Nothing can ruin your mood like a reminder that you're never your own person. You're someone else's to do with as they pleased. As she pleased. My wolf had retreated for now, but I was no fool. I was going to have to sleep with one eye open tonight, or she'd just take me over when I was out. She disliked these fights we had over my body as much as I did.
Just when I thought I was done with the night, I stood up and tried to look everywhere but at the mess I'd made on the ground.
"What the hell are you?"
The voice that came from behind me brought ice-cold chills down my back and made my stomach turn. If there had been anything left in there, I'd have been on my knees again.
That damn werewolf.
"You know very well what I am," I said to Finn without bothering to even meet his eyes. I'd thought he was gone by now, but I was wrong. He'd followed me out in the alley instead.
"Oh, you're not a werewolf," the man said, a hint of a smile in his voice. "No werewolf can pick up scent like you."
"Well, then I'm afraid that fairy took more than just your leg," I spit and headed for the street. The sooner he was out of my hair, the better I'd feel.
"Victoria, stop," Finn said, and I have no idea why I did as he said.
"This is serious. People are dying. Animals are being tortured and used as puppets. You can't turn your back on this."
It was almost like he didn't know me.
Well, he didn't, not really, but still.
"Watch me, old man," I said and continued to walk, this time not intending to stop if he asked me.
"I'll be waiting for your call!" Finn shouted. I pretended not to hear him. "And I'll figure you out, Victoria. You just wait."
Imaginary spiders crawled all over my skin. I held my breath until I was out of the alleyway. To somebody who didn't know Finn, the one-legged werewolf, that wouldn't have sounded like a real threat.
But I knew Finn. He dealt in information. It was the basis of the agency he operated. Unusual Orders. His agency was the best in the country for a reason. If you wanted something found and you had the money to hire the best, he was the answer. The same applied if you wanted something lost, too. Or someone. Then, there was an entire division that dealt with stealing, kidnapping, torturing—and killing people for money. Yes, Finn might have looked like an ordinary werewolf without a leg who'd picked the worst name in the history for his agency, but he was no joke. If he said he was going to figure me out, chances were he was going to do it.
And I couldn't allow that to happen.
My first thought was to pack my bags and leave the city. Extreme, I know, but my wolf had to remain a secret. If people found out, I was going to be hunted down and killed, if not worse. I hadn't been this much of a chicken just five months ago, when the world as we knew it changed completely, and this time, it wasn't because of a fairy. It was because of a new kind of witches who'd just seemed to pop out of nowhere. It's amazing how Mother Nature operates, when you think of it.
In the paranormal world, there are four kinds of witches. Blood, Bone, Green and Hedge, though it's believed that Hedge witches have gone extinct a couple decades ago. They were night witches, stronger than all at nightfall, but with a few screws loose in their heads, all of them. They picked fights they couldn't handle in daylight, and they killed each other like it was their favorite pastime. But the rest remained. Just like the wolf packs, witches operated in covens. It was the way it had always been—until the Storms came along.
A new kind of witches, they drew power from the weather. At first, nobody had any idea why they just appeared out of thin air. They were powerful, and they didn't need to turn eighteen to be able to use the full extent of their magic, like all other witches. They could pretty much use their raw magic since birth. I'd seen it with my own eyes. My sister was a Storm witch.
Then, the demons came. They looked like the usual guy, if you missed that they were all males and their pupils were slit vertically, like a cat's.
Pretty powerful creatures who we soon found out could be killed only by Storm magic.
But until then, what did our government do in the face of a new kind of witch with unheard of powers and unknown potential?
They kidnapped and imprisoned them, and they ran tests on them. And those they couldn't catch, they just killed instead. It was sick just to think about it.
And this was exactly why I couldn't allow the ECU to find out about me. I didn't mind ending up dead as much as imprisoned and tested on against my will. My wolf was strong, but even she couldn't do anything against the ECU. The Executive Control Unit held all the reins. They had an army, mostly made of werewolves because werewolves were the best at following orders, not to mention very powerful. Wolf packs and witch covens reported to the ECU, and they kept the law and order in the United States. They also killed when it suited them or just hired Finn to do it for them. No, I had no plan to ever trust the ECU, especially after one of theirs went rogue five months ago, and he'd almost wiped out the entire city of Manhattan with an army of his own—an army of demons.
