Grayscale Ch8

I'm starting to develop tendinitis in my left wrist now too. X(  Anybody know of a good (free) program that translates spoken words to text?  Anything I can do to step away from using one or both hands is helpful.

***

Koz left to get food shortly after Jack turned back. They spoke only long enough to agree that it would have been a bad idea for Jack to appear in front of a crowd of police officers wearing only an oversized jacket. Much as it would lend credibility to his fugue state claim if he were to show up buck-naked, he’d much rather look a little less credible and save his dignity by showing up with clothes on.

He sat in the back of the van, head burrowed in his knees, arms wrapped around his legs. Outside he could hear birds and people—the sounds of life—but inside the car all was silent.

He was afraid. The werewolves knew where he lived. Members of Manny’s psycho pack knew where Jack’s family lived. They even tried to break in!

Were they out of control? Jack had never seen a truly rabid werewolf—even what he remembered from when Manny bit him, the wolf had been calm and calculating in his attack.

Jack shuddered and rubbed his hands up and down his arms. Manny had chosen to turn him and the thought made him feel slimy. An idea prickled at the back of his mind and his stomach turned as it grew. What if the wolves last night were trying to turn his family?

He swallowed hard, fear clawing at him. He’d known the she-wolf breaking into his house last night hadn’t had good intentions, but he hadn’t had the human thought capacity to contemplate what that meant. Manny’s pack had come to either kill or turn his family.

He thought of the two older wolves waiting just inside the woods, watching the pups, and remembered Jamie’s words. They make new pack members prove themselves. Jamie’s family had to kill hunters to prove themselves, those two pups from last night must have been given a similar task last night—and neither of them had seemed all too keen on going after Jack.

He swallowed bile, panic rising in him. What should he do? He’d been all but helpless in the face of werewolf attack before Koz came along. All he did was hide in the cabin and slowly starve, and his family couldn’t even do that—their home wasn’t fortified against werewolves like the cabin had been. Sure, Jack had chased off the two last night, but could he do it again? They were smaller and younger, but there were two of them and two older wolves waited in the wings. What if next time they decided to step in? There was no way he could win by himself.

He wanted to rely on Koz—but Koz wasn’t trustworthy. On the other hand, Koz could help him—and likely would help him.

Jack ran his hands through his hair. He didn’t know what to do. He liked Koz and wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, but Koz had proven himself to be terrifying and dangerous, and didn’t always have Jack’s his best interests at heart.

Jack had a newfound respect for what his mother must go through, but at the same time, he was wary of repeating her mistakes. Koz had proven to be a threat, and under normal circumstances Jack would have avoided him at all cost. He bit his lip. But in this case, the cost might be his family’s lives.

Koz had parked his van the next street up from Jack’s house. It was far enough away that he wouldn’t be mistaken for a persistent looky-loo but close enough that Jack could see his home in-between the houses.

A parade of people traipsed in and around his home. Police milled about, taking statements from the neighbors while the animal control officers skulked in and around the forest, searching for a mountain lion they’d never find. Eventually the local news showed up and started taking photos and videos and interviewing the neighbors. Then came a tall man in a suit with a clipboard—an insurance agent, Jack guessed.

The man talked with Jack’s mother on the porch and Jack sadly noted that she’d been kept so busy she was still in her pajamas and bathrobe. If he were there he could give her a break—or at least make her some coffee and make sure Emma got ready for school.

He watched as one of the neighbor ladies, Miss Clavel, hobbled up the steps and pressed a steaming mug into his mother’s hands.

Jack let out a sigh of relief. At least his mother wasn’t totally without help.

Jack was so engrossed in watching the house he jumped nearly a foot when the front door of the van opened suddenly. Koz slid into the front seat, carefully slinging a plastic bag onto the passenger seat before reaching back to hand Jack a cup of coffee.

“Sorry,” he said, not really looking Jack in the face. “I wasn’t sure how you took it, but I brought some creamer cups if you’d like.”

