Bless her heart, she did.

I drove over to the summer home on the lakeshore where Jen was working alone, banging on the door until she answered. Her expression was sullen. “I don’t want to talk to you right now, Daise.”

“Hear me out?” I pleaded.

She hesitated, then tossed a rag at me. “I’m running behind. The family’s due back any minute. Help and I’ll listen.”

“Deal.”

I followed Jen upstairs to the master bathroom. Without speaking, we fell into a familiar rhythm. I set about polishing the chrome fixtures while she tackled the sunken Jacuzzi bathtub. It felt like being back in high school, when I’d helped her out plenty of times, except in high school, we would have been looking through the client’s cupboards in search of sex toys, giggling uncontrollably if we happened to find any.

“Look,” I said to her reflected back in the mirror. “I’m sorry. I was wrong, and you were right. I shouldn’t have intervened. And I wasn’t exactly a neutral third party.”

“Not exactly?” She shot me a look over her shoulder, brushing a wisp of glossy black hair out of her eyes. “You were all over him in the patrol car.”

“I wasn’t all over him! I just . . .” Realizing I wasn’t helping my case, I bit my tongue. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve had a crush on him for ages. I should have told you.”

“Yeah, you should have.” Jen pointed with one rubber-gloved hand. “Mind scrubbing the toilet?”

I exchanged my rag and polish for a brush and a bottle of toilet-bowl cleaner. “I’m sorry,” I said for a third time. “Truly. I don’t know how else to apologize for it. Help me out here?”

Jen detached the showerhead and sprayed down the tub. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?” she asked over the sound of the water.

“About Cody?”

“Duh.”

I scrubbed diligently at the faint rust-colored ring in the toilet bowl. “I don’t know. I guess . . . it just felt safer not to.”

Jen shut off the water, then turned around and sat on the edge of the tub. “See, that’s what hurts, Daise. Since we’ve been friends, when have I ever not had your back? Since when can you not trust me?”

I flinched away from the genuine pain in her brown eyes. “It’s not you—”

“—it’s me?” she finished bitterly. “Yeah, where have I heard that before?”

I sighed. “It’s not what you think.” Closing the toilet-seat lid, I perched on it. “Cody’s a werewolf.”

She stared at me, lips parted. “You’re telling me Cody Fairfax is a fucking werewolf?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m violating the entire eldritch code of honor to tell you that Cody Fairfax is a fucking werewolf. That’s why he dropped out of basketball when his hormones went into overdrive. That’s why he cut classes at least once a month. That’s why the chief never schedules him for duty during a full moon. And that’s why he never dates anyone for more than a month or two, which is why I didn’t want you to go out with him, because I knew you’d only get hurt.”

“It still wasn’t your call to make,” Jen said automatically.

“I know.”

She peeled off her rubber gloves. “Why’s he such a closet case?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. It’s complicated. His whole clan—”

“His whole clan?”

“Yeah,” I said. “The whole Fairfax clan. I think they’re pretty secretive by nature, but they’ve got reasons for it.”

“It does explain a lot about them,” Jen said in a thoughtful tone.

“I know, right?” I stuck the toilet brush back into its container. “Look, that’s why I didn’t want to talk about Cody. I didn’t trust myself not to tell you, and it wasn’t my secret to tell.”

“You didn’t trust me to keep it?”

I spread my hands. “I’m trusting you now, aren’t I?”

She made a face. “Now, yeah.”

“I know, I know,” I said. “And for the thousandth time, I’m sorry. I’ve got a lot going on, okay? I didn’t expect all this to come up. I didn’t expect the Vanderhei kid to drown. I didn’t expect to be working so closely with Cody.” My tail lashed with pent-up agitation, and I felt pressure rising in the air around me. “And that whole ‘it’s not you; it’s me’ thing? It’s true. He meant it. Turns out werewolves only mate with their own kind, so if it’s any consolation, I’m no more eligible than you are. And there’s this guy I just met, this other guy, Stefan—actually, he’s a ghoul, but before you—”

“Daise,” Jen interrupted me. “You’re babbling.” She glanced uneasily about her. “Calm down before you burst a pipe.”

Taking a deep breath, I envisioned myself pouring out a glass filled with my roiling emotions. “Okay, okay. So this ghoul, Stefan—”

Downstairs, the front door opened. “Yoo-hoo!” a bright, cheery woman’s voice called, accompanied by the sounds of a family returning from a day at the beach. “Hello! Are we just about finished here?”

