by Kali Harper
If the wolf I saw was wild, how did it get inside The Laughing Bean? If it was a shifter, how come I’d never seen it before? And most importantly, where did it come from?
“I left him a voicemail,” Ida said as she sat back down, holding her cell phone in her hands as she stared at the screen. “This isn’t like him. He almost always picks up. If he’s on a case, he calls before he goes out. I hate not knowing where he is.”
I could relate. I might not have known Lance for as long or been related to him, but I could easily see why she was worried. “I’m worried about him too,” I told her, hoping my voice didn’t shake as much as I thought it did.
“What now?” Kat asked after a long moment.
Glancing around the room, everyone was glued to their phones, including Ronan. Granted, he was probably making a list of supplies he’d need to recover his losses, but no one was paying attention to us.
“Let’s slip out the back,” I told the two of them. “With the town mostly cleared out, it should be easy enough to go around unnoticed.”
“You’ll get in trouble,” Ida said, dialing Lance again.
“We’ll find him,” I told her, placing a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll call you if I learn anything new.”
“Please do. I’m going to wait here in case he walks in. You two be careful, okay?”
“We will,” Kat and I said, stepping toward the small door in the back so no one would see us leave.
Sammy walked at my heels, not saying a word as we slipped outside. When I didn’t spot Max or any of the other officers around the corner, I waved Kat outside where we took a moment to look up and down the street. It was so bad, I half expected a tumbleweed to roll by.
Instead, we were met with silence. No dogs barking, no birds, nothing. Even the air was different, almost suffocating me as I debated which way to go first.
“Max will probably be waiting at the bottom of the hill for animal control,” Kat suggested, glancing in the opposite direction.
“Then we go this way. Are you sure you’re up for this? Sammy and I can—”
“And leave me out of it again? I almost missed the entire investigation when you went to Fairmout without me.”
“It wasn’t like it was planned, Kat.” I sort of just fell into these things.
“No, but how can you solve a mystery without your trusty sidekick?” She stroked a pose and placed both hands on her hips.
“You look more like a superhero.” All she needed was a cape.
“You can get me my own outfit for my birthday.”
“Deal, but if anything dicey happens—”
“I’ll get on your broomstick like a good shifter and hide in your bathroom.”
“Hopefully not as a fox this time,” I said, starting toward the back alley leading to the other side of town.
“Fingers crossed.”
Chapter Seven
Out of all the years I’d lived in Emberdale, the town only closed once. A freak snowstorm had rolled through, dumping more snow than I knew what to do with. At the time, I’d actually enjoyed seeing the streets so bare and all the shops closed for business. There was a serenity to it, almost like taking a deep breath before jumping back into our busy lives.
But now, in the middle of autumn, I wanted nothing more than for the flakes to fall. With the sun shining overhead and the air warm enough to go without a coat, my wish for snow would have to wait. Snow would make it easier to track things, though.
“Are you sure Connie can’t control the weather?” I asked Kat, breaking the silence between us. I knew Connie could predict the weather, and while Kat had told me weeks ago controlling the weather was a big no-no, maybe folks could make an exception.
“If she could, what would you ask her to do?” Kat asked, stopping at the corner and looking both ways out of habit.
“I’d ask her to make it snow so we could actually see the wolf’s footprints. There wouldn’t happen to be a tracking spell we could use, would there?”
“Not since the last time you asked. Looks like we’ll have to find it some other way.”
“You actually want to run into that thing again?” Sammy asked, his words coming out in a strange meow.
“Sam, you okay?”
“Fine,” he coughed. “I’m fine. But you, on the other hand… have you lost your mind?” He was looking at Kat, but his question was directed at me.
“Max obviously doesn’t believe a word I say, and until we get a hold of Lance, we—”
“Have to prove ourselves? Stop trying to please everyone, Astrid. That wolf’s dangerous. You saw the blood on its chest. It’s a killer.”
