Wolf Moon Read online

  Wolf Moon

  The Full Moon Trilogy-Book 3

  By Tess Grant

  Digital ISBN

  EPUB 978-1-77362-979-7

  Kindle 978-1-77362-980-3

  Amazon Print ISBN 978-1-77362-981-0

  Copyright 2017 by Tess Grant

  Cover Art by Michelle Lee

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  Chapter One

  “I need to talk to my baby brother.”

  Of course, it was a wrong number. Kitty checked her watch. Five after ten. Anyone who knew her mom, Anne Irish, knew better than to call after nine-thirty at night. It was one of the house rules. Break it at your peril. Besides, there was only one baby brother in the house and that was Kitty’s own, Sam, who happened to be standing at the door of the study staring at her. He must have slipped out of bed—his blonde hair already looked like bed head—and down the stairs at the ring of the phone.

  Kitty shooed him back to his room with her hand. If their mom got out of the shower and found him there, it wouldn’t be pretty. Cupping her palm over the receiver, she hissed, “It’s not Dad. Get in bed or Mom’ll….” and she drew her forefinger across her throat in a severing motion. Into the phone, she said, “Sorry, wrong number.”

  As Sam turned and began climbing the stairs, Kitty pulled the receiver away from her ear and held it toward the cradle. The voice said something, and the name she only half heard made her draw it back. “I’m sorry?”

  “Nate. Gotta talk to Nate. He there?” The noise coming out of the phone was somewhere between a rasp and a gurgle, as if the speaker had screamed so long his throat was raw and bleeding.

  “Ummm.” Kitty considered hanging up again. Whoever it was had her father’s name right, but Nate Irish was an only child. At least that’s what she had always been told. “I think you have the wrong number.”

  The caller coughed. Half his lung must have come up in that hacking gush. Kitty grimaced in disgust. Good thing there was a phone line between her and whoever this nut job—infectious nut job—was. She walked to the bottom of the stairs to double-check on Sam. He wasn’t sitting on the top step; she hoped he was back in his room. She returned to the window. A slight chill radiated off the glass, making the hair on her arms rise.

  “Nate Irish,” the caller rasped when he was able. “Is this Annie?”

  Kitty pressed the receiver a little closer to her ear. He knew her mother’s name too. She had never heard her mother called anything but Anne, but still she knew it wasn’t a wrong number. The background hum strengthened for a second, then fell off before rising again. The wind. Her caller was outdoors. She scrubbed one hand up and down her forearm, trying to rub some warmth into her skin, but the goose bumps stayed, dotting her arm.

  “Annie?” the caller asked again.

  She was supposed to hang up. Her mom always told her that. It was in all the horror movies her friend Jenna made her watch. Staying on the line with the creepy guy asking all the questions was the last thing she should do. “No. They’re busy. Can I take a message?”

  The only answer was the rise and fall of the air on the line and his ragged breathing.

  “Can I take a message?” she repeated. Only a tiny pane of glass hung between her and the inky black outside. Not even a sliver of moon cut through the cloud cover. Kitty was positive he stood in the dark on his end of the line—huddled in the lee of some corner convenience mart or against the back wall of a crappy bus station; his feet surrounded by week-old shopping flyers and fast food wrappers. Why did the weird ones always call late at night?

  “Who is this?” The voice was all soft edges now, almost purring.

  She nearly laughed. Was he trying to be charming? Part of her wondered why she continued the conversation. She’d probably do something really stupid next—like wander out into the woods on a full moon night without a silver bullet. She tossed the question back at him. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Nate’s big brother.”

  The words stunned Kitty, and she sat down in the wingback next to the phone. Her butt hit harder than she intended and the bump rattled up her spine, forcing out a little laugh. “Good one. Dad doesn’t have a big brother.”

  Even as she said the words, she knew they were a lie. It had been nine months since she’d first heard the name Kevin Irish—some sort of horrible gestation period. Five months since she’d heard the story of how he’d been attacked by werewolves and gone on the run over twenty years before. Three months since she found the pictures in the workshop of her dad and an older boy—a boy who looked surprisingly like Kitty herself. “Nate and me” proclaimed the words on the back. He wasn’t some second cousin twice removed like she told herself.

