by Rebecca York
He had asked her what she’d seen. She had seen Delacorte. But not the wolf. Earlier, he’d been relieved.
Now—
Now he felt his chest constrict so painfully that it was difficult to draw a full breath. She had made love with a man named Adam Marshall. Would she run screaming from the werewolf? And what would he do if she turned away from him after giving herself to him?
His arms tightened around her, and she snuggled into his warmth. But she didn’t speak.
What was she thinking now? He was afraid to ask.
But he needed to talk to someone who had faced this crisis. Had his brother, Ross, dealt with this? And what had he done about it?
The questions tore at him. In the warmth of Sara’s bed, he made an effort to unclench his jaw.
He closed his eyes, thinking he would just lie here holding her. But the night’s activities had worn him out.
Sometime before dawn, he drifted into sleep.
And sometime after the sun had come up, he woke with a start. The bed was cold. He was alone. Sitting up, he fought a wave of dizzying fear as he staggered through the cabin looking for her.
She wasn’t there. And when he got to the dining area, he found a folded note waiting for him on the table. With a shaking hand, he reached out to pick it up.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
WAS SHE A coward? Sara asked herself as she headed north in Miss Hester, her rattletrap Toyota.
She’d snuck around the cabin, throwing a few things into an overnight bag because she hadn’t been able to face Adam in the morning. Not because of anything he’d done.
A warm flush heated her whole body. Making love with him had been more wonderful than anything she could have imagined. She’d given herself to him with a joy she’d never known before.
Last night she had been swept along on a tide of passion, and then in the morning, reality had set in. Her world had turned upside down since she’d arrived in Wayland. Not just by Adam Marshall. Something was happening within herself, and she needed to understand what it was.
It had borne fruit in Wayland. But she knew that the roots went much further back. To the time before she’d come to live with Barbara and Raymond Weston.
Last night she’d talked a little to Adam about her parents. They’d loved her. But they’d let her know that they wanted her to be a “normal” little girl. She’d done her best. And for a while, it looked as if it had worked. But now she felt like the fabric of her life was unraveling. There were things she needed to understand. Things that only Mom could tell her.
She knew the Westons hadn’t been able to have children of their own. And they’d been in their late forties when she’d come to them. Probably it hadn’t been an adoption through an agency. Probably they’d worked through a lawyer or something like that. They’d never talked about how they’d gotten her.
She’d loved her parents. And they’d loved her. They’d given her a good foundation for going out into the world. When Dad had died of a heart attack five years ago, she’d mourned his loss.
But she’d come to understand that they were people with rather rigid and traditional values, people who didn’t know how to cope with a child who saw things that weren’t there.
Had they done her a favor? Certainly they’d helped her fit in to the conventional world. But their upbringing hadn’t prepared her for what had happened after she’d come to Wayland.
Come back to Wayland, she thought now. Because the minute she’d driven into town, the place had seemed familiar. She hadn’t wanted to admit that then. Today she had to.
As she pulled into the driveway, she stood looking at the house. Dad had taken care of the home maintenance. But since his death, there hadn’t been anyone to do the work. And Mom couldn’t afford to hire out.
That was one of the things Sara hoped to remedy. When she got a steady job, she was going to take out a loan and get the house back into shape.
Even Mom’s beautiful garden was a little less polished than in previous years. There were fewer annuals among the perennials. And she saw weeds poking up in the unmulched beds.
Mom was in the kitchen when Sara knocked at the back door. Her mother dropped the colander she was holding into the sink and rushed to the door.
“Sara! What are you doing here? Is something wrong?”
With a shake of her head, she hurried to reassure her mother. “No. Nothing’s wrong. I just got a little homesick,” she answered, thinking that was just a bit far from the truth. But she wasn’t going to come bursting through the door complaining about her problems—or making demands.
“But you drove all this way!”
“It’s not so far.” She crossed to her mother, and they gave each other a tight hug. Once again she was back in the warm, sheltered environment of her childhood.
“You should have warned me, and I would have fixed extra for lunch. I’ve only got my spaghetti.”
“I love your spaghetti.”
“We can stretch it out with a salad.”
“Wonderful. And I want some of your iced tea.”
“There’s a pitcher already in the refrigerator.”
She and her mother fell into the familiar rhythm of putting together a meal. Twenty minutes later, they sat down at the dining room table with the place mats and flowered china she remembered so well.
Mom watched her from across the table.
She forked up some spaghetti and sauce, chewed, and swallowed. “This is so good. I missed your cooking.”
“If I’d known you were coming, I would have made chocolate chip cookies.”
“We can make them together after lunch,” she answered, thinking that if they were both busy it might be easier to talk. She still wasn’t sure what she was going to say. The only thing she was sure of was that she wasn’t going to chicken out.
ADAM sat at his desk pretending to go over a list of books he was considering for the gift shop. But his mind was on Sara. She had gone to her mother’s. She said in the note that their lovemaking had been wonderful. But she had some issues to resolve about her own background.
