toward the victim, shuddering—“screaming while something dragged her by the arm. I could feel the teeth biting down.”
Anger flashed across Sam’s face, and Colleen set her jaw as she snapped on a pair of gloves and bent over the body. When she pulled the hair back from her face, she gasped.
“I know this girl, Cori. We have to get this guy.” She smoothed the bangs back and her face hardened. “Nobody deserves to die like this.”
As I expected, a small crowd had started to gather, and I went to help Stan keep them back while Colleen did her thing. Sam pulled his truck so that it blocked most of the scene. The gossip was going to be bad enough without giving them access to the gory details.
Half an hour later, he laid his hand on my shoulder and I turned to him.
“She’s almost done.” His voice was tired and his thick salt-and-pepper hair was standing on end. I knew he'd been running his fingers through it like he did anytime he was frustrated.
He gestured toward my running clothes. "I got this handled if you want to go home and change or something."
I gave him a wry half-smile. "I will, but first I wanna take one last look at the scene before everything gets trampled worse than it has. See you back at the station in an hour?"
Sam nodded. "See ya then, kiddo."
Despite his use of pet names, Sam respected my position as sheriff. As a matter of fact, he was the one who pushed for it when others urged him to step into the role instead. He said he liked fishing too much to listen to old ladies bicker over parking tickets.
To be fair, that's definitely a time-suck, but he also understood there was much more going on beneath the façade of our town that he didn’t have the experience to deal with. He was one of the few humans who knew about the town’s diverse citizenry.
I noted the slight hitch in his step as he walked back to his cruiser. He brushed off his aches and pains, but I worried about him. At sixty-five, he was healthier than a lot of people in their early fifties, but still.
The one thing that bothered me about the murder, and the one that had been committed a few days prior, was that the wolf didn’t seem to care if he was caught. That was a problem on a number of levels. He had to know the pack wouldn't tolerate this, and that if we didn't get him, one of the other organizations would, so I didn’t get it. Yet.
What I did get was that it was about to turn into a hot mess if I didn’t get it under control, pronto. Some of the unofficial organizations tended to come in with sledgehammers rather than scalpels, and I needed to avoid that at all costs.
"Cori?" somebody said from several yards behind me. My heart stuttered at the familiar voice, even though I hadn't heard it in nearly twelve years.
I paused as a tangled rat's nest of competing emotions writhed in my stomach, the fur forgotten. I mentally wadded them up and shoved them to the back of my mind. That was a therapy session or twelve for another time.
I schooled my face into a friendly yet detached expression, then willed my heart to slow before I pushed to my feet and turned to face the man who’d broken my heart. Because, you know, I didn't have enough to deal with right then.
Want to keep reading? Pick up Howling for Revenge here. Available on Kindle Unlimited.
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Other Series by Tegan Maher
The Enchanted Coast Magical Mysteries (Destiny Maganti)
Cori Sloane, Witchy Werewolf
Haunted Lodge Mysteries (Toni Owens)
Celestial Academy: The Witch (Shelby Flynn)
Paranormal Artifacts Cozy Mysteries (Sage Parker)
Witches of Abaddon’s Gate (Mila Maganti)
Southern Soul Hunters (Kira)
Gulf Coast Reaper Chronicles (Wren)
About Tegan
I was born and raised in the South and even hung my motorcycle helmet in Colorado for a few months. I've always had a touch of wanderlust and have never feared just packing up and going on new adventures, whether in real life or via the pages of a great book.
When I was a little girl, I didn't want to grow up to be a writer—I wanted to raise unicorns and be a superhero. When those gigs fell through, I chose the next best thing: creating my own magical lands filled with adventure, magic, humor, and romance.
I live in Florida with my two dogs. When I'm not writing or reading, I'm racing motorcycles or binge-watching anything magical on Netflix.
I'm eternally grateful for all the people who help make my life what is today - friends, readers, family. No woman is an island.