cuts aren’t deep, but there are several of them on each hand.”
Jana hesitated. She wasn’t an expert. Who was when it came to the cassandra sangue? But she was the human part of the law here. “I’ll ask one of the doctors to make a house call. I think the fewer people who see Maddie today, the better.” She hesitated. “You need to discover what she used to make the cuts before the other children find it. Or ask Kane to sniff around the room and find it.” Virgil was right here and could do the sniffing, but she needed the sheriff and that had to be a priority.
Evan nodded, but she wasn’t sure he’d heard her or understood what she’d said.
She left the house, almost smacking Virgil with the screen door in her haste to get home and finish dressing for work. She crossed the street with the Wolf trotting at her side. “You need to contact Tolya, tell him we need to meet. It’s urgent. Kane should go over to Maddie’s house and see if he can find what she used to cut herself. If it has any blood on it, it has to be kept away from the other children.” She thought for a moment, then added, “John should come to the meeting, since he used to live in Lakeside.” He was the one individual she knew had had direct contact with a blood prophet and might be able to give them more information about what they should do now.
Puddle, puddle, red red red.
Grass stained with blood where dogs had died the other day. She remembered it so easily, the ground soaking up the moisture.
Puddle, puddle, red red red.
How much blood would have to saturate the ground before it began to puddle?
She bolted up the short walk to her front door. “Call them, Virgil!”
Setting the magazine and picture book on the coffee table, she rushed to her room to pull on her shirt and retrieve her service weapon. Rushed back to the living room and fumbled with the latch on Rusty’s crate.
“Sorry, girl. Sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong. No, you didn’t. Come on, now. We have to go. You can have a treat when we get to the office, okay?”
She was heading out just as Barb returned and handed her the paper with the cryptic clues. “Close up the house when you go, okay?”
Barb nodded. “Did you shut off the coffee?”
Jana shook her head. When she reached her vehicle, John was waiting for her and Kane was limping toward Maddie’s house. She didn’t see Virgil, but he might be running toward the town square and would get there before she did.
As soon as she got Rusty settled in the cargo area, she flung herself behind the wheel, hit the lights and siren, and stepped on the gas.
“Hey!” John grumbled.
Jana growled.
It didn’t occur to her until they reached the office that nobody who could wear fur made a sound for the rest of the drive.
* * *
* * *
The howling vehicle pulled up in front of the sheriff’s office.
“Nothing subtle about her this morning, is there?” Tolya asked, watching as Jana hustled the puppy out of the cargo area.
“Wolverine,” Virgil growled softly. “Snapping orders as if …”
As if she were dominant, Tolya thought, finishing the sentence. “And you didn’t correct her?”
Virgil’s bared teeth were his only answer as he opened the office door.
John Wolfgard hurried into the office, then took up a position in the doorway that led to the back rooms, as if he wanted quick access to a number of rooms that had doors he could barricade against the human female.
Did this signal a temporary change in the pack hierarchy or something more serious that would require careful consideration by all the terra indigene running the town?
Rusty bolted for her crate. Safe ground. The pup’s fear of the person she usually trusted said a great deal about Jana’s state of mind—and explained Virgil’s wariness.
Jana dropped a book and a magazine on her desk, gave the puppy a treat, and finally looked at all of them. She blew out a breath and said, “Maddie cut herself this morning. Cut her hands, multiple times.” She held out a piece of paper to Tolya. “Virgil heard what she said. Barb wrote down the words. The children were looking at this book and magazine when everything … started. We need to figure out what Maddie saw that set her off, for her sake … and, I think, for ours.”
Still