“I told you to keep an eye on her.” Was that really Charlie?
“I was.” Well, that was definitely Jase.
“Not good enough.” Okay, that had to be Charlie, although I wasnʼt used to hearing him speak so gruffly towards anyone, especially Jase. “I swear, if he touched her...” There was something on the tape that almost sounded like a growl. At first I thought it had come from Charlie, but then I remembered they were playing the stupid zombie alien game.
“Speaking of people keeping their paws off of my sister.”
“My paws have been over 300 miles away from your sister ever since August.” Yep, definitely Charlie. And definitely not happy. “I waited until Tuesday to come home just so I wouldnʼt be anywhere near her. I didnʼt want you to worry your pretty little head even though you know I could never do anything to hurt her.”
I glanced over at the calendar on my desk. Friday had been Charlieʼs last final. I had assumed he waited until Tuesday to come home so that he could celebrate all weekend. It appeared I may have been wrong.
“Thatʼs not what Iʼm talking about and you know it.” The music from the video game was adding a dramatic edge to the conversation. Well, that or the pounding of my heart. “You know how she feels about you, man.”
He did? Oh God, no. No, no, no, no, no.
“And you know how I feel about her.”
How did he feel about me? I didnʼt know how he felt about me. Shouldnʼt I be the one with that knowledge?
“Sheʼs my sister.” Even though his voice was slightly distorted, I could tell that Jase was talking through clenched teeth. It didnʼt take much imagination for me to visualize the hard look he was sure to have on his face. “Anyways, donʼt you already have a girlfriend?” Charlie had a girlfriend? Since when? And what did that have to do with me?
This wasnʼt exactly the sort of information I had been seeking, but I found it infinitely fascinating. And humiliating. And confusing.
There must have been a noise that the recorder hadnʼt picked up, because one of them asked, “What was that?”
“Toby and Scout.” That was Charlieʼs voice. “Toby is trying to convince her to start training again.”
“How? By throwing cookware at her?” Well, that wasnʼt too far off the mark.
“Who knows with Toby, but he’ll do whatever it takes. He thinks it’s his job as Pack Leader to keep her safe. I’m surprised he hasn't assigned someone to guard her 24/7.” Pack Leader? Huh? And guard who? Me? From what? Alex? Did everyone know he was a werewolf?
“Well, he can back off now. The Coles are gone.”
Yep. They were talking about Alex. I wondered if I was the last person in Lake County to know about his split personality.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. I went over to their place Monday night and the scent has almost completely faded. Theyʼve been gone a full cycle. We are once again the only Shifters in Western KY.” I sat, not breathing. My eyes were still frozen on the calendar. I had been unable to look away from it since I realized Monday had been a full moon. Charlie waited until after the full moon to come home.
Because he was a werewolf. Charlie and Jase were werewolves.
I pulled a long, shaky breath into my lungs. This was crazy. My brother was not a werewolf.
I would have known.
I walked over and tore my calendar off the wall and began flipping through the pages. This theory was going to be very easy to dispel. All I had to do was remember seeing Jase, fully human, on a night of a full moon. No big.
Or, it should have been no big. But of the twelve nights we had a full moon over the past year, I couldnʼt remember doing anything with Jase on any of them. On the contrary, I could specifically remember not seeing him on several of them. In February, he missed a basketball game and spent the entire night in his bed, deathly ill. In April, he had been on a camping trip with Charlie during the full moon. Septemberʼs full moon coincided with the night he spent at Gramma Haganʼs after she had a short stay in the hospital. Monday night he had went to do some last minute Christmas shopping in Nashville and spent the night at the Base.
Still, that didnʼt prove anything. I was not going to accept that my brother had a secret identity as a supernatural being without something a bit more concrete.
I grabbed a stack of books from underneath my bed and began thumbing through them, acting more out of habit than anything else. I was just about to grab another stack when something caught my eye. On the inside cover of a local library book was a plaque that read,
“In loving memory of Jason Anthony Hagan.”
Donating books to the library in honor or memory of a loved one was a common practice in our small town. Miss Nancy encouraged people to do it as a way to keep the library well-stocked, despite the countyʼs flimsy budget. When someone in Lake County passed on, their family would almost always purchase a book by an author or on a topic with which their dearly departed had a special connection. It was like sharing a piece of that person with the community.
Jason Haganʼs book was The Voice of the Coyote by J Frank Dobie.
The pieces started to slowly slide together and click into place.
I turned on my computer, grateful I had the foresight to dig it out from under a pile of Jaseʼs dirty clothes when we got home. After a brief debate with my morals, I managed to hack into the libraryʼs newspaper database.
The first thing I found was the obituary. It solemnly stated that Jason Hagan passed away on November 23. He was survived by his mother, one brother, and his wife, Rebecca Lowery Hagan. It did not mention that she was two months pregnant with his son at the time.
I finally found what I was looking for a few pages later. The headline read, “Local man dies in an early morning accident.” Below was a picture of a man decked out in camo, displaying the rack of a large buck. Although I never met him, I could imagine the way his green eyes shone with pride. Mom always said that Jase was a carbon copy of his father.
“Jason Hagan, 30, of Timber was fatally wounded in an accidental shooting at 4:36 am Tuesday morning in a wooded area approximately 15 miles north of Princeton,” the article stated. “Royce Pearlman of Fredonia states that he saw what he believed to be a coyote approach his deer stand. It was not until he reached the place where he thought the animal had fallen he realized his grave error. Hagan was pronounced dead on the scene.” Click, click click went the pieces of the puzzle in my head. Of course a large pack of wolves would draw attention running around Western Kentucky, but not coyotes. Coyotes were a dime a dozen. Just last summer Dad swore that he saw a huge one in our back yard.