A Light So Cruel (Pioneer Falls Book 3)

by Heather Davis

  “Morgan!” I felt a rush of relief, that Morgan was safe. Somehow he’d realized Bob was in there, too. How had I missed that smell?

  One EMT helped Morgan to sit on the sidewalk. Another worked with a firefighter to ease Bob Murphy onto a gurney.

  I lifted my nose to the air, this time, catching something distinctive beyond the fire—the smell of wolf, forest, old-man cologne. I swiveled and saw the Smiths standing in front of the hardware store having some kind of a heated discussion. Nathaniel looked ready to strangle Jonah.

  The stooped figure next to the arguing men was Ezra—his white hair scraggly and his eyes like soulless black holes in his wrinkled face. Frowning, he pulled his rain poncho up around his shoulders. Then he seemed to notice me watching him. His nose twitched as he sniffed in my direction. His lips lifted in a wide grin and gave me a nod.

  I shivered in disgust. “Are you serious?” The old wolf seemed really pleased to see Bob’s place on fire and even happier to see me and Morgan in distress.

  “Lily!” Dad growled. “Go see if Morgan’s going to the hospital for observation. We should try to avoid that, if possible.”

  I snapped to attention, realizing Dad was right. I ran to Morgan’s side, crouching down next to him. “What were you thinking?”

  “I could smell Bob was still in there,” he said, his voice choked. He looked up at me, his eyes watery, soot smeared across the bridge of his nose, his forehead. “He must have come back to lock up after we were there. I wasn’t going to let him die. You’re right, no matter if he’s a hunter. This isn’t what we do.”

  My heart melted, but I was also angry. “You could’ve been killed.”

  “I thought it’d be easier to pull Bob out. He was heavier than I expected.”

  “Lily,” the EMT said, and I noticed it was Paige Newman, who’d been in Cooper’s high school class. She shooed me back. “Let me work on him, okay?”

  Morgan frowned, but let her fit the oxygen tube beneath his nostrils. Paige said she didn’t want Morgan going into shock and wrapped a space blanket around his shoulders. We sat there for a few minutes, Morgan’s eyes fluttering a little as he took deep breaths.

  Around us, the firefight continued, with the hoses turned full blast on the burning hunks of metal. Then, another small explosion rattled the shop, another gas can rupturing. I let out a little scream and crouched lower on the curb next to Morgan.

  The sound seemed to rouse Morgan from his foggy state. He glanced toward the ambulance. “Will Bob be all right?”

  Paige grunted she didn’t know and waved at a colleague working with Bob in the back of the aid car. “Stay still. Breathe.”

  “No, no. I’ll be fine,” Morgan said, pulling the oxygen tube from under his nose. “I heal quickly.” He stood up, seeming a little wobbly.

  “He should go to the hospital,” Paige said, giving me a sharp look.

  “I know that’s protocol, but I think I’m fine,” Morgan said.

  “You’re going to refuse treatment?”

  “Sorry, Paige. He’s stubborn,” I said.

  Dad opened one of the back doors of his squad car and set Morgan inside, with his feet out on the pavement. He pulled a water bottle from his console and handed it to Morgan. “It’s bad enough with Lily’s heroics. You’ve got to rein in this instinct.”

  Morgan nodded, his eyes downcast as he hacked out another cough.

  “Dad,” I said, pointing over to the corner, where I could see Ezra and his sons piling into his truck. “They came out to gloat. I mean, the bowling alley’s miles away— you can’t tell me they just happened to be in the neighborhood.”

  “I’m sure they’ll say they were at the inn having a beer,” Dad said. “We don’t know it was one of them we saw in the shop earlier tonight.”

  “Bob has a head wound,” Morgan added, his voice hoarse. “He was probably out before the fire was set.”

  The firefighters doused the interior with the hose, sending up a plume of grayish steam. They’d almost subdued it. The impromptu crowds that had come out to see the blaze started drifting away.

  “I can’t leave the scene yet. Do you feel well enough to walk a few blocks?” Dad asked. “Or should we have Lily go get the truck?”

  Morgan rubbed at the soot around his eyes. “I can walk.”

