SwitchBack: A Paranormal Werewolf Romance (Knightsbridge Canyon Series Book 1) (9 page)

I decided that I felt guilty enough as it was without adding eavesdropping to the list of my sins, so I slipped out to the back yard to have a smoke and think. That was where Will found me, lost in thought when he stuck his head over the fence.

“Hey Spongebob.”

“Hey Patrick,” I popped right back at him, just like we were back in grade school.

“Whatcha thinkin’?”

“Thinkin’ about blowin’ this popsicle shop.”

“Yeah? Where to?”

“Home.”

“Home?” he said. “Like Frisco?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Home, like San Fran. The City. The Ice Cube by the Bay. The Big Queasy. Don’t call it Frisco.”

“Come here and help me over.” He pushed himself up from the ground on the other side and sort of fell on me as he dangled by his hands.

“You’re not as young as you used to be, sport,” I said. “Next time you might want to try the gate.”

“Hey Ash! Can you tell your boyfriend that we do have gates? Climbing over the fence lowers the property values,” my sister called from where she stood in the upstairs window.

“See?” I shot Amber the finger, but thankfully she wasn’t looking. “Seriously, Will, I need to get out of Amber’s hair,” I sighed. “I overheard her talking to Dad today and she actually asked if I could go stay with him and my stepmother.”

“Come stay with me,” he said.

“Yeah, right,” I said. “Your mother would just love that.”

“Actually, she would, I think.” Will grinned. “Sam works so much and Mom’s been feeling deprived. You can be a new daughter figure. And we’ve got the spare bedroom.”

Was I really thinking about doing this? I didn’t want to leave, but it sounded like I was becoming a burr under Amber’s saddle and I wasn’t ready to go back to my lonely loft in the City.

“Say yes, Ash,” Will said.

“Say yes, Ash,” I heard my sister whisper from where she stood in the bedroom overlooking us on the ground floor.

“Say yes, Ashlee.” My mother’s voice bubbled up from where she lay at the bottom of the pool.

“Fine. Yes,” I said, exasperated. I knew when I was outnumbered. With that, I went upstairs to pack.

“Is there anything I can get for you? Here, let me help you do that,” my sister offered, then had my folded laundry tucked into my suitcase and my bag in my hand before you could say Versace. “Now, don’t worry about a thing. I’ll come visit at least…” She mouthed
four
,
three
“…no,
twice
a week and you are always welcome for dinner, if you call ahead of time. Bye!” she said as she pushed me out the door and into Will’s waiting arms.

We looked at each other and had to shake our heads and laugh. God I loved and sometimes hated my sister. But isn’t that the way it always is with family?

If you don’t get the irony, try harder.

Will brought my suitcases in and as I began to hang up my clothes in the empty half of the closet, his mother came in to put fresh linens on the bed.

I felt a catch in my throat and choked back a sob.

Mrs. Stenfield looked at me with concern.

“I’m sorry,” I said and sat down on the bed with a slight butt-wince. “It’s just…” Suddenly the waterworks poured forth. The emotional rollercoaster of what I called PCS, Pre-Change Syndrome, was starting to get me, which really sucked, because it was exactly fourteen days off of my PMS, which meant every damned lunar month I got twice as much insanity as normal women.

And you wonder why I’m a mess?

Will’s mother sat on the bed and held me and rocked me as I cried out my sorrow. All of my longing for family. All of my hunger for belonging. All of the heartache from not being able to feel my mother’s arms around me came rushing back, here in this place. In my home that wasn’t my home anymore, but still felt like it.

“You were very young when your mom died, weren’t you?” she said.

How did mothers know just what to say?

“We were eleven,” I said, my nose running as I blew long and hard into the tissues she pulled from her pocket. See, I thought. Some women were just born to be mothers. I began to cry even harder. “I forgot how much I missed her,” I sobbed, darting glances around the room to see if Mother was going to materialize. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful, seeing as how I could still at least talk to her, but I hadn’t realized just how much I missed her presence. The softness of her arms around me, the smell of her hair.

