Page 7 of Kin of the Wolf

“I can’t either.” I kept myself from adding I was surprised he knew where to buy a physical newspaper—to think, he’d calledmea Boomer, even though I was barely Gen-X. I’d teased him enough for the morning though. One had to keep up the morale of one’s interns, not torment them needlessly. “I assume there’s something pertinent in it?”

He held a section from theSeattle Timesout to me, a photo of the apartment complex, Sylvan Serenity Housing, on the front of the NW section. I slumped against the door frame, certain this didn’t herald anything good.

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The titlefor the article under the photo of the apartment complex was “Ghost Dogs Feature in Speculation on Sylvan Serenity Murders.”

I pushed my hand through my hair. This wasn’t the first article that had been printed in the aftermath of the deaths of the thugs who’d driven down here in Teslas, shooting rifles out the windows in an attempt to kidnap me and kill Duncan.Murderswas a strong word for their fate since the killings had all been in self-defense. The choice worried me. Previously, the deaths had been labeled as freak animal attacks, with nobody implicated. Nohumans, anyway. Since the authorities didn’t acknowledge the existence of werewolves, they hadn’t brought them up, at least not that I’d heard. I didn’t know what Bolin had told the police when they’d questioned him, but I doubted he’d mentioned werewolves either.

“Ghost dogs?” I asked. “That’s worse than the article about lions.” That had been published the week before. “Where are people coming up with this stuff? There’s no evidence to support lions or ghosts.”

Maybe I should have been pleased the hypotheses were off themark—what would I have done if an article had called outwerewolves?—but I mostly wanted all discussion of the apartment-complex deaths to disappear. Weren’t there other more recent crimes the journalists could write about?

Bolin shrugged. “People don’t like unsolved mysteries. They need explanations. One of my professors liked to say that in the absence of facts, we will make up stories to explain things that allow our world views to make sense. Sometimes in the presence of facts too.”

“I guess. Well, this doesn’t really change anything, right? It’s just more speculation. Implausible speculation.”

Something about Bolin’s expression warned me that I was wrong, that itdidchange something.

“My parents saw the article,” he said grimly.

“Oh.” As the ramifications of that came to me, I repeated a softer, “Oh. Had they, uhm, not seen the earlier ones?”

“They’ve been out of the country. I told them there’d been an incident on the premises, but I didn’t go into all the details over the phone. I don’tknowall the details since I wasn’t there for it. I mostly pointed out that crime has been on the rise in the area.”

That was true, and not all of it had to do with me. I was fairly certain the motorcycle gang that had come through in November hadn’t been my fault. The riders hadn’t been paranormal in any way, and they’d vandalized the parking lot before I’d uncovered the magical case or reconnected with my werewolf family.

The rest of the “crime” around the complex, however, had been my fault. Maybe in a roundabout way, but it had only happened because I lived here. My cousins and Radomir and Lord Abrams had all been after me for one reason or another.

“My parents might come by to talk to you later,” Bolin said. “They didn’t say when.”

That prompted my third, “Oh.”

Over the twenty-odd years that I’d worked as the propertymanager and, less officially, handywoman, I’d rarely interacted with the Sylvans. Usually, their businessperson Ed Kuznetsov was my contact, and even he didn’t come by that often. Typically, we spoke on the phone when something came up, which hadn’t been frequent. Until my life had grown insane with artifacts and belligerent family members, I’d run the place smoothly, taking care of almost every detail about the complex and operations.

“It wouldn’t be to talk about that article specifically,” Bolin added, “but about the increased crime and the deaths. Nobody’s come forward to press charges or anything, but they’re worried because people died violently on one of their properties.”

“Yeah.” I hoped I wasn’t about to lose my job. Even if the pay wasn’t great, I’d grown comfortable here, and I liked the work and independence. As I’d just been thinking, the owners mostly left me alone, trusting me to handle things. The idea of starting over somewhere else was daunting, especially if some suspicion ended up getting attached to my name. Whether it had been self-defense or not, I had killed those guys. What if someone figured it out?

I made myself skim through the article. “The author is hypothesizing that someone trained animals orsummoned ghost dogsto kill on their behalf?” I checked the top of the newspaper to make sure it was indeed theSeattle Timesand not some unreputable rag. Their articles didn’t usually cover ghosts.

“Most of the story talks about the idea of trained animals—realanimals,” Bolin said. “It was some of the residents here who suggested ghost animals. Some claimed to have seen dogs or wolves that moved eerily and were unnaturally powerful.”

“Nothingunnaturalabout the wolves,” came an indignant mutter from inside the apartment—Duncan listening near the door.

I didn’t point out that werewolves were all kinds ofunnatural. We being werewolves ourselves didn’t change that.

“Anyway,” Bolin said, “I thought you should know about the paper and that my parents would be in touch.”

“Yes. Thank you for telling me.”

“I also may owe you an apology.”

“I doubt you have anything to apologize for. Especially on a Saturday. I wasn’t even expecting to see you today.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to see me either. But, uhm, on my way in…” Bolin looked toward the corner of the building. My apartment was in the back, so we couldn’t see the parking lot, but he waved in that direction. “Do you remember how you walked me through onboarding new tenants? And we leased an apartment to those two girls who are going to be roommates?”

I didn’t think they were exactlyroommates, but I hadn’t commented on that at any point since Bolin thought the redhead was cute. “I do.”

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