Jack took the cup and put it in the backseat’s cup holder without a word of thanks, then accepted an offered bag of mini-muffins and put them on the seat beside him without even looking Koz’s way. He couldn’t let himself be swayed by kindness—the man had plotted to kill him. Actually kill him! Coffee and breakfast wouldn’t make up for that any time soon.

Still, Jack wouldn’t leave again. That much he’d decided on. If Manny’s wolves knew where his family lived, then they were in danger—and the best person Jack knew to stave off blood-thirsty werewolves was Koz (even if he had technically failed to protect Jack from his werewolf attackers). While he was pretty much convinced Koz was a lying ass—and really, he must be, you can’t plot someone’s murder one moment then make out with them the next—the fact of the matter was that Jack still needed Koz. He just wouldn’t let his guard down around him.

He couldn’t boycott the food Koz brought him for too long. The change always left him starving. He inhaled the muffins and drank the coffee black—which was disgusting, but asking for the creamers would mean in some way acknowledging that Koz had been thoughtful and Jack didn’t want him to get any sort of idea that he’d been forgiven.

He kept looking up from his breakfast to watch his house. People had started to trickle away—getting ready for their days as usual while they mentally rehearsed how they would tell their co-workers about this.

Jack’s mother was the last to head inside after the insurance agent and everyone else had left. For a moment Jack was worried—his sister had school soon, would his mother be able to get her on the bus? But then the door opened and Miss Clavel marched out—still in her bathrobe—leading a fully dressed, ready-for-school Emma by the hand.

Jack covered his hand to stifle a laugh. His sister was eight and firmly under the impression that she didn’t need to hold hands with adults anymore. She rolled her eyes when Jack made her hold his hand, once even going so far as to say ‘I’m too old for this shit.’ She was too polite to sass Miss Clavel, but the look on her face made her thoughts on the hand-holding abundantly clear.

Jack watched her walk down the street and disappear from view. He craned his neck and pressed his face to the glass to catch a glimpse of her heading to the bus stop, but the other houses were in the way. He waited until his mother came out of the house fully dressed. She was wearing khakis and the uncomfortable polo that formed her work uniform at the local craft store, grey-streaked brown hair tied back in a ponytail.

Jack watched her lock the front door and head down the steps. He felt a pang in his heart. She looked so tired.

Koz dozed in the front seat, but Jack sat back and watched the neighborhood empty out. Around midday, the streets were clear, the houses vacant as everyone left for work or school.

*

Koz pulled the car up onto Jack’s street and kept watch while Jack scurried into the forest. He walked parallel the tree line just out of sight, heading to his own backyard. They had decided—or rather, Koz had said as much and Jack had silently nodded his head—that it would be less alarming for neighbors to see a stranger letting himself into the empty Overland house than it would be to see Jack doing so, seeing he was missing and presumed dead. Jack had told Koz where the front door’s key was hidden and he walked up to the front door, calm as you could believe and let himself in.

Moments later, he appeared at the back door and Jack darted from the cover of the trees, up the back steps and into his kitchen.

As soon as he stepped up the rickety wooden back steps and through the backdoor, he was misty-eyed. He looked around at the sunny kitchen, taking in every detail: the wall clock over the kitchen table, the dirty dishes in the sink, the handmade magnets strung across the refrigerator door. He’d once thought he’d never see this place again. He took a few steps into the room and rested his hand on the worn surface of the kitchen table.

The broken window over the sink had been hastily repaired with a taped up piece of wax paper. There were scratches on the counter from the she-wolf’s claws and Jack would bet good money his mother was absolutely furious about the marks to her counters.

As he continued to look around, Jack felt that something was off. Still, it took a second for him to figure out what. Normally there was a picture of the four of them hanging on the wall between the kitchen and dining room, but it was gone.

