My gaze snapped to his immediately. “I don’t know what you want me to say. What if I said yes? What would that solve?”
“You’d be telling me the truth!” Harris exclaimed, shaking his head at me. “Come on, Reed. Don’t you ever get tired of hiding who you are? Because it seems like you’re actually a pretty decent guy.”
“That’s the way it’s always been. If we ever let anyone in on our secret…” I shook my head. “We’d be endangering them. We’d be endangering the pack, too. We can only ever really trust ourselves.”
Harris let it go without argument. I could tell he wanted to press the point and had consciously held back. But he was wrong about us. We could never tell anyone who and what we were. Keeping our secret was the right thing to do. No matter how alone it made us feel.
* * *
After we finished eating, I showed Harris the rest of the town. We poked into the bookstore, and I was pleased to find that Harris liked to read. It was something I enjoyed too, though I never seemed to have any time for it. I bought him a book he’d been looking at—a cozy mystery-fantasy mashup—not at all thesort of genre I would’ve guessed, but it fit with everything I knew about him. And, after considering it, I bought a second copy for myself.
Harris gave me a strange look and I said, “What? It looked good. And now you’ll have your very own copy.”
He took in my too-innocent expression. “We can read it together.” Then he paused, cocking his head to the side as his gaze swept my face. “And there’s nothing wrong with being sweet, Reed. It suits you.”
I felt heat creeping into my cheeks, but it was accompanied by a strange rush of warmth at his words.
Then I took him to the building that doubled as the clinic, post office, town hall, and the sheriff’s deputy’s office. The townsfolk sometimes called it “the everything building.”
“No actual sheriff?” Harris asked, his gaze lingering on the door to the deputy’s office.
“There’s a county sheriff, but Crescent Springs isn’t big enough to warrant her office being here. The deputy, Jensen, is a nice enough guy, though.”
“You’d thinkheought to know.”
I shrugged by way of reply.
After that, we ducked into a few of the boutique shops—most of them sold handmade crafts, expensive wines, specialty soaps, and other items aimed mainly at the tourists who came in the winter to enjoy the ski lodge.
Winter was months away, but it would still be here too soon. Then the town would be crawling with people. And if the monster problem persisted…
I tried not to think about it. One crisis at a time.
Last, we stopped in at the Crescent Moon bar. “And you’re already familiar with this place. The pack owns it.”
“I didn’t exactly get a chance to absorb the ambiance,” Harris said, looking around. “Huh. It’s… rustic.”
I followed his gaze, trying to see it the way he did. Wooden floors, wooden tables and chairs, two pool tables on one end, a long wooden bar with liquor bottles behind it. A taxidermy moose head mounted on one wall, facing a deer head mounted on the other. Fishing poles, nets, and tackle mounted on the walls around the bar as well. A glowing neon sign over the door advertised a popular beer brand. Another neon sign over the bar was in the shape of a crescent moon.
The place wasn’t crowded—just Robert on the back porch with his beer as always, Jess and Charles playing pool with Hughie, a middle-aged man who used to work for the forestry service but had retired early. He always tipped well, though he never said where his money came from. And then there was Becca, an older woman with a mane of blue-gray hair, nursing her drink and watching the game of pool unfold.
“Rustic? Is that a bad thing?”
“I’m guessing you didn’t decorate it?”
“Hank, Jeremy’s father, did. He was the one who opened the bar originally.”
“And he was the former…” Harris hesitated, glancing around at the patrons, who were paying us no mind. “Leader. For you guys.”
“Yeah. And Jeremy’s grandpa was the leader before that.”
“You guys just going to stand in the doorway?” Lee asked, coming out of the back room. “Or did you come to tap me out?” Then he paused, giving Harris a once-over, and smirked at me. “Or maybe you’ve got better plans for the evening.”
“Well, now I feel objectified,” Harris said.
Lee snorted by way of reply, then turned his attention to me. “Did you stop in to check on me, or do you want some beer?”
I hesitated, remembering that Harris had only finished half his beer at lunch. “No. I’m showing Harris around town. He’s staying with us for a little while.”
