I pressed end, then contemplated the wolf. “You wanna tell me the story now?”
Take it off. I look ridiculous.
“You’ll look more ridiculous dead.”
If I haven’t died in over four hundred years, I doubt I’m going to die now.
Four hundred years? I guess she was the same wolf I’d been seeing since childhood. Or maybe “wolf” wasn’t quite the right word.
“You sure you’re not a werewolf?”
She stiffened, appearing very regal despite the cone of shame. I am not.
“Why are you so offended?”
Besides this ridiculous ruff?
She shook and the plastic-paper rattled like distant thunder.
“Don’t whine to me if you give in to an irresistible urge to chew open your stitches.” I yanked the string and drew the cone over her head. She dipped her snout toward her paws in thanks.
Werewolves are evil. Insane, murdering beasts.
I’d expected her to say werewolves didn’t exist. Silly me. “So there are werewolves?”
Have been since the beginning of time. A lot more since World War Two.
“You’re making that up.”
Why are you so amazed? You’re speaking to a wolf.
“Am I? Or am I just imagining that I am?”
What do you think?
I had no idea any more. Once I’d believed I was special. I’d had to give that up or risk everything—my family, my future, my sanity. However, deciding that the thoughts of animals were only the projections of my own hadn’t stopped them from coming. Hadn’t stopped them from being spot-on accurate either.
“I think I have bigger things to worry about at the moment. Someone tried to kill me.” I frowned. “And someone tried to kill you. Which has to be related somehow.”
Not really. Edward thought I was a werewolf. They tried to tell him I wasn’t, but he didn’t get the memo in time.
I managed not to ask how a four-hundred-year-old wolf knew about memos. At the moment, I needed to keep my questions confined to the really important ones, like— “Who is Edward?”
Mandenauer. He’s the leader of a group of monster hunters known as the J?ger-Suchers. That’s German for “hunter-searchers.”
“And what does World War Two have to do with anything?”
With this? Nothing. With werewolves, more than I have time to explain right now. Suffice it to say, Hitler was a lot busier than anyone thought. The J?ger-Suchers are still cleaning up his mess.
“If Edward is such a werewolf expert, why didn’t he know you weren’t one even without the memo?” Or the silver bullet to the ass.
Werewolves have human eyes. Pru lifted her bright green, not-at-all-wolf eyes to mine.
“Ah,” I said. “Then what’s your excuse?”
I’m a witch.
Chapter 18
Little worried. Call me.
Owen’s thumb hovered above the delete button, then he put the phone back in his pocket without touching it. He might want to listen to that message again on a dark night in Afghanistan. There’d been many times in the past when he’d wished he could hear Becca’s voice anywhere other than in his imagination.
She did sound worried. He should call her. But what he really wanted was to see her, touch her, kiss her, hold her.
His gaze wandered over the circus on Route GG. From the looks of this, that wasn’t going to happen for a while.
George had pulled up less than a minute after Peggy died. The two of them commenced CPR, only stopping when the EMTs arrived and commenced it for themselves. They didn’t have any better luck. They were loading the body into the now silent ambulance when George took out his notebook and pen. “What happened?”
Owen took a deep breath, opened his mouth, and let both breath and words out.
“A break,” the officer murmured when Owen finished.
“Stabbed,” Owen said. “Not broken.”
George cast him a disgusted glance. “A break in the case.”
“Which one? You seem to have a crime spree right now.”
“We thought so, but you just proved it’s all one case.”
“Didn’t mean to.”
“Well, not you personally. But the ring. The brands.” George lifted his hand and tapped the air. “Bing. Bang.” Then pointed at the car. “Boom.”
Owen tried to follow. Gave up. “Huh?”
“I read the file. I was at the house when Becca and the out-of-town doc found the brands on the animals. Now this lady has one too.”
Owen saw a trickle of light in the pitch-black darkness. “Whoever killed the pets killed Peggy?”
Owen vaguely remembered Reitman saying the pets were practice for humans. But that didn’t explain …
“Why Becca? Nothing connects her case to either of the others.”
“The ring does.” At Owen’s blank expression, George frowned. “Becca’s attacker dropped a ring just like the one that branded Peggy.”
This was the first Owen had heard of it. But things had been a little busy.
“There were brands on the animals too, but Reitman couldn’t see what they were.”