Third Time's the Charm

by K. J. Emrick

  You kill that one…

  “You kill that one,” he says to Ulva, with a toss of his head toward Harper. “This one is mine.”

  Me. He means me.

  Ulva smiles, and turns back on Harper as she drops on all fours and her limbs start to crack and bend into the long, strong legs of a wolf. Her clothes tear along the seams. Her hind feet burst the straps of her high heeled shoes.

  I see the same changes start in Lowell’s face. The features of the wolf wear sharper on him with more angles and darker hair and a savage calculation in those eyes that have become large dots of black against a golden yellow.

  This would be really cool, if I didn’t think he was about to rip me to shreds.

  My hand fumbles under my shirt, behind me where my concealed holster holds my pistol in my waistband. It slides out easy and the weight of it in my hand makes me feel better. It’s fully loaded. Six shots. Six chances to save my life. My ability to see into the future will let me survive for a while, but I don’t like my chances against a wolf with a human mind. Not for long.

  Face halfway between a human and an animal, Lowell looks down the barrel of my gun.

  He sniffs the air, sniffs again…and laughs.

  His voice is distorted, guttural, untamed. The words are marred by his flat, wide tongue. “You don’t know much, do you girl?”

  The gun trembles in my hand. There’s something about someone laughing off a loaded pistol that kind of makes me stop and think twice.

  Then I remember. Parker had told me, when I saw him in the Belt. He told me how to kill a werewolf. Silver bullets. You needed silver bullets to kill one of them and I didn’t have any, yet. Just lead ones. Ordinary, copper-jacketed lead bullets.

  Which is what Lowell had just smelled out.

  “Oh…crap.”

  Ulva has torn her way out of her clothes completely now, her wolf form sleek, her fur a dark brown, her tail flashing back and forth as she stalks Harper into a corner.

  Lowell is still changing, and there was a chance that I could maybe shoot him now with regular bullets and hurt him before he went full wolf, but there was also a chance I’d shoot him six times and do nothing more than make him angry. I’d be left standing here with an empty gun and nothing but my pretty smile to protect me.

  Time to die.

  With a growling laugh, Lowell’s lips peel back from his long, sharp teeth. “Time to die. Time to take your secrets with you to your grave, Sidney Stone.”

  Jump left, over the couch.

  When my future-sense tells me to do something, I’ve learned not to question it. Gun still in my hand, I jump as far as I can to my left, clearing the top of the couch if only just barely, falling over the other side to the floor, landing on my shoulder and rolling, rolling. A new pain erupts in my arm, tugging awake the achy soreness from when I dropped myself out of Kato’s window. I roll over onto my side, wincing, and then get my feet under me…

  Roll! ROLL!

  Instead of trying to get up I go back into my roll, just in time. Lowell’s four padded feet land hard on the floor where I’d been just a moment ago. His teeth snap closed in the air next to my ear. He snarls and takes a slow step in my direction. I’m laying here defenseless, my gun out and aimed but useless.

  Lowell comes closer.

  And above me…

  Oh, God I hope this works.

  Lifting the revolver up at the ceiling, I squeeze off two shots.

  The first one misses.

  The second one cuts through the decorative cord holding the heavy glass chandelier in place. It jingles and clanks as gravity takes hold of it and pulls it down, a wide round missile made of beveled pieces of glass, all of them edged sharply and held together with a metal frame.

  Halfway down the electrical wiring pulls out in a shower of sparks that spread through the air.

  It was the sparks that caught Lowell’s attention. He turns his muzzle to look up, his eyes reflecting the tiny flashes that shine through the jangling glass pieces of the chandelier…just before it drops its full weight on his head.

  The yelp he makes is cut off with a wet crunch, and the chandelier crashes to the floor all around him. Blood seeps across the floor. I watch as the feral light in his eyes goes dark, and a last gasp of air escapes out from between his broken jaws.

  Huh. Guess silver isn’t the only way to kill a werewolf.