I think everybody would agree that I'm better off keeping my wolf a secret, and that was exactly what I intended to do. Even if it took leaving the city—or country—to get Finn off my back, in the end, I'd do it.
My apartment building was in Midtown, and I was right over a very noisy fast food joint. It didn't help that my apartment always smelled like hamburgers, and not very good ones at that. The joint was open around the clock, and sometimes, it was really hard to fall asleep. I dreamed of the day I'd be able to afford a better place, but for now, this was going to have to do. It was far enough away from Geraldine Street, at least. That neighborhood had enough paranormal residents and businesses to make me never want to breathe through my nose again. Sure, humans smelled, too, but nothing as intense as paranormals.
Luckily, my stomach had calmed down by the time I made it inside and locked the door behind me. My apartment wasn't much, but it felt like home. I'd been renting it for three years and was only late with the payments a few times. My job wasn't exactly a get-rich-quick kind of job.
The kitchen was to my right with light wooden cabinets and a chrome refrigerator I had yet to fill completely. It was huge. My landlord must have spent a fortune on it, only for it to fall in my hands. I'd have loved to find some juice in there, but all I found were two beer cans and some milk.
Beer it is.
Since I'd seen how busy the fast food joint below me was, I played it safe and breathed through my mouth only when I sat on my dark green couch and fired up my laptop. I turned the TV on, too, just to make some background noise. The apartment always felt fuller with the TV on.
Yes, I might be having more of an issue with loneliness than I liked to admit.
I was checking my email for a new job request because, like it or not, tomorrow I was going to have to send my car for a checkup. The people who hired me didn't always live in Manhattan. They came from all over New York, and without going to the person's home to smell the scent of a pet, I couldn't hope to find any of them, ever.
Ms. Polimore had left a glowing five-star review on my web page!
Would you look at that?! "Fast, very polite, and incredible at her job."
"Aww, Ms. Polimore," I said to the screen, blushing slightly. Reviews always got to me. This one even made up for the fact that I had no new request in my inbox. No need to panic yet. The rent was paid for this month, and I could fix the car with this paycheck. The penthouse and my Bugatti could wait for another few decades.
When someone knocked on my door, it made me jump, and I almost spilled my beer all over my keyboard. If my laptop was broken, too, it would totally be time to panic. But it was safe for now, so I put the beer on the coffee table and the laptop far away from it, and stood to go answer. It was probably my neighbor Sarah. We weren't exactly friends, but she came over to watch movies with me sometimes because she hated her roommate and couldn't stand the sight of her. I never asked why, but it felt like the two of them had a lot of history before falling out.
And that's why I didn't sniff the air, which would have told me exactly who it was on the other side of the door. While I was better off without that nasty smell of burgers messing with my poor stomach, when I opened the door, I regretted ever having breathed through my mouth.
It wasn't Sarah.
It was a man I hadn't seen in five long years.
"Victoria," my father said, as if he was surprised to see me, when he was the one knocking on my door.
But my body refused to move a single muscle. We were both frozen in place, just staring at each other. He looked almost the same as he had five years ago. Werewolves aged much slower than humans. His dark hair was cut close to his head like always, his dark eyes wide. He smiled, but it felt forced. I couldn't breathe for the longest second.
"You look good," he said, clearing his throat. "It's-it's good to see you, Victoria."
"What are you doing here, Dad?"
Dad. I called him Dad without right. He wasn't my father. But what else was I going to call him? Oscar?
"Aren't you going to invite me in?" he said, again faking a smile.
Like a robot, I moved to the side. "Of course." My voice sounded strange, too, and my throat hurt. Maybe I was coming down with the flu.
My father walked in and showed himself to the kitchen first, and then to the living room. I watched him, still standing by the door, until I convinced myself that it was just him. I breathed through my nose now, ignoring the smell from the fast food completely. And my nose said that nobody else was out there with him, except the humans who lived in the apartment building around me. My mother hadn't joined him, and for that, at least, I was thankful. I couldn't have controlled myself in front of her. The sight of her alone would break me. So I shut the door and went to the living room.
