It was after eleven, and the diner was finally, blissfully empty. It was always crowded after Wolf Creek’s football games let out, and that night had been no exception. Except for this time, the gossip hadn’t been about the missing girl, Bethany, but another cheerleader who’d gone missing—a girl named Cassandra Devon—and the new body the police had discovered. A sanitation worker with his throat ripped out and half his left arm missing.

It was morbid how excited the girl’s friends seemed, as they volleyed around their theories of where Cassie might have ended up.

“Maybe Cassie killed the garbage man?”

“Maybe Bethany killed Cassie and the garbage man?”

“Oh please, Cassie and Bethany totally hated each other, so it’s not like they’d both be in this together.”

Ember had spent most of her life wishing for friends, but after tonight, she was changing her mind. It had gone on all night. Their theories were far-fetched, speculating about everything from tainted water bottles to flesh-eating cults. Ember had served them all, fighting not to roll her eyes or tell them what truly horrible people they were.

When Ember finally locked the door and flipped the sign, she leaned against the door with a huge sigh. “That was awful. People are awful.”

“Humans are awful,” Tristin clarified, as she filled ketchup bottles.

Ember didn’t think that was true, but she wasn’t willing to get into yet another argument with her cousin, so Ember let it go. Over the next twenty-five minutes, they went through the process of shutting down the diner. Nobody seemed in a hurry to leave. Tristin and Quinn were in the corner booth, both staring intently at their phones. Donovan was still hosing down the back, and Isa was dropping cash into a bag so she could make the deposit in the morning.

“It can’t be a coincidence that another cheerleader’s gone missing, right?” Ember asked.

“The same night another half-eaten corpse shows up?” Isa shook her head. “Not in this town.”

“So, two humans turned zombies?” Donovan asked, sticking his head through the pass-through.

“Not zombies!” Ember snapped, cutting her eyes towards Tristin. Ember didn’t need Tristin jumping on his bandwagon and claiming again that this was all, somehow, Ember’s doing. Tristin’s gaze flicked towards Ember, as if reading her mind before going back to thumbing through the phone.

“Have you heard from anybody patrolling?” Quinn asked. “They’ve been out there for hours.”

“Wren said it’s quiet in Belle Haven; he and Neoma are eating pizza in the truck over by the old Bryant place since, apparently, that was the last sighting of the first girl. I haven’t heard from Kai or Rhys, but that doesn’t mean anything,” Isa said with an exasperated sigh.

“I have no idea why you still let them patrol together. You know they are just holed up somewhere groping each other,” Tristin muttered.

Isa shrugged. “If they’re going to spend the rest of their lives together, they’re going to have to figure out a way to work together and have a relationship. This is like on-the-job training.”

“Yeah, until one of them becomes a zombie snack because they were too busy rubbing up on each other.” Donovan snickered.

“Not a zombie!” Ember shouted.

Donovan’s brows shot up, face falling sadly before melting into a grin. “Okay. Not a zombie. Either way, I don’t know if it’s such a good idea to let those two out together either. Especially since you’ve imposed such cruel restrictions on them.”

Isa’s mouth flattened. “Nobody asked you.”

Ember smelled blood in the water, and so did the others. It was rare to find something that made Isa uncomfortable, but talking about her brother and Kai was making her squirm.

“It hardly seems fair. I mean, really, what difference does it make if they wait until they’re eighteen or not? Is this some kind of test?” Tristin asked.

“No, it’s about responsibility,” Isa explained. “Rhys is still officially engaged to Selina Clearweather. While I’m sure that will be cleared up shortly, I don’t want either of them getting even more caught up in each other because they are having sex.”

Ember’s eyes went wide as they all stared at their alpha in awkward silence.

“Yeah, right. You’re just not ready to be a grandma,” Donovan teased.

Isa’s cheeks flushed, and she looked a little sick. “I’m not even thirty,” she whispered.

“Well, if it makes you feel better, I doubt accidental pregnancy is a big concern for my brother or yours,” Tristin joked. Donovan laughed again, but Isa appeared done with the conversation.

