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less than 10 yards
away.
    Thad ginned and hugged me one last time. “I
was providing some motivation.” He got in the car, and I glared at
him as he backed up. He just waved and smiled until he was out of
sight.
    Jed stood on the porch, his hands fisted, his
jaw clenched. I walked up the stairs and stood next to him, staring
down the driveway.
    “You talked to Varius?” I asked.
    “I talked to my mother. She feels we can
handle one wolf on our own.”
    “Don’t wolves usually run in packs?” I
asked.
    “Yes. I’m pretty sure we’re being set up.”
The echo of Thad’s warning in Jed’s words made my skin prickle with
goose bumps.
    “By Varius?” I asked.
    “She says she wants you to continue your
sessions with Doctor Veronica, but she also wants you to be
involved in talking to the wolf. She’s calling this your first
mission, a good test for you.”
    “What? But what can I really do?”
    “That’s what I asked,” he said, his voice
rough. “She hung up on me.”
    “Shit.”
    “My thought exactly.”
    “It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Why would
she go to all the trouble of sending me out here for intensive
therapy, and then ask me to go talk to a potential reaper? Why is
she offering me a mission, now, when she’s been refusing me for so
long?”
    He stared out at the forest for a long
moment. When he finally spoke, his voice made me jump. “The
intervention wasn’t her idea,” he said, his voice barely above a
whisper. He turned and walked back inside, but I stayed on the
porch for a moment, dumbfounded. If Yvonne hadn’t insisted on the
intervention, then it had to have been Jed’s idea. I might not be
an alcoholic, and I might be hating every moment of the
intervention, but I was lucky to have a friend like Jed. He’d set
the whole thing up to help me, and why? Because he worried about
me, not because he saw anything to gain. I wanted to follow him
inside, wrap myself around him, and thank him, but I knew he
wouldn’t appreciate it. I had to get my feelings under control,
accept his friendship as the gift it was, and stop wanting anything
more.

CHAPTER SIX
     
     
    “What did I miss?” Tucker asked. He’d been
helping Len out with some job in the Midwest, and was probably back
because he’d heard about Bruce. I had no desire to get into another
fight about whether or not I should be allowed to remain in the
same town as a scary reaper werewolf.
    “There have been a few developments,” I said.
“Can you agree to just listen for once without any psychoanalysis
or snarky comments?”
    “Nope.” His tone was curt, with an underlying
current of anger. Something was clearly bugging him, but I didn’t
have the energy to ask. He could be as moody as me, so I chalked it
up to grumpiness. If he wanted to talk about it, he would.
    “Maybe I should tell everyone at the same
time, then.”
    Tucker nodded and gestured for me to lead the
way.
    Inside, I found Jed, Henry, and Angelica
sitting around like they were waiting for something. Doctor
Veronica had disappeared into the back, probably making her own
phone calls to Varius to ask how she was supposed to help me
recover from past traumas while I was rushing into potentially new
trauma. That was her problem. I was just relieved to have something
to do other than another memory session with the doctor.
    I sat down next to Angelica. “I think
Angelica and I should go talk to this guy alone,” I said. “If she
shows up with the two of you, he might get scared off.”
    Jed’s nod shocked me. “Fine. We’ll stay
outside the shop while you talk to him.”
    “Fine.” I glanced at the clock on the wall.
“It’s noon now. Why don’t we go talk to this guy, then have lunch
in town and look around. See if we see anything else fishy going
on.”
    “Bruce isn’t…Why would you think—?” Angelica
asked.
    I took a deep breath. “I saw Houston in this
house the day I arrived.” I wasn’t about to send my friends into
that town not