The dog was gonna tell someone they had company? Huh.
PP padded away, her claws clicking on the floor. Inside, the house was decorated in French country, with lots of wood and crockery and copper pots hanging near the AGA stove. There were white quartz countertops and dark green walls with weathered gray cabinets. And flowers everywhere, in vases, in pitchers, stemless blooms floating in shallow bowls. Over the floral fragrances, I could smell Italian sausage simmering on the AGA and pasta and fresh bread and aromatic cheeses. My mouth watered. And it made me feel guilty, to think of my stomach while two young women were being . . . I shook my head to make the images go away.
“Sit a spell,” Sarge said as we entered a great room with matching leather couch, love seat, and recliner, upholstered ottomans, and a beautiful wall-hanging over the fireplace, made of different lengths and colors of horsehair, an image suggestive of the black water swamp and the sky under moonlight. “Hope you’re hungry. My wife will insist you join us.” He didn’t sound too happy about it, and placed the shotgun on a small side table instead of putting it away. I took that as a sign to be very careful. Sarge dropped into the recliner in the corner, house wall at his back, windows and doors in his line of sight, and shotgun about a quarter second from his hand.
“I don’t have time to eat,” I said. “I don’t have time to visit. I just need to know if you’ll help me.”
“Sit,” he said again, this time pointing to the chair that put my back to everything important. I wanted to sock him to make him listen to me, but I took a seat catercorner to him, not the one he’d wanted me to take. It wasn’t the best seat in the house from a defensive standpoint, but it was second-best. Somehow my chair choice made a point for me; Sarge chuckled. “So, what do you want me to do for you?” he asked.
“I was hoping you and PP might join me.” He didn’t appear to be opposed to the idea, so I took a quick breath and added, “Both on leashes.”
Sarge didn’t shoot me. He didn’t move at all. I heard ticking, slow and sonorous, and saw the pendulum of a grandfather clock swaying off to my right. The ticking seemed to echo through the house. My palms started to sweat. I didn’t want to fight a werewolf in any form, especially not one with a shotgun close to hand. Weres are fast.
Then Sarge started to chuckle and I unclenched my fists. “You hear that, Christabel? This skinny little thing wants to put a leash on me.”
“It worked for me,” a breathy voice said.
I turned my head, only slightly, and took in the woman standing next to the clock. She was slight, model-thin, like a size zero, with waist-length hair in calico-cat patterns, patches of white and silver, black and brown, blond and reds. I envied her dye job. If it was a dye job. I sniffed. She smelled of trees. Oak, pine, sycamore, sourwood, and sweet gum. She wasn’t human. I wasn’t even sure she was mammalian. I didn’t know how long she’d been there, and that bothered me. I didn’t smell witchy magics on the air, but then, the trees, garlic, and spices were strong enough to mask most any other scent. “Come,” she said to both of us. “Let us break bread.”
Sarge came up out of the recliner like a bullet and I jerked. He laughed again, and I knew the wolf leap had been to push my buttons. I rose from the chair, coming to my feet closer than was polite in human terms. He didn’t back down. I didn’t either. And this close, I could smell the were-stink on him. A low growl came from my other side, reminding me that PP would love to join in a fight.
“Do not toy with the u’tlun’ta, my love,” Christabel chided. “Even if you tree her, she may bite.”
“I’m not a liver eater,” I said, stung.
Christabel shrugged, hands folded at her waist, her hair moving in the air current of the heating vent as she replied, “It is only a matter of time.”
This woman knew what I was. And knew of the curse that clung to my kind, to eventually go insane and start eating people. I forced my breathing to remain steady, calmed my heart rate. I was too close to them to win any kind of fight with the werewolf/husband/protector, his part-mammoth dog, and his wife, the nonhuman whatever-she-was. And Christabel might have some answers to questions about my magic and heritage.
Sarge extended an arm like a refined waiter and said, “After you, my ladies.”