“Devon,” I said, feeling like the earth itself had been jerked out from under my feet. “I need you to talk to Mitch and find out something for me.”
I’d asked Callum how many female Weres had a dead twin—but that wasn’t the right question. Not now, after feeling that thing’s breath on me.
Now that it had tasted my blood.
“What do you need?” Devon didn’t hesitate, wouldn’t, no matter what I asked of him.
I thought of the cabin in Alpine Creek. The dead animals. The Shadow’s human victims, teenagers all.
“I need you,” I said slowly, “to find out if Samuel Wilson had a twin.”
I came to on a bed in a different motel. Apparently, we’d become persona non grata at the old one.
Go figure.
Chase was lying beside me, his body curled around my smaller frame. On my other side, Jed was calmly and efficiently digging a needle into my flesh: quick, clean strokes.
Stitches.
If the Shadow bite had been numb before, my shoulder was on fire now. Lovely.
“How long was I out?” I ground out. Jed eyed Caroline, and she tossed me a rolled up pillowcase.
“Little over an hour,” she said. “Bite down on that.”
I wanted to refuse, just on principle, but as the needle dug deep into my skin, I stuffed the pillowcase into my mouth and bit down as hard as I could, muffling the scream that wanted to make its way out of my mouth.
I could do this. I could handle this. I hadn’t faced off against a ghostly opponent to be undone by a few measly stitches.
“Is poor wittle Bryn going to cry?” I could see worry playing at the edges of Lake’s mouth, but her tone was an exact match for the time I’d broken my arm, when we were nine. “Don’t be such a bawling little crybaby. You’ll be fine.”
Chase gave her a disgruntled look, but I found myself appreciating the distraction. It was easier to deal with Jed sewing me back together like a patchwork quilt when I had something else to concentrate on.
To that end, I turned my attention to Lake and said something that does not bear repeating into the pillowcase bunched up in my mouth.
She grinned, but the expression didn’t go all the way up to her eyes. I may have only been out for an hour, but that was an hour too long. She’d worried.
They all had.
“Almost done here, Bryn.” Jed made good on his words, and thirty-five excruciating seconds later, he tied off the last stitch. He smoothed something that looked like mud and smelled like booze over the wound and then bandaged it.
I spat out the pillowcase.
“Guess I can scratch ‘get eaten by an immaterial being’ off my to-do list,” I groused, trying—and failing—to find some humor in the situation. Beside me, Chase swallowed a noise halfway between a snort and a cry and ran his hand up and down my good arm.
I could almost feel the pain flowing from my body to his. If he could have borne this for me, he would have, in a heartbeat.
“I wouldn’t recommend trying to move that arm,” Jed told me—no muss, no fuss, no pity. “Unless you’re looking to repeat this particular experience.”
More stitches? No, thank you. The throb of pain was constant—burning, aching, incessant assaults against each and every nerve ending in my shoulder.
“I’ll take it easy,” I said.
The rest of the room scoffed audibly. In unison.
I took the high road and ignored their obvious skepticism. Instead, I focused on the real issue here. “The Shadow’s gone, but he could come back.”
Griffin caught my gaze and lifted his eyebrows slightly. I thought I’d done a good job hiding my doubts about him, but the look on his face was enough to tell me that he’d known. He may as well have written do you believe me now? across the sky in large block letters.
I nodded—as close to an apology as I could come when there was something much, much bigger at stake. The very possibility that the Shadow might be Wilson had changed everything, even though I had no way of knowing if my instincts were on point. Maybe the specter that had been following Maddy wasn’t the same monster who’d turned her into a werewolf when she was six years old—but maybe it was.
That same monster had killed my parents, Changed Chase. The kids in my pack had once been his, until they’d turned on him and literally torn him to pieces.
Female twin. Violent death. Those were the ingredients Callum had said went into making a Shadow. I hoped I was wrong, but we knew for a fact that Samuel Wilson fit at least one of those requirements.
As soon as Devon got back to me, we’d know if he fit the other one, too.
“I’m sorry.”
It took me a second or two to figure out who was apologizing and another stretch of time to work my mind around why.