“I wonder what she wants this time?” Nik wipes his hands on his pants and we both go down the sidewalk.
“Hey, neighbor!” Donna calls as she gets out of her car.
“Hi,” I reply. “What, uh, brings you over?”This time, I grumble in my head.
“You have a dog, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” I say slowly, shifting my gaze to Hunter, who’s laying on the porch. “Hunter.”
“And he’s never leashed, is he?”
I clench my jaw, taking a breath before answering. This isn’t the first time she’s given me shit about it. “Not when he’s on my property.”
“Hmm.” She pulls her phone from her purse and steps around me, putting one hand on my hip as she looks at Hunter. “Nope, it can’t be him. He’s too dark.”
“Can’t be him?” Nik echoes.
“Look at this.” She thrusts her phone forward, showing us a still image captured from her doorbell camera. “This is the fourth time we’ve seen it. Scared our livestock and my kids half to death!”
The sun is shining on the screen, making it hard to see the picture. I hold my hand up, shielding my eyes and move closer.
“It seems about the same size as your dog,” Donna goes on, holding the phone right up to my face. “Maybe even bigger. We don’t have wolves around here so someone must have gotten one as a pet and wasn’t able to handle it. They’ll be fined for this, you know.”
“Do you have more footage of it?” I ask, surprised to see that she’s not exaggerating for once. The image is a little blurry, but there’s no mistaking the wolf-like creature in her yard.
“Yes and take a look at this. That thing is probably rabid. I’m going to start keeping my pistol in my purse.” She pulls up another video. This one was taken at night, and the wolf is sniffing around the yard and then sits right in the middle of the path leading to their porch. It’s staring at the camera, and I swear it’s doing it on purpose. It stays like that, unmoving, for several seconds and then turns and trots off, eyes flashing red for just a millisecond.
Anyone else would have chalked the red flash up to some sort of reflection from the porch lights, but I know better. That wolf is someone’s familiar.
ChapterFifteen
“When did you first see it?” I ask, watching the video loop play again.
“We got footage on Thursday night, but the kids say they’ve seen it for well over a week now. We found tracks around the barn, and I told Animal Control someone’s large dog was off leash and wandering my property, but they didn’t believe me. But they will know that we have video evidence,” Donna explains, looking rather satisfied with herself for having this information.
And she either didn’t realize or doesn’t care that she just admitted she called Animal Control thinking it was Hunter. Given what I know about Donna, she just doesn’t care.
“Have any of your animals been attacked?” Nik asks.
Donna shakes her head. “No. And I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Donna. I live down the street.” She holds her hand out for Nik to shake.
I grit my teeth again. She has met Nik before, and we ran into each other about a month ago when Ethan, Nik, and I went to dinner. Donna picked and pried for information about Nik, making it known how “modern” we were for “having a male houseguest” and how “surprised” she was that Ethan didn’t feel threatened.
“I’m Boris,” he says shortly, annoyed with Donna just like I am. “And I’m new in town,” he goes on, talking with an accent with a straight face. “Visiting from Russia for first time.”
I have to look away to keep from laughing, and Donna’s face is priceless. She wanted to go through the same song and dance about how weird it is to have a roommate—though it’s not—because I think she’s convinced we’re a throuple and wants me to admit it.
“Oh, well, it’s, uh…nice to meet you.” Her small eyes narrow and she looks at me, waiting to see if I’m going to laugh and say this is a joke.
“That wolf,” I begin again. “You said it just frightened your animals, but it didn’t attack?”
“Right.” Donna shudders. “It was like it was stalking us, waiting for a bigger target?”
“Like you?” Nik asks seriously and if I had water in my mouth, I would have spit it out.
“Me or my children. That thing has a taste for blood, I’m telling you.” She shakes her hair back. “Which is why I just had to tell you. You have those little rescue horses, and I would just be heartbroken to know something happened when I could have warned you and prevented it.”
And I’m back to grinding my molars in an attempt to bite my tongue. It has to be exhausting to be her, dropping insults, and trying to constantly stir up shit.