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"Claire! You scared the crap out of me. "
She moved forward out of the light, and she was just Joyce again, though she still had the knife.
"Wh-what are you doing with that?"
"This?" She frowned at her hand, then reached back to the desk and held up an envelope, slitting it. "Opening mail. What did you think I was doing?"
For an instant I'd thought she'd been performing bizarre rituals right beneath my nose, but the desk was merely covered with letters. Nevertheless, I checked to see if she had a swastika-bearing rune anywhere close. She didn't.
Joyce glanced at the paper she'd withdrawn from the envelope, scowled, and fed both of them to the shredder next to the desk. The machine growled, low, deep, and almost as menacing as a wolf.
"Why aren't you doing this upstairs?" I asked.
She didn't answer, just kept opening envelopes and feeding the junk to the machine.
"Joyce? Is there something going on that I should know about?"
More than there already was, that is. I didn't think Joyce was aware of the werewolf problem, and I didn't plan on telling her. She'd think I was crazy, or she'd want to do something to help.
I had enough on my plate worrying about Grace and myself; I didn't need Joyce deciding to hunt the woods as her father had done and winding up wolf bait like Balthazar.
The very thought made me physically ill and brought home just how desperate our situation was. If we didn't stop this thing haunting our town, soon people I knew, people I loved, would no longer be people.
Joyce bit her lip, as if she was trying to keep the words from spilling out. What was she hiding?
"You're not selling mail-order
porn, are you?" My voice rose, thinking of the field day Balthazar - well, not Balthazar, but someone from the paper - would have with that scandal.
"What?" She glanced up, then laughed. "Oh, the Cleavers. No. I'm just taking care of stuff. "
"What kind of stuff?" I asked warily, thinking of Granny and her still.
"Well, I guess you had to find out sometime. "
"Joyce, you're scaring me. " Considering what had been going on lately, that was saying a lot.
"I'm doing the extra work whenever I get a few minutes. "
"What extra?"
"There's a lot more to running Lake Bluff than I've let on. I didn't want you to break and run before you found your stride. "
I stared at her for several minutes as I processed that info. "Let me get this straight - you're working down here so I don't find out the job's harder than I think and take off like a chickenshit loser for greener pastures?"
"Pretty much," Joyce agreed, and opened another envelope.
"I thought you had more confidence in me than that. "
"I do. But why push my luck? I certainly didn't want Balthazar in charge. "
"You won't have to worry about that," I muttered.
She cast me a quick suspicious glance, but she didn't ask how I could be so certain.
"This is ridiculous. " I waved at the pile on the desk. "Bring everything upstairs, and I'll help. "
"You know, I kind of like it down here. No phone. No one dropping in to whine. "
