Wild and Witchy

by J. D. Winters

  “Oh. Sure.” She gave me a grin as though she wanted to let me know this was right down her alley and all would be well.

  Did I believe that? Hell no!

  But she went on in and I waited a few beats until she got Tommy off his phone call and started charming him with cat pictures. Then I snuck in.

  “Aw, kittens. I love kittens,” Tommy was saying as I slipped past them. So far, so good.

  I knew the offices and hallways of the Sheriff Station pretty well, having spent way too much time here and knowing Shane like I did. I was just thinking about the time they were holding my vampire friend Bentley on murder charges when I heard someone coming in from the back of the building, talking on his cell.

  I froze. Who was it? The voice sounded like the Sheriff’s. My heart jumped. Now that was the very last person I wanted to find at the Sheriff’s Station. What now?

  I was too far from the vault room to make a lunge for it, but I had to do something. I was going to have to shelter in place, as they said these days. But where? I was holding panic back, but only barely.

  Shane’s office was dark and looked locked. But right in front of me was what Shane called the “war room”, the room with the big cork board where they put up the pictures of the suspects and all stood around and brain stormed over who-done-it. The room was dark, but unlocked. I slipped in, then stood with my back pressed against the door, holding my breath as the Sheriff came by and stopped dead in front of the room.

  Had he seen me? He didn’t say. But he was still talking on his cell phone, so maybe not. I calmed down and listened hard. His voice was low, but I could make out enough of his words to catch some of it.

  “No, it’s that old European type van, the ones hippies used to live in back in the Seventies,” he was saying. “Yeah, a VW bus. That’s right. We put a BOLO out on it about an hour ago. Someone will see it and give us a call. Don’t worry about that. We’ll get them.”

  I winced, pretty sure I knew who the “them” was he was talking about. And that “them” might even include me, though I was pretty sure the Sheriff didn’t have that pinned down yet, or I would be in custody by now.

  His voice changed and I realized he’d hung up and was talking to Rennie now.

  “Well, hello Ms. Dobbs,” he was saying, moving away from the door at last. “What can we do for you? Is Chuck with you?”

  “Oh. No, he’s not. I…uh…I…uh…”

  “What have you got there?”

  “Um, ashes. For the Festival. I’m supposed to put them into the vault, so….”

  “You’ve got the key?”

  “I do.”

  “I’ll just let you get on with it then. Excuse me, won’t you? I’ve got some business to attend to.”

  “Oh, of course. Nice to see you, Sheriff.”

  I heard his office door close. Now to get Rennie into the vault room.

  I could tell she was walking down the hallway. I needed to go after her, but as I turned, I noticed something that stopped me in my tracks.

  The room I was about to leave was dark but not so dark that I couldn’t make out the pictures on the big bulletin board on the far wall. The photos were of suspects, I assumed—with string pinned showing connections one with another. And there, right in front of me, was a face I knew well. It was me.

  What?

  I caught my breath and looked further. There was a picture of Oliver. Oliver, of all people--or birds, as the case seemed to be.

  And attached to him by string was a smaller picture I had to peer at for a moment before I recognized. Was that really Gran Ana? Uh oh.

  A group of three men came next. Shifters. Was it those same werewolves from the beach? I wasn’t really sure. They looked a bit more wolf than man in the picture posted here.

  There was a photo of the VW bus, but not of the three people who had been using it. Still, I knew who this was about.

  But not what—although I could probably guess. The murder on the cabin cruiser. Of course.

  This was not good.

  “Haley? Haley?”

  It was Rennie, whispering in the hallway, obviously trying to find out what had happened to me. I wanted to stay and study this board, but I knew I had to go.

  I opened the door a crack.

  “I’m here, Rennie,” I said softly, glancing out to make sure no one was lurking in the halls. “I’m coming.”

  She grabbed me and clung. “Oh thank goodness! I thought you’d deserted me.”