Across from the back door was the door to the basement (a glorified cellar really) and then a path to the dining room. Curious, Jack poked his head into the dining room. There were the good table and chairs they used only for holidays, and the shelves along the wall with all the family’s good glassware. But all the family photos that usually adorned the shelves alongside his mother’s china were gone.

Jack walked through the dining room, and into the living room, pausing in the doorframe. Everything seemed normal here at first sight. The family’s lumpy couch was pressed against one wall. His father’s chair was stationed right in front of the television, the seat ripped up because his dad’s ass had worn through the fabric over time. Except that there was a cover on the chair now.

Jack stared at it. That hadn’t been there when he left. The whole room looked classier now, but also strangely cold. The shelves beside the TV held their DVDs and various VHS tapes, but all the photos usually there were gone.

Jack looked across the stair’s banister in the entryway and saw Koz standing just in the kitchen, watching him warily. Jack looked away, flushing as he remembered he wasn’t wearing anything beneath Koz’s jacket.

“I’m going to take a shower and put some clothes on,” he said. He looked around. He hadn’t really considered playing host for Koz. “You can uh . . . eat or watch TV, I guess.”

He put a hand on the banister and started up the steps, ignoring how Koz was eyeing him. He hadn’t noticed it so much before, but the steps dipped downward in the middle. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Everything here felt strange and new and achingly familiar.

‘Focus,’ he thought, ‘shower.’

His shower was brief—he kept fighting off paranoia that one of his family members would suddenly come home while he was washing. But if he hadn’t been worried about that, he might never have left. He’d forgotten how good showers and feeling clean felt. He’d had one at the cabin just after he’d turned, but he’d been an inch from passing out then.

He wrapped himself in a snuggly clean towel and headed across the hall to his room, feeling a strange sense of dysphoria as he did—like he didn’t belong in his own home. He tried to push the feeling away. It was only because he was so paranoid that his mom or sister might come home and find him here after being missing for so long.

He found even in his room, things were different and yet just the same.

Half of it was a mess as usual—DVDs and books that he was determined to watch and read but hadn’t gotten to lay stacked against his bed. His clothes—dirty and clean—were strewn about the floor and there were Halloween candy wrappers next to his open math textbook on the desk. He rifled through the clothes on the floor and picked out something clean to pull on before investigating further.

Over-top of his usual mess, black dust was scattered across his desk and dresser. Upon closer inspection he saw his own fingerprints outlined in the fine powder. The police must have come and collected his prints, he realized. In case they needed to identify him. He looked around in embarrassment—the police had seen his dirty room?

Some of the dust had been wiped away—his mother’s doing no doubt, which would also explain why half of his floor was cleared of clothing—but not why these clothes had been deposited on the bed (Jack never put clothes on the bed, that was his sleeping space). He sat on the edge of the mattress and looked around his room—different and yet just the same.

It wasn’t like his mother to leave his room half-cleaned once she’d lost patience with his messiness. He bit his lip at the thought that it probably wasn’t the mess that had overwhelmed her so much she couldn’t finish. Maybe, he realized, that had something to do with all the missing photos too.

It felt weird to be there, where so much had changed and yet nothing had changed at all.

Koz knocked gently on the doorframe, looking in with concern on his face. ‘Don’t look at me that way,’ Jack wanted to say. ‘Don’t act like you care.’ He blinked a few times, hoping his eyes weren’t red.

“The showers free,” he said.

Koz hesitated, his eyes slipping around the room for a second before landing on Jack. It felt so strange to see Koz standing there. He didn’t belong here. Koz was the woods and wolves and hunting and this was Jack’s home – where his mother and sister lived.

Still, while Jack found it weird, it wasn’t necessarily bad. When his father came home it felt like the house was set on a field of landmines, where one misstep could set off an explosion. When Koz walked into the room, it felt more like finding a strange cat had wandered through the open door—it was surprising and unusual, but only dubiously threatening.

“I thought we might discuss our plans first,” Koz said, taking a few steps into the room before pausing.

