* * * *
“I guess I could’ve grabbed both of them,” Yoshida said, hefting Maisie’s enormous antique canvas suitcase. “I was thinking they’d be heavy as hell.”
He told McGlazer about the vase in the barn that, despite appearing empty, was startlingly heavy. The minister stopped and looked at him.
“What?”
“You would think we’d start getting used to this kind of thing.” He cast a nervous glance around the scene where so much strange carnage had occurred.
“Look, Rev. I have to ask. Aren’t you a little conflicted about this? Working with witches?”
McGlazer thought about it. “Mysterious ways, and all that.”
“So you still…believe?”
“I believe that I believe,” answered McGlazer. “I hope I believe.”
They trudged, in silence, along the worn pathway where Jill had fought for her life against “deceased” slasher Everett Geelens almost a year earlier. Within a few yards of the barn, Yoshida stopped again. McGlazer met his worried gaze.
“What’s wrong?” the reverend asked.
“If you had to, could you change her back?”
“With faith in God, we can do anything,” McGlazer answered.
“How is your faith in God holding up, Reverend?”
As McGlazer struggled with the lie forming in his mind, a low growl rose from the barn and grew to an eerie whine, a howl suppressed by the muzzle. It filled the farm and the men with a dark vibration.
Yoshida bolted into the barn to help his…pack mate?
Chapter 6
Wolf’s Blood
“Cannisssss!?” Emera called at the very instant Stella opened the front door.
“In the kitchen, Emenemenema!”
Bravo appeared, panting a greeting.
Stella set down the little one and followed her to the kitchen, where husband Bernard and Candace filled puffy cooler bags—Snow White–themed for Emera, Nightmare Before Christmas for Candace—with the next day’s lunch. Though Emmie didn’t go to school yet, she insisted on having a packed lunch every day like her big sister.
“Don’t forget her noon pills,” Stella told Bernard as she gave him a kiss and rubbed Bravo’s head.
“Way ahead of you.”
“Almost time for tonight’s.” Stella said, as the older girl accepted Emmie’s hug and kiss.
“I know, Mom.”
Throughout the bedtime routine, the family exchanged accounts of Leticia’s dinner party with the witches and the setup for The Chalk Outlines’ rehearsal at the Community Center. Stella and Bernard smoothly traded off, seeing to the needs of one little girl or the other as needed. It was a near-mastery of the chaotic dance called parenthood.
Helping Emmie brush her teeth, Stella felt Bravo’s meaty haunches brush past her. Looking up to talk to the dog’s reflection, she caught sight of herself smiling in the toothpaste-spattered mirror. Yes, it was satisfying to be providing the orphan girls and the big dog with a normal home and a future of relative certainty, especially after the many horrors they had suffered. She was proud of Bernard, how he had evolved and taken to fatherhood like a natural, leaving behind a pattern of self-absorption and emotional inaccessibility.
But she wasn’t ready to tell him what the witches had said, about “recruiting” Emera. Not until she knew more herself.
Bernard checked the hallway overhead light, a blazing hundred-watt bulb that both girls needed to sleep. Their bedroom door remained open so they could listen for any slight sound from the girls. Stella and Bernard had gotten used to wearing sleep masks and taking turns getting up at least twice a night to look in on them. After all they had gone through both before and after the girls came into their lives, Stella and Bernard were all the more fiercely loving these days. Their parental instincts were alive and kicking, their marriage better than ever.
Though they helped keep their bad dreams in check, the girls’ meds didn’t eliminate them. Only recently, through counseling, had the Riesling family learned to accept that the nightmares might never go away.
“Don’t forget, we’re going to see your therapist tomorrow,” Stella told Candace, as she pulled back the covers on the twin bed shared by the girls, a bed Stella and Bernard had bought and assembled together with such a sense of purpose and family it felt like a daylong dream.
“Will you make sure she knows I really need those meds?” Candace asked. “Emmie too.”
“Don’t worry, sweetie.” Stella stroked her little girl’s chestnut hair, especially the thin white streak she bore as a souvenir of her brush with death—and an oddly poignant reminder, of her big brother. “No one will make you stop taking them, as long as you need them.”
Candace’s relief was visible. Stella knew the girl’s real father, Aloysius, had withheld medical and emotional attention his children desperately needed. It was understandable that Candace would fear having it taken away. “Whatever it takes to keep you feeling safe,” Stella added.
“You make us feel safe, Mom,” Candace said, as Emmie crawled over and scrunched up against her on the wall side. “Thank you for taking care of us.” The earnestness in Candace’s eyes, the ferocity of her hug, swelled Stella’s heart.
Emmie joined the hug, radiating the same gratitude.
Bernard stepped in with a storybook, smiling at the huddle. “Hey, me too!” He playfully covered Stella and the girls, mashing them into the bed and eliciting a chorus of giggles. He relinquished them quickly, careful not to make them feel trapped, or remind them of a closed bedroom with a terrible predator implacably tearing its way to them.
Bravo took his nightly post in the bedroom doorway, where he had a good view in all directions.
* * * *
Rushing into the barn, Yoshida met the glowing gaze of the werewolf Aura and felt a weird relief that she was safe. But he couldn’t help feeling her howl had been meant for him. A summons—or a test of his will.
“Thank you, Deputy Yoshida.” Ysabella said. “Just put them down anywhere.”
“Matilda had quite a stock here.” Maisie, wearing an expression of mild alarm, appeared from between two of the shelving units with an armful of bottles, decanters, and wooden boxes. “No one should have most of these things. For
