After that, he hung up and dialed Lynette again, giving her instructions on where to meet Kira while passing along the latter’s number. And even though I longed to bask in the near contact of eyes focusing unwaveringly on me, I forced myself to focus on something very different.

  Now wasn’t the time for basking. If I wanted to see what kind of future Drake and I might create together, I first needed to deal with the most unpleasant part of my past.

  To that end, I jerked the loose board a little harder. This time, it came free, allowing a cascade of dirt to spill down into the homemade coffin.

  I expected to find my dead husband’s face there, or perhaps his skull. Rates of human decomposition weren’t something I was intimately familiar with.

  What I found was worse. No face. No skull. No evidence at all that my murderous husband was dead.

  Chapter 3

  Tru

  It wasn’t the most rational reaction, but I abruptly needed to know if this rough wooden box was a mere decoy. So I fell down onto my belly and thrust my arm through the opening where the board had been, straining into the darkness.

  Nothing. Nothing. Then my fingers hit something hard and Ambrose’s booming laugh carried previously forgotten memory back into full focus.

  “Your blood is delicious.” He’d stood over me, one of the hundreds of glass vials he’d carefully filled with a mixture of my blood plus a clear preservative pinched between thumb and forefinger. His lips were bloody from the taste he’d already enjoyed and he didn’t bother wiping away the red splattering his lips.

  “Why?” I choked on the word, barely able to talk. I was so lightheaded. If I hadn’t been lying down already, I would have fallen.

  “Look.” He spread his arms wide and I blinked, trying to focus. My husband’s face seemed to shimmer slightly as if he was shifting to lupine form even though his shape remained resolutely human.

  Then I understood what was happening. The small wrinkles around his eyes were smoothing. The few streaks of white in his hair had returned to glossy brown.

  Ambrose was stealing my life to extend his own. And, given my marriage vow, there was nothing I could do about it.

  He laughed again, the sound deeper, more resonant. A hand landed on my shoulder…

  Not in memory, in life. Ambrose was here. He wanted to drain me dry again and…

  Luckily, I wasn’t the innocent I’d been last time. “My oath died with you!” I gritted out.

  I didn’t know if that was true but I wasn’t waiting around to find out. I fumbled for the slit in my skirt, the one Lynette had come upon me sewing into place and proclaimed “sexy” until she understood its purpose. The Velcro I’d used to close the long gash ripped beneath my fingers. The knife I’d strapped to my thigh was in my hands even as I spun to fight the man who’d killed me once already.

  Grabbing the knife, however, had required dropping my phone. Face down on the earth, its glow provided only a tiny rim of light between the two of us. So all I could see was my enemy’s massive size as he bent over me. All I could smell was the fur waiting beneath his skin.

  His huge hands were raised to the sky though. No wonder when my knife was at his throat. I’d won this round.

  “I shouldn’t have touched you.”

  The familiar rasp curled around me and I sucked in a gulp of air more frigid than it had been a moment earlier, not realizing until I did so that I’d been holding my breath. “Drake?”

  The bulky shadow nodded, the motion working against my knife and cutting into his skin. I could smell his blood, just as salty as the liquid that had lined my husband’s lips. My fingers trembled. My weapon tumbled down to join my cell phone.

  “Ambrose Reed is dead,” Drake continued as if he’d read my mind. “I saw him die and I’ll prove he’s gone.”

  Over the next hour, Drake did exactly that.

  He began by ripping the first two boards loose with his bare hands, revealing the shoulders of a desiccated, headless skeleton. And when I still couldn’t seem to stop shivering, he pulled out a multi-tool and worked every screw loose along the top of the coffin, revealing the rest of my husband’s remains.

  Rotting clothes sagged over bones and connective tissue, dirt that had cascaded inside weighing down portions without obscuring the whole. Unless someone else had been put in this grave, I was indeed a widow.

  And Drake swore he’d been personally responsible for transporting Ambrose’s body across the country to return it to the Reed pack this past spring. “Palms required greasing,” he rasped. “We don’t embalm our bodies and human laws can be difficult when crossing state lines.”

