Lycanthropy Files Box Set

Chapter 7

7

The silver and emerald cat charm lay heavy in my hand, but I didn’t know if its weight came from the metal itself or the memories it carried. I couldn’t help but remember the first time I’d seen it—also during a time of loss and grief.

Grandfather and I had gone walking in town one Sunday morning. I was still dressed in black, the dress Mother had gotten me for Andy’s funeral, and even though it had a full skirt—my favorite kind to twirl in—I wasn’t feeling up for a good twirl or laugh. Grandfather had been very patient with me that summer as though he knew what it had been like to lose my twin brother and to be the non-favorite child who survived. I didn’t know, but my parents were working through divorce proceedings while I played in the Ozarks, and my grandfather had a sense things may even be worse when I got back.

“You’re walking slow today, Joanna,” he said.

“These shoes pinch.”

“The way you’re walking reminds me of a cat. They always pad on their toes, you know.”

“I know.”

“And if you’re lucky, they wink at you.”

“Cats don’t wink.” I had read all about cats and knew their facial expressions weren’t the same as people’s.

“That’s what the books say, but they never asked a cat.”

“How would you ask a cat?” The thought of talking felines tugged me away from my sorrow for a moment.

“Sometimes you just need to sit down with them and let them tell you in their own time.”

“Cats don’t talk.”

“They usually don’t want to. They find people dull and boring.”

I smiled. I tended to find people dull and boring too. Books were much better companions.

“Now look at this little lady.” We stopped at a jewelry store window. The shop was closed, but in one of the display cases, a silver cat charm with slanted oval emerald eyes winked at us in flashes of green light. “Would you say she doesn’t wink?”

“I guess not.”

“When the store is open on Tuesday, I’ll come back and get her, and you can keep her here.”

“Why can’t I take her home?”

His brows bent as he pondered how to tell a nine-year-old her mother would always try to take away whatever she valued. “Because she’s an Ozark cat,” he explained. “She’ll get lonely in the city. She needs to be up here where there are red wolves and other wild things.”

“How do you know?”

“Because she told me. But she’d be happy to be your friend and protector while you’re here.”

“Oh. Okay.”

The following Tuesday, Mishka the silver cat came home, and whenever I visited, she would always be there around my neck on a silver chain. I hadn’t seen her in years.

“Hello, Mishka,” I said. The emeralds winked back. Other than being a little tarnished, she looked the same, like she’d been polished just before being left outside.

“What did you find, Joanie?” Ron came over.

I stuffed the charm in my pocket. “Nothing.” I knew this was a message from my grandfather, and I didn’t want to talk about it until I could figure out what it meant.

“Still nothing.” Ron’s scowl reminded me of my grandfather’s. “Happy now?”

“Yes, thank you. I have a much better idea of what happened.”

I guess.

Lonna returned just before we sat down to dinner. While Gabriel cooked, I asked the guys about anything they could remember about Charles Landover and if he’d ever mentioned a family curse or his research on it. They repeated conversations, and we analyzed them until nothing made sense anymore. I had the feeling there was something they weren’t telling me, but I couldn’t tease it out of them. Occasionally Leo’s gaze would catch mine, and our eyes would lock for a moment longer than necessary. Ron always looked away immediately. I figured he must still feel shame over his behavior when he came down with CLS and wondered if I should apologize for having him talk about it.

A timid knock on the front door broke our concentration. There was Lonna, and I didn’t need to have a werewolf’s nose to tell what she’d been up to.

“Sir Peter’s peter strikes again,” Ron said. “I guess he won’t be making any more babies with Marguerite tonight.”

Lonna shot a scared look into the den and raced up the stairs to her bedroom.

“Don’t be too long,” I called up after her. “Dinner’s about ready.”

“I’m not hungry.” I could hear tears in her voice. What the hell could she be crying about? Had they already broken up? I’d tried to warn her about the perils of messing with a married man.

