Cry Wolf

by Aurelia T. Evans

  Kelly thought Renee would be somewhat mortified if she knew just how much the werewolves in particular could discern from her scent, and that it made her more appetising to both of them.

  Kelly could handle it, though, and so could Malcolm, it seemed, when he had his own rare steak before him.

  It was a good dinner. On the other side of the table, Leslie was more animated than usual, pleased that all his people were there for him. Afterwards, Ki brought out chocolate cake, and they all retired to the living area with a game of Clue.

  Max hesitated before handing Kelly the Mrs White token. Kelly tried to keep a straight face. His inner argument passed over his face, as obvious as though he’d spoken it out loud.

  “You don’t have to give me a token,” Kelly said, taking pity on him. “I’ll just watch and gloat.”

  Renee and Ki laughed.

  “I don’t get it,” Britt said, her brow furrowed.

  “It just doesn’t seem fair for me to play a guessing game,” Kelly said, “although I do appreciate that you were willing to let me win just to be polite.”

  Britt chuckled low in her throat once she got the joke. “Is it always like that for you when you play?” she asked.

  “Most of the time, since results of games are pretty unimportant. It’s the high stakes games where it gets fuzzier,” Kelly said.

  “So Vegas is out of the question,” Jake said, kissing Britt’s hair playfully. “Go on and get that thought out of your head.”

  “Absolutely,” Kelly said. “I screw up most of the slot machines and roulette wheels anyway. When it comes to poker, I have a good poker face, but I never saw the point of playing it in the first place. However, I’m pretty good at seeing other people’s cards during casual card games, and I know the outcomes of most board games. I mostly just like to watch.”

  “So you know the end to everything?” Jake asked.

  “Most games,” Kelly said. “Not everything. And some of the things that I know the outcome to, they’re still worth the game.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Renee said, not looking at anyone, but Britt gave her a little punch on the arm anyway.

  “Then you know what’s in this packet?” Malcolm said. He had shuffled the cards and now passed them around to everyone.

  “I knew them before you shuffled,” Kelly said. She sat back and primly crossed her legs.

  He gave a tight smile, not in scepticism or irritation, just as though he found something amusing and didn’t feel like sharing. “Write them down. We’ll see whether you’re right.”

  “Do you doubt me?” Kelly raised an eyebrow, meeting his dry secret amusement and raising him a cold challenge. It had been a while since she’d had to prove her abilities. It still felt cheap to her. Talking about it didn’t bother her, but she remembered all the callings of coin flips, the rock-paper-scissors battles, the ‘is this your card?’ and ‘you hid the ring here’.

  “I wouldn’t bet against her,” Renee said.

  “See? Someone who doesn’t believe in magic trusts my magic more than you,” Kelly said to Malcolm.

  “I don’t doubt it, but call me a son of the Enlightenment. I want to see it.”

  Renee checked with Kelly, who nodded. Renee ran to her office to bring back a pad of paper.

  “I don’t know why any of this is necessary,” Leslie said, still lounging in his armchair throne. ”We all know I’m going to win.”

  Kelly gave him a grateful smile, which strangely made his own expression of contentment deepen.

  “You do have a knack, old man,” Max said.

  “Who are you calling old?” Leslie said. “In my day…”

  “Aaaaand you’re old,” Max said.

  “I concede, but it means I can tell you to shut your trap or I’ll throw you off my lawn,” Leslie said. “Damn kids.”

  Jake’s laugh filled the room. Renee had to stifle her own mad giggles as she handed Kelly a notepad.

  Kelly wrote down Mrs. Peacock in the Conservatory with the Lead Pipe and flipped the page over. She put the pad of paper on the dining room table to hide it from everyone’s eyes. Then she sat on the sofa on the other side of the coffee table, farthest away from the dining room table, so that it would be a lot harder for her to sneakily change anything.

  “Good,” Malcolm said. He sat in the armchair across from Leslie and clasped his hands, focusing his attention with false deviousness at Leslie. “Excellent. Ready for this, Leslie? Do you really think you can out-sleuth me?”