  “Never.” I managed a brave smile despite the way I was feeling inside. “Let’s go scare that ghost.”

  The funny thing was, there really was one. I didn’t tell Rennie. She was nervous enough as it was and the ghost didn’t do much except hang around like a shroud from a ceiling corner and moan, very low. Too low for Rennie to hear it, too transparent for Rennie to see it. So I just gave it the old stink eye and ignored it.

  Meanwhile, I was busy. While Rennie fumbled with the key and talked nonsense a mile a minute, I was putting some power into a little spell to turn the camera monitors to static before Rennie closed the heavy steel door with a bang and turned the locking device.

  Then we got out of there. Luckily, Tommy was on the phone again and barely looked up when Rennie passed by, waving at him cheerfully while I slunk around corners and avoided his gaze.

  Finally we were back in the car and I was heading for Rennie’s house to drop her off.

  “Will Chuck be home yet?” I asked her.

  “Oh, I hope so. I miss my sweetie-pie.”

  Hard to keep a straight face while picturing that big old lug of a guy as a “sweetie-pie”, but I managed. At the same time, I was ready to get myself some private time so that I could think over what I’d learned in the “war-room” at the Sheriff’s Station.

  It looked like they were considering me as a possible suspect. What on earth were they thinking?

  “Rennie, tell me something,” I said as we pulled up in front of the house she shared with Chuck, the mayor. “Just exactly who are The Builders?”

  “The Builders? You don’t know?”

  I shook my head. Rennie looked stricken.

  “Uh..The Builders. Oh, you know. They’re the ones who…who left us here. The ones who started it all. The ones….” She looked over her shoulder as though afraid someone might be eavesdropping, and then she was whispering. “The ones who could be listening right now. I’m sorry, hon. I just can’t do it. I can’t talk about them. It’s too…too…” She shrugged, reached for the door handle and was out of the car and racing up the driveway to her front door.

  Chapter 9

  Moments later I was home, heading up the stairs of the silent, half-dark bakery and yearning for my soft bed. I pulled open the door to my room and came up short, There was someone in my overstuffed corner chair, all curled up and sound asleep.

  “Mandy,” I said in surprise as I recognized my favorite fox shifter. She was in human form at the moment, but some part of her fox nature still clung to her, some endearing softness, a certain perkiness about the ears—I don’t know. You just couldn’t help but like her on sight. I touched her shoulder. “What’s going on?”

  “Oh, Haley.” She blinked rapidly, yawned and stretched before she sat up and smiled at me. “I tried to stay awake but you’re so late.”

  “Don’t I know it,” I replied, stifling a yawn myself. “What’s up?”

  “I was waiting here because I wanted to catch you when you came home. I’ve got something I need to talk to you about.”

  I looked longingly at my large, fluffy pillow. “Can it wait until morning?”

  She looked so crestfallen, I relented quickly.

  “Oh go ahead,” I said, sitting on my bed instead of flopping down the way I’d envisioned this a few seconds earlier. “Just don’t expect me to be very coherent.”

  “You don’t need to be coherent. Just a few words should do it. All I want to know is—who were those people you met on the beach, the ones you dr
ove off with? The ones in the VW bus.”

  I stared at her. “What did Shrimp tell you?” I asked carefully, though I was pretty sure I knew.

  She shrugged. “He saw you. That’s where he went when he disappeared this afternoon.”

  My eyes narrowed with just a flick of annoyance. “He followed me?”

  “Not exactly. He didn’t swim like you did. But he was worried about you and he knew that I was too. So he took off and followed some clues and ended up where some guy with bleached hair was talking to you on the beach way down from where we were at the pier. And then you left with him and two other people in the van. Just drove off. He had to come back on his own.”

  I was a bit groggy from lack of sleep and I shook my head, trying to keep all this straight. “Shrimp was there? Why didn’t he reveal himself to me? I could have made sure he had a ride back.”

  “He didn’t want to intrude.”