He took off his jacket and dropped it on the couch while he looked around the small room. With my head down, I went to the couch and removed my laptop, folding the blanket I always left there before waving for him to sit down. I thought he was going to start reproaching me for living here—he used to reproach me about the stupidest things—but he didn't. I waited, but he never said a word, so I had to be the one to break the awkward silence.
"Do you want something to drink? I have beer. Or milk," I mumbled, unsure what to do with my hands. My heartbeat was killing me. It was all in my ears.
"Sit down," Father said, patting the couch next to him. Without a word, I went and sat down. It was an old habit. I'd never been compelled to follow his orders like a normal werewolf, but I'd made it a mission to make him think I was. It seems that had still stayed with me. "I've missed you, Victoria. Very much." His voice shook. He sounded like he meant it. Did it make me a really bad person that I didn't believe him?
I didn't want to look into his eyes, but I couldn't help myself. My father had always been an excellent father—to my sister. But between us, there had always been a barrier. Just an invisible wall that never quite let us connect. As a kid, after my wolf came out the first time, I thought it was because he knew what I was, and of course, he wouldn't want me near him.
But as the years passed, I realized, the feeling was mutual. It wasn't just him. I'd never even tried to connect with him, either. And I'd accepted it. It was better that way. I almost never agreed with the man, anyway.
"I've missed you, too," I said. It was the truth. I might not have been on the best terms with my father, but we never argued. We never fought. We just lived around each other, and believe it or not, living life in solitude got incredibly lonely. I missed him and my mother and my sister. I even missed the guys from the neighborhood who never stopped messing with me as a kid. I just missed having someone around all the time.
"Why did you leave, Victoria? Why did you run away from home?"
Right to the heart. I stared at him like he was a stranger. He felt like it— and didn't. I couldn't figure it out yet. I couldn't say a word, either. I'd left my mother a letter when I left. I told her I knew where I came from, and I thought we were both going to be better off apart. My whole life I'd felt like I didn't belong in the pack or with its people. I couldn't stay in a place where I was forced to fake who I was every second of every day—even from my own family.
I thought she would show the letter to my father—and all the others without a return address I sent her every few months just to let her know that I was okay—but maybe she hadn't? I couldn't be sure.
"Doesn't matter," my father said, smiling when he saw that I wasn't able to answer. "You're okay. You're fine, aren't you? How are you doing?"
"I, uh…I'm fine." I was as well as I could be, except for that sudden guilt squeezing the air out my lungs. "How are you? How is…how is…" I couldn't say it. I couldn't even say Mom out loud anymore. It hurt too much.
"She's fine, I promise," he said with a nod. "I'm okay, too."
I swallowed hard. "Why are you here, Dad? How did you find me?" I'd gone five years without hearing a single word, and now he was sitting with me in my apartment His smile faltered. I wished I hadn't had to ask him, but it was strange enough that he'd come to my door after so long. I needed to know how he found out where I lived because even if my mother showed him the letters I sent, I never left any clue of where I was staying.
"I'm here to talk to you, Victoria. Something bad has happened," he said. The authority that normally accompanied his every word suddenly faded.
"What?" I asked, my mouth already dry.
"It's…it's Izzy."
A silent shock went through me. "What about Izzy?"
When my father looked up at me again, I saw his fear as clearly as I saw my reflection in his eyes. He was terrified—and it made me feel the same, too. My father was not a man easily scared. On the contrary. He was fierce, manipulative, very confident in his abilities to "master every situation," as he used to say.
"She left home about four months ago, and we haven't spoken to her since," he said.
"What happened?"
My sister was very close to my parents. She wouldn't have left home just for the heck of it. As opposed to me, she and my dad had a very good relationship. In fact, she was closer to him than she was to Mom.
"I-I-I did something," he whispered, and a visible shiver shook his shoulders. I'd never heard my father stutter like this before. "She got very mad. At first, we thought she just wanted some time away to clear her head, but then…" His voice trailed off, and he shook his head.