  “You never learned patience, young grasshopper,” Leslie replied. “Or attention to detail.”

  “You’re going down,” Malcolm swore.

  “I sincerely doubt that, my friend,” Leslie said mildly. The creases on his face did nothing to hide the almost childish gentleness he displayed. He was deceptively cunning, and Kelly liked him even though she was probably least acquainted with him. She sat back again, watching them all as they ribbed and jabbed at each other, slipping each other the cards when they made their guesses.

  There was only one incident.

  Renee was two people clockwise from Malcolm. Jake sat between Renee and Malcolm. The arrangement had been automatic and involuntary, Jake taking his position as alpha of the pack, protecting the most vulnerable.

  That was how Kelly thought of Renee—not as the weakest of the group, because she wasn’t. Simply the most vulnerable. It was hard to call someone weak who had gone through what she’d gone through mostly intact, doing what she’d had to do to protect her pack, though she wasn’t a shapeshifter herself.

  Vulnerable, but it was just as foolish to assume Renee was weak as it was to assume that Leslie was slightly senile in his not very old age just because he was a little absentminded. After all, he was only turning forty-three. In comparison to the rest of the pack, he was significantly older, but his mind was intensely sharp, more than anyone else in the sanctuary realised. His brain was just sharpest on another level than the reality he happened to be in at the time. Kelly could empathize—she found his mind a pleasure for hers to brush against now and then.

  Leslie set himself to the game with his usual diligence. Max, Britt and Jake were haphazard with their game play, and Ki and Malcolm had good memories and good intuition, but it was Leslie and Renee who had really figured out the game. They were both meticulous note-takers, writing something down on almost everyone’s turn.

  Malcolm’s turn came along, and he made it into the Billiard Room. He pulled Renee’s Miss Scarlet into the Billiard Room with the Knife.

  Jake couldn’t challenge his guess, but Renee slipped her card on the coffee table towards him. He carefully checked it then held it upside down to give it back to her.

  His fingers brushed against hers, and when she took the card in her hand, he wouldn’t let her fingers go. He stared intently at the place where their hands met.

  “Malcolm,” Renee said softly.

  “I’m okay,” Malcolm replied, although he sounded breathless. “Just let me…”

  He brought her hand closer, which made her stand. Jake and Britt tensed immediately, but Renee was surprisingly calm. Kelly hoped that Ki was watching, because Renee was doing exactly what she was supposed to be doing. For someone who was so nervous outside the sanctuary, she could be extraordinarily solid and quiet within it. There was a reason that although Jake was de facto alpha of the dog pack, Renee was the real alpha among her shapeshifters.

  Renee kept her card hidden and her hand still, not a single glint of fear in her eyes, although she seemed sad.

  Malcolm’s mouth was open, the better to taste as he breathed in Renee’s scent.

  “Did you hurt your hand?” Malcolm asked. “I can’t find a cut, but I smell something, and it’s good.”

  “On my forefinger, I cut it a few days ago in the greenhouse,” Renee said. ”It’s closed now.”

  “Malcolm, are you going to be okay?” Britt asked. She was braced for trouble, a sheen of sweat on her forehead.

  “Yes, I�
��ll be fine, it just…calls to me,” Malcolm said.

  Renee came a little closer, shrugging Jake’s cautionary hand off her shoulder. Her proximity made it easier for Malcolm to find the closed cut on her finger then to nuzzle down in her palm, his nose nudging the card out of his way. Renee’s pupils dilated a little, making her eyes sparkle. She reached up with her free hand and stroked Malcolm’s cheek with the backs of her fingers.

  “Let it go,” Renee said quietly. “It’s okay that it smells good to you, but you aren’t missing anything by letting it go. Can you leave it?”

  “I can,” Malcolm said. He pressed a kiss to her palm then slowly disengaged his fingers from her hand. “Thank you.”

  Renee shook her head as she sat down again. She patted Jake’s knee and let Britt take her other hand, also in reassurance. But she herself appeared mostly unshaken.

  It would take a few more years for Renee to figure out that she was one of the strongest people that Kelly knew, since Renee was convinced she was weak, simply lucky to have survived and content with that. Kelly hoped that she was still around when Renee realised otherwise.