  The sheriff’s patrol car pulled up next to Dad’s. He gave the sheriff a wave and turned his attention back to us. “Get him a warm shower and give him lots of fluids. There’s some of Fawn’s chicken soup in the refrigerator.”

  “Wait— You want me to take him home, to our house?”

  Dad gave me a funny look. “Of course. Can you handle that?”

  I nodded, surprised at Dad’s offer of hospitality, but not wanting to argue with it. I wanted to make sure Morgan was all right if he wasn’t getting cleared at the clinic.

  “Thank you,” Morgan said as I helped him to his feet.

  Dad glanced anxiously toward the sheriff. “I’ll ask Dr. Burrows to come by in the morning.”

  I nodded. “Please tell the sheriff we saw someone in Bob’s shop earlier.”

  “And then, conveniently, you were the first on the scene? How does that look?” Dad said, his shoulders tensing.

  “But it had to be the Smiths! Did you see them?”

  “Let’s go,” Morgan said, pulling at my hand.

  I exhaled, feeling the frustration of yet another shutdown. When would Dad realize that he had to do something to stop Ezra and the evil he’d brought to town?

  Dad started helping the sheriff block the street and shoo the remaining stragglers away. The ambulance crew wheeled Bob toward the back of their rig. Bob was conscious now, trying to sit up on the gurney, looking with anguish toward his smoldering shop where some of the flames still climbed.

  A black cloud gathered overhead, forming a mass that seemed to blot out the slice of moonlight. The lamplights, the old-style ones along Main Street, cast a glow through the smoggy darkness filtering around us, crushing the weak light.

  I helped Morgan down the block, toward our house. The two of us fumbled through the toxic mist until at last we reached a clear patch of air and could smell the faintest hint of forest, the barest scent of river, beyond the burn.

  Evil had come to Pioneer Falls. Evil wrought by wolves. A cowardly evil gathering strength in the dark. And it was going to expose all of us if we allowed it to grow.

  Chapter Five

  The sight of Morgan in my lilac bathrobe made Rose and Fawn smile. He paused on the stairs, waving at the twins downstairs on the couch. I motioned for him to come on down, and then handed him one of our throw blankets. I’d put his clothes in the washer, but my guess was they were completely wrecked, even his signature green scarf. The only thing that wasn’t smoke logged was his lupine stone, and he wasn’t taking that off anyway.

  “I’ll go heat up some soup,” Fawn said after she’d stopped gawking at Morgan.

  Rose got up from the couch too, making room for Morgan to stretch out. “I’ll find a pair of Dad’s socks.”

  “Some trousers?” Morgan said, giving Rose a weak smile.

  “Just get a pair of Dad’s pajama pants and a sweatshirt,” I called as she scurried upstairs.

  Morgan lay back on the couch and I settled the blanket around him. He wasn’t coughing anymore and with all the soot cleared away, I could see there weren’t any burns on his face. Still, he looked exhausted, pale.

  “You sure you’ll be all right here? Rose doesn’t mind if you want her room.”

  “That’s not the room I’d choose,” he said, winking.

  “What else do you need?” I said, brushing his wet hair from his face.

  “Besides a kiss?”

  I indulged him, planting a careful kiss on that smile. “Done.”

  “I left the apartment without my phone and keys. Maggie must be wondering what happened,” he said as he propped himself up on the pillows.

  “I can run over there and lock up.
And I’ll get you some clean clothes for the morning,” I said, with a bit of a blush. I’d envisioned an overnight with Morgan at some point, but I hadn’t imagined it’d be under Dad’s roof, when he was at home.

  He smiled, and I wondered if he’d heard my thought.

  “The girls’ll be right here if you need anything. It’ll just take me a few minutes.” I kissed him on the forehead, then grabbed my jacket from the mudroom.

  There was a smoky, chemical tang in the air outside. It’d been about an hour since Morgan and I had left the scene, but I could still hear activity a few streets away. Big diesel truck engines rolling by. A drizzle had cleared some of the smoke, and small drops freckled my coat as I walked the few blocks to get Morgan’s stuff.

  As I turned down Third, I thought I heard steps behind me. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, my skin tingling. I glanced over my shoulder and didn’t see anyone. When I looked up, there wasn’t anything there but the cold drops of rain hitting the last of the maple leaves. Still, my skin tingled with something—a warning, the sense that I wasn’t alone.