Mrs. Stenfield just stroked my hair and held me, waving Will away when he passed by the doorway.

When I came back to myself, I felt awkward and unkempt.

“Why don’t I just leave you alone for now?” she said, the unspoken “while you pull yourself together” hanging in the air between us.

I nodded and sniffled as she shut the door behind her and left me alone. I could hear murmuring in the dining room, then the sound of the evening news on television drifting from the living area. With the sounds of normalcy gathered about me, I curled up into a ball on the bed and went to sleep.

I woke up later, in the middle of the night. The clock read 2:23 a.m., and I got the impression I had heard something outside. After looking though the windows and seeing nothing, I went into the kitchen to the back door, carefully turning the deadbolt so it wouldn’t make a sound, and left it open. I stood on the screened-in back porch next to the old washer and dryer and stared at the moonlit scene.

Inhaling deeply, I smelled the half-familiar smells of my childhood – wisteria going dormant, wild onions that infested the back lawn, Mexican food from one of the neighbors, damp old rusting steel screens that hadn’t yet been replaced with aluminum.

I looked up at
la Luna
hanging there in the sky and felt the tug, the pull, the urge to get naked and change and run free through the backyards like I used to do. I realized I could do the basement window trick, do it tonight, but I had never changed this early. A day before, sure, which hurt like a son-of-a bitch for some reason. Once I’d held it off until the night after, which was painful too, but I’d been aboard a cruise ship that got stranded at sea an extra forty-eight hours and didn’t have anywhere to go. Could have locked myself in my cabin but that was its own kind of agony, all that energy bursting from me with nowhere to put it.

If I changed this early, would that mean I was done for this cycle? I really did not know for sure. What if it didn’t really count? What if I ended up with some kind of extra bonus change, or what if it threw my cycle off and I have to start changing mid-moon? No, it was safer to just wait a while, do it when it was easiest and I was sure of the results.

Something moved off in the shadows by the fence where the gate to the next-door neighbors used to be. My eyes narrowed and I squinted,focusing on…what? Something small…a striped piece of fur. A cat. Just a cat, doing a bit of nocturnal hunting. I relaxed. See? Nothing to worry about.

I went back inside, locked the door, and settled back to sleep.

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty,” he said and I rolled onto my back and stretched like a cat. He softly closed the door and knelt down at the edge of the bed and put his arms around me. I curled up against him, my face next to his. His essential maleness assaulted me and I sneezed.

“Ow, ow!” My butt protested the violent explosion.

“Bless you.” He laughed.

I groaned, absolutely mortified. “Sorry.”

Will chuckled as he grabbed a pillow and wiped his face with it. “What’s a few germs among Germans?”

“I’m Scottish.”

“I’m English. Who wants to revisit old feuds?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Guess I didn’t think how being back in this house might affect you,” he apologized.

“No. It’s not your fault.” I paused, thinking. “It’s actually really good for me,” I said. “I need to face this. Face my past. Battle my demons.” I cleared my throat and inhaled his scent and it stuck in the core of my being.

“Yeah, well. Make sure that you at least leave me something to slay,” he teased.

I pulled my head back to get a better look at him, his eyes glittering in the dark. “You know, that’s probably one of the sweetest things any man has ever said to me.”

He began to make another smart remark when I kissed him. Some men just need to learn to shut up and not ruin the moment. That’s why God made women. To kiss them stupid, like I was doing right now.

When we came up for air, he said, “What was that for?”

“Just because,” I said and rolled off the bed and onto my feet. “So, what’s for breakfast? I’m starving.” Nervous breakdowns do that to a girl. They make her incredibly lightheaded and voraciously hungry.

After we ate we decided to go for a drive and watch the sun rise over Knightsbridge. I settled against Will and enjoyed seeing more of the town I grew up in and how it had changed.

“You know, I never get to do this anymore,” I told him.

“Yeah, I guess in the city you don’t need a car.”

“And people don’t usually get in a car unless they’re going somewhere.”