“What’s to discuss? I’m going to wait until my mom and sister get home, tell them what happened, then we’re going to split town and get away from Manny’s pets. You can do whatever you want.” Jack ground out, bracing himself to hear Koz’s criticism.

Koz took a step forward and Jack shifted uncomfortably on the bed. He mentally chided himself as he saw Koz realize that he was nervous being so close to him. The older man leaned back slightly, pressing his back to Jack’s dresser, but not moving away.

“Do you think they’ll believe you?” He asked. “I know from experience it can be hard to get people to believe in this sort of thing—even you once tried to chalk it up to a drug-trip.”

Jack flushed. “I’ll make them believe me!”

Koz watched him evenly, calculating. “How?”

Jack glared down at his lap. “I don’t know!” He growled.

“I’m not trying to bully you, Jack,” Koz said, unphased by Jack’s anger. “I’m trying to help you.”

Jack snorted in disgust. “Yeah, right,” he said, “you’d rather I were dead.”

There was a pause, the only hint that Jack had struck a chord. Jack looked up to see Koz carefully crafting a neutral expression. God, he’d thought his stoic-ness was cute just the other day but now it was just annoying.

“I don’t rather you were dead,” Koz said. “I told you I regretted it.”

Jack looked away and Koz kept talking.

“I know I have a lot to make up for, but we need to focus on this right now, okay? Keeping your family safe is more important than what’s going on between us.”

Jack balked. He was reminded of all the ‘think of the children’ song and dance his father had gone through the few times his mother made like she was going to leave. At the same time however, he knew he couldn’t deny that he needed Koz. There was a chance his mother wouldn’t believe him, or she wouldn’t want to leave until his father was home or whatever. On some off chance that he couldn’t get his family out of here tonight, they’d need Koz.

He let out a frustrated sigh. “I guess if you want to help, you could back me up. My mom might think that I’m on drugs because I’m a ‘troubled teen’, but you look pretty legit.”

Koz blinked his ‘I’m laughing on the inside’ blink. “Thanks,” he said sardonically.

“The wolves followed me from the woods, even though I rode in a truck all the way here,” Jack said. “Could they follow us if we try to leave?”

Koz frowned (frowns came easy to him, Jack had noticed). “Werewolves are incredible trackers and significantly faster than regular wolves. They certainly could keep up with a moving vehicle for quite a long way and then track by scent beyond that.”

Koz’s eyes glazed in thought. “Of course, if your mother and sister disappeared so soon after you it might mean trouble. Your father might get blamed, but your mother might be suspected. She could end up a wanted criminal. Either way, she’d probably never be able to contact any of the people she knows now.”

Jack bit his lip. His mother wouldn’t leave her abusive husband because it would mean leaving everything. If she wouldn’t do it to protect both of her children, could he really expect her to do it just to see him?

“I don’t know if she’ll want to leave,” he said, avoiding Koz’s eyes. “She might just be happy to hear I’m alive and then . . . y’know, stay home and wait for Dad.”

“Even if she thought she and her daughter were in danger here?”

Jack let out a mirthless laugh. “We weren’t safe whenever my dad was home.” He shrugged helplessly. “They’re in danger here or there, with or without my dad. I don’t think it’ll make any difference to her.” He fell back onto his bed and pressed his hands against his eyes.

He heard a soft sound as Koz approached and quickly yanked his hands away from his face, afraid that Koz would sit on the bed and try to sympathize with him, but he had kept his distance and instead was looking at a collage his sister had made for him when he finished his physical therapy. Most of the photos were of him at therapy with his trainer, but there were a few glamorous shots of him lying in his hospital bed.

Koz noticed him watching and backed away. “We should go,” he said, “until we have a plan on how to get your family out.”

“What if that doesn’t happen before tonight?” Jack asked.

