“Ouch! We talked about that.” Gently, I pried her hand away.
Ana popped up, apparently deciding she was done, and I had a moment of regret at the abrupt end to our connection. There was still magic within me, but these days it was never so powerful as when Ana was actively nursing, which she only did about four times a day. How often would it be in a year?
When would I be ready to quit entirely?
Evan would usually poke his head in around this time, watching us together as if he, too, could feel the connection. Maybe he could.
Tonight, of course, he had a critical task to complete. He was probably upstairs, in his lab, where he had a permanent casting circle etched into the floor and all the materials he needed at his fingertips.
I knew the underlying principles of most healing spells too. I could help, take some of the burden away from him.
Shaking my head, I got my clothes back in place and headed downstairs with Ana on my hip. The magic was seductive, but it lied. Evan didn’t need me, and if he needed help, he had his powerful cousin right downstairs.
Speaking of Scott Lee …
A pair of raised, angry voices carried all the way to the top of the stairs. Tucking Ana more securely against my hip and letting my free hand slide along the curved wooden banister, I rushed downstairs, wondering what could have happened.
The door to the den stood wide open and inside, the sheriff and Scott stood practically nose to nose, staring each other down. Madison sat, wide-eyed, on the leather sofa. She hadn’t moved since I’d come in. Frank remained on his feet, but had edged away from the squabbling pair to stand near the wet bar.
“Just because it looks like a dog doesn’t make it a werewolf!” Scott’s fists were balled into fists and his posture was rigid. In his face, I saw something of the monster that lived inside him, coming out at the full moon each month. Something of the wolf. He got that look when he was angry.
If he had looked at me like that, I’d have backed off. Sheriff Adams wasn’t even flinching.
“It had glowing eyes. I’m not stupid. No normal animal has eyes that color.” The sheriff jabbed his finger at Scott’s chest. “I heard rumors of a place running experiments on werewolves and I know her brother” – he jabbed his finger at Madison – “is half wolf all the time. You can’t tell me they weren’t working on a way to let you shift outside the full moon.”
Madison winced. She was very sensitive about what had happened to her brother. Scott, perhaps sensing his mate in pain, growled, the sound low and menacing.
Ana began to scream.
“Stop!” I told the two men. “Please, stop. We need to talk about this rationally, and this posturing isn’t helping. You’re just upsetting Ana.”
Both men glanced at me and Ana, then looked away. They did, at least, have the sense to look chagrined.
“You,” I said to Scott, “sit over there by Madison. And you,” I said to the sheriff, “go sit over there.” I pointed at a recliner on the other side of the room.
There was a moment in which I wasn’t sure if they would listen. Ana’s increasingly high-pitched shrieks filled the ensuing silence, forcing me to back down from my own rigid stance to do the baby dance. I thought it would undermine my credibility, but strangely, it didn’t. At the time, I had no idea why. I’ve since come to understand that the angry mama glare has a lot of power.
“Sheriff, what’s eating you?” I asked when he’d settled himself in the offered seat.
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve been acting off since you came here asking for help. And it’s more than this one case, however horrible it is. There was no reason, none at all, to think there was so much danger that Evan needed to come with me. The cold was bizarre and the deaths …” I trailed off, images of Nadine and Jared flashing before my mind’s eye. I saw again the fear in their faces, and the way they’d clung to one another in their panic. They must have been in love.
Rallying, I continued, “If you think I’m too stupid to come in out of the freezing cold, then you don’t need my help on this case at all.”
“It’s a damn good thing Evan came.” Sheriff Adams heaved a sigh and took off his broad-brimmed hat, running his fingers through his thinning hair.
“It was a good thing he came. It might even save Jim’s life.” I did a bit more baby bouncing; Ana’s cries were decreasing in volume, but I had the sense that she was gearing up for another assault. “But why did you think he needed to be there?”
“It’s not the first werewolf I’ve seen outside the full moon,” Sheriff Adams said.
“It can’t be a werewolf!” Scott growled.
