“Huh.” I looked at Quinn, but he shrugged, as baffled as I was. I needed to think that over for a while, so I changed tack. “Did the police make any progress on identifying bones?”
“Not that I know of,” Simon said wryly. “Since it’s obviously magic related, we can’t give them too much information. I backed up their hypothesis about it being a science cadaver from the college, so there’s no reason for them to keep me in the loop at this point.”
Quinn motioned for me to put the phone on speaker. “Simon? Quinn’s here with me. You’re on speaker.”
“Oh,” Simon said, a little surprised. “How’s it going, Tall, Dark, and Undead?”
Quinn, whose hair was as blond as Daniel Craig’s, rolled his eyes. “Can it, Dungeon Master. Listen, do you need some assistance with getting information from the police?”
A pause. “Not at this point, but it may come to that.”
I winced. Quinn was talking about pressing the cops to believe whatever Simon told them about the pellet. I didn’t like that, not the least because my cousin would be one of them. Despite my two arrests, I felt a little protective of the Boulder Police. With the exception of Keller, all of them had been decent to me.
Quinn must have seen me flinch, because he gave me a little “it is what it is” shrug. I didn’t like that, either, but we both knew this was what I had signed on for. “Okay, one other thing,” Quinn said to Simon. “You said you checked fossil finds. What about local folklore?”
There was a long pause while both Simon and I were impressed with Quinn. “That’s a good idea, thanks. I’ll get into it.”
When I hung up with Simon, Quinn raised his eyebrows at me. “Hi,” he said, smiling.
For some reason the fact that he smiled, instead of giving me his usual unreadable expression, made me flush. “Hi.”
“Ready to go question a werewolf?”
The smile faded from my face.
We parked a half mile away from the sanctuary and hiked back down the road until we reached the outer fence, the same one I’d driven past on the way up the driveway. It was still light enough for me to see eyeshine reflected back at us, as the penned wolves silently watched our approach through the fencing. They still didn’t bark or whine, but this time when I walked up, every single one of them was pacing back and forth in their individual spaces, agitated and skittish. I watched their body language and realized they weren’t hoping to attack us. They were hoping to flee.
“What’s got them all riled up?” I murmured.
I caught Quinn’s sidelong glance. “How would you feel if your neighbor suddenly and rather violently changed into another animal in front of you?”
“Good point.” I counted paddocks as we walked, and stopped when we reached the back fence of the fourth enclosure. “This is it.”
I peered past the double fence, looking for a glimpse of Tobias. I had brought a flashlight, but I didn’t want to turn it on until absolutely necessary. I didn’t see any cars, and the building lights were off, but the sanctuary employees could still be around. There were five or six large trees in Tobias’s space, and between the growing darkness and the trees’ shade, I saw nothing. Quinn reared an arm back and threw a rough blanket from the back of the Jeep over both of the fences. It fluttered a bit but landed true, well within Tobias’s enclosure. I was hoping it would be enough to tempt him to come out, but nothing stirred in the enclosure.
“Do you see him?” I said under my breath, hoping Quinn’s vampire eyesight would serve us better than mine.
“No. Wait . . .” Out of the corner of my eye I saw Quinn’s head tilting up. “Look in the—”
There was a tremendous crash, and a skinny, naked form dropped out of the nearest tree, no more than six feet away.
I jumped, but managed to suppress the shriek that threatened to erupt from my throat. He’d annoyed me, though, and I rather vindictively clicked on the flashlight and shone it right at his face.
“Owwwwww,” Tobias complained, dropping instinctively into a crouch. He held up one hand to shield his eyes. In his human form, the werewolf was average height, slender, with ropy limbs and dun-colored hair that stood up in angry tufts like he’d been pulling on it. His blue eyes glared at me. “Just funny,” he sputtered, and then more carefully, he said, “Joke-telling, I was joke-telling.” His face creased into a frown. “Joke-being, maybe.”
Quinn gave me a questioning look, but I just shrugged. I’d met a crazy werewolf in Los Angeles who made Tobias look downright coherent. As far as I was concerned, werewolf magic was called a curse for a reason.
Tobias went over to the horse blanket, wobbling a little on his two legs. He scooped it up carelessly and wrapped it around his belly, tucking it in like a towel. I moved the beam of the light toward his chest, and he relaxed, his fingers reaching up to casually grip the fence near his face. Taking charge, Quinn stepped forward so he was right up against our side of the fence. “My name is Quinn,” he said in the same cool, distant tone he’d used when we first met, when I was the one being questioned. “I work for Maven.”
Tobias glared at me. “Silver girl,” he growled.
Aw. He remembered me. “Lex,” I corrected him. “I work for Maven too.” It still felt weird saying it out loud.
“In charge now Maven in charge now,” Tobias said in the same odd, jarring cadence, like he was having a hard time modulating his volume and tone.