Chapter 10

I woke up on Friday morning with a feeling of expectancy I didn’t deserve. I knew I shouldn’t put much stock in whatever Mark could find out for me but I couldn’t help it. The case had gone on too long. I packed a bag of running gear for my Saturday long run at Jakob’s place, sure I wouldn’t see the apartment before Monday.

Hopefully by the time I came back Christine Sweeny’s case would be solved. I drove into work feeling undeserved happiness. It all came crashing down when I stopped for a cup of coffee.

They sold newspapers by the cash register, just a few in case someone wanted something to read, an innocuous enough item. This morning the headline wasn’t innocuous: “Police apathetic in murder case?” it asked and I recognized the picture.

Christine Sweeny with blonde hair and a smile I’d never seen before looked up at me. The article was written by someone who didn’t like the SIU. I bought the paper, not happy to spend money to see my work abused.

I stepped out of the elevator and into the squad room reading. Between the tearful interview with her mother and the sound bites from the boyfriend about us “sending him away” from her house after a few minutes, it was clear the paper thought SIU didn’t give a damn.

The fact that we had no evidence and no information to go on didn’t make it into the article. Yeah, they managed to leave that part out, even left out the way we’d tried to bribe someone into coming forward.

“You’ve read it,” Danny said. From his tone I knew he’d read it too.

“Yep. Any ideas of what we can do about it?” The article didn’t change the fact that we didn’t have anywhere to go on this case. Forensics didn’t get anything useful out of her car. After its time in the river there wasn’t anything left on the body. Hell, even the cryptic message from the ghost wasn’t helping.

“Don’t know, doesn’t matter though, we’re the stars at a briefing with the Lieutenant and a half-dozen other important people.” He heaved himself out of his chair. “Come on they’re waiting for us.”

I rolled my eyes, grabbed a notebook from my desk, and headed in.

****

I didn’t leave the room until we broke for lunch at twelve-thirty. Four and a half hours of going over the case, the tiny amount of evidence, and the other work we’d done in the past week that maybe (they weren’t sure) should have been given a lower priority. I got a sandwich from downstairs and checked my voice mail hoping for news from Mark.

Instead there was a message from a victim advocate group, Justice Now, telling me they wanted access to the files for the Christine Sweeny case. They couldn’t have them of course; no one got files from an ongoing investigation, but Justice Now had a habit of making the police look bad. They usually stayed away from the SIU but it looked like our time of not being hassled was over.

Another four hours in the room, more time I could have spent actually doing something spent instead on deciding if something was done wrong and who could be blamed. I hated every minute of it.

I spent the time fantasizing about ways to get revenge on the reporter who’d decided to publish the story. He was the second person I was going to call when I got out of there. The first person was Mark, and I rehearsed my angry speech to him in my head for most of the afternoon. When we were finally done, I got a chance to use it.

“Is there something you want to tell me?” I said without even any other greeting.

“Actually, there is, I met this girl and—”

“I meant about my case!” I shouted, startling Danny, who sat across the desk from me.

“Oh, oh that!” Mark said. “Shit, I’m sorry, Mal.”

“You have no idea how sorry you should be. Tell me you got something good about the dead girl.”

“You mean the dead mistress,” Mark corrected. Apparently today was the day for everyone to tell me I was wrong about everything.

“Mistress?”

“She was sleeping with a senator on the side. There’s a chance this is really about him.”

“Lovely. And why does the FBI know this?”

“Never you mind why we know, just be happy we told you.”

When I say Mark wasn’t as much of an ass as he used to be, I don’t mean to imply he was suddenly a great person. Today, for example, I wanted to strangle him and I only blamed half of that on my many meetings.

“What else can you tell me?”

“Not much. The good senator might not be good but the girl seems to be okay. She’s got nothing in her background that’s fishy, nothing illegal anyway. I had to find that part out on my own by the way. The people I met with are investigating the senator—something about organized crime. It’s all very dramatic; they even tailed me through the mall.”

“Anything else?”

“Watch your back on this one. People like this don’t enjoy being investigated and I don’t think the FBI is going to be much help.”

I thanked him for what little he had given me and said goodbye. Another time, another day, and I would have asked about the woman he’d met but not today. Today was a complete sucking void of frustration and negativity, no reason to try and fight it.

“Turns out Christine Sweeny was having an affair with a senator who may or may not be in with the mob,” I reported to Danny.

“Could they have killed her?”

“No idea. What should we do now?”

“We increase the amount of the reward on the tip line and we interview everyone we’ve already interviewed.”

“That’s it?”

“Well we can hope the media attention gives us something new, someone who saw something but didn’t realize it, and they come forward.”

“But that’s just waiting. We need to do something, to act. Going over the same interviews again isn’t going to help.”

“It’s what we’ve got,” Danny said, sounding tired. I looked at him, not wanting to yell at him but wanting to yell.

“Someone drove that car. Someone. Someone out there knows. Maybe they don’t know everything but they know a part of it. What can we do to get them to talk to us?” I demanded.

