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It was dawn by the time I made it back to our motel, dirty and damp and dragging my feet. Memories I’d worked hard to squash now swirled around me like the storm that had recently blown over. Four parents gathered pridefully in our orchard with me in the center of both woelfin and trees....
“Have you chosen?” That was Aunt Promise, my cousins’ mother. When I was five, I’d begged to be the first to choose my self-name, and she’d made me an oath that I would be given that opportunity. So here we were, a decade later, with me leading my cohort in the ceremony of self-naming.
Moral of the story? Woelfin lived up to their names.
Not that I was thinking of Aunt Promise’s name when I turned fifteen and embarked on the self-name ceremony. Instead, I stood tall and proud. Bare feet on top of my pelt to ground me even though it was cold winter. Bare head open to the sky so I’d always keep a clear mind.
“I’ve chosen.”
“And what have you chosen?” Even Papa’s eyes smiled. He’d selected “Bright” as his self-name long before my conception. Every day, he brightened our family’s lives.
“Honor. I am Honor.”
A whoop of joy and agreement rose from my parents, my twin, my cousins. Ten years ago, I’d danced with the joy of their pride in me. Now, my pads scuffed against the pavement, my self-name soiled by betraying Luke’s trust.
It wasn’t the first time I’d put the good of my family above my personal honor, but this lapse stung deeply. Which may explain why I rounded the corner of the motel and started up the steps toward the second-story landing without once looking to see where I was going.
Of course, motel rooms have doors. And doors require hands to open. Soon, I’d need to shift if I didn’t want to stand outside barking and hope my family noticed before the neighbors did.
So I dragged my gaze off my claws...and froze as I took in the sight of a man leaning up against the outside of the door that shielded our temporary den.
***
HE WAS SO INTENT UPON whatever he was doing that he hadn’t seen me even though his body was twisted in my direction. As a result, I was granted a perfect view of his mini-potbelly...along with the bulge beneath his left arm that could be nothing other than a holstered gun.
The man was short, barely taller than me, and what I could see of his face seemed familiar. Still, I was more interested in the small black cylinder sandwiched between the door and his open eye.
A peephole reverser. A cute little gadget I had in my own possession, used to see the wrong way through a supposedly one-way peephole. Cheaper doors—like this one—were more likely to give up their secrets.
What was this almost-stranger doing prying into our den?
At the moment, though, his reasons for snooping were less import than my reaction. Mr. Potbelly hadn’t noticed me, but he might at any moment. So—slowly, silently—I backed down the stairs, padded across the parking lot, and made my way up the staircase on the opposite side.
Here, I paused long enough to regain my humanity. Yes, I could attack the guy in wolf form and have him running so fast he’d wet himself.
But I wasn’t into scare tactics. I craved information instead.
So I knotted the legs of my pelt tight around my waist to partially shield my modesty, ignoring the way the tension made my human calves twinge. Then I stepped lightly across rough concrete. Three doors away, two doors, one door....
Mr. Potbelly was half a foot taller than me and significantly heavier, but I was used to those physical disparities. As a woman, I depended on agility and speed and—in this case—on the element of surprise.
The peeping tom’s left arm was lax against his side as he used the other to grip the peephole reverser. Working fast, I snaked one hand up under his shirt to grab the gun....
“What?”
Predictably, he spun to face me as the weapon slid free of its holster. Less predictably, I used his momentum to my own benefit.
Pistol safely clasped in my right hand, my left hand bit into his wrist as I sidestepped his charge toward me. His body thudded into the motel wall, potbelly forward.
And, for the first time in hours, I smiled. The arm I’d grabbed was twisted upward so high even a kid could have restrained him. No wonder Mr. Potbelly swore so loudly that my family came pouring out.
***
BASTION WAS BY MY SIDE in a millisecond. Not the Bastion I’d left the previous evening. No, this was my familiar partner, strong and quick and brimming with health.
“Gun?”
I handed it over, adding my own request: “Zip tie?”
The thin plastic restraint exchanged hands in the opposite direction. Snick, snick, snick. Bumps slid through the rectangular opening until the end pulled all the way tight.
The man, whoever he was, hadn’t stopped struggling. But, between us, Bastion and I pushed him into our room and closed the door in less time than it would have taken to brush my teeth on a busy morning.
Problem neutralized for the moment, I stepped back and eyed my favorite cousin. Bastion looked so much better that I found it hard to take in the changes. His cheeks were pink, not from exertion but from vibrancy. His motion, as he tossed Mr. Potbelly onto a bed, was lupine smooth.
Bastion was also tuned in to me in the way we’d been before his health deteriorated. I raised my eyebrows in question—what happened? How could he be so healthy?
“Later,” he mouthed before jerking his chin toward Grace.
Unlike Bastion, my twin was just the way I’d left her—which is to say surly. Still, she tossed clothes at me while Justice finished latching the deadbolt.
Family accounted for, I slipped into shorts and a t-shirt while considering the man who’d been spying on us. “Who are you?” I asked, shivering as I realized I was asking him the exact same question I’d fled rather than answer two hours earlier.
Focus. I raised one eyebrow, Bastion’s cue to lift Mr. Potbelly off his face then perch him in a semi-seated position at the edge of the bed.
And now that I got a look at the spy head on, I knew the answer to my own question. He was familiar. In fact, I’d spoken to him quite recently.
But Bastion was the one who named him. “Slim?”
This was the local bounty hunter who’d pulled me in to help track down Jimmy English. The one who’d interrupted the domestic altercation two nights prior then lost track of the perp.
“You won’t get away with killing me too.” Slim’s chest puffed out, like a wolf trying to cover up his own terror. But his eyes slid sideways to where Bastion held the handgun laxly at his hip.
“Killing? Too?” I frowned. “You’re going to have to start making a little more sense.”
Slim’s bluster dialed up its intensity. “Don’t act innocent. I saw it in the paper. You’re not going to make me lose my license. I have proof that you were there....”
Slim kept ranting, but I’d already turned away. Grabbing change off the dresser, I left our prisoner in Bastion’s capable hands and pounded down the steps I’d recently padded up. Two quarters in the dispenser later, I had the local news at my fingertips.
There, on the front page, was Jimmy’s mugshot. “Local man found dead,” I read aloud, not looking where I was going as I returned more slowly to our motel room.
The news was old, dating back to two nights prior...shortly after Jimmy and I had tussled and he’d slipped through Slim’s fingers. Jimmy had died of blunt trauma to the back of his head, his body then dumped at the end of a long driveway. The family who owned the house was out of town on vacation, so it had taken nearly twenty-four hours before a deliveryman made the trek and found a corpse on their perfectly manicured lawn.
Obviously, I hadn’t killed good old Jimmy. But something cold radiated out of my belly anyway.
Was it a coincidence that two people had touched my pelt over the course of twenty-four hours and both had ended up dead in short order? A coincidence that I’d felt pain in the relevant portions of my own anatomy the moment each person was killed?
Was it just random chance that someone was using Bastion’s pelt at the same time and in the same town where deaths were cropping up with woelfin overtones? Somehow, I suspected it was not.
Slim was hunting a murderer. I was hunting a thief. And my gut told me those two people were one and the same.