  I thought of the vision in the woods, the ravens. But I didn’t think those creeper birds would be out at night in the rain. It was nearly midnight, I guessed. Not exactly a witching hour, but still enough of a spooky factor to make me hustle down the street. The sooner I got this errand done for Morgan, the sooner I’d be back in my warm safe house. With him.

  I paused at the corner as the sheriff’s car whizzed by. Things must be wrapping up, I thought. When I walked up Maggie’s driveway, I expected her to come running out, but she didn’t. It seemed improbable that she’d slept through the fire and noise, but maybe she’d had on one of her meditation tracks in her earbuds.

  I didn’t want to wake her now, so I climbed the stairs to the guest apartment above the garage where Morgan had been staying. The door was closed, but unlocked. I stepped inside and clicked on the lights. Then I froze, feeling flight-or-fight adrenaline pumping through my veins.

  A particular smell—of forest and wolf and new clothes—lingered in the air. It smelled like a Smith male had been in the place. Not Nathaniel, because I always caught cooking smells from him. Maybe Jonah.

  I walked toward the dresser, sniffing the air. His scent was on the drawer handles, the clothes inside. He’d been pawing through Morgan’s stuff, looking for something, maybe. But what? Morgan wore his lupine stone; he never took it off. So what Jonah thought he’d find, I didn’t know. But it must’ve been during the fire. Maybe Ezra’s pack had been watching us, waiting for an opportunity to break in to Morgan’s place.

  They knew we’d smell that they’d been by, so maybe it was an intimidation tactic. I scrunched up my nose and took a seat on the couch, looking around the room.

  Things were tidy, but not as they’d been when Morgan and I had said good night. A book or two out of order. The blanket shifted. There was something else in the air, something that wasn’t wolf, but didn’t seem familiar enough to place. Maybe Jonah hadn’t been the first. I felt a little shiver travel down my spine, thinking that a hunter could’ve been through the apartment, too.

  I got up and gathered a few of Morgan’s things, putting them into a shopping bag I found in a drawer in the kitchenette. I grabbed his phone and charger and his keys from near the door, then locked up tight. I took a few steps down the stairs, but then I heard voices. I froze, listening.

  It was Maggie, talking on her front porch to someone. “Well, that may be, but he’s a good tenant and there’s no reason to suspect anything out of line is going on there.”

  I went down a few more steps, listening.

  The other voice belonged to a man. “I’m just wondering if you’re adhering to the town ordinance about short-term rentals. For example, if you list your room on an online vacation site, there’s a special tax.”

  “He’s like family and so I’m not collecting rent from him. Also, Mike, it’s midnight. I don’t see what the emergency is here or that it’s town business,” Maggie snapped.

  “I was out anyway, with the fire and all. I don’t see how you could have slept through it.”

  I leaned around the corner in time to see Mr. Lindstrom, Tom’s dad, town council member and owner of the hardware store, leaving Maggie’s porch. I waited a beat before I knocked on Maggie’s door. The scowl on her face when she opened it again told me she’d expected it to be Mr. Lindstrom returning.

  “Sorry, people are mad that Morgan’s staying in your spare room?”

  “Oh, you heard that? No, don’t worry about it. It’s a tax revenue scheme, I’m sure.” She paused and then realized I was alone and it was super late.

  “He’s at my house, don’t worry,” I told her, then gave her a quick update, so I could hurry home to him.

  ***

  Everybody was talking about the fire the next day at school. A couple people even asked me about Morgan, since they’d heard he’d helped Bob out of the fire. During lunch, Morgan had texted me that Dr. Burrows had stopped by to check him over. That he’d been given the green light to head home. Dad had dropped Morgan off on the way to work. Despite my worries, Morgan assured me that werewolves healed quickly. Faster than humans, anyway.

  I spent the rest of the day clock-watching. I couldn’t wait to see Morgan, to see for myself that he was all right. By the time fifth period rolled around, I was pretty antsy. Kids were milling around, slow about taking their seats, but I just wanted class to get going.

  Alicia slipped into her chair and handed me her open laptop. “Here you go,” she said. “I opened the costume contest file you wanted to see.”