“Nothing.” The last voice I wanted to hear came from the doorway. “All we can do is ask. There’s no way to force them to come forward.”

I turned to look at Amadeus expecting a smug expression but he only looked weary.

“I mean it. I did this job for years and when the leads dry up, they dry up. The only thing you can do is sit back and wait, hoping something breaks loose.”

“Well that’s not good enough.” I grabbed my bag and stormed out of the office. I could have ranted about him, could have called him on throwing his experience in my face again, but I wasn’t angry at him.

I was angry for the girl, the one who’d sat next to me, begging me to stop them. Stop who? What was this great conspiracy? I’d been trying to find her killer for over a week and I hadn’t gotten anything new in five days. The chances of me stopping them were dwindling to nothing.

****

I drove angry, going faster than I should have. I parked angry and I slammed Jakob’s front door. Anger and frustration, there was nothing that could make this day go any better. I headed back to the bedroom. It was after six and Jakob would be getting ready for work. I could find him and share my bad mood with him. Except he wasn’t there, he was in the shower.

I sat on the bed, nursing my anger. I should find another job, I should quit. I should move someplace new, get a new job where I wouldn’t be lectured all day about things I couldn’t control. I should…I mean I could…

Yeah, to hell with it. I stripped and joined Jakob in the shower, happy to let the water wash away my day. I walked into the shower naked, cold but not desperate to get under the hot water yet. Jakob was in the middle of washing his hair, the bright blond muted by heavy white suds, his eyes shut. I reached out to him, stroking my hand along his chest, expecting him to jump but he didn’t.

“How’d you know it was me?”

“I know your heartbeat, your scent, the way you move.” He ducked under the water to rinse.

“Really? Then what’s my heartbeat doing now?” I reached between his legs to catch him, the soft flesh of his body fitting neatly into my fist as I squeezed gently. His only answer was a moan, and he pulled me closer to him, the water splashing all around me. “Hey no fair!”

“You’re in a shower; people should expect to get wet in a shower,” was his sensible reply. I would have protested again, said something about how unfair it all was but he pulled me toward him, pressing his mouth over my breast.

There was no prelude, no hesitation, no soft kisses to start with, just the searing ecstasy as his mouth caught the flesh there, his tongue massaging me, while his hands danced along my thighs. My breath stopped, stilled by the power of the pleasure he was giving me. I rode the feeling as he moved from one breast to the other, then stepped back, letting the water run down my body where he had been a second before.

Hot water and then his tongue, one after the other in a pattern I couldn’t understand, only enjoy. Until finally his hands joined the moment, fingers painting designs on my inner thigh, working their way up to the place between my legs.

And then they were there, joining the twin sensations of water and tongue, fingers pressing into me. I leaned back against the tile, not feeling the wall behind me, every inch of being focused on him as I screamed his name. His tempo changed, increased to match the pounding of my heart, and I begged him not to stop.

“Oh God, please Jakob, please.” I wanted to tell him I was on the edge, my body was ready for him, but somehow, he knew. I wrapped my hands around him and screamed, my body exploding in sensation, my legs weak. It took forever but was over too fast, and soon I was panting in his arms, his body supporting my weight.

He leaned back, rinsing in the clear water, then kissed me. When he stopped his eyes asked a question I didn’t have the breath to answer; I could only nod. He understood, and gently, he entered me, his hard body parting mine and filling me. I steadied myself against the wall, my palms pressed flat as he arched against me, our bodies joined.

I tried to match his fluid movements, moving with him hot and wet as the shower pounded down. The moment became a frantic rush of sensations, water on my breast, his hand on my nipple, his body stroking inside me, his mouth on mine and then, then finally every muscle in his body clenched in release.

We stood still joined. I panted while he only held me, whispering in my ear in sweet German. Time passed; I closed my eyes, and rested my head in the curve of his neck, smelling the shampoo and soap. He turned off the water, and with a soft kiss on my forehead left me, returning almost instantly with a wide towel. We made it to the bed, my hair barely wet, while he was already half dry. I curled my body next to him, my eyelids heavy.

“I’ll bet you haven’t eaten,” he said, shaking his head. I suspected skipping dinner for sex was a fairly big sin in Jakob’s world.

“Nope. Work was rotten. I want to go to sleep and start over tomorrow.” I moved closer to him. “The only good part of today was the shower with you.”

He pulled the towel off his waist and half of my body decided we weren’t that tired. I almost agreed with it. The sight of him, the blond curls between his legs still damp from the shower, the rest of him still hard for me, inspired all sorts of naughtiness in my head. But the day had been tedious and stressful; the only thing I was good for was a nap.

“I can bring you dinner in bed,” he offered.

“You have breakfast in bed, not dinner,” I mumbled before falling asleep.

