On one hand, the McNamaras don't have a werewolf stalking them. A human stalker is safer than the alternative. On the other, there are two dangerous persons lurking in Heisenbühl now.
Three, if one of the two didn't kill Sophie.
Kill Sophie. The revelation unsettles me more than I could ever admit. The possibility—no, probability—that one of the two strangers I've encountered in the last twenty-four hours is the one who did that to Sophie Schwarz.
"Excuse me?" A young male voice calls out from over the top of my head. "Is anyone in?"
My shoulders slump and I breathe another subtle sigh before soldiering up. When I pop up into view of the customer, I bring a tub of paper coffee cups that had been sitting on a shelf beneath the register with me to act as though I'd been down there looking for them.
"Yes, sir. Sorry for the w—"
I don't so much as place the tub of cups on the countertop as I do drop them.
I had been so locked within the inner worries of my own brain that I'd ignored everything around me.
I hadn't heard the soft, fairy-like chime of the bell when the door had been opened to signal a customer.
I hadn't heard his footsteps as he'd approached the counter.
And I hadn't paid attention to his scent until I stood up to face him and a gust of it punched me square in the face.
Werewolf.
"Wait. Sorry for the wait," I finish my sentence with substantial difficulty. The mechanisms upstairs have encountered a jam. "Ready to order?"
He must hear my fanatic heartbeat. I can hear his, as calm as a cat's lying in the evening sun.
Why is he here?
He orders a black coffee, to go. His eyes explore my face, suspicious. As far as he knows, I'm as human as the rest of Heisenbühl. So why, then, is a human reacting like this?
I have to excuse my nerves, somehow. Some way.
I tell him the price. As he reaches into his pocket to retrieve his wallet, a dark black curl of hair falls over his brow. He's probably my age, if not a year or two older, dressed in a smart charcoal mackintosh with a navy sweater beneath. His facial features are firm and symmetrical, his skin clearer than the sky outside.
An idea strikes, and I partially wish it hadn't. A simple girlish crush would explain my hammering heart...
"I haven't seen you here before," I comment, lilting my voice just enough that I loathe it. "Are you new in town?"
He doesn't notice my tone at first, and if he does, he keeps his formal. "Yes. Well, no. I'm here on business. I'm from Reinberg, actually. About an hour north."
I lean just a minuscule amount forward, not feigning my interest because I'd genuinely like to know. "How long have you been in the area?" Long enough to murder an innocent girl and dump her body over a bridge like a sack of rotten potatoes?
"Just one day now." Long enough, indeed. "Yourself?"
I smile and meet his bluish eyes. "Three years."
He gives me his money. When I take it, I make sure our fingers brush. At the subtle contact I quickly look away as though to hide my synthetic grin. I feel his gaze on the side of my face, and somehow, sense him smiling back.
He's picked up on the hints. He's drawn the conclusion. The poor little barista girl has a crush on me, how flattering! At least that's what I hope he thinks.
"Ah, so not originally?" He's a step closer to the counter than before. "Your German is impeccable, but your accent tells me you're not from here. May I ask?"
The question takes me off guard and I fumble with placing the euros in the register's drawer. I delay as I search for a polite way to avoid the question, and by the time I do answer there's no time to make it a flirty one.
"It's not important," I finally say. "I call this home now. I'll be right back with your coffee."
With that I dip away, relief flooding me once again to be momentarily out of sight. When I round the corner, Lattie is on me in an instant.
"Have an order, Leila? I can take it." Lattie has been restless being stuck in the back of the café all day. She starts toward the front of the building as though to resume her usual job and relieve me of it.
"NO!" I grab her elbow, jerking her back. "I mean, no. I'll get it. It's fine."
I offer her a nervous smile. She returns it with a furrowed brow. "Are you okay?"
"Peachy. What's that, Nanni?" I call over Lattie's head, further into the cafe. "I think Nanni needs you back there," I tell her, ushering her through the kitchen door before she can object.
"But Leila, Nanni didn't even—" The door swings closed behind her before she can finish. With Lattie safe and out of sight, I rush to make a black coffee and pour it in a to-go cup.
Reinberg, I ponder, a werewolf from Reinberg. He's not here on business. Reinberg is a city over ten times the size of Heisenbühl. People from Heisenbühl go to Reinberg for work, not vice versa.
When I return to the counter with his drink, he seems to brighten in a way I didn't expect, giving me the distinct impression that my act had been too convincing. Nonetheless, I mirror his straightened posture and pleasant expression.
"Here you go." I hand him the filled cup, and it's he who initiates the finger brushing this time. "Enjoy."
He hesitates for a moment before extending his non-coffee-holding hand out over the counter. In confused instinct, I take it. He squeezes, solidly but gently, a way intended to make an impression.
"I'm Konrad, by the way." He introduces himself with a steamy smile that would buckle the knees of those of lesser strength than myself. "So nice to meet you."
"Leila," I state. "And you."