  Now I do get to my feet, my gun still in my hand, a total of four shots left and one werewolf to—

  Duck run jump move move MOVE!

  A jumble of suggestions rolls through my future-sense, all of it leading to pain and darkness and I know there’s something seriously, seriously wrong. Three seconds. That’s all I’ve got.

  One.

  I turn around and there’s Ulva’s wolf, leaping across the room at me. She’s not interested in Harper anymore. Now she wants to kill the person who killed her brother.

  Two.

  There’s nowhere for me to go. Nowhere.

  Three…

  “Harry!”

  I feel the tassel tied to my belt sort of pulse, and in an instant Harry appears in front of me, right between me and the attacking wolf, just as she was about to slash her claws through my neck.

  He raises his arm, and there’s something in his hand…

  Wow. Just…wow.

  He’s holding a giant, rolled up newspaper in his fist. Like, cartoonishly big. Like the Sunday edition on steroids. I didn’t realize anyone still read newspapers but right now I’m really happy they’re still available at your local grocery store.

  Harry drops the end of the newspaper down hard, smacking Ulva right between her pointy ears, slamming her head down into the floor, knocking her senseless. Her pink tongue lolls out of her mouth and her eyes open, but stunned and unseeing.

  “Bad dog,” he tells her with a boyish grin. “Sit. Stay.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Having Harry as a friend is the absolute best.

  It was nearly three hours later now, and we were back in Molly’s apartment. Me and Harry, and Ulva too. Kurt sat next to his sister on the couch, and every once in a while he would growl to remind her not to move. She sat there sulking in the black slacks and black blouse and black knee-boots Harry had poofed her into, once she changed back to her human shape. She hadn’t said a single word to me after we left her house. Granted her arms and feet had been bound with rope by Harry in the most complicated knots I’ve ever seen…but she had no problem getting the last word in before we drove away from her estate.

  “I’m going to kill you,” she had said. “Maybe not today, but I will kill you. When you see your death, it will be my face you see.”

  “Quiet,” Harry told her. “Or I will smack you with a newspaper again.”

  Best. Friend. Ever.

  Ulva was still tied up, hand and foot, and now her leg was also tied to the leg of the couch. I’m pretty sure she could break through them simply by luping into a wolf but I’m not taking any chances. I still don’t have any silver bullets in my gun.

  Me and Harry and Molly are at her kitchen table. The cups of tea that she’s made for us are all untouched, not just mine this time. It’s taken us this long to explain everything that’s happened. Harper’s admissions. The reaction by Lowell and Ulva. Lowell’s death.

  How Harper had nearly died, too.

  I have no doubt that Ulva would have snapped Harper’s neck between her teeth if she’d had the chance. She had knocked Harper to the floor and torn her chest and arms to bloody shreds. If I hadn’t fired my two shots, distracting Ulva by killing Lowell…yeah. There’s no doubt in my mind that Harper would be wolf food right now. Instead, Ulva had left off to come and try to kill me. I saved Harper’s life without really meaning to.

  Well. I did say I didn’t want her dead. Just punished. I guess being in a coma that might last for days, weeks, or longer is a punishment that sort of fits the crime. She had been willing to condemn Kurt to a lifetime of being trapped in
his own body, just to get what she wanted. Now she was the one trapped, in a coma, unable to move. Sounds fair to me.

  That bit about Lowell dying had gone over like a ton of bricks when we told Molly and Kurt about it. I mean, there was nothing else I could do—except let myself die, and that just wasn’t in my plans today. For several long moments after we told them, Kurt had hung his head low and curled his tail around his feet. His breathing had been slow and heavy. Molly had sat with him the whole time, whispering things in his ear and holding him tight until finally he had picked his head up, his eyes flashing as they locked on mine.

  Then he went to the couch and sat next to Ulva, snarling softly. He didn’t blame me for his brother’s death. He blamed Ulva.

  Which was a huge relief to me. I’d already had to kill one member of the Dachiana family today. I didn’t want to kill a second one. Especially not the one I liked.

