Sasha's house is cool yet cozy, with an uncluttered, rustic atmosphere. Log beams span the raised ceiling overhead, and stone accents give the place a calm, forest-river feel.
She leads the way to her living room, where everyone had gathered before we'd arrived, and invites us to make ourselves at home.
"Y'all want coffee?" she asks. "I just made some fresh."
Dane and Julian accept; I decline, and (unsurprisingly) Kit follows my lead. He stays close to me, observing everything with quiet curiosity.
"What about the little ones?" Sasha asks, bouncing Luna on her hip. "Do they like juice? Or chocolate milk?"
"Just plain milk, if you have any," Julian says. "Sugar makes them a little... wild, if you know what I mean."
"Wild?" Sasha laughs. "This little angel?"
Luna watches her with wide, mismatched eyes, clearly fascinated by a stranger who looks and smells like family. The twins were too young to remember her from the last time she visited.
"I'd say 'demon' is more accurate, except I know some actual demons who are better behaved," Julian says, taking her back from Sasha and handing her off to Dane, who pops her in the play-pen with her brother.
Martin laughs. "If you think two wolf-children are a handful, try four. Travis keeps joking about getting 'fixed,' but I think he's half serious. I don't know how Mom and Dad managed..." He trails off and clears his throat. "Anyway, I can't imagine eight."
"Neither can I," Julian agrees. "Two are quite enough for me. I don't know what I'd do if we didn't have Monty to lend a hand now and then."
He casts me a smile and I shift my weight awkwardly and rub the back of my neck.
"And Monty!" Sasha exclaims, playfully whacking my arm with the back of her hand and grinning at Kit. "When were you gonna tell me you'd found someone, Mister 'I'm a lone Wolf'? How'd you two meet, anyway?"
"Oh, uh..." I hesitate, unsure how to answer without either lying or telling the truth. To my surprise, Dane answers for me.
"He's a client, Sasha, not his Mate. Monty's protecting him."
"Oh!" Sasha's eyes go wide. "But then..." She frowns as if perplexed by something and glances between me and Kit. "I could have sworn..."
"We'll explain later," Dane says tersely. "After we've found Mom and Dad—one way or another."
Sasha nods, her expression clouding with grief once more. The babies had provided a momentary and welcome distraction, but our business couldn't be put off any longer.
"Alright. Let me get that coffee and milk, and we'll start." She retreats to the kitchen, and Julian follows to help, carrying Luna and Luca's little cartoon-covered sippy cups.
The rest of us find seats on the dark leather sofas and chairs. Jake takes a chair, Martin and Freya sit on the smaller couch, and Dane and I take the larger sofa, leaving a space for Julian when he returns.
We keep the talk light while we wait, catching up with each other and asking after those who couldn't be here on short notice.
"Ingrid wanted to come," Freya says, "but she had a big performance with her quartet in New York. I told her to stay focused on that, for the moment. Too many of us will just make this harder, and missing that performance could ruin her career."
Dane nods. "What about Travis? He couldn't make it?"
Martin shoots him a look. "Chiaki's due in a week. She doesn't want to travel, and he doesn't want to leave her, obviously."
Chiaki is Travis's mate, and heavily pregnant with their second set of twins.
"Where's Noah, anyway?" Martin asks.
There's a slight accusation in his tone that makes me frown. Though Travis, Martin, and Noah are triplets, Travis and Martin have always been closer with each other than they have with Noah. After making Noah the butt of one too many practical jokes in high school, they'd had a falling out, and drifted further apart over the years.
"He stayed back to guard my territory," Dane says.
Martin's brows pinch. "But won't you be moving here anyway, if...?"
"Let's not speculate on what we don't know," Dane growls. "In fact, let's start by sharing what we do know, shall we?"
Jake nods in agreement, businesslike and official, and Dane seems to take this as a sign from a kindred spirit. If he actually starts off on good terms with one of his siblings' mates, though, it'll be a first.
Sasha and Julian rejoin us, Julian bringing the sippy cups filled with warm milk to Luna and Luca, and Sasha setting a tray of coffee, mugs, cream, and sugar on the low table between us all.
Everyone who wants a dose of caffeine serves themselves, and then Dane settles back and focuses on Jake.
"So. What happened?"
Jake rests an ankle across the opposite knee.
"Actually, I think Sasha should start. She was the first eyewitness on the scene. You wanna tell 'em, Hun?"
Sasha twists her coffee mug between her hands, her even brows pinched and the corners of her lips dipped in a frown. Her legs are tucked up beside her on the chair, and even though it's a warm day, she wears a thin sweater wrapped about herself.
