by Tess Grant
Joe’s chair legs hit the floor, suddenly alert.
Jenna bit her lip, taking a while to reply. “I was so embarrassed. I took the hit from my parents and didn’t say anything to anybody.”
“What happened?” Kitty prompted.
“Deb and I went to the movies. She met somebody she knew—or wanted to know—out in the lobby. Some guy.” Jenna pushed the empty fudge plate around with her finger. “About halfway through the movie, she said she had to use the bathroom. She left with him.”
Joe’s eyes got big. “She ditched you? Thirty miles from home? No wonder you two aren’t so chummy anymore.”
Jenna scowled. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want anybody to know. I couldn’t call you—”
“Yes, you could,” Kitty interrupted.
“I didn’t know that,” Jenna said. “We hadn’t said more than a handful of words to each other in months. I walked over to the university and wandered through dorm lobbies until I found somebody who graduated from Oakmont. They found somebody to drive me home.”
“You weren’t out alone, were you?” Joe asked, catching Kitty’s eye.
“Not other than walking to campus.”
Kitty made a snap decision. “Can you spend the night?”
“I doubt it.” Jenna giggled. “I just got my keys back. Plus Gran would have a stroke if I wasn’t home by ten. It’s a full moon tonight.”
Is it only Joe and me who have had our lives sanitized? “What is it exactly that makes your grandma so upset anyway?” Kitty asked.
Jenna laughed again. “Have we never talked about that?” She shoved the empty plate toward Joe. “This deserves more fudge. Peanut butter this time.” Jenna sat up in her chair and straightened her shoulders like she was getting ready to give a presentation in English. “According to Gran, there are creatures living in the national forest. They’ll come after you on full moon nights.”
“What do they do?” Kitty asked.
“Eat you, kill you, something like that. Or make you one of them.” Jenna’s voice deepened like a movie announcer, and she shuddered in mock horror.
Joe set a full plate on the table and slid into his seat. “Do you believe her?”
Jenna tapped her forefinger against her lower lip. “Not much.” A frown turned her mouth down at the corners. “Still she’s so…earnest. She really believes it.” She grabbed a piece of candy off the dessert dish on the table. “And there are a lot of really strange articles in the paper the week after a moon.”
Kitty raised her eyebrows at Joe who nodded. “What if I tell you she’s right? That there’s something out there?”
“Good one.” Jenna bit into her fudge.
“I’m not joking. The things in the forest are werewolves, Jenn. They only come out on full moons.”
Jenna’s eyes narrowed and she swallowed. “Is this my punishment for being AWOL?”
Joe dug around in his pocket. “Catch,” he said and tossed something toward Jenna.
Her hand whipped out and snagged the silver projectile from the air.
Kitty snickered. “You carry one of those with you?” Between the sugar high and the fact that all three of them were together again, she felt a little giddy.
Jenna rolled the bullet around in her hand. “What is this? I mean it’s a bullet, but why is it so bright?”
“That’s what Kitty and I hunt with. It’s silver.” Joe’s eyes moved from Jenna’s face to Kitty’s and Kitty shrugged. She couldn’t quite gauge her friend’s reaction yet.
“I started hunting werewolves with Phinney back at the beginning of the summer,” Kitty said. “I was being weird all summer, and it wasn’t all about my dad.”
Jenna placed the bullet on its side on the table and flicked it toward Joe with her finger. It rolled over and over on its way to him until he stopped it at his side of the table. “Have you guys been rehearsing this? Waiting for me to show up so you can…”
“We’re not joking,” Kitty interrupted her. “Remember on homecoming when I grabbed your arm?”
“That was the weirdest thing ever.”
“I thought when you went missing that you’d been bitten and infected. I was trying to figure out if it was true. That’s why Joe stayed behind—to see what you did. I left and went to the national forest to hunt.” Kitty didn’t know how to tell Jenna to make her believe. Jenna didn’t have a dead uncle to add any weight to the story—only a slightly demented grandmother who liked white wine.
“When you came to my house after I got grounded,” Jenna started. “Did you come to see if I was—what did you call it?—infected?”
