“What? Do you smell him?” Robyn took an exaggerated whiff of the air, but I could tell from her frown that she smelled only the same woodland inhabitants I had: skunks, beavers, raccoons, and somewhere nearby, a very nervous deer.
I shook my head and stared straight ahead, trying to direct her gaze in the right direction, absent the ability to speak. When she only squinted into the woods, I realize we weren’t close enough yet for her human eyes to register the light. So I kept walking, and she followed as quietly as she could.
Twenty yards later, she gasped softly. “A light. Is it the cabin?” The light had a yellowish hue, but lacked the jumpiness or warm look of a flame. “It’s dim, at least to my human eyes, but according to the GPS—” She held the screen out for me to see. “—it’s coming from the direction of the cabin.”
So we pressed on. “Still no scent of him?” she whispered as we continued.
I shook my head.
The closer we got to the cabin, the more detail I could see. It was old and small—probably only one room—with a rusted metal roof. The windows were grimy, but both of those facing us were lit by what appeared to be a single dim bulb.
At the top of a set of warped wooden steps, the front door stood ajar.
“Shit,” Robyn whispered. “No one over the age of eight leaves the front door open.”
She obviously hadn’t spent much time with Brandt. But her point was valid.
My muzzle bobbed as I scented the air in several short sniffs.
Death. Decay. Rot. Feces.
My pulse exploded into a frantic rhythm, and I took off for the cabin as fast as I could.
“Wait!” Robyn called as she raced after me, all caution abandoned. She obviously couldn’t yet smell what I’d scented, but she could tell something was wrong.
She burst into the cabin a moment after I did, then pulled up short, one hand covering her nose when the smell hit her. Then she gagged and staggered onto the porch.
Unpleasant scents are weaker in human form, but much more difficult to tolerate. Especially if you’re unaccustomed to them.
While Robyn gulped breath after fresh breath through her mouth, I stared up through the wooden railing at the second-floor loft directly over the cabin’s small kitchen, breathing deeply to analyze the details of the tragedy I smelled upstairs.
“Sorry,” Robyn murmured as she stepped into the cabin, clutching the straps of my backpack, her teeth clenched against an obvious gag reflex. She sucked in another long, slow breath and I could see her fighting to control the impulse to flee the stench. “There’s a corpse?” she asked, and I nodded, still staring at the loft.
She glanced over the worn living room furniture, the small, grimy kitchenette, and a fireplace full of ash, but found no obvious source for the stench of death. And finally, her gaze traveled up toward the loft, where my feline nose had already pinpointed the source. “It’s up there?”
I padded toward the threadbare couch, where a woman’s purse sat on the edge of the left-hand cushion. Reaching up, I nudged the bag with one paw, and it fell, spilling makeup, tissues, and assorted other belongings across a wood plank floor worn smooth by years of traffic. I sniffed the contents, familiarizing myself with the trace scents of the owner.
“Is it Justus?” Robyn whispered, dragging her gaze away from the loft.
I shook my head. Then I lay down on the floor and began to shift, because there wasn’t much more I could tell her—or that I could do—in cat form.
While my body tore itself apart and slowly, painfully reassembled itself in a human configuration of muscle and bone, Robyn set my backpack on the floor next to me, then crossed the small room toward the narrow staircase.
I wanted her to wait for me—she shouldn’t have to find a decaying corpse by herself—but until my shift was complete, I could only listen to the wood creak as she climbed the stairs.
As my shift wound down with a few soft, gristly pops and deep bone creaks, Robyn gasped. I sat up to find her standing hunched over in the loft, because of the valued ceiling, which only reached its eight foot height directly above a full-sized bed, the end of which I could see through the railing.
I dumped my backpack on the floor and scrambled to pull on my pants, then raced up the steps two at a time. The smell of decay was distinctly weaker in human form, but immeasurably worse, because my human brain processed not just the facts—rot equals death—but the more complex and devastating emotional reality.
Someone has died.
Someone female, whose purse still sat abandoned on the floor of the cabin.
The dead girl lay on the bed—the only piece of furniture in the cabin loft—atop the rumpled, old-fashioned bedspread. She was fully dressed, her sightless eyes staring up at the ceiling. Though the stench was terrible, there was no visible sign of decay. Her identity was clear. We’d found Ivy Lowe.
But someone else had found her first.
Chunks of flesh were missing from Ivy’s left calf. Something had beeneatingher. There was relatively little blood on the blanket beneath her, which meant her heart had stopped beating before the meal began.