"Can't they just read the report I gave?" she asks.
Jake shakes his head. "It's best to hear it right from the source, Sweetheart. Go on—take your time."
Sasha sighs and leans forward to set her coffee mug down.
"Alright. Well, it was two days ago now. I'd been over there, helping Mom put up a new shelf the day before, and everything was fine. They were... fine."
She sniffs and shuts her eyes. Jake gets up and comes back with a box of tissues, patting her shoulder as he sets it beside her chair. She glances up and gives him a watery smile before continuing.
"Anyway, next morning around breakfast time—eight or so—I realized I left my favorite sweater over there. Dad had mentioned he was going into town around ten, so I texted him and asked him to drop it over on his way out. He didn't reply, but that wasn't unusual. Then ten o'clock came and went, and he never showed. I figured he'd changed his mind about town. I tried Mom, next. She had a book club at noon—lunch with some friends—but she didn't reply either, and that was strange. You know how she is."
My siblings and I nod. Nobody texts Mom unless we're prepared for a long, rambling back and forth involving lots of emojis and pictures of things we don't necessarily care about.
"I tried Dad again—tried calling him and Mom—and when neither answered, I decided to head on over myself, get my sweater, and scold them for not paying attention to their phones. Because what if it was an emergency? What if—"
She cut herself off, covering her mouth with her hand.
We wait, and after taking a shuddering breath, she goes on.
"When I got there, I couldn't understand what I was seeing. The house was... just gone. It made no sense, and it was like... a nightmare, or a hallucination. I got out and walked towards it, and... Well, I guess I passed out from shock. When I woke up, I called 911."
"How close did you get?" Dane asks. "Can you describe the scene?"
Sasha glances up at him, her eyes shining with tears. "It's not a scene, Dane," she whispers. "It's our parents."
"And I intend to find out exactly what happened to them," Dane snaps. "To do that, I need every piece of information you can give."
Julian lays his hand over Dane's, shooting him a warning glance, but Jake Nash once again takes Dane's side.
He shifts in his seat, leaning forward to touch Sasha's knee.
"Dane's right, Sweetheart," he says. "We gotta treat this as objectively as we can. The, er, 'normal' authorities don't seem too keen to pursue it—beyond writing it off as a tragic accident, I mean."
"You don't think it was?" Dane asks, his amber gaze locked on Jake.
The other man shrugs. "I may not have known your parents long, but I know they weren't some old, feeble folk liable to sleep through something like an accidental fire. They were fierce. They were Wolves."
"Are Wolves," Freya corrects sharply, eyeing Jake with unmistakable dislike. "They are Wolves."
He casts her a pitying look. "Let us pray so."
She narrows her eyes at him and crosses her arms over her chest, and I make a mental note to ask her for the scoop on Jake Nash, when I have a chance.
An outburst of tiny growls breaks in upon our attention. I turn to see that, having finished her own, Luna has taken Luca's sippy cup—an act of aggression that has sparked a minor war. Julian rolls his eyes and gets up to deal with it.
Dane rubs his hands over his thighs and pushes himself to his feet.
"Right. Well, let's finish this at the site. I want to see it for myself."
~ ☾ ~
Julian stays behind with Sasha to look after the twins and keep her company, while Dane, Freya, Jake, Kit and I head out again. Freya rides with us, calling 'shotgun,' and I drive, which leaves Dane and Kit together in the back, each looking out their respective windows.
Martin goes with Jake, who climbs into a shiny new Ford Explorer and leads the way, though it's not as if we don't know where our own parents live.
Or lived.
"You don't like him," I state, nodding at the tailgate of Jake's vehicle through my windshield. "Why not?"
Freya shrugs. "Dunno. Just don't."
Dane leans forward from the back seat. "Did he disrespect you? 'Cause if he did, Sasha's Mate or not, I'll—"
"No, he didn't," Freya interrupts, waving him off. Then she sighs. "It's just his polite, 'good-guy cowboy' attitude, I guess. Rubs my fur the wrong way, if you know what I mean. Darius would..."
She bites her lip and goes quiet.
"Where is that voodoo blood-sucker, anyway?" I ask, thinking to make her laugh, but she flinches and turns a little further away.
"Who knows?" She shrugs again. "We're not... working together... at the moment."
"Oh. I'm sorry."
She waves a hand at me. "Nah. He can do what he wants. Anyway, I got bigger things to worry about."
I meet Dane's eyes in the rearview mirror, and see my protective instinct reflected there. Having been born in a body that didn't match who she was inside, Freya's had her share of challenges over the years, but she always perseveres with strength, courage, and grace. Anything that gets her down immediately gets our collective hackles up.
