Werewolf PI (Paranormal Private Detective) Read online

  “I think you do.”

  I wasn’t about to admit what I’d done. She’d probably want a demonstration of her own, and I wasn’t going to risk it again. Seeing that I wasn’t going to let her in on what had happened, she opened the door and led me into her daughter’s room.

  It had been quite a while since I’d been in a seventeen year old’s bedroom, and this still wasn’t what I’d been expecting. It could have been a generic guest room for all the personality it had, a decorating scheme straight from a magazine with no individual imprint on it at all. There were no posters on the walls, no books on the nightstand, not even a study desk. “Are you sure you’ve got the right room? It’s a big house, I’m sure it’s easy to get confused.”

  She looked around. “It is rather austere, isn’t it?”

  Like a prison cell, I thought. “She must be a minimalist. I can respect that.” I turned to Mrs. Granger and said, “I need a recent photograph of her, remember? Something I can make copies of, if you’ve got it.”

  She nodded, then started to leave the room. When she saw I wasn’t following along behind her, she stopped. “Aren’t you coming?”

  “I thought I’d look around while you were gone.”

  She frowned, so I added, “I won’t take anything without telling you first, okay?”

  “Fine,” she said, though her expression said it was anything but. “I’ll be right back.”

  The second she was gone, I started tossing the room for something, anything that might tell me where the girl had gone. It was a quick but thorough search, and the yield was absolutely zero. I was about to turn back to the hallway when a scrap of paper caught my eye at the edge of the bed. It looked like a vacuum cleaner had nudged it under there instead of picking it up. I straightened the paper out and saw that a telephone number was scrawled on it, hastily scribbled as if it had been written in the dark. It was something, though what I couldn’t say until I dialed it. Most likely it would be a number for take-out Chinese food, but it might be something important, and until I found out, I was going to keep it to myself. I shoved it into my pocket as Mrs. Granger returned. “What was that?” she asked.

  “Used gum. I got tired of it pretty fast. Would you like some?” I don’t know what I would have done if she’d said yes, but I was saved the trouble of lying when she declined the offer.

  “Here’s the picture you asked for,” she said as she handed it to me.

  I studied it and saw a slim teenaged brunette with obvious signs of gleaming metal braces on her teeth. Unfortunately for her, she’d inherited her father’s looks, and not her mother’s. I tapped the picture. “Would you mind telling me what your daughter is like?”

  “Why on earth would that matter?” Mrs. Granger asked.

  “Given the sparseness of her room, I was hoping you could help me get a handle on her personality. I don’t have much of an idea of who she hangs out with, what she does, anything that might tell me where to start looking for her.”

  Stephanie Granger looked around the room a few moments, as if seeing it all for the first time. “I don’t know, at least not anymore. We’ve drifted apart the last few years. I can’t even tell you the last time I was in here. It’s dreadful, isn’t it?”

  I had a hunch her husband wouldn’t be any better. “Does Jennifer have a best friend? Someone she might confide in?”

  “No, there’s no one. She always was one to keep to herself. She’s an odd child, I know that, even though I love with all my heart, I’m not blind to her quirks.”

  This was getting ridiculous. “How about Emmitt? Does he know her very well?”

  “There’s no need to speak with him,” she said. “He never had any contact with Jennifer at all.”

  Except for the photograph and the errant telephone number, the house was one big, dry hole. I wasn’t going to have any luck tracking Jennifer down, but that didn’t leave me stymied. If she was with Harkins, when I found him, she wouldn’t be far away.

  “I’ll take off, then. Can Emmitt give me a ride back to my office?”

  “I’m sorry, but he’s out running another errand for me. You may use the telephone to call a cab, if you’d like.” Obviously, she’d never tried to get a cab to go into Dogtown. It didn’t matter if it was noon or midnight, the chances would both be the same: zero.

  “No thanks. I’ll use my cell phone and call a friend. She can pick me up at the gate, if I can get out.”

