“He tracked you down once,” I told her. “We shouldn’t risk it.”
“I’m not doing this psychic quest without a fresh change of clothes,” Etta countered. Her nose wrinkled as she sniffed. “Besides, I’m not the only one who could stand a shower right now.”
She wasn’t wrong. I stunk to high heaven. As a coyote, my nose was good, but as a wolf, hers was better. Etta hadn’t complained too much, but she had to be ready to jump out of the truck by now.
“Maybe a shower’s not a bad idea,” I agreed. I hadn’t grabbed any extra clothes before I’d left Peculiar the night before, so that was an issue. “We should stop at the store for a change of clothes, though. What I’m wearing is all I brought with me.”
Etta gave me a curious look. “You really just jumped in your truck last night and went searching for me?”
I popped my neck, then reached back and rubbed the tight muscles. “Uh, yep.” I hadn’t even called my dad to tell him what I was doing. Sunny had told me Etta needed me, and I went running without giving it any real thought. Shit. I glanced at my phone. It was close to eight-thirty, and it wouldn’t be long before he started blowing it up with texts and calls, wondering why I wasn’t at the courthouse for work.
“Where’s your apartment?” I’d call Dad from there if he didn’t call me first.
“I can drive if you’re tired,” she suggested.
My neck and shoulders ached with knotted fatigue. I hadn’t slept since five a.m. the previous morning, and twenty-seven hours awake, give or take a few minutes, was taking its toll. “I’ve still got some energy in the tank.” I nodded ahead. “Just tell me where to go.”
“Are you sure?” Etta asked.
“I am.”
“Take a left at Grover. It’s the next light.”
The light was red, so while we waited for it to change, I asked, “You wanna tell me what happened last night?”
Her shoulders bunched up as she leaned against the door. “I think you know the gist of it. William is a controlling, possessive dick who won’t be happy until he has me locked up tight in a cage of his making. In other words, just another Wednesday for me.” She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Thursday now.”
I pivoted my gaze back to the light. It had gone green, so I eased out and made the left turn. “That’s not what I’m talking about.” I twisted my grip on the steering wheel. “As the saying goes, there’s no such thing as a private conversation in a room full of shifters.”
“Okay?” Her expression was confused. She blinked. “Did someone say something about me?”
I sighed. “My hearing is excellent. Yours is better. So, I’m going to need you to explain why you couldn’t hear the phone call from Sunny until I put it on speaker.”
“I…” She shook her head. “I don’t know why. I just thought she was whispering.”
I watched her gnaw her bottom lip with worry, and it made my coyote sit up and pay attention. No matter how much I told myself we were only friends, my other nature refused to read the memo. Truth be told, my human side wanted her just as much. There was something about Etta that called to my soul. I shook my head. There was no such thing as fated mates. Not with therianthropes and not with lycans, but my father told me a few years back that when love takes hold of your heart, it takes death to shake it.
I’d chased Michele for years, but Etta was proof I hadn’t loved the deer shifter. Once I met the beautiful, vulnerable, pain in the ass next to me, the chase no longer interested me. I wasn’t sure if what I felt was love, but it was definitely something akin to it.
I set my hand down on the seat between us, careful not to touch her. The way she’d pulled away earlier told me she needed space, and no matter how much I wanted to scoop her in my arms, I would give it to her. “What’s going on in that pretty head of yours, Etta?”
She turned her gaze to me. Sunlight filtered through the windshield, making her gray eyes luminescent. “You think my head is pretty, huh?” she asked, dodging the question.
I gave her a slight eye roll. “You know you’re beautiful, but that’s not the point.” Gods! Talk about frustrating. Getting information from her was like trying to slice through a hunk of meat with a dull knife. “Look, I drove all this way to find you. To help you. I don’t know what else you need from me, but I hope you know you can trust me, Etta.” I flipped my hand over as a gesture of openness. “Let me in. Etta, talk to me.”
“Take a right on Zoll, then turn left on Broad Street. My apartment is two blocks down.”
“You know that’s not what I meant,” I told her.
Etta grimaced. “I know.” The side of her thumbnail replaced her lip between her teeth. She looked out the window, refusing to meet my gaze, then said, “There’s something I didn’t tell you about last night. About what happened when Cordell chased me.”
“You said he died. Stabbed in the neck. Is there something else?”
“He shoved me through a window.” Her eyes darted as if fearful her words would conjure something terrible. I waited, impatient for her to spit it out but cognizant that she had been traumatized. Rushing her could undo the trust I was trying to build.
I turned on Zoll before she added, “There was someone else in the shop last night when Cordell bulldozed me through the window,” she finally said. “A witch of some kind. She said she was a soul seer and conjuror, and she did something unfathomable to Cordell. He had been partially shifted to stop himself from bleeding out, and she cast what she called an extraction spell and removed his wolf. Cordell died because she changed him from lycanthrope to human, and as a human, he couldn’t recover from the blood loss.”
My brow furrowed as I processed her tale. Lycan and therianthropes were born, not made. Sometimes, though, two therianthropes could give birth to a non-shifter. It was rare, but it happened. So, maybe it was possible. I couldn’t imagine having my coyote taken from me. “That’s…”