  She could deny it all she wanted to the man on the phone, but Kitty had an uncle. And he was a werewolf.

  A soft laugh rippled into her ear. “Oh, but he does. He just doesn’t claim me. So you’re his delightful daughter. Kathleen, right?”

  Kitty cowered back into the chair, drawing her legs up into a ball. The wings wrapped protectively around her, shielding her view of the dark window. Maybe she could pretend the ugly yellow-green of the chair was actually daylight streaming in around her. She could hear the thrum of the shower from the bathroom; she didn’t want—or need—her mom getting out and hearing this. “Why wouldn’t he claim you?”

  The line hummed as the wind rose on the caller’s end. When he spoke again, she swore he was smiling and it wasn’t a friendly smile either. “Because I scare him.”

  Kitty thought of her father at the air base the last time she’d seen him—tall and straight in his desert camo herding a gaggle of younger soldiers toward the troop plane taking them to Iraq. Her father’s deployment had been the first of all the changes in her life. Her mother went back to work, and Kitty took over the house and Sam. Then Kitty met Phinney—local town eccentric—and added werewolf hunter to her list of extracurricular activities. With Kevin’s call, the job was about to come a lot closer to home.

  “Daddy isn’t scared of anything.” Daddy? She hadn’t called him that since she was Sam’s age. She willed herself to calm down. “He doesn’t have a big brother,” she whispered, but this time it sounded more like a question.

  The shower cut off and the farmhouse grew quiet. Her mom was fast. It was one of the advantages of short hair. Kitty knew from experience once the water shut off, she had two minutes max before Anne would be moving around the house.

  Harsh breathing whooshed down the line again. “He was probably right not to tell you. Don’t get me wrong—certainly I’m disappointed, but I understand. I’m a very dangerous man.” He began to laugh, a wheezy sound that broke down into another coughing fit.

  He probably thought you were going to give us all TB, Kitty thought, hoping a little humor would quiet the churning in her stomach. Her body wasn’t so easily convinced this was funny though, and her stomach rolled again.

  When the coughing subsided, the caller continued. “He could have at least used me as a tale to terrify you when you misbehaved. I think I deserve that much.” He paused for a few seconds. “I do scare you, don’t I?”

  Her stomach rippled in response and she pressed farther back into the armchair. “No,” she lied. “It’d take a lot more than you to scare me.”

  I’ve had things in my face that want to kill me. A voice in my ear is nothing. Her hand shook, and the phone jerked into the side of her head. Nothing. Now repeat it until you believe it, K
it.

  “Hmmm,” the caller mused. “Too bad. I should.”

  Kitty whispered, “I’m hanging up now.”

  She pulled the phone away from her ear, but the voice came again and she froze. “Forget Nate. He wouldn’t be that happy anyway. Why don’t you tell Annie I’m coming home? Somewhere around the twenty-third or twenty-fourth should work out.”

  Kitty swallowed hard. There would be more on her calendar than just the full moon.

  “You know who I’m really eager to meet? Sam. Yeah, tell him Uncle Kevin’s comin’.”

  Clunk. Kitty shoved the phone down hard.

  “Hey. No talking with your buddies after nine-thirty. Save the late nights for college.” Her mother stood in the doorway in her robe, running a towel through her short dark hair. “Anybody who calls after nine is either an emergency or a crazy.”

  Or both.

  “Prank call,” said Kitty, standing up. She reached out to the window and twisted the little stick to turn the blind down. She didn’t want to see the blackness outside the window any more.

  More than that, she didn’t want whatever was outside in the dark seeing her.

  Chapter Two

  Anne watched Sam speed walk toward airport security. “He’s pretty fired up. I thought he was going to shove me out the door this morning.” She shifted the bulging bag on her shoulder.

  “He figures the sooner you’re out, the sooner you’re back with Dad,” Kitty said, dragging her mother’s wheeled suitcase around a St. Patrick’s Day display in the middle of the long corridor.

  “Yup. It’ll be good to have him home.” Anne smiled, but she didn’t lift her gaze from the floor.