“We don’t know if it’s killed for sure,” I said, fighting back my nerves. “Maybe someone’s injured and needs our help.”
“Help Max can give.”
Now I really wished Sammy had been able to smell something over the blood in The Laughing Bean. As it was, we had no idea what we were looking for. A wolf, obviously, but beyond that, it could’ve been wild, a shifter playing tricks, or even one that had gone over the edge.
“I hate to say it, but Sammy’s right,” Kat said as we crossed Main Street. “Even if you have your broom out—which you should, by the way—that doesn’t mean you won’t freeze if we happen to find the wolf.”
“You did freeze up before,” Sammy said, sitting back on his haunches once we were in another alley, away from the open sidewalk.
“You scared me,” I told him. “What else did you expect me to do?” I still had no idea how he managed to jump in front of me and put up a shield the way he did. Then again, he had a lot more experience with this sort of thing. “Have you ever fought shifters before?”
“You mean before Thomas?” He gave my question some thought, scenting the air. “I’ve dealt with wild ones before, but most shifters know better than to face a witch with her familiar.” He got quiet then, the fur along his back standing on end. “Someone’s coming.”
Without saying a word, Kat took my hand and practically dragged me behind a nearby dumpster, pressing a finger to her lips as she crouched low to the ground. Sammy hid as well, staying under the blue bin in front of us.
From where we were, I couldn’t see much at all. Of course, that didn’t mean I was about to peer around the dumpster. Not knowing what else to do, I motioned for Kat to scoot over, then got on my stomach so I could see underneath the bin.
Sammy’s form was a dark blob right on the edge of my peripheral vision, and at first, I didn’t hear or see anything. However, the longer we waited, the more on edge I became. Every breath I took shook with nerves as we watched and waited.
Kat lowered onto her stomach and pointed right at me.
“What?” I asked in a low whisper.
“Get out your broom.”
“Be quiet,” Sammy hissed, glaring at us.
With a wave of my hand, I summoned my broom and held it at my side, close to the pavement. Sammy’s tail swished from side to side, stopping when he tucked it under his paws. Then, from my right, I noticed another set of paws.
Meeting Kat’s gaze, I nodded in the animal’s direction so she could see. Her breath caught as the three of us backed up against the building the best we could. Considering there was a wild animal walking down the alley, I frantically looked for a way to escape without it noticing us.
Sammy stopped me, his form shivering ever so slightly as he placed a ward around us. “Stay still.”
First, he criticizes me for freezing up, and now I’m not allowed to move?
Kat squeezed my hand, her eyes fixed on the four dark paws walking on the other side of the dumpster. A long muzzle lowered close to the ground as the animal—a wolf, I realized—sniffed around. There’s no way he isn’t going to catch us. Sammy’s wards were used for protection, but he never said anything about them hiding our scent.
“I thought I smelled something familiar,” a deep baritone rumbled in front of us, his voice sending a chill down my spine.
&nb
sp; Kat started to stand. “Ivan?”
“What’re you doing?” I asked, grabbing for her hand which was out of reach. “He’ll see you!”
“Astrid, relax. He isn’t a threat,” she said, climbing out from behind the dumpster.
“Then why is he prowling the streets as a wolf?” What if he’s the wolf?
“Such a frightened little rabbit,” the wolf laughed—Ivan according to Kat who’d already stepped out into the open.
Meeting Sammy’s gaze as he continued to hide under the bin, I decided to stay right where I was, keeping my broom out in case this shifter was the same one we were looking for.
“Never mind her,” Kat said. “What’re you doing here?”
“I’m supposed to meet up with Lance, but he’s not answering his phone. I thought I might sniff things out a bit before I hit up the station.”
Sammy was the next one to step out into the open, and once he was sitting in front of Ivan, I joined them. In his wolf form, Ivan was a lovely timber with a dark patch on his back. His coat didn’t match the gray one we’d seen at Joe’s, so why was I still nervous?