****

Jakob’s bed wasn’t any different from mine, not really. It was still a mattress with a box spring encased in a frame. But somehow I slept better at his place, every time. Maybe it was the solid rock walls of the cave and the total lack of light coming in from a window or maybe it was the absence of street noises. I couldn’t be sure why but I woke up on Saturday feeling more rested than I had all week, the frustration of the day before largely forgotten.

I ate a simple breakfast, fueling for my run but not rushing. My goal for the day was simple: two four-mile loops on the dirt trail that started a little ways from the house, by the stream. I was still in my bathrobe, trying to decide if I needed sun block when my cell phone rang.

I cursed a little, then remembered it wouldn’t wake Jakob and got over it.

“This is Mors,” I answered without looking at the number.

“It’s me,” a voice replied and I recognized Danny when he hadn’t had enough sleep. “We’re on.”

“What?”

“We’ve been called in. Hopefully it’s something about the Christine Sweeny case.”

I groaned. Not the most mature thing to do but hey, it was before eight on a Saturday; I was allowed. I left Jakob a note and headed in to work on my day off. I arrived to find a stack of files on my desk and my half of the squad room deserted. Simon and Danny were in the office with the Lieutenant. I joined them and took a seat. Their attention was locked on the speaker phone.

“And for that reason, the FBI is willing to bring you into this very sensitive case—” a faceless voice was saying.

“Detective Mors has joined us,” Lieutenant French interrupted.

“Well you can brief her on her way to the body. We want this case solved and we want it solved quickly. I don’t have to tell you this is your first priority.” The speaker hung up without another word, the obnoxious sound of a dead phone line filling the room.

“Okay, someone brief me,” I said. The Lieutenant raised a single thick eyebrow at me, his displeasure as clear as his dark skin, but I didn’t bother to apologize. He might be a tough-as-nails ex-Marine who never grumbled but I wasn’t. I’d finished work last night with people yelling at me about how I wasn’t doing my job fast enough. I was still smarting from it. If they were going to start yelling again I wasn’t in the mood to be nice about it.

“Representative Lloyd was stabbed with something that left traces of silica, traces that look a lot like petrified palm wood under a microscope.”

“Petrified palm wood?” I asked clueless.

“The state fossil of Louisiana,” the Lieutenant supplied. “It’s not usually sharp enough to cut someone, and it’s not easy to shape. If you’ve got a knife made out of petrified palm wood, there was probably an earth witch who made it.”

“How does that connect to our case?”

“It doesn’t,” Danny said. “It connects to an FBI case. Someone destroyed all of the equipment at a construction site. No one took responsibility but the FBI suspected organized crime, angry about how the contracts were given out. The only leads they found were traces of silica left behind by the knife they used.”

I swallowed hard. “Whose body am I looking at?”

“The dog,” Lieutenant French said and I realized he was as annoyed with this as I was.

“The dog?”

“There was a dog at the construction site. He was killed as part of the vandalism. So now, when we have all kinds of people pressuring us and Christine Sweeny being trotted out by the newspapers as an example of our incompetence, you’re going to see the dog’s body.”

“Seriously?” I couldn’t believe I’d gotten called in on my day off for the dog. Everyone knew animals didn’t talk to me.

“Oh and the dog in question has been dead for several days, so good luck.”

“Thanks, I’ll need it.” I sat there a little bewildered. “I got called in to check up on a dog? This has nothing to do with Christine?”

“It has a tenuous link to Representative Lloyd’s stabbing, but the link is pretty weak. Nothing to do with your case.”

“And the files on my desk?”

“Guess what I’ll be going through while you’re gone,” Simon said, clearly unhappy. I looked around the room and realized no one was glad to be here. As we shuffled out of the lieutenant’s office I decided to make the best of it.

“Is Lucas still on his way in?” I asked, hoping he was and he could grab donuts for us.

“First night of the full moon, I don’t have a partner for the next few days,” Simon replied.

“Again?” I tried to make a joke.

“Yup. I mean it’s the beginning so he could make it in today if it was something important but….” Simon’s voice came up at the end and I realized I’d be hearing about the dog thing for a while.

“Hey, I’ll bet Rex or Bowser or whoever he is, was a really important dog,” I tried.

“Sure, laugh it up you two, and when the newspapers print a giant picture of Rex’s mother or worse his puppies that’ll never know him, then how will you feel?” Danny looked at us both sternly. We did our best to stifle the gallows humor but failed. By the time I got it under control I had accepted the bizarre hilarity of my day and we headed out.

Our first stop was the city morgue. Dr. Mohahan wasn’t in but a helpful lab tech offered to find the body for us if we would wait. Thirty minutes later we were still waiting. An hour after that he arrived, much chagrined, to tell us since this was an FBI case the body had been transferred to their custody. Yesterday my anger would have overflowed into a tirade but today the insanity of it insulated me. We thanked him for the trouble and headed over to the FBI offices.

The scene repeated itself with the addition of extra layers of security and background checking. In the end, two hours later, the result was the same: the body had been transferred to a vet school. Nearly noon on my day off and I hadn’t done anything worthwhile yet.

