Savage by Nancy Holder

months ago.
    She put the phone up to her ear. He identified himself, then added, “I just wanted to let you know that the fire investigators finished their report on your house. Given what happened to your dad, the department wanted to make sure there was no arson or anything else involved. It turns out it was just an accident. Earthquake broke a gas pipe, there was a spark . . . you get the idea. I’m sorry.” He paused, then added, “There was one interesting thing they did find, though, that I thought you should know about in light of our recent conversation. They did find what appeared to be a bullet made out of silver. We’re looking into that. Call me if you want to talk.”
    With a trembling hand, Katelyn deleted the message. She sat for a few minutes staring at falling snowflakes without seeing them, as she tried to make sense of what she’d just been told.
    Why had there been a silver bullet in their house?
    She thought about how dramatically her mom had changed after her father had been killed. Giselle Chevalier had become a broken woman, afraid of everything, a poster child for post-traumatic stress disorder. Katelyn had had to grow up fast, raise herself, baby her mother.
    Her mother, who had sent Mordecai McBride the newspaper article about Katelyn’s dad being bitten by a wolf.
    See, I told you so.
    That was what her mother had written in the margin of the news clipping.
    “Keep it together,” she whispered to herself. “You’ll figure all of this out.”
    She just wished she believed that.

    By the time she pulled up outside the cabin, her heart was thumping. Just breathe , she told herself.
    Trick’s car wasn’t there and she was disappointed. She closed her eyes tightly, got out, and slammed the door. She mounted the cabin steps slowly, her hand shaking so badly she had to try twice to unlock the front door. She pushed it open and stepped tentatively inside, closed the door and leaned against it for a moment, struggling to catch her breath. She couldn’t let her grandpa know anything about what had really happened in the last twenty-four hours.
    Mordecai McBride appeared from the kitchen, wiping a butcher knife with a dishtowel. She stared at the glinting silver of the blade and began to sweat.
    “What the hell happened to you?” he asked gruffly, eyes narrowing as they took her in from head to toe.
    “Oh, hi, Ed,” she said. That had been her nickname for him when she’d first arrived in Wolf Springs. He’d told her that when she was little, she hadn’t understood what a grandfather was. He’d told her it was like having an extra daddy, and she had taken the initials — E.D. — and called him that. In the months since then, they had moved on to “Grandpa,” but in her uncertainty, she’d reverted to the more distancing name. “I, uh, was at Paulette’s. Like I said.” Her voice sounded like a tiny squeak to her own ears. She thought of the wound at her temple. Surely it had healed by now. She could feel the sweat rolling down the middle of her back. It was beginning to bead up on her forehead and she clenched her fist, hoping that he didn’t notice.
    “Paulette live in a pigpen?”
    She glanced down. There was muck under her fingernails and she could still smell bog water in her hair. She’d done a terrible job of cleaning herself up.
    “No, she, uh — it’s just that—”
    Katelyn panicked as she realized she was stammering. She was an idiot. No one had been at the Fenner house. She could have used a faucet outside or probably even found her way inside to a shower.
    “It’s just that—”
    “Just what?” he cut in, sounding angry.
    He took another step closer and she smelled the poisonous, silvery tang. With a sudden sinking in the pit of her stomach she realized that he wasn’t holding a kitchen knife but a hunting knife.
    And it was made of silver. Hunting knives were usually made of stainless steel.
    He knew. He knew, and now he was going to kill her.
    Just