“Ivan? As in Lance’s old classmate?” I asked, keeping a few feet away from him as Sammy stood between us.
“The one and only,” he said, a wolfish grin spreading across his face. “Man, lighten up. You’re acting like someone’s dead.”
None of us said anything.
“No one died, did they?” he looked at Kat, shifting into his human form as he did.
Ivan wasn’t at all what I’d expected. His frame was smaller and not nearly as muscular as Lance, his blond hair so thick with gel, I wondered if he ever had to brush it at all. His leather jacket and jeans made him look like a total greaser.
“Kat, what’s going on?” Ivan asked.
“You sort of rolled into town at a bad time,” she said, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.
“Funny how that happens,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.
“Hold on a second. No one’s dead, but the town’s empty?” Ivan asked.
“Why are you walking around as a wolf?” I asked him before Kat could say anything.
“It’s how I travel. When Lance didn’t show up at the airport and didn’t answer his cell, I decided to run the whole way here in order to save him a bit of time. I figured he was in the middle of something and was honestly hoping for a better welcome than this. What’s going on?” he asked again, his tone harder than before.
“Everyone’s gathered in the hall. Well, almost everyone,” Kat told him.
“Kat!” I said, glaring at her.
“What? He’s a detective, same as Lance. He can help.”
“How do we know he isn’t behind all of this?” I couldn’t believe I had to ask. The town was in chaos and he just happened to drop by in his shifted form? Something didn’t feel right.
“Is he the same wolf you saw earlier?” Kat asked. When I averted my gaze, she continued. “See?”
“But he could’ve brought friends. Maybe he turned someone else.”
“Turned?” Ivan laughed. “She’s new, right? Look, darlin’, the way shifters work is far and away from whatever it is you’ve read in books. We don’t turn anyone. Not the best of us, anyway. In fact, it’s forbidden. We have enough to worry about with our own packs without adding to them. But you wouldn’t know that, would you?”
I shrunk away from him. “I’m sorry, it’s…”
“Lance is missing,” Kat explained, taking my hand in hers. “We haven’t heard from him since last night.”
“Who spoke to him last?” Ivan asked, pulling a pen and pad of paper from his back pocket, which made me miss Lance even more.
“I-I did,” I said, not meeting his gaze.
“Is anyone else missing?”
“Over half the town,” Kat informed him.
“More than that,” I said. “Max had everyone gather, but there was only one-third of the town present. Some folks are homesick. Others aren’t answering their phones… including Lance.”
“And I take it Max isn’t running things as well as you’d like.” When I looked at Ivan, he smiled. “Lance has complained about your chief’s participation before. He’s more inclined to fill himself with sweets than to hoof it around town after a suspect.”
“Sounds like something he’d do,” Sammy said, rising to his paws to investigate Ivan. “Where’d you say you’re from?”
“Maggie’s old familiar, right?”
“Answer the question.”
“I never said where I was from, but if you must know, I’m moving back.”
“You are?” we all asked.
“I thought Lance said you were only coming by to check out the area,” I said, trying to recall what Lance had told me the day before.
“I was, but it’s been ages since I’ve been to Emberdale. You never know how much you miss something until you go for a visit.”
“And you’re hoping to take over Lance’s job, is that it?” I took another step toward him, stopping when Kat placed a hand on my shoulder.
“Astrid, back off,” she said. “He and Lance go way back. He’d never do that to him, would you, Ivan?”
“No, especially not to a packmate.”
The air rushed from my lungs and I struggled for breath. “Pack…”
“Mate?” Kat finished for me. Apparently, this was news to her as well. “There are—were three shifters in this town—now two, and you’re telling me Lance is a sleeper?”
Ivan stifled a laugh. “A sleeper? God, no. Has he seriously kept it to himself all this time? Man, and here I thought he’d come to terms with it.” He paused then, glancing up and down the alleyway. “Any chance we can go someplace private? As much as I love the smell of rotten garbage, I think we’d all be more comfortable somewhere else, preferably a place with food. I’m starved!”