“Suit yourself.” With a shrug, I walked back into the formal dining room, which could also be reached through the front hall. It had a view through French doors of the mountain vista, and I took a deep breath and basked in the twilight scenery. Green waves of mountains faded to purple in the distance and broke under a pink and orange sky. I took another breath, slowly, in through the nose and out through my mouth and tried to block the memory of Lonna in the café with Peter. Involved with a married man. Had she not paid attention at all? At the end of the day, they always go back to their wives and tots and leave you in the cold. Even if they do lie and tell you they’re separated.

“Is everything all right, Madam?” Gabriel carried a silver tureen redolent with the smells of savory herbs, onions, garlic and red wine into the room. He put it on the table, which was set with fine cream-colored porcelain plates on burgundy table linens.

“Rabbit stew.” He gestured to the tureen. “It’s one of your grandfather’s recipes.”

“I’m fine, I guess.” I tried to calm my roiling emotions, which bubbled like the stew. I had to admit some of the conflict was from the unfulfilled s****l tension bursting between me and the werewolf men. Something about them was so primal and untamed, and the fact they hated it made it even more alluring. I didn’t think I’d be able to feel those impulses again since Robert had broken my heart.

Gabriel opened his mouth, then shook his head and went back into the kitchen.

I turned back to the mountain vista and tried to imagine standing there with a husband or lover. Maybe that was it—jealousy. All Lonna needed was a glance, and any man was hers. I could risk career, sanity, everything, and it was never enough. I’m sure Kyra had the same talent, but at least Lonna wasn’t a b***h about it.

I closed my eyes and breathed deeply again. This line of thought wasn’t getting me anywhere. In the scientific world, solving a puzzle might take years, but at least it had a solution somewhere that could be found by breaking the problem into little manageable bits. In the world of emotions and people, things were never simple.

“Full moon tonight,” commented Gabriel as he returned and poured the wine. I jumped and opened my eyes. The sky had darkened, and the first few stars—planets, I guess—shone forth.

“I guess the boys will have to run.” I had known that, but my memory wouldn’t tell me why it was important beyond the significance to the werewolves.

“They already have.”

“Oh.” A pang of disappointment stabbed my chest. “I’ll see if Lonna wants to join us.”

The upstairs hallway was dark, but the light in Andy’s—I mean Lonna’s—room was on, the door cracked.

“Knock knock,” I called.

“Come in.”

Steam from Lonna’s recent shower made the air warm and moist, and I smelled the citrus-coconut scent of her shampoo. I walked through the room to the bathroom door, which was ajar. She stood by the sink and toweled off her long, luxurious dark brown hair.

“The guys—Ron and Leo—left.”

“Good. I can come down to eat.”

“Why didn’t you want to before?”

“New people. I’ve had enough of strange men today.”

I raised my eyebrows but resisted the retort that came to mind. Instead I asked, “Was Peter able to give you any insight into the missing children?”

“No, but he did fill me in on the families that were here, specifically which ones fought the development.”

“Does he think the two are connected?”

“He doesn’t know. But at this point, everyone is a suspect.”

“Even him?”

She ran a comb through her hair. “Even him. You know the saying, keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

I bit my tongue over the reply that she seemed to have kept him close enough that afternoon.

“I’ll let you get dressed.”

I made my way down the stairs and paused by the front door. I don’t know what I was hoping to hear, but I could only make out the typical night sounds. I imagined what it would be like to shed human responsibilities for a few hours, to run under the moon and stars through the wild hills with the pack. I shivered. Would it all fall away, the grief over my grandfather’s strange disappearance, the guilt that blossomed at the thought of Louise going missing that morning, and the bitterness and anger over Robert’s betrayal? I could feel all those things whirling around in my head, a miserable fog that weighed heavily on my heart. Ah, to be rid of that for even a few moments. A tear slid down my cheek and I took a deep breath so sadness wouldn’t overwhelm me. Even with two guardians in the house, the sense of loneliness crushed my heart.