  “Buzz me when you get there. I can release it from here. Find her, Mr. Trask.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “I expect to hear from you soon.”

  I shrugged. “That would be nice, but I’m not going to check in unless I’ve got something to tell you. If you hear from her first, let me know.”

  “Of course,” she said, then dismissed me with a wave of her hand.

  As I walked out of the house and toward the gate, I called my friend Belle Gray for a ride. Belle was short for Belladonna. She was a slim woman in her early thirties with one eye that matched her last name, and she had a full mane of jet black hair. We’d known each other for years. There’d never been anything romantic between us, and in my opinion, that made our friendship stronger.

  She answered on the fifth ring. “Hey. I need a ride.”

  “Yeah? I need a thousand bucks myself. I’m not your chauffeur,” she said. “Drive yourself.”

  It was all I could do to keep from feeling all warm and fuzzy from her tone of voice. “I can’t, my car’s at the office and I’m in the city. I can pay for your gas if you can wait until I go to the bank.”

  She laughed. “You’re hopeless, aren’t you? Where exactly in the city are you?”

  I gave her the address, and she whistled into the phone. “What are you doing there, applying to be a pet?”

  “Not funny,” I said, her joke stinging me a little. Belle didn’t understand or accept my line of work, and she especially didn’t get why I ever helped norms. But she supported me anyway, and that was all I could ask of a friendship. “Can you come or not?”

  “Be there in twenty minutes.”

  I thought about using my waiting time productively, like interviewing the neighbors, but there were gates at every driveway, and I finally decided to just sit at the curb until Belle arrived. I pulled out the number on the paper, dialed it, and was surprised to hear the bartender from the Wolfbane answer, identifying the place.

  I hung up on him, wondering what rich little Jennifer Granger was doing with the telephone number to one of the seediest bars in Dogtown on a slip of paper in her room.

  I was still wondering what it meant twenty minutes later when, good to her word, Belle pulled up in a beater that had more Bondo patches than paint, but it ran like a charm.

  “Hop in.”

  I did as she directed, and she took off before I even shut my door. “In a hurry?”

  “I hate being on this side of town after dark.”

  I looked to see if she was kidding, but her bad eye was toward me, and I couldn’t tell. I don’t know why I call it a bad eye. It’s gone, torn out when a set of claws slashed her before we met. She always wore a black silk patch over it, and the scars had faded somewhat, but it was unsettling if you weren’t expecting it. Belle had never told a soul who’d slashed her, and most folks had tired of asking. I figured she realized that if she ever wanted to talk about it, she’d know where I was.

  “Where to?” she asked as we reentered Dogtown. “Are we going to your office first?”

  “No, I’ll pick my car up later.” I needed to find out what Jennifer’s connection to Harkins was, and how the bar fit into it all.

  “Let’s go to the Wolfbane,” I said.

  “It’s about time you bought me a drink,” she said as she turned toward the bar.

  “That would be pleasure. This is business.”

  “What business is that?”

  “I’m looking for Matthew Harkins,” I said.

  Belle jerked the car to a st
op, nearly putting me through the windshield. “Get out.”

  “What? You’re kidding me. Come on, Belle.”

  “Do I look like I’m joking?” She nudged my chest with a knife blade that hadn’t been in her hand a second before. It wouldn’t kill me, but it wouldn’t be a joy to take, either.

  I got out, and she locked the door and rolled down the window part of the way.

  As I leaned forward, she said softly, “If you’re going to kill yourself, I’m not going to help you do it. Do you understand?”

  “I’m on a case. Harkins has abducted a norm girl, and she’s underage. The faster I find them, the better off everybody in Dogtown is going to be. That’s a good enough reason to go looking for him, isn’t it?”

  Before I could answer, she drove off, nearly taking my left arm with her.

  There was just one thing left I could do. I started walking toward the Wolfbane, in search of a rogue werewolf and a young girl in over her head.