“On my way out, Mrs. Kleinholtz!” Jen called back downstairs to her. “Sorry—just running a little late!”

I helped Jen scramble to pack her cleaning supplies into a plastic carryall, then followed her downstairs, where the highly manicured and impeccably tanned Mrs. Kleinholtz blinked in perplexity at my choice of attire—I was still wearing the linen sheath dress I’d put on this morning—but insisted on tipping me alongside Jen nonetheless, pressing a ten-dollar bill into my hand.

Outside, Jen cocked her head at me, her expression soft and open for the first time since we’d fought. “Look, I’ve got to go home and shower. Do you want to meet at the Shoals in an hour and get a drink? Talk?”

I did. I so did.

But dauda-dagr was fraying a hole in my straw satchel, and I had promised Cody he could give me a lesson in handling edged and pointy weapons this evening. More important, I needed to tell him what Stefan had discovered, and what I’d learned—or hadn’t learned—from Mr. Leary.

“I can’t,” I said reluctantly. “I wish I could, but I can’t.”

Jen sighed. “Oh, for fuck’s sake!”

At that moment, my phone rang. Glancing at it, I saw it was Cody. “I’m sorry. I have to take it.”

I thought Jen might bail on me, but she waited while I confirmed with Cody that I’d meet him at his place in half an hour.

“Okay,” I said after I ended the call. “I really, really am sorry. I should have put our friendship before the eldritch code, and I didn’t. But as much as I’d like to, I can’t put it before this investigation. There’s a lot at stake. And if we don’t get to the bottom of it fast, it’s going to get ugly.”

“I know.” Her face was somber. “Everyone’s talking about it. Are you in trouble, Daise?”

“Honestly?” I asked. “Yeah, I think maybe so. But I’m not sure what kind.”

“Anything I can do?” Jen asked steadily.

“Yeah.” I smiled at her. “You can accept my apology. That way at least I won’t be checking my phone every ten minutes.”

“Okay, okay!” She blew out her breath, setting wisps of hair dancing around her face. “Look, I’m not quite ready to hug it out yet, but if you want to talk later, call me. I have to admit, I’m curious. I mean, seriously? A ghoul?”

Gah! I really wished I had more time. “I’ll call you,” I said. “Thanks, Jen.”

“You’re welcome.” She got into her car, an old Chrysler LeBaron convertible with God knew how many miles on it. “Daise?”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful,” she said in a serious voice, turning over the ignition. “Okay?”

“I will.”

Jen’s hand hovered over the gearshift. “And listen, I won’t say anything to anyone about Cody. But if you really like him, I think you should go for it. All these rules and codes . . .” She shrugged. “They’re kind of stupid, and they get in the way. Sometimes you’ve just got to follow your heart, you know?”

“Maybe,” I said ruefully. “This isn’t the time for it. Like I said, there’s a lot going on. But so far, there’s no evidence he feels the same way.”

She put the LeBaron in gear. “Well, think about it.”

Twenty-one

I drove home and changed into jeans and a scoop-necked T-shirt, then drove out to Cody’s place.

Collectively, the Fairfax clan owned a big tract of property out in the countryside that bordered the county game preserve. Exactly how they divvied it up, I wasn’t sure, but Cody had his own place with a couple acres of woodland within shouting distance of his brother Caleb’s place. His mother and father’s house was a little way down the road, and beyond that, I thought there were an aunt and uncle, as well as a few cousins and their families.

“Hey, there, Pixy Stix!” Cody greeted me from the front porch as I pulled into his driveway. “C’mon up.”

Oh, crap.

He looked different in his own element, more at ease in his skin. He wore faded old blue jeans that fit him in all the right ways and an equally faded plaid flannel shirt, washed until it was paper-thin and soft, worn open over a white wifebeater tank top with Timberland boots on his feet.

In other words, a poster boy for a woodsy “Men of Pemkowet” calendar.

“Beer?” he asked as I approached the porch, dangling the neck of a bottle from one hand.

“Yeah, thanks.” I accepted it with gratitude, trying to ignore the way his damp, freshly washed bronze hair curled around his ears. I tipped the bottle and took a long drink, slaking a thirst that had plagued me since I’d visited Mr. Leary. “Any luck this afternoon?”