I've decided I'm quite fond of the lead pipe. It's weight in my hand is a great comfort, the solidness of it even more so. Some might find its position in my floorboard as I drive through the village to be disconcerting, though with the events of the last two days, I'm not particularly concerned with appearing crazy.
The sun is still up, though it's on its descent. I speed over the bridge and wheel into the McNamaras' driveway. The last of my errands lie here.
My lead pipe and I inspect the property for any visitors—outside, since I know there had not been any to come in. I find no one hiding in the back garden presently; but I do find a trail of mashed flowers in one of Nanni's garden beds, leading to a place of wallowed dirt behind a large rose bush.
A bead of ice water trickles down my spine as I stand in that spot of bare dirt and peer through a small hole amid the leaves of the bush. Just enough twigs have been broken to give me a direct line of sight to the white spiraled bench on the back porch: the exact place where Lattie and I sat almost twenty-four hours ago.
Had we been watched?
I sicken further when I remember getting up from the bench and going inside, leaving Lattie and Nanni sitting out here alone... being watched.
I suddenly wish, not irrationally, that I had a bear trap on hand instead of a lead pipe. The crushed foliage and stamped petals of the McNamaras' stalker's hidden path would make a fine place to set it. And considering the wear of the dirt, I'm sure he has plans to return.
I step out of the shrubbery and flowers begrudgingly, knuckles white on the pipe. This man, whoever he is, has started a war that I'll make sure he doesn't finish.
He won't, because I will.
I think of the details surrounding Sophie Schwarz's death as I fill a bucket with water. I compile a mental timeline of events in my head as I squeeze in an ungodly amount of soap. I review my list of suspects as I scrub the oily handprints from the ground floor windows with just enough restraint to avoid shattering them.
Werewolf presence in Heisenbühl aside, the human stalker has risen to the status of prime suspect. Konrad has done nothing suspicious besides show up, and the werewolf who'd left me a note in my door has displayed no explicitly aggressive tendencies or ill intent thus far. Yes—the human stalking the McNamaras is the most likely of the three to have harmed Sophie.
When news first broke of her death, I had assumed that the killer was a serial one. That assumption was based off of shock and distress, but now, it appears to be coming true.
Serial killers have types. They kill in patterns. Sophie and Lattie fit the same pattern and check the same boxes.
Petite.
Fair haired.
Sweet faced.
Young.
Lattie may fit this predator's checklist, but I surely do not. Standing at five foot seven inches rather than Lattie's five foot two, with a head of dark auburn hair and an expression far from being described as "sweet," I'm unlikely to catch the killer's eye. But he's caught mine.
Once the windows are free of any evidence to frighten Lattie or Nanni, I move to the side of the house for a cursory glance at the phone box. Upon opening the squeaky, thin metal lid, I find what I expected to: the line cut clean in half.
This isn't an offense that can be remedied as easily, and so for a brief moment I consider my options. Maybe we'll all just move exclusively to cell phones, I decide as I shut the metal lid. It would probably be safer, anyway. If Nanni can be convinced to keep it with her at all times, and if she can listen to someone else long enough to learn how to use it.
Except I know her well enough to know how slim the odds of that happening are.
And so I slump against the house and slide down it in reluctance of that fact, and emit a groan a bear might even be disturbed by. At the bottom of the house where I come to sit, I take out my cell phone and ring the phone company, as much as I don't want to. Because reporting a cut line would raise alarms as to suspicious activity, I tell them my little cousin was playing a prank and didn't realize the permanence of his actions until it was too late. They tell me they'll send a repairman right over.
He arrives half an hour later. I show him to the box and we chat as he gets to work on replacing the line. He's absentminded and talks mostly of football, needing only an acknowledging hum or a filler phrase to be encouraged, until eventually the job is done. He asks me for a name to put on the bill. I give him mine, because Nanni will never know about what she doesn't have to pay for.
I watch the repairman's van disappear down the forested road leading out of Heisenbühl. It's only after the bright red van is out of sight that I turn to go back inside and feel something hard and smooth beneath the toe of my shoe.
A smartphone. He must've dropped it amid his enthusiastic rant about the injustices of last year's World Cup.