“You’re always starved,” Kat told him with a laugh, taking the lead as we headed for her shop.
“Sounds like someone else I know,” I said, ducking into the back of As The Page Turns with Ivan and Sammy following behind us.
“Constant hunger plagues all shifters, I swear.”
Not all of them. Was Lance really a shifter? A werewolf like Ivan?
Beside me, Sammy kept to himself, though I had a feeling his thoughts were as loud as my own. For the second time in under twenty-four hours, I wished I could hear his thoughts along with Kat’s. I’d never heard hers before, but not being able to speak mind-to-mind with Sammy ever since I asked Morpheus to put a block on my projections was starting to get uncomfortable.
I missed hearing Sam in the back of my head and having private conversations with him even if we were in a crowded room. Right then, more than anything else, I wanted to know what he was thinking. Did he trust Ivan? Or was his feline-smile all for show?
Sammy certainly seemed at ease around the shifter, but then he was experienced and had probably faced worse in the past.
“It isn’t much,” Kat said, rummaging through her office before presenting us with a box of stale crackers and a half-eaten bag of potato chips, “but it should keep you sated for now.”
“Nice to see things haven’t changed,” Ivan said, shoving a handful of crackers into his mouth. “You always did prefer snacking over real meals.”
“I’m getting better at it,” she said, sitting beside me on the floor as Ivan completed our tiny circle. “I’m eating fruits and veggies now.”
“Okay, you’ve eaten,” I interrupted them. “Start talking. What do you mean when you say Lance is your packmate?”
Ivan dusted his hands off on his jeans and set the box of crackers aside. “Exactly as it sounds. We both became shifters at the same time, under the same alpha.”
“I thought you said you couldn’t turn others.”
“We can’t—or, well, we prefer not to. Other packs work differently. As for ours, you’re invited into it.”
“Then bitten,” I finished for him with
a nod. I knew how this worked. I’d read about it a hundred times before. A human’s bitten by a wild animal, then turns into a hairy beast during the full moon.
“Have you taught her nothing?” Ivan asked, looking at Kat.
Kat shrugged. “I was born a shifter. I never saw the need to tell her about any others. How did I not know about Lance? I would’ve sniffed him out for sure.”
“That makes two of us,” Sammy said, “but Lance is human.”
“He smells human,” Ivan corrected him. “Back when we were first recruited into the Riverwood Pack, Lance was excited. Thrilled, even. He embraced his wolf the same way Kat embraces her fox. He accepted it. Cherished it.”
“So what happened?” I asked, feeling a little more at ease around him than I did before.
Ivan let out a long breath and bowed his head. “One night while on patrol, a hunter spotted us with one other. Lance and I ran far into the woods, keeping one of the newer recruits between us. He was our responsibility. Newly shifted, it was up to us to protect him.”
My stomach turned. I could already see where this was going.
“A pack’s loss, no matter how new the wolf, hits us all differently. Some seek revenge, some blame themselves, and others like Lance suppress his other form with enchantments and charms. He blames himself for what happened as he was the one running in the back. Thing is, the hunter aimed for him and missed, hitting our newblood instead.
It was no fault of his own, and being in a pack, you accept it as a fact of life. Hunters hunt. When Lance visited me this past summer in California, he actually let his wolf out. He met with our alpha and took part in our rituals, so I thought he might’ve finally accepted his wolf along with the fact that what happened to Eric wasn’t his fault.”
“What color is his wolf?” Sammy asked before I could do the same.
“Black. Pitch black and one of the most beautiful wolves I’ve ever seen.”
I released a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
“Astrid, are you okay?” Ivan placed a hand on my shoulder, smiling when I met his gaze. “You went pale there for a second.”
“I, uh… the wolf Sammy and I saw was gray. Not Lance.”
Now it was Ivan’s turn to release a shaky breath. “I understand your concern, but if Lance has kept his wolf at bay this long, then I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”
