Chapter 15: Wolverine Creek

I went for the door.

Abel caught my arm.

"Wait."

"She's in there."

"So is somebody else. Smell."

I breathed in.

Woodsmoke.

Creek water.

Tansy's scent, stronger here, so strong it filled my mouth.

And another wolf.

A big male.

Old sweat, chewing tobacco and a gun that had been oiled recently.

"Behind the cabin," Abel said, very low.

There was a camper trailer back there, half in the trees, with a light on behind a curtain.

A game show. Somebody had just won a car.

"I'll get the lock," Abel said. "You get her. If he comes out, you don't stop for me."

"Abel."

"You don't stop for me, Imogen."

He went back to the truck and came up the road with a tire iron.

He fit it into the hasp of the padlock.

He looked at me once.

Then he pulled.

The hasp tore out of the old wood with a shriek.

The television went quiet.

I was through the door.

The cabin was one room.

It smelled of woodsmoke and old blood and bleach.

A camp lantern turned low on a table.

A stack of plastic tubes and needles in a shoebox.

And an iron bed against the far wall.

A girl lay on it in a man's flannel shirt.

She was so thin her cheekbones looked sharp enough to cut.

Her straight light-brown hair had gone dull and long.

A chain ran from the foot of the bed to a cuff around her ankle.

The cuff was wrapped in leather.

Under the leather I could smell it.

Silver.

Just enough against her skin to keep her from shifting.

She opened her eyes.

Big gray eyes.

Her mother's eyes.

She looked at me and flinched back against the wall.

"No," she whispered. "No, it's not Tuesday."

"Tansy." I dropped to my knees by the bed. "Tansy, it's Dr. Bracewell. From the blood drive. You squeezed the foam ball."

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