I swirled the red wine around in my glass as Lonna recounted what she’d learned from Peter. The alcohol warmed me from the center out and loosened some of the tension in my chest. A good fruity Merlot, it paired well with the rabbit-leek stew and the crusty French bread, which Gabriel had somehow found out I loved and which he had picked up at the bakery in town that afternoon.

Most of the settlers of Piney Mountain were of German and Scandinavian stock, and not much had changed due to the community’s isolation until the weekend commuters had discovered the joys of clean air and mountain living. The town’s resistance to being incorporated into Crystal Pines had been led by three families: the Van Dorens, the Schmidts and the Jorgens. Louise’s daughter had been Honey Jorgen, and it was her son—Louise’s grandson Johnny—who’d been the second to disappear. Eleven-year-old Simon Van Doren had been the first.

“How did the developers explain that one?” I asked. “It seems the connection is obvious.”

“It snuffed the resistance, that’s certain.” Gabriel used tongs to refill the bread basket with fresh, hot bread slices. “Suddenly the families who’d been here for generations were more willing to sell their land and get out. Your grandfather talked about it often.”

“And the ones who moved in haven’t lost any kids?”

Lonna took a piece of bread. “I pressed Peter for more information…”

Into the couch in his office? The angry little voice in my head broke in.

“And?”

“He said they just took it as a sign they were meant to be here, and the land was supposed to change hands now for a new era.”

“How pompous!” Wine sloshed in the glass as I set it down. “He’d be great in politics.”

Gabriel looked up from the bread. “Worse arguments have been made for relieving people of their birthrights. This used to be Native American country before the settlers came through.”

“Good point. So he couldn’t come up with any good explanation either?”

“No, only a strange one. The Piney Mountain residents seem to feel the developers have brought an evil spirit upon them. Did you have any luck with Louise?”

“No.” I lowered my eyes. “I didn’t get to talk to her.”

“What happened?”

“She didn’t show up for work today. The sheriff didn’t know anything, either.”

“He wouldn’t,” Gabriel said.

“Why didn’t you say something before now?” Lonna’s tone accused me of a grave sin of omission, so I decided to commit one and not tell her about the CLS victims in our midst.

“I got a little distracted, okay? Leo and Ron knew my grandfather, and they’d seen the spot where he disappeared. They took me there.”

“Did you find anything?”

I lied. “No. But at least I got a mental picture of the crime.”

“Some of us can do our jobs without getting distracted by a cute piece of ass.”

“And some of us can do our jobs without sleeping with one.”

We locked eyes. Gabriel cleared the bowls and beat a hasty retreat to the kitchen.

“I come up here to protect you, and this is the thanks I get?”

“Oh, that’s rich.” I threw my napkin down. “Since when does protecting me entail getting into the first pair of trousers you come across?”

“I wouldn’t have if I’d known about Louise.”

“Not like we could do anything anyway. The sheriff has his eyes on us. He’s not the only one.”

“Your job was to get information from the locals.” She pitched her voice low and dangerous. “I wouldn’t have spent so much time with Peter if I’d known you couldn’t even manage that today. I was going to interview Ron and Leo tomorrow.”

“What is my job, Lonna? I. Have. No. Job. I have no boyfriend. I have no ability to find either right now, not until I figure out what happened to my grandfather.”

“Ladies, would you like dessert?” Gabriel came in with three dishes of chocolate mousse on a silver tray. His eyes begged for us to be finished.

“I’m done.” Lonna slowly folded her napkin and placed it on the table. “I’ll be upstairs reviewing my notes on the missing-children case if anyone needs me.”

I put my head in my hands as I listened to the angry click of her heels on the hardwood floor. “I think I need something stronger, Gabriel.”

“Yes, Madam. An Irish coffee, perhaps?”

“Decaf. I’ll be on the balcony.”

