Page 38 of Dark

“You know this would be easier if you sat in your seat.”

Glowering across the empty parking lot like she was about to bust through the window of her death-trap Volvo (because of course we had to take her car) and eat the stray moths flying circles around the halogen lamps, the small black wolf growled low in her throat. Because it had taken all of two seconds after receiving that text threatening her sister for her to leap out of bed, grab the sharpest steak knife out of my drawer and charge for the door. She still couldn’t handle direct moonlight. And hell if she cared. Which was how I came to be doing surveillance at 1 a.m. with a hundred-pound werewolf standing in my lap.

The door to the clinic opened. Hayden lunged across the front seat and pressed her nose to the windshield.

“Yeah, that’s my dick.”

Beowulf oh-so-delicately shifted her paws so she was crushing my liver instead. Because, helpful. Together we watched as a teenage girl skulked out to her car holding a cat carrier.

“You know Ellie’s not alone in there, right? The vet’s one of us. She’s up to speed on the situation.”

A shadow passed over the hood of the car. Nearly taking herself out trying to clear the steering wheel (again, we should have taken my truck), Hayden vaulted to the passenger door and began gnawing at the handle.

“Uh, yeah, killer, that was a grackle.” Double-checking that the locks were engaged, I pulled out my phone to see if Brody had texted back. “Hangry much?”

She shot me the mother of all dirty looks and hunched into the passenger seat to continue surveilling the empty parking lot for enemy birds.

Reaching down into the bag on the floorboard, I unwrapped a double bacon cheeseburger. Hayden flattened her ears when I set it on the dash in front of her, clearly still pissed I wasn’t taking the 007 thing more seriously. But as soon as she thought I wasn’t looking, big hulking bites began disappearing from the edges of the burger.

Better it than my face.

The door to the clinic swung open. Caught with a rogue tomato slice dangling from her fangs, Hayden whined.

“Yeah, I see her.”

Dressed in blue scrubs featuring cats wearing eyeglasses (because everyone in this family seemed to have a knack for making themselves into wolf-bait), Ellie headed for her car. Hayden whined again, an image of a wolf leaping out from the shadows to eat her sister forcing its way into my mind.

“Yeah, Lassie, I get the picture.” I pulled out my phone, about to text the clinic when Ellie slowed. Frowned down at her phone.

“See? She’s going back in.”

Which of course, was exactly the moment Mini-Hays looked up. Had we been in my truck, which looked about like every other beat-up, muddy Ford in Lindley County, no doubt she would have kept on walking. But because Beowulf insisted we take Death-Trap, a twenty-year-old Volvo that her Aunt Piper had gotten custom-painted Glitter-Smurf blue as a surprise learner’s permit present, I was now sitting outside the Walmart in the dead of night with Ellie squinting over at me like I was a total creeper, with a werewolf she couldn’t know about hyperventilating next to me in the passenger seat with total guilty tomato breath.

“Okay, not good on so many levels.” Cranking the ignition, I peeled out of the parking lot without even bothering to turn on the lights.

Hayden yelped, scrambling to the back window to see. A tail smacked me in the face.

“Um, ow? Driving.”

She whined.

“You know as well as I do she can’t see you. What did you think we were going to do, take you in there to get your nails clipped and a flea dip? Maybe you could have accidentally eaten all the cats in the waiting room while you were there?”

She growled.

“Yeah. That was a rhetorical question.”

My phone buzzed. I reached down to silence it, only to realize. Crap. It wasn’t my phone at all.

Pulling over to the side of the road, I grabbed Hayden’s phone out of the console. Beowulf helped by trying to stand on my face.

CadburyFunny: Um, is everything okay? I swear I just saw Ethan Caldwell outside the vet clinic. In Axel. With this huge black dog.

Shit. I started typing.

Me: OMG. was going to surprise you tomorrow. adopted a dog. Violet. sooo cute

Me: Dog emoji. Party popper emoji. Clapping hands emoji. Heart-eyes emoji.