  “If you say he’s dead, he’s dead.” Then I frowned, paying attention to the man in front of me at long last. “I cut you.”

  And, okay, so maybe I just wanted an excuse to touch someone alive and lemon-scented. After all, the thin line of red from my knife was already coagulating and clearly didn’t require treatment. Still, I reached into the kitten-containing pocket and drew out the cloth handkerchief Drake always kept there, using it to dab at the wound I’d created while lost in memory and fear.

  “Not the first time.” Drake’s rasp vibrated through the cloth and into my fingers, completely eradicating fear of the past while warming the air around us. Perhaps it hadn’t turned so unseasonably cold as suddenly as I’d imagined. Perhaps I’d just lingered too far from Drake’s tantalizing heat.

  Which is how Lynette found us, arriving along with four young wolves and the apprentice Drake had called to collect them. The latter shone a huge flashlight beam down on us while the largest wolf swiveled around to guard against anything coming up behind us out of the forest. And Lynette hopped down into a hole that abruptly felt overcrowded. Only quick reflexes managed to save Drake from a bloody nose as our ward saluted.

  “Reporting for duty. Which piece did the bas…” She coughed and seemed to change her mind about wording, cheeks pinking in a way that reminded me of myself in a modern fitting room. “Which piece did the grave robber touch?”

  The stumble over words made Lynette seem younger than she actually was, and I opened my mouth to tell her she didn’t need to do this. I hadn’t thought through how having a teenager analyze an open grave might layer new traumatic memories atop old ones.

  Plus, it wasn’t as if the current mystery was pressing enough to require interrupting Lynette’s newfound childhood. My husband was dead. Whatever had happened to his grave wasn’t important enough to mess with the normal life I was trying to create for our ward.

  But Drake, who never naysaid me, shook his head very slightly before wordlessly pointing Lynette’s attention toward the single board that had been askew from the beginning. She reached out to touch it, taking advantage of scorchy fingers that also let her see fragments of the past when in contact with inanimate objects.

  Her eyes closed and her cheeks seemed to sink under the stark lighting from Kira’s flashlight. Now Lynette looked nothing like the kid we’d left playing tag with young shifters. Instead, she was once again a young woman doing whatever she had to in order to survive.

  Involving her in this mess had been a terrible idea.

  Then Lynette’s eyelashes twitched. And when she opened her eyes, it was me she spoke to. “You’re not gonna like this.”

  I already didn’t like this. “Tell me.”

  “It was Kami.” Lynette rocked back on her heels, putting as much distance as she could between herself and the piece of wood she’d been touching. “She dug up the grave and took dead dude’s head.”

  Chapter 4

  Tru

  If there was one person I was even less thrilled to be reminded of than my dead husband, it was Kami. A month ago, I’d thought our physical resemblance meant she was a sister or possibly daughter and also my closest friend.

  Turned out she wasn’t my friend, wasn’t even a person. Instead, Kami was, well, a kami, a spirit who had saved me from death when my husband went blood hungry over a century ago…and who, more recently, had proceeded to kidnap and kill half the people around us while stealing my memory daily to bolster her own strength.

  Those cells Lynette and I had ended up in a month ago? Kami’s doing. And when I’d broken the bond that linked us, hoping it would make the woman who looked just like me but acted like my evil twin waft away into thin air, Kami had instead pranced out of the building wearing someone else’s face.

  So, yeah, the fact that Kami was tangible enough to grave rob was bad news. It didn’t however, entirely account for the way Lynette’s hands were currently shaking. Nor did it begin to explain the dark streak below our ward’s ear that I had a sneaking suspicion wasn’t dirt.

  I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed either. “You were upset before you touched the board,” Drake rasped. “Why?”

  Lynette shook her head and a naked young man standing beside Kira was the one who answered. “Lynette is going to tell you she wrecked your car, but she didn’t.”