  Yeah, right. Much easier to spy on people when they don’t know you’re doing it, right? But I couldn’t blame him.

  “Huh. Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t really know. He didn’t tell me all this until after you and Rennie left to go get the ashes.” She shrugged. “But the point is, he recognized the blond guy. He’d seen him before.”

  That got my attention. “Really? Where.”

  She took a deep breath and her voice was a little unsteady. “With Piper. My sister. Before the crash in the lake.”

  “No kidding.” I had to be careful here. Even with Mandy. Until I had a better fix on what Marcus and his friends were up to, and why the police wanted to talk to them, I knew I’d better choose my words wisely.

  “Do you remember him?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know, not having seen him. Did you know him before? I know you wouldn’t recognize him, but did he say he knew you?”

  I hesitated. I knew she was desperate for anything related to her sister’s disappearance. But I wanted to play this a bit cagy for now. “I didn’t recognize him, but he did give me names.”

  “He did?”

  “Sure.” I paused, but there really was no reason not to tell Mandy. “The blond guy is Marcus, and the other two are Roger and Celia. They said something about having been in the car at the lake that day, but I’m not sure I buy it.”

  Mandy drew in her breath sharply. “In the car at the time?”

  I shook my head. “That was the impression they left me with, but I decided to reserve judgment. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to trust anything they said. I mean, they were just people I met on the sand, you know?”

  I glanced at her face, feeling a shot of regret that I never had anything encouraging to give her. I couldn’t even tell her that I saw her sister when I had the dream. She’d told me that she and Piper looked a lot alike, but I had never noticed anyone in the car who looked like she did to me. But who knew if those people were real…or if my dream senses were picking up random people to populate the scene? Who trusts dreams, anyway?

  “They didn’t say anything about Piper?”

  I shook my head again. “Nothing I heard. But I wasn’t trying to pin them down on anything and they abruptly dropped me off on the highway before I had time to formulate any sort of plan.”

  “Just dropped you there?” she said, wide eyed.

  “They did. Suddenly they seemed to have somewhere to go. And Shane drove up about two seconds later. So I wasn’t exactly stranded.”

  Mandy frowned. “So if you don’t trust these people…”

  “I just don’t know. I want to trust them. Because…” I sighed. “Mand, he knew who I was right away. And he said he came to help me get my memory back. And that is a pretty big incentive for me to try to find a way to trust him. You know what I mean?”

  She stared at me for a long moment, then nodded. “Sure. I get it. And Haley, I really, really hope your trust is vindicated.”

  “Me, too.”

  She thought for a minute, then rose abruptly. “Thanks Haley. I had to ask, just in case.”

  “Sure,” I said, then had a thought.

  “Wait a second, Mandy. Do you recognize this?”

  I pulled the bracelet out of the pocket of my jacket and held it up to the light. “Did Piper ever have anything like this?”

  She touched it and turned it, then shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. It’s pretty. And it feels like it’s got something….” She shrugged. “I don’t know if it’s magic, but there’s something going on with it. Can’t you feel it?”

  I nodded, putting it back in my pocket.

  “Where did you get it?”

  “The blond guy, Marcus, gave it to me. He said it was mine.”

  “Oh.”

  Our gazes met and held for a long moment. I couldn’t read her mind but it occurred to me that neither one of us knew exactly what we were worried about but we both knew something dangerous was going on.

  “Haley,” she said at last. “Are you going to meet up with them again?”

  I nodded slowly. I was pretty sure that was going to happen. I mean, the guy had claimed he knew how to get my memory back. There was no way I could let that slip away without some investigation.

  “I just hope I can get to them before the police do,” I said, and then regretted having admitted it. Oh well.

  “Be careful,” she said softly.

  I nodded again and she went out the door.

  It had been a long time since I’d had the dream, but I had it again that night. We were riding in the car, just as always, and we were laughing and singing along with a song on the radio. This time I hadn’t bought into it quite so calmly. This time I was looking from one person to the next, trying to identify them, trying to see….

