“His granddaughter—”
“Is a flat-chested, elf-faced ivory-tower academic who won’t even know we’ve been here.” It was the female’s voice again. “If you’re careful, Ronan.”
The golden wolf lunged at the deer but misjudged its angle, and two of the others leapt aside as the animal crashed through their circle, hooves flying.
“We’ve got to figure out how real wolves do this,” panted the silver one as they took chase.
Real wolves? I shook my head. It was too incredible. What were these things? And what did my grandfather have to do with them?
I waited five or ten minutes to make sure they wouldn’t come back and staggered to my feet, my head still reeling from what I’d just witnessed. Especially the last comment by the gray wolf. If they weren’t real wolves, what were they?
“Amazing night, isn’t it?”
The voice shocked me, and I wheeled around. For a moment, it sounded like my grandfather, and I was transported back in time to my childhood as he and I stood on the balcony and found constellations. I was never good at it, my brain already bent to the reality of math and science rather than fanciful creatures in the stars.
A flicker of flame and then the smoldering ash of the end of a cigarette brought me back to the present. I coughed.
“Thought I’d light up while you thought about your answer.”
Leonard Bowman stood there, leaves stuck to his sweater and jeans. The light of his cigarette and the moon flickered in his dark eyes.
“What are you doing here?”
He raised an eyebrow. “I could ask you the same question.”
“It’s my grandfather’s house.”
No answer, just a long stream of smoke.
“It’s my house,” I finally said. The words felt awkward on my tongue, and I became aware I was standing in my nightshirt and boxers in a flimsy robe on a cool night. I shivered.
“So your lawyer says.”
I tried my best imitation of a Gabriel shrug. Leonard smiled and dropped the cigarette, which extinguished with a hiss in the dew-damp grass.
“So do you always lurk in the bushes of your own house?”
My cheeks burned with the flush that crept up my neck. “Not always. Sometimes I lurk in the trees.”
“I’d be careful if I were you, then.” A smile flickered across his lips, but his eyes remained serious. “You never know what might be in the woods around here.”
A sharp pain stabbed through my wrist and up to my elbow, and I looked down to see it in his grip. “What did you say?” he growled.
I tried to jerk away, but it was as if my wrist was caught in a steel trap. “Let go,” I hissed.
“What did you hear?” The pain clouded my awareness, a bright throbbing focus as fingers found tendons and squeezed the pain up through my bicep and to my shoulder and collarbone. My knees buckled, and then I was bowled over by something large and covered in flannel.
The pain eased, and I found myself curled in the fetal position on the lawn as two men wrestled not far from me. It was Leonard and Gabriel.
“Get off of me, you overgrown poodle,” Leonard grunted.
“Take your filthy hide somewhere else, Lothan!” Gabriel was on top of him, hands around his throat. Both men bared teeth in a feral way, and my heart beat in staccato. Gabriel had tossed his flannel robe aside and wore only his white T-shirt and boxers. He had the arms of a basketball player—lean and muscular. Leonard was built more like a football player, all knotted muscle, but neither man had an ounce of fat on him. I knew I should run, but my fascination held me rooted to the spot.
“I believe the Lady of the Manor would like you to leave,” Gabriel snarled.
“I’m sure she would.”
Gabriel sprang away, and Leonard got up and slowly brushed his clothes off.
“Until later, milady.” That last word was an insult, I knew, but I was just happy to see him walk away. The shadows of the trees swallowed him, and I turned to Gabriel, who still managed to look the distinguished butler in spite of disheveled hair and grass stains on his T-shirt.
“Let’s get some ice on that wrist,” he said. “Even so, it will probably leave a nasty bruise.”
He let me lead the way inside, and I sat on the couch in the study as he fixed an ice pack out of some towels and a zip-top bag of ice.
“Thanks.” Somehow sitting on the couch was soothing, a bit of normality in an otherwise bizarre night. The ice pack stung, but it quieted the throbbing.
“I wouldn’t be too terribly upset with Loth—Leonard,” Gabriel told me as he set down a cup of herbal tea and a bottle of honey.
“Why? He hurt me, and he knew exactly how to do it.”
“He was not entirely in control of his actions.”
“What?”
“How much honey?”
“A teaspoon. But what do you mean, he wasn’t entirely in control of his actions?”
“He was in a state where his impulse control was still impaired.”
“Why?” But part of me knew the answer, and it was in a place I wasn’t ready to go yet.
“Can I get you anything else?”
The frustration finally kicked in. “Gabriel, sit.”
He surprised me by sitting in the armchair, but he did not settle in.
“Look, it’s obvious you know what’s going on better than I do. Can we just chat like two normal people and forget you’re the butler for a little bit?”
“I can try.” He eyed me warily. I think he was surprised he had been so obedient.
“Okay, let’s back up. How did you know what was going on out there?”
“I heard you cry out.”
“I never cried out.”
Another shrug.
“I wasn’t supposed to see them, was I? And don’t you dare shrug.”
He sighed instead. “In time, you would have been introduced properly to them. But no, your grandfather wanted you to be sheltered at first.”
“So you drugged me?”
“It obviously didn’t work.”
“Obviously. Why did he want to shelter me?”
“He knew how your mind works. He felt that, after the fire, you may not be ready to see what your mind would classify as impossible.”
“But now he’s dead, and I’m in the middle of something I need to be able to understand.”
“You may be able to understand it better than anyone.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your research.”
“My research?” I felt the cold sweat at the back of my neck and closed my eyes.
“CLS.” He rose from the chair. “Excuse me a moment. I have something for you.”
I sipped the tea, which may have been drugged, but at that point I didn’t care. Before I had been let go from Cabal Industries, I had been studying a pattern of breakouts of Chronic Lycanthropy Syndrome, a new psychological disorder of impulsivity. With the help of a historian, I had been tracing family trees and gathering family medical
