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Claire set two mugs on the table, and we each took a chair. “What’s going on?” she asked.
Quickly I told her about the previous night. The strange, flickering light. The fire that wasn’t. The crater and the wolf.
“I’m not certain I really saw it. When I checked for tracks, there weren’t any.”
“You expected to find tracks in a storm like the one we had last night?”
I shrugged. “You never know.”
“Did you hear a howl?”
“Nothing but thunder and wind.” And the rhythmic beat of the giant wings of an invisible bird.
I decided to keep that to myself.
“There was also a man. He came from nowhere.”
“As in now you see him, now you don’t?”
“Not sure. He was in the woods. I couldn’t make out his face clearly, but he was Indian. For a second I thought—” I broke off, remembering. “Grandmother used to tell a story about a band of Cherokee who’d hidden in the mountains to escape the Trail of Tears. They hid so well that eventually they become both immortal and invisible.”
“I guess you had hit your head.”
Though I’d thought the same thing, I couldn’t resist needling her. I could rarely resist needling anyone. “This from a woman who saw people turn into animals.”
She toasted me with her mug. “Got me there.”
I tapped my own mug against hers, then drank. “After my head cleared, it occurred to me that a wolf had gone into those trees and, not too long after, a man had popped out.”
“Did the wolf have the eyes of the man?” Claire asked.
We’d discovered last summer that a werewolf resembled a real wolf in every way—except for the human eyes.
I tried to remember the eyes of the wolf, the eyes of the man, but I couldn’t. I would think I’d recall something as bizarre as human eyes in the face of a wolf, but with the residual effects of the concussion ...
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I have certain gaps in the gray matter since the air-bag incident.”
Concern washed over her face. “You want an aspirin?”
“No, Mom, but thanks.”
“Watch it, or I won’t let you hold Noah when he gets up.”
I had a serious weakness for Noah Cartwright. Who’d have thought that rough, tough, gun-toting, order-giving Grace McDaniel would go gooey over a baby? Certainly not me.
“Sadly, I’m not going to be able to wait for His Highness to get out of the crib.” I stood, draining the rest of my coffee in one gulp.
“I’ll mention what you told me to Mal.” Claire followed me to the front door. “He’s pretty good at spotting the unusual.”
Considering Mal had been cursed to wander the earth for centuries, he’d had his share of experience with shape-shifters.
“That’d be great,” I said.
I’d tell him myself, but considering the storm I’d be a little busy with the human inhabitants of Lake Bluff for the next several days. Having never actually seen a werewolf, I was at a disadvantage. Not that I didn’t believe they were real. Long before they’d shown up, I’d seen other equally amazing things, which had eventually made me a convert.
“I’ll be in and out this week.” I stepped onto the porch, marveling at the bright sunshine after such a terrible storm. “I’m going to have to check on all the people in outlying areas.”
There were still quite a few old-timers who insisted on living in the mountains without a phone or even electricity. There were a few new-timers who thought it was all the rage too. I thought they were nuts. Probably because every time a natural disaster occurred I had to check on them.
