I barely felt the cold on the brisk walk to The Rusty Wrench. A few times Smooshie protested her inability to explore, but I worried that if I stopped, it would give me time to think about what almost happened. I liked Parker. Too much. Which meant, I needed to keep my distance.
My uncle's words kept playing in my brain. “Parker Knowles is human, Lily. You can play with them, but you can’t keep them. That’s the rules.”
Growing up in a town full of paranormals, never having to hide who I was, had not prepared me to go out in the world of non-parakind. The boundaries were blurring in an alarming way. Being a Shifter in a human world was harder than I ever imagined. Did I really think I could live beside them and happily watch them, detached and separate? I’m not sure what I’d thought when I left Paradise Falls, but whatever illusions or fantasies I may have harbored, they were now shattered.
Greer met me out front with my keys in his hand. “She’s running like a champ now.”
Martha the truck looked older somehow. It disturbed me to realize that the few days I’d spent in Moonrise had already started coloring the way I looked at the world. I tugged Smooshie’s leash as she sniffed around the asphalt then planted her nose directly in Greer’s crotch.
The older man jumped back and laughed. “Well, hello to you too,” he said.
“Sorry about that.” I took the keys. “How much do I owe you?”
“Forty-eight even,” he said.
I tilted my head and met his gaze. “What about the twenty-five for labor?”
“I figure the way you’ve stood by my kid the last couple of days, I could throw the labor in as a thank you.”
I quirked a smile at him. “Giving away service isn’t going to keep you in business.”
He chuckled, and it reminded me of Parker’s laugh. “I’ve got plenty, missy. Don’t you worry about me.”
“You sure?”
“Yep.” He gestured to the truck. “Now get going. I have an engine to overhaul.”
Impulsively, I gave him a quick, awkward hug and ignored the happily baffled expression on his face. “Thanks, Greer.”
I opened the driver’s door, and Smooshie jumped in as if she’d been riding with me for years. She climbed over to the passenger seat and sat down, her tongue dangling a good six inches out of her opened mouth as she panted with excitement.
I scratched her ear as I scootched in behind the wheel. “You like a good road trip, don’t you, girl?”
She barked in response. I put the key in the ignition and fired it up. Martha immediately started, her engine humming. I didn’t even smell the telltale sweet smell of leaking antifreeze. Greer Knowles might not be a witch, but what he did with my truck was nothing short of magic. I gave the horn a bump and Greer, who didn’t look up from the car he was working on, waved back at me. One cool dude. Parker came from good stock.
I avoided the treacherous four-way by exiting on the side street. The white crust of melted rock salt discolored the asphalt. Martha’s wheel wells were already rusted, the hazard of being an old vehicle in a cold region, so I wasn’t worried the salt would do more damage. The speed limit was twenty-five down most the streets. The main drag had a few sections that went as high as thirty-five. I followed Main Street until I saw a green sign pointing left that said, “Two Hills Community College—Home of the Beavers.” I snorted a laugh and glanced at Smooshie.
“I think Tizzy might like a college full of beavers.” Tizzy, Hazel’s familiar, had a thing for beaver Shifters. Talk about bad romance.
The pittie wagged her tail, and it made a clunking sound as it slid across the back of her seat and hit the door panel several times. She looked around, her body vibrating with eagerness. As if an invisible hand guided me, I pulled into the nearest lot and found a visitor parking space. The small campus was mostly long, one-story buildings with names like Anne R. Langtree Learning Center and Robert John Blackwell Technical Center. The sidewalks were salted and scraped clean, creating a maze of gray concrete in the fluffy white snow. Students with backpacks and satchels walked between buildings, their coats up around their ears, their heads down as they made their way to classes. With only Smooshie as my witness, I admitted, if only to myself, I was jealous.
A knock on my window startled me. Smooshie began barking. I recognized the shiny brown hair and symmetrically perfect features of the local veterinarian, Ryan Petry.
“Hush, Smoosh.” I scratched her neck and shoulder with one hand and rolled the window down a couple of inches with the other. “Can I help you?”
“I thought you might need some help,” he said. “You lost? The campus can be confusing to navigate the first time around.”
“I’m not lost,” I told him since it wasn’t a metaphorical question. “I’m just looking.”
“The admission’s building is the one on the left over there.” He pointed to one of the smaller buildings.
“I’m not enrolling. Really, I just pulled in to rest for a moment.”
“Do I know you?” he asked. He smiled, and it was breathtaking. I bet a whole lot of women fell helpless at his feet.
“I’m not from around here.”
“Still, I feel like I’ve seen you before.”
I decided to let him off the hook. “I was at Nix’s last night.”
He snapped his fingers. “That’s right. You were with Nadine Booth.” He gave me a crooked grin. “Wild about that fire.”