Kitty still felt a little ashamed. “I did. I told you I came for you, but I didn’t really.” She met Jenna’s eyes. “I came for me…because I couldn’t hunt you, Jenn. If you had been bitten, I didn’t know what I was going to do.”
Jenna reached out and placed her hand over Kitty’s.
****
“I still don’t know if I believe you guys,” Jenna gave Kitty a hug. “But I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Be careful.” She wrapped an arm around Joe. “You too.” She stood next to her car, arms wrapped tight around her middle. “I mean really careful. I’ll be waiting up. Call me to let me know you got home okay.” She didn’t move as they walked on to the Jeep.
Joe opened Kitty’s door then circled around to his own side. “This sucks,” he said as he fastened his seatbelt.
“It does,” Kitty agreed. “Maybe someday it’ll be over.”
Joe started the Jeep up and swung onto the road. Through the back window, Kitty watched Jenna pull out of the driveway going the other direction.
They passed Phinney’s lane and were heading up Hillclimb when headlights sprang up in the rearview. The only other lights on the road belonged to Jenna and those had been taillights. Whoever it was had just come out of the lane.
“Do you see that?” Kitty asked.
“Mmm-hmm. Just pulled out.” Joe switched his high beams on.
Kitty checked the rearview one more time. Who else would be taking these back roads in the middle of the night on the twenty-third of December? She turned sideways to face Joe. “I think Detective Melville’s back there.”
Joe glanced in the mirror. “Could be anybody.”
“My fault,” Kitty said. “I let the cat out of the bag the other day at the cabin—well, half out of the bag anyway. I told him about the full moon and Phinney’s fire. He’s probably been going through every back file he’s got connecting the dots.”
Joe reached across the seat and squeezed her hand. “Silly girl. What’d you do that for?”
“I’m ready for it to be done, Joe. I really am.”
“Well, tonight it probably will be.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Mr. Z’s Cherokee labored up the logging road. Joe patted the dash. “Come on, baby. Last time. You can do it.” He checked the rearview again. “I don’t see him now. Think he’s gone home?”
“He’s back there,” Kitty said.
“What do we do?” Joe downshifted as they approached the path and pulled the Jeep slightly right.
“I don’t know,” Kitty said. “We don’t have much time. If we wait for him here, we lose our opportunity to get to the safe zone. If we go without him, we risk him running around out there and getting hurt.”
“Let’s just stay here.” Joe flicked off the lights and turned the ignition off. “We can roll down the windows enough to get the barrel out. Use the Jeep like a blind.”
“I don’t think the paint job will stand up to werewolf claws. We’ll bring it home with the roof half peeled off.”
“Good point. I don’t think my dad would buy it that somebody keyed us in the parking lot at Classics Night.”
Kitty laughed. She could think of only two other people she would rather have with her tonight. One was dead, the other overseas in a hospital bed. “Let’s head for the safe zone. It’s a big enough trail. He can’t miss it. About halfway up,
I’ll break off and wait for him. You get to the nest. If he comes in, I’ll try and turn him around. If he doesn’t come at all, I’ll already be halfway there.”
Joe cocked his head. “What if he won’t go? He seems rather persistent.”
Kitty checked the mirror. No headlights. Either he was sneaking up on them or he had gone home. “I give him some ammo and get him to the safe zone.”
Joe shoved the .45 in his belt, and Kitty slung the carbine over her shoulder. They started down the path; it hadn’t snowed since yesterday, so the going was easy from dragging in the weighted-down sleds. A motor purred somewhere behind them then cut off.
Kitty gauged the path. “We’re about halfway. I’ll wait and you go on. Stay in the nest whatever you do.”
Joe nodded and moved on. Kitty paced the tiny path, unable to hold still. She was so jittery tonight. She hadn’t been this way since her first trip out with Phinney. Where was Melville? She needed to get under cover. Here—where Harris and Kevin had both been attacked—was the one place she didn’t want to mess around.
