Moonshifted(71)

“What are you doing?”

“He has fillings. I don’t. Weres don’t get cavities—the moon heals all when you transform, even teeth. So he was made less than a moon ago.”

“He’s a were?”

“Was.” Lucas touched the blood and then put it up to his nose. “I can’t scent his pack, though. Which is strange.”

Dren had said as much about the women who’d been chasing me. Lucas wiped the man’s blood on his thigh. “This would have been his first moon, if he’d lived to see it.” Lucas rocked up to his feet and offered me a gore-covered hand. “This violence is fresh. If you’d left dinner any sooner, or not come out at all—” He didn’t have to finish his thought.

I looked around my kitchen. It was thrashed—not just the aftermath of a fight but completely tossed, high shelves emptied of their contents, a spout of flour from a torn bag still trickling white powder onto my floor. Lucas followed my gaze.

“He wasn’t just out to get you. Clearly, you weren’t hiding in your cabinets.” He turned toward me. “What were you hiding in here?”

“Nothing,” I said. It was even the truth.

There was a plaintive meow from my bedroom, and I ran back.





CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX





“Minnie?”

There was another sad meow, from behind my dresser. I walked over to it and crouched down. It’d been shoved away from the wall as whoever had tossed my room had looked behind it. Minnie was back there, wedged in, hiding and unhappy.

“Oh, Minnie—” If anything had happened to her, that’d be it. I’d be through.

Lucas followed behind me and whistled from my doorway at the mess. All the drawers were out of my dresser, my underwear and bras strewn across the floor. I assumed the were had done that—and it’d been Veronica who’d taken my closet door off its hinges when she’d woken up. I scruffed Minnie and pulled her out of hiding, holding her to my chest.

Lucas pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. “You should pack. I’m calling you a cleaner.”

“A cleaner’s not going to cut this,” I said, squeezing Minnie tight.

“My pack’s cleaner. He understands. I’ll be out there, measuring your carpet.” Lucas tilted his head toward my living room and left the door.

I should have asked some questions, like Where are we going? or For how long? But I stumbled around my bedroom in a state of shock. The mattress of my bed was pushed sideways and knifed open, stuffing poking out, looking like subcutaneous fat pushing out of skin.

The dark wood box Anna’s knife had been in was shattered into large splinters on my floor. The knife was still in my locker at work. That was the only thing I could imagine the were had been looking for. A vampire-thing. So much for Lucas’s assertions that weres and vampires were completely distinct.

I almost tripped over Asher’s silver bracelet. I picked it up, put it on, and went for my closet door—I had an overnight bag inside.

Minnie’s cat carrier was at the top of my closet. I put her into it, grabbed enough clothing off my floor for overnight and walked out into my living room. Lucas was walking around my living room in a very precise way, sending multiple texts. I stood in the hallway, watching him pace.

“Minnie can come, right?”

“I’m not sure if Marguerite will approve.”

And this would be when I found out he had a jealous werewolf girlfriend. “Who’s that?”

“My cat.” He glanced over at my disbelieving face. “What, you think werewolves can’t have pets? Plenty of people have dogs and cats that live together.” His phone chirped, and he looked at it before nodding to me. “My cleaner will be here soon. Leave the door open for him. Of course you can bring her. Let’s go.”

All the locks on the door were busted in. I had no choice but to leave it open. Me and Minnie followed Lucas out the front door, and we all got into his truck.

“Where are we going?” I asked, once I had Minnie’s carrier settled on my lap.

“My place. Just for a while. My cleaner’s fast.” I was thinking about this, and maybe he took my silence for fear, as he continued. “You couldn’t stay there. Not with all the blood.”

“Yeah. I’d totally lose my deposit.”

He snorted. We took a turn, and Minnie growled.

“I feel awful putting her through this.” God only knew how long she’d been hiding behind my dresser.

“Doesn’t it occur to you to be mad? Your vampire friend just got you into a lot of trouble.”

“Yeah, only somehow all the things attacking me are weres.”