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“Of course, you are. And mine. Thank you, for saving my life just now.”
“We saved each other today,” he said. “Next time, we might not be so lucky. Next time that I tell you to stay at the cabin, please do so.”
“I did stay at the cabin, just not inside it,” I argued the point, which he gave me. “How did you know I was in trouble? You weren’t due back here until this evening.”
Something that Wilkens must have been counting on. He will be very disappointed and cross that his efforts today had been in vain.
“One of the kids spotted the two Arcans headed towards the cabin,” Bryant explained. “After Wilkens’ threat last week, I figured out too late that the outsider sent to the village was only bait to lure me away from the cabin so that his men could kill you while you were alone.”
“Yeah, I figured that out, too,” I said. “That man is a demon in disguise.”
“I had no choice but to shift and run at were-speed for the cabin,” he continued. “I wouldn’t have made it back in time, had I not. Callista, I honestly planned to tell you about myself. I tried to tell you the night before the festival.”
“You did,” I said, then remembered something else, more of the puzzle pieces snapping together. “Oh! Alice knows too, doesn’t she?”
“She does, but Henry doesn’t,” he said. “She found out...Well, that’s another story, and one I’ll tell you, along with everything else. But after I get some rest, if you don’t mind.”
“Fine, but we have another immediate problem, dear wolf husband,” I reminded, wincing. “What are we going to do with the two bloody corpses in our front yard? We can’t exactly put them out for the weekly garbage collection.”
* * *
“Stay on the horse and don’t say a word,” Bryant warned quietly.
I sat behind him on Patty as we rode into town. Poor Pat had another occupant, one that was shrouded in a ratty blanket and laying across his saddle.
“No arguments,amigo.”
“I hope that means ‘yes’ in your strange future tongue.”
“It does,” I assured.
We halted in front of the town jail. Wilkens must have spotted us from the window and burst outside with dropping jaw at the bundled delivery on one horse, and the fact that I sat upright and very much breathing on the other.
Bryant dismounted with another look to me to remained seated and silent. No worries there, mate.
“Good day, sheriff,” he said. “I found something in the woods that I believe you’d be interested in. Wanted to do my civic duty and bring it here.”
He untied and slipped off the body from across Pat’s saddle, and it fell with a thick, dusty thud at the sheriff’s boots. He looked like he was going to puke when he pulled back the blanket to reveal the green-yellow face of Bandana Man.
It was all I could do to keep a straight, calm expression on my own face.
“Dammit, you are a witch,” he said to me. “You couldn’t possibly...”
“Survive your assassination attempt on her life?” Bryant added for him.
Wilkens closed his mouth and lifted his chin. “False accusations, Bryant. I know nothing of any attempt on your woman’s life. If anything, I’m sure that it was her who had something to do with their deaths, what with all her evil spells and curses and such. I should lock her up right now and send for the judge to try her for murder. Even if we can’t hang her for witchcraft these days.”
Bryant’s brows hiked. “Theirdeaths? That’s very interesting. How did you know there were two men dead when there is only one body here?”
The sheriff startled at being caught in his lie, but quickly tried to backtrack. “I know nothing of a sort. Were their two men that she killed?”
“You know there was,” Bryant said. “You’ve been seen with both by several witnesses. And it was you who sent your own man to the Indian village today to draw me away from Callista, then sent this man and the other to my cabin to kill her when she was alone and unprotected.
“Gotta tell ya, sheriff, I don’t take very kindly to such threats upon the woman I love.”
“Threatening a town official, are you?” Wilkens retorted.
“Of course, not. Just a friendly warning. Mistakes and accidents happen all the time, don’t you know.”
