In the Air Tonight Page 27

  “My mother is not a werewolf,” Raye insisted.

  “Edward’s more of a ‘shoot now, figure it out later’ kind of guy.” Franklin peered into the trees. “And he’ll probably be here any minute.”

  “Where was he?” Cassandra asked.

  “He was on his way from Three Harbors.”

  “That’s where my sister lives,” Raye said, just as Pru snarled.

  “Sister?” Franklin asked. Then things started to happen all at once.

  The wolf loped off. A few seconds later, several shots were fired in the direction she’d gone.

  Raye shouted, “Mom!” and Bobby had to grab her before she ran off too.

  “You need to go to the hospital,” he said.

  “But—”

  “She’s over four hundred years old. She can handle herself.”

  “You don’t know Edward,” Franklin muttered, and Bobby cast him a stern “shut the hell up” glance. “I’ll give him a call. Tell him not to kill the un-werewolf.”

  “You do that,” Bobby said.

  “I’d feel better if Henry were here,” Raye murmured.

  “He’s not?”

  She shook her head.

  Bobby wanted to ask if Genevieve was near, but cops and EMTs spilled into the clearing, and the next hour was spent arresting people and trying to explain what had happened without using the words spells, magic, voodoo, or werewolves. It was surprisingly harder than he’d thought. He let Franklin do most of the talking. The fed had had practice.

  Raye left in the ambulance with Cassandra. He’d seen enough of the priestess to know Raye would be safe until he got back to her side. Once he did, he didn’t plan to ever leave again.

  “Doucet!”

  Chief Johnson had arrived. He didn’t look happy.

  *

  “Just who are you guys?”

  Cassandra waited until the EMT finished putting in my IV and went to sit a few feet away with his clipboard. Then she leaned in close.

  “There’s a group of hunters called the Jäger-Suchers.” At my confused expression she translated. “Hunter-searchers. They’ve been around since the Second World War; so has my boss.”

  “He’s gotta be ancient.”

  “He is. He began hunting werewolves, but as time went on, he branched out.” She lifted her gaze to the EMT, who was giving my vitals to the hospital—probably still half an hour away, even at this speed—by cell phone, then returned it to mine. “He’s gonna be pretty interested in this mess.”

  “He isn’t a witch hunter too, is he? Because I have enough of those on my ass already.”

  Cassandra’s lips curved. “He likes to employ the good witches.”

  “And the not so good ones?”

  Her smiled faded. “He doesn’t employ them.”

  “How did you meet him?”

  “I tried to raise my daughter from the dead.”

  Hadn’t seen that one coming.

  “Did you?”

  Cassandra shook her head.

  “Can you?”

  “Not anymore.” I bit my lip, frowned, and she continued. “Raising Bobby’s daughter is a bad idea.”

  Maybe so, but how did she know I’d had it? For that matter, how did she know about Bobby’s daughter?

  “Franklin is in the FBI,” she said. “He can find out damn near anything. Edward can find out even more.”

  I was tempted to ask if she could read everyone’s mind, or just mine, but she spoke.

  “I would have done anything to have my child live again. I nearly did but…” Cassandra let out a breath.

  “But?” I pressed when she didn’t go on.

  “I learned several things while I was trying to raise her. Everything happens for a reason. There are no accidents, and most importantly, there is a better place, and it isn’t here. Bringing her back would have been for me and not her. It wasn’t fair, and it definitely wasn’t right.”

  “Okay,” I said slowly, my gaze drawn to the corner of the ambulance where Genevieve had just materialized. “But what do you do when they don’t go to the better place?”

  Cassandra’s eyes followed mine. “She’s here?”

  I nodded.

  “Ask her.”

  I didn’t need to. Genevieve had already told me what the problem was. Bobby believed it was his fault that his daughter was dead. I wasn’t sure how I was going to make him stop believing that, but I’d have to try. And that would start with telling him all that his daughter had shared.

