Aiden’s blue truck pulled up next to the curb. As I walked over, he leaned across the front seat and opened the door. The cabin’s pale light silvered his dark blond hair and deepened the shadows in his blue eyes. While most Australian wolf packs were amber-eyed and either brown, red, or black in color, the O’Connors were the more rare gray wolves.
I shoved the backpack into the foot well and then climbed in. His warm, musky scent teased the air, and I flared my nostrils, drawing the delightful aroma in as I leaned across and dropped a kiss on his cheek. “Where did the murders happen?”
“At a small B&B on Hunter Street.”
Which wasn’t a street I knew. I grabbed my seat belt and clipped it on as he accelerated away from the curb. “Who reported them?”
“The owner.” There was something in his expression that had wariness rising. “Her name is Lacy Marin, and she’s a good friend of my mother’s.”
I couldn’t help my snort. “Meaning I should expect a mix of attitude and frostiness being flung my way.”
His mother—Karleen Jayne O’Connor—had certainly made no secret of her disapproval of me, nor her determination to end our relationship. I was both human and a witch, and as such would never be a suitable match for her son. The longer Aiden and I were together, the more likely it became she’d do something more concrete to split us up. She’d already threatened to place a wolf embargo on our café, but if she’d been paying any real attention to our business of late, she’d know that wouldn’t actually close us. It would severely dent our profit margin, however.
“She’ll be polite.” His voice was flat. “She won’t dare be anything else in my presence.”
Which was the exact tactic his mother had taken, and oh boy, the minute he’d stepped away, the alpha bitch had come to the fore. Still, in this particular case, it was unlikely Lacy would throw too much attitude my way; not when there were two dead bodies in her B&B.
It turned out Hunter Street was only six streets away, so it didn’t take us long to get there. Aiden cut the siren and stopped in front of a white weatherboard miner’s cottage. As the red-and-blue lights swept across the shadows of the night, a small woman wearing a bright red raincoat and matching gumboots came out of the more palatial house on the opposite side of the road and strode toward us.
“Wait here.” Aiden climbed out and met Lacy Marin at the front of his truck.
She took a set of keys out of her pocket and handed them to him. “I locked the doors once I’d reported the murders.”
Her voice carried easily, despite the heavy drumming of rain on the truck’s roof. Either she was shouting or my hearing was, for some weird reason, suddenly sharper.
Aiden nodded. “Jaz should be here in fifteen minutes to get your statement. In the meantime, you’d better get out of this rain.”
She nodded and turned around, her gaze briefly meeting mine. Though her expression gave little away, contempt was very evident in the glint of her golden eyes.
My sight, I noted somewhat uneasily, had also sharpened. Either that, or my imagination was running away with me yet again.
As Lacy Marin strode away, Aiden moved around to grab his kit out of the back of his truck, then opened the passenger door and helped me out. Rain blasted into my face and ran down the back of my neck; I shivered, shoved my hands into my pockets in a vague effort to keep them warm, and quickly followed him through the picket gate and down the stone stairs. The old cottage was well-kept and pretty typical in style for its era: a red tin roof, sash windows on either side of the red front door, and a wide veranda that did at least offer some protection from the worst of the weather.
I ran a hand down my face to get rid of the moisture and studied the building with my ‘other’ senses. There was no immediate sensation of evil and nothing to suggest that souls lingered inside, which meant these deaths were ordained.
“Anything?” Aiden asked softly.
I shook my head. “If we are dealing with some sort of supernatural entity, then they didn’t come through this door—there’s no resonance.”
“It didn’t. Lacy said the main bedroom is an extension at the rear, with double doors leading out to the hot tub and patio. They were open when she arrived.”
He handed me a set of gloves and shoe protectors; I leaned against the wall to put them on. “They weren’t murdered in the tub, were they?”
I’d seen plenty of brutal murders in this reservation, but for some reason, the thought of it occurring in water had my skin crawling.
He shook his head and opened the door. “They’re in the bedroom. Lacy said it smelled as if they’d been dead for at least a few hours.”
“I wouldn’t have thought putrefaction would have started that quickly, given how cold it’s been these last few days.”
“It depends on the situation. It can start as early as six hours after death, but it’s usually somewhere between twenty-four and thirty-six hours. Speaking of which—” He dug back into his kit and then tossed me a small jar. “Use this.”
“Vicks VapoRub?” I said, surprised.
“Dab it under your nose. It’ll help.”
“Meaning you can smell them from out here?”
“Werewolves have a keen sense of smell, remember? But in this case, there appears to have been major bowel leakage after death.”
“Great,” I muttered, and wondered why that seemed so much worse than the many other gruesome things I’d seen over recent months.
I unscrewed the lid, scooped up some of the VapoRub, and dabbed it under each nostril. The menthol scent had
