Kitty Takes a Holiday

this—some miasma rose from the earth itself, seeping under my skin, raising the hair on my arms. It felt like something in the trees was watching me, but 1 looked and smelled the air, and couldn't find anything.

'Evil,' I echoed. 'It feels evil. All it wants to do is destroy.'

Ben spoke with a clenched jaw. 'I've been feeling that crawling under my skin ever since that son of a bitch bit me. How am I supposed to tell the difference?'

He could smell the blood, and the scent prodded his wolf, like poking a hornet's nest with a stick. But he didn't recognize it. Couldn't separate his own hunger from the wrongness that permeated the earth here. His shoulders and arms were tense, like he was bracing against something. His face held an expression of horror, but I couldn't tell if the expression was turned out to the scene before us, or inward, to himself.

I went to him. Didn't look at him, but gripped his hand and leaned my face against his shoulder.

'Practice, Ben. Patience.'

He turned slightly, rubbing his cheek against my head, and I thought he might say something. I thought he might talk it out until this made some kind of sense. Instead, he abruptly broke away from me and stalked back to the road.

Tony watched him leave. 'How's he doing really?'

'Oh, just fine,' I answered lightly. 'That's the scary part.'

I couldn't imagine what Ben would be like if he were handling this reall y badly.

Side by side, Tony and 1 followed Ben back to the road. I tried to pin Tony down, studying him out of the corner of my eye. Despite the weirdness of the area, despite having spent most of the morning with a couple of werewolves, he didn't seem tense at all. He kept his head up, his gaze out, looking around at the trees, the top of the hills, the sky, watching everything just in case something interest­ing chanced by.

I didn't make him nervous, and that was refreshing.

'Did Ben tell you where he'd seen this before?' Tony asked.

'That job in New Mexico,' I said. 'The one that blind­sided him and Cormac. They kept thinking there were two werewolves, but the evidence didn't add up.'

'So one werewolf, and one something else? That nar­rows it down.'

I couldn't help it; I laughed. Tony smiled in reply.

'One more question,' he said. 'Cormac said he'd meet me here. What happened?'

That one was a little harder to answer, because I wasn't sure myself. The tension had gotten thick. Then it had twisted, gone weird somehow. When we either couldn't stop glaring at each other, or couldn't look each other in the eye, something had to break.

I hadn't realized I'd let my hesitation stretch into a long silence until Tony answered for me.

'Ah—you and Cormac, and then you and Ben—'

'There was never a me and Cormac,' I said.

'Oh. Okay.'

He didn't sound convinced, and I declined to argue the point further. The lady doth protest too much, and all that.

Another car was parked on the shoulder, right behind mine. I recognized it; I'd seen it all too often the last week or so. Sheriff Marks's patrol car. His arms crossed, Marks leaned on the hood of his car, staring down Ben, who leaned on the back of mine, staring back.

'Who's that?' Tony asked as we made our way over the barbed-wire fence. Marks turned to watch our progress, his expression even more hooded and suspicious than ever.

'Sheriff Avery Marks. The local stalwart defender of truth, justice, and the American way.'

'Hm, one of those.'

'Norville,' Marks called. He'd dropped the 'Ms.' I knew I was in trouble now. 'May 1 ask what you're doing trespass­ing on Len Ford's land? Trying to clean up a little mess?'

I couldn't quite think of a response that wouldn't get me arrested on the spot. If he'd been five minutes later he wouldn't have seen us, and it wouldn't have been an issue. His timing was impeccable.

A bit too impeccable. 'Have you been following me?' I said.

I didn't think it possible, but his frown deepened. 'I have the right to keep a suspect under surveillance.'

Ben straightened, pushing off from the car. 'Your 'sur­veillance' is coming awfully close to harassment, Sheriff.'

'You going to sue me?'

Ben only raised his brow. Marks didn't recognize the tr y me look, but I did.

Oh, this was going to get ugly.

Tony butted in, shouldering past me and in front of Marks like he really was breaking up a fight. 'Hello, Sheriff Marks? I'm Tony Rivera. I'm afraid this is my fault, I asked Kitty to show me around. She said some weird stuff's been happening and I wanted to check it out.'

He held out his hand, an obvious peacemaking gesture, but Marks took his time reaching out to it. Finally, though, they clasped hands. They held on for a long moment, locked in one of those macho who 's going to wince first gripping matches.

Finally, they let go. Tony's face had gone funny, and it took me a moment to figure out what it was. He was frowning. He hadn't frowned once all morning.

He looked at me. 'He's the one. One of them, anyway.'

'One of them, what?' 1 said, perplexed, at nearly the same time Marks said, 'One of who?'

