That night, the pack made a formal offer of employment to Tad. It took some string-pulling to get Tad enrolled late, but we managed. Adam said that the school’s reluctance to bend the rules of entry had only been pro forma. Tad’s grades were high enough that he qualified—and the school hadn’t known what to do with the protesters. They were more than happy to let us propose a solution that suited everyone; it just took a couple of days to manage that within the established rules.
Tad had cheerfully accepted Jesse’s somewhat scattered approach to her first semester at college. I was pretty sure she’d added the women’s studies Comparative Sexuality class to see how far she could push him. Tad rolled with whatever she threw at him. After dealing with Zee his whole life, Jesse was easy.
I didn’t know what would happen once she picked a major, but maybe matters would quiet down so it would be enough for Tad to be on the same campus rather than needing to be on the same class schedule. For now, at least, Tad and Jesse were fine.
“It’s a Tuesday,” I said to Adam. “Isn’t it a little late for them to still be up?”
“Wednesday morning now,” said Adam. “Did Jesse say anything to you about having plans?”
“No.”
We’d warned her about the Sherwood problem before heading to Uncle Mike’s. If she’d had plans, it was entirely understandable that she’d forgotten to tell us about them. Adam opened the front door, and laughter and the scent of fresh-buttered popcorn rolled out of the kitchen. They didn’t seem to notice our entrance.
Adam winked at me and then announced, “Parental curfew,” in a drill sergeant’s voice that could have awakened the dead.
There was the sound of a chair scraping the floor, then Jesse bolted out of the kitchen and threw herself at her dad. She had, for the time being, eschewed her usual bright-colored hair dye. Her newly natural honey-brown hair, which was making its first appearance since she was about thirteen, made her look uncomfortably like a real grown-up. She didn’t look less adult in her frantic relief.
Adam hugged her hard. “All is well,” he told her, which was true as far as it went. But Jesse was used to that; her dad had been the pack Alpha since the day she was born.
“The thing that we thought might end up with Adam dead looks like it will work out okay,” I told her dryly as her feet hit the ground again. “We have another situation to replace it that might end up with Adam dead. Or me dead. Or maybe the whole pack. But at least we solved one deadly situation before we picked up another one.”
“Business as usual,” said Tad, who’d exited the kitchen with a little less speed than Jesse.
He was only tall when compared to his dad, but he had a sort of lanky grace that made him look taller. His ears stuck out, and his nose was flattened as if he’d spent time in a boxing ring. He was still attractive, but it was an effect of expression rather than bone structure. Of course, his appearance was a matter of choice rather than genetics. He was half-fae and half-human, but powerful enough that he could adopt a glamour like the full-blooded fae in order to hide his other-than-human appearance.
Izzy, full name Isabella Norman, tagged along behind Tad. She was slender and doll-sized, with curly brown hair—and was a lot tougher than she looked. She and Jesse had been casual friends for a long time. When Jesse started taking heat from other high school students as her father’s position as the werewolf pack Alpha became better known, Izzy had jumped into the breach. For that alone I would have liked her, but she was also a genuinely good person.
She wrapped a hand under Tad’s arm and leaned around him so she could see us better. “Hey, Mr. H, Ms. H, glad you’re both still alive. Mom wants to know if you want more of the orange essential oil—it’s on special this month.”
“I’ll take two,” I said. I’d been experimenting with using it in my baking. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it was awful.
“Don’t you have school?” Adam asked, addressing all three of them.
“Not until eleven tomorrow,” Jesse said. “And we are working on an assignment, anyway.”
“The Harvester,” said Izzy in a tone suitably sepulchral. Then she grinned and said, “You know, the new horror movie? The one written by that Danson guy who graduated from Pasco High? Apparently he went to school with our English Lit teacher, from kindergarten through college. We were given the assignment of watching it and reporting on it.”
“The screenwriter claims that it’s based on a local urban myth,” said Tad with a grin. His hand covered Izzy’s where she touched his arm.
Aha, I thought. They’re dating. No wonder she’d called Tad when Jesse had been in trouble.
“The problem, ladies and gentlemen,” announced Jesse in a voice meant to mimic their instructor’s, “is that there is no urban myth of that sort around here. Have fun picking it apart.”
“I don’t think he likes his old schoolmate much,” murmured Tad with laughing eyes. “Jealousy is a terrible thing.”
“I get the impression that it’s not jealousy,” said Jesse. “It feels more personal than that. Like maybe Danson stole Dr. Holbearth’s girlfriend.” She paused. “Or they dated and had a bad breakup.”
“The Harvester had a pre-opening midnight showing tonight,” said Izzy. “We thought we’d get a running start on our assignment. And also miss out on the crowds.” She shook her head. “One out of two isn’t bad. That theater was packed.”
Tad’s eyes caught mine meaningfully, then traveled to Jesse. He and Izzy had taken Jesse out to distract her from her worries over her father, I interpreted. I gave him a little nod of thanks.
“It was so bad,” Jesse said. “I mean even worse than the usual B-horror-movie bad. The villain, for no discernible motive I could figure out, dressed up like a scarecrow, took a scythe down from an old barn in the back of the farm he’d just bought, and started killing people in ways designed to be as bloody and disgusting as possible.”
“It was a sickle,” said Tad in the patient tone of someone who has said that before.
“And it was supposed to be possessed,” Izzy said. “The old woman, the first victim, she said as much. ‘That old scythe is hainted.’ ”
“ ‘Hainted’?” I said. “The movie is supposed to take place here, right? Isn’t a ‘haint’ a Southern term for a ghost? Like Georgia Southern. Southeastern Washington is still in the Pacific Northwest.”