Teacher's Pet Wolf

I laugh. “Cleaning up after a werewolf’s night out is above and beyond holding your sister’s hair while she pukes.”

“Pfft. In six months, you’ve produced less roadkill than a single night on the highway,” she tells me, gathering up her backpack and preparing to hike out to wherever she left her truck. “But if you ever do more, I know all the best ways to hide a body.”

“That’s not as comforting as you probably think.”

“Maybe not.” Her face clouds. “But spending Christmas in Aspen was my idea, so I should at least—”

My snarl cuts her off.

She goes still. “Was that you or…?”

“Me. Because you shouldn’t ever think that.”

“Yeah, well—you’re my little sister, and I’m a cop. Both things mean I should have protected you. So I’ll feel shitty about it whether you give me permission or not.”

“So you’ll feel shitty, I’ll feel shitty…maybe I should call up Mom, so she can feel shitty, too.”

“Was that a threat?” She stops dead, staring at me. “Did you just threaten me with our mother?”

“I’ll tell her you’re feeling guilty about something, and she’ll come flying back from Florida to pull us into her warm bosom of motherly—”

“Okay! I won’t feel guilty! Holy shit, you went straight for the nuclear option.”

“Because that’s what your guilt deserved.” Total annihilation. To nuke it from space. And our mother’s the only way to be sure. Because she’s wonderful but she’s also relentlessly sunny, and determined to fix everything that’s dark or broken.

Some things can’t be fixed, though. And I’m one of those things.

But Sam’s right. I do need something for myself. So I’ll spend a few days with Ranger. And I will control this monster. This time with him is for me. Not the beast.

Even though the difference between us seems to grow thinner and thinner. And my greatest fear is that, all too soon, there will be no difference between us at all.* * *I wake up in my sister’s truck with Sam shaking my shoulder.

“We’re home.”

At the farmhouse we share at the edge of town. It’s not much of a farm now—just a big overgrown field and an old barn—and has been like this as long as I can remember. Back when her dad was alive, Sam says they used to have goats and chickens. But there weren’t any animals around except for a few stray cats by the time I came to live with her and her mom. Our mom, because Carolyn Green was more of a mother to me than mine ever was.

Mom continued living here when Sam went to college, then when I did. After we each graduated and returned to start our careers, we moved back into the farmhouse…and Mom moved out two summers ago, after falling in love with a rich retiree from Florida who was on a golfing tour in Oregon. She’s in the Keys now, living her best life.

And I’m glad. Glad she’s happy, and glad she’s not here to see me stumble groggily out of the truck, with elk blood saturating my hair.

Sam swings the driver door shut. “You okay?”

Yawning, I nod…then go still, the hairs prickling on the back of my neck. Turning my head, I draw a deep breath through my nose.

“Alicia?” Up on the porch, Sam realizes that I’m still standing beside the truck. “What is it?”

“I don’t know. I caught a whiff of…something.” Something that makes me wary and restless. But I’m not good with odors yet. I can identify some people that way—Sam, she’s easy. The other teachers and most of my students. Everything else seems to smell the same as it did before. Just stronger. And there’s a lot of stuff I don’t recognize.

Like who knows what a cougar smells like? I didn’t until one crossed our field a few weeks ago. And the scent was only vaguely cat-like. But I didn’t know what a cat smelled like, either, before this winter.

This scent I’m picking up now is…weird. And exciting. And scary. And new, yet also seems as if it should be familiar, but I can’t place it. Like a word caught on the tip of my tongue, a word that I know, but for the life of me I can’t remember it.

I’m just too tired. Shaking my head, I trudge up the steps. Inside the house, most of the odors from outside vanish and the restlessness within me vanishes with it. All that’s left in my mind are thoughts of Ranger—of seeing him later today—as I set my alarm and fall facedown into bed.

Seconds later, I’m out.4AliciaWhen the alarm starts beeping at five p.m., dragging myself out of a dead sleep isn’t as hard as I think it’ll be. Anticipation overrides my lingering exhaustion when I reach for my phone. A message has been waiting since nine o’clock this morning.

Ranger: Columbia Inn.