“We’ll have a stake-out,” Koz said simply. “Either way, I think I’ll want to stock up on weapons and ammunition. How nosy are your neighbors, by the way? Do you know?”

“They stood around for over an hour because they thought a mountain lion broke into their neighbor’s kitchen.”

“Point taken,” Koz said with a soft quirk in his eyebrows. “We’ll need to have our stake-out in the woods then; if they’re nosy they’ll question it if a car with tinted windows sits on the street for too long.” Once again Koz was talking about things that seemed completely un-ordinary as if he’d done them a million times before.

With a plan of action more or less figured out, the two separated. Koz went to wash up while Jack went downstairs for lunch—he was still famished. He finished two packets of Poptarts and was still hungry, so he went to the refrigerator to check its contents. Here, there was something else that was new: a small white board calendar with all sorts of engagements written on it.

He could see his mother’s work schedule, his sister’s soccer games, and several meetings with ‘Mr. Hart’, a name Jack recognized from ads as a lawyer.

Jack bit his lip. The situation with his father must have been very serious if they needed a lawyer.

He opened the fridge and rifled around. Instantly he noticed the abundance of take-out containers and the complete lack of beer. Curious, he left the fridge and checked the cabinets. He found flour and sugar and a plethora of sauce mixes, but no liquor.

Had his mom thrown it out? He worried his lip between his teeth. There would be Hell to pay if she’d thrown it out without his father’s consent.

He ate cold, leftover pizza and tried to push aside his curiosity and anxiety about his family. He’d find out what was going on soon enough, once they got home. One step at a time. He finished the pizza and sat at the table, he was exhausted. The only sleep he’d gotten the night before was during the truck ride. But he couldn’t rest yet, he had to plan this out.

As startling as it would be for his mother to come home and find him sitting at the kitchen table with Koz, if he came up to the front door it was possible their reunion would become a neighborhood event: he’d rather not have a crowd when he came out as a werewolf to his mother and subsequently explained how they had been slated for death by a pack of psychotic lycans as part of an initiation ritual and should maybe skip town.

Yeah. Maybe Jack would explain all that after they were on the road.

He heard the sound of car doors slamming shut somewhere outside and froze. His mother couldn’t be home yet, could she? He glanced at the clock over the kitchen table. Two o’clock. His eyes flitted to the calendar on the refrigerator. His mother wasn’t due home for at least an hour.

With the window gone, he could hear the sound of footsteps making their way through the grass outside, but they didn’t come to the front door. Instead the footsteps came right up to the broken window. Jack could just see two shadows on the other side of the wax paper.

He sat frozen, heart pounding in his chest. Were they burglars? Was somebody about to break in? Or were the police back to check the scene again?

“How ‘bout we follow the trail first and see if we can find anything, eh?” A male voice with an Australian accent said from outside.

“Da,” said another, deeper voice with a harsh accent. “Though I doubt we will be finding anything. Not in day time, anyway.” His shadow shrank as its owner ducked down by the wall.

Jack stayed still and listened to the pair’s footsteps as they walked along the side of the house. He caught a glimpse of movement through the windows over the kitchen table and turned just slightly to see two men in matching gray animal control uniforms, carrying tranquilizer guns.

He breathed a sigh of relief as the two disappeared into the forest. It would be too easy for them to spot him when they came back out of the trees, so he quickly ducked into the living room.

Confident he wouldn’t be spotted, he got out his mother’s laptop. He booted up the old machine and searched for information about his disappearance—namely about whether or not his dad was in jail.

This turned out to be surprisingly difficult. The Burgess and Whitestown papers were the only ones doing coverage (Claussen was too big and too busy to care about locals in the next town over (the opposite of the Whitestown paper)). Both papers didn’t have much on him at all, other than the article about how his father got brought in for questioning. Jack sighed. He knew he shouldn’t have expected much, he was a troubled teen boy from a bad, not quite-poor-but-not-quite-middle-class family in a small town. His disappearance was never going to make national headlines, but he’d still sort of expected it to at least be the talk of the town.