  “So it was Harper this whole time?” Molly asked me now. “I never would have…I didn’t think she had it in her.”

  “She was jealous of what you and Kurt have.” It’s a short explanation but really, it was just that simple. No complicated backstory, no need for pages of written explanation. She did it for one of the oldest reasons in the book. Love gone bad. “She knew taking the necklace would hurt Kurt. She knew Ulva would blame you, and she was right there pushing your name to the top of the suspect list, too. If her plan had worked, you would have been forced out of Kurt’s life, and she could have returned the necklace later saying she ‘found’ it, making her a hero to the Dachiana family, and Kurt would be so grateful he would have loved her again.”

  From over on the couch we all hear Kurt sneeze. That’s the wolf equivalent of ‘no way,’ I suppose. He had no intention of ever going back to Harper. I’ll bet the story of their breakup is epic.

  Ulva throws her head back with a derisive snort. “Oh, Kurt. I told you being with that vixen over there would be trouble for us all. You just wouldn’t listen.”

  Kurt leans in, putting his nose right against Ulva’s neck, and blows out a hot breath that stirs his sister’s hair. Ulva doesn’t move, not an inch…but I see the nervous swallow she tries to hide. Big brother has a temper, and a lot more muscle mass.

  Molly watches her fiancé from the table with a look of pride. I can tell, just from the short time that I’ve spent with the two of them, that she is exactly the person he needs in his life. All of that pureblood nonsense is just that—nonsense. Love finds the perfect someone for you to be with and it doesn’t pay attention to where they come from.

  Which made me think about Chris, and what he said to me, and the way his soft lips felt against my cheek…

  Ahem. There’s going to be time to figure out my personal life later. Much later, I hope.

  “But how?”

  For just a moment I thought Molly’s question was about me and Chris. She meant the necklace, though. She was asking me how it was possible that Harper had gotten past the spells she put on the box to steal it.

  “Well, to answer that…” I reach into my back pocket and take out my cellphone. Opening the photo app, I show her the picture I took of her photo. “Remember that?”

  Molly looks closer and nods her head. “Well, sure. That’s the photo of me and Kurt in our bedroom. That was right after he moved me into this place.”

  “But see this in the background?”

  She squints. “You mean the box? The one I kept the necklace in?”

  “Yes. Now…” I use two fingers and enlarge the image for her. “See this?”

  “Um. Sure. That’s the nick I put in the box. I dropped it.” She bites on her lower lip with a shrug of one shoulder. “I’m a little clumsy sometimes, and I let it slip right through my fingers. It’s heavier than it looks.”

  Harry puts his hand on the table, right in front of my phone, and then smiles at Molly. “Now, look at this.”

  He lifts his hand slowly up, and as he does the empty box from Molly’s bedroom rises out of the table until it’s sitting there, neat as you please.

  Molly giggles with delight. “Neat trick. I guess I’m not the only one who can do magic.”

  “Show off,” I say to Harry in a stage whisper. He gives me a knowing wink and sits back in his chair. “This is the box from your bedroom. And this is the picture you took some time ago. Look at this box, and then look at the box in the picture. Notice anything different?”

  Her eyes look from the picture to the real box, back and forth. I can see Kurt doing the same from across the space of the open room. His sharp eyes pick up on the difference before Molly says, “oh!”

  In the photo is the box that Molly put the Garoul Necklace in. You can clearly see the small gouge on the corner, just like she said.

  On the table, however, is the box that Molly found empty the day after the Harvest Moon Festival. It’s perfect, just like I thought the first time I saw it. Absolutely perfect.

  No gouge mark at all.

  That’s what I’d noticed when I saw the photo on Molly’s nightstand. That little difference made me realize how this crime was done. Molly’s story about how her and Kurt met after his breakup told me the rest.

