Daniel remained silent as I spoke, but he gave me a knowing glance when I said this about Jude. I wondered, when Daniel and I were psychically connected in our dreams, if he’d been able to channel the fear and the pain I felt toward my brother. When I got to the part about what had really happened to Dad, Daniel put a soothing hand on my shoulder, and I wished again he’d been there with me in the hospital.
Charity took it all in with a maturity I should have credited her with a long time ago. Her eyes flitted to the rifle that sat next to Daniel in the grass only a couple of times. When I’d caught her up on everything relevant, from the Shadow Kings to the hunting party looking for the wolf that supposedly killed Pete Bradshaw and, lastly, to this morning’s run-in with the sheriff and Deputy Marsh, she sighed heavily and pinched her fingers above her nose like she was trying to keep all this new information from leaking out of her brain.
“Okay,” she said. “But the thing I still can’t figure out is why everyone keeps saying Pete Bradshaw is dead when he’s not.”
“I’m sorry, Charity. But he is. I was at the hospital when he passed away two days ago.”
She shook her head with such denial it surprised me. “That can’t be.”
“I know it’s hard to hear that someone you know is dead.…”
“But he’s not,” she insisted. “I saw Pete Bradshaw when we stopped at a gas station in the city early this morning. He was acting kinda wacko, but he looked pretty darn alive to me.”
It took me a full thirty seconds to respond. Like my brain and my mouth decided not to communicate with each other. “Are you sure it was Pete? It wasn’t, like, someone who looked like him? He might have cousins in town for the funeral.”
“Pete doesn’t have any cousins. His mom said something about that when they had Thanksgiving dinner with us.”
“He doesn’t? I thought…” I recalled the fact that Pete’s only uncle was barely older than we were. Even if he had any cousins, they’d be too young to be mistaken for Pete. “This doesn’t make any sense.” I’d been there when the doctor pronounced Pete dead in the hospital, and even the news had reported his death. There couldn’t have been a mistake. There had to be another explanation.…
Charity bit her lip. “So if Pete died, and now he’s alive again like Daniel, does that mean he’s a werewolf now, too?”
“I don’t know.” I pushed myself up from the grass. “But I’m going to find out.”
Even though it meant I was going to have to do something I never wanted to do again.
Chapter Twenty-one
TRICKS OF THE TRADE
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON
Charity wasn’t too happy that I wouldn’t let her come with us. Truth is, with this new Pete development, I didn’t know what Daniel and I would be heading into, and I didn’t want her to get hurt. Before we left, I swore her to utter secrecy and then tasked her with the more-than-important job of covering for me with Aunt Carol.
“When Carol gets up from her nap, tell her I went to the hospital,” I instructed Charity before getting into the Corolla with Daniel. “Or that I’m at April’s working on a project or something. But I might not be home until late.”
Daniel and I headed to his apartment first in order to find him some proper not-pajamas clothes for our mission. I waited on the sofa bed while he changed in the bathroom, and I tried not to dwell on what had almost happened the last time we had been alone in this room together. Because of that, I wasn’t exactly allowed to be in here.
“Sorry I took so long,” Daniel said as he came into the living area, wearing dark jeans and a white button-up shirt that was open at the collar and clung to his carved chest. “Had to try three different pairs of pants before I found one that didn’t fit like floods.”