  As soon as we arrived at the hospital, I was whisked off so that someone could stitch up the knife-shaped hole in my arm. The painkillers combined with the sudden absence of adrenaline until everything faded to black. When I woke, night had fled. The sun was shining. Bobby was there. So was his daughter.

  There was something different about her. She was kind of fuzzy, and it wasn’t because I was.

  “Hey,” I mumbled.

  “Hey,” Bobby returned, and took my hand. “Your dad just left.”

  For a minute I thought he meant Henry, but he couldn’t see Henry. “My father?”

  “Yeah. Sorry. Forgot you have two. John was pretty upset. Stayed here all night. I don’t know if your—uh—other dad is—”

  “He isn’t.” Which worried me. But I was in no condition to summon him now.

  “Jenn’s called at least ten times.”

  “She hasn’t come?” How very un-Jenn of her.

  “She’s being questioned. She was the last one to see Brad before he snatched you. I’m sure she’ll be here as soon as she’s done.” Bobby took a deep breath. “I love you.”

  “I— What?”

  “Marry me?”

  I glanced at Genevieve, who was fading fast. “Hold on.”

  “I will.” He tightened his hand. “I won’t ever let go.”

  “I meant Genevieve.”

  “Where?” he asked, then turned in her direction.

  “You feel her, don’t you?” He was more sensitive to ghosts than anyone I’d ever known. We’d discover why later. Apparently, we’d have time.

  He shifted his shoulders. “I…” His breath rushed out. “Yeah. I do.”

  The little girl became more solid. “Tell him it wasn’t his fault.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I repeated.

  Pain flickered in Bobby’s eyes. “Of course it was. I left her with her mom. Audrey was—” He took a breath, which shook in the middle. “Tell her—”

  “You can tell her,” I said. “Just because you can’t hear or see her doesn’t mean she can’t hear and see you.”

  I patted the bed at my hip. “Come here, baby.”

  Genevieve sat where I indicated and lifted a ghostly hand to her father’s face.

  He turned his cheek into her palm. “I should have done more to get you away from your mother, sweetheart.”

  “She needed me, Daddy. I couldn’t leave her.”

  I told him what she’d said.

  Tears welled in his eyes. “I still should have taken you somewhere. Anywhere.”

  “The man in black wouldn’t let you keep me.”

  I got a shiver. “Man in black?”

  “That’s what she called the judge.”

  “Did you try and get custody?”

  “I did. But we were never married. Audrey didn’t even put my name on the birth certificate.”

  Which explained the lack of info I’d found on Genevieve Doucet.

  “I’m sorry,” Bobby said. “I told you I didn’t have children, but I—”

  “I understand.”

  “I tried to save her, and I failed. She died.”

  “Mommy’s waiting,” Genevieve said. “My gramma too. I want to be with them.”

  “You need to let her go, Bobby. She doesn’t belong here anymore.”

  “I’m not sure how.”

  Neither was I.

  “Is he happy?” the child asked.

  “I think he could be.”

  “Th
at’s all I want. I can’t leave him when he’s so sad.”

  Bobby’s gaze remained on me. “What did she say?”

  “She wants you to be happy.”

  “I will be. With you.”

  Genevieve leaned over and kissed him. He closed his eyes, and the tears fell.

  “Good-bye,” he whispered at the exact moment she did.

  His hair stirred as she disappeared. He opened his eyes. I traced a tear from his cheek with my thumb. “You okay?”

  “I think so. Ever since she died I felt…” He struggled to find a word.

  “Haunted?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And now you’re not.”

  “No,” he agreed.

  “Except for that one guy.” At least Geraldine had moved on.

  He straightened. “What?”

  “Cold case.” I lifted my gaze to said guy. “We’ll talk. Run along.”

  The guy went poof.

  “Did he?”

  “He did.”

  “About that marriage proposal…”

  “Bobby, I…”

  “You’re going to say no?” He sounded almost more surprised about that than he’d been about the ghosts.