We called Simon, got his order for Chinese, and headed back to the squad room with lunch. The Lieutenant had gone home for the day, which meant we could relax and joke over our take-out boxes. I ate more lo mein than I should have, but I justified it saying I’d run it off this afternoon, and I’d be doing magic later. Simon called me on the last one.

“Spirit magic is kind of like death magic, right?” he asked.

“Sure, I’ll give it to you,” I said, ladling more noodles into my mouth with chopsticks.

“See the thing is, I don’t get anything from animals. I mean, not anything useful anyway. I might get a fuzzy noise of an emotion but not the clear angry, happy, sad I get from people. That’s different for you?”

“No, you’re right. Animals kind of buzz at me, like static, that sort of noise.”

“But if that’s true, what’s the point of trying to magic the dog?”

“There isn’t one.”

“Wrong,” Danny chimed in. “It’ll make the FBI happy, and it gets us overtime pay.”

****

We got back in the car and drove out to the vet school. We hit a little traffic, a car accident that hadn’t been cleaned up yet. There weren’t any dead bodies, and nobody even seriously hurt when we finally got near the wreckage, so the delay was just one more bit of bad luck.

The clock was closer to two than to one by the time we made it to the school. They closed at two, so there were only a few people left and none of them knew anything about the case. It took two phone calls and a text before we were lead into a room of steel drawers. For Danny it was a quiet room; for me it buzzed like a thousand cicadas on a hot day.

“Which drawer is he in?” Danny asked and his words barely registered over the din in my head.

“Uh, umm.” The lab tech, an unhelpful, clearly hung-over young man in a white lab coat flipped through several sheets of paper. “Actually, not this room. He’s in the freezer.”

We left, shutting the door and the sound behind us. We followed him through a series of wide open buildings with weird harnesses for lifting cows and a treadmill big enough for a horse to a giant stainless-steel door with a large round push button knob.

“You push this button and it opens. There’s one on the inside so you can never be locked in. If you’re claustrophobic I could go get a cart and bring the body out for you, but you can’t leave the door open for too long. It lets the cold air out.”

I didn’t bother to mention it was only forty-five outside and the sun was rapidly fading. In the summer, I’m sure his speech would have made a ton of sense, but in the middle of January he sounded silly. Danny nodded and I went along with the nod. The door popped open when he hit the shiny steel button but he just stood there.

“I uh, I mean, I don’t think you’ll—”

“You’re claustrophobic,” Danny said. When he wasn’t worried about selkie troubles he was a great detective.

“Yeah.” The kid swallowed hard.

“We’ll be fine. We can find our way out to the front desk,” Danny told him while shutting the door.

The inside of the cooler was only a little bit colder than the outside had been and I buttoned my coat again. The empty rectangle of a room was ringed with shelves holding containers of food and industrial-sized plastic barrels you find in warehouse stores. The wonderfully distracting goods on the wall couldn’t keep me from turning to the table in the middle, which held the world’s largest dog.

His tawny fur stood with the stillness of death, his black muzzle frosted in the cool room. A normal dog only at fifty times the scale, the body in front of me stretched out for at least four feet.

“One hundred and seventy pounds,” Danny read from a clip board. “They didn’t have a drawer big enough to hold him. Guess his name?”

“Cujo?”

“Tiny,” he smirked.

“Okay, Tiny, what do you have to tell me?” I put my hands on his stiff back leg. The body was heavy, solid and dry like a piece of brittle wood. The noise came with the touch, a buzzing, quieter than the other room, a gentle hum. I concentrated, pulling the energy into my body like breathing in for a long time, and then poured it over the dog.

The noise increased and with it came something new, a smell. In a room filled with formaldehyde and cold neutered scents I could smell earth, thick black dirt and plants. It was the scent of summer, of freshly mowed grass and someone digging in the garden. I wanted to press myself against that grass, to lay back and let the sunlight warm my skin. I wanted that summer.

I chased the feeling, moving my hands up the dog’s body. It grew, the smell of plants and green growing things got stronger as my fingers dipped into a wound. Here, where he’d been stabbed, where valiant Tiny lost his life, the grass was bright green and the dirt was rich. I took a deep breath and caught another scent a flower maybe, a blossom.

“Why do you smell like flowers, Tiny?” I whispered. The buzzing noise got louder, the sounds drowning out the scent but never forming into words.

“Mal?” The voice sounded like it came from the other side of a long tunnel. I lay on freshly mowed grass in summer, and the voice came from winter.

I was lazy with the summer day and it took me a long time to remember how to talk. When I finally did all I could come up with was “Just another minute.”

“You’ve had twenty,” the voice reported sternly.

That should have bothered me but I’d never felt anything like this, like earth and summer all wrapped up at once. It was pleasant, sweet, I didn’t want to go yet. I liked summer.

“Right, that’s enough.” Danny grabbed me from behind and pulled me away from the dog. My hands left those cuts and I was back in January again.