  The last conversation with the doctor at Walter Reed Army Medical Center had been a few days ago. When her mother picked up the wireless extension upstairs, Kitty hadn’t bothered to hang up the one on her end.

  Her mother’s frustration had come through loud and clear to every clipped officious phrase the doctor had thrown at her.

  “Mrs. Irish, we’ve discussed this situation before. I don’t know what the problem is, but something is holding your husband back. If he is unable or unwilling to invest in his own recovery, the staff here at Walter Reed is unable to take him any farther.”

  “If you could hold off on the discharge another week, I’m sure I could convince….” Even with the phone pressed tight to her ear, Kitty could hear the floor upstairs squeaking. Her mother was pacing.

  “Mrs. Irish.” Kitty gritted her own teeth at the condescension in the doctor’s voice. “Your husband will not participate in the physical therapy sessions. His wounds are healed, and there is no physical reason for his inability to walk. Indeed, I would pronounce him perfectly healthy. I’m sure even in such a small town as….” Here, pages rattled in the background as the doctor searched the paperwork for a name. “Oakmont, an outpatient physical therapist could be found.”

  “I keep encouraging him to work harder, that the therapists are there to help, but he’s hesitant. Maybe it’s a pain issue.” Kitty didn’t need to be in the same room to know Anne was running her fingers through her hair; she always did when she was worried.

  The doctor sighed. “It’s not a pain issue. It’s a mental issue. And the best place for a veteran to work through a problem of that nature is in the security of his own home.”

  The thump from upstairs meant her mother had plopped down on the edge of the bed. In defeat. “Of course, I’ll bring him home. I mean, if you can’t do any more for him. You’re right. In the home environment, he’ll get better so much faster.”

  Kitty listened through to the end of the conversation, replacing her handset only after her mother clicked off. Now she walked her mother to the plane taking Anne to Walter Reed to pick up her dad.

  “He’s not doing that great, is he?” Kitty asked.

  Anne drew in a deep breath. “Not so much. He won’t put any effort into his physical therapy, so he’s still using a walker. The doctors say he’s fine. The physical therapists don’t know what’s going on. It’s like there’s something in the way.”

  For nearly a year, Kitty had hoped her dad would come home, that everything—and everyone—would start up exactly where it had ended, like pushing the pause button on a CD. Unfortunately, the disk kept whirling. She could never go back to the beginning unchanged—to that time before Phinney, before the werewolves. Maybe her dad’s CD had been spinning too.

  “For now, we’re going to move him into the back room—the study, off the living room. He can’t get up the stairs. The walker’s too wide.” Anne pinched the skin between her eyebrows. “I should have gotten it cleaned out in the last few days, but I didn’t get to it. Can you…?” Her voice trailed off hopefully.

  “Sure,” Kitty nodded. I’ll slide it in between studying for mid-terms and chasing after Sam.

  “Joe’s mom and dad are going to let us borrow their guest room bed for a while.” Anne looked up as Sam flapped an arm at them.

  He had stopped at the security line to wait for the slowpokes to catch up. “Hurry up. What if you miss the plane?”

  “Mom’s flight doesn’t leave for over an hour,” Kitty said.

  Anne grabbed Kitty and pulled her into a hug. “You’ve done great,” she whispered into Kitty’s ear. “You’re almost done.”

  Kitty hugged her back, feeling a brief flare of hope at the words ‘almost done.’ If only it were true. To give up the housework and taking care of Sam…but if her dad was that bad, there might be no break at all. And the werewolf hunting was always there…as regular as the moon. Still any freedom would feel good.

  “Get over here and hug me.” Anne held her arms out to Sam.

  Sam tolerated a brief squeeze before twisting free. “Get going before you miss it. Can we watch you take off?”

  Anne smiled at Kitty over Sam’s head. “I’ll be on that plane, don’t worry. Be good and I’ll see you in three days.” She grabbed her wheeled bag from Kitty and stepped into the security line. “Viewing windows are two flights up. Run upstairs and watch a few planes.”

  “Excellent.” Sam dashed for the escalator.