  Chapter 2

  “Trask, you’re not welcome here,” the bartender told me as I walked into the Wolfbane. It took a second for my eyes to adjust to the gloom, but I didn’t need my vision to identify the voice.

  “Fox, is that any way to greet an old friend?”

  He was holding a baseball bat, thumping it against his free hand as he spoke. There were other folks in the bar, but I couldn’t take my gaze off Fox just yet. We had a score to settle, and if I didn’t take care of him first, I was going to get a shot, and not the kind I needed.

  “I paid for the damage. I don’t see what the big deal is,” I said as I looked around the place. There were mismatched tables and chairs scattered out on the concrete floors, and the barstools had been old when Fox had installed them. He believed that customers came to the Wolfbane to drink and not to socialize, and with the damage done to the place every week, he was probably smart not to invest too much in his décor.

  “You’re not serious,” Fox said. “How about breaking a customer’s arm? Did you pay for that?”

  “Tommy Grace didn’t want to tell me something I needed to know, so I had to persuade him a little stronger than I usually like. Any problem I have is with him. I thought you and I were good.”

  “Yeah, well you thought wrong.”

  “What’s it going to take to make things right?” I had the last of my cash in my pocket-since I hadn’t taken care of the check yet-and I put the money on the bar between us. “Will that take care of it?”

  He reached for it, and the cash disappeared into his pocket. Fox shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “Good.”

  I hadn’t had time to ask him about Jennifer Granger and Matthew Harkins yet, so I was about to when I noticed Fox’s glance go over my shoulder. Someone was approaching me from behind. I caught sight of the image in the mirror behind the bar, and saw that it was Tommy Grace himself. From the way Fox looked at me, I figured we were good, at least for the moment. I hoped so, anyway, because I was about to turn my back on him.

  I put a hand on Tommy’s chest. “Slow down before somebody gets hurt.”

  “Get your grubby paw off me. If I hadn’t been drunk, you never would have got the drop on me before. Want to try it now, when I’m stone sober and ready for you?”

  “I don’t want to fight you, Tommy. There’s no beef between us. Just leave it alone.”

  Tommy looked around the bar and laughed. “Do you hear that? He’s not a wolf. He’s more like a Chihuahua.” The crowd rustled softly as he turned back to me. “Go home, little doggie. We don’t want you here.”

  There were a few uncomfortable laughs in the bar, but most folks were sitting there quietly, waiting for something else to happen.

  I might have let it slide, but Tommy was making me look bad in front of a lot of people, and I couldn’t afford to let anybody in Dogtown think I was slowing down a step, or I’d be putting down challenges all the time, and I’d quit fighting for the sake of the battle years before.

  I’d controlled my thirst for blood, but apparently Tommy hadn’t.

  “Take it outside,” Fox warned. “I won’t have you fighting in my bar again.”

  If he’d nudged me in the back with that baseball bat, I would have made him eat it, but since he didn’t, I decided to let him live.

  I turned to Tommy. “Do we really have to do this?”

  “I’ve been dreaming about taking you down, Trask. You’re mine.”

  I just shook my head. “Let’s get it over with, then.”

  Tommy followed me toward the door, but before we could even get outside, I could feel him shifting behind me. He really did want me, if he was willing to zone so he could jump me before I had a chance to react.

  Without thought, without preordination, I let the part of me chained in my heart out, and before Tommy’s claws could crush the back of my skull in, I shifted to full phase, something not many brethren of mine could do in ten seconds, let alone the scant second it took me.

  I was still there as my body changed, but I wasn’t in total control, at least not with the tamed part of my mind. It was like watching myself on stage from the wings. I knew what was happening, but I couldn’t stop it at that point if I’d wanted to. I’d let the beast out too quickly to control. We don’t become wolves, and we don’t stay men and women when we shift. Instead, we become something between the two, something strong, and quick, and deadly.

  I knocked his taloned paw away from its arc toward my eyes and drove one clenched paw into his gut, driving him off his feet and back into the bar. If I’d wanted to hurt him badly, I would have left my claws exposed so that the spikes would have been driven straight into his stomach, but I was still hoping I wouldn’t have to teach him that hard a lesson.

