Dead Letter Day (19 page)

“Has it been a problem?” I knew what Chuck had told me. It would be interesting to hear it from some other wolf’s perspective. Chuck might have his extremely sensitive ear to the ground, but that didn’t mean he knew everything that was going on in his pack.

Sam’s brow furrowed. “It’s not like we’re not used to Paul being gone from time to time. He takes off all the time. We usually know when he’s going to be back, though. And when he’s around, he…balances things out. Things don’t feel quite right with him gone like this. At least, not to me.” Sam sighed and shifted in his seat.

I knew how he felt. It was like something in my life was a bit out of kilter with Paul not on the scene. “How about the other wolves, then? What is it like to them?”

“I don’t think I can speak for anybody but myself. I know Kevin thinks everyone is overreacting, that Paul will turn up on his own and we’ll all feel silly. I’m not so sure, though.”

That sounded like an echo of Chuck’s opinion. Maybe I was being an alarmist. Lord knows, my mother has called me a Negative Nellie more than once in my life.

“Are Paul and Kevin friends?” Paul had never really
mentioned Kevin by name, but he was pretty careful about who he mentioned. I never did hear a lot of names.

Sam looked over at me, his head cocked to one side as if he didn’t understand the question. “They’re Pack.”

I wondered what it was like to have life be that simple. You’re Pack or you’re not Pack. I’m not sure if I’ve ever been able to view anything as that black-and-white in my whole life. I wasn’t sure I wanted to either. Twenty-eight years of existing in the margins have given me an appreciation of the gray areas in both my worlds. Still, black-and-white aside, Pack politics could be complicated even if, in the end, they were usually resolved in the simplest of ways: by one werewolf ripping out the throat of another and feasting on his or her blood.

Just because you’re Pack doesn’t mean you like each other. It does usually mean you have each other’s back, though.

“Can you track?” Sam asked, breaking the silence. He was a nice boy, making conversation like that.

“Some. Not like you guys. And definitely not from inside a car.”

“I hear that.” He nodded. “All those smells…the gas, the rubber, the electrical wiring. It scrambles me up. Paul’s place is right up ahead.”

Suddenly there it was. It looked exactly like a place where Paul would live. Clean, simple, but oh so very manly. It was truly a cabin. Moderately rustic. All rough-hewn logs with two Adirondack chairs on the porch. The area around the cabin had been cleared, but not planted. It looked like some place the guy on Brawny paper towels would live.

I stepped out of the car and stood for a second, trying to let my senses open, trying to feel some kind of pull in one direction or another that would tell me where Paul had gone.

“Wanna go inside?” Sam asked, stretching his arms and back. “He never locks it.”

Why would he? Who would find it, much less burglarize it? I nodded and we walked up the porch steps and into the cabin. Inside there was…nothing. I mean, there were rugs and lamps and furniture, although not much of it. A couch. One chair. A coffee table. A small dinette set. A rug on the floor by the couch. There wasn’t much else, though. There was certainly no sign of a struggle. If someone or something had taken Paul, they hadn’t done it from in here. I can’t imagine what it would take to move that man if he didn’t want to be moved, but I’m pretty sure it would leave destruction in its path.

There also wasn’t much of a residue of Paul-ness, for the lack of a better word. I didn’t feel his presence here. He hadn’t been here for a while. There was a slight scent of him, but no magical signature vibration, and the scent could be from anything. Clothes. Furniture. Sheets. Towels.

“Do you sense anything?” I asked Sam. “Smell anything?”

Sam lifted his head and scented the air. I’d seen Paul do it a hundred times. Maybe a thousand. I’d seen him do it when a familiar scent crossed his path, like when Ted or Alex or Meredith walked into his bar. I’d seen him do it when he was hunting for something, too.

Sam shook his head. “The bread over there is moldy. That’s all I’m getting, though.”

Bummer. “My turn,” I said. I shut my eyes, tried to go to a place of calm and tranquility and opened my senses as far and wide as I could. I probably didn’t look all that different than Sam had a second ago. I tilted back my head and breathed in. It was a totally different thing, though.

Werewolves hunt like, well, wolves. Their senses are
crazy sharp. Not quite as sharp in human form as they are in wolf form, but still way sharper than any regular person. They can smell and hear and taste and see with great acuity. Me? I can smell and hear and taste and see more sharply than most people, but not anywhere as well as a werewolf can. I also, however, sense magic.

I wish I could describe it. I’ve never been able to. Of course, until recently, there wasn’t anyone I needed to describe it to. No one knew I was a Messenger except Mae, and since she was already a Messenger herself, I didn’t need to explain much of anything to her.

Sometimes now, though, Ted would ask. Or Norah. They wanted to know what I felt. I didn’t really have words for it. It was definitely like a vibration, but it was almost electrical in how it felt. Lately, too, there’s been more of a flavor to it, but it was all mixed up. Like I could feel tastes in my flesh and smell the colors of what I was hearing.

At first, there was nothing. No buzz. No shiver. Then there was the tiniest of tingles. It was faint, but it was there. I opened my eyes and looked at Sam. “This way,” I said and walked out of the cabin.

It’s not like I knew where I was going precisely. I just knew which way to walk. We went out behind the cabin, away from the piddling excuse of a road. “Do you think it’s him?” Sam asked, his voice tense and excited.

I shook my head. It didn’t have the musky earthy feeling of a werewolf. It had magic to it, definitely. Although maybe whatever it was wasn’t precisely magical, but had been made by something magical. Objects of power were funny like that. They might not be magical all on their own, but they held a bit of the tingle of whatever had made or wielded them. Whatever it was definitely wasn’t alive. I wasn’t sure if that was a relief or not.