“Well that was just plain creepy,” Danny announced.

I didn’t argue with him.

****

I ate two Snicker’s bars and drank a Dr. Pepper on the drive back. I was going to run as soon as I made it to Jakob’s place. There was still a little light, it was only four, plenty of time. Except when we made it back to the office the FBI was waiting for us.

The hour-long debriefing where I tried to put the summer feeling into words and failed miserably went far too slowly. I shouldn’t have even mentioned it. Finally, they decided I could try writing it up, so I headed back to my desk to struggle through the unfamiliar FBI reports.

A bad mood comprised of equal parts frustration and exasperation started to come over me as we wrapped up our findings for the day in a report. I fantasized about what was left of my weekend, about Jakob and things that had nothing to do with the office but it didn’t work. I pressed my signature onto yet another page and looked up to find Amadeus sitting in my visitor chair innocently. The minute I saw his smiling brown eyes his know-it-all comments from the night before came back.

“Your coffee mug is disgusting,” I said. I didn’t bother to keep the annoyance out of my voice.

“Then don’t look at it,” he replied.

“You leave it here every morning with blood in the bottom. It’s unsanitary.”

“I wash it out every night, besides I can’t get sick.”

I lost it. “I can. I want it off my desk.”

“People in hell want ice water,” he replied. “Only half of the desk is yours; you’ll have to put up with it.”

“Enough.” The lieutenant’s voice cut into our argument. I didn’t have a chance to ask when he’d come into the office. “The mayor is on her way up. Could you two squabble some other time?”

He barely got the words out of his mouth when the glass doors sprang open. The mayor walked in, efficient and powerful, trailed by at least two assistants. Her black suit and white shirt were as crisp at seven at night as they had been at eight in the morning. Her short blonde hair was expertly brushed to one side as if even it wouldn’t disobey her.

“Your Honor.” Lieutenant French and Danny greeted her in unison, my own “Your Honor” lagged a step behind.

Amadeus used a different greeting. “Leslie.”

“Amadeus? What are you doing here?” she asked him. The rest of us were forgotten as he leaned back on the desk to answer her.

“I thought it was time to be a detective again. I hope you aren’t here about one of my cases?” He was doing the thing he did, the slightly manipulative tone of voice coupled with a cute-look thing that drove me nuts. Apparently, it didn’t bother “Leslie” at all.

“No, I’m here to see Detectives Mors and Gallagher.”

“Oh that case, glad I didn’t get stuck with it. They’ve been busting their ass but when there’s no physical evidence there isn’t much a detective can do.”

“There has to be something…” Her voice wasn’t sure if she was asking a question or stating a fact.

“Of course, there’s something; you can wait for someone to come forward. What the case needs is a break and until someone gives you one there’s not much else.” He shrugged. “We can ask until we’re blue in the face. People don’t listen to cops.”

“They damn well better listen to me. I have a press conference in ten minutes; I’ll make sure the public knows how important this is.” As she said it her eyes touched mine for a second. Before I got a chance to say anything she turned on her heel and walked out, the lackeys a step behind her. The doors swung shut and we all took a minute to stare at Amadeus.

“Leslie?” Danny asked.

“We know each other,” he said.

“How?” Danny asked the question I’d hoped we could all avoid.

“Professionally,” Amadeus answered with a slick smile.

“Do not say another word. I don’t want to know. Just promise me you didn’t use any magic on her,” Lieutenant French ordered.

“Not a drop. Didn’t need to, we get along.” He picked up his coffee cup from the desk we shared and walked toward the break room. He’d saved me from being dressed down after a long frustrating day. More than that, he’d gotten the mayor to appeal to the city on our behalf. I didn’t care how he knew her; I was grateful.

I said a quick goodnight to Danny and the lieutenant, then turned toward the break room where I knew Amadeus could hear me. “Leave your coffee cup wherever you want,” I whispered on my way out the door.

****

I drove to Jakob’s deluding myself that the sun hadn’t really set, that it was safe to run, when really it was getting darker all the time, the sky barely glowing with the last vestiges of light. My day had been such a mix of things; good natured ribbing over the dog, and Amadeus saving my butt with the mayor, balanced out having to work on my day off and the tedious debriefing at the end.

A run could push this over into a good day, could make it a “yeah I had to work but it wasn’t that bad” kind of day, with the story of the dog as a highlight. Unfortunately, wanting a thing doesn’t make it so. Dusk ended quickly and I was still half an hour away when I turned on Lara’s headlights.

****

The house was empty, not waiting for me, not holding Jakob. He’d left a note telling me he’d be back soon. It didn’t say he’d gone out to get something to eat but that’s what it meant. I stalked around the house for a few minutes, frustrated. I’d spent the whole day wasting time when I could have been running. I debated. I paced.

Jakob couldn’t be gone long and the woods by the house were probably very safe. He’d be back and he could find me if something went wrong. I could take my gun, just in case. I would probably be able to see, there was a full moon out. It might be fun to run in the dark. Jakob could join me after he got home.