  Of course I did love him. But—

  “Just because your daughter’s gone doesn’t mean I won’t still see the dead, and that bothers you.”

  “It did. But really, Raye, after all that’s gone down, that’s the least of our worries.”

  He was right. The Venatores Mali were still out there. They still wanted me dead. Probably more now than before.

  “Mistress June?” I asked.

  “No sign of her. Franklin and Cassandra are on it. And their boss…” He shook his head. “That was one weird old dude. But he said he’d find the woman. I wouldn’t want to be Mistress June when he does.”

  “What about the others?”

  “Clammed up tighter than clams.”

  I assumed that was tight. No idea. Never seen a clam.

  “Brad?”

  “You cracked his skull.”

  “Whoops.”

  “You don’t sound sorry.”

  I wasn’t.

  His lips twitched. “Probably for the best that he’s out of it, and in protective custody.”

  “Because?”

  “Your little friend wants him dead. She scares me.”

  “She should.”

  His half smile faded. “If you don’t want to marry me, fine.” He didn’t sound fine, or look it either. “But I’m not leaving.”

  “You have a job, a life in New Orleans.” And I had both in New Bergin. I might have considered leaving with him, even for superbly haunted New Orleans, if it hadn’t been for my sisters. I’d never met them, but I couldn’t leave them behind.

  “You’re my life,” Bobby said. “And I have a job here now.”

  “You what?”

  “Brad’s a little incarcerated, and Chief Johnson … well, he isn’t up to dealing with all of this.”

  “Who is?” I asked.

  “Me.”

  “You gonna tell him that?”

  “Didn’t have to. He retired.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Can’t say I blame him.”

  I didn’t either, but—

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life, Raye. But if you’re not—”

  “No.” I stared into his eyes, and saw that in a world of complications, some things were so damn simple. Like this. “I’m sure too.”

  Of Bobby. Myself. Us. Everything. For the first time in a lifetime, I belonged.

  To him.

  Epilogue

  Henry stood at the edge of another forest, in another town, watching another daughter.

  The sky above split open, spilling lightning. The earth below shuddered with approaching thunder. Henry couldn’t help it. He was both afraid and furious—two traits that often manifested in a storm.

  The Venatores Mali hadn’t raised Roland. Yet. But they weren’t going to stop trying.

  Pru appeared at his side. They gazed at their middle child, framed in the window of her apartment. She had no idea what was coming. They hadn’t wanted her to, had hoped they would succeed in New Bergin and there would never be any reason to disrupt the life she had made here.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  Pru lifted her nose to the stormy night sky and howled.

  Read on for an excerpt from Lori Handeland’s next book

  Heat of the Moment

  Available July 2015 from St. Martin’s Paperbacks

  Chapter 1

  I glanced up from my examination of a basset hound named Horace to discover the Three Harbors police chief in the doorway. My assistant hovered in the hall behind her.

  “Can you take Horace?” I asked, but Joaquin was already scooping the dog off the exam table and releasing him onto the floor. Before I could warn him to leash the beast—my next scheduled patient was Tigger, the cat—Horace had trotted into the waiting area and found out for himself.

  Indoor squirrel!

  Since childhood, I’d heard the thoughts of animals. Call it an overactive imagination. My parents had. That I was right a good portion of the time, I’d learned to keep to myself. Crazy is as crazy does, and a veterinarian who thinks she can talk to animals would not last long in a small northern Wisconsin tourist town. I doubted she’d last long in any town. But Three Harbors was my home.

  Woof!

  Hiss.

  Crash!

  “Horace!”

  Tigger’s owner emitted a stream of curses. Joaquin fled toward the ruckus.

  “Kid gonna be okay out there?” Chief Deb jerked a thumb over her shoulder, then shut the door.

  “If he wants to keep working here, he’d better be.” The waiting room was a battleground, when it wasn’t a three-ring circus.

