The door opened wide, revealing a short man with desert-burnished skin aiming a rifle at us.
I wondered if he knew that he’d need the bullets to be silver.
“My daughter’s right,” he said in perfectly decent English. “We’ve had enough. Get out, now, before you bring more evil with you.”
It seemed to me that we weren’t the ones carrying evil around with us. We just kept finding it. I had the good sense not to say anything. Funny how a loaded gun can shut you up.
“Well. Thanks for your time,” I said. I took Ben’s arm and pulled him away from the door. Slowly, we backed along the path, until the door to the house slammed shut.
Ben’s muscles were so tense they were almost rigid, like he wanted to pounce. “Keep it together, Ben,” I whispered.
“What a pack o
f liars.”
“Does this surprise you? This is the family that produced John and Miriam Wilson. Both confirmed monsters.”
“Okay, but you’re living proof—in fact you’ve based your whole career on the belief—that being a monster doesn’t make someone a… a…”
“A monster,” I finished, grinning wryly. “A fucked-up family’s a fucked-up family, whether or not werewolves are involved.”
“You think I’d have figured that out by now,” he said.
“You know, I’m sick and tired of people pointing rifles at me.”
“That was a shotgun, not a rifle.”
For some reason, that didn’t make a hell of a lot of difference to me.
We got back in the car and pulled out on the dirt track. We didn’t speak. Another door had closed, figuratively speaking. One less chance to boost Cormac’s defense.
“Kitty, wait, look.” Ben pointed to a figure running toward us, from the Wilson house. Small against the landscape, it looked like it fled something terrible. It was Louise, her black hair tangling in the desert breeze.
I hit the brakes and waited for her to catch up. I didn’t see anything chasing her, but I wondered.
I’d started to unbuckle and climb out, but Ben said, “Wait. We may have to drive out in a hurry.”
He was probably right. I left the car running while Ben got out and waited for her. She reached us more quickly than I expected—she was fast, and we hadn’t gone far. The house was still visible. I wondered if her father would show up in a minute with his shotgun.
Sliding to a stop, she leaned on the car’s trunk. Her dark eyes were wide, wild. She seemed too flustered to speak, but she said in a rush, “Let me in. I’ll talk to you, but we have to go.”
Ben put the seat down so she could climb in the back, then he returned to the front.
“Go, now, hurry,” Louise commanded. I was already driving, before Ben even closed the door.
I glanced at her in the rearview mirror. She perched at the edge of the seat, her hands pulling at the fabric of her jeans. Her gaze never rested. She looked around, out both side windows, over her shoulder to the back window, ducking to see out the front. Like she was worried something might follow us. She had the look of someone who was always afraid that something was following her.
I said, “Do you always jump into strange people’s cars and tell them to drive? How do you know we’re not murderous psychopaths?”
Her gaze settled on me, briefly. “I know a murderous psychopath when I see one.”
“A murderous psychopath like Miriam?”
“Yes.”
“Miriam was a skinwalker,” Ben said.
“Yee naaldlooshii. Yes.”