He shouldn’t complain too much though, he scolded himself. There were probably people kidnapped or murdered who only had a photo on a milk-carton or some homemade missing person’s poster . . . like Koz.

Jack did a quick search of Koz’s name, trying to remember how they’d spelled it on his poster. He found nothing, even after altering the spelling just in case. Nothing. Now he’d gone and done it—he was feeling bad for Koz when he was supposed to be mad at him.

He sighed again and closed out of the browser, shut down the laptop, and stowed it back where he’d found it. He was still hoping to talk to his family that night, but he reluctantly agreed with Koz that he needed a plan—especially with Manny’s pack involved—and if he wasn’t going to greet his family at the door, he certainly wasn’t going to scare them by letting them come home to a house where everything had mysteriously moved around.

He glanced at the couch, wondering if he had some time for a quick nap when Koz appeared at the stairs. His hair was wet, but combed back so it looked the same as usual, albeit a little drooped from the weight of the water. It was the first time in a long, long while that Jack had seen his hair combed. He looked very sharp.

‘No,’ he scolded himself, ‘don’t fall for it again.’

“I was thinking,” Koz said as he paused on the stairway, “that we should check and see where your father is.”

“I just looked online—there’s nothing on where he is now, just that he was brought in for questioning a few days ago.”

Koz frowned. “They couldn’t hold him for questioning for longer than twenty-four hours without making an arrest—and if the papers got so excited about him getting brought in for questioning, I’m sure they would’ve released something if he had been arrested.”

Jack bit his lip. “So whatever our ‘plan’ is, we’ll have to include him. Great.”

“Come on then,” Koz said, “we can brain-storm on the way to get supplies.” He walked down the last step and stopped, head quirked to the side suddenly, as if he were listening to something.

Jack froze, listening as well. He could just hear footsteps around the side of the house. “Oh,” he said quietly. “There’s some animal control guys outside.”

Koz frowned. “They were already here,” he said quietly, silently walking into the kitchen.

The two shadows were at the window again, one large and thick and the other thinner. The thinner one’s head moved, looking this way and that. “Seems like it was quite the dog fight,” he said. “What are you thinking, North?”

Koz jerked back like he’d been shot. He clapped a hand over his mouth. Jack stepped forward silently. “What?” He barely breathed, suddenly twice as anxious. Had Koz smelled something? Were the control officers actually werewolves or something?

Koz was incredibly still. “That’s North and Bunny.”

For a moment Jack was confused. Who? Then he remembered. North and Bunny. Koz’s hunting partners. He raised his eyebrows.

Koz pressed his lips together and nodded, face pale. He slid to the floor silently, putting a finger to his lips. Jack followed suit, lowering himself to the floor. If the two outside could see anything through the wax paper, they wouldn’t be able to see the two of them beneath the counter tops.

Jack glanced at Koz and saw him watching the hunters’ shadows with a sad, hungry look in his eyes.

Jack turned his attentions back to the men. The thin one who’d just spoke—Bunny—looked about while North knelt just beneath the window. Jack heard a click and a noise he recognized as measuring tape being drawn out.

“Definitely a wolf,” North said, his voice thick with a Russian accent. Between his Russian accent, Bunny’s Australian accent, and Koz’s British accent, Jack was sure it would be fun to be in a room with the three of them. “We’ll check inside when the family gets home.”

Bunny shifted his weight. “Look, I know you don’t want to consider it but—“

“It probably bled on grass when it broke through. Animal control would take sample—we hack into computer and confirm later.” He slunk away, acting as if Bunny hadn’t spoken.

“You can’t keep ignoring me, mate. This attack here and those campers—it could’ve been—“

“Look at claw marks!” North said, his shadow jerking forward as he pointed. “Too close together for full-grown. A pup left them. Check yourself if you want. Is not him.”