  The speaker must have been lupine a few minutes earlier, likely the wolf who’d been guarding all of our backs by staring into the dark woods. I’d thought the kids Lynette played tag with were all younger than she was, but I’d clearly been mistaken. Because this guy held himself like a man, or at least he did until Drake turned the full brunt of those gray eyes in his direction.

  “Explain.”

  “Yes, sir.” And now signs of the teenager’s youth rematerialized. His lips moved but no additional words came out.

  The mouth-drying effect of Drake’s glare was no surprise, but that glare seemed out of proportion when Lynette had been the one driving and everyone appeared to have walked away from the car wreck unharmed. Searching for clues, I glanced at our ward, whose eyes sparkled in a way I’d never seen them do previously. Then I considered Drake who, I now realized, had wrapped one possessive arm around the girl’s shoulders while growling ever so slightly up at the teenage boy.

  So that’s how it was, huh?

  Murmuring softly enough so only a very nearby shifter could hear me, I suggested: “You might want to cool it on the over-protectiveness if we’re going to get answers tonight. They’re teenagers. They’re allowed to have crushes.”

  In response, Drake’s mouth quirked ever so slightly. Then the rumble in his chest stilled as he turned his head just the tiniest fraction, enough to let the poor kid he’d been frowning at suck in a deep breath then speak.

  “We were on a blind curve, sir, and you know the roads around here aren’t really wide enough for two cars unless you hug the edges.”

  Now Lynette found her tongue also. “It’s still my fault, Erik. I’m not used to driving without streetlights and I was in the middle and…”

  “You don’t get it,” the young man countered, forgetting the scare factor now that he was addressing the girl he’d clearly taken a shine to. “He swerved at you. You did the best you could to get out of his way.”

  “He?” Drake rasped, keeping his tone level this time. “You got a look at the other driver?”

  “I mean, yeah, but I couldn’t see much. It was dark. And after we went off the road, our car flipped and the kids in the back got scared.”

  That explained the persistence of fur on shifters who’d been two-legged and loquacious when we left them playing tag earlier in the evening. If I didn’t miss my guess, the teenagers in the front seat had gotten scared also, which explained why Drake had wanted to give Lynette the chance to showcase her talents and remember her strength by touching the coffin lid.

  “Would you be able to identify the other driver if you saw him again?” I asked both teenagers.

  Lynette shook her head, but Erik’s shrug was more uncertain. “I mean, maybe? I’m better at numbers than I am at faces. But letters are really just numbers if you look at them sideways and…”

  “What he’s trying to say,” Kira intervened, “is that he memorized the license plate and recited it to me the minute I showed up. Our usual contact is out on maternity leave, but I should be able to get a name and address by tomorrow.”

  I hadn’t really understood the partnership between Drake and his apprentice in the past. Drake had called Kira in to join him on Executioner business twice since my memory had stopped fleeing, and both times overhearing her on the phone had left me with doubts about why he’d bothered to include her in the task.

  Kira was just so cheerful and pleasant. And the job of Executioner was just so…not.

  But now she proved herself as efficient with smiles as Drake was with growls. “I’ve also called in some Reed wolves to sniff around the cemetery, although it seems like the trail is pretty cold. Both avenues of investigation will take awhile, so I say we drop the kids with their parents and the rest of you come back to Gate City for the night. My mate and I have enough spare beds for any sort of sleeping arrangement and”—she almost seemed to sparkle with anticipated pleasure—“I’d really like to finish up my date.”

  In response, Drake and I glanced at each other, doing that wordless assessment thing we’d fallen into the habit of in order not to be twisted around Lynette’s little finger. His furrowed brows reminded me that we hadn’t intended our cemetery meetup to turn into an overnight event. After all, our housemate and landlady Rosa expected me and Lynette back in Lexington tonight and Drake had a job—albeit a non-time-sensitive one—that he needed to head south for.

