Page 116 of Evidence of a Folktale

“Pizza sounds perfect.” Bel placed her heavy best friend down on the floor, but when she stood back up, a wary Eamon greeted her.

“What happened?” he asked, clearly reading the emotions on her face.

“Rollo’s transport crashed. He’s missing.” She grabbed one of the complementary paper plates from the pizzeria and loaded it with a few slices as she recounted her day. “They’re blaming the accident on the icy roads, but I don’t buy it for a second, especially since the officers escaped with only bruises,” she said, taking a bite of the still-steaming Margherita slice. “Rollo did this. He caused the crash.”

“I’d bet money on it.” Eamon filled his plate with the meat lover’s slices and then stacked the boxes before grabbing a bottle of wine and two glasses in his fist. “Come on.” He nudged her into the living room, and he set the food and alcohol on the coffee table before the roaring fire.

“It’s dark now, but they crashed during the day,” Bel said as she curled up on the luxurious couch, and realizinghe wouldn’t get any salty pizza no matter how big his puppy eyes got, Cerberus shoved his face into his toy box and started throwing stuffed animals around the floor. “I thought werewolves needed the moon to shift.”

“Just like I can’t walk into a church or step into the sunlight or see my reflection in a mirror.” Eamon grabbed her legs and pulled them onto his lap before opening the wine. “It’s part of the lore they spread to protect themselves, much like the myths my kind perpetuates to hide our truth. If a Dhampir can’t set foot inside a church, then humanshave no needto fear those sitting beside them.”

“And if werewolves only shift below the moon, anyone you meet midday is safe.”

“Exactly.” He handed her the wine andthenturned on the news for soft background noise.

“So Rollo shifted once he escaped your reach and crashed the van.” Bel curled closer to Eamon, trapping him below her legs with the sole purpose of watching his black eyes burn. After today’s aggravation, this wasexactlywhat she needed. Pizza, wine, a roaring fire, a comically playing dog, and her best friend and confidant. “I don’t know how to feel about this,” she continued. “He murdered people… brutally. He stripped them down and forced them to run naked save for a hooded cloak through the snow. But he was also a man so broken by his grandmother’s death that he felt he had no choice when the legal system failed him. I want his actions to disgust me, but then I picture my dad in the woods because someone made a devil’s deal for something as stupid as fame. I think about finding Briar gutted and frozen, and I fear I wouldn’t be any better. If I triedover and over againto convince the police, only for them to laugh in my face, what would I do? Would I move on, or would I hunt the guilty down myself?”

“Don’t drive yourself crazy thinking like that.” Eamon ran a hand over her hair. “Your family isn’t dead, and Rollo isn’t you.”

“I know what you’d do,” she said. “You would hunt down their murderers and make sure nothing was left to find.”

“Yes, but that’s the key difference. You wouldn’t find anything if Iwasavengingyour family, therefore, there’d be no crime.No body? No problem. But compared to the things I’ve done, vigilante justice would be almost heroic.”

“If he hadn’t shoved the deaths in our face, we would’ve never known he was the killer. He had the power to drag them deep into the wilderness, and if he’d chosen to kill close to home, we might have classified them as animal attacks, just like with Ewan’s victim. He could’ve gotten away with it.”

“But he didn’t want to get away with it. He wanted the world to acknowledge what those five did. He wanted to prove their guilt.”

“Will that happen, though?” she asked. “If the deal is their lawyer, he’ll spin this Draven’s way.”

“But you know the truth.” Eamon brushed his knuckles over her clavicle. “I know the truth. Griffin knows the truth. That’s a good start.”

“But not good enough for Rollo. He still escaped custody.”

“Bars can’t hold wolves,” Eamon said. “You begged me not to kill him, so I didn’t, but the only way to stop a creature like that is to kill it.”

“We’re never going to catch him, are we?”

“No, you’re not. I guarantee you he’s inhiswolf form, and the authorities aren’t searching for an animal. My guess is he’s headed north into the woods. You’ll never find him. But I could.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes, I could find him…” He paused, his head twitching as his hearing picked up something only his senses could detect. “In fact,I know where he’s been. Tracking him from there wouldn’t be hard.”

Bel stiffened, her eyes scanning the dark windows. Was he here? Had Rollo returned to exact revenge on her for disrupting his plans? But then Eamon leaned forward and snagged the remote off the coffee table, increasing the news to a volume she could hear.

“Tragedy has struck Aesop’s Files yet again, and fans worldwide mourn the sudden and unexpected death of the show’s lead actor Beau Draven,” the evening reporter said, and Bel sat to attention so fast that she choked on her pizza, gagging and coughing until Eamon pounded relief into her back.

“A series of gruesome murders plagued the crew of the beloved TV show while they filmed on location this winter,” the reportercontinued,as if Bel wasn’t actively fighting for her life. “The man allegedly responsible for the killings was taken into custody during the blizzard two days ago, and actor Beau Draven was arrested alongside him. Details haven’t been released to the public yet, but Draven’s lawyer issued a statement calling the allegations outrageously false and malicious. Mr. Draven was released on bail this morning, but his car was found crashed on the side of the road early this evening.” The woman mentioned a two-lane divided highway that Bel was unfamiliar with, and she wondered what the pair was doing so far off course. She returned to New York City often to visit her family, and if Draven was aiming for the Big Apple, he shouldn’t have ended up in the snow miles away from the route any GPS would recommend.

“Beau Draven and his lawyer were pronounced dead on the scene,” the reporter’s voice said as images of the crash displayed across the screen, and Bel recoiled against Eamon at the sight. The mangled metal. The shattered glass.The annihilated trees and obliterated snow. The news didn’t need to tell their audience that the occupants of that expensive vehicle were killed upon impact. No human could survive violence like that, and while the deal possessed magic, his body was brittle, just like Alcina Magus’ was when Eamon beat her to death to save Bel.

“The authorities have ruled the crash an accident,” the reporter said, yanking Bel back to the present. “With the increasingly bad weather plaguing the tri-state area, emergency services have struggled tokeep up with thestreet cleaning demands. The police believe the car hit a stretch of black ice, which caused the driver to lose control. The studio has yet to release a statement about the actor’s passing, but thecast and crew of Aesop’s Files have taken to social media to express their condolences to the Draven family.”

“There wasn’t any ice, was there?” Bel asked as the reporter transitioned to the next segment of the nightly news. “It was Rollo. He got his fifth kill.”

“That car hit those trees with a massive amount of force,” Eamon said. “It didn’t end up there by accident. And why were they in the middle of nowhere? I drive to the city often, and I’ve never ended up there.”

“Rollo’s wolf probably corralled them somewhere lonely,” Bel said. “He didn’t want any witnesses. Are werewolves fast?”

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