Ruger laughs and I savor the sound of his amusement like I savor his food. My answering smile is undeniable, and I decide to get comfortable, stretching out my legs and mirroring his position. This is surprisingly nice. Intense, but in a good—if slightly intimidating—way.
I take a second and ponder my real answer to his question. “Honestly, there’s not much to tell. My mom died when I was eleven. She didn’t have any family, so I became a ward of the state.”
“What about your dad?”
I shrug. “My mom would never talk about him, no matter how much I pushed. I—unfortunately—don’t remember anything about the guy. I saw in a movie once the leading lady had this box she kept of love letters and pictures. I searched every nook and cranny in our house for a month and never found the box of answers I was convinced existed. Turns out, real life isn’t a romance movie, go figure.”
Ruger huffs out a chuckle. “Paranormal romance maybe.”
“True. Guess I should have watched more Supernatural,” I admit, cracking up.
“Any sign your mom was a shifter?” he asks.
I sigh and pull at a string that’s sticking out from the hem of my shirt. “I’ve tried to think, to see if there was something I missed because I didn’t know what I was looking at back then, but it was so long ago,” I admit, and Ruger nods. “How does it work? Were both my parents…”
“At least one had to be, that’s for sure. You’re strong though, very strong, which makes this situation all the more curious.”
“How so?”
“Well, it might mean that both your parents were shifters. Strong magic from both sides could explain your ridiculously quick transition. It normally takes two weeks. Or…” Ruger hesitates for a moment, his eyes contemplative. “Or your super speed might have nothing to do with bloodlines and everything to do with the block instead. Maybe you didn’t need a propellant bite to wake up your wolf. Maybe you needed a bite to break the block and free it.”
“Isn’t that practically the same thing?” I question. “Whether it’s a bite to activate dormant shifter genes or to break a spell, wolfing out is still the result.”
“True, but the magic would be different. So would your reaction,” he counters. “Ellery said you grew up in Michigan?” Ruger asks, and I nod. “How far back do you remember?”
My brow furrows as I consider his question. I had just grabbed the fish and chips container, but I put it down and tilt my head, trying to recall. I tilt the other direction when I can’t think of anything past the year before my mom died.
“Huh,” I grunt, slightly puzzled. “That’s weird, I can’t really pull up any memories before we moved into our house on Kingston Street. I would have been ten.” I dig harder for anything before that. I see a few flashes of something, but they’re mangled, unidentifiable. “That’s so strange.”
“We wondered if that might be the case,” Ruger mutters, and my eyes snap to his.
“What do you mean?”
“We talked to Imogen about your block, to see if she could tell us anything else about it. Where it might have come from, what it was designed to do… She said that it had strong foundational magic, but it wasn’t put on correctly. She suspected that the witch who did it was either in a hurry or inexperienced. And that the bad application could have caused memory loss.”
“Hold on,” I interrupt, reeling and lifting my hands in the universal sign of wait-one-damn-minute.
I struggle to follow the maze of what he just said. I don’t know which part is more startling. Them talking about me is understandable. And clearly, witch doctors don’t have the same HIPAA laws as humans. They just go around blabbing your business to anyone who asks. It’s bad enough to find out you have some weird magical block on you. But mine’s botched.
What the fuck?
“Did she know what it was for?” I ask, homing in on the most crucial detail of that cluster fuck of a statement.
“Imogen wasn’t sure if it affected your shift, but she was certain that it blocked mind links and kept you from being tracked.”
“Tracked by who?” I demand, completely baffled.
His eyes trace over my face as he pulls in and releases a deep breath. “That’s what we want to know too.”
“Holy shit, what happened to you?” I ask, covering my mouth with my hand to try and trap the laugh I feel bubbling up.
The sheriff drops his fist. My rush to fling the door open when I first saw him through the peephole prevented him from knocking.
I wasn’t waiting for him. Nope. I just know he stops by around the same time every night and updates me on what’s going on, and I just happened to be here hanging out by the door. Which is how I caught the hot mess posing as Ellery when he ambled up the hall and spent a second trying to tame his flyaway hair to no avail.
He stands there looking completely shellshocked and tired. His normally perfectly coiffed hair is sticking out in all directions. His uniform is untucked and ripped in a few places, and he has a streak of green goo on his collar and…his earlobe.
Yikes.
He leans against the doorframe, a tight smile stretching across his face before he releases an exhausted sigh. I’m almost tempted to invite him in, but the goo stops me. I really don’t want that anywhere in my space.
“I brought a wraith whisperer in to examine the spot where you were attacked,” he tells me, and immediately the lightness I felt at his appearance disappears. “Wraiths are spirits that are attracted to pain and violence, among other things,” he explains, knowing I need the Wikipedia summary of just about everything in this town. “I was hoping there might be a few remnants hanging around that a whisperer could commune with and it might give us a lead.”
I run my gaze over him. “I take it things didn’t go well?”
He huffs out a laugh and shakes his head, bringing up a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose.
“There was an incident on the street last night between a coven of witches and a clan of vampires. I had hoped it was far enough away that the whisperer could still get a reading, but the fight between the coven and the clan seems to have overpowered everything else with its echo.”
Disappointment trickles through me, but it’s not nearly as potent as it was a few days ago when he arrived with bad news. I feel a tinge of sympathy for the sheriff. He’s obviously working hard to figure out what the fuck happened, and I hate that we don’t know more—for his sake and mine.
“So did you go for a brisk walk through a swamp to let off steam?” I ask, trying to steer the conversation back to a lighter place, a place that doesn’t have me feeling defeated, or imagining things that might cheer me up, things involving naked Ellery and a good long scrub in the shower.
Shit. Rein it in, thoughts. He might be able to hear you.
He laughs and the sound is less hollow, much closer to that Code Orange laugh that I like more than I should. His chuckle sends warmth rippling through me and goose bumps crawling up my arms and legs.
“No, unfortunately a boggan showed up. It’s an underworld creature that likes a good wraith buffet, and last night’s fight pulled in a smorgasbord of wraiths. I spent the last hour exterminating that boggan and helping the whisperer cleanse Main Street.”