  Now Malcolm slowly sat back in his chair. His breathing shivered out of him, and his lips were wet. There was a bulge in his jeans, not necessarily caused by Renee herself. Just her smell, being so close to it and wanting, needing to be closer. There was something terribly intimate about hunting human flesh.

  Instead of staring at Renee the rest of the game, though, Malcolm kept glancing at Max, Kelly and Ki, all sitting on the couch together. His nostrils flared now and then, especially when Renee moved, but mostly he was able to refocus on the game.

  As expected, Leslie conquered them all, although Renee would have won if the round had made it past Leslie.

  “Moment of truth,” Malcolm said to Kelly. “Did you get it right? I won’t make you do it again. I can tell it bothers you.”

  “Of course I got it right,” Kelly said. She could have conjured it over but she got up, pulling the skirt of her dress down. It was supposed to be a summer dress, midnight blue with small white polka dots and to a conservative length just below her knee. None of these things were practical for March, nor were they worn for the purpose of modesty. It had just been a while since she had worn proper clothes. She liked wearing them now for the special occasion. She wasn’t wearing shoes, though.

  She brought the notebook back and handed it to Renee. Leslie put the sleeve cards onto the board, and Renee read out Kelly’s correct answer.

  “I have been bested,” Malcolm said, grinning as he tossed his cards onto the board.

  “You know it,” Kelly said.

  “You know it,” Leslie repeated. He held his hand out to Kelly for a high-five. It felt somewhat like high-fiving a professor—which was to say that Kelly thought it was awesome. She had to swing her hair out of the way to keep it from falling in Ki’s face as she stood and leant over to celebrate their victory.

  “Happy birthday, Leslie,” Kelly said.

  “Thank you so much,” Leslie replied. “One thing about this sanctuary is that I don’t regret getting older, because it means I’ve had another wonderful year with fine company. I do regret, of course, that I have one year fewer with all of you, but it is hard to dwell on that when I am among my true family.”

  Max swept his hand through the curtain of Kelly’s hair as he reached over to shake Leslie’s hand. Then everyone stood up to shake his hand, even Malcolm, which made Leslie’s entire prematurely lined face light up. Malcolm didn’t have anything like the reaction he had with Renee. Of course, Leslie wasn’t fully human—he was a different kind of prey.

  “Another piece of cake?” Kelly asked, handing Leslie a smaller second piece on a paper plate.

  “How did you guess?” he replied. He regarded it with a little regret, but it wasn’t enough for him to say no to more homemade chocolate cake.

  “Magic,” she said.

  She sat down again, and that was when storm clouds exploded her mind into darkness.

  Chapter Four

  When she came to, she was sitting on the hay and sawdust-covered dirt floor of the dog barn, leaning against one of the sofas with her legs splayed. Most of the dogs in the barn kept a wide berth from her, but they didn’t appear particularly anxious. In fact, most of them were asleep.

  Renee sat on the sofa above her. Baron the Great Dane rested his head on Renee’s lap. When Kelly stirred, Baron’s expressive eyes flicked over to her and a line formed between them. But because Renee showed no sign of alarm, Baron accepted Kelly’s presence, although she clearly made him nervous.

  Kelly’s temples pulsed. She was familiar with this kind of headache. It was actually on its way out, despite the way the light in the barn hurt her eyes and made her head throb. She was rarely conscious for the worst of her blackout migraines, for which she was grateful.

  “How long have I been out?” Kelly asked.

  Renee jerked. She had been half asleep petting Baron.

  “About six hours,” Renee said after checking her watch. “Past even my bedtime, but I wanted to make sure you were all right, and I needed to keep the dogs calm. Max is upstairs,” she added, looking up at the loft.

  Kelly squinted up into the darkness and saw Max sleeping among a good group of dogs who had probably wanted the higher ground from her.

  Kelly shifted to get up and paused. Her dress, arms and her hands in particular were flecked with white paint, the smell of it powerful and uncomfortable to her. She looked up.

  The inside of the barn’s wooden façade had been covered with her handiwork.