"But then, what?" Panic raised all the alarms in my head. This wasn't good. All my instincts were screaming. I wanted to grab my father by the shoulders and shake him until he told me everything, but I held my breath and waited instead.
"Then, she didn't come back and we heard rumors," he whispered, as if he was afraid somebody would hear us. "We heard rumors that she's involved with some very bad people, Victoria."
That sounded like nonsense. "That can't be right. Izzy knows better."
My sister's sense of right and wrong was impeccable. Stay away from bad people, Vicky. Ignore the bullies. All they want is your attention. If someone shows you they're bad, don't wait for them to show you a second time. She'd lecture me about this every day. She was very persistent, too.
She was the first to walk away from a situation if it gave her a bad vibe— even as a kid.
"God, I hope so, too," my father said with a sigh. "But we don't know for sure, do we?"
"They're just rumors. Izzy is fine. She knows how to take care of herself," I told him, but I'm not sure if I was trying to reassure him or myself.
My father stopped breathing for a second and met my eyes. He looked like a little boy in those seconds. Like a terrified little boy, and the sight of him shocked me all over again.
"She doesn't. She's not like you, Victoria. She's very sensitive," he whispered. "And what if the rumors are true?"
"They're not." They couldn't be.
"But what if they are?" he said, raising his voice. He rubbed his face for a second and took in a deep breath. "I hired a private investigator to find her. The best in the country. He told me he couldn't, but that he knew someone who could find anything at all." Goddamn it. I should have known. "When he told me your name, I thought he was kidding me."
"Was it Finn from the Agency?" Everybody knew Finn and his Agency.
My father nodded. "Yes, it was."
The fucking asshole. I'd told him my real name in confidence. If I'd known he'd tell my own father about me—and I'm a hundred percent sure he already knew who Oscar was because Finn's job was to know things—I would have never told him.
But that's a lie.
The sight of my father, so broken, so scared…I never thought I'd say this, but I was glad he'd found me, no matter that that feeling flushed all those five years down the fucking drain.
Then came the words I dreaded the most.
"You need to find her, Victoria. You need to find your sister before it's too late. Your mother and I are losing our minds. We don't know what to do, how else to look for her."
I stood up and went to the window, as if that was going to make me escape the situation somehow. Even though my back was turned to him, in my mind's eye I still saw my father's wide eyes and the desperation in them. It was like meeting him for the first time, or at least a part of him I'd never known before. Even my wolf was now curious. She didn't give a rat's ass about people, but this sure seemed to interest her.
"I work with animals," I whispered, my breath fogging the glass. It's when I realized that I was burning up, and it wasn't even warm in the apartment. "I wouldn't know how to…" My voice trailed off.
It was the truth. I wasn't a private investigator. I found animals because it was easy. I'd get a request for a job, go to the address and smell the missing pet's scent. Animals had a much heavier smell than people, and my wolf was always a hundred percent into it, so it was easy for me to track. I always found the animals—whether alive or dead.
But people were a different story.
"I brought you something," my father said and stood up to come to me.
He handed me a shirt. "It's Izzy's. She had this on the entire day before she disappeared. You can still smell her."
Pursing my lips, I took the shirt. I couldn't allow myself to breathe through my nose just yet. Too much had happened already.
"She was last seen in a tavern in Jersey City, the same night she disappeared. Here's the address," he said and put a folded piece of paper in my hand. "Do you think you can pick up her scent with this shirt?"
A lump formed in my throat. "Yes," I breathed.
He wrapped one arm around me and rested his head on my shoulder for just a split second. I couldn't remember the last time we'd hugged. When he let go of me, I felt a thousand pounds lighter.
"So Finn was right," he said then. "He said you had the best nose in the country."
"He's exaggerating it," I whispered.
"Why didn't you tell me?" my father asked. He didn't accuse or judge me. He just…asked. And it made it all worse.
