“What’s wrong?” she whispered.
“I don’t know,” I lied, because if she was like Joel, the fact that her dogs were in trouble would mean I’d have to sit on her to keep her out. “We’re going to wait here for Adam. He’s changing, and it’ll take a while, be patient. If I’m panicking for nothing, it won’t matter, but if there’s something here, I’d rather face it with a werewolf.”
“Changing. You mean changing into a werewolf?”
“That’s right.” Only then did I realize that the reason I knew that was because of our mate bond. He hadn’t said anything to me before I sprinted to Lucia.
“If you want to, you can go wait in your car.” I didn’t think she would, but it was worth trying. In her car, she might have a chance to get away if things went south.
“Is it because your brother is Native American?” she asked.
My eyes were good in the dark, and I was looking so hard they ached, but all I saw were a few bats and a squirrel. It took a moment to realize that I really didn’t have any idea what she was talking about.
“Is what because he is Native American?” I asked.
“Sorry,” she said. “When I’m nervous I forget to say everything out loud. Is he psychic because he is Native American?”
“As far as I know, Native Americans are no more psychic than anyone else,” I told her. “My father, though, he was…” Was what? Coyote? “A bull rider in rodeos, but in his spare time he hunted”—vampires—“demons. He was something of a shaman, and some of that followed his children.”
“You don’t have visions?”
“No.” I turned into a coyote and saw ghosts.
“You speak of him in the past tense,” she said. Lucia asked questions when she was scared, I got that, I did that sometimes, too. More often I talked. Sometimes I laughed. It was better than crying, and it made me look braver than I was.
I nodded. “My father died. The bad guys got him.” Coyote lived. Coyote always lived. The human guise he’d wrapped around himself because he was bored, the man my mother had fallen in love with, he had died.
The SUV door opened, and it was too soon for it to be Adam.
“I’m taking my chances out here,” Gary Laughingdog said. “I got nothing against werewolves, but when they are changing…”
“Just as well,” I told him. “They get pretty grumpy.”
Gary lifted his head and smelled the air. He glanced at me, and I nodded, knowing he was smelling Guayota for the first time. He grimaced. “Just so you know, kid,” he said. “I usually run when the bad things start happening.”
“Me, too,” said Lucia, and Gary and I exchanged quick grins because she was lying.
The sound of the SUV’s door opening had us all turning to look.
Adam was beautiful as man and as wolf. His wolf isn’t huge, not like Samuel’s or Charles’s wolves are, but he is substantial and graceful. He flowed out of the vehicle without making a sound, a blue-gray wolf with black markings. He raised his head and looked at the house.
“Okay,” I said. “We’re going in. Adam will take the lead, then me, Lucia, and Gary will be rear guard.”
“You did hear me the first time, right?” Gary said.
“That’s why you are in the rear,” I told him. “To give us warning when the bad guys eat the rear guard.”
He laughed, then took a good look at the door and stopped. “Someone’s been inside,” he said.
Lucia had locked the door when we left for the restaurant, but that hadn’t stopped the interloper. The door had been forced, breaking the frame. Most of the damage was on the inside—apply enough inward force, and that happens.
Adam shouldered the door open and paused, then he kept going. I followed him, wishing for a gun, but I’d left my Sig Sauer in the safe at work and my .44 S&W at home. I hadn’t wanted to retrieve the Sig with all the police and Cantrip agents running around. Maybe I was going to start leaving a gun in each car, too.
Just inside the door, I understood exactly what had made Adam pause. Something had marked territory in the house. I wrinkled my nose. It wasn’t a dog. Or—and I thought about Zack’s complaint about his hotel room—a human peeing in the corner.
“If that is Guayota, I’m going to completely revise my opinion on the manners of primitive gods,” Gary whispered.
“You have heard some of the stories about Coyote, haven’t you?” I asked. True, I hadn’t heard any about him marking territory, but a lot of Coyote stories sound like something thought up in locker rooms by a bunch of horny teenage boys. I was pretty sure Coyote enjoyed those the most. Maybe they were all true.
Adam glanced back at us, and I caught the reproach. He didn’t chatter when he was scared. Adam was the man in charge. Wolf in charge. So if he wanted quiet, we’d better give it to him.
The blood smell had faded once we were in the house—so nothing had died here. I didn’t think. But the urine made it so rank—Lucia was coughing—that I couldn’t be sure.
Nothing alive in here. Tell her to get her things, and we’ll go back to the kennels. Adam’s voice slid into my head like warm honey.
I’d never told him how much I liked it, because, like telling him how sexy it was when he did sit-ups when I could see his bare stomach, it could never be unsaid. He had enough power over me already. He didn’t need to know how weak I was.
I love it when you talk this way to me, too, Adam told me.
“Adam says that whoever broke in is gone now,” I said, trying not to smile because it would be inappropriate. “We’ll have you pack something, then check on the dogs.” I didn’t tell her what I was afraid we’d find in the kennels. Free to run, they might have stood a chance against what I’d faced in my garage. But they hadn’t been free to run. “Where is your bedroom?”
“Second door on the left,” she said.
The door was closed, and I opened it because it was less likely to take damage if it was me than if it was Adam. Werewolves break things like doorknobs. As soon as I opened it, the smell of urine and musk quadrupled. I glanced inside. It looked as though a giant dog had torn the room to bits, piled everything up in the middle of the bed, and peed all over it. Which might have been exactly what happened.
I shut the door quickly. “Belay that plan,” I said. “We’ll find you some clothes at Honey’s.”