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"Nah. It was all generic stuff. I only wanted this." He handed me the bag. Inside was Dan's jacket, washed denim with leather trim and a shearling lining.
"Nice, but it looks a little small for you."
He rolled his eyes.
"Okay," I said. "I give up. What did you want with his jacket?"
"It's not his. It's Dennis's."
"Dennis?"
"I smelled him on it when I was checking Podrova for ID. So I took it. No mutt is being buried in Dennis's coat."
I pulled it from the bag. "This isn't Dennis's. First, I saw his coat in the cabin--a plain, Sears catalogue parka. All his clothing was department store and that--" I pointed to the jacket. "--might have come from a catalogue, but if so, it was from one of those fancy collegiate stores. It's a young man's jacket. Dennis was trying to recapture his wolf, not his youth."
"Well, it smells like Dennis. Like he wore it."
He motioned for me to sniff the inside. I did and Dennis's scent was indeed there, as if he'd pulled it on once or twice, but under the mutt's more recent smell was another, deeper one embedded in the fabric. The real owner. And when I caught a whiff of that, I swore.
A smile creased Clay's eyes. "Admitting you're wrong, darling?"
"Not about that. Something bigger. At Dennis's place, I smelled another werewolf. A family member. I presumed it was Joey, but having now smelled Joey and smelling this, I was wrong. This coat belonged to a werewolf and it belonged to a Stillwell. But not Dennis and not Joey."
It was Clay's turn to curse, taking the jacket, inhaling deeper and cursing again.
"We need to talk to Joey," I said.
WE'D ALREADY NEEDED to talk to him--about this "deal" with the mutts and his lie about not encountering them. And now this: the existence, or former existence, of a Stillwell that Jeremy knew nothing about.
But this wasn't the sort of conversation we could have in Joey's office. We'd need to waylay him as he left work, and hope he didn't decide to put in too much overtime.
It was only midafternoon, meaning we couldn't talk to Joey for a few hours. That was fine, because right now, neither of us was in the mood for that conversation. We were tired and hungry and sore, and all we wanted was to crash in our hotel room... which was a problem.
"Already taken care of," Clay said. "I called Jeremy when we first split up. He'll have something booked for us by now."
First, though, we had to retrieve our stuff. My steps slowed as we entered the lobby, certain I could pick up the faint smell of Travis Tesler, my stomach knotting at the thought of going up there, smelling him, smelling what he'd done.
"Take a seat," Clay said, waving at the armchairs in the middle of the lobby. "Call the kids."
I hesitated.
"Plenty of people around," he sai
d. "It's safe."
"That's not what I meant. I should help--"
"Sit."
When he started walking away, I called him back and leaned in closer to whisper, "My clothes. The ones he..."
"In the nearest trash, along with anything he so much as touched."
"Thanks."
"Hey, if you have to walk around naked for a few days, I'm not complaining."
I managed a smile, then picked a seat with my back to the manned counter, facing the doors. I couldn't imagine Tesler sneaking up on me here, but I felt better being careful. Then I called home.