"Well, Leila," he tries out my name, our handshake ending a second beyond the line of formality, "I'll be here a bit longer and wouldn't mind having someone show me around. Maybe we could get together and talk sometime. When you're not working, of course."
I beam as though I were six and have just been handed a puppy. I tell him I would be happy to be his guide.
The creeping thought isn't lost on me that this may be exactly how he became acquainted with Sophie, if he became acquainted with Sophie. Serial killers have routines, and this might be his.
But so long as his predatory attention is occupied with me, it isn't on someone else.
"Can I ask your number, then?"
"Actually," I start, pulling the small tablet from my apron and plucking off a sheet, "It would be better if you give me yours. I get a ton of spam calls, so I don't answer if I don't recognize it."
A smirk plays across his face as he sets his coffee down to take my offered pen and begin writing out the digits. "I'd certainly want you to recognize it."
I'm given the paper and we exchange our final smiles—his charming, mine coy. He reattains his coffee, turns, and heads for the doors, though not without having a parting word.
"I'll see you around, Leila."
I glare after him, fine clothes and all. I'm sure you will.
Once he's gone, I glance down at his neat, uniform script. His name is written above his numbers, the letters square and straight. Konrad Fürst.
Konrad is not the werewolf who had been in my driveway. His skin is fair, not at all tan.
There are three dangerous persons in Heisenbühl now. Four, if one of the three didn't kill Sophie.
Kill Sophie.
My mind whirls down its spiral all over again.
~
The morning passes in a daze after that. No customer has been as interesting as the one whose phone number is stashed away in my pocket.
I had told Nanni I planned to leave at nine o'clock to run my errands. I couldn't make myself. I feel too fortunate to have been at the front of the café when a werewolf walked in, and I don't trust the odds of fate enough to risk it happening again in any other way.
"Leila, dear," Nanni says as she pops up from the back. The customer I'm serving thanks me and goes off, not interested in eavesdropping. "Don't you have things to do today?"
"Yeah, but we've been busy and I didn't want to—"
"Go on, girlie." She pulls the knot of my apron at the small of my back and it pops loose. "No need to be negligent."
"But Nanni, I—"
She unhooks the apron from around my neck, jerking me down with it so that she can reach it to remove it. "Go on."
"But—"
"No buts!"
"N—"
"Shoo!"
And like that, I'm brushed out on the doorstep like a stray dog riddled with mange, the door locked behind me.
~
I'm reluctant to leave the café parking lot after being shoved out the door into it. Incessant worry has me tied by a rope, and one million and one scenarios of the terrible things that can happen to the McNamaras while I'm gone run through my head.
Among the most prominent are those involving werewolves or serial killers, or both.
Nonetheless, Nanni was right. The errands I have to run can't be neglected, either. And thus, I'm determined to run them in the least amount of time possible and get back to the front counter as quickly as I can.
I take out of the parking lot going a bit faster than I'm sure Nanni would like. My first stop on the way: my house, which is the first one you come to from the café on this stretch of forested road. I pull my Hummer into the driveway, relieved to see no figures sneaking about in the daylight as there were in the night.
I check the property more thoroughly now than I could afford to the night before, with a short lead pipe in my hand which was leftover from when the waterlines had been redone a year ago. There's nothing amiss inside the home. The closets hide no persons, the windows bare no cracks, and the space beneath the bed is as dusty as I'd left it.
No one has been inside the house. I can trust in that conclusion. I know someone has been outside at the front—but what about the back? I set off through the house toward the back door, intent on inspecting every blade of grass in the yard thoroughly.
I don't get one foot outside.
I freeze mid-step, my shoe suspended in the air, as I watch a square sheet of white paper flutter down to land upon the porch boards, having been stuck between the frame and the door.
A letter. I pick it up.
I don't know if it's really you or not. It makes no sense for you to be here. But it smells like you. It feels like you. I need to know if it is.
If it is you, meet me tomorrow night on the village bridge. If you're scared, don't come. I'll know I have the wrong person, and I apologize.
The handwriting doesn't belong to anyone whose script I can remember, which only consists of three people. It isn't Lattie's, Nanni's, or even the finely dressed werewolf Konrad's who thinks I'm smitten with him. No—these letters are bold, shaky, and boyish, like someone who cares for legibility rather than appearance and doesn't write by hand often.
Who? Who could that be?
My social circle since moving here has been decidedly limited to Lattie and Nanni, and I'm well familiar with the regulars at the café, though none of them would do this.
The werewolf in my driveway...
This has to be his letter. This has to be why he was here but didn't break in.
I don't know him, but I don't doubt that I am the "you" he's looking for. I have to be, no matter how much sense it doesn't make. Nanni's sister, Lattie's great-aunt, built this house for herself. She was the only one to occupy it from its construction to her death, and as far as I can tell, she would have no reason to have been involved with werewolves. Me, on the other hand... my involvement is a different story.
Meet me tomorrow night on the village bridge.
If I caught the culprit here last night, and I assume he left this letter moments before our noisy encounter, that means two grave things are in order. It means that today is tomorrow, and the sun is quickly drawing near the horizon.