  Tommy managed to right himself, drawing on energy reserves he could ill afford to tap. I could see it in his eyes, a spike of real fear, as he stood to face me again.

  Would he act on his trepidation, or would Tommy try to brave his way through and attack again?

  As he leapt for my throat, there wasn’t much doubt I was going to have to hurt him, and seriously, to get him to stop.

  Keeping my paws tightly clenched, I started battering him, shifting punches from his stomach to his head to his barrel chest at will. He managed to stay on his feet through most of the pounding, but he couldn’t ward off my blows. Taking aim, I drove my fist into his gut shooting for a spot three feet behind him, and he finally went down.

  I looked around, still in my fully shift form. We can talk while we’re shifting, something most norms don’t realize, but it’s more guttural than actual enunciation. “Anybody else?” I asked as I glared at everyone standing around us.

  There were no takers, so the fight was over, at least for tonight. Harnessing the beast inside is a lot tougher than letting it go free, and it seemed like every time I had to do it, it got a little harder than the time before. With a long, low breath, I got the beast within me back under control and felt my body shift back to normal.

  Belle was by my side as soon as the transition was complete. “Let’s get you out of here.”

  “I’m not ready to go anywhere yet,” I said. “You left me out in the street, remember?” My hormones were still running high, and I wasn’t in any mood to be pampered.

  “You proved your point,” she said as she gestured at Tommy, who was now getting help from some of his friends. “Unless you want Round Two with reinforcements, we need to take off.”

  I glanced around, but I couldn’t see Harkins, or any of his friends, for that matter. I’d have to talk to Fox later. Belle was right. Evidently Tommy wasn’t finished with me, no matter how bad a beating he’d just taken.

  Belle handed me a bar towel. “Use this.”

  “What for?” I asked as I took it from her. “He never touched me.”

  Belle dipped a hand to my shoulder, then showed it to me. “What’s this, catsup? He clipped you at one point, unless you did that to yourself.”

  Evidently Tommy had manage
d to get one good shot in, and he hadn’t pulled in his claws for the blow. My shoulder hadn’t been hurting until I saw that blood, but as the adrenaline died, there was pain I hadn’t even been aware of. Shifting takes energy, but not as much as healing does. It was going to be hours before I was ready for combat again.

  I was lucky my friend had come along when she had.

  I let Belle lead me out as my shoulder started to throb with pain, and by the time we got to the car, I was feeling disoriented.

  That’s when I knew that it was no ordinary slash. I’d been hit a dozen times from other werewolves in the past, but never with this much throbbing.

  “Something’s wrong,” I said.

  Belle didn’t even look over at me as she drove us away from there. “Do you mean besides you getting blood on my carpet?”

  I shook my head. “Take me to Bailey.”

  Belle’s disgust for my friend was plain to see. “You don’t need him.”

  “Just do it,” I said, and then I passed out.

  I woke up in familiar surroundings, though they weren’t my own. It took me a second to realize that I was in Bailey’s bedroom, a small nook in the corner of his lab. Bailey Hope was one of us, a brother of the Wolf, but he mixed freely with the norms, something few of rest of us could do. Bailey taught at the university-lycanthropy, of course-and in his spare time, he strove to find something to nullify the mutation’s curse we lived under. It made him an outcast in our world as well, but he was my best friend, and I’d fight to the death to protect him.

  The bedroom door opened, and Bailey came in, his hair a mess and his lab coat stained with a dozen different concoctions. Bailey was years older than me, maybe even enough to be my father’s age. His wasn’t the typical build for werewolves, at least not for most of the men I knew, who were big and swarthy. Bailey’s physique was slight, and he barely reached five and a half feet tall. Most folks found it curious we were so close, but he understood me, what drove me, and we found our own common ground. Friendships don’t come in standard sizes, at least not for me.