The motion-sensor light clicked on as I opened one of the French doors and slipped outside. The house was built on the mountainside, so the ballroom sat on the lower level in the back with a patio under the balcony that could be used even in the rain. The night was quiet as though the hills slumbered, and the river murmured. An owl hooted somewhere in the woods, and then a howl broke the stillness. The bone-piercing cry chilled me to my marrow, and I didn’t see the wolves in my mind’s eye, but rather another presence, this one infinitely menacing and ready to snatch up victims without notice. I wondered at this and at the fight Lonna and I had just had. It wasn’t like either of us to confront the other. Something about this place was unsettling. Too many had gone missing. What could be out there?

“Your coffee, Doctor Fisher.”

“Thank you.” Before he could step away, I asked, “Gabriel?”

“Yes, Madam?”

“What’s out there? The wolves, I know, but I heard something else.”

“These hills are full of tales, Madam. Perhaps you heard the evil spirit of which Ms. Lonna spoke.”

I shivered as the realization of what we’d planned to do that night hit me. “Lonna had wanted to go and see if she could catch whatever’s taking the children in action. After hearing that cry, I’m glad we fought. Maybe she’s forgotten.”

“I wouldn’t recommend going out clothed only in human flesh, not on the night of a full moon.” Gabriel took a sip of his coffee, and I wondered what he could see out there in the gloom, what he could smell with his ultra-sensitive nose. “There is old energy in these hills. And old creatures.”

“And the boys are out there hunting?”

“They are with their pack and are therefore protected.”

“I hope so. Why don’t you go?”

“I don’t feel the need. Not tonight. Being near them helps me to stifle my own desires.”

“Why?”

“I have no pack.”

“That makes two of us.” I noticed he held a glass mug of Irish coffee as well. I didn’t care. “Cheers. To us lone wolves.”

“Cheers, Doctor Fisher.”

I grinned up at him over the rim of my glass mug. “Perhaps that’s not such a bad thing.”

His elegant lips curled into a smile. “Perhaps not.”

I leaned against the doorframe. In spite of my quivering rage, it didn’t rattle, so I had to satisfy myself with glaring into the gloom instead.

“Well?” I asked.

“Well, what?” came from the lump on the bed.

“Did you find out anything else that was useful?”

“Bug off.”

“You’re supposed to be a P.I.,” I reminded her.

“Remember the Oliver case?”

“The one where you found out it was the teacher abusing the child, not the father?”

“Yes. Peter knows it. One of his law firm partners defended the guy.”

I snorted “You’re not convincing me he’s a worthy person if he was with a firm that defends perverts.”

“He said my work was brilliant, that he couldn’t have built a case against it.” The lump rolled over, and I felt her looking at me. Her eyes glowed in the darkness, and I stepped back. “I just wanted the appreciation not to end. Do you know what it’s like when your purpose, your career, is affirmed like that?”

“Can’t say that I do.”

“Oh, Joanie, I’m so sorry.” She burst into tears.

“Sleep it off, Lonna.” I sighed and closed the door behind me.

And woke up.

Dream analysts say every character in one’s dreams symbolizes some aspect of the self. The Lonna in the dream was the part of me that had sold out, that had turned tail and run before I could discover the truth. I’d felt too ashamed to protest my termination because they’d all suspect I had been having an affair with my boss.

“Nothing like the honesty of the mind at three a.m.,” I told myself as I strained to hear the sounds of the night. Nothing. No voices, no wolves. Not even the bone-shuddering cry I’d heard.

I rolled over to go back to sleep, but my eyes wouldn’t close. I only stared into the darkness, curled into a ball against a sense of wrongness. Then I heard it grunts and the swish of something being dragged from the bottom of the driveway. Fear paralyzed my stomach while my heart thudded against my ribs. Now I recognized the emotion. It was the same feeling I’d had the night of the fire, the one that urged me to hurry, to find something meaningful in the data as something closed in on me. The same feeling I’d had the night Andrew died.

Footsteps, a muffled exclamation, then the front door opened and closed. I rose, splashed some water on my face, and put on a robe.

“Doctor Fisher?” Gabriel stood at the door. At first it looked like his shirt was stained black, but the smell told me it was blood, and he was soaked with it.

“Gabriel, are you hurt?”