  “There’s no way the box could have a little chunk taken out of it on the corner there before the Harvest Moon Festival, and then not have any blemishes at all after the festival. It didn’t heal itself. No. The only explanation is that this—” I put my hand on top of the undamaged box. “—was left behind in place of the real box. You wondered how someone could get through all the spells you put on the box. Well, the answer is Harper never got through the spells. She didn’t need to. She just took the whole thing with her, necklace, box, and all.”

  Molly dropped her head into her hand. “I never thought of that. I protected the box from being opened…”

  “But not from being moved. Exactly.”

  “So if she took the box, where did she get this one to replace it? They’re identical. Except for the mark on the corner, I mean.”

  “There’s a metal tag on the bottom with a serial number, which is what manufacturers do when they produce more than one identical piece. Reprints of a painting have something similar, actually. All Harper would have to do is find the place where Ulva bought the one she gave you guys as a gift, and then she could order another one to use when she made the switch. Overnight delivery would cost a little more but sometimes you just absolutely, positively have to have it the next day.”

  She sinks a little lower in her chair. “I thought I was being so careful.”

  “What I’ve learned from doing this job is that any security measures, no matter how strong, can be gotten past if people work at it hard enough.” Which was something no security company will ever tell you, no matter how true it is. “Harper probably wrapped it up in a heavy blanket or something like that and just took it away. She would know about the spells because she was always tagging along behind Ulva. She would have heard her talking about it at some point. She knew better than to touch it directly or even indirectly. Kurt’s sister was so worried about Kurt being with you, Molly. Turns out she should have been worried about who she was hanging out with herself.”

  “The witch is still trouble,” Ulva says. She’s careful not to look at her brother when she said it. “And, I’m still going to kill you, Sidney Stone.”

  She’s careful not to look directly at me when she said that, too.

  Good thing, because I’ve had more than enough out of her. There’s a dead body back at her home, and Harper’s in the hospital from what everyone will assume was a wild animal attack. We haven’t had to involve the police yet because I really don’t want to explain how I killed a man for turning into a wolf and trying to eat me. The Dachianas have money to burn, and more than enough wealth to keep things like this under wraps. I’m not the police. I’m under no obligation to report any of this to the cops or to Chris or to anyone else. Chris understands I keep things private sometimes for my clients. For myself, too.


  But if Ulva wants to come at me, that can all change.

  I’ve killed men before, back when I was serving in the Marines. I killed for the good of our country and for world peace across the globe. This was different. This was killing to protect myself. I’m still very okay with it, I have to say. I figure no one should have to feel bad about defending their own life. It’s an exception to the whole ‘Thou shalt not kill’ rule that even God endorses.

  If it’s okay with God, then I can let it be okay with me, too.

  The question of what will happen to Ulva isn’t up to me. That’s up to Kurt. He’s going to be the leader of the family again, the real Lupus Regem. In fact, he’s going to be the only member of the family left standing except for his mother. His time will come, and when it does, I’ll be able to say I know the werewolf king.

  Kind of cool.

  “Sidney?” Molly asks me, and I realize it isn’t the first time she’s tried to get my attention.

  Oops. “Sorry. I was thinking about things. What did you ask me?”

  “Where’s the necklace now? How can we find it?”

  Her little hand was curled up against her chest. I could see the uneasiness in her eyes. She hired me so we could get the necklace back from the thief. Now that thief can’t tell us anything because she’s in a coma. Without Harper being able to talk, the necklace could be anywhere. We could spend the rest of our life trying to find it.

  The whimper from Kurt tells me that he’s thought of the same thing. All of this trouble, his family in shambles, and he still can’t be the human lover that Molly needs him to be.

  I look over to Harry, and he reads my expression like a book. My friend and I are pretty in sync. Raising one of his hands he presses his fingers together, ready to snap.

  “You have one left for this story, my lady.”

  It’s not a story…but I don’t even bother to correct him this time. “Ahem. Harry, for my last wish, I would like the Garoul Necklace to be back here in Molly’s hands.” Now that we knew who had the necklace and exactly where it would be there should be no problem with Harry bringing it to me.