“Jett, what’re you on about? Why’s the door open?” Shelby sounded innocently curious, like she had no suspicions that things could have gone wrong. “Was it that Alex, hmm? Did he not do the latch? Cooper would do the latch for you, there’s bunyip around these parts, you know.”

More than just bunyip, I thought. I wanted to call out to her. I couldn’t figure out how.

“Shelly, look at this.” Riley. He sounded concerned, unlike his daughter. The reason why was quickly explained as he continued, “There’s blood on the ground here, see? Someone’s been hurt.”

“Oh, God—Alex?” Shelby didn’t hesitate. She shoved past the dog, her footsteps pounding on the thin wooden floor. I heard her gasp. I wanted to roll over and tell her that I was fine, I just needed someone to help me off the floor, but that seemed so hard. I decided to stay where I was instead. Much better. “Alex?!”

I couldn’t ignore the edge of panic in her voice. She wasn’t touching me. That was a good thing. Even upset, she was respecting proper safety procedures. The risk of infection would have been too great, given that I was sprawled in a pool of blood and unidentified black sludge.

Answering her was the only polite thing to do, much as it pained me to even think about moving. I shifted my head enough to free my jaw, and said, muzzily, “’M not dead.”

Under the circumstances, it felt like a speech worthy of Shakespeare.

Shelby must have decided to hell with observing proper procedures, because I heard her step forward, only to stop abruptly. “Daddy, let me go! He’s hurt!”

“Yes, and Cooper’s dead.” Riley’s voice was grim. “Son, you want to go ahead and tell us what happened?”

It was difficult to think, much less follow an unspoken implication. Still, I did my best, and after only a few moments I reached the appropriate conclusion. “I didn’t kill him.” The more I talked, the easier it became. The words were coming back to me, clear and understandable, if a little bit dusty around the edges. “I tried to save him.”

“So what’s this sludge on his shirt? Some sort of toxin?”

Shelby’s father had to be playing stupid to upset me. It was the only thing that made sense. “It’s the toxin you sent us out here to make,” I snapped, turning my head and glaring at him. Half a second later my body realized that I had just forced it to move, and rewarded me with a wave of staggering nausea. I fought through it, keeping my eyes on Riley. He filled the doorway, one massive hand clamped down on Shelby’s upper arm as he forced her to stay with him. “I spilled the tincture when I was trying to administer it to him.”

“Yeah? You’re sure you didn’t feed him a nice big dose to see what would happen?”

Shelby shook off her father’s hand in a sudden, convulsive motion. He turned to blink at her, apparently as surprised by this as I was. “Stop it!” she said, grabbing a box of plastic gloves off the nearest counter and yanking them on. “Just you stop it! I know you don’t like Alex, and I don’t give a fuck! Look at his arm!” She pointed at me as she dropped the box. I obligingly twisted as much as I could to show him my left arm, and the shredded coat that covered it. “Something bit the ever-loving crap out of him, and now you’re going to stand there accusing him of murder? Really? That’s how you’re going to deal with my bloody fiancé now?”

“Fiancé?” he said. He sounded like he’d been poleaxed. I knew how he felt.

Shelby didn’t dignify his question with a response. She just glared at him and stalked over to where I was sitting, reaching down to offer me her hands. I glanced at them, alarmed. She smiled a little. “No open cuts, I’m wearing gloves, and lycanthropy is hard to catch, you said so yourself,” she said, still holding out her hands. “I’d have to lick you all over to pick up any of the remaining werewolf saliva from your skin. You’ll forgive me if I’m not interested, yeah?”

“Yeah, but you’re still taking a shower after this,” I said, and offered her my right elbow.

With her grasping my arm and me pushing off with my legs, we were able to get me to my feet with a minimum of trouble. The newly awakened pain in my left arm had dropped back down to a dull throb, allowing me to focus on other things. Like Cooper, whose eyes were still closed, but whose chest no longer rose and fell with the labored rhythm of his breath.

“Damn,” I whispered. “You poor bastard.”

“What happened?” Shelby’s voice was gentle.

I turned back to her. “We went to the aconite field to gather flowers,” I said. “There was this flat pond . . .”

“A billabong,” said Shelby. “I know the one. There’s bunyip down there.”

“Cooper seemed to think he could handle them.” And maybe he could have. Bunyip were business as usual for him: they existed in the environment they were made for.

“But that wasn’t what attacked you, was it, Alex?”

Her tone was low and even: that, and the use of my name at the end, actually made me smile. “You’re talking to me like a victim,” I said. “That’s good technique. Really soothing. You’ve been working on your people skills.”

“I’ll work on them even harder if you’ll tell me what attacked you.” She was smiling, but I could see the concern reflected in her eyes, and the hands that held me upright were trembling faintly. She was terrified.

She was right to be. I pulled away, shifting my balance to my own two feet, and much to my relief, she let me go. “We were ambushed by werewolves.” I looked to Riley, who was standing stone-faced in the doorway, blocking all hope of escape. “I think there were two of them, both in wolf form. One attacked. We filled it with bullets. We didn’t expect the second one. It came out of nowhere.”

“How are you so sure there were two?” asked Riley.

I shook my head. “We shot the shit out of the first one, if you’ll pardon my French. I never even saw the second one coming . . .” I closed my eyes. I couldn’t help myself. The image of a wolf rising from the flowers was there, waiting for me, and I was suddenly glad I couldn’t remember any dreams I’d had while I was unconscious. I shuddered, trying to shake off the thought, and opened my eyes as I repeated, “It came out of nowhere. There was no time for us to run. It bit me, and savaged Cooper. When I came to, I carried Cooper back here and bound his wounds. You can see what I did . . . I don’t think I made things any worse. I did the best I could.” My cheeks were wet. I was crying. That wasn’t really a surprise, although I wished I could have held back the tears until Riley was no longer looking at me with those cold, judgmental eyes.