Then my eyes widened as I realized what Tony was talking about: what he'd come here to look for, the curse, my house—Marks was the one.

'You?' I drew the word out into an accusation and glared at Marks. He didn't seem like the type to hang skinned dogs from trees. I'd have expected him to just shoot me. I'd never have pegged him as someone who knew anything about magic, even if what he knew was wrong. He was just so… boneheaded.

'What the hell are you people talking about?'

Tony said, 'Anyone ever tell you that when you lay a curse, you better do it right or it's going to come back and smack you?'

If Tony was wrong and Marks didn't have anything to do with it, I'd have expected denials. I'd have expected more of the sheriff's blowhard posturing, maybe even threats. Instead, the fury left him for a moment, leaving his face slack and disbelieving.

His protest was too little, too late. 'I don't know what you're talking about,' he said in a low voice.

Tony ignored him, and glanced between Ben and me. 'Remember what I said about spirits having fingerprints? Everybody's soul has its own little flavor. It follows them around, touches everything they do. This guy's stamp is all over your place.'

'I called him out there a couple of times, to check things out. That could be why,' I said.

'No. Too strong for that,' Tony said. 'This has malice in it.'

Marks seemed to wake out of a daze. His defenses slammed into place, and the look of puckered rage returned. 'You're accusing me of being the one who pinned those dead rabbits to her porch, and all that other garbage? What a load of crap. I don't believe this hocus-pocus nonsense.'

I said, 'But you believe I'm a werewolf—a monster that could do something like slaughter a herd of cattle. You can't have it both ways, Sheriff. Believe one and not the other.' I'd learned that quickly enough.

'Okay, I won't say I don't believe it. Somebody's done something out at your place, I won't deny that. But I wouldn't know the first thing about cursing someone.'

'Maybe you were just following directions,' Tony said.

Again, that blank look while he organized his defense. 'That doesn't even make sense.'

I said, 'Sheriff, you don't like me. You've made no secret of that. You don't like what I am, you don't like that I'm in your town. Maybe you're not the only one. And maybe you didn't do it, but I'm betting you backed who­ever did.'

The three of us—Tony, Ben, and me—surrounded him, pinning him against his car almost. If Marks had reached for his gun, I wouldn't have been surprised. To his credit, he didn't. He appeared stricken, though. Frozen almost, like he expected us to pounce.

1 said, 'I haven't hurt anyone. I didn't kill those cattle. I don't deserve what's been done to me, and I just want it to stop. That's all.'

His lips pursed, his expression hardening. We weren't going to get anything out of him. In his mind, he'd drawn some kind of line in the dirt. I stood on one side, he stood on the other, and because of that we'd never come to an understanding. I might as well pack my bags and leave.

Tony reached out to him. He moved quickly. Marks and I held each other's gazes so strongly I didn't even notice it until Tony held Marks's collar. Marks only had time to flinch before Tony had pulled out a pendant on a hemp cord that had been tucked under the sheriff's shirt.

Tony held the pendant flat in his hand, displaying it: a flint arrowhead of gray stone, tied to the cord.

'Zuni charm,' Tony said. 'Defense against werewolves. He knows all about this magic.'

Was that why 1 wanted to growl at Marks every time I saw him?

Marks snatched the arrowhead away from Tony, clos­ing his hand around it. He took a step back, bumping against the hood of his car. His armor had slipped; now, he seemed uncertain.

'It wasn't my idea,' he said finally.

The air seemed to lighten around us. At last, he'd said something that sounded like truth.

'Whose was it? I'm not out for revenge, Marks. I just want to know why.'

'We wanted you to leave. We're a quiet community. We didn't want any trouble.'

'I wasn't going to bring any trouble! I just wanted to be left alone.'

'But you brought trouble. That's trouble.' He pointed out to the backhoe across the pasture.

I shouted. I didn't mean to. It just came out. 'You pinned rabbits to my porch before any of those cows died! You assumed I'd do something before anything even hap­pened! You heard what he said about a curse coming back to smack you—you brought this on yourself! And then you had the gall to pretend to investigate, when you knew all along who was doing it—'

'Kitty, maybe a little more calm,' Ben said softly. I must have been really worked up if Ben was having to settle me down. My whole back and shoulders felt tight as springs.

When Marks spoke, his voice had changed. He sounded suddenly tired, defeated. 'We—we knew it wasn't working right. You should have just left. Quietly, without a word. We wanted it to be quiet.'

'Well, you screwed up big time, didn't you?' I said.

'Can you blame us for trying?' he said roughly.

'Uh, yeah. Hello, I am blaming you.'

'We all know what you are! A—a monster! We don't want that in our town! Nobody would!'

'You know, I don't think I'm the monster here, really.'