Calvin got Jason into the truck and slid him over, and Sam climbed into the driver's seat. Jason would be between us after I climbed into the truck. But Calvin had to tell me something first.
"Felton will be punished," he said. "Right now."
Punishing Felton hadn't been at the top of my list of things to think about, but I nodded, because I wanted to get the hell out of there.
"If we're taking care of Felton, are you going to go to the police?" he asked. He was standing stiffly, as if he was trying to be casual about the question. But this was a dangerous moment. I knew what happened to people who drew attention to the Hotshot community.
"No," I said. "It was just Felton." Though, of course, Crystal had to have known, at least on some level. She'd told me she'd smelled an animal that night at Jason's. How could she have mistaken the smell of panther, when she was one? And she had probably known all along that that panther had been Felton. His smell would be familiar to her. But it just wasn't the time to go into that; Calvin would know that as well as I, when he'd had a moment to think. "And my brother may be one of you now. He'll need you," I added, in the most even voice I could manage. It wasn't very even, at that.
"I'll come get Jason, next full moon."
I nodded again. "Thank you," I told him, because I knew we would never have found Jason if he'd stonewalled us. "I have to get my brother home now." I knew Calvin wanted me to touch him, wanted me to connect with him somehow, but I just couldn't do it.
"Sure," he said, after a long moment. The shape-shifter stepped back while I scrambled up into the cab. He seemed to know I wouldn't want any help from him right now.
I'd thought I'd gotten unusual brain patterns from the Hotshot people because they were inbred. It had never occurred to me they were something other than wolves. I'd assumed. I know what my high school volleyball coach always said about "assume." Of course, he'd also told us that we had to leave everything out on the court so it would be there when we came back, which I had yet to figure out.
But he'd been right about assumptions.
Sam had already gotten the heater in the truck going, but not at full blast. Too much heat too soon would be bad for Jason, I was sure. As it was, the second Jason began to warm up, his smell was pretty evident, and I nearly apologized to Sam, but sparing Jason any further humiliation was more important.
"Aside from the bites, and being so cold, are you okay?" I asked, when I thought Jason had stopped shivering and could speak.
"Yes," he said. "Yes. Every night, every damn night, he'd come in the shed, and he'd change in front of me, and I'd think, Tonight he's going to kill me and eat me. And every night, he'd bite me. And then he'd just change back and leave. I could tell it was hard for him, after he'd smelled the blood . . . but he never did more than bite."
"They'll kill him tonight," I said. "In return for us not going to the police."
"Good deal," said Jason, and he meant it.
15
Jason was able to stand on his own long enough to take a shower, which he said was the best one he'd taken in his life. When he was clean and smelled like every scented thing in my bathroom, and he was modestly draped with a big towel, I went all over him with Neosporin. I used up a whole tube on the bites. They seemed to be healing clean already, but I could not stop myself from trying to think of things to do for him. He'd had hot chocolate, and he'd eaten some hot oatmeal (which I thought was an odd choice, but he said all Felton had brought him to eat had been barely cooked meat), and he'd put on the sleeping pants I'd bought for Eric (too big, but the drawstring waist helped), and he'd put on a baggy old T-shirt I'd gotten when I'd done the Walk for Life two years before. He kept touching the material as if he was delighted to be dressed.
He seemed to want to be warm and to sleep, more than anything. I put him in my old room. With a sad glance at the closet, which Eric had left all askew, I told my brother good night. He asked me to turn the hall light on and leave the door cracked a little. It cost Jason to ask that, so I didn't say a word. I just did as he'd requested.
Sam was sitting in the kitchen, drinking a cup of hot tea. He looked up from watching the steam of it and smiled at me. "How is he?"
I sank down into my usual spot. "He's better than I thought he would be," I said. "Considering he spent the whole time in the shed with no heat and being bitten every day."
"I wonder how long Felton would have kept him?"
"Until the full moon, I guess. Then Felton would've found out if he'd succeeded or not." I felt a little sick.
"I checked your calendar. He's got a couple of weeks."
"Good. Give Jason time to get his strength back before he has something else to face." I rested my head in my hands for a minute. "I have to call the police."
"To let them know to stop searching?"
"Yep."
"Have you made up your mind what to say? Did Jason mention any ideas?"
"Maybe that the male relatives of some girl had kidnapped him?" Actually, that was sort of true.
"The cops would want to know where he'd been held. If he'd gotten away on his own, they'd want to know how, and they'd be sure he'd have more information for them."
I wondered if I had enough brainpower left to think. I stared blankly at the table: the familiar napkin holder that my grandmother had bought at a craft fair, and the sugar bowl, and the salt- and pepper-shakers shaped like a rooster and a hen. I noticed something had been tucked under the saltshaker.
It was a check for $50,000, signed by Eric Northman. Eric had not only paid me, he had given me the biggest tip of my career.
"Oh," I said, very gently. "Oh, boy." I looked at it for a minute more, to make sure I was reading it correctly. I passed it across the table to Sam.
"Wow. Payment for keeping Eric?" Sam looked up at me, and I nodded. "What will you do with it?"
"Put it through the bank, first thing tomorrow morning."
He smiled. "I guess I was thinking longer term than that."
"Just relax. It'll just relax me to have it. To know that . . ." To my embarrassment, here came tears. Again. Damn. "So I won't have to worry all the time."
"Things have been tight recently, I take it." I nodded, and Sam's mouth compressed. "You . . ." he began, and then couldn't finish his sentence.
"Thanks, but I can't do that to people," I said firmly. "Gran always said that was the surest way to end a friendship."
"You could sell this land, buy a house in town, have neighbors," Sam suggested, as if he'd been dying to say that for months.
"Move out of this house?" Some member of my family had lived in this house continuously for over a hundred and fifty years. Of course, that didn't make it sacred or anything, and the house had been added to and modernized many times. I thought of living in a small modern house with level floors and up-to-date bathrooms and a convenient kitchen with lots of plugs. No exposed water heater. Lots of blown-in insulation in the attic. A carport!
Dazzled at the vision, I swallowed. "I'll consider it," I said, feeling greatly daring to even entertain the idea. "But I can't think of anything much right now. Just getting through tomorrow will be hard enough."
I thought of the police man-hours that had been put into searching for Jason. Suddenly I was so tired, I just couldn't make an attempt to fashion a story for the law.