"I didn't know how." I'd never told anyone because by the time I'd found out that I smelled things differently from other werewolves, I'd already committed my first murder. I was afraid that if my parents found out, they could link that man's death to me. That they'd tell the others that it wasn't a bear who'd killed him. It was me. My wolf. So I kept my mouth shut and felt safer that way. My mother didn't deserve to have her heart broken and her name stained because of me. The best thing I ever did for her was to run away.
"You're going to find your sister, and you're going to bring her home.
And you're going to come home, too, Victoria."
"Dad, I—" "No excuses. We've gone through enough, don't you think? We're a family and we're going to start behaving like one."
I bit my tongue to either keep from smiling or crying. I loved the words that left his mouth as much as I hated them. Because whether he meant them or not, I didn't believe him. There was a voice in my head saying that the only reason he'd bothered to come for me was because of my sister. He didn't care whether I went back home or not, just as long as Izzy did. It was a tormented existence when your own mind regularly turned against you.
I wanted to tell him that I was never going back home. That I already was home and that they were better off without me. That Mom was better off without me.
But how could I? I'd never talked back to this man, ever in my life.
I kept my mouth shut. If I found Izzy and took her home, it would be easier to tell both him and my mother then. And maybe Mom wouldn't be so sad.
That's what I told myself.
"And…and if I can't?" I asked halfheartedly. For the thousandth time, I worked with animals, damn it. I'd never hunted for a person before. What the hell would happen if I couldn't find my sister?
"But you can," my father said. "I believe in you, Victoria. You can find her."
Air left my lungs for a second. It felt like he sucker punched me in the gut. Here I was, going five years thinking that the man who raised me, whom I called Dad for seventeen years, thought of me as nothing.
Unworthy of his name. And now he was here, and he was saying things that messed with my head and brought out an even more vicious side of me. The side that wouldn't let me get comfortable or enjoy even seeing him for a single second. I wanted to scream and shout, I wanted to cry and tell him that he was wrong to believe me. He couldn't put all that responsibility on me! I wasn't to be trusted. My body wasn't to be trusted. My wolf could come out and rip my father apart, too, at any second, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
"I have to go now. Your mother is expecting me. She doesn't know who I came to meet," he then said, pressing his lips together as if he was sorry.
As if he knew what he'd just done to me, but he had no other choice.
"Keep it that way." My mother didn't need to know that I was searching for Izzy. She had enough on her plate already.
The beast inside me watched as I saw my father to the door. She watched and she took note of everything—every movement, every feeling, every thought that went on in my head. She reminded me once more, while I watched my father get into his car, why I'd left home, why I lived alone, and why nobody was safe around me.
She reminded me that she was in control, and no amount of kicking the door with all my strength was going to make me forget that. All it was going to do was make my toes hurt real bad. At least my father was gone and he didn't see me lose it. Nobody had ever seen me lose it—except my sister.
Was she really involved with bad people? It was so hard to believe that when she'd always been the voice of reason in my head. She always knew the right thing to do.
Now I wished I'd asked my father about what he'd done. How had he managed to drive Izzy away? Had he hit her? If he had, I swore to God, I was going to kill him myself, and I wouldn't even let my wolf do it.
But I doubted it. My father might have been an asshole most of the time, but he'd never hit us. He wasn't that kind of a man.
As soon as I sat down in front of the laptop again, intending to find the address my father had given me, I received a new email. It was from Finn. I still had no idea whether to be angry at him for telling Dad about me or thankful. There was time to decide.
The email had no subject. I opened it.
The picture took over my screen instantly.
Another wolf and a deer right beside him. The animals were cut to pieces, but this time, there was no blood. It almost looked like someone had sucked it out of them. A vampire?
No, vampires didn't like animal blood. And this wasn't a kill for feeding. You could tell by the missing organs and the missing heads that this was a kill for magic. I slammed the lid shut and closed my eyes. My wolf was mad. She was clawing at the inside of my chest, trying to hurt me for…what? Because I didn't want to know where Finn had found those animals?
"Isabelle," I said to myself. "Isabelle comes first." I didn't care what the wolf thought. My sister was in danger, and my father believed I could find her. It was time to either disappoint him for good, or for once in my life, take control of myself and do something right.