Several apologies poured out of Tasia as she followed him around the miniature glade while he collected thin sticks. He assured her that he wasn’t upset, and she finally chose to believe him when he pointed out that she had learned her lesson about swinging frying pans and was not likely to do so again.
The pan took some time to heat, but it worked wonderfully for drying out the filemu. The towel had removed a good portion of the moisture, so the actual cooking wasn’t too long. To be safe, both of them stayed upwind. When the full batch was dried, Mitch turned into a wolf to give it a sniff test. He switched back and reported that it smelled more like nothing than it had when they drenched it the week before.
“The full moon is coming up soon, isn’t it?” Tasia asked as she repacked the leaves carefully into her basket.
Touched that she had remembered, Mitch rubbed his hand over his mouth to hide his smile. He had nearly accepted that his heart belonged to her now, but she didn’t need that complication in her life. After the army cleaned up this mess, Frank’s money was going to set her up with a new life somewhere else. Without him.
Tasia looked up from her basket with a question in her eyes, and he realized that he hadn’t answered.
“This week,” he hurried to say. “Three days of being stuck as a wolf whenever the moon is in the sky. Pah.”
She made a face of commiseration.
“I’m going to have to fake a stomach bug or something so Barone doesn’t come looking for me. Know of any highly contagious but not life-threatening diseases?” he asked, not quite facetiously.
“Not sure I can help you there,” she said with a laugh. A sound that was fast becoming one of his favorite things to hear.
It took a little time to put out the fire and scatter the remains. The mud helped bury any leftover coals, and Mitch was positive that no unintentional fires would start when they left.
When the pair reached Granny’s cottage, he shifted and slunk around to the back.
Before walking up the path, Tasia took care to tuck the basket under her cloak. Then she knocked.
Grandmother took her own sweet time opening the door. When she did, Tasia revealed the basket with a flourish. “No rain on your medicine today!”
Granny blinked at her, then raised her eyes to the sky, which was substantially clearer than before. She took the basket without speaking and shuffled inside. Tasia might not be as smart as Mitch wanted to believe she was, but she was happy to foster the sinister old woman’s misapprehension about her lack of wit.
With her money at hand and the door of the cottage safely closed behind her, Tasia headed back into the woods. Far sooner than she expected, Mitch joined her, causing a happy zing to zip through her body.
“Still worried I’ll get lost this close to Granny’s?” she teased.
“Nah.” Mitch scratched at his chin. “Just figured there was no point trying to hear anything more.”
As far as excuses went, that one was pretty weak; and yet, Tasia couldn’t bring herself to mind. She preferred walking alongside her wolf-man over trying to navigate the woods on her own.
“It’s too bad you can’t station yourself at the dance hall door in your wolf form,” she mused. “Then you could sniff everyone and we would find the traitor right away.”
Mitch snorted. Then he tilted his head. “I haven’t sniffed around the hall yet. I will try to do that this week.”
“Be careful,” Tasia couldn’t help saying. “The closer we get to the dance, the more chances of running into Granny’s thugs.”
The rest of the return journey was as pleasant as it could be while slipping and sliding through the muck, and a good deal more pleasant than it maybe should have been with the threat of enslavement looming over their heads. Despite the cold and her valid concerns about what Grandmother was doing, Tasia had a lovely time walking home with Mitch. No longer the taciturn grunter that she had met months ago, he willingly talked about anything and everything Tasia could think of. She was sorry tosee him go when their paths diverged. And happy to remember that she would see—and possibly speak to—him every day.
The snows began in earnest that week. Mitch was able to do some investigating as a wolf, but with the snow sticking around, he had to be careful about paw prints. Now that he knew what to look for, he forwent his wolf form so folks wouldn’t have any reason to get up in arms about a wild animal stalking them. A few more barrels were found and emptied.
He checked in with Tasia daily until the full moon confined him to his room. Remembering to set the ground work, he’d ensured that the whole inn—and Barone—were under the impression that he was explosively allergic to a new ingredient in the stew, and they’d left him alone for all three days. To maintain that impression, Mitch had not left the room after the moon set, except to “empty” his chamber pot.
The innkeeper’s wife left bread and broth outside his door once a day. He doubted it came from a place of kindness. More likely, she didn’t want to deal with a dead outsider. The severely restricted diet made him look rough when he finally emerged from his room on the fourth day. His haggard appearance and ravenous appetite lent credence to his supposed indisposition, though. If it had been any warmer, Mitch would have found a cave or some other shelter so he could eat whenever he wanted and not worry about revealing his furry little secret.
The last rest day before the winter dance was warmer than it had been for a while. Light clouds obscured the sky. The low spots and frequently used paths quickly became rivers of slush and mud.
Tasia and Mitch were able to repeat their filemu experiment and arrived at Granny’s home without mishap. Patches of mudgrew wherever the snow was thinnest as the day continued to warm up. They still had one more week of autumn, and it seemed the weather was determined to embrace the last bit of heat. No one could truly say that it was warm, but Tasia started unbundling some of her layers, as the exercise made the extra less necessary.
Mitch had taken on his wolf form some distance away from the cottage in order to sniff out anything—or, more importantly, anyone—who could hurt Tasia. As she went to the front, he crept to the back, fully intending to rejoin her as soon as this last drop was made, certain that nothing of interest would happen. Instead, he heard something on the far side of the cottage.
Crawling on his belly, he inched forward until he could poke his snout around the corner. His nose identified the source of the sound first. Then his eyes spied a couple of men lurking in the trees. The men seemed to be waiting for something. Tasia’s cheerful goodbye must have been the cue, because they slowly moved out of the woods and approached Granny’s front door once she left.
The old woman scolded them for their lack of caution as she ordered them into the house. The door shut with a firm click, and Mitch raced back to the other side of the house when he realized that anyone approaching from town could see him. Huddling under a window, he strained his ears to make out the conversation over the sound of his racing heart.