It only took me a few minutes to talk myself into it. Tonight I was running alone, after dark, in defiance of all the good sense in the world. I told myself I’d run today and I was damn well going to run today, regardless of what the FBI did to screw things up.

I tucked three sports gels in my pocket and left Jakob a note with my route plainly marked. He would be back soon; if I ran two four-mile loops I could stop by the house to check in with him.

I started out slow, my feet barely making any noise on the soft forest trail. The tall trees crowded around me leaving the light of the full moon in patches. Everything felt right; the night was quiet, the only sounds the squishing of mud beneath my feet and the movement of squirrels as I ran past. The breeze smelled clean. I was running in a place of perfect nirvana where my stride came easy and nothing hurt.

I took a sports gel at the beginning of mile four, about forty minutes into the run. Five minutes after that I felt the tingle of magic across my skin. Something was dying in the woods. The magic felt pleasant and warm across my skin, calling me from not too far away. Heady with a strong runner’s high I detoured toward it.

I ran down the path of death for a few minutes before I came into a clearing. When I recognized what was dying and how, my body petrified with fear. It was a bear, a large bear but it looked small compared to the werewolf tearing into it. I’d been attacked by werewolves, tortured by them. Watching the wolf rip into the bear while it roared in pain brought all those memories back.

I felt the bear finish dying, holding as still as I could, wanting to run but not wanting to be chased. The high the magic brought me didn’t do anything to stop the panic attack. The wolf stopped eating and scented the air, I thought about turning to run and it was on top of me.

The hard ground bit into my skin as it tackled me. The snout of the thing was inches from my face and it didn’t bite. I didn’t take the time to thank God; instead I reached out to the bear and called it to me. It took all of my strength but I brought it back, animating the dead flesh. My power came smoothly; moving me to a world where the only thing that mattered was my magic.

I couldn’t hear the night around me or smell the blood; I could only feel the dead bear. I commanded it to attack the wolf. The undead thing I’d brought back roared and launched itself at the wolf.

Its claws sank into the flesh of the wolf’s back and the blood came pouring down but the wolf didn’t release me. It kept me pinned to the ground while the two of them clawed at each other, back to belly in a gruesome dance. I waited for a chance of escape and began to panic that there might not be one. The wolf threw the bear off. The beast shook itself and charged forward again, catching the chest of the werewolf and ripping.

My world began to dim and I realized I hadn’t eaten enough to sustain this much magic. Eight miles was nothing compared to calling back a zombie. The night became darker; shadows grew as I fought to stay alert. For an instant, I thought I saw a man shape but then it was only a blur.

Something pulled the bear and the wolf off me. I scrambled on my back away from the scene, unsure if I should get up and run. I let the bear go, conserving my strength for whatever was next. The werewolf was fighting with someone, someone strong enough that it was losing.

It was terrifying to watch but as the wolf scratched and bit him the wounds simply closed. I thought vampire and sent what little power I had left out. I felt the bear, now truly dead, and other deaths in the forest, a deer, some small animals, but the two men in front of me were both alive. Whatever was fighting off the werewolf and healing so fast it didn’t bleed wasn’t a vampire.

The wolf let out a long howl and abandoned the fight. The man walked over to me speaking in gentle tones.

“Relax, you’re going to be all right. I’m a—”

“Lucas?” I interrupted him, recognizing him. The fight had been werewolf against werewolf then, one shifted, one still in human form. That explained the healing.

“Mallory?” He shook his head at me. “Come on, we need to get you clean.”

He pulled me up from the ground with one hand. I tried to stand but the world spun around me.

“You need to eat. That bear trick took a lot.”

“I have, hold on.” I pulled out the two packets of sports gel and sucked them down in rapid succession. Each packet gave me a hundred calories; the coffee flavored one came with extra caffeine. Handy, since I was starting to feel fatigued.

“Where’s your car?” he asked.

“I ran from home.”

“No one lives out here.” He gave me the look we all used for victims who weren’t thinking straight. I hated it.

“I live out here.” Okay that was a lie but I would live out here when I moved in with Jakob. I stopped overthinking and got to the important part, woozy. “The house is four miles that way.” I pointed in the direction I had come but realized I was lost. I’d followed the bear’s death off the path and every tree in the woods seemed the same. “Or maybe that way.” Which way was north? The house was east of here, if I could figure out north.

“Uh-huh. My car is definitely that way. Why don’t we get out to the road and you can try to give me directions from there?”

I nodded, too tired to correct his use of the word “try.” Fatigue grabbed onto me as we walked to the car in silence. He opened the door for me and I got in without saying thank you. My back screamed in protest when I sat down. Whatever wounds I’d received from the fall didn’t want to be touched.

“Why didn’t it kill me?” I asked.

“It was thinking of sex not food; you’re ovulating.”

