Page 17 of Silver Claw

I hesitated. “I don’t know. But maybe.”

“Okay. That’s what I’ll tell them, anyway. Now get out of there.”

I dropped my phone back into my pocket and jogged through the house, uneasy. I’d help Remy with the remaining thugs—and if the shouts, screams, and roars were any indication, more Pocket residents had joined the fight. Even Remy Simon could be overwhelmed by numbers.

I needed the fight. I felt lacking, despite my wolf and my blade, simply because I’d been filled with magic for so long. I wanted to prove to myself that I was as strong as ever.

And a little practice was good for a wolf.

The entire street was alive. People stood on porches, cheering as they threw bottles and jars and food. When someone began blasting music, a skinny man dressed only in once-white briefs ran into the street to dance, sharp elbows and knobby knees flying. He was promptly knocked unconscious by a flying bottle.

Remy wasn’t uninjured. His face was bloody and one of his cheekbones was already beginning to swell, likely from a club to the face. His shirt was covered with blood, but most of it, I hoped, belonged to his attackers.

“Welcome to the party,” he yelled when he saw me coming.

I jumped off the porch and into the middle of the fight, my frustration and the tiniest thread of doubt making me a little extra brutal.

Then Joe returned, and before I lost the mad energy coursing through my body, the street was littered with humans, and the Pocket was silent.

A hospital emergency department would be full that night. And when they were able, the Pocket thugs would get right back into their trucks and wait for other outsiders to show up so they could attack again.

On the positive side, they kept their violence contained to their sad little town of horrors.

Remy was looking a little scuffed up. “Can I drop you at Shadowfield, Remy?” I asked, frowning at the ginger way he climbed into my car. “Ben can patch you up.”

“Fuck off, Kait,” he growled, slamming his door.

Joe laughed. “Humans are puny.”

“I’d have been a lot less battered if I could’ve used a blade,” Remy said.

“We can’t kill the humans,” I said mildly, attempting to drive back down the street without running over anybody. “You were kicking ass with the club you took from one of them.”

He snorted, then groaned. “Fucking Pocket. What’d you see in there, Kait?”

I told them. Neither of them said a word, and I wondered if they were thinking the same thing I was. Blonde human women butchered by a mad killer.

Of course they’d be thinking the killer was Jakeston’s infamous serial killer.

They’d be thinking it was Sam.

“What did you find, Joe?” I asked, my chest easing when finally, I was on the highway and the stench of Falton was behind me.

“Nothing,” he told me. “I caught a scent but lost it less than half a mile from the house.”

“You’re not a hunter,” Remy said with no little satisfaction. “We can’t expect you to track like one. You should have let him kick human ass, Kait, and sent me after your killer.”

“I tried,” I told him. “But he doesn’t obey my every command.” I was silent for a few minutes, lost in the blood of that room. I’d seen a lot of bad shit. I’d killed a lot of people. But I was far from immune to seeing a roomful of bloody, sad, murdered women. Finally, I took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Call Max, Joe. Tell him we’re on our way in.”

Joe pulled his phone from his pocket. “We’re only a little late. He’ll be happy.”

We didn’t speak again until I parked in front of the building that housed my office.

Remy climbed from my car, murmuring into his cell phone. He dropped his phone back into his pocket and began walking down the sidewalk without a word to me or Joe.

“Where are you off to, Remy?” I asked. He’d left his car at my house. “You can’t walk all the way to Huntersburg.”

“I have a ride coming,” he said, then gave me a jaunty wave and continued on his way. “Enjoy your ghost hunting and call me when you need me.”