Kitty stared up at the pawnshop through her car window. It kept her from looking at the diner—postponing the inevitable maybe—but a little stall time to round up her courage wasn’t going to hurt anything. The owner hadn’t fixed his gun sale sign yet; the fall advertisement stuck to the glass with yellowed tape. Maybe his sign was like Christmas lights—too much trouble to put up over and over again so he left it year round.
A tap on the glass next to her head made her jump. Kevin stood there making a cranking motion with his hand. She pushed the button to roll down the window.
“Coming in or just window shopping? That carbine finally give up the ghost?” He crouched down, so his face was on a level with hers. “I just came from school, and your posse picked up Sam, so you’re all good. The three of you are doing quite a nice job.”
Keeping him away from you, Kitty finished the sentence for her uncle. “Thanks,” was what she said out loud. She grabbed her bag out of the passenger seat. “Watch your face.” Kevin took a step back as she depressed the button and the window rolled up.
Kevin took the stairs to the diner ahead of her, grabbing the door and holding it open. He waved her in with his free arm. Kitty headed straight for the booth by the window. She debated taking the seat against the wall, but decided discretion was the better part of valor. He seemed to be taking the defeat in the woods the other night with good grace, but no sense flaunting it. She took her usual seat—if using it once qualified as the usual.
Kevin lifted a finger toward the kitchen window.
“You seem to have settled into town pretty well,” Kitty remarked as a coffee cup and a pop materialized on the table in front of them. “Where are you staying anyway?” She would pour a grain or two of salt in the wound. “Since you didn’t like the Dew Drop Inn?”
Kevin pulled a napkin out of the dispenser and popped it under her can preemptively. “Down by the river,” he said offhandedly, as if it were a given.
Most of the places down by the river were summer cabins for the big city folks to come in on weekends and fish during the warm weather. Now that she knew how he’d gotten his car, Kitty was pretty sure she knew how he’d gotten his temporary home too. “There are some nice places down there.”
“I have pretty simple needs. I took one of the smaller ones.” He pulled his coffee cup to his nose, sniffing at it.
Maybe it was to mask her hunter’s odor.
“Smells like they brewed it within the last twenty-four hours. That would be an improvement.” He took a swallow. “Not bad. I’m surprised to see you so soon.”
Kitty did a once-over of the diner. Only the two of them and the kitchen guy. Hard Traveled was nowhere in sight. From the kitchen came the muffled clink of dishes and a whoosh of steam. Were they cleaning up after the lunch rush? Was there a lunch rush in this place? “So soon after what? After trying to kill Joe and me the other night?”
Kevin looked a little startled. “Trying to kill you? Hmm. Can you refresh my memory on that point?” He leaned back in his seat as if prepared for a long explanation.
“Full moon. Manistee National Forest.” Kitty popped the tab on her can. Guess she’d better settle in for the long haul, too. Word games took time.
“Hmm,” Kevin said, as if the whole thing sounded new to him. “I wasn’t in the forest—or even in town—the other night.”
Kitty considered if he were lying. Only one shadow had stood at the tree line. Her leg was utterly quiet today, but it had hummed with an electric current the other night in the woods.
Her uncle went on. “I had stuff to figure out. It’s a big commitment taking on an eleven-year-old traveling companion.”
Kitty’s circuits nearly overloaded as the words registered. Who cared where he had been the other night? He’d finally said the words she’d dreaded—expected?—since she found the gifts in Sam’s room.
He was still talking and Kitty dragged her attention back to him. “…needed to assess if that’s really the best thing for me.”
“For you?” Kitty broke in, enraged. “For you? What about Sam?” A crash from the kitchen covered her voice.
“I’d be a great dad. Hasn’t Sam said so?”
Kitty closed her eyes, the balloon of her anger punctured and leaking. Essentially Sam had said just that. Opening her eyes, she met her uncle’s gaze. “We already have a great dad.” She believed it. She only needed to find him again—to dig through the shell he’d built around himself and pull him out kicking and screaming. To make him help her.
