Page 31 of Crave

I put my brother on mute. “Sure you’re up for this?”

“We need answers.” She bared her teeth. “Let’s go hunting.”

* * *

An hour later, we were out on the side of Highway 29, soaked to our skins. Wild squalls lashed rain across the empty highway perpendicular to the road. It was so dark I couldn’t make out anything but the light of Lacey’s phone, high up in the branches of a massive live oak.

“Pretty sure you don’t have to take that whole tree apart, sweetheart.”

“Do you want to climb up here?”

“Think we both know how that would go.” I checked my phone. Still a spotty signal.

“Because if I recall, only one of us has ever made it through the Aragog scene in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets without suddenly remembering we need more popcorn, or it’s time for an emergency Twizzler run, or he needs to check the sprinkler heads—”

“Water waste is a serious issue.”

“It was December.”

Something drifted down from the branches overhead, landing on the back of my neck. I ripped off my jacket, cursing loud enough to draw every undead for twenty miles down on top of us. Laughing, Lacey jumped down.

“Wench,” I mumbled. “Anything?”

“Fried. Same as the last one.”

Inside the Escalade, I fired up the heater while she pulled out her phone.

“Hey.” August’s voice cut out. “What’d you find?”

He sounded worn down. Part of me wanted to ask if it had been a bad night, but the only thing my brother hated worse than anyone fussing over him was two people doing it. There was no name for the chronic condition he suffered from, and just as few answers. His specialists had determined it was some sort of autoimmune disorder brought on by his body’s response to the lycan virus. When August’s disease flared, the attacks caused nerve damage, seizures, crippling pain and disorientation. Since he was a shifter, he healed in between episodes, only for his immune system to flare again the moment he was better and send him crashing back down. Hell of a catch-22. To make matters worse, for the past year, the interval between flare-ups had been shrinking, and no one could figure out why.

“Could be hail damage,” Lacey said. “Best guess, that big storm the last night of the Harvest Moon Festival cracked the camera’s exterior casing, then with the freezes we’ve been having the past week, moisture got in there and shorted something out.”

“You don’t sound sure.”

“That would be your mother’s influence.”

August barked out a laugh.

I tapped my thumb against the steering wheel, the back of my neck tingling, every sense on high alert. “August, what are the odds we lose two cameras within an hour of each other?”

Lightning lit up the sky, causing the call to drop.

“Effing great,” I muttered, punching redial.

“I don’t like this. None of it adds up. Too many coincidences. But then if the vamps were planning to hit us tonight, why sound the alarm and tell us they’re coming?”

“Unless this was never the way they planned to come at all.”

“You’re thinking a diversion?”

“Maybe,” I said. “August, what’s your read?”

Keys clacked in the background. “I’m here. Looks like we might have just lost a third camera, but with the weather, they’ve been blinking on and off all night.”

Lacey cursed.

“Okay.” I rubbed my forehead. “Where is it?”