Oh my god, I just realized how long it's been since I updated this. Thank you all for your patience. I'm in the process of setting up an AO3 account for myself, but I'm also in the process of writing some stuff for my job, which is just forevertaking.

"Got a light?" Murphy met me at the top of the stairs, barely more than a shadow moving against the darkness of the hall.

"One second," I said, in the middle of buttoning my jeans. I hadn't bothered trying to find my shirt or shoes. I yanked the amulet from my neck and wrapped the chain around my hand, calling up enough dim blue light for us to see the narrow staircase. Enough light for me to see that she had lost her pajama pants, now wearing only the thin, baggy t-shirt that fell to just shy of the middle of her thighs. I had warned her about the lack of air conditioning.

... Not that I was complaining. She had fantastic legs that I had only ever seen while under duress, and I could objectively appreciate the view and the fact that I wasn't facing down a landmine, or fading in and out of consciousness from third-degree burns, or worse still, having to listen to Kincaid's color commentary.

Well. Mostly objectively.

She glanced up, her warning look cut short as her eyes raked over me. It might have been a trick of the light, or the lack of sleep, or maybe I just wanted to see a flicker of interest there before she jerked her chin at the stairs. I obliged, taking point through the darkened house.

The thing screamed again, much closer, so loud it made the old glass in the window panes resonate in a chaotic, malevolent hum. I stopped on the landing and didn't know I was holding my breath until I felt her hand in the middle of my back for a second; hesitant, featherlight.

Compared to the silence that followed, our feet on the wooden stairs might as well have been hammers on an anvil. I called my staff to my hand as I crossed the kitchen, threw the door open and stepped out, ready to raise a shield. I made it to the porch steps and paused again, as unnerved by the silence as I had been by the sound.

In all the time I had spent on the farm, I had never heard it so quiet. Not peaceful. Still in a terrible, suffocating way. The humidity made the stars shimmer, white-hot, too close. Without a breeze, the air felt thick, the heavy scent of vining roses growing on the far side of the house mixed with less pleasant agricultural smells and a whiff of something dead. We made a circuit around the house without leaving the porch. I wouldn't have known Karrin was behind me if she hadn't spoken. She would have been just as ghostly silent in boots as she was barefoot, sticking close to me as we crossed into the shadowy dogtrot between the house and office. "Do you see anything?"

"Nothing. I don't—" I stopped again, seized by rabbit-hearted terror as another howl shook the rafters above us. Dirt filtered down from rattling kerosene lanterns and bundles of drying herbs. For a second it wasn't even an animal sound anymore. I would have sworn I could hear the roar of a burning mansion and the monstrous screams of the vampires inside, could smell it, could feel the breath of snarling hellhounds hot on my heels. I shook my head violently, trying to get the noise out of my ears like it was water, itching to get behind a threshold again. "I don't think it's out here. It could be miles away. Let's go back inside."

Murphy didn't move an inch until I touched her shoulder. Only then did she look up at me, startled, cold through the thin fabric of her shirt and trembling from head to toe. She let me take her arm and pull her into the dim, candlelit kitchen, moving numbly beside me, bloodless hands wrapped around the grip of her Sig Sauer.

My own hands were shaking a little when I slipped the chain of my amulet around my neck. That was concerning enough by itself — I had gone one-on-one with things way more frightening than some spectral hound, if that's what it was. Masters of the arcane aren't supposed to get vaporlocked from a damned noise.

I grabbed a blanket from the back of a chair in the living room and paused for one indecisive second before I took a bottle and two ancient glasses from the liquor cabinet. Heavy crystal, cut in a fancy geometric pattern, covered in a thick layer of dust — probably hadn't been used since the last time I sat and had a drink at the kitchen table, the night before I left for Chicago. Stepping into the kitchen felt like stepping back an entire decade. My army surplus duffle bag was parked in the same corner, though at the time it had been packed with all my worldly belongings and wasn't even half full.

The kid who had sat at that table— near to tears with the relief of being comparatively free from the looming threat of the White Council— would have laughed in my face if I told him that he was now one of their Wardens.

I draped the blanket around Karrin's shoulders and steered her into the nearest chair. I wiped down the glasses and sat next to her. She looked tinier than ever wrapped in the thick wool afghan. Her hair had come entirely loose from its messy braid, curling around her face. She put her pistol on the table and frowned at the tremor of her fingers.

"So," I said, pouring half an inch of scotch into the bottom of each glass. "Probably not a coyote."

"You don't fucking say," Murphy muttered. She picked up the glass and studied the contents, glowing amber in the candlelight, then knocked back the shot without flinching. I didn't like seeing her so spooked — she didn't like me seeing it, either. She dragged the back of her hand across her lips, steady and no longer shaking, quiet for a moment before she turned to me. "Did that feel… weird to you? Like one of those fear monsters," she clarified, saying aloud what I had been thinking. "A little too creepy?"

"Disproportionately creepy, yeah." I downed my own drink and immediately poured myself another round. "Yeah, it did."

"Wasn't just me?"

"Definitely not." The scotch burned pleasantly, soothing jangled nerves. "Fetches are more of an up close and personal thing, though, remember?"

"Do I ever," Murphy grimaced, the color returning to her face. She held out her glass for another round. I splashed in another half-inch. "The moon isn't right for it. And there would be human victims, if—" she paused, tapping a nervous fingernail against the rim of the glass, staring out the pitch-dark window over the sink. McCoy never bothered with curtains, claiming that anyone bold enough to peep deserves what they see. I found myself missing the subterranean security of my basement apartment. "If it was a loup garou. I know that. But that's what it sounded like."

We both drank the second round a little slower. Some good-natured teasing was usually enough to snap her out of her obstinate refusal to acknowledge fear. There was nothing funny about what happened when CPD had misguidedly tried to handle a loup garou on their own, though, and nothing funny about the vulnerability she had just shown me.

"Sounded like hellhounds," I admitted. We glanced at each other, noting the detail: we had each interpreted the sound as something specific, something traumatic. A significant observation and a damn good starting point for research but between the long drive, lack of sleep and adrenaline, my brain felt too mushy to make any connections.

Murphy yawned in unspoken agreement, reached for the bottle and turned it around, brows climbing as she traced the old paper label with her thumb; 1925. "Pretty sure the statute of limitations is up for Prohibition-era bootleggers," I said. She snorted. "We can look again in the morning. Should probably try to get some sleep first."

She put a hand on my shoulder as she stood, giving me a grateful little smile before she collected her gun and climbed the stairs, the hem of the blanket trailing behind her.

I left my empty glass on the table next to hers and followed.

stay tuned