“Are there fish in there?” Carmen asks, eyeing the water that ripples in front of them. The reflection is nearly blinding, and she has to squint to stop her eyes from burning. “Maybe we can catch a couple for dinner.”
She watches as Lacie scans the river, her face flushed from the heat. A bead of sweat glides down her temple. “I think so,” she says, looking back at Carmen. “But we don’t have rods.”
Carmen smiles. “We have you.”
Lacie’s brow furrows. “Me?”
“You’re sweet enough to catch every damn fish in that water.”
Lacie giggles, and Carmen’s chest swells. “You’re ridiculous,” Lacie says. “We can’t burn a fire anyway—it’s too dry. Come on.” She winds her arm around Carmen’s waist and turns them both toward the blue Impala Lacie begged her dad to buy them when they saw it sitting somewhere in Indiana with aFor Salesign tucked in the rear window. It was only a few hundred dollars, and she and Carmen promised they’d work to repair anything wrong with it before taking it out on the open road. Surprisingly, it only needed a new battery and an alternator. She and Carmen have been in it ever since, taking turns behind the wheel as they follow Warren around when he needs them, or pointing it somewhere new for a while when he doesn’t. “We have to set up camp before the sun sets.”
Carmen lets Lacie lead her to the trunk of the car, and they both work to pull out all their camping supplies: an old orange tent just big enough to fit them both inside, a pair ofworn folding chairs still dusted with flakes of dried mud from their last overnight stay in the mountains, an obscene amount of junk food, and a pile of blankets and pillows to burrow in together later. Carmen works to pitch the tent while Lacie sets out the chairs and snacks, a little distracted by the phone that keeps buzzing in her pocket.
“So,” Carmen says when the tent is up. She reaches into a bag of potato chips and grabs a handful. “What’s the plan?”
Lacie blows out a breath. “My dad found a pack hiding in Jerome yesterday. It’s about an hour and a half drive from here.” She pours a handful of Skittles into her palm, the colorful candies bright against her pale skin. “He wants us to meet him there in the morning. Some of his friends from Nevada are already driving down.”
Carmen looks up, searching for the moon in the still-blue sky. She tries not to feel frustrated, but she and Lacie have been running on fumes since they’d hunted a water wraith in Idaho last week. Theyneeda break. “How’d he find them?”
“He was selling some knives to other hunters who’ve been chasing the pack for weeks. They asked him for help.” She pours the mound of candy into her mouth and chews. “Dad went out with them last night and caught the pack’s scent.”
Carmen knows it’s a strange advantage to have on their side, but Warren is one ofthem: a werewolf. He was Turned from the same dark magic that the rest of them are made after being bit in a dark back alley one night on his way home from a bar.
It’s a truth that both thrills and terrifies her.
It took him over a decade to learn to control the deadly force of power that thrums through his veins, longer still to figure out how to use it for good, to tip the scales of balance. Lacie’s mother left soon after Warren was Turned, and he’d spent a good long while hurling himself against the world, trying likehell to end the nightmare that his life had become. They were dark years, and Lacie wasn’t sure he would survive it. But he’d never given her a reason to be scared of him. Even when he’d try to turn his own violence on himself, unable to contain the brutal rage he now bears—not once had he ever turned any of it against Lacie.
Eventually, he gave in to what he couldn’t change and started hunting down the pack that Turned him. When he finally found them hiding in a ranch house in Tennessee, his raw and untamed power was enough to obliterate all seven wolves. He and Lacie have been on the road since, hunting other packs and anything else that might stalk around at night.
Even after all this time, Carmen knows Lacie isstillcoming to terms with what her father became, though she never lets him see her struggle. He needs her as much as she needs him, and Lacie’s always been careful about what the strain of her emotions might already do to his fractured soul.
“Does he know how many there are?” Carmen asks.
Lacie shakes her head. “At least four. They’re hiding out in an abandoned mine—there’s no telling how deep it goes or how many are actually in there.”
Carmen considers this as a whisper of dread curls in her chest. A mine system doesn’t leave a lot of room for escape routes. They’d have to be careful. “We’d better sharpen our blades, then.”
Lacie wraps her hand around Carmen’s, her skin soft and warmed by the sun, and it soothes over Carmen’s growing anxiety. “It’s not ideal,” she admits. “But as long as they’re in that mine, they’re trapped. We’ll throw enough fire to burn them all to fucking ashes before they can even touch us.”
Carmen sees the violence in Lacie’s eyes, a permanent hunger for revenge shaped by the fierce love she has for herfather. “I love you,” she whispers, lifting Lacie’s hand to her mouth, pressing her lips to sun-kissed skin.
“I love you more, Carmen,” Lacie says back, tugging Carmen toward her until their bodies are flushed, hips to chest. “I love you so much that sometimes I can’t stand it.”
Carmen laughs, reaching a hand under Lacie’s shirt. She kisses her cheek, her jaw. When her mouth reaches her neck, Carmen whispers, “Let’s get out of these fucking clothes.”
CHAPTER 8
Carmen walks into the Renbury library bright and early the next morning, onlypartiallybleary-eyed and with a newfound pep in her step after everything that was said at the bar last night. An abandoned building hidden in a densely wooded area is the perfect place for a pack of wolves to hide out in, and the sounds Frank and Martha are hearing every night only strengthen Carmen’s belief that this is the massive break she needed.
She had to stop herself from hightailing it back into the woods last night after leaving The Rusty Saloon, knowing she’d very likely find exactly what she’s been looking for. She could almost hear Warren’s stern warning telling her to slow down, to take a deep breath and think this through, do this the right way. Warren made sure Lacie and Carmen both learned the key to winning these battles against supernatural monsters is preparedness and rigorous planning. Running straight into a wolves’ den in the middle of the night, half-drunk on whiskey with a fire burning in her heart, would have been a fool’s mistake and likely would have gotten her killed before she had the chance to inflict any damage of her own.
Her chest tightens as she thinks of Warren, almost desperate to hear his voice after so long, to ask him for advice. She wonders if he would come and help her. But Carmen doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to forgive him for what happened to Lacie, even if deep down she knows it wasn’t his fault. If he’d had any inkling as to who’d been hunting his daughter that night, he would have used all that strength and power to get to that lake as fast as he could, to protect his baby girl from the exact type of monster he’d been trying to save the world from, the same one he bore inside himself.
Carmen shakes the thought, clenching her fist at her sides as her throat constricts with emotion. She looks around the library, eyeing the explosion of Halloween decor with a frown. Orange and black tablecloths cover long tables that sit between rows of books, a life-sized witch with green skin and an impossibly large nose glares at the section of old westerns, and a little black kitten—very much real and alive—stalks after a beetle scurrying across the floor.
“Oh, don’t mind Jinx,” an older woman croons from behind a large mahogany desk. ACustomer Servicesign hangs from the ceiling above her, a cauldron full of what must be dry ice sending out tendrils of smoke beside her. “He’s just helping with a little pest control.”
Carmen gives the woman a small smile and then looks down at her digital wristwatch, the date on the display reminding her that it’s the twenty-ninth. Halloween—andthe blood moon—are coming up quick, and she only has a couple more days to get this plan in motion.
