Yes, there was chemistry between us, but he was a savvy businessman, and I suspected he could easily allow his head to overrule his heart.
As for me, I didn’t know what to think or hope for. I cleaned up the kitchen and straightened the living room, but I was restless. There had to be something I could do for Veronica and her sister. I hadn’t been modest when I told Jared I didn’t think I could manage the store. If Veronica’s sister was so ill she needed Veronica there, it meant she couldn’t be in the shape needed to train and supervise a new manager. I’d never done retail, and the thought of ordering inventory I knew nothing about made me cringe.
My phone rang, and I answered without looking, thinking that maybe Jared was coming back and would invite me to hang out with him in some cute little bed and breakfast, where we could—
“Hey, Kyra, it’s Cindy.”
“Oh, hey.” I tried to sound happy to hear from her. “Jared’s on his way back to Boston.”
“Oh, no. Did things not go well with you two?”
I almost held the phone out and looked at it disbelievingly. “Things are fine. I just thought you might be worried about him.”
She laughed, and I imagined her dismissive hand wave. “No, not at all. He can take care of himself. I wanted to talk to you.”
“What about?”
“It’s too complicated to go into now. Can you meet for lunch tomorrow?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Okay, just let me know. I’ll be up there, anyway, so it’ll be easy for me to pop by for a quick lunch and chat whenever you’re available. Jared wants me to help him scout out potential commercial space.”
We said our goodbyes and hung up. I couldn’t figure out why she was so interested in me or what she wanted to talk to me about. But then, Jared seemed to be attracted to me, so maybe it was a sibling thing, and she wanted to check me out. I’d never done that for my brothers, but they and I weren’t that close.
Meanwhile, too much energy coursed through my nerves for me to sleep.
Maybe the police missed something at Crystal’s place that a wolf could smell. It seemed a long shot, but the moon already sang in my blood, and despite my efforts to the contrary, a strange giddiness kept making me smile when I thought about Jared’s kisses. The two combined would mean a sleepless night unless I truly wore myself out.
A quick internet search showed me the address and directions for where I needed to go. Now all I had to do was figure out how to get out of the house.
A memory tickled my brain, that Nona had once had a dog. If I closed my eyes, I could picture where the dog went in and out, and it wasn’t the kitchen. There was a door off the laundry room that had stuff piled around it, but I found what I thought I remembered—a doggy door. Not ideal, but necessary.
I made sure the rest of the house was locked up, took off my clothes, folded them on top of the dryer, and changed.
11
Nocturnal Wanderings
Crystal had lived in a duplex close to the main Salem State University campus. I wasn’t sure what I thought I would find, but I did feel better after loping through the shadows and chasing a few nocturnal critters. I didn’t stop to catch and eat any, but my wolf senses were satisfied by the chase.
Different scents assailed me on my trip—the brine of the air, the bitter scent of fallen leaves, and the plastic of the Halloween and festival decorations. But when I arrived at my target address, I found a smell both new and familiar—the same green, floral scent that had been in my kitchen. It was most concentrated around the back door of the duplex, and I wished I could get in and sniff around. Not that I would be able to find anything, and I knew better than to disturb a crime scene, but still, I wanted to do something.
Then it occurred to me—as a wolf, I could follow the more recent scent trail from my own kitchen door to see where it led.
First I trotted back and forth across the yard to see if anything of the trail from two days before lingered. There were areas here and there, but one spot in particular intrigued me. Apparently whoever it was had stood there for a while, and when I walked over it, the ground felt different, barely softer. A human in shoes wouldn’t have noticed it, but I did with my bare paws.
A noise made me look up, and I saw the same teenager from the store that afternoon. No, not her, but one who looked very like her, except she was dressed in seventeenth-century costume like one of the witch girls in the museum dioramas. She disappeared, and I shook my head to clear the ringing echo in my ears. The encounter had been brief enough to make me question my perception but strong enough that my fur stood on end. I made a quick note of the spot in the yard and returned to the street, where I felt I could breathe again.
I backtracked to my grandmother’s house and found what I was looking—er, smelling—for. The trail led to the north, opposite the direction of Crystal’s duplex and straight to the commons and the galleria where Veronica’s shop was.
This perplexed me. I knew Veronica wasn’t the perpetrator—presumably she’d been working when whoever it was had broken into my grandmother’s house—and she didn’t have the right scent, anyway.
Voices alerted me to someone coming, and I ducked between a garbage can and a wall, hoping I’d blend in. The smells of melted cotton candy and rancid-turning festival food made me want to hold my breath.
“I know you’re jet-lagged, but this can’t wait,” Veronica was saying to a man and a woman following her. The woman wore a hat and a coat with a turned-up collar that kept me from seeing her face clearly.
The man, who had reddish-blond hair, yawned. “I slept on the plane, but Lonna didn’t.”
“Couldn’t,” the woman said, and my ears flattened at the sound of her name and her voice. I remembered standing on the front porch of a grand old manor house and arguing with her and then Matt telling me I needed to get out because I’d been accused of impersonating her to get her fired.