  But it was no use. They were much clearer before I started staring at them than after. There was color and a sense of gender until I tried to drill down. All features began to blur, all colors began to swirl. The harder I looked the less I could actually make out.

  And then came the crash, the sound of metal against metal, the screams of the others, my own scream, so ugly I wanted to blot it out somehow, the rushing water, the sense of helpless doom.

  And then I was awake.

  I hadn’t seen anyone very well, but there was one thing I was pretty sure of. None of those people with me in the car was Marcus.

  Of course, what does a dream do but terrify you and tell you lies?

  I woke up for real a few hours later. Sunshine was streaming in through my window and voices from the bakery below were filtering up. Krissy was working on the morning bake but there was someone else talking to her.

  I listened carefully. Rennie.

  Oh no. Not again. I didn’t have time to run all over town doing things with Rennie. Not today. I had to make contact with Marcus and his crew and try to figure a few things out.

  That is, if they were still around. If they hadn’t been taken in for questioning by Shane and the Sheriff.

  I slipped into jeans and a tank top, then added an open denim jacket for the morning chill. I ran a brush through my hair and tied it back, then jotted down a quick note for Krissy, telling her I would call her about ten.

  For just a moment, the wonderful scents of sweet bread baking filled my head and made me swoon, but I knew I couldn’t give in to the urge to run downstairs and grab a cinnamon roll. This was too important. I had to get these things done, and having Rennie along would doom most any plan to major re-evaluations and blind alleys. I couldn’t risk it.

  I opened the big window next to my bed and shimmied out, landing in the huge old oak that stood there, the one with plenty of footholds and handholds making even a clumsy climber like me safe going down.

  A few scrapes on my legs, but what the heck. A small price to pay. Soon I was in my car, rolling away silently at first, then with the engine kicking in, and I was off.

  I’d seen that map in the pile of papers and notebooks on the floor of the VW bus the day before, and I
called it up from my short term memory now. I was pretty sure I knew what area the map had covered. Not that I’d ever been there before. After all, I was pretty sure the place

  was very close to Werewolf country.

  Werewolf country. No big deal. I’d been to Gremlin country and even spent time at the gremlin ranch. I figured Werewolf country would be similar—lots of strange Supernaturals feeling comfortable by being walled off, away from certain other groups that might not take kindly to their operating so close to normal society. That meant they had to live on the outskirts of the haven, protected as far as being patrolled by the sheriff but not guarded by the stones. It was the wild west out there in some ways. A little too rough for most civilized Supers and Normal society.

  Normal society. Now just exactly what was that anyway? In a town like Moonhaven, you had to wonder who had the larger demographics, Supers or Normals? And even if the demos skewed in favor of the Normals, didn’t the Supers have the energy and the reason to pay attention to what was going on that the Normals didn’t usually seem to have? That was the way it had looked to me since I’d arrived in town.

  Oh well. Your mileage may differ.

  And then I pulled onto the off-ramp that led to Werewolf Country, slowed to a stop and came face to face with the large timber entryway. I felt a bit awestruck. It was a huge gateway. Everything about it was meant to impress--the large signs of warning, the cameras pointed my way, the sound of howling in the distance.

  Every tiny hair on my body quivered. And then I read the main sign.

  This here is Werewolf Country.

  Werewolves patrol these lands.

  Enter at your own risk.

  YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!

  I gulped a little. But then I calmed myself. Okay, so they wanted to impress and intimidate. Wasn’t that just what you would expect a werewolf to do? I was pretty sure I could handle myself. After all, all I wanted to do was find Marcus. If they let him in here, why not me? I drove on in.

  It was like driving into another piece of the West. Colorado, maybe. Utah. Nevada. Everywhere I looked I saw huge green desert pines set off against buttes and mesas and red rock canyons. I could hardly believe I was still in Moonhaven Valley.