  My quick sideways glance, in contrast, pointed out that Lynette was so shaky we’d be lucky if she made it back through the woods to my car without assistance. Our ward needed a bed now, not after a three-and-a-half-hour journey seated beside a driver who was just learning how to operate a modern motor vehicle. Plus—biting my lip as I considered the young werewolf beside Kira—if Erik was right and someone had purposefully run the kids off the road, I didn’t intend to leave the vicinity until I was certain the culprit wouldn’t come after our ward.

  Especially not with Kami in the mix.

  At that, Drake’s jaw clenched. He didn’t want me and Lynette close to Kami, but he also knew I wasn’t about to drop the issue. With the tiniest sigh, he made the decision that keeping us close was better than leaving us to sleuth without him. Then he boosted me and Lynette out of the grave and politely accepted accommodations for all three of us in the newly built bunkroom on the third floor of the bar Kira’s mate used as pack central.

  The location where I’d appeared six months ago. The spot where I’d first met Drake, a meeting I would give anything to recall.

  Also the spot where my body had, apparently, been buried. So, yeah, I wasn’t 100% thrilled about spending the night above my own grave.

  Still, Lynette’s needs took precedence. And, an hour later after the teenager collapsed onto a bunk and Kira rushed off to rejoin her mate, I was just relieved to know I had a bed of my own waiting in the near future.

  First, though, I took advantage of my momentary solitude to call Rosa and let her know we wouldn’t be home tonight, possibly not even tomorrow. “But if you need me for work…” I ended.

  “You know the niece filling in for me has her sister tag along half the time. Clara will be glad to earn a paycheck.”

  That was good news, especially since it meant I wouldn’t have to browbeat Rosa about overdoing it by returning to the cleaning job she’d been outsourcing ever since Kami gave her a concussion last month. The doctor had been adamant about light duty only until Rosa stopped drowsing off without warning, but the older woman found rest unappealing.

  “I hope you know how much we appreciate everything you’ve done for us,” I started, and Rosa cut me off before I could continue with what she liked to call worthless, sticky sap.

  “I’ll appreciate a report from Lynette that you and that handsome werewolf aren’t acting like oil and water. Where is Drake now? Why aren’t you there?”

  “I’m watching Lynette.” Making sure she fell asleep rather than reliving the car crash over and over.

  “Tell yourself excuses if you want to,” Rosa countered. “But don’t expect me to buy into your lies.”

  She was right. Perhaps that’s why, after ending the call, I followed Drake’s scent trail down through the vast, echoing building that was familiar to me only from stories of our introduction months ago. Back then, my memories fled every morning. So I didn’t recognize the space I stepped into now, streetlights shining through a big front window the only illumination.

  Despite the dimness, Drake was impossible to miss as he sat at the bar, silently contemplating his empty hands. Without overthinking, I sank down beside him and pushed my shoulder up against his shoulder. Because I needed the moral support of contact to consider the elephant in the room—or, rather, the pit I’d risen out of six months before.

  “Just because we’re here,” Drake rasped, reading my thoughts as easily as if I’d voiced them, “doesn’t mean you have to see it.”

  “I want to,” I answered, although want wasn’t the proper word. Need was closer, the yearning similar yet distinctly different from the thrumming tension that drew me toward the man by my side whenever we were in close proximity.

  Like we were now.

  “Okay then.” Drake held out his hand, even though shifter eyes meant navigating this empty bar was as easy as striding down a sidewalk on a sunny afternoon. And I slid my hand into his just like I had up in that cemetery, the skin-on-skin contact tightening my chest.

  I wasn’t the only one affected either. Drake’s voice grew even deeper than usual when he added, “It’s through there.”

  Then cold plucked at my fingers as he released my hand in order to open an interior door with a crescent moon engraved on its surface, leading me into a space that would have been a party room in any other establishment. In the Full Moon Saloon, I gathered, it instead served as a place for werewolves to meet without worrying about prying human eyes if some of them chose to go furry. There were no windows opening up to the outside world so this time I flipped on the lights before closing the door we’d come in through.