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"Dario's gone," he says.

"Where?"

"He was standing right here."

Right here is torn grass and a lot of black that isn't ours. Ours is a stripe running out toward the fence.

It stops.

Not thins out. Stops. At twenty feet there's blood, and at twenty-one feet there's nothing, and past that the ground runs clean all the way to the wire.

I try to catch the scent in the grass.

Rot. Smoke. Burned rosemary. It's all over this yard thick enough to make my eyes stream, exactly as loud as it always is. My nose is working fine.

The trail just ends.

Nobody carried him out. Nothing dragged him. He got as far as the fence line and then he was just gone.

Wrong.

Ansel's truck comes in behind mine and two doors open. I don't turn around.

"Neal's in the trees," I say. "Take him."

"Gage."

"Take him or get out of my yard."

Boots go past me. I hear Tobin's voice, old and calm, telling Neal to quit trying to stand up.

I'm already at my own front door, and it's shut, and both bolts are thrown.

Good girl.

She opens it before I knock.

Maren's on the other side in a sweater with someone else's blood on the sleeve, and she's standing on both feet, and she's looking at me.

Everything in me that's been screaming for eleven miles goes quiet at once. It's the closest thing to relief I get anymore.

Ours.

"I'm fine," she says.

"You're not."

"No. But I'm standing here, so we can start with that."

Cass is against the wall inside, gray as the paint, holding her own arm on.

“I’ve got two of them,” she'll tell me later like it's an apology.

Then I look down the hall into my kitchen and even my wolf stops talking.

There's a creature hanging over the counter.

Head, shoulders, one arm out and reaching, and none of the rest of it anywhere. It hangs three feet off the floor with nothing under it. The mouth is open. The eyes are wet and they move when I move.