And he wanted me to believe he was merely a wolf.Right.
Grabbing my keys and wallet, I reluctantly left the apartment, locking the door behind me before departing.
Since it was morning, Johnny, the homeless man who liked sleeping on the front stairs, was nowhere to be found. Caveat,however, was loitering near the entrance gate as he usually did, and the smell of fresh pot hit my nose at full power.
When he saw me, Caveat smiled toothily and waved. “Yo, Drew! Where ya been?”
I waved back. “I’ve been busy,” I replied as I came to a stop before him. “Are you good, Cavi?”
He nodded, jittery, obviously from whatever type of pot he was inhaling. “Been seeing a pack o’ some dogs ’round here,” he told me. “Thought ye might like it.”
I frowned. Stray dogs weren’t uncommon in this neighborhood, but a pack of them? “It does sound interesting,” I said, feeling my investigative tendencies rising to the surface, especially since I had an alleged “dog” back home. “What do they look like? Are all of them the same breed?”
Caveat shrugged. “No ’dea,” he said, wriggling his brows. “But I did good, didn’ I? Ye can write ’bout some gang of shape-shifters or somethin’ else as crazy as you like.”
His words made me remember the conversation with my parents a few days ago, and I began walking away, turning my back to him. “I’m not crazy,” I said, annoyed that Caveat, of all people, dared to callmecrazy. “One day, you will all learn the truth, and I’ll be the one who says,Told you so.”
“Ha!” Caveat barked from behind me. “That’s what all crazy people say!”
I ignored him, like I ignored everyone else. Because I knew I was right. Iknew.
Even if everyone else, homeless men included, begged to differ.
With three plastic bags full of groceries, I climbed the road leading back home. Thankfully, I didn’t see anyone I knew on the way; I was in no mood to interact with people.
All I wanted was to be back in my apartment and nuzzle my face in the wolf’s fur. Which reminded me, I needed to give him a name. I couldn’t keep calling him “the wolf” all the time.
But I had a feeling that the wolf already had a name, and I simply had yet to learn it. I mean, even supernatural creatures had names, didn’t they?
When I reached my apartment building, Caveat and Johnny were both loitering by the gate. I had no intention of talking to them, since I was still sullen from my earlier chat with Caveat, so I rounded the building, heading to the back door.
Once at the back, however, I realized I hadn’t returned here since the night I found the wolf. The door had been cleaned, so no blood remained there, or on the asphalt. There was a little puddle of water near the bottom of the building’s downspout.
I was about to completely dismiss it when the sun suddenly rose brightly over the alley, peeping from beyond the neighboring building. As if they had a life of their own, my eyes were drawn to the little water puddle, and when I realized the sun wasn’t reflected in it—that nothing, in fact, was reflected in it—I froze.
Slowly, I lowered the grocery bags to the ground and took a couple of steps to stand above the puddle. It was small, in the shape of a normal water puddle, but its color was dull. Dark.
It wasn’t a little puddle after all.
It was a shadow mark.
Right where the wolf had been lying a few days ago, bleeding.
Heart racing against my rib cage so loudly, I wondered if Caveat and Johnny could hear it from all the way over at the main entrance, I crouched down, studying the puddle.
Back on Sunset Boulevard, there had been too many people around for me to do anything other than take a picture of the shadow mark.
But here I was alone, with full access to one. The second one that had appeared in a matter of weeks.
That could not be a coincidence. I didn’t believe in coincidences anyway. Not with the supernatural roaming free.
Adrenaline boiling under my skin, I pulled a water bottle out of the grocery bag and emptied it on the asphalt behind me, away from the mark. Then I dipped the bottle opening into the shadow mark, letting the odd, murky liquid flow inside.
I scooped up as much of the shadow mark as I could, until all that was left were a mere few drops I couldn’t quite capture. Then I capped the bottle, carefully put it in the grocery bag, and rushed inside the building, heading to my apartment.
Throwing the door open, I didn’t see the wolf anywhere and assumed he was in my bedroom, napping, but I didn’t care at the moment.
I had actually managed to bottle a shadow mark.