Veronica held a hand up, and the three stopped. I silenced the low growl that had emerged and tried not to do anything that would further draw attention to me.
“Who’s there?” Lonna’s mental voice came to me, and I tried to think of darkness and nothing else, but the image of the disdainful look she’d given me flashed through my brain.
“Kyra?” she asked out loud.
“Ah.” Veronica looked straight at me. “Come on out, you’re caught.”
The man, who I’d figured out was Max Fortuna, looked amused. “So this is the infamous Kyra Ellison.”
I came out from behind the trash can with my tail between my legs. If I’d been in human form, I would have been afire with a blush.
“You might as well come in, too,” Veronica said. “I have a robe you can borrow, and then we’ll all talk.”
After changing in the store behind the desk again, I put on Veronica’s robe and called out, “Okay, I’m decent.”
The robe smelled of Veronica—damp earth, fresh night air, and the sharpness of flint. It was too bad I couldn’t tell the police she had the wrong layers of scent to be the perpetrator. Then I’d probably be locked up for a different reason.
They came in, and we sat in a circle. Veronica closed the door and murmured something, and the sound of something snapping into place made me jump.
“Good concealment spell,” Max said with an approving nod.
“Thank you. I can only do it with the aid of the crystals. I promise this won’t take long,” she said.
“What about her?” Lonna asked and inclined her head to me. She was still lovely, if tired-looking. I remembered that feeling, of being off an international flight and wanting nothing more than a shower and a bed but having to go to one more meeting, and I almost felt sorry for her.
“I suspect she is here because she has information that’s relevant to what I called you about,” Veronica said.
“The murder or the weather wizard?” Max pulled out his phone. “Kurt and Merlin will be here in the morning to take him into custody.”
I stood. “No!”
All eyes turned toward me.
“You can’t do anything to him,” I said. “He’s a free citizen of the United States of America. You can’t just arrest him.”
“He’s potentially dangerous.” Lonna cocked her head and fixed me with a measuring look. “Do you have some sort of relationship with him?”
I only glared at her. She’d falsely accused me of something in the past, so I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of something else she could use against me.
“There is some mutual interest, but also a lot of fear,” Veronica said. “But that is not important at the moment.” She looked at Max and Lonna. “Neither is the weather wizard himself. He is untrained, only coming into what he can do, but there is a greater danger.”
“What?” Lonna cut her eyes to me.
I returned my gaze to her, and we sat in challenge until Max said, “Enough.”
My tip twitched, and I caught myself before I bared my teeth. “What is your problem with me?” I asked Lonna. “I haven’t done anything to you, yet the pack thinks I did.”
“What do you mean?” She looked genuinely confused.
“They think I impersonated you to try to get you fired from your job. Former job. As a social worker.”
“Oh.” She shook her head, and her cheeks turned pink. “I did ask about you, but that ended up being something completely different. I ended up leaving the country before I could go back and explain.”
I crossed my arms and sat. “Leaving them thinking I was trying to hurt you. I got kicked out of our pack.”
“I am truly sorry,” she said. “There was some strange metaphysical stuff going on. I never actually accused you of anything, just asked where you were because something odd had happened to me, and we somewhat resemble each other.”
I wanted to be angry, but I was too tired. “Whatever you say. You’re here now, so you need to help me with the current situation. Someone’s after Veronica. And me.”
She nodded and at least had the sense to look abashed. “I agree, and I’ll call Matt in the morning and straighten things out.”
“Thank you.”
Max cleared his throat. “Veronica, is that what you meant by something more urgent—that you’re in danger?”
The panicked look he gave her made me wonder why he should be so concerned about one frumpy, albeit talented witch. It only confirmed what I suspected—that she was here for more reason than to help her ill sister with the shop.
“Yes. Someone is trying to interfere with my mission. That one—” she pointed to me “—has sniffed it out, so to speak. That’s another reason I wanted you to come.” Now she took on a frightening aspect, her eyes dark. “So you could interrogate her and wipe her memory if she’s not trustworthy.”
“Uh.” I stood again. “Well, this has been fun, but I should be going.”
“Sit,” Veronica said, and my knees buckled, bringing my ass down hard on the chair. “Maximilian, go ahead and test her.”
12
Revelations II
I tried to move, but my limbs hung leaden in the chair. I recalled that Crystal had been poisoned. Had someone slipped something to me? The only person who could have was Jared, and I didn’t think it was him. Or I hoped not.
“Don’t fight it,” Lonna said. “You have a witch, a wizard, and a wizard-werewolf hybrid magically holding you in place.”
“Who’s the freak?” I asked through clenched teeth.
“I prefer the term truly unique individual,” she said with a small smile. “Although there are more of us than you’d suspect. Max?”
“Right.” He stood and put a hand on my head. “One has already died, and others—likely including yourself—are in danger. Consequently, the information you hold could save your life as well as those of others. Do you consent to this interrogation?”
“Well, when you put it like that…” Nope, still couldn’t move. “Do I have a choice?”
“Always.” The shadows under his eyes had deepened, and it seemed to pain him to have to do whatever he was doing to me.