“It wasn’t a werewolf.” I shot Scott a look I hoped conveyed the idea that I could handle this. Then I turned back to the sheriff. “It had red eyes, not yellow eyes. Werewolves have yellow eyes. They also look much less like dogs or wolves, despite the name.”
Scott growled. Ana shrieked.
“Scott, calm down,” Madison rubbed her hand along his rigid forearm.
“You’d think the sheriff might believe a werewolf about what a werewolf’s like,” Scott snarled. “Cassie’s never even seen one!”
“Never want to,” I added, shooting a rueful look at Madison. She had seen Scott transform twice, and both experiences had been hellish. She still had nightmares.
“That thing bit Jim,” Sheriff Adams said. “I need to know if my deputy is going to turn into a monster.”
I hadn’t thought about that. Just because this thing wasn’t a werewolf, didn’t mean it couldn’t reproduce the same way. Werewolves made new werewolves by biting. Vampires made new vampires by biting. There was plenty of precedent in the magical world for concern.
Unfortunately, I was having trouble thinking with Ana shrieking in my ear. I bounced, I shushed, I swung and swayed and tried to remember the other S’s.
“Let me take her.” Madison got to her feet and crossed the room, putting her arms out for Ana. I hesitated. I didn’t want to let her go. On the other hand, I couldn’t think.
Sighing, I let Ana slide from me to Madison’s outstretched arms. She screamed harder, tears falling down her face as she shot me a look of utter betrayal.
“I’ll get her some dinner.” With that, Madison swept Ana from the room, closing the door behind her. Ana’s screams gradually faded with distance, until, finally, I couldn’t hear them at all.
It didn’t help. I knew she was crying and still felt guilty.
“You said you’ve seen these things before?” I asked the sheriff.
“Twice. First time was a couple months ago when little Craig Jenner went missing.”
I remembered that. I’d been about to suggest that Evan do a scrying spell for the missing six-year-old when the search teams said they’d found him in the woods. He’d gotten lost and spent two nights there, beating the odds against coming out alive.
“I was the one who found the boy,” Sheriff Adams continued. “Found him just after sunset, like tonight, sleeping at the base of an old oak tree. When I approached him, I heard this growling noise and I turned to see a dog like the one we saw tonight, with glowing red eyes. I thought he was going to attack, but then Craig woke up, spotted me, and flung his arms around me. When I looked back, the dog was gone.”
I frowned. “Some kind of guardian spirit? But who summoned it? Craig Jenner doesn’t come from a family of strong practitioners.”
“The other one I saw was prowling outside your mom’s house when I stopped by to check on her last week.”
My head snapped up. “Mom’s house? What?”
“I spotted it when I pulled up the driveway. It was prowling the edge of the house and when it saw me, it stopped and growled. Again, I thought it would attack. When I got out of the car, it growled louder. I ended up getting right back in and speeding off.”
“But it didn’t attack.” I looked at Scott, not because I thought the thing was a werewolf, but because a werewolf might understand the mind of a pred
ator. But Scott, too, looked confused.
“I feel something in the air.” The sheriff stared at me. “Can’t you feel it? The mist over the lake that never seems to dissipate. Everyone’s a little more on edge, a little more depressed, or a little angrier. It’s subtle; I didn’t notice it all at once, but tonight when I saw those two young people frozen in ice, I knew something else was going to happen. I could feel it.”
“Intuition,” Scott said. He wasn’t growling anymore, but looked pensive. “Evan’s often wondered if you have it.”
“All good cops develop instincts,” Sheriff Adams said dismissively.
“If you say so. I’ve felt the pull of intuition. I know what it’s like. That bone-deep certainty you can’t explain. And maybe later you can logic it out, put the pieces together, but maybe you never do. And in that moment all you have is a choice: Listen to your gut or suffer the consequences.”
“What does your intuition tell you now, Sheriff?” I asked. “Is Scott telling the truth? Is it a werewolf?”