On the other hand, we've learned when to respect her boundaries, and when to push, and this seems like 'boundary-respecting territory,' at least to me.
Dane seems to agree and settles back in his seat.
"When did you get here, anyway?"
"I was here already," she says. "I stopped over for the night on my way up to Edmonton, in Alberta, for a job. I got in late, slept outside as a Wolf. Woke up to... a nightmare."
"A job?" Dane asks. "On your own?"
"Can we focus on Mom and Dad?" Freya snaps. "You can worry about me later."
Dane is silent a moment.
"You said you got in late. Did you notice anything unusual on the ride in?"
Freya brushes her long curls away from her face and relays her statement with military precision.
"No. I arrived between oh-four-hundred and oh-four-thirty. I was expected, but the house was dark, and I didn't want to disturb anyone so early. So, I parked my bike, Shifted, found a nice comfy clump of grass and went to sleep. The sirens woke me. I shed my Wolf, got dressed, and saw the time was a little after noon. I'd slept much longer than I meant to—tired from the long ride, I guess."
She shrugs.
"I got on my bike and followed the sounds, and... Well, see for yourself."
She nods ahead of us, and we arrive at a scene of horror.
The house I grew up in is gone.
I'd imagined a burned ruin, a blackened skeleton of wall and roof, but there's nothing but a rectangular patch of flat, gray ash.
Burned to the ground, literally.
The surrounding land is nearly untouched. A tree only a few meters away stands with green leaves, hardly seared. I know that's how it is sometimes, with house fires, but it seems impossible. How could something burn so hot to turn metal appliances to ash, and yet a stone's throw away...
Dane reaches forward from the back seat to grasp my arm and startles me.
"Come on," he says. "Let's check this out."
~ ☾ ~
Dane and Freya Shift, taking their Wolf forms; they're the best trackers among us, with the keenest senses as Wolves.
To my surprise, Kit slips away from me and joins them, taking the form of a large white fox, single tailed, which the untrained eye might easily mistake for a small, gracile wolf.
Jake, Martin and I keep our human forms; I may have the advantage in size and strength, but when it comes to things like this, I think clearest as a man.
Dane and Freya roam back and forth like particularly motivated cadaver dogs, while Kit zips along in a zig-zag pattern, roaming near and far. Meanwhile, Jake gives us a tour of the site with the official air of a chief inspector, pointing out the evidence.
He explains the potential heat of a house fire, as well as several probable causes of such—neglected candles, portable heaters, electrical failures—and how each could happen to the best of us.
"As for the human—or the Wolf—body..." He scoops up a handful of ash where he kneels, "At these temperatures, and with the natural winds created by a fire..." He shakes his head, his face hidden in the shadow of his wide-brimmed hat, and dusts the ash from his hand.
Dane and Freya approach as he speaks, in human form and clothed once more.
Dane shakes his head. "This place burned hot and fast," he says. "All I smell is ash."
Freya nods, frowning unhappily. She's pulled her cascade of long, gold-tipped curls into a loose ponytail, and wears a brown leather jacket over fitted jeans.
"Me too," she admits. "There's nothing here."
"But that's good though, right?" I say. "That means maybe Mom and Dad..."
"I've been over this place a dozen times," Jake says, kneeling by a twisted clump of metal and turning it over with a stick. "As a Wolf and as a man, and I ain't found hide nor hair of your parents. On the other hand, if they'd escaped... Well, surely they'd'a made an appearance by now. I'm sorry, Montreal," he says, looking up at me and squinting against the bright midday sun, "but with a fire this hot, fact is..." He shakes his head. "I'd be surprised if there's anything left."
As he speaks, Kit approaches, padding up on long, delicate limbs, his little black nose close to the ground and his ears flat against his head. He Shifts before our eyes, apparently unashamed of his human nakedness, and stumbles towards me and into my arms.
I catch him, feeling him shiver against my chest. Shrugging out of my over-shirt, I wrap it around him; I've no idea where he left his clothes.
"Kit? What is it?"
He looks up at me, hugging my shirt around himself like a blanket.
"They're not here," he whispers, his black eyes wide and dark.
"We know," I say. "Jake says the fire—"
"No, I mean, they were here," Kit interrupts. "They were here, and something bad happened. And now... now they're not here."
"Yeah," I say, feeling a sharp blade of grief twist my heart. "Yeah, Kit. Now they're not."
"No!" He clutches at me and presses himself close, desperate for me to understand. "I mean they are not here at all!"
I squint at him. "You mean..."
"Not as ash, not as bone." He shakes his head. "Somewhere else."