  “Wait for me.” Kitty raised her voice. She caught up with her little brother at the base of the escalator. “We can’t wait for Mom’s plane. But I’ll let you watch two before we’re out of here.”

  Sam jumped on the moving treads two steps above Kitty. “Do I have to go back to school? There are only a couple of hours left.”

  “Good try, kiddo. It’s eight-thirty in the morning, and it’s a half hour tops to get back. You’ll only miss the first hour or so.” Kitty grinned. “If I have to go, you have to go.”

  Sam jumped up the final stairs and darted across the lobby toward the windows.

  “Hey,” Kitty called, trying to keep her voice from becoming an all-out yell. “Stick around where I can see you.”

  Sam’s nose was already pressed against the window, his breath making little circles of condensation. Kitty crossed the hall and stopped next to him. “Don’t go running off. We’re in the big city now.”

  Next to the big viewing windows, the heat from the main lobby dissipated into thin air. It reminded her of standing by the window at home the other night, Kevin’s voice in her ear. Uncle Kevin—the relative she’d never met. Kitty pulled her coat tighter around her. She stood in the ten-inch zone of cold surrounding the glass and watched the planes wait their turns to take off.

  “Which is Mom’s?”

  “I don’t know if it’s out there yet. It’ll be one of those.” Kitty tapped a finger on the glass, pointing at a commuter plane pulling up to the boarding door.

  “Oh yeah. Blue tail.” Sam turned to her. “Won’t it be great to have Dad home? I can’t wait. He needs to work with me on my curve ball ’cause baseball starts in two months.”

  Kitty pushed her chin down into her scarf. Maybe Joe could work with Sam on his pitching. Jenna liked Sam—maybe she could use her dance team influence to get somebody off th
e baseball team to spend an hour with him. Their dad wasn’t going to be doing anything like that with a walker. Kitty said hesitantly, “We need to give Dad some time to get used to being back. Settle into the routine, you know.”

  “You sound like Mom,” Sam said, squinting toward a plane coming in. “He’s been waiting to play baseball with me. I know it.” He wandered down the window a few feet to get a better look.

  Maybe baseball would be all it took. Kitty could hope at least. She stepped backward away from the windows. Checking her watch, she calculated. Thirty minutes and they would skim in with more than half of second hour to go. “Five minutes, Sam.”

  “Seven?”

  “Six.” She could have predicted the bargaining—she knew her little brother so well. Their mom’s trips back and forth to Walter Reed might have cost Anne at least a couple weeks of Sam’s life, but Kitty had gained the time with him. The boy drove her crazy but she loved him. “We’ll see what we see, then we gotta get out of here.”

  Kitty shoved her hands deep in her pockets, one hand closing around the key ring, the other around the little WWII noisemaker Phinney had given her when they’d been partners. Paratroopers used the crickets behind enemy lines to signal each other when they were lost or separated. It was a standard carry item for her. Lip gloss, cricket. Driver’s license, cricket.

  Kitty rocked on the heels of her boots, waiting for six minutes to trickle by. Sam must be counting planes or something. His forehead wrinkled in concentration. She’d avoided thinking about last night’s phone conversation, but with each back-and-forth motion, a line went through her head. Forward. I’m Nate’s big brother. Backward. He doesn’t claim me. Forward. Do I scare you? Backward. I’m coming home.

  She came down hard on the flat of her feet and clenched the noisemaker tighter. She wished it had been a mistake, a prank. But he knew Dad’s name and Mom’s too. And he knew me. What did he call me—the delightful daughter? And the worst of it, the ending when she’d dropped the phone back in the cradle. You know who I’m really eager to meet? Sam. The door leading out to the tarmac opened, and the blue-tailed plane she’d pointed out to Sam released its passengers. People filed up the corridor past Kitty, jostling her with their briefcases. She glanced at the window but saw only clear glass. Her stomach dropped in a nauseating swoop. Sam was nowhere in her line of vision. Craning her neck, she searched the wall near the viewing windows. Her heartbeat picked up at least twenty beats per minute. She tried to take a step forward but the line of business-suited passengers flowed between her and the window. A briefcase smacked her shin, and she stumbled backward.