Kevin smirked. “Anyway, why would you think it was me in the woods, Kathleen? I’ve had ample opportunity to kill you already. Why would I suddenly bother now?” His tone was dismissive.
Kitty focused in hard on her uncle’s face—so like her own. He was spouting crap. “Other than sending me that letter about the place you got attacked, you’ve never been here.” Her voice bounced around the empty room, and she lowered it to a hiss. “Ample opportunity to kill me! If we had ever met up in the woods on a full moon night, I guarantee I would have made it very unpleasant for you.”
Kevin’s eyes darkened in anger and the corner of his lip drew back slightly, exposing a tiny hint of white canine. He pushed forward into the table. “Did your Dad ever tell you…wait that’s a stupid question. Apparently Nate never told you anything.” He shoved the thick dark hair off his forehead. A white scar arced over his left eyebrow. “Like it? Before Nate learned to play ball—I mean really play it—he was awful.” He traced his finger over the half moon. “Gave me this with a wild pitch. Split the skin wide open. Took eight stitches to close it up.” He let the hair flop back into place. “It’s quite an identifier, don’t you think?”
Kitty felt the weight of something coming, something she didn’t want to know. It pressed down on her, making it hard to breathe. Something familiar about the shape of the scar and its placement tickled the inside of her head.
“You might be a pretty good shot, but you can’t dig a hole for shit.”
The change in subject confused her. “What?”
“The duffle bag. You didn’t get it nearly deep enough when you were hiding it. You’re lucky the searchers didn’t find it after the fire.”
She had buried the duffle bag of equipment after she killed Phinney. The only one who had seen her that night had been a werewolf. There was no way Kevin could have seen her hide it. But he sent her a letter, “I saw what you did.”
No way.
Kevin must have seen awareness dawning in her face, because he lifted the hair off his forehead exposing of the scar. “Wanna see it again?” he taunted.
The thing in the clearing where she had hidden the equipment had an arch of white above its left eye.
“That had to be the worst night of your life. I’ll bet the only thing that even came close was the night Phinney got bitten. Too bad you were too late to save him.”
Kitty wanted to wipe that look off his face—wipe the knowing off his face. Her hands clenched down hard on the can, not quite denting the aluminum. “Shut up.”
The clinking in the kitchen stopped at her raised voice. The kid materialized at the serving window, but Kevin flicked his fingers and he melted away as quickly as he had come.
“Ohhhh.” Kevin laughed. “I was there that night too. Don’t you remember Phinney calling to me?”
Kitty’s stomach dropped. She grabbed her bag and slid out of the booth seat. “We’re done here.”
She headed for the door, straightening her back as she slung her bag over her shoulder. She would not run. His laughter floated out the door with her. She took slow purposeful steps toward the car, folding herself into the seat and slapping down the lock button.
She jammed the key into the ignition—it took two tries—and started the car, leaving the key shoved over so long that the engine ground in protest. As she drove past the coffee shop, she risked a sideways glance. Kevin still sat in the booth, placidly drinking his coffee. He lifted a hand to her as she went by.
Kitty made it around the corner and into the downtown, making sure she was invisible to the diner before she pulled over. She hunched forward, arms wrapped around her belly, and head cradled against the hard coolness of the steering wheel for stability.
Phinney had called to Kevin the night he was bitten. As he lay in the bloodstained grass with his arm in shreds, he stared off into the shadows calling his former apprentice’s name. Kitty thought he’d been in shock. When she looked under the trees, she’d seen nothing but shadows there. Except when she finally thought she had seen something, it had disappeared.
Her stomach roiled. So what if Kevin was there? What did it matter if he’d seen her bury the duffle? If he had pictures of her and Sam, he’d probably been in and out of Oakmont for the last twenty-some years spying on the life he might have had.
What mattered, her head said matter of factly, was if Kevin was there he had been a wolf. And if he had been a wolf, why didn’t he attack either her or Phinney?