Moon Sworn

I headed down the side street again and walked toward the stand of trees. There was a young, bored-looking uniformed officer standing under the shade of one of them, and I smiled. Harris had obviously taken my jibe about protecting the crime scene seriously.

Of course, this also meant that I couldn’t nose around like I wanted to. I gave the young officer another smile as I walked by the trees, and continued on until the grass gave way to the tufted wild grass. I turned around and studied the houses surrounding the paddock. I couldn’t imagine Landsbury living in the immediate area—not with the police station and Harris’s house so close, but he’d have to live somewhere near the paddock because otherwise someone would have noticed him being carried. Although for all I knew, someone had. Harris wasn’t about to tell me stuff like that.

The houses behind Harris’s—the ones closer to the pub—were all pretty, well-looked-after places. Which didn’t seem the sort of place someone like Landsbury would be living in, so that left the area to the left of the park. It was more isolated, more rundown. The perfect area for a criminal wanting to get away from his past.

I spun on my heel and headed left. The cop was still watching me but, even from this distance, it didn’t “feel”

suspicious. More an “I’m bored and there’s a leggy redhead wondering around in a bathing suit” type of feel.

Interested, but not aroused.

It struck me then that since I’d woken up in the desert, nothing remotely resembling desire or lust had hit me. Which was odd, because I was a werewolf and sex was an important part of our makeup. But the urge just wasn’t there.

It couldn’t be just the soul-mate factor. Losing a soul mate might rob a werewolf of happiness and their life companion—and sometimes even their life—but it didn’t erase the need for sex. It couldn’t. That was ingrained in us and, when a soul mate died, the restriction of having sex only with them was lifted.

But maybe they’d stolen that the same time as they’d taken my memories, I thought glumly.

I headed past the last of the houses lining the paddock, then turned left into what was little more than a dusty side track. The houses lining either side of this track were even more decayed than they’d seemed from a distance, with most needing major structural work as well as a good lick of paint. The sea air obviously played havoc with timber surfaces. There were ten houses in all, and I walked past each of them slowly, drawing in the scents and trying to uncover anything that vaguely resembled Landsbury’s stench.

I found it in the last house on the street. I paused and took off a shoe, shaking imaginary sand out of it as I studied the building. It wasn’t much to look at, but the windows were unbroken and the curtains appeared to be newish. There was a dead bolt on the front door and padlocks on the side gate, and both were new.

Awareness surged at that moment—someone was coming toward me. Not Harris; someone else. I put my shoe back on and kept walking. A big, dark-ski

“Well, I’m guessing you’d be Ha

“That’s what my driver’s license tells me,” I said somewhat flippantly. “Who are you?”

“Mike West, the other cop stationed in this shit hole we call a town. Harris told me that you might wander down this way.”

He stopped, waiting for me to get closer. His scent washed across the air—an odd combination of smoke and dirt.

“I didn’t realize it was illegal to walk around this section of town.”

He turned around and fell in step beside me. “It’s not—except when the person doing the wandering has already been warned away from a crime scene twice and was seen there yet again only a few moments ago.”

So the young officer didn’t only ogle. Good for him. “I didn’t go anywhere near the taped-off area. I just walked through the field.”

“A technicality, as we both know. Consider this a final warning. If we find you near that field again, we’ll arrest you.”

I raised my eyebrows. “On what charge?”

“Obstructing an investigation.” He glanced at me. His eyes were brown—like almost everyone else in the West pack—but his seemed to hold his emotions clear and sharp. What I saw was resentment, unhappiness, and just a touch of anticipation.

And it was that last one that struck me as odd, because while it wasn’t sexual in nature, it did seem to center on me.

“I can hardly obstruct an investigation when there’s not a lot of investigation happening.”

“That’s because we have to wait for the big-city cops to come down and do it. We apparently haven’t got the right expertise or knowledge for that sort of stuff.”

Though there was no edge in his voice or expression, his derision rode the air, bitter and sharp. Mike West wanted more than what his job was offering. But then, was that really surprising? Most folks who became cops did so because they wanted to help others, or they wanted to catch criminals and make a difference.

And if the emotions I was sensing in Mike West were anything to go by, being a cop in a small town in the middle of nowhere wasn’t achieving either of those two aims.

“So the autopsy results haven’t come back yet, either?”

He slanted me a glance. “Like I’m going to tell you that. Harris would have my head.”

“He doesn’t have to know.”

Mike snorted. “Harris knows everything. The man has an instinct for it. Makes me wonder why he decided to transfer to a dead-end place like this.”

“Well, he is from the West pack—”

“He had a stellar career as a detective in Sydney, but he suddenly ups and runs back here?” Mike shook his head. “The man is mad.”

“Or he just missed home turf.”

“Yeah, there’s a whole lot to miss in this hellhole.”

I squinted up at him. “If you hate it so much, why not transfer?”

“I’ve applied, trust me.”

“Then why aren’t you getting anywhere?”

“Because it’s hard to fill positions in shit holes, and they’re reluctant to transfer people out of them.”

“So what are you doing about it, besides bitching?”

He laughed. It was a sound as bitter as the emotions that were still swirling around me. “Putting out feelers. Pulling in favors.” He shrugged. “Stuff like that.”

The snarky part of me wondered just how many favors a cop in nowhereville could actually pull in. Not a lot, one would have thought.

We hit the main street and I turned right, heading back to the store to grab the coffee I’d told Evin I was coming out to get. Mike followed.

“You don’t have to baby-sit me,” I commented. “I won’t go back to your precious crime scene.”

Now, going back to the house—that was another matter entirely. And one he hadn’t actually warned me away from. Of course, if I got caught breaking into said house, it could land me in a whole lot more trouble.

So shadow and don’t get caught, that little voice inside whispered.

Which made about as much sense as pigs flying, but even so, my pulse raced at the thought. Vampires shadowed, and I wasn’t a vampire.

Was I?

No, I thought, squinting up at the sun. If I was a vamp, I’d be toast by now. Yet if there was vampire blood in me, it would explain the surprising sensitivity to the sun.

“When you start heading back to the villa, I’ll head back to the station,” Mike commented. “Until then, consider me a thorn in your side.”

“There’s obviously very little to do in this town if you can waste time baby-sitting me.”

“That’s what I’ve been bitching about, remember?” He snorted softly. “The most exciting things to have happened in this town are your appearance and the damn murder.”

I raised my eyebrows as I squinted up at him. “How is my appearance exciting?”