  “It’s on the outside, too,” Renee said flatly, not moving from the sofa.

  Kelly started there. The light from the open barn door illuminated where she had painted near a dark stain the shapeshifters had not been able to completely clean off the wood. Above the stain, Kelly had painted the word ‘BODY’. It came to her in a vision at that moment. The slumped, bloody body of a young man in the snow, his face mangled beyond recognition and the front of his plaid flannel shirt obscured with gleaming new blood, black in the moonlight. Kelly blinked and the vision was gone, just the stain left behind by Grant’s victim and the accusation levelled at Renee for her role in Josh’s death—the reason why Renee hadn’t followed her out.

  Kelly closed the door and backed up to view the damage she had done on the interior of the barn wall.

  Plaster covered the longer walls of the dog barn, like the shapeshifter barn, but the smaller walls on either end were just dark grey timber. The white paint showed up particularly well under the suspended fluorescent lights.

  There were two sections to her work. The one on the right side of the barn door was done in a series of wavy lines. The strokes were rough, and Kelly had to back up further to see better that she had painted the line of a wolf’s back, from muzzle to the end of the tail. And not just one wolf. She had drawn a pack of eight.

  But she had paid the majority of her attention to the painting she had done on the barn door itself. Just as the wolf painting had been stylised, the same was true of the painting on the door. Up close, the paint would have been indecipherable blobs. From a distance, it became clear that the white paint had been the negative space of a rough portrait—the pale parts of the face, a face with distinguished, gentlemanly facial hair above his lip and curving over his chin, following the line up his jaw. He did not appear particularly ominous or imposing, but he did seem proud. Under the face, Kelly had painted the name ‘ABRAHAM’.

  Nothing else. And while Kelly usually had flashes of images or sound bites to go with her prophecies, the man’s face gave her nothing more than whispers, too many whispers for her to know what any of them were saying.

  The painted images and words were typical of most of her blackouts. She was no artist. Whatever moved her hand during those times wasn’t much better than she was, with the notable exception of some of her tattoos. She didn’t need to be da Vinci for the magic to make its basic points
known.

  This was not one of those moments. Kelly had clues but none of the context. She would only know what they meant in hindsight, and understanding prophecy in hindsight helped no one.

  The feeling when she looked at the man’s face—like sinking slowly in deep, dark water—told her that whatever she didn’t know, it was going to bite her in the ass one way or the other. The sensation was not entirely unpleasant, but it wasn’t pleasant either.

  This was one of those times when she wished she could scream at whatever magical entity had tried to speak through her for being so vague as to be no help at all. If she were going to have six-hour blackouts and freak everyone out, the least she could do was come up with a half decent prediction.

  “You kind of went stiff, and I swear your face went white,” Renee said. “Your eyes glowed the green they have when your magic is working. It’s more golden when your werewolf comes out, but your magic is pure emerald green in your eyes.”

  “David didn’t realise that for two years,” Kelly said, shakily sitting down on the sofa’s arm. She noticed Renee cradled a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in the crook of her arm. It was half empty, although Kelly couldn’t tell if it had started out full at the beginning of the night.

  Renee offered the bottle to Kelly without looking at her. “Want some? It doesn’t affect me, yet I stupidly try to make it work anyway. Should work for you.”

  Kelly accepted the bottle and took a deep swig, welcoming the rush of whisky fumes that entered her body. They hit her head at the same time the warmth hit her belly. Back when the blackouts had been frequent in the evenings and the unfiltered telepathic information had become too much for her, this had been the only way to dull its effects. It didn’t make everything go away, but it made it matter less.

  For now, though, the magic was quiet, and all she wanted was a few swallows to calm her nerves. Since the change, most of her prophecies came in images and words that no longer had the unconsciousness-inducing urgency of before. It had been a long time since she’d even had a blackout. The last time had been in David’s wolf pack when she’d foreseen Grant’s coming. Whatever the magic wanted her to know this time, it was obviously crucial enough that it had overwhelmed the werewolf’s stronger filter. All the more reason to fear what it was that she wasn’t getting from the painting.