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Or, rather, we had a twin to find. Because Luke caught my elbow as I eased away from him.
“And the third member of our party?”
I’m not quite sure how it happened. But ten minutes later, Grace, Luke, and I were alone on the sidewalk, released from an investigation that had everyone else cooped up inside telling their stories over and over and over.
We maintained our unity until clipboard lady reentered the double doors between the tall white columns. Then we shattered into three jaggedly uneven parts.
“My car is this way.” Luke’s voice was like warm toffee flowing across me. Unfortunately, Grace wasn’t a fan of the sticky sweet.
“Thanks for the ride offer,” she told Luke rather than following him down the block in the direction he’d indicated. “But we’ve gotta run.”
The shards of ice in her voice made me squint and try to figure out what she was telling me. Two hours ago, we’d been united. What had happened in the interim to tear us apart?
“Our cousin is waiting.” Grace raised her brows and widened her eyes as if she thought I’d forgotten. Then her gaze slid down to land on my ripped and rumpled dress.
My cheeks heated. Did my twin really think I’d been upstairs making out with Luke rather than searching for Bastion’s pelt?
For a split second, I was furious. Then guilt hit me in the form of a long-repressed memory from our shared past.
Ten years ago. A night so dark the milky way was visible. Home alone. The door knob rattling....
I shivered, blocking out the memory and focusing on the present instead.
Grace was right. Bastion needed to be soothed, and my pelt wasn’t up to the task at the moment. Which meant I needed to shift and run, just like she’d hinted. We were wasting time standing here at the curb.
Headlights caught my eye. A taxi—a speedy exit.
I leapt toward the vehicle, arms waving. It screeched to a halt, and I hesitated. This might be the last time I saw Luke....
Grace jerked the door open. Pushed me inside without time for farewells.
“Don’t let down the pack,” she hissed. Again hung in the air between us, no need for it to be spoken aloud.
I didn’t intend to let down our pack. Still, I glanced over her shoulder.
Luke wasn’t even looking at me. Instead, he appeared to be speaking to the driver.
I turned away just in time to feel the heat of his gaze swipe across my body. Then tires rolled across pavement and even that contact was gone.
***
THE RIDE HOME WAS STILTED and formal. I shared what I’d found—or, rather, what I hadn’t. Grace countered with a rehash of her conversation with the lady of the house.
“You look familiar. I know your mother,” my twin mimicked in a high falsetto. The social falsehood was funny because both of our parents had been dead for nearly a decade. Neither of us cared to laugh.
After all, Bastion was now failing in the exact same manner. A text from Justice offered the information that Bastion had been awake and alert an hour earlier. Now he was alternating between chills and heat flashes. Grace had been right to hurry us along.
By the time the cabbie dropped us off in our motel’s parking lot—refusing to take our money since Luke had already slipped him payment—the silence had coagulated like dried blood between us. Grace grabbed my hand and pulled me into the dark indentation by the ice machine where the overhead light had burned out.
“Strip,” she demanded.
“Can’t I at least go see Bastion?”
She shook her head, eyes glimmering reflected starlight. Her tone was as cold as the cubes of frozen water chilling in the bin.
“And, what, use your knife to solve his problem? Just like you pulled a knife in the middle of a black-tie affair?”
So Grace had seen me rescue her from the groper back at the Smythewhites’. But I’d been trying to help, not hinder. How had that made her so mad?
“It’s not a knife,” I rambled, trying to solve a problem that didn’t make sense to me. “It’s a dagger. Sharp on two sides rather than one.”
Grace snorted so delicately I barely heard the exhale. “You sound like Justice.”
For half a second, we were united in amusement over our pedantic cousin. Then, just as quickly, she hardened her tone.
“All Bastion needs from you is a pelt. He needs it soon and he needs it charged. You’re wasting time.”
Ten years ago, I would have snapped back. Would have called Grace on her bitchiness, maybe donned my skin and grappled with her until one of us ended up on the ground.
Now, though, our connection felt as tenuous as a spiderweb. Grace had no pelt to transform her into a scrappy animal and her lack was my fault.
So I bit my tongue and stripped. Stacked my weapons to one side, my clothes to the other.
“Did you at least see what happened to end the party?” I asked as goose bumps rose on my exposed body. It shouldn’t have been cold, not during the dog days of summer. Still, I rubbed my arms, trying to chafe in a little warmth.
“Some girl swan-dived off the second-story landing.” Grace shrugged. To her, the fate of a stranger was irrelevant in the face of our own family drama. But my body chilled further as I guessed who the girl had been.
What sort of desperation pushed a teenager into prostitution? And why had she hung around after being dismissed by Clarence?
Because, in retrospect, I was 90% sure the voices that made me knock my head on the bottom of the guest-room desk the first time had belonged to those two teenagers. What had happened during the twenty minutes between the girl leaving Clarence’s room and her death?
“Did you see...?” I started.
But Grace shushed me. “Go.” Her tone brooked no argument. Like Justice earlier, she refused to even look at me.
The memory of ten years ago rose between us, a lesson and a challenge. I’d failed the pack then. I wouldn’t fail them a second time.
So I dropped the thread of our conversation. I wrapped the warmth of my pelt around me. Then, four-legged, I ran.
***
RESIDUAL HEAT FROM the day had baked into the tarmac. Between that and my fur coat, the air had turned oppressively heavy. Shivers forgotten, I was panting by the time I made it to Jimmy English’s home.
I’d come here in an attempt to make myself useful, following up on a text that had arrived while I was wrapped up in Bastion’s agony the previous day. Slim had fumbled the catch, and I was the chosen fall guy.
“He jumped out the window and skedaddled,” my collaborator had griped. “What gives? If you want to be paid, next time stick around for the finish.”
I’d been cast out of my den to charge up my fur, so I might as well hunt the missing bail jumper. To cool myself down, I took my time sniffing for Jimmy’s presence beneath the treehouse. Underneath each window. In front of all the doors.
The wife beater’s scent was there, but old and cold. He hadn’t returned since yesterday evening. Instead, the musk of his anger slid across the lawn then faded into rubber at the edge of the road.
Jimmy had a vehicle. Or a friend willing to provide pick-up service? Whatever the reason, my nose wasn’t going to be able to follow that scent any further.
Still, criminals often stick to the familiarity of their own neighborhood. So I set off to run sweeps up and down nearby sidewalks, paying particular attention to alleys dark and deserted while doing my best not to set off too many outdoor dogs.
And at first, I thought that’s what was trotting toward me. A dark shape. Four-legged. A dog who’d slipped his leash or jumped his fence to enjoy a night of freedom.
Only...he ran with the lean grace of a hunter. His scent was subtly wild.
That was no dog. That was a wolf.