Coyote would have timed my brother’s phone call so precisely without a reason.
“Hey, love,” said Adam. “Elizaveta just called. She wants to check something out at her house, and she doesn’t want to do it alone. I’m going to go pick her up. Don’t worry. Love you.”
Yes, I thought, I’d have had trouble convincing Sherwood that I just needed a quiet place to think for a while if he’d heard that message.
I grabbed a set of keys, turned out the light again, and relocked everything up. Then I got into Stefan’s bus and headed for Elizaveta’s house for some recon. As I traveled I called Stefan’s phone and got his voice mail—which I’d expected.
“I stole your bus,” I told him. “And I am headed to Elizaveta’s to look for Adam. I believe that the Hardesty witches are there, and that they have Adam and Senator Campbell. If I don’t call you back in a few hours, would you call Darryl?” Hopefully Marsilia didn’t plan on keeping Stefan bound and gagged for long. “Tell him that I think the zombie witch can control werewolves and he should take precautions.”
I found a place to park the bus next to a haystack about a half mile away from Elizaveta’s. With any luck, it wouldn’t draw too much attention. It wasn’t exactly a stealth vehicle, but at night it wasn’t as noticeable as it was in the daylight. I gave Scooby a pat on his fuzzy head for luck, then stripped to my skin, opened the driver’s door, and hopped out.
I shut the door quietly and shifted to coyote. Then I went off to do the thing that coyotes do best—sneak.
There were lights on in Elizaveta’s house. I slunk down the edge of the driveway from shadow to shadow, moving as slowly as I could bear. Quick movement catches the eye. If I had been dealing with mere humans, I’d have trotted right along. But I had no idea how well the witches could see in the dark, so I crept.
Elizaveta’s driveway was nearly a quarter mile long, and there was a newish RV parked between the house and the garage. Adam’s SUV was parked right in front of the house, as was a Subaru Impreza. I watched the yard from under a raspberry bush. The underbrush had been cleared out and the bush trimmed, so there was plenty of room for me to hide.
I watched for maybe five minutes but saw no movement inside or out—despite the lights in the house.
Maybe they were all in the basement.
That thought had me sliding out of my hiding place. I was halfway out when a sound made me freeze.
A bluish-gray wolf, distinctively marked with darkened feet, muzzle, and tail, walked across the yard. Adam. The deliberate pace of his movement, his pricked ears, and the slow swing of his head told me that he was on patrol.
I stepped out of the shadows and let him see me.
He walked right past me, as if I weren’t there.
I am to patrol the grounds and alert them if I come across anything that might threaten them or is unusual.
The thought brushed my mind lightly, as if I were overhearing a conversation that had nothing to do with me. It whispered down our mate bond, and if I had been ten feet farther away, I doubt it would have touched me.
There is nothing threatening or unusual in a coyote running around Finley, he noted. Just for a moment his gold eyes brushed mine, and then he moved on.
But if I were that coyote, I would leave.
And then, as if he could not even think the name, an image floated in my mind’s eye: a wolf’s face with a red X across it.
Adam was warning me not to let the pack come here.
* * *
• • •
Of course I didn’t leave.
If Adam was here, I could safely assume the senator and Elizaveta were also here. So all I had to do was get a look at their defenses. I had the bare bones of a plan in my head—I didn’t like it and I wasn’t sure it would work.
I expected my explorations to last longer, even given that I now had to avoid Adam. But after the third zombie in twenty feet, I had all the answer I needed.
I was going to need help.
They had Adam, I thought, trotting back to the bus; I couldn’t afford to give them the whole pack. But I had other friends to call upon, which