“What?” I didn’t bother to keep the outrage out of my voice.

“You smell like sex.” He dismissed this intimate knowledge of my cycle with a shrug.

“When you get out to 413 take a left,” I directed. Anger was creeping into me around the exhaustion. Too much magic in one day had me ready to collapse. “What were you doing out there?”

“I’m stronger than most of them. For the first few nights I can hold off the change and make sure nothing gets out of hand.”

“I meant out here, why out here?” As fascinated as I was by werewolf politics, he hadn’t answered my question.

“We’re an hour away from the city, with caves to hide in and lots of deer. It’s the perfect hunting ground for the full moon.”

There was something alarming about what he’d said. I fought through the tiredness to remember it. “It’s too close to the house. If Mark finds out, he’ll kill you all.”

“Who’s Mark?”

“Agent Zollern, the one who only eats werewolf blood?”

“You’re taking me to his house?” Lucas asked. He sounded a little upset; I tried not to smile.

“No, it’s Jakob’s house, well it’s our house, or it will be.” I was too sleepy to bother with the conversation anymore. Lucas would have to figure it out on his own. I closed my eyes only to have him shake me awake.

“Talk to me, Mallory, don’t fall asleep.”

I let my head rest on the side of the seat. I was tired but it really seemed to matter to him that I talk. My eyes fell on a football helmet shaped air freshener.

“I’m a huge Saints fan.” I reached my hand toward the dangling gold and black, but fell back into my seat before I made it.

“You know what my deepest fear is?” he asked.

“Are we that close?” Of course, he knew all about my fertility so maybe we were.

“We’re both Saints fans, right?” He looked over at me worriedly. “My biggest fear is making someone like me. You’re covered in blood, Mallory. It’s a blood borne disease. You have to stay awake so you can get clean.”

I nodded sleepily. “You missed the driveway.” He turned the car too fast. We skidded sending wood chips flying. He pulled up to the house and shut off the car.

“If I let you go in alone do you promise me you’ll shower? I mean it, seriously scrub everything off under hot water?” He looked worried.

“Sure,” I promised knowing full well I was going to fall asleep the minute I hit the bed, assuming I made it that far. The couch was pretty comfortable and the living room was much closer.

“Bullshit.” He opened his door then came over to open mine. He offered me a hand but when I took it he picked me up entirely. “Where’s the key?”

“Shorts pocket,” I muttered. My hand went to it but I couldn’t make my fingers work. He grabbed the key for me. He opened the first door and left the key behind. “You shouldn’t leave that in the door.”

“I’ll take it with me when I head home. You can have it back on Monday.” He struggled to open the inner door finally putting me down. I slumped against him. “Which way to the bathroom?”

“Down the hall, past the kitchen, down a little more on the left.” The world was hazy but I was fairly sure that was where I had left it.

I slept for a bit and the next time I heard him speak he said, “This is a bedroom not a bathroom.” I only pointed to the door on the other side of the room.

I came around leaning against the shower door. There was water running on the other side.

“Do you like this outfit?” he asked. I shrugged. Such a strange question. It wasn’t my favorite or anything. He tore my sports bra off and then did the same thing to my shorts. I was grateful when he pulled my sneakers off instead of destroying them. I realized I was naked in front of a man I didn’t know and tried to cover myself. “Don’t bother, you’re not my type,” he said gruffly and pushed me into the cold shower.

The blood came off me in tiny pink rivers while Lucas scrubbed furiously. When he got to my back I gasped with the pain even though I was half asleep.

“Where did you get these? Did it scratch you?” I didn’t answer—it seemed like too much effort. “Mallory!” His voice was filled with fear.

“Rocks,” I mumbled. “It threw me on the ground; there were rocks, this tree branch…”

He scrubbed even harder, like I hadn’t told him anything. Next time I wasn’t going to bother. I fell asleep again, waking up when he roughly toweled me off. For a second I was back at some community pool I begged my mother to take me to when I was a kid. She hadn’t wanted to go. In exactly one hour she’d yanked me from the water and dried me harshly for the drive home. The towel had stung on my water-softened skin in exactly the same way. I pulled myself back to reality.

“You wore pants in the shower?” His jeans were soaking wet but his t-shirt was missing.

“We’re not close, remember?”

“Right.” I nodded. He wrapped me up in the towel and picked me up again. I was so used to Jakob’s pale skin that Lucas’ chest with its thick curling hair was fascinating. “You’re leaving wet spots on the carpet.”

He pulled back the covers and put me down, still wrapped in the wet towel. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, you’re just going to have to live with it.”

The room changed, there was a presence. In my sleepy state it took me a minute to recognize it was Jakob appearing as a mist. He came together in a few seconds, naked and blond, his eyes unnaturally bright.

When I glanced back to Lucas I could see he was looking lower, and enjoying the view. Jakob crossed the room with supernatural speed, pulling Lucas away from the bed with hate in his eyes. Too late I realized how it looked: me naked in bed, another man next to the bed, him calling me sweetheart. Jakob grabbed Lucas and threw him against the wall.