A maple grew at the path’s edge, and Kitty planted her back against it. It was solid and stable in all the weirdness of the past few days. She turned her head toward the Jeep and placed her cheek for just a second against the rough bark.
Please help me. I don’t know what to do anymore.
She measured the time passing in the little clouds that blew out from her mouth, and she started to wonder whether the detective had given up. She considered lighting out for the safe zone but something made her think better of it. He was out there; she knew it.
Then she saw his shadow on the path. For all his mass, Melville was silent. He propelled himself in fits and starts. A few quick steps; hold up and survey. Move. Stop. She felt a twinge of fear in her gut, but it was time to end this. Someone was going to get hurt, and it was no secret who it was. As much as she disliked Melville following her, pushing her buttons, he wasn’t really that bad a guy. She wouldn’t see him added to the list of cold cases.
She slipped out of the shadows of the tree and stepped full into the path. “Detective. It’s me.”
Melville stopped stock still six feet away. “That’s a good way to get yourself hurt, missy.”
Kitty closed the distance between them. “The best way to get hurt right now is to be out here on a full moon. I tried to tell you. I know you don’t believe me, but I wish you had stayed home.” She thought briefly of the movie they all had watched earlier in the evening. Of Scrooge’s nephew inquiring after Bob Cratchit’s myriad children. “With Mrs. Melville and all the small assorted Melvilles.”
He must have seen the movie too for he snorted. “I ain’t the ghost of Christmas present.”
What I need is the ghost of full moons past.
Melville’s voice rumbled in the silent woods. “You’d better start talking. And don’t give me some line. Paranormal don’t fly with me. I want to know what you’re up to out here. I want to know about the old man.” He leaned forward into her face.
“Please go home.”
“And dragging Zubowicz into it too. He’s a nice kid. At least you could have kept it a lone enterprise.”
Kitty’s top blew. “I didn’t drag him into it. I didn’t drag you into it.”
As the words slowed, she realized the position she was in. She was in Melville’s face. Leaning forward, nearly screaming. Not a smart position. She pulled back, trying to make amends. She’d never get him to leave this way. “I’m sorry I yelled. Please, would you just go back to your car and drive away?”
“Not likely.”
Kitty sighed. She dug deep into her pocket and pulled out eight projectiles—enough for a full magazine. Even under the trees, they shimmered, picking up the moonshine off the carpet of snow and bathing her hand in a near spectral light. She extended them toward the detective.
Melville looked askance. “And those would be…?”
“That’s what’s going to keep you alive out here. Silver bullets.” She waved her hand impatiently. “Take them. One in the chamber, the rest in the magazine.”
He still looked skeptical but he scooped them up. “Sure, I’ll play your little game for now. Where’d they come from? Not going to jam me up, are they?”
“Phinney made ‘em. You can’t buy silver bullets on the open market.”
He slid the magazine out of his .45 and started loading. “What if I need more?”
Kitty smiled grimly. “A friend of mine used to say if we can’t kill it in one or two shots, we might as well hang it up.” She dug down into her pocket, leveraged out four more rounds and shoved them in his direction. “Let’s move. Joe’s up there alone, and he’s still new at this game.”
She left then, moving fast. Behind her, he ratcheted the round into the chamber. She didn’t look back. There wasn’t much time.
This half of the path seemed longer than the first part, every shadow deeper, every sound magnified. Her nerves were on high alert, and the blood hummed in her ears. Her head chanted with every step. Get to the safe zone, get to the safe zone.
She caught up with Joe in the clearing. He paced back and forth in front of the punji sticks. “Where have you been? I was starting to think—”
“It’s almost midnight. Get under cover.” Kitty scrambled between the stakes, pulling her father’s snow camouflage suit tight against her so she wouldn’t get hung up. Joe crawled in on the opposite side.
A deathly quiet hovered over the woods. Kitty couldn’t tell if it was just the seasonal change or if things were coming to a head. The winter forest was so much harder to read. Why hadn’t Phinney given her some pointers? Weren’t there any little winter critters willing to sound the alarm?
Where was Melville? She hadn’t been that fast.
