Her eyes widened. “You got him started on the local fairy tales!”
“His grandmother had told him about a witch who bound a wolf to her. It gave her the ability to shift into animal form so she could defeat her enemies. And the wolf became a man who fought at her side.”
She brought his hand away from her mouth, clasping it between her two. “You think the wolf was a feral and she brought him back.”
“Yes. Maybe.”
Well, that sounded hopeful. “What happened at the end? Did he stay human? Did she?—”
“It’s a fairy tale, Julie. Told from the human perspective.”
Clearly she was meant to understand what that meant. She hadn’t a clue.
“The good guys were the humans. They killed the witch in her wolf form and then burned the man at the stake as a warlock.”
“Oh. That sucks.”
He flashed her a brief smile. “His interest grew over the years, but it wasn’t until this summer that he found more information on that story. Ingredients to a binding spell.” He gestured behind him to the kitchen. “We even tried to re-create it.”
So that’s what that thing in the refrigerator was. She’d found a bottle labeled “Experiment 7” stored behind the beer. It was now on the counter in preparation for the trash. “And? What happened?”
He looked back out the window. From her angle, she could see his head turn slightly as he steadily scanned the environment. “And nothing. I couldn’t tell him what I was looking for. I asked for bonding rituals, love spells and the like. I even paid him for the work and drank the potions.”
“Seriously?” His silence told her that he had indeed slammed back experiments one through six. “What did you find?”
“A killer case of indigestion and really bad BO.” His gaze returned to hers. “And your dad had a heart attack.”
Her eyes widened. “He didn’t drink them, did he?”
“Only me. And we made sure nothing was poisonous.” He gestured to the bottle on the counter. “I’m not supposed to try that one until the next full moon.”
Because that made logical sense—not. Meanwhile he turned to look at her dad’s office. “There were more recipes that we hadn’t tried yet. I’ve already looked on his desktop. There isn’t anything there, so it must have been on his tablet or in his journals.”
The missing tablet and journals. This is why he’d been alarmed by the “wrong” scent in the office. This is why he thought someone had stolen the information. Because it might contain the key to him staying human.
“We need to tear this place apart,” she said. “We’ve got to find?—”
He shook his head. “I already did that while you were away. They’re not here.”
Which led credence to the idea that an evil someone had stolen her father’s research. “That’s why they attacked,” she said softly, the pieces falling into place. Not to mention a killer case of the heebie-jeebies. “I’m the only one who can read his notes.”
“What?”
“Have you seen my dad’s handwriting? It’s appalling, and that’s when he’s not writing in shorthand.”
He touched her arm. “Are you saying that whatever was stolen—can’t be read?”
“Anything on the tablet is probably understandable. Anything in his journals would look like scribbles.” She flashed him a rueful smile. “What did you think I was doing those summers when you excluded me from the fun stuff? I was transcribing my father’s notes into English.”
“For the record, I wasn’t excluding you from fun stuff. I was keeping you away from shifter stuff.”
“What?”
“Look, I remember cutting you out. Parties you got uninvited to. Times things broke up just as you arrived.”
She stiffened her spine, remembering the pain of that. She’d been a teen in a small town where she didn’t go to school. She was a visitor for the summer without even her sister for company because Ellen had wanted science summer school way more than time with their father. That left Julie in Gladwin feeling like she was being snubbed at every turn. She lost track of all the times conversations just stopped when she showed up. And that was nothing compared to the “get together and hang out” times when she wasn’t invited or worse, it somehow got canceled only to happen somewhere else. She’d hated it and she’d hated them for being so snobbish. It never occurred to her that it was because of this…this magic business.
But even so, the memory still stung.