He looked away. “Probably not. But for all the weird stuff that happens around here, there have never been many magical creatures. Made me think that kind of stuff was made up.”
“It usually is,” I said, but I caught Scott’s eyes and stopped, wondering if I’d made the classic mistake of assuming I knew more than I really did.
Chapter 5
THE SOUND OF THE DOORBELL RINGING kept me from formulating other questions. Glancing at the three men standing around the room, half-angry, half-scared, and half-confused (yes, I know that’s three halves), I decided a warning was in order. “Behave yourselves. I’ll be right back.”
Slipping out of the room, I left the door ajar so I could hear the men if they started at each other again. The house was quiet; Madison must have settled Ana. I stopped just outside the front door and checked the video feed, not wanting to be surprised this time. Then again, I had no idea who might be there.
A middle-aged, middle-height woman stood on the front porch, staring around nervously as she wrung her hands over and over again. When her gaze slid by the camera, I got a good look at her face and recognized her. Sarah. Jim’s wife. Of course she’d come.
I opened the door. She looked up, staring at me with red, swollen eyes. Her makeup was smeared and her hair was mussed.
“Sarah, come in.” I opened my arms in a sign of welcome and she flung herself into them, seeking comfort. “It’s okay,” I whispered as I patted her on the back. “Jim’s going to be okay.”
“That’s not what David said.” Sarah backed off, putting a foot or two of space between us. “He said Jim might die.”
David was Sheriff David Adams, but I never called him that. I couldn’t make myself think of him by his first name, probably because I’d started at the sheriff’s department when I was so young. Sarah was much closer to his age than to mine.
“Evan can save him.” I injected all the confidence I felt into my voice. Yes, Jim’s injuries were serious. He wouldn’t have survived a trip to the hospital. But Evan had saved me from worse. A vampire had once ripped out all of my intestines and Evan had painstakingly put them back. Or possibly regrown some. I didn’t like to linger over the details. The point was, he’d done it.
Sarah buried her face in her hands and let out a strangled sob. “Why? Why is he willing to save my Jim? Your kind doesn’t usually … that is to say, I’ve never … why?”
“Rumors of my husband’s dark nature are highly exaggerated.” I gestured for her to step over the threshold, which she seemed afraid to do. “Come in. Seriously. You can wait in the den with Frank and the sheriff.”
Tentatively, she stepped over the threshold and allowed me to close the door behind her. I led her to the den, where she immediately went to Frank’s side and exchanged a tight hug with the younger man. Only when she disentangled from him did she pause to take in the other occupants of the room. She smiled at the sheriff, but her face froze when she spotted Scott.
Pretty much everyone in town knew he was a werewolf. Even the mundane population, or at least the ones who believed in magic, knew the rumors.
“You said a werewolf attacked Jim.” Sarah’s words were for the sheriff, but her eyes never left Scott.
“That was a misunderstanding.” I put my body between Sarah and Scott, not wanting to stir that up again. “We’re still trying to figure out what it was, but it was definitely not a werewolf.”
“So he won’t – he won’t turn into a monster if he lives?” Sarah asked.
I hesitated. How could I say anything at all about the potential consequences of this attack when I had no idea what had attacked him?
“What aren’t you telling me?” Sarah asked, misinterpreting my hesitation.
“Nothing. Look, why don’t you three stay in here? Scott, come help me in the kitchen. We can put together some leftovers from the party for people to munch on.”
“When can I see Jim?” Sarah asked. “How long will … how long will it take?”
I glanced at my watch. Evan had already been working for about forty-five minutes. Since he didn’t have to replace intestines, it shouldn’t take too much longer. The blood replenishment potion took twenty-four hours to brew, but I’d mixed up a batch last month so we’d have it on hand if we needed it. Evan would just have to stir in some magic. He’d probably finish any minute now, although Jim would need a good night’s sleep followed by a ton of food and water. With good rest and proper nutrition, he’d reach full health in twenty-four to forty-eight hours.
