Thunder Moon (Nightcreature 8)

“I heard you saw a wolf last night,” he said.

“I’m not sure what I saw. Any tingles on your end?”

“I haven’t had a vision, if that’s what you’re askin’.”

“I don’t know what I’m asking. Claire tells me you know things. I’ve seen how you are with animals.” I shrugged, then gave Noah another soft push. His head was beginning to sag against the headrest. Nap time would soon be at hand. I could use a nap myself.

“I’ve had dreams that come true, but I’ve had just as many dreams that didn’t. Since I stopped living as a Gypsy, the ability’s fading.” He held out his hands as if he wasn’t sure what to do with them. “I dinna mind. The magic for me now is in Noah and Claire.”

I leaned over, and kissed Noah’s sweet cheek. “Well, if anything comes to you—”

“I’ll call.”

“Thanks.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve contacted the Jäger-Suchers?”

That hadn’t occurred to me.

Last summer the Jäger-Suchers, translation “Hunter- Searchers,” a Special Forces monster-hunting unit, had come to town. We wouldn’t have even known they were there, as they’d planned to slip in, shoot the werewolves, then slip out again unnoticed—their modus operandi—but things had gotten more complicated, and they’d been forced to reveal themselves.

I knew that the Jäger-Suchers had resources beyond anything a small-town sheriff might. I still didn’t want to call them when I wasn’t exactly sure if anything supernatural was going on.

“I think I’ll wait,” I said.

“Wait too long and they’ll just show up and take over.”

“Like they won’t do that anyway,” I muttered.

The Jäger-Suchers had a lot in common with the FBI when it came to sharing cases. They didn’t.

A shadow passed over the yard, and I glanced up just as a great bird seemed to sail through the rays of the sun. Something tumbled out of the sky, sifting slowly downward on the current.

Mal snatched the feather from the air before it got anywhere near the ground. “I didn’t think you had any eagles here.”

I stared at the feather, white with a dark tip. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d seen one, and now I’d seen two in as many days.

“We don’t. Not really. They live in the south, though sometimes, in the winter, they’ll travel to the mountains.”

“Mmm,” Malachi said, twirling the feather around in his nimble fingers.

“What do you think it means?” I asked.

“There’s an eagle where one isn’t supposed to be. What do you think it means, Grace?”

In the lives of most women, that would mean a bird whose sense of direction was on the fritz. In mine it meant the very real possibility of a shape-shifter.

I was going to have to call the Jäger-Suchers.

* * *

I headed to my office, trying to figure out a way to avoid the inevitable. The only thing I knew about shape-shifters was that touching some of them in human form with silver caused a nasty burn, and if you shot them with a silver bullet, whether they were on two legs or four, great balls of fire were the result.

Some of them, but not all. An unpleasant fact we’d learned the hard way last summer. Those cursed to shape-shift, rather than having been turned by another shifter, followed different rules depending upon the nature of the curse. However, it wouldn’t hurt to try the silver test; it was all that I had.

Since the only new person in town was conveniently the same person I’d seen step out of the woods after the wolf had gone in, and he was the same person who’d shown up in town wearing an eagle feather in his hair, and he was a self-admitted member of a clan of medicine men, I had a pretty good idea where to start.

“Is he an eagle or a wolf?” I murmured. Did it really matter?