“Jakob don’t! It’s not what you think!” Fear made me alert. Jakob hesitated and let Lucas slide to the floor.

“She’s right, cupcake. I like boys.” Lucas reached up and kissed him on the lips. Jakob broke the kiss and brought his fist squarely into the other man’s face. It shattered beneath his hand, blood coating the wall. Lucas fell a few feet away from him, closer to the door. The bone in his face began to knit itself together, the muscle and skin crawling back to where it belonged. It was mesmerizing and gruesome to watch. In seconds, he was perfectly healed. He rubbed his jaw with one hand.

“I’ll let you know if I decide the kiss was worth it,” he said to Jakob. He was halfway out the door when he glanced back at me. “See you on Monday, Mors.”

I heard the front door shut and the exhaustion came back.

“Mallory?” Jakob looked at me his face confused.

“There was a werewolf and a bear.” I struggled with the explanation. My eyes had filled with sand again; my eyelids weighed at least a thousand pounds. “I’m fine. Can we talk about it later?”

“Of course.” He curled into bed next to me, taking off my towel. I pressed my body up against him and surrendered to sleep.

My dreams were fragmented chaos, running through the woods with a werewolf chasing me, then falling, coming down only to find the wolf was on top of me and somehow I was looking up at him again. The wolf changed, his fur bleeding away to dark black, turning him into a different wolf, the one who tortured me in a dark tunnel one long summer night.

I made the mistake of thinking of it and I was back in that close room, handcuffs on my wrists, his hands on my thighs. This time I was naked, and while my body spared me the indignities of his touch by passing out when it happened, this time I was awake. My heart raced with terror as the snout came closer to me. Jaws danced in front of my face and I knew he was about to tear into my lips.

The scene shifted abruptly, trading darkness for light, bright sunlight dancing off water. I was back at Jakob’s mill. The ancient stone building and wooden wheel were next to me, the babbling stream in front of me. It was a place that hadn’t existed for over five hundred years, the last place he was human and my favorite place to dream about.

I didn’t look for him, I just wished myself into the cold swirling water. In dreams, a thought is enough to carry you and the next second there I was, buoyed up by the icy current. I don’t know how anything could live in water that cold but I wasn’t willing to leave. As long as I was freezing I couldn’t be trapped in a hot room with a werewolf.

“Your lips are turning blue.” Jakob was sitting on the rocks near the bank. He was tan and human, the way he looked in dreams.

“I’m trying to get clean.”

“Because of what happened tonight?”

“Because of what happened last summer.” He looked at me perplexed. “With the werewolves.”

“Ah,” he said. When I looked back up he was holding a fluffy white robe. It looked out of place in the medieval forest. “Come out, there are no wolves here, ever.”

Saying the words was enough to make it happen. I found myself wrapped in the plush robe, the sun warming me gently. I thought myself a blanket and lay down, spreading my hair out to dry.

“Thanks for rescuing me.”

“I wasn’t sure why your heart was racing. I must admit, I didn’t expect to find you where I did.”

“The werewolf tonight must have made me remember the other one.” I wasn’t willing to think about it anymore.

“The one by the side of our bed?”

“What? No, the other one.”

“My dear, there was only one wolf in the house.” His tone was so very gentle, almost like I was crazy. Which made sense, he didn’t know what had happened, so I sounded pretty crazy.

“Come here and hold me.” He was lying on the blanket next to me, his arms wrapped around me. Sometimes I loved the way dreams worked. “I went for a run in the woods. I felt something dying and followed the feeling to find a werewolf killing a bear. The wolf came after me. That’s the wolf that brought back last summer, not Lucas. I work with Lucas, he doesn’t bother me. Well, he can’t gently towel someone off to save his life, but he doesn’t bother me.”

“Towel someone off?” His bright blue eyes were still perplexed. For a minute, I lost myself in the way they sparkled in the sunlight. I only ever got to see that sparkle in dreams. It was hard to pass up a chance to admire it.

“I used the dead bear to go after the wolf. That left me covered in blood, and the rocks the wolf threw me on left my back scratched up. Lucas insisted I get clean but I was too tired to do it myself. Trust me it wasn’t fun at all.”

“He mentioned you weren’t his type.”

“That kiss was completely out of line. I may have to smack him for it on Monday.”

“You don’t think breaking his jaw was sufficient?”

“I’m not the one who matters here.” Jakob was wonderful, loving, and caring, but he could also be vicious. He’d been kept by a rapist once, a man who hurt him in ways I hated to think about. The kiss would’ve brought all that back. I suspected he’d killed men for much less.

My worry must have shown on my face because he laughed.

“I was shocked, but not shocked into murder. Besides he saved your life; that earns him some mercy.”

“Some?”

“Some. A second kiss would not be a good idea.”

“Nice to know what I’m worth.” We laughed together for a while in the sunlight before I woke up.