face, and put on a robe.
“Doctor Fisher?” Gabriel stood at the door. At first it looked like his shirt was stained black, but the smell told me it was blood, and he was soaked with it.
“Gabriel, are you hurt?”
“No, Doctor, but she is, and she’s asking for you.”
“Lonna?”
“No.” He took a deep breath. “Louise.”
I shoved past him, heedless of the smear it would leave on my robe and ran downstairs.
Louise lay on the sofa. I couldn’t see her wounds, but I could smell the burns, the blood. Her immaculate coffee-shop uniform had been torn and stained with grass, with the rust of old blood and the crimson of new, and with smoke. Her face, pinched and white, strained with every rasping breath.
“Louise!” I wanted to hold her hand but I was afraid to hurt her. She grabbed mine and struggled to articulate something. It started a throbbing pain in my wrist, but I didn’t care.
“Lay still,” I told her. “Gabriel, have you called 911?”
“Yes, Madam. The paramedics are on the way.”
Louise squeezed my hand. “The black wolf,” she said.
My heart skipped a beat as adrenaline poured through me. “What black wolf?”
“It. It.”
“Hush now, you’ve got to save your strength.”
She shook her head. “It knows.”
Gabriel took her other hand. “She shouldn’t be speaking. Her pulse is faint.”
She still struggled to speak. “Beware. It knows.”
A knock at the door. Gabriel ran to answer it.
Louise convulsed one, two, three times, then shuddered and lay still.
“No, Louise, no!” I didn’t want to believe it. The tears came then, racking sobs. Strong hands separated mine from hers and guided me to the armchair. I couldn’t stop as the guilt welled up. I should have searched for her. Should have done something.
“She’s expired,” Gabriel told the paramedics. They started CPR anyway and brought out the paddles. I couldn’t see what they did—I only heard the noises as they tried to revive her. And then the muffled curses and uncomfortable silence as they failed.
Gabriel held my shoulders, his strong grasp two points that anchored me to reality as sobs subsided into hiccoughs, but the tears still flowed. I couldn’t see the paramedics, merely blurs of blue uniforms. They parted for a figure in khaki.
“Well, Doctor Fisher,” drawled Sheriff Bud Knowles. “It looks like Miz Louise’s disappearance yesterday mornin’ has become your business after all.”
“Doctor Fisher is in no condition to be questioned, Sheriff,” Gabriel said. Damn, I just couldn’t manage to speak for myself this week.
“Well, then, I’ll start with you, seeing as you’re the one covered in blood. Don’t move her,” he barked at the paramedics, who prepared to lift Louise’s body on to a stretcher. “This here is now a crime scene.”
“What is the crime, Sheriff?” Gabriel asked. “We merely brought in a friend who was hurt and appeared at our door this morning.”
“You must be the new butler.” Knowles deliberately reached into his back pocket, brought out a pad, licked his thumb, and flipped the little notebook open to an empty page. “Could I have your name, sir?” he said with a sneer.
“Excuse me. I’m going to get some water.” I pushed by Gabriel and staggered into the kitchen.
I turned on the water and waited for it to warm. I felt the need to wash my hands both from the sticky blood and the impossible situation. The icy-cold water gave me an anchor to reality, and I watched blood swirl off my hands and down the drain. Blood. I tasted acid in the back of my throat, swallowed hard. Tried to concentrate on the water, on the cold tile beneath my sock feet.
The motion-sensor light turned on, and I caught sight of something big and black. Yellow eyes flashed at me, and I staggered back, found the sharp edge of the island with my lower back.
I must have screamed because footsteps pounded into the kitchen.
“Miss? Doctor Fisher?” An unfamiliar voice, one of the paramedics. “In here. She’s in here!”
“Did she faint?”
“Bring her out here. Lay her down.”
“Not on the sofa. Put her in the chair.”
Strong arms. No good. All went black.
Chapter Eight
I came to in the armchair with something acrid wafting into my nose: smelling salts.
“Are you all right, miss?” The young paramedic’s eyes looked into mine, and I could see his concern.
“I’m fine.” But I felt groggy, like someone had hit me over the head with a medical textbook.
“Here’s some water.”
“Thank you.”
Gabriel stood by the fireplace with the sheriff. His feet were square to Knowles, but he kept glancing over his shoulder at me. I raised my glass to show him I was okay. He inclined his head, but his back remained tense.
“Well, if that’s all, Sheriff, perhaps you can come take Doctor Fisher’s statement tomorrow,” he said. “I will be here all day as well if you think of anything else you’d like to ask me.”
Surprisingly, Knowles took the hint. “I’ll be by in the morning.”
Louise was gone, but the couch showed stains where she’d lain. Also gravel and grass. What had happened to the poor woman?
Gabriel didn’t sit down until he had locked the door behind the last of Knowles’ crew.
“I guess there’s no way to salvage the couch, is there?” I asked. Even before he said so, I knew the soft fawn suede had been ruined.
“The sheriff asked me to keep it here until forensics can come and collect it. I can’t even try to clean it.”
“What else did he say?”
“That none of us are to leave tomorrow until he and the forensics team return. The driveway and grounds are also considered a crime scene. Apparently it seems as though Louise was dragged up the driveway.”
I remembered the sickening sounds. “I heard it, but I had no idea what it was.”
“Me too. When I went out to investigate, all I saw was Louise lying in the grass. That’s when I brought her in.”
“Poor woman.” I blinked to keep the tears from falling again and to not relive the whole encounter.
In an instant Gabriel was by my side searching my face. “Are you all right, Madam?”
“I am. Did you see it?”
“See what?”
“The black wolf.”
“No, but I could smell it on her.”
“Was it…” I couldn’t bear to say it.
“No.” He leaned closer. “Don’t worry, it wasn’t Ron or Leo.”
“Phew.” Some of the tension drained from my chest, although the other possibility was just as disturbing.
