The Better to Bite(27)

Would have, right.

“Lamb to the slaughter,” Rafe muttered and he yanked his hand through his hair.

I blinked. “Excuse me?”

A knock sounded at my bedroom door. “Anna?” My dad’s voice.

“Go!” I whispered to Rafe even as I yanked down the window and the blinds. I spun away, just as my dad opened the door.

“Baby, are you okay?”

He was in his faded robe and pajama pants. The pants with smiley faces all over them. A gag gift from me last Christmas, but a gift that the guy wore all the time.

I nodded. “Yeah, sorry, Dad.”

His gaze swept the room. I knew suspicion when I saw it. “I thought I heard you talking to someone.”

You did. I exhaled. “I had a bad dream.” I never liked lying to my dad, so I usually just avoided the fake stories all together. He could see through lies too easily. Evasion worked better for me.

“A dream about the wolf?”

I’d told him about the attack. Brent hadn’t been able to remember anything, so it was just my word that a big, crazy wolf had charged at the truck.

My dad had believed me. He always did.

“Y-yeah.”

He came toward me. Put his hands on my shoulders…and moved me away from the window. So much for a comforting hug. “Dad!”

He pushed up the blinds and peered outside.

So busted.

I craned to see over his shoulder. I only saw the empty tree limbs. Rafe was already gone.

I exhaled.

Dad looked back at me.

I didn’t give him a fake smile. It was too late. I was too tired.

But he gave me a hug now. The kind that I needed.

I got back in bed. He checked the lock on my window, then he picked up my mace.

My eyes narrowed on that leather case. “Dad, where’d you get the mace?” I know I’d asked before, but he’d just given me a smart ass answer then.

He shrugged now. “From the station.”

My hands curled into the covers. “When I sprayed the wolf, the mace burned its eyes.”

He dropped the mace. “That’s what it’s supposed to do, you know that—”

“No.”

He frowned.

“Not burn as in…it hurt his eyes and made them water.” Not even close. I licked my lips. “I mean smoke was coming off the wolf. Its eyes looked like they were bleeding, and the wolf was burning.” I pressed my lips together, waited a beat, then asked, “Just what, exactly, is in that mace?” What’s happening? Tell me!

My dad walked toward the bedroom door. I thought he’d leave without responding, but then he stopped. His shoulders drooped a bit, and my dad looked…tired. “Back in the city,” he said slowly, “I didn’t think there was anything worse than the killers I faced on the streets.” He turned his head and met my stare. “But there are worse things, baby. Much, much worse.”

And with that, he left me.

It took me a very long time to get back to sleep.

***

The bell of the spell shop jingled when I walked inside. My dad had brought me to the station, but I’d slipped away while he was on a call. Staying cooped up in there—even without all the missing persons’ posters—wasn’t my idea of a good Saturday afternoon.

Of course, going in a spell shop wasn’t, either. But if dad wasn’t going to give me the answers I needed, I had to find someone else who would.

“Anna!” Cassidy poked her head through the thin beaded curtain in the back. “I heard about what happened!” She hurried toward me. “Are you okay?”

I nodded. My body ached all over, and I had a most lovely assortment of bruises, but I was alive. So I figured that qualified as okay. “Hey, you tried to warn me, right?” I should have listened to her.

She flinched. “I didn’t know that—”

“No, it’s okay, I know you didn’t.” My target had. “Is Granny Helen around?”

“Yes, child…” came Granny Helen’s smooth voice. “I’m right here.”

She stood in the middle of that beaded curtain. I lifted my chin. “I want to know what’s happening in this town.”

Granny Helen’s black eyes assessed me. “Tell me, lamb…”

And I stiffened because Rafe had called me the same thing.

“…do you dream since coming to Haven?”

Now Cassidy was as still and quiet as a statue.

“I dream about wolves,” I said. But, hey, big surprise. When you got attacked, it only made sense that the beast would follow a girl into her dreams.

But Granny Helen nodded. “Want to know your past or your future?” She slipped to the side and parted the beaded curtain for me.

Oh, crap. I looked at Cassidy. “Do it,” she mouthed.