“Yeah, it was something else.” Smooshie crawled over my lap and pushed her nose against the crack in the window. Petry put his hand to her lips, and Smooshie licked his fingers. “Traitor,” I said out the side of my mouth.
“Hey, girl,” he said. “I see you found a partner in crime.” He glanced at me. “I immunized her and spayed her for Parker Knowles. Are you fostering or adopting?”
“She’s adopted me,” I said.
“I’m Ryan Petry.”
Now I smiled. “I know.” I shook my head. “Parker told me about you, and Nadine pointed you out last night. I’m Lily.” I rolled down my window about halfway and backed Smooshie up.
“Glad to meet you, Lily.” His green eyes shined like polished jewels in the afternoon sun.
“Me too,” I replied automatically. “I mean, it’s nice to meet you.”
“I know what you meant.”
“Did you leave before the fire started?”
“I was inside.” He shook his head. “I assisted a few ladies who’d had too much to drink.”
“A real hero, eh?”
He laughed. “Nothing like that. One of the girls was really out of it. Her friends couldn’t get her up from the booth.”
“Which one?”
“Her name’s Lacy. She’s a regular at Nix’s.”
Lacy had definitely been buzzed and giddy when I’d seen her, but she’d been far from pass-out drunk. “Wow. I didn’t think she’d had that much to drink.”
“She couldn’t walk.” He pursed his lips and shook his head. “I tried to get her out the front door near the booth, but it wouldn’t budge. I had to carry her out the back.” He put his hand on the roof of the truck at the top of my window, exposing his forearm. I could see some singed hairs around his wrist. He had gotten dangerously close to the flames.
“Where did you first see the fire?”
He squinted his eyes and looked up for a moment then said, “Near me, I think. Over by the pool tables. It happened really fast, and there was all that smoke.”
“Well, I’m glad you got out safe.”
“You too.” He glanced at his watch. “Better go. I got a class in five minutes.”
“You teach?”
“Veterinary Clinical Pathology Methods.”
“That sounds like a mouthful.”
“It’s a requirement for the Veterinarian Technology degree the school offers.”
“You better get going then.”
He hesitated. “Would you like to go out with me?”
“I don’t even know you.”
“That’s why I want to take you on a date. So you can get to know me.”
Ryan Petry was handsome, charming, and likable, but he wasn’t Parker Knowles. Maybe that was a good thing. “Maybe.”
He grinned. “That’s not a no.”
I started the truck up again and put it in gear. “Don’t be late. Minds to shape and all.”
“Where can I find you?”
“Bye.” I smiled and waved as I backed the truck out the parking spot. It had been a while since my last date, and I wasn’t sure how to proceed with a human. “It shouldn’t be this complicated, Smoosh.”
She curled in the seat and started licking her butt.
“Not helpful,” I told her. Unsurprisingly, she didn’t care.
After more driving around, I found myself parked out in front of Rex Kapersky’s church. There was only one car in the parking lot, a red four-door sedan—an upscale model. Something I imagined Katherine Kapersky would have been proud to drive. The sign over the church’s front door proclaimed, All are welcome. I hooked Smooshie’s leash on her collar. “Last time I checked, you were an All,” I told her.
Smooshie pulled me up the steps, ready to explore a new place. The doors, like last time, were unlocked. There wasn’t any music today. The church had a quiet serenity that can only happen when a sanctuary was vacant. Absent of activity. I sat in the last pew and Smoosh parked herself between my knees, her head on my left thigh. The interior was a mixture of dark wood grains, rich red and gold fabrics, and stain-glassed windows on both walls. A podium stood at the center of the stage where the choir had been rehearsing just two days earlier. Towering behind the podium on the wall was a statue of Jesus Christ, his hands out as if asking for a hug. I thought it was nice. Some images I’ve seen of Christ, especially the crucifixion ones, could scare the bejeezus out of people. I sat quietly for a moment and stared at a stained-glass angel.
Reverend Kapersky, wearing black slacks and an untucked white button-down shirt, walked out through a side door at the front of the church. The door I’d seen him go come out of when he greeted Lacy Evans. His shoulders slumped, and his arms were slack as he crossed to the front of the church. Even in the poor lighting, I could see puffy redness around his eyes. His grief was real, and the fact that some people were glad his wife was dead, no matter how awful she might have been, struck a nerve with me.
He turned toward the back of the church and made his way down the middle aisle. His eyes widened when he finally noticed me.
“Can I help you?”
Smooshie popped up and put her paws on the back of the pew in front of me. “Sorry,” I said. I moved her back to the floor.
“All God’s creatures, great and small,” the reverend said. He walked back to where I sat. He approached us with enough caution for me to count him as a smart man. He held up his hand to Smooshie and let her sniff him. When she pushed her head forward, he took that as permission to pet her. “Beautiful animal.”
“Thanks.” I kept a tight hold on her leash in case she decided to get aggressive with her affection. “She’s a lover,” I warned.