  That perked me up. I’d asked her about it at lunch. “Thanks,” I said, as I scrolled through the thumbnail images, looking for crowd shots. If Bob Murphy was target number one, then it was super important to find out who’d been with him, who the wolves might focus on next. “You’re sure these are all the pictures you took?”

  “Seriously?” She lowered her eyebrows at me. “At least I was there! You bailed.”

  “My dad was sick, you know that.” I kept scrolling. “These weren’t all uploaded to the staff-shared drive. I know I haven’t seen that bald spot before,” I said, pointing at a shot of the backs of a bunch of heads watching the awards presentation.

  Alicia raised an eyebrow. “I was jockeying for position around a guy dressed like Bigfoot and a couple in a unicorn costume. Anyway, every photographer edits their roll. I’m lucky to have gotten a few usable shots out of a hundred.”

  “And that’s why I don’t take the pictures for class. All of mine would be horrible,” I said, turning to give her a wink. “Any group photos in here?”

  Alicia took over the scrolling and then clicked through to another folder of pics. “I should have some from the sidewalks.” She opened another folder marked Street Scenes.

  I lowered my voice and said, “I’m kind of hoping to see all the people dressed as zombies.” I hadn’t told her anything about the hunters being dressed like zombies, just like I hadn’t told her anything about the family curse.

  Alicia was getting used to me being a little odd lately, so my comment didn’t faze her. “Here you go, weirdo,” she said with a half-smile.

  Clicking through a few of the shots, I saw a clump or two of zombies, including Mrs. Gillingham and the late Mr. Gray, in his outfit as a circus master zombie. I’d seen them arguing the night of the town festival. Mr. Gray might’ve realized Mrs. Gillingham’s true purpose for romancing him—the whole black widow thing. Maybe he’d uncovered her ties to the hunters and was acting like some kind of double agent. Or maybe he was just a lonely old werewolf, looking for female companionship. At any rate, it had cost him his life.

  “Ugh,” Alicia said, pausing on a picture of the mayor in a particularly tight superhero costume. Not something anyone needed to see, ever again. “Okay, I’ll just upload these outtakes and send you a link to the folder,” she said, shutting down her laptop.

  As the bell finally
rang, Ms. Wilson hustled in, head down. As she set her coat on the back of her chair, I noticed that her blouse was wrinkled and hung down below her cardigan. Strands of her hair, normally tamed and tied back, were loose and messy. She gave us a weak smile as she grabbed her planner from her desk. “So, let’s review where we are with assignments for the next issue,” she mumbled, flipping through it.

  Tom Lindstrom didn’t wait to be called on. “Ms. Wilson, we did that yesterday,” he said from the back of the room.

  She lifted her head, giving us a confused look. “Oh, yes. You’re right. I don’t know how I forgot that.”

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  Ms. Wilson set down her planner. “Of course, class. Just give me a minute to…” She paused, glancing nervously toward the door. “Actually, Tom, why don’t you lead the discussion? I need to retrieve my water bottle from the staff lounge. I’ll be right back.”

  Tom strode to the front of the room as Ms. Wilson left. I glanced over at Alicia, who seemed as concerned as I did. Then I slid out of my desk.

  “Where are you going?” Tom called out, but I ignored him.

  I found Ms. Wilson down the hall, making slow progress toward the lounge. “What’s going on?”

  When she turned, I saw her face was pale, her eyes red-rimmed. “Lily… You shouldn’t have left class.”

  “I know, but you’re not okay.”

  Ms. Wilson leaned against the wall, putting a hand to her stomach. “I hardly slept last night. I kept waking up feeling—nervous. Maybe I was unsettled from hearing the fire engine sirens. I barely made it out of the house this morning, I was so tired.” She glanced down at her sloppy cardigan, tucking her loose blouse inside. “Anyway, I went home during my prep period, just before this class, to fix myself up a little. And…I found that something happened in my house this morning after I left. Cabinets opened. Chairs knocked over. Papers scattered.”

  “Someone ransacked your place? Did you call the police?”

  She shook her head slowly. “Millicent… Poltergeist activity.” She pulled her phone from her pocket and showed me some photos of the rooms. Pieces of furniture were upside down on the hardwood floor. Books had been pulled off the shelves. Curtains twisted from dangling rods.