Jack's brow furrowed in confusion. What campers? What were they talking about?

“Those campers weren’t killed by a pup.”

“They also weren’t killed by a lone wolf.”

“Yeah, I got a theory about that,” Bunny said. “Don’t you think it’s a little suspicious that this family’s boy goes missing and then a werewolf pup breaks into their home?”

North nodded at length. “Yes, I too thought the two might be related. The Overland boy might be werewolf now.”

“But who turned him?”

“Bunny—”

Bunny held up his hands defensively. “I’m just saying—we do know one werewolf with a tendency of going off on his own who’s currently missing. And you said he’d been acting squirrely before he left.”

Koz let out a heavy breath and Jack looked across at him. They were talking about Koz. They thought Koz had turned him. They thought the two of them had attacked him family!

“Koz wouldn’t bite anyone—not unless moon was full—”

“It was!” Bunny hissed desperately. “It was full and he didn’t come home, North!”

There was a pause and then North spoke quietly. “I’m sure he took precaution. Koz is careful . . .” His voice trailed off, as if he doubted his own words. “He wouldn’t turn the boy,” he said quickly, his tone assured. “And he for sure would not harm those campers.” North turned away, his shadow disappearing from the wax paper—but Bunny wasn’t ready to let the subject drop.

“What if he did, eh?” He asked. “I mean . . . you said he’s been acting strange and all the old accounts of werewolves say they’re evil. Maybe that’s just medieval superstition—but what if it isn’t? What if one of the changes that occurs with a werewolf’s bite is to their minds? Koz could be doing awful things and he just doesn’t realize he’s doing anything wrong ‘cause the wolf in him is messing with his head!”

Koz shifted uneasily beside Jack and Jack almost wanted to scold him—he didn’t want to be caught by these hunters! But he was also alarmed at what he was hearing. Were their personalities going to change because of the bite? He remembered how the first time he’d met wolf-Koz he’d been tame—cuddly even—and the second, he’d tried to attack Jack. Was Koz going to change so his personality was like that—like some super aggressive predator—even when he was human? Was Jack going to become like that?

For the first time, Jack seriously reconsidered going home. He didn’t want to rejoin his family only to become a blight worse than his father.

But what about Jamie? He’d been a werewolf for years it sounded like, and he wasn’t murderous. But then again, his sister sort of was and he’d said his father and uncle weren’t nice either. His father had even killed his mother for Christ’s sake! And Jamie wasn’t a sparkling image of morality either. He’d joined Manny’s pack, hadn’t he? The ambiguous moralities Jack had accepted before suddenly became questionable. Were the werewolves acting in reaction to complicated situations as he first thought or were they simply working on some psychotic werewolf aggression?

“I don’t know,” North spoke at length. “I do think Koz is not doing so well, but I am thinking he is just depressed. He is having a hard time, you know? And you are not helping, I might add.” He sighed. “I only hope he returns so we can clear this all up. I’m very worried about Seraphina—“

“How’s the little sheila doing?” Bunny’s tone changed completely in an instant. Even his shadow’s posture changed. “I’ve been worried sick about the little bird.” His voice carried so much love and concern; Jack suddenly realized why Koz had defended him as a friend even after telling him that Bunny had tried to kill him.

“You know Seraphina,” North said, his shoulders slumping. “She’s a teenager and Koz’s daughter. She is keeping everything to herself. I am thinking of taking her to see Tooth.”

“Struth,” Bunny sighed. “That bad?”

“I told her Koz is bitten.”

Koz tensed beside him and Jack glanced his way. Koz looked like he was going to be sick.

“Are you crazy?” Bunny snapped. “Man, even if Koz isn’t going off his rocker, he’ll still kill ya when he finds out.”

“I know, I know—but she kept asking questions and I hate lying. She already knew anyway—of course she noticed when Koz left every month around full moon . . . then that time Koz is getting lose.”

“Struth . . .”