I didn’t have anything to hide, but I hated what this had come to. But Jared was also in danger. If I could do something to get in their good graces and then leverage that to help him, I’d cooperate.
“I consent, but only on one condition.”
Max raised his eyebrows. “What?”
“That you will cure me if you have, indeed, found the remedy for CLS.”
He sighed. “I can’t promise you that because while we’re close, we’re not quite there. We’re still testing what we have and working out the kinks.”
“So the leak wasn’t accurate.” The little part of me that had expected to be disappointed sent a jolt of I told you so bitterness through my gut.
“No, but I promise to keep you apprised of our progress. Will that work?”
“Sure.”
“Good. First, what do you know of the Lycanthrope Council?”
“Not a whole lot, only that they’re in Scotland.”
He nodded. “Good. And what about the Institute for Lycanthropic Reversal?”
“Only that you’ve managed to come up with a cure for lycanthropy, or that you’re close.” My tongue tripped along. “But there are those who don’t think it should be cured and those who feel the remedy should be available to everyone, even those born with CLS.”
He continued to ask me questions, and my mouth moved of its own accord, sometimes saying things that had been outside my awareness until he asked about them. Then we got to the strange spot I’d discovered outside of Crystal’s apartment.
Lonna leaned forward. “The ground was different? Like how? Like someone buried something?”
Max removed his hand from my head and shook it.
“That’s all I can do,” he said.
I glanced up, then away. He hadn’t asked me about Jared, for which I was thankful. At least he had kept his questions limited to the murder and respected my personal privacy.
Or maybe my relationship with Jared—if it could even be called a relationship—didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.
I chose to answer Lonna’s question even though I was no longer compelled. “It’s hard to explain. It’s more like the dirt was a different type.”
“Protected, perhaps.” Veronica drummed her fingers on her thigh. “We should take a look at it.”
“You shouldn’t.” Lonna stood and stretched. “You’re a person of interest in a murder, remember? If you’re found there, it will only hurt your case. Kyra, I know you’re exhausted from your changing, but can you lead us there?”
“She needs to be careful, too,” Veronica said with a sigh. “A tip has associated her with the murder.”
The thought made my bones ache preemptively, but I knew what needed to be done. “I can take you and show you the spot on one condition.”
“What?” Max asked.
“You have your people leave Jared alone.”
Max rubbed his eyes. “All right, but I at least need to talk to him.”
I tried not to grin too widely, but the pieces to solve my own puzzles were falling into place nicely. If I could arrange for Jared to talk to Max and Lonna without being in danger from the wizards, he could get the cure for CLS. Then I’d have an excuse to spend more time with him and be a test subject, too. Perhaps then I’d have the chance at a normal professional and personal life.
I walked behind the counter. “Just give me a moment to change.”
The change so exhausted me that Max and Lonna allowed me to crash out in the backseat of their rental car. It felt like I had just drifted off to sleep when we arrived at the crime scene tape-surrounded duplex, and I shook myself awake.
Veronica had loaned them some shovels from the fool’s gold display in her store, for which I was glad. I didn’t think I had the strength to dig. I showed them the spot, and Max held up a hand before Lonna could lower her shovel. I looked around,
and my fur stood on end. It felt like something watched us.
“There’s something strange here, a spell or something that makes this the most uninteresting spot in the yard to a wizard.” He cleared the fallen leaves, and I sniffed, but all I could smell was the mixture of sharp autumn decay and dampness characteristic of leaves that had been on the ground for a while.
“Can you detect anything?” he asked me and Lonna.
“No,” Lonna said and knelt. Her nostrils flared, and I guessed she was trying to get her inner wolf to come out.
Something brushed past me, and I jumped back at the sight of another black wolf that didn’t have a scent. My lips curled in a snarl.
“It’s okay,” Max said. “Lonna’s inner wolf is sometimes an outer wolf, sort of a guardian spirit.”
“Can she change, too?” I asked, fascinated.
“Yes,” Lonna said, and her voice echoed through the other wolf, which sniffed at the spot.
“There is something dangerous to lycanthropes, but it is buried. The wolves should stand back,” it said and then vanished.
“She’s useful like that,” Lonna told me. “Let’s stand over there.”
I didn’t want to stand near the woods, where the shadows gathered, and I glanced around while Max dug.
Finally he unearthed a metal box. He opened it and pulled out a sheaf of papers and an envelope. He rubbed his fingers together.
“It’s bank statements and some sort of powder. Veronica said Crystal was poisoned, right?”
“Yes.”
He stood. “I’m going to call my contacts here and get them to rush the autopsy. Lonna, take Kyra back to her place. I’ll walk back to town with this stuff. I don’t want you anywhere near it.”
“Will you be all right?” she asked.
“Your wolf said it was dangerous to you, not to me. I’ll take it to Veronica’s place. Meet me there.”
He replaced the dirt in the hole and covered it with leaves.
Lonna took me back to my place without saying much. She didn’t have to—she emanated worry.
Lycanthropy Files Box Set: Books 1-3 Plus Novella Page 88
