The Vegan and the Wolf by Julie Steimle (red white and royal blue hardcover txt) 📕

“Last night.” Audry nodded, relaxing. “My cousin gave it to him. I think he is getting it notarized today.”

The policemen nodded. The cadet grinned approvingly at Audry. As they took Harlin to the police car, the cadet stayed with Audry to finish taking the statements of the four ladies. Audry’s eyes fixed on the scar on the police cadet’s arm. It didn’t have any stitch marks, but it looked like it had been treated properly.

“How did that happen?” Tricia asked, staring at the scar also.

Glancing to it, the cadet chuckled, still writing on her pad. “Oh, long story.”

“Can you tell it?” Wendy asked, curious.

But the cadet only shook her head. It seemed to amuse her and yet was a bother.

Audry looked at her name tag. It said Mason. She had to be Rick’s friend. But Audry wanted to make sure. So she said, “I know Silvia Lewis.”

The cadet’s pen skidded off the page. She stared up at Audry, almost pale. Her brown eyes widened.

“You’re Jessica Mason, aren’t you?” Audry asked.

Her roommates stared at Audry, shocked.

The cadet slowly nodded, amazed and possibly a little terrified.

“Rick told me about you,” Audry said to assure her she wasn’t getting her information from Silvia, then nodded to her arm. “And that scar.”

Her roommates now really stared. “What?” “You know her?” “Rick? Who is this Rick?”

Audry stared skyward, unable to answer any of those questions yet except one. “Rick Deacon. You know, Howard Richard Deacon the Third?”

But the cadet relaxed, nodding easily. “I see. But… why did you mention Silvia?”

“You know Silvia Lewis?” Tricia and Wendy chimed together. Laura looked ashen.

Shrugging, the cadet took in their expressions with reassurance that they were not Silvia’s friends, considering their horrified facial expressions. “We went to high school together. Her brother is one of my good friends.” Yet she looked to Audry. “How do you know Silvia?”

Audry shrugged. “She’s in our Green Club.”

The cadet laughed, mystified. “No kidding?”

“What about your arm?” Tricia asked again. Audry could see cold prickles go up her skin.

Audry shook her head. Looking to her roommates, she said, “Long story. And it will give you nightmares.”

“Did it give you nightmares?” Laura asked, definitely looking faint. “You know, yesterday?”

The police cadet, Jessica Mason, lifted her eyebrows, gazing at Audry.

Audry shook her head. “No. Not that. Rick told me about it afterwards.” She looked to the cadet. “Did Rick put you up to this? To watch out for me because of Harlin last night at the party.”

“Would he do that?” Tricia hissed to Wendy.

Wendy shrugged. Neither of them had met Rick. They had only heard of him.

The police cadet chuckled, shaking her head. “He would, but he didn’t. I was riding along with those to officers to observe the handling of domestic disputes. I’ve been observing Family Courthouse procedures as part of my training.”

Audry nodded. That made sense.

“But what party were you at with Rick last night?” the cadet seemed genuinely interested. She had that same look in her eye as Rick’s mother—mildly surprised and yet hopeful. Hopeful for Rick’s sake.

Sighing, Audry shook her head. “I wasn’t there with him. I was with my cousin Vincent. Rick happened to be there with his mother and—” Audry put her hands over her mouth, paling. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t supposed to tell. I don’t know if they have gone public with that yet.”

“His mother was out?” the cadet Jessica looked pleased. “Oh, good. He was hoping she would—”

“Cadet! Do you have their statement yet, or are you just gossiping?” One of the policemen had returned.

Jessica blushed. “Sorry. We’d better get back to business.”

“He’s so bossy,” Wendy hissed, giving him the evil eye.

The police cadet shrugged. She collected the last of their statements and turned to go. Yet her eyes rested on the bullet around Audry’s neck. People who knew Rick always seemed to pick it out. It was unsettling. “That’s interesting. Where did you buy that?”

Roll her eyes, Audry replied for what she had hoped was the last time, “I dug this out of the leg of a wolf I rescued last winter. What about that crystal around your neck? Silvia’s brother Danny had one just like it. But I’m not sure if that is police regulation.”

The cadet met Audry’s eyes with an older kind of inspecting look and said, “There are eight of them, actually. All my friends, except for Rick, have one. Silvia’s brother—Daniel Smith—is my good friend, and we never go anywhere without it.”

“Even if—”

The cadet cut her off. “Even if it is against regulations. Besides, it’s allowed for me.”

“Because you have a rich friend?” Audry asked, wondering what kind of person Jessica was.

Laughing, Cadet Jessica Mason shook her head. Her laugh was beautiful, like walking sunshine. “No. It is actually in spite of him. Lots of people in NYPD don’t like the Deacons. They see them as meddlers. But—here.” Jessica dug her wallet out and extracted a shiny business card, handing it to Audry. “If you ever need help, or have serious questions if things get a little too strange, contact me here.”

Audry stared at the card. On one side was a huge number 7 in shiny gold and Egyptian writing. On the back was a website. No other explanation.

“My friend Semour set up the site,” the cadet said. “But, if you just want to talk…” Jessica took up the card and wrote on the side with the web address. She handed it back. “That’s my email address.”

“Cadet! We’re waiting!” the other cop arrived now.

