Wolf was several feet behind us, looking intently down on the farming town below. I called to him.
“Come on. We’re going to go to that barn.”
He looked at me sharply. “Why? Everything we want is down there.”
“Yes, but you’re not exactly in top condition to visit them, are you?”
He snorted. “And who are you to judge? Little missy wolf scholar. Think you know everything, do you? Keen on locking me up while you play with the locals?”
“Caroline,” Alex muttered.
Suddenly Wolf’s eyes went wide and the gold flecks disappeared. He gasped. “Oh Caroline. I’m so sorry. I’m just a little…out of sorts.” He pressed his fingers to his temples.
I took a moment to gather myself together from his little outburst and then beckoned him. “Come on then, it’s okay.”
He whimpered, but trotted obediently beside me. It was unnerving to see him like this. One day he’s taking on evil panthers and harpies to save me, the next he’s going bi-polar, violent in one moment, docile and worrisome in the next. I put my hand on his shoulder.
The barn wasn’t so much a barn as a huge stable. Inside were several large stalls for horses with tall doors, half of which were wood and the other half of thin bars that reached to the ceiling. The sort of barn one expected an extremely wealthy person to own. The other side was piled high with bales of fresh hay. Though the stables weren’t in use, someone was definitely using the place for storage. Still, they weren’t likely to come in and fetch hay at night, so I guessed Wolf would be relatively safe in the meantime. I sat him down on a bale.
“Okay. We’re going to go into the village to look for Marianne. You stay here and try to relax.”
He frowned up at me. “But you’ll need me to help find her.”
“No, you stay here. We can look around on our own. If we don’t find anything, we’ll come back and see if you’re able to help. How does that sound?”
He nodded and said nothing. I jerked my thumb at Alex to tell him to go. I patted Wolf on the head a few times and kissed him on the forehead. I was tempted to say, “Now be a good boy” before I left, but I kept quiet.
“Honestly,” Alex said as we walked toward the town, “I don’t know what you see in that guy.”
“He’s not just a guy, and it’s not his fault. There’s something wrong with the wolves in this place.”
“And you still think it’s safe to hang around him?”
“He’s just having a hard time because the full moon is tomorrow.”
“Full moon? You mean this guy is a werewolf?”
“No. Werewolves are human wolves that have gone bad.” I sighed in frustration. “Look, Alex, I don’t know everything about this place, okay? And so far my time here hasn’t been all that great. But Wolf,” I pointed back to the barn, “has saved me loads of times already. In fact, it’s kind of embarrassing what he’s gotten me out of. So I’m going to do what I can to help him.”
“All right, all right. So what are we looking for in this place?”
I explained the frightening werewolf phantom, as well as what Marianne looked like. Alex looked at the town in disbelief.
“How the hell could something like that come in here and no one has a second thought about it?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s magic. Maybe it knows how to hide.”
We strolled through the town, trying to look as normal as possible. But people were giving me odd looks and gaping a bit at Alex. Made sense. My clothes were dirty and bloodstained while Alex wore the attire of a Sentry for the House of Hood. He nodded courteously at people with the occasional, “Ma’am,” the way he did in town back home. I looked for some sign of passage by the smoke beast. But the place looked for all the world like a regular town, though maybe in Switzerland. Quaint shops sold lace and fountain pens, candles and various shiny baubles. Pies cooled on windowsills of bakeries. The occasional small herd of sheep wove its way through the street, tended by boys or girls with herding staffs. Women in bonnets traveled from one merchant to another, adding goods to their baskets until they were full of mouth-watering morsels and homey items.