Ray did. “There’s a lot of howling in these woods at night,” he replied. “And I’ll tell you right now that they’re wolves, not coyotes.” His yellow eyes narrowed. “Big ones. And not red wolves, either, and that’s all that should be out here.”
“Shifters?” Elliot asked, understanding what Ray was telling us before I did.
“Oh, yeah,” Ray confirmed. “Quite a few of them.” He met Elliot’s gaze steadily. “And while actual wolves move in packs, shifters usually don’t.”
“You know a lot about wolves?” Elliot asked, stealing a piece of bacon off the serving plate and biting into it.
“I’m an alpaca farmer,” came his response. “It’s my business to know about things that might eat my ’pacas.” He glanced over at me. “And that definitely includes wolves.”
“But shifters?” I asked.
Ray snorted. “Shifters that don’t like you are worse than wolves who don’t give a hoot,” he replied. “Smarter and meaner.”
“And these shifters don’t like you?”
“These shifters leave me alone, and I leave them alone. They haven’t come after my ’pacas or hurt me or mine, so I let them do whatever it is they do.” He looked at me, then, yellow eyes sharp. “Of course, things seem to have escalated recently.”
“Escalated how?” Elliot wanted to know.
“More howling. More tracks.” He paused. “No one has said as much, but I would bet every alpaca we have that it wasn’t awolfthat killed your mother, no matter what the Sheriff’s Department says.”
Of course, we knew that already—and so did the Augusta County Sheriff’s Department.
Funny how they didn’t seem to be doing anything about it.
After breakfast,Elliot and I went up to the house, me ignoring the nausea that was roiling around in my stomach. It had nothing to do with Helen’s cooking and everything to do with the house and the memories trapped within it.
“What can I do?” Elliot asked me gently.
I sighed. “Just… We need to keep cataloging stuff. I—didn’t get very far last time. Could you… come with me and take notes?”
“Absolutely.”
He followed me around, writing things down, occasionally asking questions for clarification.
We’d just finished the downstairs and were preparing to go up to the narrow stairs to the to tiny rooms that had belongedto Noah and me when I noticed the small closet door under the stairs. It had always just been storage for extra dry goods, but we hadn’t inventoried it yet.
I opened the door and stared at a bag of cat food.
“El, have you seen a cat? Litter box?”
“No, why?”
I moved out of the way, letting him see the bag of food.
“Huh,” was his response. “I don’t imagine a cat would like all of the strange activity around here. Poor thing is probably hiding under the porch or something.”
I frowned. “Nobody’s been feeding it,” I said, now genuinely worried about the cat. “It’s probably starving.”
“Cats are resourceful,” Elliot replied. “I’m sure it’s eaten mice and birds and is fine.”
“We should find it,” I insisted. Maybe it was what Ray had said about the howling wolves, or maybe I just felt a weird kinship for the poor abandoned cat that my father hadn’t cared enough about to feed. Hopefully he hadn’t eaten the poor thing.
“Seth—”
“Please, El.”
He put down the clipboard I’d given him. “Okay, but cats don’t just come when you call them,” he said. “It’s likely going to be as afraid of us as it is of everyone else.”
