A Wolf After My Own Heart MaryJanice Davidson (children's ebooks online .txt) 📖

“What the hell are you talking about?” Mock asked. “Who’s Macropi?”

Oz straightened in his seat. “So that wasn’t you guys?”

Gulo was shaking his head; the other two hench-turtlenecks looked equally mystified.

He exchanged a glance with Annette, then said what they were both thinking. “Then who the hell tried to burn Mama’s house down?”

Chapter 46

“Both of you shift,” Lila ordered. “Right now. And wait here. Do not leave this spot. I’ll be back in a sec.”

She’d never get used to how quickly these guys could get out of their clothes. Fabric tore, and she was glad they were following instructions even if telling them to put on her sweaters was dumb in retrospect because now they were getting torn to shit, fuck.

She walked softly and steadily around the side of the house, hoping whomever set the fire was still there. It wasn’t likely—arsonists who hung around their own fires tended to go to prison—but she had to check anyway.

The kitchen porch door was open. Was the firebug still inside the house? Was he a suicidal firebug? Even more interesting, there was a familiar truck in her driveway: Harriss & Son.

Which made perfect sense once you looked at the clues. Too bad he had to set another fire before she caught on to the fact that he set fires.

She ran back to the kids, went to her knees, stared straight into Devoss’s furry fox face. “You both get to the shed and get out the hidden door, and you hide in the woods until me or Net or Oz or Macropi call for you. If not for yourself, then to keep Sally safe.” She picked up Devoss by his scruff and tossed him gently in the direction of the shed to get him moving. “Now.” Sally hesitated, then scampered after Devoss, her roly-poly body making her look like a moving medicine ball.

Then Lila turned back to confront the dumbass who thought he could burn out someone who planted dill. It was broad daylight, which seemed wrong. Surely such terrors came by night? When the hour was darkest, when the body’s circadian rhythms were at their lowest? When, if you were still awake, you felt like the only person on earth? Even though she knew that was childish nonsense—the fire that consumed her mother’s possessions had been started at 3:00 p.m., Sue and Sam’s plane crashed around lunchtime, she sat through M. Night’s The Happening at 4:00 p.m.—it still seemed strange to confront horror in daylight.

There was a crash as someone shoved open the kitchen door and stumbled out into the yard, smoke pouring out behind him. “You.”

“Me,” she agreed. “You disconnected my smoke detectors, you arsonous douchenozzle.” That was a word, right? Arsonous?12 “Macropi called your dad to fix her screen door, but you showed up instead.” And when he was done with the door, she realized, he saw a window of time when the Curs(ed) House was empty and made his move.

“Why didn’t you take a fucking hint?”

“Perfect question,” she told Harry Harriss, son of the owner of the Curs(ed) House. “There were enough clues, I should’ve confronted you two days ago.”

Macropi: I thought you were going to encourage him to leave home once he got his pilot’s license?

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You had access to avgas, and I’ll bet your handy-dandy repair truck is full of stuff you used to sabotage the place until whoever-it-is moves out. How long have you been doing this? Never mind. Whatever the answer, it’s pathetic.”

It’s not like I’m doing any of it on purpose. And Macropi hadn’t been. It was all on Harry Harriss.

“You think this is bad?” Harry asked, pointing at the smoke.

“Well, yeah.”

“That’s just from the fireplace. Wait ’til I get some wood in there.”

Lila laughed at him, relief making her giddy. “That’s what you did? You tried to burn my house—”

“Our house, the Harriss house, you fucking ape.”

“—by starting a fire in the fireplace?” That explained why there was smoke, but she couldn’t hear or feel any flames. “What kind of arsonist doesn’t know about fireplace flues?”

“Who rents a house with fireplaces but doesn’t keep anything on hand to make a fire?”

“So it’s been a frustrating week for both of us.”

“Week’s not over yet,” he snarled.

“True.” Wow, he’s really going to stand there and confess to felonies in broad daylight. Awesome. “But why torch Macropi’s place?”

“It was supposed to teach her a lesson! Whenever anyone moves in, Shifter or Stable, she’s always on the front stoop with fairy bread or some other bullshit. And she’s always bummed when they move out! Even the Stables!” He threw his hands in the air, exasperated by the fact that Macropi wasn’t a drooling sociopath. “She’s just like my dad.” Harriss was a stockier version of his father, with tufts of black hair valiantly battling male pattern baldness, and beard stubble that looked so coarse it could be mistaken for steel wool. And what the hell was he, anyway? What was his other self?

He was also chock full of grievances this afternoon. But on the upside, it sounded like Harriss Sr. had no idea what his idiot son had been up to these last few years. “They both need to be way more discerning,” he finished contemptuously.

“Is that why you’ve never moved out? Is that why your dad has to bribe you to get you to leave? So you can hang out here and purify the neighborhood with your assholery?”

“They told you that?”

Wow, he looks more upset about that than he did about getting caught. “What can I say? People love to gossip about the pitiful.”

“I shoulda taught her a lesson about sticking with her own kind years ago.”

“You would have loved all those separate-but-equal lunch counters in the 1950s, I bet.”

Harriss ignored her history burn. “But what does she do? Huh? After the fire? She moves in…with the Stable! And takes her cubs, too!”

“Yeah, it’s a real bummer when you go to the trouble of committing arson and it