I groan and reluctantly swipe the thing up. Returning it is but another task I'll have to deal with... which is why I hold my breathe that he'll come back for it. One tap on the sleek screen gives me my answer.
The lockscreen is the red logo of the phone and cable company. A company phone, I realize, and know that I've seen the last of that football-obsessed repairman's face.
With a sigh I pocket the device and go back inside to the kitchen, where my earlier lie to Nanni—that all the noise last night was just me rearranging the kitchen cupboards—has come back to bite me. She hadn't looked in them this morning, but something has to be different the next time she does or else I'll have some more explaining to do.
And thus, I find myself on the kitchen floor, pots and pans and skillets of all kinds thrown about all around me. It takes longer than I'd like to create enough of a difference to excuse the noise. Though Nanni was half asleep anyway, I need to be sure.
As I make my way around every cabinet, metal ringing in my ears as an aftereffect, I don't realize the room darkening. It's only when I close the last cupboard and clamber to my feet that I notice the house has gone shadowy and the sun has dipped beneath the trees.
I glance at the clock. 7:23 PM.
Closing is at 8:00. I have to get going.
I lock the door on my way out and hurriedly hop into the Hummer, not ignoring the imagined image of the serial killer hiding beneath it, ready to grab my ankles.
What I also forgot, until the desolate bridge coming up in my headlights reminds me, is the ominous letter still sitting in my passenger seat.
If it is you, meet me tomorrow night on the village bridge.
Me or not—scared or not—it seems I'm here.
I can't get to the café without crossing this bridge, nor can I get the McNamaras home. Even if I do speed over, I think, it's better to face it now, before Lattie and Nanni are in the car with me later. Besides that, I won't be able to act like an oblivious passerby. The werewolf in my driveway, after leaving his note for me, saw my vehicle. He knows what I drive.
My speed slows as I come upon the bridge, sitting rod-straight and scanning the shadows for any sign of a person. The writer of the letter had not specified a time, only that it be at night.
I decide I won't stop and wait if they don't show themselves first. I'll roll over the bridge in a crawl, doors locked.
I don't reach the halfway mark.
I lay a heavy foot on the brake pedal, sitting like a statue in my seat as I watch a man climb up over the side of the bridge just a handful of meters ahead. The sight is worse than seeing a ghost—more like seeing a zombie rise from the dead. It spurs my heart and chills my skin.
I hadn't seen much of the culprit in my driveway besides the tanned shade of his skin, so that's what I have to compare to this man who's on his feet now, shielding his eyes from my lights.
The comparison is a match. He's shielding his eyes with a tanned forearm, just like before. I have mercy and switch on the low beams despite my clenched stomach. This seems to ease his arm a bit until finally he drops it to reveal his face.
I stare at this face for three seconds before becoming gripped by a feeling so great I think it may explode my heart.
It can't be...
I've not seen this face before. Not this version of it. But the underlying familiarly is there and overwhelming. The version of this face I've seen, and memorized day after day, is a younger one.
My body moves on impulse. I shove the door open and step out on one leg, pausing mid-departure. Over the top of the Hummer's door, we stare at each other.
I don't remember that I have the ability to speak until he does so first.
"Leila." His voice is a cold metal in my ears. It is deep and smooth and disbelieving, so unlike the boy's whose I hold in my memories. When he told me goodbye, it was with a high voice susceptible to cracking.
My mouth is dry. My throat is shrunken. I can manage only a whisper. "Zakai."
But this whisper seems an invitation to speak louder, and the speaking of my name an encouragement. I step out fully and shut the door.
A laugh jumps out of me and I'm smiling, however hesitantly, as I search this stranger's face. "Zakai," I say louder, stronger.
He beams in return, that smile seizing my lungs. "Leila," he says again, deciding that label is correct and right.
We meet in the golden fog of the headlights. A daze seems to have us both in its grasp. I don't know who initiates it, or if it was even initiated. I just know that it happens, that my world is reduced to him: my vision nothing but the olive green of his shirt, my ears saturated with the sound of his pounding heart and ragged breaths, and my sense of sensation nothing but the firmness of his body fitted to mine. My arms have linked around his midsection, much broader than I remember. His arms have wrapped around my shoulders, covering more of me than they used to.
