“You want me to follow you?”
Another nod.
“Well… okay.” She took hold of the strap around my neck and moved close, leaning on my shoulder. “Can we go home to Daddy?”
Chapter 2
Ihad to be careful with my big paws not to tread on the little girl’s slipper-clad feet, but I paced along close beside her, sniffing the ground when I needed to. She clung to my harness, her candy clutched to her chest with her other hand. We followed a circuitous route. I figured she’d been trick-or-treating up and down the blocks. A lot of other human scents overlay hers, so I couldn’t tell who, if anyone, she’d been with.
Surely her Daddy didn’t let her out alone?Kids’ ages were not my specialty, but she couldn’t be much older than Dylan. A male scent suffused her dress, slightly familiar in the back of my brain. Not someone I knew, but maybe someone I’d once met. I assumed that was Daddy, but I didn’t pick up a matching scent anywhere on the pavement.
A few times, we saw other groups of candy beggars in the distance. The girl didn’t seem to recognize anyone, and by now I was invested in getting her home safely.
Five blocks on, the girl suddenly said, “I know where we are! I’m not lost.” She tugged on my chest strap. “Come on, doggie.”
I’d meant to back away once she was safe, but I was reluctant to break her hold. Anyhow, I wanted to make sure there was someone home for her. She led me up a pair of front steps to the door of a small white house. Two pumpkins sat on the top step, one a classic grin, the other with a grid-like shape and a lump with eyes. “I did that one,” she said. “It’s a cat looking out the window. I want a cat, but I’m allergic.” She stabbed the doorbell beside the frame with a determined finger. I heard a deep chime inside.
The man who opened the door carried the “Daddy” scent, for sure. He also rang loud bells for me of a verynotDaddy kind. Yes, someone I’d met. Halloween, a decade ago. He’d been young, hot, dressed as Clark Kent, dancing in the crowd, his shirt askew to show the Superman logo underneath. He’d looked the part, down to chiseled cheekbones, the nerdy glasses, and the fall of straight black hair across his forehead. He still looked the part— a bit more mature, maybe in his mid-thirties now, but still hot as hell.
He gasped. “Larissa! Get away from that dog!”
She didn’t let go of me. “He’s a nice dog. He brought me home.”
I did my happy dog impression with wagging tail and panting grin, and Clark-guy’s anxiety scent dropped a notch.
He asked less sharply, “What are you doing home by yourself? Where’s Miss Amy, and the rest?”
“I don’t know,” Larissa said. “They lost me. The doggy brought me home.”
“Oh, God.” The man paled. “Well, say goodbye to the dog and come on in, honey.”
The girl said, “Goodbye, doggie,” tried to step away from me, then came up short. “I can’t, Daddy. My dress is all tangled.” She tugged at where the floating scarf bits had snagged into a buckle of the harness.
“Crap.” Her father said, “I’ll get scissors. Just, um…” He hovered, clearly not wanting to leave her alone with a huge unknown canine on the doorstep.
“Don’t cut my dress. I want to come in,” she whined.
“You’re attached to the dog.”
“The dog can come in too, Daddy.”
“Its owner wouldn’t like that.” He peered into the dark past me. “Did you see its owner? Where are your people, dog?”
I wagged my tail but didn’t shake my head or whine and point or anything. I was a bit surprised he hadn’t figured out what I was. By now, most folks had seen enough video to recognize an improbably large wolf with a broad head as a werewolf. But I guess he was shaken by having his kid turn up alone, and if he hadn’t made the connection, then disappearing into the background remained an easy option. Just a big stray dog, here and gone. I could chew myself loose in seconds and run. No complications.
So I’m not sure what made me follow that kid through the door when Clark-guy ushered us inside— a tangle of a child’s gauzy fabric I didn’t want to damage, perhaps, surely not the almost-forgotten scent of a man I once met.
Clark left the door ajar and bent over us. “Maybe I can work you free.” He fiddled with the buckle of my chest strap, trying to unsnag the scarf. His face was right there, his scent in my nose, and I almost gave in to the temptation to lick him.
Then Larissa said, “The dog brought me home when I was lost. He sniffed the way back. I asked if he would help me and he said yes. And he made the bad boys run away.”
“He said…” The man met my eyes from inches away and I couldn’t resist. I winked at him and grinned. “Oh, God, it’s a werewolf! I mean, you’re a werewolf.” He grabbed Larissa and scrambled backward.
A scrap of fabric ripped and she wailed. “You tore my dress, Daddy. He’s a good doggy. He helped me.”
The guy landed on his ass, his kid in his lap. I could’ve trotted out the door and been gone, but I didn’t want to. Something in me rebelled, some fragment of the gay boy who could never be himself in fur, or the gay man who’d wanted this night of all nights to be different. The sight of Clark-guy’s parted lips and the smell of his sweat made me dizzy and stupid enough to give in to impulse. For once, I might spend a moment with a guy who knew I was both queer and wolf, and who wouldn’t hate either one.
However, I couldn’t exactly have a conversation in fur, either. So I tilted my head like a question, pointed my paw in the direction I could smell a bathroom, and whined a couple of times.
