“Officers who don’t see the value of cooperation can be replaced. I’ll get a feel for the town and find out whose strings can be pulled and whose strings need to be cut.”

“See you there.”

Parlan ended the call and stared out his hotel window.

Abigail had escaped his control and eluded him for more than three years. It would serve her right if betraying her brother to the authorities, whatever they might be, would be the very act that would cause her to stumble back into Judd’s waiting hands.

CHAPTER 25

Thaisday, Messis 23

Responding to the frantic knocking on the front door and Rusty’s equally frantic barking, Jana dropped her toast and rushed through the house. Anyone knocking on her door at that hour of the morning and in that way wasn’t outside to tell her something good.

She grabbed Rusty’s collar with one hand as she turned the locks and opened the door with the other.

“You have to come,” Kenneth said. The burly schoolteacher looked ready to faint. “Maddie cut herself and we don’t know what to do. She’s … We don’t know.”

“Is Evan home?” she asked, then snapped, “Quiet, Rusty.”

“He’s dealing with the other children,” Kenneth replied. “They …”

They want to lick the blood. Michael Debany had hurriedly told her a few things about dealing with blood prophets if she should cross paths with one, and one of those things was that the Others should not consume cassandra sangue blood because it produced a reaction in the terra indigene.

“Go home and help Evan,” she said. “Do not let the other children lick Maddie’s wound or any of the blood.”

“Wounds.” Kenneth sounded devastated. “More than one.”

Gods. “I’ll be over in a minute. You go now.”

Yelling for Barb, Jana dragged a now-whimpering Rusty back to her crate and stuffed the puppy inside. Not a kind thing to do, but she could feel the seconds ticking and knew something was very wrong if a girl as young as Maddie had suddenly made multiple cuts.

“What’s the matter?” Barb asked. “Why are you being mean to the puppy?”

“Maddie cut herself.”

Barb gasped.

“Grab a pen and paper. You have to help me.”

“Me? Why me? Where are Evan and Kenneth?”

“They have to keep the other kids away from Maddie. Come on, Barb.”

Jana ran out the door, trusting that Barb would follow. She stopped outside Maddie’s house, cupped her hands around her mouth, and yelled, “Virgil!” Then she yanked open the screen door and stepped inside.

Maddie knelt in the middle of the living room, smacking her bloody hands on a sheet of drawing paper and making a strangled sound as if she wanted to scream but couldn’t even get that much out. Kenneth held on to Zane, and Evan had a tight hold on Mace, who kept snarling and saying, “Let me lick it. I wanna lick it.”

No sign of Charlee, but Jana didn’t ask about her. If the young Hawk wasn’t in the room, she wasn’t an immediate problem.

Jana dropped to her knees in front of Maddie at the same moment the screen door opened. As Barb dropped down beside her, looking white with dread but holding a pen and pad of paper, Jana closed her hands over Maddie’s wrists. “Speak, prophet, and we will listen.”

Maddie suddenly stilled and stared at her with terrifyingly empty eyes that turned dreamy as the girl began to speak. “Puddle, puddle, red red red. Grandma hair walk her dog. Big water. Bumpy dark.” The girl sighed and slumped forward.

Jana lowered Maddie to the floor, then looked at the two men and the boys. “You boys go to your room and stay there, or I’ll arrest you.”

“You can’t—” Mace’s protest was silenced by the savage snarl that came from the other side of the screen door.

Virgil bared his teeth as he focused on the boys. But Jana saw him quivering and took a moment to admire the strength of will that kept him on that side of the door instead of tearing through it to reach the girl with the bloody hands.

“Boys,” Evan said firmly. “Go with Dad Kenneth.”

Zane and Mace allowed Kenneth to herd them to their bedroom, but Mace, the young Wolf, kept looking back as if to be sure Virgil was still there to reinforce the order.

“Get some water and a cloth to clean up her hands,” Jana told Evan. “We’ll take the papers that have blood on them.”

“And do what with them?” Barb whispered.

“Burn them.” As far as she could tell, the drawing paper didn’t hold anything that would help them—not a picture or any other kind of clue. “Evan, do you know what Maddie was looking at just before this happened?”

Evan shook his head as he began cleaning Maddie’s hands. “We were making breakfast. The children were out here. We didn’t know there was anything wrong until Charlee ran into the kitchen and told us that Maddie had cut herself. I don’t know what she used, what was in the room that could …” He glanced around the room. “That issue of Nature! wasn’t on the floor before, and I don’t know where that picture book came from.”

“I’ll take them with me and see if I can figure out what she was trying to tell us.” Jana rose and gathered up the magazine and picture book.