He made a snorting noise. She might think she had issues. But how was she going to react to the tooth and claw monster watching over their shoulders?
He wanted to know if she would run screaming from the wolf. He had to know. He wasn’t going to be able to think about anything else until she came back.
A knock at the office door made him jump.
He looked up to see Delacorte standing in the doorway carrying a large cardboard box. “You got a package from UPS,” the sheriff said.
Adam’s hand froze on the paper he was holding, and he had to force his fingers to unclamp.
Without asking permission, the large black man came into the office and closed the door, setting down the box beside the desk.
Adam gestured toward one of the wooden chairs across from him. “Have a seat.”
Delacorte accepted the invitation.
“What can I do for you?”
“Since you asked about the break-in at the historical society, I thought I’d keep you posted on…developments. I’ve been keeping an eye on the place.”
Adam managed a steady gaze and an even voice. “After the break-in? Isn’t that like locking the barn door after the horse has escaped?”
“You can put it that way if you want. I think of it as seeing whether the witches come back to the scene of the crime.”
“The witches! You think it was them?”
“I did some pondering on it. Who else would steal a devil’s lot of old history records?
“An interesting way to put it. Was it a whole bunch of stuff?”
“I was speaking figuratively. Mrs. Waverly claims she doesn’t know exactly what was taken. But I think she’s lying. I think the witches were looking for evidence of who did what to whom in Wayland in the past.”
“You think they got what they wanted?”
“I reckon we’ll find out.”
Adam shifted in his seat, hoping the sheriff couldn’t detect the wild pounding of his pulse.
“When I was a little pitcher, I had pretty big ears. I listened to all the old tales about the witches. Some of them had more holes than a screen door at an orphanage.”
“Yeah. I’ll bet.”
“But they all followed a kind of pattern. And I think I encountered a new wrinkle last night. I was down at the historical society after midnight, and I saw what looked like a wolf.”
Adam raised an eyebrow. “A wolf? Are there wolves in this area?”
“Not that I know of.” The sheriff shifted in his seat, tension crackling through him. “I came over here to try out a theory on you.”
Adam’s mouth was so dry that he could hardly speak. But he managed to say, “Okay. Shoot.”
“Keep an open mind. I don’t want you to get the notion that I’m crazy.”
Adam nodded, thinking that the sheriff and Sara appeared to be having similar doubts. Delacorte seemed to relax a notch. “Like I said, I’ve heard the old spine-tinglers since I was a kid. About stuff the witches could do. But I never heard tell of a werewolf.”
The word Adam had been dreading was out in the open. He sat very still, half expecting the sheriff to draw his gun. But he only ran a hand over his short-cropped hair.
“What if the witches have developed a new talent?”
“Are you talking about shape-shifting?”
“It’s not impossible.”
“It sounds like a stretch to me,” Adam managed to say. “Why would they add something new?”
“Because they’re growing and evolving. They’re getting stronger.”
“You sure are into this paranormal stuff.”
“When I was a kid, I didn’t really believe it. It was just stories the bigger boys and old men told to scare you. But now that I’m in the middle of it, it looks kind of different.”
“Yeah,” Adam muttered. “But that doesn’t mean you saw a werewolf. You said it was last night, right? Why wasn’t it just an ordinary wolf?”
“You would have had to be there,” the sheriff answered. “He wasn’t just trotting around town. He was sniffing around the exact place where they broke into the historical society. He was pawing at the plywood tacked over the broken window. He was acting intelligent. Like he had a purpose.”
“What did you do?”
Delacorte laughed. “I panicked. I pulled my gun. And he ran like hell.”
Adam wished he could share the humor. In a tight voice he asked, “Would you have shot him?”
“I would have last night. Now I think that would have been a mistake.”
Adam sighed. Well, that was something anyway. He pretended to be carefully considering what Delacorte had said, pretended that his heart wasn’t threatening to beat its way through the wall of his chest.
“You think I’ve gone off the deep end,” the lawman finally said.
“No. I’m thinking about what you said. Let’s agree for the sake of argument. Suppose you saw a werewolf. If he was part of the witch group, why would he have gone back there? What would have been his purpose? I mean, you’re assuming he has human intelligence. What would he have to gain by sniffing around the place where his friends broke in?”
Delacorte rocked back in his chair. “I don’t know.”
“Well, since we’re getting into the twilight zone, let me try a theory on you. You think that a…uh…coven of witches has come back to town to get revenge. Suppose there’s another faction. Suppose somebody with…um…psychic powers is fighting the witches. And the werewolf is part of that other faction. So he was down there…investigating.”
The sheriff’s brows knit together. “That’s an interesting hypothesis. I suppose it’s a possibility. But who would it be?”
“Folks who were never friends with the witches?” Adam suggested. “Folks who have figured out what they’re doing and want to stop them.”
“Yeah. But folks with…powers.”
“Superman!” Adam said, cutting through the tension.
“More like wolfman.”