“Da,” North sighed. “I can see why Koz didn’t say anything to her. She is worrying too much. But she is not saying anything of course.” He shrugged. “She broods.”

“Like father, like daughter,” Bunny said, sounding half annoyed, half fond.

“Da,” North sounding miserable. “I caught her crying the other night.”

Koz let out a quiet, horrific sound and buried his face in his hands, his breath coming unevenly.

“Did you hear that?” Bunny’s head whipped around as he raised his tranquilizer gun. Jack thought his heart might burst, he was so scared.

“Maybe a bird?” North suggested, sounding like he didn’t believe his own words for an instant.

Jack hardly dared to breathe as the two hunters left the window and stalked around the side yard. Looking over his shoulder, he could just see the two of them through the windows over the kitchen table. One was a springy sort of man. He couldn’t have been older than Koz, but his mousy brown hair was streaked with grey. He didn’t look bad though—with his squared jaw, and stubbled chin . . . he was actually a babe.

Koz had said North was the more experienced, so the second man—who was at least fifty—must have been North (which mean the hottie was the werewolf-hater, Bunny). North was the sort of large person who was not only wide but very tall. However, there was a certain sway in his movements that said his thick middle wasn’t all chub. In short: he looked like a bear. He had a thick salt and pepper beard and his matching-colored hair was long and tied back in a ponytail.

The two carried their tranquilizer guns with the professionalism of a trained SWAT team. They combed the edge of the wood, moving low and careful and reminding Jack very much of Koz.

He looked back at his companion and found him trembling, palms pressed hard over his eyes. Jack couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. Maybe that made him weak, but even while Koz was a lying, slightly murderous creep, he was also a caring father and he was suffering.

Jack reached over and rested a hand on Koz’s shoulder, feeling the man start slightly at the touch. Jack rubbed a few shallow circles across his back before his hand went still. Koz’s hands slid down his face and he gazed at Jack with red, but dry eyes.

Jack looked back at him. He wanted to tell Koz he didn’t trust him, that he didn’t forgive him; but they were both in this together and Jack liked that better than being alone. He wanted to tell Koz he was sorry things weren’t working out for him, but he couldn’t, the hunters were out in the yard, debating whether or not Jack’s footprints were part of animal control’s or not.

They sat there, still and quiet, until a car pulled up. Jack could tell by the position that it was on the driveway next to the house. He heard a car door slam shut. All attention, both from the hunters and the wolves, shifted as Jack’s mother got out of the car. Jack thought his heart might explode as he and Koz exchanged wide-eyed looks.

What would happen if she found them here with those hunters outside? What would they do? He could hear his mother’s footsteps coming up the sidewalk in front of the house.

He stood up and Koz rose as well. They were probably going to give her a heart attack, but at least they’d get it over with quickly.

“Hello ma’am!” North voice boomed so loudly, Koz and Jack both jumped.

Jack could just hear his mother quietly acknowledge him. Koz took three giant, quiet steps forward and looked through the front door’s peephole. He looked back at Jack. “They’re both out there with her.”

“My name is Scott Claus.” North’s voice was too large to not overhear. “I’m with animal control.”

Jack’s mother still seemed hesitant. “Oh,” she said. “Well, some officers came this morning . . .” North’s boisterous voice was easy to hear even at a distance, but Jack’s mother’s voice sounded like a whisper in the next room it was so small.

“Yes,” North said. “We’re from the Claussen animal control. I’m sure you heard about the campers who were attacked last night?”

“You think they might be related?”

“We’re certainly suspicious!” Bunny said. “Peter Briar, nice to meet you.”

Koz moved away from the door, grabbed Jack’s arm, and pulled him toward the back of the house. Jack, at a loss for what to do, obeyed him silently. They slipped out the back door, across the yard, and ducked into the trees. It wasn’t until they’d gone in far enough that Jack could barely see his house that his heart stopped pounding. This was turning out to be more complicated than he’d thought.