“Why do you think they’re eating their victims?” Ember asked, moving the conversation back on track. “I mean, I know you said certain creatures will eat their victims, but how many of them will still look human doing it? They said the girl, Bethany, still looked like a human, and she definitely knew to run when she was discovered, and now this other girl is missing. So, is she another victim? Or has she been turned too?”

“Maybe the girls are just in a highly suggestible state?” Tristin said. “Like, maybe they’ve been hypnotized or are victims of compulsion? Anybody looked to see where Stella was during these attacks?”

Ember shuddered at the thought. Donovan snickered, but nobody took the idea seriously. Not even Stella was that brave, no matter how high up in the Grove her mother was.

Ember looked at Tristin. “Maybe it’s a spell?”

Quinn leaned back, pondering the theory. “Well, according to the police report, she’d gone to the movies that night with five of her teammates, but she’d separated from them after the film and texted one of the other girls that she had a ride home.”

“So, maybe somebody attacked her and sent the text as her,” Donovan said.

“Either way it would mean she knew her attacker, right?” Tristin picked up her phone again and thumbed it open. “She either knew the person well enough to accept a ride on her own, or the person knew her well enough to know who to text on her phone.”

Quinn nodded begrudgingly. “Do we know if any of her friends have supernatural ties?” Quinn asked. When Isa frowned, he said, “There are supernatural creatures everywhere; it’s not completely out of the realm of possibility that one of her inner-circle is something other than human.”

“But then what about this new missing cheerleader? Is she another of the cheerleader’s victims, or is she dropping bodies like the first girl?” Donovan asked.

“The girls at my table tonight said that Bethany and Cassie hated each other. They were even joking that they were going to find Cassie’s mangled body next,” Ember said.

“Cassie?” Donovan asked.

“Missing cheerleader number two,” Isa supplied. They hadn’t really had time to do a victim profile before the evening rush.

“These girls called themselves their friends? They sound like great girls,” Quinn said, shaking his head.

“What movie did they see?” Tristin asked suddenly, still looking at her phone.

“What? Why?” Quinn asked.

“Because, according to this, three movies were playing at the Cineplex that night, but only one of them was a film about cannibals.”

“Cannibals?” Ember said, feeling her chest lighten a bit. She smirked at Donovan. “See, not zombies.”

“So, she’s mimicking what she saw in the movie?” Isa asked.

Donovan sat on the stool just behind Ember’s, and Ember could feel the heat emanating off the wolf. She fought the urge to move closer. She was always so cold lately. He laughed low, like he could read her thoughts, and then asked, “Is there anything that can cause somebody to need to imitate something they’ve seen in the movies?”

“If there are movie demons, I’m out,” Ember said. “I don’t even want to know.”

“I have no idea, but if there is, you can bet it has something to do with witches,” Quinn muttered.

Ember didn’t have to look at Quinn to know he was frowning. She avoided him as much as possible, but even she knew his newfound hatred for the witches was growing by the minute. Witches had helped his sister bring him back. They’d forced Ember to stuff his soul in Mace’s body. They’d taken his father and refused to give him back. Yeah, Ember disliked the witches, but Quinn…he loathed them. Which sucked, because now he was one.

“Whatever is causing it, we better hope we can catch them and put them down quickly and quietly before the humans catch on, and we end up with an even bigger crisis on our hands,” Isa said.

“I still think we should just wait and see how this plays out,” Quinn told the alpha. “We have enough going on.”

Tristin nodded. “He’s not wrong.”

He glanced at her, mouth twitching. Ember didn’t know what was going on with the two of them, but they’d been weird around each other for days. Isa’s phone chirped, and she looked down at the screen.

“It appears that my brother and Kai aren’t as useless as we thought. They’re tracking a girl through the woods along the Belle Haven border. Maybe, if they can catch her, we can question her.”

“If they don’t kill her first.”

Isa sighed. “Yeah, there’s always that.”