Anne Bishop - Written in Red

“Come on, Sam. You can stay up here with me until Simon gets home.” She’d spent so much time in Simon’s apartment these past few days, she hadn’t had a chance to settle into her own place.

“Meg!”

Meg opened her door, tossed the towel on the floor near the boot mat, and told Sam to stay on the towel. Then she greeted Tess as the other woman bounded up the stairs.

“Here,” Tess said, holding out a bakery tin. “Chocolate chip cookies, still warm from the oven. I booted everyone out and closed A Little Bite early, but after I got home, I felt restless and decided to bake.”

Meg took the tin. “Thanks, Tess. Do you want to come in?”

“No. I’ve got a casserole in the oven now. You’re shivering. You should get inside.”

Tess wasn’t shivering—yet—but she wasn’t dressed for being outside for long.

Meg stepped inside.

Tess’s hair began to streak with green. She shook her head, but the hair continued to change to green and started to curl. “It’s this storm,” she explained. “Everyone will be edgy if the Wolfgard gets stranded tonight.”

“Winter said the storm will hold off and Simon will be able to get home,” Meg said.

Tess gave her an odd look. “Did she? Well, she would know.”

Bounding down the stairs, Tess ran back to her own apartment. Meg closed her door and set down the tin with the rest of her things as she took off her boots and hung up her coat.

Sam immediately began sniffing at the bakery tin. When he couldn’t nose it open, he sat and grabbed it between his front paws, trying to hook his claws under the lid to pull it open.

“No,” Meg said, taking it from him. Going into the kitchen with him bouncing beside her, she set the tin in the middle of her table, opened it, and recalled everything she could about cookies and animals.

The chocolate chip cookies smelled delicious, and she wanted to bite into one. But she looked at Sam, balanced on his hind legs with his front paws resting on the table’s edge, and closed the tin.

“I’m sorry, Sam, but I don’t know if Wolves can eat these cookies. I remember that chocolate is bad for dogs—” She held up a hand to stop him when he began vocalizing. “Yes, I know you’re not a dog, and maybe since you can change shape you’d be fine eating chocolate even when you’re furry, but I can’t take the chance of you getting sick, especially tonight, when it would be hard to get help. So no people cookies. And I won’t have any either.” At least, not until you go home.

Sam howled.

Someone pounded on her front door.

Meg hesitated, rememories of bad things happening when someone answered a door flashing through her mind. Then, reminding herself that she was safe in the Green Complex, she hurried to the door. It was probably Vlad checking to make sure she and Sam had gotten home all right. Or maybe Henry had come home in the past few minutes and wanted to let her know he was close by.

But when she opened the door, Elliot Wolfgard stepped inside far enough to prevent her from closing the door. The hatred in his eyes froze her—more so when Sam bounded in from the kitchen, trailing the leash because she hadn’t had time to remove the harness.

“Sam,” he said, still looking at Meg. “Come with me.”

Sam whined and looked at her.

“Sam,” Elliot snarled.

“It’s all right,” Meg told the pup. “Simon will be home soon.”

Elliot scooped up Sam. “Once I get him settled, I’ll be back. I have some things to say to you.”

As soon as Elliot went down the stairs, Meg closed the door and hurried to the phone.

“Tess?” she said as soon as the other woman answered the phone.

“Meg? Is something wrong?”

“Elliot Wolfgard was just here. He took Sam back to Simon’s place. Was it all right to let Sam go with him?”

A pause. “In human terms, Elliot is Sam’s grandfather, so there’s no reason why the pup can’t go with him.”

Then why didn’t Simon ask Elliot to watch Sam? “All right. Thanks. Have to go. Someone is at the door.”

“Call me when your visitor leaves.”

She hung up without promising to call and hurried back to the door.

Elliot stepped inside, leaving her to shiver because, once again, he wasn’t far enough inside for her to close the door.

“The enforcer may be willing to protect you, but the rest of the Wolves will never forgive what you’ve done,” he snarled. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re barely useful meat, and I am going to do everything I can to have you running before the pack as prey for what you did to Sam.”

“I haven’t done anything to Sam!”

He slapped her face.

“Enjoy your evening, meat. You won’t live to see many more of them.”

He went down the stairs, leaving her shaking. A few moments later, she heard Simon’s front door slam.

She was going to die in the Courtyard. She’d known that since the first time she’d set eyes on Simon Wolfgard.

She swallowed convulsively, but her mouth kept filling with saliva. She barely made it to the toilet before she threw up.

Vlad flowed over the snow toward the Green Complex, ready to spend a quiet evening at home. Blair was on his way to pick up Simon and the two guards who had gone with him, Nathan Wolfgard and Marie Hawkgard. If the weather forecast was right about Lakeside getting another foot of snow this evening, the drive home would be slow going.

After hearing that report, he had sent Heather home, closed Howling Good Reads, and locked up the social center. Tess had already closed A Little Bite, and Run & Thump, along with the rest of the Courtyard businesses, had closed an hour after that. But a bar across the street from the Courtyard was still doing a brisk business. He had fed sufficiently on two delightful girls who claimed they had missed their bus and were in the bar drinking while they waited for the next one. He was suspicious about their reason for being in the bar, but he had no doubt they’d been drinking, because he was a little drunk from the alcohol in their blood.

If the weather had been milder, he would have let the girls find their own way to the bus stop, since it was within sight of the bar. By itself, the amount of blood he’d taken from each of them wouldn’t do more than make them tired. But the police officer, Lieutenant Montgomery, paid attention to the Courtyard now, and Vlad didn’t think Simon would appreciate questions about two girls falling into a drunken sleep and dying in a snowdrift so close to where the Sanguinati lived—especially when there was no reason for the girls to die. So he flagged down a cab and paid the driver to take the girls back to their residence at the nearby tech college.

He wasn’t sure he liked thinking of humans as something other than useful prey or concerning himself with their welfare once he was done with them, but with humans stirred up about whatever had happened in the western part of Thaisia, being considerate of the prey here was just healthy self-interest.

As he flowed into the Green Complex and headed for his apartment, he became aware of sounds coming from Simon’s apartment. Sam was howling, an unhappy sound. Probably meant that Meg wanted some time to herself or wasn’t interested in taking any kind of walk with the temperature dropping and the snow falling so heavily.

Passing his own door, Vlad shifted into human form and walked over to the stairs leading to Meg’s apartment. Since the cold and snow didn’t bother him, he would offer to take the pup for a walk. That would at least give them all a bit of quiet.