Reverend Rex sat next to me and leaned over to pet Smoosh again, and he ended up with a wet lick across his mouth and nose for his effort. He sputtered then wiped his face with the back of his hand and smiled. “Definitely a lover.”
“I’m sorry about your wife.”
The smile faded. “Thank you.” He looked at me. “Did you know Katherine well?”
I shook my head. “No. Really, I didn’t know her at all. I…I just…” I realized he didn’t know I was the one who had found her.
“It’s okay, child.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “I thank you for your sympathy. Would you like some counsel, or would you rather me leave you alone to pray?”
I had a million questions to ask the reverend, but I couldn’t think of a single organic way to go about it. Buzz had said that some of Katherine’s information had to have come from the private counseling sessions between the reverend and his flock. Could that be my way in? After all, Kapersky had offered. “I don’t want to be alone.”
“Let’s go back to my office.” He stood and straightened the tail of his shirt.
I followed him back, the heavy scent of musk and alcohol wafting behind him. Some kind of aftershave. At least he hadn’t stopped grooming. That was always the first sign of someone who has given up. He ushered me into a room that was maybe twelve feet by ten feet, not quite a square. A large oak desk took up a big chunk of space opposite the door. A wooden office chair with leather padding was situated behind the desk. The reverend sat down and gestured for me to take one of the two hardwood chairs across from him. One wall had a bookshelf filled with different Bibles, like King James, New American Standard, and the International Bible.
“Please have a seat.”
He sat with his hands folded on the desk. No pen or paper at the ready. “Do you take notes during your sessions?”
The question surprised him. “If you’re worried about confidentiality, you needn’t. I no longer take notes.” He leaned forward, smiling. “How can I be of service, Miss…?”
“Mason,” I told him. “Lily.”
“Miss Mason.” Some of the kindness and sadness had left his tone. It had been replaced with suspicion and a simmering of anger. “You’re the young woman who found Katherine, aren’t you?” Before I could deny it, he added, “The sheriff told me your name.”
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to hide that from you.” I walked to the bookshelf.
“Yes, you were.” He didn’t sound angry. “I don’t blame you, Miss Mason.”
I pulled out a leather-bound book, thin, almost fragile in its years, from the lower shelf. It smelled of dust, mold, and cardamom.
“Careful, there,” the reverend said. “That’s a Taverner’s Bible. Not a first edition, of course, but still pretty rare.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said and slid it back into place. “You have a lot of Bibles.” I carefully placed the old tome back in its spot. “You really have a lot of Bibles.”
“I believe in studying the whole word,” he said. “And since all versions of the Bible have slightly different ways to interpret the original texts, I try to read them all.”
On an upper shelf, I saw an Aramaic to English Bible. “Isn’t Aramaic the original language of the sea scrolls, or something like that?” I remembered the word from a documentary I’d watched, but I hadn’t paid enough attention to it to really know.
The reverend smiled. “Something like that.”
I tilted the Bible toward me. A picture slid off the shelf and onto the floor. I picked it up. It was a studio photograph of Lacy Evans and a baby in a blue onesie.
“Leave that,” the reverend said.
I turned the photo over. In messy cursive, “Our Son, 3 Months Old,” was written on the back. Shock took the breath right out of me. “Oh, my God. Are you the father of Lacy Evan’s baby?”
“No.”
“Do you know who is?”
“That’s none of your business, Miss Mason. I would no more share Lacy’s confidences than I would yours.”
“But your wife didn’t have the same compunction, did she?” Smooshie sat down next to me, her head swinging from me to the rev. She obviously felt the tension because she offered a pitiful whine. The reverend’s face reddened, but he didn’t deny it. I pushed a little harder. “She was reading your private notes, gathering information on people in the church and using it as leverage. Is that why you stopped writing down your sessions when counseling people?”
He rubbed his hands over his face and looked out the window. I slid the picture in my pocket before he turned back to me. “Katherine wasn’t an easy woman, but I loved her. Why did Parker kill her? Over some dogs?”
“He didn’t do it.” I was beginning to feel like one of those six-second looped videos all over social media. He didn’t do it. He didn’t do it. He didn’t do it. ~insert parrot squawk~
He looked at me, his stare hard as the vein in his forehead pulsed. “Sheriff Avery says he has a solid case against the young man. I hear he suffers from mental problems. I’ll be sure to pray for him. I’m a man of God. I have faith that all things happen for a reason.”
“Do you really believe God approved a killing spree in Moonrise?”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”
“Who told you something that was worth killing for?”
“No one.” I couldn’t detect any deception in Reverend Kapersky. It made me wonder if he was telling the truth or if he was just that naive.
“I’ve known people who have killed because it was Thursday.”
“Then you’ve known some depraved people, Miss Mason.”
“So have you, Reverend. Difference is, I am aware.”