“Should we take her to the doctor?” Evan asked. “The cuts aren’t deep, but there are several of them on each hand.”

Jana hesitated. She wasn’t an expert. Who was when it came to the cassandra sangue? But she was the human part of the law here. “I’ll ask one of the doctors to make a house call. I think the fewer people who see Maddie today, the better.” She hesitated. “You need to discover what she used to make the cuts before the other children find it. Or ask Kane to sniff around the room and find it.” Virgil was right here and could do the sniffing, but she needed the sheriff and that had to be a priority.

Evan nodded, but she wasn’t sure he’d heard her or understood what she’d said.

She left the house, almost smacking Virgil with the screen door in her haste to get home and finish dressing for work. She crossed the street with the Wolf trotting at her side. “You need to contact Tolya, tell him we need to meet. It’s urgent. Kane should go over to Maddie’s house and see if he can find what she used to cut herself. If it has any blood on it, it has to be kept away from the other children.” She thought for a moment, then added, “John should come to the meeting, since he used to live in Lakeside.” He was the one individual she knew had had direct contact with a blood prophet and might be able to give them more information about what they should do now.

Puddle, puddle, red red red.

Grass stained with blood where dogs had died the other day. She remembered it so easily, the ground soaking up the moisture.

Puddle, puddle, red red red.

How much blood would have to saturate the ground before it began to puddle?

She bolted up the short walk to her front door. “Call them, Virgil!”

Setting the magazine and picture book on the coffee table, she rushed to her room to pull on her shirt and retrieve her service weapon. Rushed back to the living room and fumbled with the latch on Rusty’s crate.

“Sorry, girl. Sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong. No, you didn’t. Come on, now. We have to go. You can have a treat when we get to the office, okay?”

She was heading out just as Barb returned and handed her the paper with the cryptic clues. “Close up the house when you go, okay?”

Barb nodded. “Did you shut off the coffee?”

Jana shook her head. When she reached her vehicle, John was waiting for her and Kane was limping toward Maddie’s house. She didn’t see Virgil, but he might be running toward the town square and would get there before she did.

As soon as she got Rusty settled in the cargo area, she flung herself behind the wheel, hit the lights and siren, and stepped on the gas.

“Hey!” John grumbled.

Jana growled.

It didn’t occur to her until they reached the office that nobody who could wear fur made a sound for the rest of the drive.

* * *

* * *

The howling vehicle pulled up in front of the sheriff’s office.

“Nothing subtle about her this morning, is there?” Tolya asked, watching as Jana hustled the puppy out of the cargo area.

“Wolverine,” Virgil growled softly. “Snapping orders as if …”

As if she were dominant, Tolya thought, finishing the sentence. “And you didn’t correct her?”

Virgil’s bared teeth were his only answer as he opened the office door.

John Wolfgard hurried into the office, then took up a position in the doorway that led to the back rooms, as if he wanted quick access to a number of rooms that had doors he could barricade against the human female.

Did this signal a temporary change in the pack hierarchy or something more serious that would require careful consideration by all the terra indigene running the town?

Rusty bolted for her crate. Safe ground. The pup’s fear of the person she usually trusted said a great deal about Jana’s state of mind—and explained Virgil’s wariness.

Jana dropped a book and a magazine on her desk, gave the puppy a treat, and finally looked at all of them. She blew out a breath and said, “Maddie cut herself this morning. Cut her hands, multiple times.” She held out a piece of paper to Tolya. “Virgil heard what she said. Barb wrote down the words. The children were looking at this book and magazine when everything … started. We need to figure out what Maddie saw that set her off, for her sake … and, I think, for ours.”

Still wary of the female pack member, John came over to stand next to Tolya and read the words.

“Let me see the book,” Virgil said, holding out a hand. He could have taken it from the desk, but he waited for Jana to hand it to him. A reassertion of dominance or prudence because none of them were certain of her right now?

“I can look at the magazine,” John offered.

“It’s time to ask Evan and Kenneth how long Maddie has been with them,” Tolya said, watching Jana. “Time to ascertain if she had any formal training before becoming part of their family.”

She nodded. “We need information from them—and we need to know everything we can about the cassandra sangue.” She looked at John. “You had experience living around a blood prophet.”

“Jackson and Grace will know more,” Virgil said as he turned the pages of the picture book. “They’re raising the Hope pup and have experience with her cutting.”

“I dealt with Meg when she came into the bookstore,” John said. “Not when she …” He made a slicing motion across one forearm.

“There is a human female in this book,” Virgil said. “The pups call her Grandma and she is walking a dog.” He held up the book so they could all see the picture.