“Where are you going? What is it?” Sam stayed behind me, but I could feel his excitement and it was distracting. I held my hand up to signal for him to stay back. I wasn’t going to try to explain it to him now. He wouldn’t understand anyway. Werewolves don’t sense inanimate objects the way I do. Nor are they subtle, and whatever I was sensing was definitely that. Subtle. Delicate. Nuanced.

I kept walking. There was no path and I had to go slow to crawl over the occasional fallen tree and simply to watch my step. I didn’t even realize I’d gone past whatever it was until it was well behind me. The vibration of it shifted, from a buzz that made me want to clench my teeth together, to a tension in my shoulders and back. I turned and headed back.

“Where are you going?” Sam demanded again. I held up my hand again to hush him. Whatever it was, it wasn’t big and it wasn’t strong. I needed to focus if I was going to find it.

He growled. Someone wasn’t used to taking orders from those outside the Pack. Too darned bad. I glared. He hushed.

I headed back in the direction I’d come, but with slower steps. Again, I went past, but now in the opposite direction. It was like playing a game of Hot and Cold with a totally passive-aggressive playmate. I turned again, my steps even more measured.

Here. It was right here. But how? There wasn’t anything. I stopped turning. Stopped looking. I opened my other senses. It was to my right. I shifted and opened my eyes again and saw a glint of something in the underbrush by some ferny looking plant.

I bent to look at it. It looked like a piece of netting, very fine and delicate. It glinted in the sun because it was made of metal. When I reached down to pick it up, I got an electric shock as if I’d been shuffling my feet across a carpet on a winter day.

8

“YOU OKAY?” SAM ASKED, AS I BACKED INTO HIM AND away from the shiny lace.

“Uh, sure,” I said, shaking my hand to get rid of the pins-and-needles sensation touching the lace had caused. I squatted down to get a closer look at it.

“You want me to pick it up for you?” Sam offered, starting to reach for it as he asked. Then he snatched his hand back and yelped like a puppy who’d had his tail stepped on.

There are a lot of myths about mythological and paranormal beings. I’ve never, for instance, seen a vampire turn into a bat or recoil from garlic, and they totally have reflections. I have, however, seen a werewolf writhe in agony after coming in contact with pure silver. I didn’t know how pure this was, but it was pure enough to have burnt Sam’s fingers.

Sam gave me a hurt look. “Why didn’t you warn me?”

I gave him my best apologetic look. “I didn’t know. It zapped me, but not because it was silver.”

“You think it’s pure silver?” He squatted down next to me to look at the piece of lace, but kept a healthy distance from it.

I’m not a metalsmith, but I’ve seen more than my share of objects of power. In my experience, the purer the material the object is made from, the greater its power. This little piece of net had a fairly significant mojo to it, more than I thought it would if it was some kind of alloy. I sat back on my heels. “Maybe. Probably, even.”

I glanced around. Objects tended to be more powerful if their makers were in close proximity, too. “Is there anything close to here? Another cabin? A town?”

Sam shook his head. “When Paul wanted to be private, he wanted to be really private.”

That sounded like him. He wasn’t a man of muddled motivations except for one area and that would be Meredith. I totally understood. Wanting someone or something that you didn’t want to want wasn’t a whole lot of fun and he definitely wanted Meredith and wanted not to want her at the same time. I often felt the same way about my mother’s Bundt cakes.

I cast around. I didn’t sense anything that could have made this lace. Of course, between Sam sitting right next to me and the lace sitting right in front of me, my Messenger senses were getting a little jammed. Plus the woods were full of life. Birds sang in the trees and squirrels chattered in the bushes, not to mention all the insects. Sometimes I felt like there were more distractions out in the country than there were in the city.

I looked around the area. I couldn’t decide if the grass looked torn up or if that was simply its natural state of wildness. “What do you see?” I asked Sam.

He squinted in concentration. Then he pointed. “There and there.” He pointed to a third area. “Maybe there, too. The grass
seems more trampled and that branch over there is freshly cracked. I think there might have been a scuffle here. But, Melina, it would take more than a scuffle to take down Paul.”

I nodded. “That’s what I thought, too. Plus lace doesn’t seem like much of a weapon, even if it is silver.” If the mark of a true professional was the ability to play with pain, then Paul was definitely a professional werewolf. He could withstand a lot.

I pulled my sleeve down over my hand and picked up the piece of lace. I could still feel its buzz, but it wasn’t strong enough to make me drop it. “Let’s go,” I said, standing up.

The world whirled, the edges of my vision went gray, and I nearly dropped the lace.

“Are you all right?” Sam asked, catching me by the elbow and steadying me.

I held still for a second. Everything righted itself and my peripheral vision returned. “Yeah. Just a little head rush. I guess I was squatting down there too long.”

Sam nodded, but didn’t say anything. I slipped my elbow out of his grasp and headed back to the Buick.

I was pretty sure I’d seen everything there was to see there, not that there was much. I was coming away with not much more than the vague sense of unease that I’d started with.

I knew what I’d been hoping. I’d been hoping we’d get to the cabin and Paul would be sitting on the front porch, drinking a beer and enjoying his solitude. That he’d chide me for worrying about him and send me back to town.

Failing that, I suppose I would have liked some clear-cut sign that something bad had happened to him. The presence of pure silver near his place wasn’t a good sign, but the stuff looked so fine and fragile and it was such a little scrap of a thing, I couldn’t imagine it being much of a deterrent for him. Sure, it would hurt like bloody hell if he touched it, but werewolves have a ridiculously high pain tolerance.

I was guessing it meant something, but hell if I knew what it was.