“C’mon, detective, c’mon,” she muttered. Her foot shook in its boot. That was a bad sign. She needed to hunker down, concentrate. The excess movement distracted her, sapped her.
Joe watched her, brow furrowed. “I take it he didn’t go home. You don’t look so good.”
At least one of them was steady. Kitty was thankful for the practice she had bullied Joe into. He was far better prepared than she was this go-round.
“Where is he?” Kitty stood up and craned her head. Melville had been right behind her. A feeling was rising in her gut, and she knew with certainty it was panic. The hum in her ears increased to a roar. Hold it together; push it down.
“Melville,” she screamed and wished she could take it back as it left her mouth.
The word fell flat into the void without a hint of an echo, and she knew this was no almost Christmas Eve joy-of-the-season calm. This was the silence before everything hit the fan.
“We better go get him,” Joe said, and he wormed his way out through the sticks.
“Don’t go.” Kitty pressed back against the black trunk of the oak.
Joe shot her an incredulous look. “He’s out there, Kit. We have to bring him in.”
Kitty let him leave. He was so matter of fact, and she was terrified. Frozen, she didn’t want to leave the nest, the safety. But the only way out of this mess was through it.
“Just go,” she said, and she shoved herself forward. Turning sideways, she wiggled through the gap in the stakes.
Joe hadn’t gone far before a dark shape materialized at the other end of the clearing. Kitty saw with relief the human silhouette of the big detective and ran toward them.
“Geez,” she heard Melville saying as she approached. “Foot got stuck on a root and I tripped. Something under the snow got me.”
He pulled his arm away from his chest where he had it nestled. He held his hand out into the moonlight for them to see. The sharpened tip of the punji stick Joe had thrown away yesterday punctured the soft web of skin between his thumb and his index finger.
“That’s not so bad,” Melville grunted, and he reached for the spearhead.
Against the skin of his palm, Kitty could see a darker stain, a l
iquid stain.
“No, not here,” she moaned. The panic surged up her throat, hot and acid. It shoved her voice out ahead of it, and it came out as a shout. “Don’t bleed. Don’t bleed here.”
Melville grasped the spearhead and yanked it out. A scarlet spray hit the pristine snow at his feet.
Kitty fell apart.
The heat of Melville’s blood burned tiny red tunnels in the snow. Motion at the edge of her vision caught Kitty’s eye, and she looked up to see the shadows under the trees come alive, coalesce into huge shaggy forms and cross the distance between them in an instant. Her fingers were three feet thick and she couldn’t get them to work right, couldn’t get them to wrap themselves around the gun. When the carbine dropped out of her hands, it opened a long gash in the snow that immediately caved in on itself and buried the rifle six inches deep.
Melville yelled something—at least she thought it was Melville. Somebody answered, and it probably was Joe but it might have been her. She didn’t know, couldn’t tell. She kept staring down at where the gun used to be.
Kitty dropped to her knees, scrabbling in the snow. She couldn’t find the gun, couldn’t dig fast enough. She hadn’t been able to hold Phinney at the end either. Pulling her gloves off, she threw them aside and plunged her hands into the snow. Her coat sleeves shoved up and the sensitive skin on the inside of her wrists throbbed with the cold. Above her, it was all noise. Shots whistling and yelling and growls. Heat seared her eyes. She couldn’t see. Running her hands across her face, they came away wet. Tears.
Kitty sat back on her haunches, lifted her face to the moon, and howled. Four months of guilt and stress built up inside of her tumbled out in a rush of noise.
Get it together. Get it together.
How long she might have screamed she didn’t know. Suddenly Joe was in her face, fingers digging painfully into her jaw. His teeth were clenched together and his voice hissed out. “Get up and help us.”
His face disappeared and the pain in her jaw let go. Kitty shut her mouth.
She raised her eyes from the snow. Two wolves still circled warily, and Joe and Melville rotated to keep them in front. Closer to the tree line, several circular areas of crushed-down snow were coated with blood. Nothing lay there, so at least one wolf was already out of the picture.