“I’m coming!” Jessica Mason snapped back. Audry had a hard time thinking of her as just a police cadet now. She was Rick Deacon’s friend from a creepy town and someone who had survived an attempted human sacrifice—and she seemed so… normal. And that was bizarre.

The cadet waved as she walked off.

That’s when Audry noticed the other scar on the police cadet’s right hand. It looked like it had been branded with some kind of sun symbol.

“That was weird,” Wendy murmured staring after her.

Laura nodded.

“People who personally know Silvia are weird,” Tricia chimed in and went back into the apartment.

Audry had to agree. And unfortunately, that started to include her.

She and her other roommates went back into the apartment. As Wendy returned to making breakfast—which Harlin had interrupted when he had barged in that morning—and Laura returned to yoga, Audry texted her brother about Harlin’s ‘visit’ and arrest. Then she texted Vincent. He had to know also.

As she went back to her room to find out if Harlin damaged anything (and also to get dressed and make her bed), Audry found a crumpled picture on her blankets. She picked it up and looked at it. It was a photocopy of a series of blurry cell phone pictures showing a man fighting with a woman. The bizarre thing was, in each successive picture the man contorted into a hairy, long snouted creature that resembled a wolf in the end. Typed next to the pictures was the URL to a website and the words IT IS NOT FAKE.

Moaning, Audry crumpled up the picture and dropped it on her shelf next to her bed. This was getting ridiculous. This was Harlin’s ‘werewolf’ proof? She had already run across a million hoaxes on the internet ‘proving’ the existence of demons, chupacabras, vampires, aliens, and ghosts. You could CG anything these days. And the picture was blurry. Hoax videos were always blurry.

However her curiosity got the better of her. Audry wanted to see what had convinced Harlin of crazy Ewan Steed’s werewolf claims. A stupid picture was not enough for someone like Harlin. He was a skeptic—normally. Once her blankets were straightened out, Audry took out her laptop, put it on her mattress, and turned it on to go onto the internet. Then she found the site. It was one of those “Strange Things” websites full of… yep—ghosts, vampires, chupacabras, and Bigfoot caught on video. This one was titled: Werewolf Fighting a Witch.

The video clip was brief. Viewed from the other side of a closed glass door at what appeared to be an elementary school, Audry saw a young man of similar build as Rick Deacon in a long winter coat. The foggy winter glass made it difficult to see the man well and the camera jostled as the video recorded the ‘attack’. She could only make out the man’s cinnamon colored hair, which was the same as Rick’s. The crowd around the person who was recording the scene screamed the moment the ‘werewolf’ sprang onto the ‘witch’. He had gone entirely wolf shaped, yet still wearing the same shirt, socks, and boxer shorts as the man. The dressed wolf then chased after the ‘witch’ as she ran from the parking lot.

Audry got shivers.

It was the best CGI she had ever seen for an amateur video. The video creator ought to get a prize.

Audry played the man-to-wolf transformation several times, trying to slow down the frames as she watched the change. It was marvelously done. It wasn’t the cheesy flash from one creature to the other like in that adaptation of Blood and Chocolate she had seen. It wasn’t even the usual grotesque transformation for movie werewolves. It was almost elegant and natural, though it looked painful. This was a piece of art.

She decided to download the video and searched the internet for a way to do so. As she found the program for it, Audry wondered if Ewan had made the video, or if he had just found it and used it to get back at Rick through Harlin. It was cruel, really. Some people just didn’t know when to let a thing alone. Harlin and Ewan almost deserved one another.

As she began to put other things away, Audry set the card Jessica had given her on the shelf. But as she did this, something nagged her to put it into her wallet, just in case. Audry hesitated, as keeping such a thing would connect her to Rick’s crazy world. And honestly, Audry was of the same mind as Rick—she didn’t want to get entangled in his life’s mess any more than he wanted her in it. From Silvia and her witch coven to Rick being hunted because people believed he was a werewolf—it was a nasty mess. And Jessica’s scarred arm was proof.

Yet that nagging feeling stuck with her and Audry tucked the card into her wallet behind her driver’s license and next to the business card Rick had left her at the café. Having the personal email of an NYPD cop was not a bad thing. And who knows? Harlin might come around again, and Audry would need all the help she could get.

“Hi! Hi!” Silvia skipped into the room. She was looking chipper and more normal as a human being than she had ever been, in jeans and a Green Club tee shirt. She slapped down a newspaper onto Audry’s bed. “I just came to share this.”

Audry moaned, glancing to Silvia who honestly was almost unrecognizable. A lot of the darkness that had been about her just a day before seemed melted. There were still some sticking to her, but Silvia practically glowed with joy as she poked the paper.

Audry looked at the newspaper headline.

It was gossip magazine. Front page had a huge picture of Rick’s mother standing with old friends at the hotel party. The headline announced the safe return of Emmaline D. Richardson—not Mrs. Deacon or Emily Dell— who had come back from a far off location to visit her parents. Audry poured over the article. All of it was nonsense. Something about a private European retreat. But for eight years? That was ridiculous. Audry wondered if that was the tale Mrs. Dell was telling, or what her parents had told the media. However, the article made it clear that the former Mrs. Deacon had no intention of meeting her ex-husband, though she had reconciled with her son. Audry wondered what trouble that would cause her. Those crazy hunter types might start searching for