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11
ADDIE
Irolled over and came face to face with a pile of fur. Blinking, I spat the fur out of my mouth and wiped the late-night drool from my cheek. When I sat up, a white wolf looked up at me with his tongue lolling out of the side of his muzzle.
“Maddox?” I pulled my blanket to my chest like I was wearing something scandalous when, in fact, I wore an oversized t-shirt that made me a shapeless blob.
Excited, he pawed at the sheets. He inched closer and rubbed his muzzle along my cheek before licking my face. I laughed and shoved him away. Here was the sweet wolf that I knew.
When I noticed red flecking his fur, my heart stopped. It sank into the pit of my stomach like a stone. The red looked like some sort of dried liquid. It stained the front of his chest and the corners of his muzzle.
“Maddox? What did you do?” My voice wavered.
He cocked his head, his ears flopping.
This adorable, happy-go-lucky wolf had killed someone in my city, while I’d been sleeping. I couldn’t believe it. A few hours of sleep had cost someone their life, and it was all my fault.
I gripped Maddox by his fur and shook him while I asked the same question on repeat. He let me shake him for a moment then jerked out of my grasp and leapt off the bed. Claws struggling for purchase on the hardwood floor, he scrabbled towards the exit.
I threw off my blankets and ran after him. “Get back here!”
Maddox leapt down the stairs in one fluid motion. I cursed under my breath and followed. A sweet smell reached my nose halfway down the stairs. It was only when I turned the corner towards the kitchen that I stopped.
There was red splatteredeverywhere. I waited for the cold brush of death to reach me as adrenaline hit my system, but death never made itself known. Several seconds ticked past on my old cat clock. The gears in my brain refused to process what I was looking at.
For a moment, I thought my arcana was misfiring again. There was a dead body in my kitchen, and I couldn’t feel it. That couldn’t be right, though. My gut instincts rioted. It kicked my fear to the curb so the gears in my mind could finally start turning again.
Maddox would never hurt someone like that, let alone drag them to my kitchen. Maybe he’d caught a rabbit and brought it inside. That seemed far more likely, though there was so much red everywhere that…
“You son of a bitch!” I shouted once I realized what I was really looking at.
Not only was this red the wrong shade for dried blood, but there were shards of glass on the floor t hat glinted in the light of the rising sun behind me. When Maddox started to lick red from the floor, I shouted at him.
The dumb dog was going to eat glass if he wasn’t careful.
“I can’t believe you broke a whole jar of strawberry jam just to get a sugar fix. You are, without a doubt, the dumbest shifter I have ever met. That’s saying something because I’ve met some astoundingly stupid people in my life.”
Angry, I stomped back to my couch and threw myself onto it. Now that my panic had subsided, guilt crept in. I buried my face in a pillow while struggling with shame. I shouldn’t have doubted Maddox like that. He deserved better.
“Fuck,” he said in the kitchen.
I didn’t have to look up to know that his beast had given him enough control to shift back once more. I imagined him standing in the middle of the mess he’d made. Hopefully, he felt as guilty as I did.
It was a petty thought, but one I allowed, nonetheless.
Maddox groaned. “I’m going to call your friends and have them take you out for the day while I clean this up. Does that sound fair?”
My heart flipped. I sat up and gave him a curious stare. No man had ever offered to do something so nice. When Maddox also offered to foot the bill for my outing today, my jaw hit the floor.
He gave me a sheepish grimace when we locked eyes. “It’s the least I can do.”
“I think I can accept that.” Of course, I could. I didn’t know why I was beating around the bush.
While I got ready for the day out, I waited for Perse to slide in and start laughing. Had she been around, she would have witnessed the destruction of the jam jar. It would have pleased her to no end, but Perse still didn’t appear.
Worry set in. I scowled at the walls.
There were no ghosts, even here. Something was up, and I didn’t think it had anything to do with Maddox. I would find out while shopping with Cerri and Vi, though. While Maddox stayed behind to clean his mess, I would be on the lookout for ghosts.