“Guess there aren’t many Sunday drivers in Fr-…San Fran.” He smiled.

I laughed. “Probably not.”

We drove through downtown Knightsbridge again and talked about how we used to cruise Main Street on the weekends. How the city council had threatened to prohibit cruising due to a few small skirmishes that had broken out one summer, until the kids had protested and a band of parents who remembered the glory days of their own youth formed a Main Street watch on weekends to prevent any future violence. What with that and the curfew it for minors at midnight,  it appeared to be workkng.

We drove past our alma mater and I wondered what the kids that went there now were like. High school seemed like just yesterday, and yet, a lifetime ago.

I recalled how when we were younger, we would go swimming in the irrigation canals, even though we weren’t supposed to. Later on they ended up fencing them off in the city limits. We talked about simpler times, and a simpler world, and how, even though Knightsbridge had changed a lot, it was still simple.

We held hands. Eventually we parked, and when we kissed, it was without intent. Will was being the perfect gentleman and it felt good to be with him, without the pressure of sex.

Okay, for me anyway. I wasn’t thinking about how it might be for him, but like Amber says, sometimes I’m too focused on myself.

I didn’t want to think about sex. I don’t know how sex is for regular humans, but for a werewolf, it seemed to have extra pitfalls. Speaking of which, I looked out the windows and stared at the waxing moon, and my palms began to itch. MoonFall, the full moon, was in seven days and I’d have to find a way to disappear for the evening, so I could at least make the shift and be back by morning.

Contrary to popular belief werewolves, or lupines, retained most of their capacities for intelligence even in wolf form. When I’d had to go out at night in the City – pretty much anyone from the Bay Area meant San Francisco when they referred to “the City,” – I usually hit Golden Gate Park where I could run free and get rid of the excess energy that came after the shift. I wondered where I could do the same around here anymore, what with all the growth. Just out into the hills and the Canyon, I guessed, away from the stupid suburban developments.

Yeah, it would be nice to go back to the Canyon…assuming I could face up to something I’d put off for a long time.

“Ashlee?” Amber’s voice came out all echo-ey over the speakerphone. She sounded spooked and Amber was almost never afraid.

“Amber, what is it?” I asked as Will rolled off the bed, fully dressed but plenty rumpled. We’d fallen asleep side by side in the guest room, still in our clothes from the day before.

“Um, we found a coyote’s head on the porch this morning.”

“Oh my gosh. J.R. didn’t see it, did he?” I asked. How horrible!

“No. Elle put it in a bag before he woke up. But there was a note stuck in its mouth.”

“A note?” How strange. “I don’t understand.”

“The note was addressed to you, Ashlee.” Amber’s voice took on a tone that could only be disapproval, but for once I couldn’t read her intent. “Elle took it all down to the police station. You might want to stop by this morning as they have a few questions to ask you.”

“But – what did it say, Amber?”

“I don’t know. Elle wouldn’t let me read it. She said it’s best if I don’t worry about it. And then asked me to call. So I did…I’m scared, Ashlee. What is this? This is freaking me out.”

“I’ll handle it.”

“You better.”

I resolved to try, though my record with handling things was no better than fifty-fifty most days.

I showed up at the station with Will in tow, asking him to wait outside as Elle met me in the new Chief’s office, which used to be hers before she became the city attorney. She handed me a plastic evidence bag with the note inside. It was written with black permanent ink, so even against the dried blood the words were evident.

It said,
I know what you are. I know what you did. Payback’s a bitch and so am I.

My stomach dropped inside me and I sank into a chair. A cup of water was shoved into my hand and I gulped it down. No natural wolves roamed California, but there were plenty of coyotes, the closest thing. This one had been killed as a message to me.

“We pulled your file, Ashlee,” Chief Hernandez said in that brittle tone cops use when they are questioning someone they don’t suspect, but want to. “You want to tell us what you think this is about?” Like every good cop, bad cop scenario, someone had to start and it looked like the chief was going on the offensive, giving Elle the conciliatory role.