“No, I’ve got it,” she said. “Watch your heart!”
Kebbler seemed confused for a second. “No, that was my wife. Mine’s fine.”
“Surely it’s still broken.”
Kebbler was tongue-tied.
The box contained several sealed plastic bags. The top one, labeled footpath to barn, contained shards of glazed pottery. The footpath was where Jill had battled for her life against Everett Geelens. The shards had to be from the container the punker girl had smashed over the Trick-or-Treat Terror, the one that made him “vanish.”
“I hope you don’t think all of us around here believe in that hokey, horror-movie nonsense,” said Kebbler, regaining momentum. “I think the Halloween parade got into a few empty heads around here.”
The next bag contained a clay jar, about the size of a cold-cream container, engraved roughly with the letters lup. This would be skinwalker salve, for either changing or restoring. Unimportant to Violina.
“Some kind of lube?” Kebbler giggled like a frat boy. Violina didn’t look at him, but she could feel his gaze like a heat lamp on her legs and ass.
She took down another box and opened it, facing toward Kebbler this time. Inside was something of a knife collection: Aura’s bone-handled balisong, Rhino’s boot knife and Matilda’s athame, still speckled with blood.
Beneath these smaller blades were Everett’s toys: hedge clippers and the kidney-shaped bone saw he used to make real, live skull masks.
“Don’t get yourself hurt with those, now,” said Kebbler. “Be a shame if ya got blood on that nice blouse.” His breathing had gotten heavier. “…And had to take it off.”
Among a stack of Polaroids, she found several of sigils splashed onto a stone wall, possibly in blood. A notation at the bottom told her these were taken in the chamber under the church.
“I’ll need to take some of this with me,” Violina said.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Can’t do that without the sheriff’s say.” Kebbler leaned out to look toward the front and make sure no one was there. “You can just take your time and…examine ’em here.”
A third box yielded a find more mundane in appearance, yet infinitely intriguing to Violina. giant pumpkin from field next door said its label. The contents were at least two handfuls of massive pumpkin seeds, about twice the normal size. Tiny brown dots on a few of them could only be blood.
“Are you all right, Deputy Kebbler?”
“Oh, I’m righter than rain right now, hun.”
“Are you”—she cocked her head and stared at his chest—“certain?”
Kebbler cleared his throat. He raised his hand to his sternum. “Maybe a little heartburn.”
“Some water might help,” said Violina.
Kebbler wheezed, louder with each breath, as he stepped away from the little room and started toward his desk.
Violina rearranged the contents of the boxes, putting all she wanted to take in one. She carried it cradled in her arm like an infant as she left the room and made her way toward the exit.
Kebbler was at his desk, trying to move the dirty, clear-plastic rotary on the ancient telephone cradle with a quivering finger.
“Can I call someone for you, Officer?”
Neutered by distress, he could only look at her with suspicion. “I think I’ll be all right. Just need to sit for a minute or two.”
She patted his suddenly pale hand on her way to the door. “Thanks for all your help.”
Before the door had clicked closed behind her, Kebbler’s breathing had gotten so heavy and strident it echoed throughout the building, like his off-tune whistle.
* * * *
The Wolf fought to stay. Spurred by the shock of sharp pain, the Man eventually claimed the greater measure of control.
Yoshida snarled and snapped, but the violently wriggling cat was out of his paws—hands—and bolting through the clattering pet door before Yoshida could drop to all fours to pursue it.
Out of breath, his hands stinging from cat scratches, Yoshida rolled onto his back on the rough bark mulch around Mr. Campbell’s Japanese maple and squinted in pain at the sky. Fast-growing clouds had covered the moon, but he knew, somehow, that it was at about three-quarters, and this seemed disappointing for some reason.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Purrf?” asked Mr. Campbell, smelling strongly of store-brand shampoo and a toasted bacon-and-cheese sandwich he’d eaten roughly twenty minutes ago.
Yoshida looked toward his neighbor’s door, realizing he had never heard more than an indecipherable muffle from within before tonight. He rose from the mulch and shook to throw off the clinging chips.
Shook?
He reached back and slapped the mulch away, as he hunkered down to hide between some shrubs. A second later, the bathrobed Mr. Campbell flipped on his outside light and, opened the door, searching the yard with tired eyes. “Did you fight another kitty?”
Mr. Campbell went back inside and switched off the light. But Yoshida found that he could see just the same without it. He could trace the oozing trails of his cat scratches just as well as he could feel them, even in the deeper dark of the hedges.
How the hell did I piss off Mr. Purrfect? Yoshida asked himself.
Campbell’s tuxedo cat had been friendly to him since the day Yoshida moved to Ember Hollow. Yoshida even allowed him into his home and petted him sometimes.
The cat must have gotten scared.
Yoshida realized he was naked again. And that his teeth ached from gnashing.
“Crap on a Chrysler!” Yoshida whispered. “Did I just try to eat Mr. Purrfect?”
Yoshida’s heart sank. Taking the wolf out of Aura had not taken it out of him.
It didn’t take a Harry D’Amour to figure out that he was drawing closer to full-on werewolf status as the moon grew fatter.
* * * *
Hudson set the phone on its cradle gently, as if out of respect for his fallen fellow officer, Kebbler. The relieving officer had found him face down on his desk, dead of a heart attack.
This should be a day of mourning. Unfortunately, as with the past two Octobers, that would have to wait.
* * * *
Deputy Yoshida signed out, changed into civvies and drove