“I expect we’ll have news soon,” was all I said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes with some food.”
Sarah didn’t ask further questions as we slid out of the den and across the darkened first floor to the kitchen – the only other room with lights on. Madison had Ana in a highchair, happily playing with banana and avocado. Some of it even went into her mouth.
“Who’s here?” Madison moved to her mate’s side and gave him a quick hug, as if it had been hours rather than minutes since she’d last seen him.
“Jim’s wife,” I said.
“Is everything okay?” Madison asked.
“Fine. We’re just here for food.”
Scott nodded. “I talked the sheriff down. It wasn’t a werewolf.”
“Are you sure?” Madison asked. “I didn’t want to say anything in front of the sheriff, but he did have a point. They were running some nasty experiments. Look at what happened to Clinton.”
Clinton was Madison’s younger brother. Half brother, actually, on her mom’s side. She had another half brother, though she’d only discovered his identity two years ago: Evan.
Clinton had been bitten by a werewolf last May, kicking off a series of events that had resulted in his being kidnapped, experimented on, and ultimately turned into something that wasn’t quite a werewolf. And wasn’t quite human. He had fur on much of his body at all times, plus the yellow eyes. At the full moon, he retained his human hands and his human intelligence. The other wolves in his pack didn’t trust him, which made the full moons dangerous for him.
Worst of all, he had lost the ability to speak. He was completely dependent upon sign language and notepads for communication these days.
If that could happen to Clinton, then what else could happen?
Scott put his arm around Madison’s shoulders and rubbed his hand on her upper arm. She leaned into him and I looked away, giving them a moment of privacy while I raided the refrigerator. We still had sandwich trays left over from the party, plus more fruit, vegetables, chips, and dip. We even had more cake, although the castle looked far less impressive with big chunks missing from its once strong fortifications.
“Tell me it’s not all starting again,” Madison said. “Things were just settling down. We’re about to get married, and we have a baby coming in a few months.”
“We’ll be fine. I don’t think this thing is a werewolf.”
I pulled out a head of cauliflower and began chopping it, pla
cing the pieces on a large vegetable tray around a bowl of ranch dipping sauce.
“You have a thought about what it is, though, don’t you?” I said to Scott as I continued to work.
He blew out a breath. “There were other things at that lab besides werewolves. There were a few vampires, but that wasn’t it either. Some of the other creatures, I didn’t have the experience to describe. There was this guy with black, leathery wings … he helped us escape, but I never found out who or what he was. And there were cages full of animals that weren’t quite animals. I’ve often wondered if these things were experiments, or something else. There are all kinds of stories from the old world about magical creatures, but if they ever really existed, then most were exterminated by sorcerers centuries ago.”
“So only werewolves and vampires survived?” I asked dubiously.
“Vampires reproduce insanely quickly, and werewolves can pass as humans most of the time.” Scott shrugged. “I’m not a magical historian.”
“Who is?”
“I’d try Henry Wolf.”
Of course. Henry Wolf, my husband’s old mentor, was the oldest man in town. I sometimes thought by a huge margin. He was a bit kooky, living in a small cabin by the lake with no running water or electricity. He seemed to think that modern technology interfered with magic, although I’d never noticed anyone else having that problem.
“Let me help with those trays.” Madison was by my side then, chopping vegetables and arranging them on the largest tray. A smaller tray contained grapes, apple slices, and miniature oranges.
When we finished, Scott carried both the fruit and vegetable trays to the den, while Madison took the sandwiches. I cleaned Ana and brought her along a few minutes later.
Evan was coming down the stairs just as I entered the front hall. His hair was wet, suggesting he’d stopped to shower, which was a good thing considering how much blood there had been. If he’d walked into the den covered in Jim’s blood, Sarah would have flipped.
He smiled when he saw me, weary but victorious. I returned the smile, fleetingly, and Ana chimed in with a squeal as she tried to jump out of my arms into Evan’s.
Frozen: a ParaNormal mystery Page 4