Never in my life have I met a more familiar stranger.
I've touched Zakai many times before, wrestling, hugging, or just simply fighting, but not with this body. This body is foreign, with its broadness and its solidness, a far cry from the lanky, stick thin one I was used to.
"Why are you here?" My voice is muffled against him.
"Why are you here?" he returns into my hair.
We have to separate. No matter who we once were to each other, I have to remember the current situations. A stalker, a serial kill, and werewolves in Heisenbühl—him being one of them.
"This is home," I answer, stepping back.
"You moved countries? Continents? Where's—"
I raise a hand to stop him. "It's just me. I left."
His face falls as the gravity dawns. He knows what I am—or rather, what I'm not. He knew how I felt when we lived together in the place of my birth, with the people who'd birthed me. All those years ago, I would mention how I felt to him, and once even my desire to leave. After he did, those feelings worsened.
"Damn it. I'm sorry, Leila, I..."
"It's not your fault, Zakai." I don't know that it's really anyone's fault, nor do I care to ponder it. "Now you answer my question."
When Zakai's family had left mine, they had been set to return to their native Italy. When leaving myself and looking for a place to go, I hadn't had the gull to follow them, uninvited and imposing. Besides that, I didn't expect to find much difference between the families Belfiore and Ardeneux. They're both the same. They're both werewolves.
"My family is in Italy," Zakai confirms, "But the elders decided us youngers should go off on our own. Something about life experience." He looks away as he speaks that last part.
"So you all came to Heisenbühl?" I ask, an unintentional edge to my tone. That would explain the sudden werewolf presence here... or Sophie's death, if one of those in Zakai's group had strayed from the rest. Unless it didn't stray at all. Unless the group itself... No. Zakai wouldn't.
"No," he replies, dispersing my recent pop up theories. "We're not in Heisenbühl. Just me. I was passing through and I... I thought I smelled you."
A pang of guilt aches in my chest. He remembered my scent. I had forgotten his.
I force a small smile and a joke, despite myself. "What?" I raise my arm in confusion and sniff it. "That bad? I showered."
He grins, rolling his head. "Stop," he says in good humor, "You know what I meant."
Headlights that are not mine are approaching the bridge from the village's side. I come back to reality quickly. The serial killer. The murder investigation. Lattie and Nanni waiting at the café.
"I have to go," I blurt, and then, seeing the familiarity in that face, "Do you need a ride?"
"No," Zakai responds, having seen the approaching headlights as well. He watches them with a rigid posture.
I take a backward step toward my Hummer. "Zakai," I warn, uncertain of his intentions, "Don't be caught near this bridge."
He straightens as he looks at me, still in my vehicle's headlights. "Why?"
"A girl was found dead beneath it. They're looking for her killer." And so am I. And if he—a new face with no alibi or viable connections in the area—is found at the crime scene, the police will think the same thing I did.
I reach for my handle, the smooth black paint cold to the touch. I open it. The interior light bursts on.
"Leila, wait!"
Zakai jogs to reach my door, the panel of metal separating us.
"Where can I find you?" He asks. "So we can talk."
I hesitate for a second before leaning across the front seats and seizing the letter that had been lying in the passenger one. I retrieve a pen from the console and scrawl a series of numbers on the unused side of the paper.
"My phone number." I hand it to him. He takes it with a hidden smile. "Ring twice and hang up, then call again. I'll know it's you."
But werewolves don't own phones. So, morals be damned, I pull from my pocket the repairman's company smartphone and slide it into his palm.
He lets his smile out of hiding. "Have a good night, Leila."
"You, too. And don't go sneaking around anyone else's house. They might not be as kind about it as I was." I offer a smirk, closing the door before he can retort back.
The approaching car has nearly reached the bridge. Through my window, I watch Zakai melt into the dark of night, back into the woods from which he came.
At the bridge's village-side threshold, the other vehicle and I roll past each other in a slow crawl, I suspicious of them, they suspicious of me. There's nothing out this way from the village except a single residence. What's someone doing out here, on a lonely swath of road so late at night?
The other driver, I imagine, is wondering the same.