“What’s this?” I said, but as I took the item, I realized exactly what it was. A bright blond wig.
“That’s to change your appearance a bit. Ollie thought it would be a good idea,” Leonard said.
“Uh… okay.” I shook my hair back and pulled the wig on.
Thankfully, it wasn’t one of those polyester wigs. I tugged it down and ran my fingers through it until Carly nodded and smiled.
“Good,” she said. “A whole new person. This should help as well.”
She pulled a small perfume bottle from her bag and spritzed me a few times. The scent assaulted my nose with its power and familiarity. I pulled my head back, confusion warring inside my head. I glanced from Carly to her granddaughter.
“What the hell?” I said, putting a hand to my nose.
“Sorry,” Annie said with an exaggerated shake of her head. “It was all she had available.”
The spray was a more powerful version of Annie’s scent. I’d caught it the moment she stepped into my hotel room.
“It’s the concentrated essence of Annie’s scent,” Carly said. “It’ll mask yours if anyone is trying to track or find you. It’ll make it safer to travel.”
“Did you make this before coming to pick me up?” I asked.
“No,” Carly said. “I usually carry it.”
Seeing my confused look, Leonard interjected. “She’s retired, but not really. She works at the library, and she also helps abused shifter women escape their mates. And she helps human women escape their husbands and boyfriends.”
“It’s her ‘calling,’” Annie said, making air quotes with her fingers, then gave her grandmother a lopsided grin. “Itisa pretty cool calling, I guess.”
“Enough,” Carly said, but she gave a sweet smile. “Obviously, I don’t need the spray for the humans, but it works really well for shifters. Anyone following us will only be able to scent out the three of us and not you. It’ll fade fairly quickly, though.”
“Sounds great,” I said, my head spinning from this new world I was a part of. “Let’s go.”
The library hada good selection of old local magazines and newspapers on microfiche. Within ten minutes of arriving, I was deep into more research. My eyes strained to focus on old articles. I’d actually found a story about Lincoln Masters. Apicture showed him standing in a tuxedo, smiling and shaking hands with a senator. Lincoln had attended a political rally and donated money to the campaign. I glanced at the date. It was about four months before he vanished from town.
I leaned back in the chair and rubbed my eyes. Most of the people milling about in the library were older folks like Carly and Leonard. From what I saw, this was more of a hub for older shifters to socialize. Though, there were a few younger ones like Annie around. She was studying at a table a few feet away. Leonard sat beside her, relaxing with a book and a cup of coffee.
On the ride over, Carly and Leonard told me they’d met at a punk-rock show back in the early ’80s. Carly had been there to see The Clash, and Leonard had worked the door as a part-time job in college. He’d had zero interest in staying for the show, until he saw Carly. It was love at first sight, and they’d been bonded mates ever since. Though, he’d never grown to love punk music the way Carly did.
“I’m more of a Christopher Cross fan myself,” he’d said.
Annie had rolled her eyes at that. “Ugh. You and all thatyacht-rockstuff. Gross.”
“He’s a talented musician,” Leonard had replied sternly, turning around in his seat to frown at his granddaughter.
I rolled my neck from side to side and stared at Lincoln Masters’s face on the screen. After a few seconds, I unspooled the microfilm and carefully slid it back into the container. I’d done enough research on the Masters family for now.
A new thought occurred to me. If my research on Lincoln and Rick had hit a dead end for now, there was still someone else I could research. A person I might or mightnotbe falling in love with.
Nate.
Carly had given me free rein to search through what I wanted as long as I put everything back the way I’d found it. I grabbedseveral trays of microfiche for newspapers around the time I thought Nate might have appeared at that store when he was a little boy. Perhaps someone had written a news story on it, and I could find more information from there. Tiny threads I could pull and possibly trace back to his origins. Maybe I could even find his real parents.
Before diving back into research, I checked my phone. Still no text from Nate. I told myself I’d work for another half hour before asking Carly or Leonard to take me back to the hotel. I wanted to be there before Nate returned.
Those intentions vanished as I got lost in page after page of past news articles. I scrolled through the entire tray, making notes on anything I thought might be a lead, then went to get more microfilm. I recalled Nate saying it was cold and rainy when he was walking the road to Zane’s Bait and Tackle shop. Cold and rainy in Canada meant that December, January, and February were probably out. It would have snowed then. I grabbed a tray that covered the months of March and April. If those turned up nothing, I’d try October and November.
I set the trays down next to the microfiche machine, then loaded a roll into the machine and checked my phone again. Two things struck me like a hammer to the chest. First, I’d spent over an hour researching Nate instead of the thirty minutes I’d budgeted. Second, I had multiple missed calls from Nate, all of which had come through in the few minutes I was gone from the desk. Since I was in a library, I’d put my phone on vibrate. Fear burned like acid in my chest.
Trying not to panic, I called Nate back. He was probably just calling to tell me he was on his way back to the hotel.
