“We’re breaking and entering?”

I shrugged. “With any luck, just entering.”

That’s when I realized Abby was wearing hiking boots rather than the party heels she’d worn the day before. She’d known from the moment she got out of bed that she would talk me into taking her to the crime scene one way or another.

I’d never even stood a chance.

We made our way through the woods quietly, on alert for any sign that another shifter had been there recently. But I saw no claw marks on bark, which would have indicated that a cat had climbed the tree. Both the undergrowth and bed of fallen leaves and pine needles were too thick to show any paw prints. And the only other cat I smelled was Abby.

She smelled like warm flesh, airport coffee, and good health. And strawberry lip balm. And a little like whoever she’d borrowed her jacket from. The residual scent was familiar.

“Is that Robyn’s?”

Abby glanced down at the jacket. “Yeah. I couldn’t find mine.”

I’d never formally met Robyn, and I’d only had the chance to smell her once. She’d been unconscious and bleeding by the time I’d arrived at the cabin where those sick hunter bastards had tried to lure Abby to her death, then hang her taxidermied head on their wall. But once was enough for any cat worth his claws, and I should have recognized Robyn’s scent earlier.

“How’s she doing?”

Abby rounded a clump of evergreens a few steps ahead of me. “Better. She was having nightmares for a while, but those have mostly stopped. Her parents call all the time now, and I know they just want to help, but she never wants to talk to them. I don’t think she knows what to say. I offered to take her to a counselor on campus, but she wouldn’t even discuss it.”

“It’s a good thing she has you to talk to.” Post-traumatic stress could be a real bitch, especially for humans, most of whom rarely witnessed any death, much less the violent slaughter of several close friends at once. “But I guess it could have been worse.” And no one knew that with more certainty than Abby.

She turned to give me a very grave look. “It was plenty bad.”

The sudden change in her demeanor worried me.

In college, Abby had made friends and gained both independence and confidence. By the beginning of her sophomore year, she’d regained her sense of humor and had become almost compulsively cheerful, as if putting her trauma behind her was a conscious decision and one that required relentless reinforcement.

Seeing her somber now was jarring, and it did not escape my notice that the change was in response to her friend’s recent trauma rather than her own. As far as I knew, Faythe was the only person she’d ever spoken to about her own ordeal, and that was because Faythe had been there for part of it.

“Hey, is that the house?” she whispered, and I followed her gaze to a low-pitched roof barely visible between the treetops.

“I think so.” I stepped in front of her to assume the point position, and she didn’t argue.

Listening carefully, I pushed my other senses to the back of my mind as we crept to the edge of the yard ahead, sticking to the cover of the woods for the moment. The house was small and one story, with a cellar. The exterior cellar entrance was secured with a padlock and chain, neither of which I could break through without bolt cutters.

We had several pairs back at the lodge, and I’d thought I’d have a chance to pick them up, along with a couple of experienced enforcers.

I glanced over the deserted, overgrown backyard and found a weatherworn shed in one corner, next to the obligatory old car on blocks. The only thing I could make out inside the doorless shed was an ancient and rusted riding lawnmower.

The back wall of the house boasted peeling paint, several grimy windows, and a metal door centered over a set of prefab concrete steps. I probably wouldn’t be able to hear any heartbeats or pulses coming from inside, but by all appearances, there wouldn’t be any to hear.

“Put these on.” I took a pair of leather gloves from my right pocket and handed them to Abby, then I pulled an identical pair from my opposite pocket.

“They’re too big,” she whispered, tugging the first one over her fingers.

“Make it work.”

A second later, she held up both hands hidden by a comically large pair of gloves, which hung limp over her fingertips by at least an inch. Her hands were tiny. But then, so was the rest of her. She shrugged. “If the police are gone, they’ve probably already tested for fingerprints.”

“Maybe.” I tugged her gloves down as far as they’d go. “But we don’t even know if they know it’s a crime scene yet. So, we take precaution.”

I stepped into the yard and she followed silently while I tried the back door—it was locked—then peered through three grimy windows. They were all locked too, and I saw no evidence from the rooms beyond that anyone was home. Or had been in several days.

The locks on the back door were substantial. I probably could have broken them, but if the police ever came back to the scene, they would see that the locks had been forced rather than picked—a feat beyond human strength. “We’ll have to break a window,” I whispered, peeking carefully around the corner of the house to make sure no one was out front within human hearing range.

Abby grabbed my arm, and I followed her line of sight to see the kitchen window standing open just a fraction of an inch. “What about that one?”

“I can’t fit through.”

“I can.”

“No.”

“Jace—”

“No.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and lifted one russet eyebrow at me. “You’d really rather break the glass—vandalizing some poor dead guy’s property—than let me climb through a window and open the door for you?”

Damn her and her faultless logic.

“Fine. But don’t touch anything,” I insisted, and she immediately started tugging on the fingers of her right glove. “And leave those on.”

“They inhibit my fine motor skills.”

“That’s my condition. Take it or leave it.”

Abby rolled her eyes. “Fine.” She reached up and slid the glass panel open, then peered through the bottom of the window, gripping the sill in her clown gloves. At five foot nothing, that was the only part she could reach. “I need a boost.”