“No, Doctor, but she is, and she’s asking for you.”

“Lonna?”

“No.” He took a deep breath. “Louise.”

I shoved past him, heedless of the smear it would leave on my robe and ran downstairs.

Louise lay on the sofa. I couldn’t see her wounds, but I could smell the burns, the blood. Her immaculate coffee-shop uniform had been torn and stained with grass, with the rust of old blood and the crimson of new, and with smoke. Her face, pinched and white, strained with every rasping breath.

“Louise!” I wanted to hold her hand but I was afraid to hurt her. She grabbed mine and struggled to articulate something. It started a throbbing pain in my wrist, but I didn’t care.

“Lay still,” I told her. “Gabriel, have you called 911?”

“Yes, Madam. The paramedics are on the way.”

Louise squeezed my hand. “The black wolf,” she said.

My heart skipped a beat as adrenaline poured through me. “What black wolf?”

“It. It.”

“Hush now, you’ve got to save your strength.”

She shook her head. “It knows.”

Gabriel took her other hand. “She shouldn’t be speaking. Her pulse is faint.”

She still struggled to speak. “Beware. It knows.”

A knock at the door. Gabriel ran to answer it.

Louise convulsed one, two, three times, then shuddered and lay still.

“No, Louise, no!” I didn’t want to believe it. The tears came then, racking sobs. Strong hands separated mine from hers and guided me to the armchair. I couldn’t stop as the guilt welled up. I should have searched for her. Should have done something.

“She’s expired,” Gabriel told the paramedics. They started CPR anyway and brought out the paddles. I couldn’t see what they did—I only heard the noises as they tried to revive her. And then the muffled curses and uncomfortable silence as they failed.

Gabriel held my shoulders, his strong grasp two points that anchored me to reality as sobs subsided into hiccoughs, but the tears still flowed. I couldn’t see the paramedics, merely blurs of blue uniforms. They parted for a figure in khaki.

“Well, Doctor Fisher,” drawled Sheriff Bud Knowles. “It looks like Miz Louise’s disappearance yesterday mornin’ has become your business after all.”

“Doctor Fisher is in no condition to be questioned, Sheriff,” Gabriel said. Damn, I just couldn’t manage to speak for myself this week.

“Well, then, I’ll start with you, seeing as you’re the one covered in blood. Don’t move her,” he barked at the paramedics, who prepared to lift Louise’s body on to a stretcher. “This here is now a crime scene.”

“What is the crime, Sheriff?” Gabriel asked. “We merely brought in a friend who was hurt and appeared at our door this morning.”

“You must be the butler.” Knowles deliberately reached into his back pocket, brought out a pad, licked his thumb, and flipped the little notebook open to an empty page. “I’ve heard of you. Could I have your name, sir?” he said with a sneer.

“Excuse me. I’m going to get some water.” I pushed by Gabriel and staggered into the kitchen.

I turned on the water and waited for it to warm. I felt the need to wash my hands both from the sticky blood and the impossible situation. The icy-cold water gave me an anchor to reality, and I watched blood swirl off my hands and down the drain. Blood. I tasted acid in the back of my throat, swallowed hard. Tried to concentrate on the water, on the cold tile beneath my sock feet. Wouldn’t do to puke in front of the sheriff. Focused on the cold water splashing on my face, thinking of the stinging on my cheeks, the drip as it crawled down my neck to my collarbone, chest, right breast, n****e… I raised my head and looked out the window.

The motion-sensor light turned on and illuminated something big and black. Yellow eyes flashed at me, and I staggered back, found the sharp edge of the island with my lower back. Yellow eyes, white teeth, fire! I sank to the floor and curled up. No, no, no. Away, go away, go away!

I must have screamed because footsteps pounded into the kitchen.

“Miss? Doctor Fisher?” An unfamiliar voice, one of the paramedics. “In here. She’s in here.”

“Did she faint?”

“Bring her out here. Lay her down.”

“Not on the sofa. Put her in the chair.”

Strong arms. No good. All went black.