Adam leaned back in his chair and dredged up a laugh that he hoped didn’t sound like he had a throat full of ground glass. “So the wolf got away. How are you coming on tracking down the witches?”
“I’m compiling a list of new people in town. Including Sara Weston.”
Adam had told himself he was starting to relax. “Not Sara,” he said.
“She arrived just when you tangled with that group dancing around a drugged campfire.”
“Not Sara,” he said again, flashing on what had happened last night. Not the lovemaking. Before. When she’d told him she’d had a vision of him in trouble.
Delacorte was watching him carefully, and he wondered what showed on his face.
“You’re telling me you’ve gotten to know her pretty well,” the sheriff said.
“Yes,” he answered, speaking around the lump that clogged his throat.
“You’re sure you know what kind of person she is?”
“Yes,” Adam answered, hoping that he was telling the truth. Shifting in his seat, he said, “If you’re looking at new people in Wayland, what about me?”
“I thought about you,” Delacorte said. “And I checked into your background. You’re from Baltimore. You’ve got no connection to this town.”
“Sara’s from Wilmington, North Carolina.”
“Sara’s adopted,” the sheriff said.
Adam sat forward. “How do you know that?”
“Barnette did a background check on her. She’s about the same age as that little girl whose momma burned up in that cabin. If she’s that little girl, that would sure give her reason to hate the fine upstanding people of Wayland.”
THEY were washing the dishes, when Sara screwed up her courage. “I’m not sure I ever told you how lucky I feel to have found a home with you and Dad.”
“Why thank you, dear.”
Sara finished soaping a plate and set it in the tub of rinse water. “We never talked about my real background. From before I came to live here.”
A glass slipped out of her mother’s hand and bobbed back into the tub of water.
“Can you tell me where I came from originally?”
“I don’t really know. Why are you asking? I mean, why now?”
Sara listened to the quaver in her mother’s voice. It sounded like she was either lying or worried about telling Sara the answer to the question.
She cleared her throat. “I met a man. I think we might be right for each other. But…that got me thinking about my…genetic heritage, you know,” she stumbled through the plausible explanation she’d thought of on the way up from Wayland. “I mean, what if I were in danger of passing something…bad to my children? Or what if…um…it turned out that I could develop some genetic disease? Like Huntington’s chorea.”
“Oh no, Sara. I’m sure there’s nothing like that in your background.”
“Why not? What about that stuff that used to happen to me? When I’d hear and see things that weren’t there.”
Her mother sucked in a sharp breath. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“But just because you don’t want to talk about it doesn’t mean that it will go away.”
“It did go away! Long ago.”
“Yes, Mom. You and Dad made sure of that,” she said, hearing the strident note in her own voice.
Her mother’s face had tightened. “You were little and scared. We did what we thought was best for you.”
Sara made an effort to soften her tone. “I know that, Mom. I know you had my best interests at heart. But I’m grown up now. And I need to know about my background. I’m hoping you’ll help me.
FALCON watched Starflower working on the drywall joints of the new addition to the house. He liked seeing her rounded bottom when she leaned over to get more mud out of the plastic tub. Even though she wasn’t much of a worker, she had other attributes. Basically, she wa
s a sex magnet. But she needed to learn a little discipline.
She was going to be the mother of his children when they got this house finished and set up their commune. As far as anybody in town would know, they’d be a bunch of retro hippies living in the country and getting back to nature with their brood of kids running naked in the bushes.
The image pleased him. A nice freewheeling commune was the perfect camouflage for the clan. There was a lot of land here. They’d build other houses when they got this one finished. Then they’d get money out of some of the low lifes in town who had tormented their parents. Before they killed the sorry bastards.
He came up to Starflower and ran his hand down her back from her shoulder to the nice rounded curve of her butt.
“You might as well take a break from the finishing work. You’re not getting much done.”
She gave him a saucy grin. “I was hoping you’d notice.”
“You and Willow and Water Lily can start dinner.”
Her face fell. “I’m not the chief cook and bottle washer.”
“But we all pull our weight here. And you’re a good cook.” That wasn’t exactly true. But she was getting better.
She gave him a little nod. “Can we have some fun later and use that cool smoke?”
“You like that, do you?”
She swayed against him. “You know I like it a lot. You know I’d love to get high and have a nice hard cock inside me. Yours especially.”
The suggestion made him instantly hard. “You know, we can’t use the smoke too much. The more you use it, the less effect you feel.”
“But it’s still a lot of fun.”
“Yeah.” He stroked his hand over her right breast, feeling her pebbled nipple. With his thumb and forefinger, he gave her a nice hard squeeze, and she sucked in a sharp breath. Another woman might have yelped in pain. But she liked that. Liked it rough. And he was more than willing to accommodate her. He liked fucking her fast and sharp. And he liked being the leader of the clan. He liked making the decisions about when they had group sex.
They could break off into couples if they wanted. But the group gropes and fucks were important—and not just for fun. Arousal increased their powers. So it wasn’t just having a hot time. They needed to be together in a group. They needed to practice with the power they generated.