  I sprayed the table with disinfectant and set to wiping it off. “What can I do for you, Chief?”

  “I’ve got a missing black cat.”

  My hand paused mid-circle. “I didn’t know you had a cat.”

  She’d never brought the animal to me, and as I was the only vet within thirty miles, this was at the least worrisome, at the most insulting.

  “Just because you picked up a stray,” I continued, “doesn’t mean the animal doesn’t need care.” Ear mites, fleas, ticks, old injuries that had festered—and don’t get me started on the necessity for being spayed or neutered. “A stray probably needs more.”

  “Chill, Becca, the missing cat doesn’t belong to me. Neither do the two other black cats, one black dog, and, oddly, a black rabbit that seem to be in the wind.”

  I opened my mouth, shut it again, swiped an already clean table, then shrugged. “I don’t have them.”

  “If you did, you’d be my newest candidate for serial killer of the week.”

  “I … what?”

  “After the first two cats went poof, I suspected Angela Cordero.”

  “She’s eight years old.”

  “Exactly,” Deb agreed. “But when the dog disappeared, I started to think maybe it was Wendell Griggs.”

  “Thirteen,” I murmured.

  “Missing small animals are one of the first hints of pathological behavior.”

  Apparently Chief Deb liked to read that healthy and growing genre, serial killer fiction.

  “Missing small animals are usually an indication of a larger predator,” I said. “Especially this close to the forest.”

  Three Harbors might be bordered on one side by Lake Superior, but it was backed by a lot of trees, and in those trees all sorts of creatures lived. Perhaps even a few serial killers.

  My imagination tingled. If I weren’t careful, I’d be writing one of those novels. Maybe I should. Writing might be good therapy for my overactive imagination. Ignoring it certainly wasn’t helping.

  “I know.” She sounded disappointed. Apparently the chief would prefer a seria
l killer to a large animal predator. Worse, she was kind of hoping that the serial killer was someone we knew who’d yet to hit puberty.

  This surprised and disturbed me, though I didn’t know her well. We’d gone to school together, but Deb had occupied the top of the pyramid in high school—literally. Someone of her tiny stature and blond-a-tude had been a given for cheerleader of the year.

  She’d worried me when she’d danced on top of those ten-people-high pyramids. Now I was worried that she’d fallen off, once or twice, and hit her head.

  “Have you had any animals in here that have been bitten, scratched, mauled, or chewed on?” she asked.

  “Not lately.”

  “Any farmers complain that they’ve seen coyotes or wolves closer to town than they should be?”

  “Wouldn’t they report that to you, not me?”

  She tilted her head. “Good point.”

  Deb had cut her blond ponytail years ago and now wore her hair in a short cap that, when combined with her tree-bark brown police uniform, Batman-esque utility belt, and Frankenstein-like black shit-kicker boots, only made her appear like a child playing dress up.

  Dress up.

  I tapped the calendar. “Less than two weeks until Halloween.”

  “I hate Halloween.” Deb kicked the door, which rattled and caused Horace to yip in the waiting room. Wasn’t he gone yet? “Second only to New Year’s Eve for the greatest number of morons on parade.”

  “You said all the missing animals were black.”

  “So?”

  “A wolf or a coyote wouldn’t know black from polka dot.”

  While dogs and cats, and by extension wolves and coyotes, weren’t truly color blind, they didn’t see colors the way we did. Most things were variations of black and gray and muted blue and yellow. Or so I’d heard.

  “Might be kids playing around,” I continued.

  “Sacrificing black animals to Satan?”

  “You think we have a devil-worshipping cult or maybe a witches’ coven? In Three Harbors?”

  She drew herself up, which wasn’t very far, but she did try. “There are witches.”

  “From what I understand, they’re peaceful. Harm none. Which would include black animals.”

  “Something weird is going on.”

  “Kids messing around,” I repeated. “Though I doubt they’re stealing black animals and keeping them safe in a cage somewhere just for the hell of it.”