'I saw a werewolf.'

Tali rehearsed the words in her head. Her cellphone shook against her ear. The other shaking hand massaged Jake. The lab perched on his claws as if he were ready to leap through the glass slider at the next passing shadow. His ears were alert and stubbornly fixed beneath her palms. His eyes roved empty shadows across the lighted deck.

Russ's voicemail kicked in. Tali dialed him back again. The phone rang once, twice, then this time a sleep-laced, groggy tone answered.

"Russ," she began in a hurried whisper. Her eyes darted from the gun on the desk beside her to Jake to the bleak outdoors. "Someone"—or something, she thought even as she willed those monstrous hands not to be true—"is outside my house. Jake scared him off, but Dante's at Molly's for the night; put him there because of the damn broken slider. I'm worried about him and the others, but going out doesn't seem smart."

My son, my darling flesh and blood, is just a couple yards across a parking lot, probably cozy under a blanket eating overly buttered popcorn with Molly, she decided. Safe and sound. "You can stay up 'til your mom's home," Molly had probably told the anxious boy. Yes, she was saying that and he was safe and sound. But Tali felt overwhelmed by a desire to protect him. She needed to see him, make sure he was safe. She stared hard at the front door, wanting so much to fling herself out there and run to him, but every muscle in her body turned stiff and rigid at the mere thought of opening the door to the night.

She heard a groan from Russ's wife as the sheriff rolled out of bed. "Who'd ya see?" he asked, voice immediately transitioning to one of acute listening and focus. She hadn't heard that sharpened tone since one of the Bette twins had fallen through the pond ice last winter.

Here, Tali faltered. What do you say when you've glimpsed a creature of folklore and fairytale? How do you keep from sounding crazy?

Jake scrambled onto his feet so fast her heart skipped a beat. The dog stood still, listening in slight shifts of his head, following a sound undetected by her own straining ears. Following a sound that seemed to walk along the far wall.

"Tali?" Concern flooded the voice on the line. She heard Russ wake his wife.

"Jake hears something," she whispered, as though a hushed tone would hide her in this illuminated office of smashed pottery. "We saw...I saw a, uhm, a werewolf I think. Guy in a costume I'm guessing, but it looked so realistic. Whoever designed it should give a few pointers to the designer of Wulver high's mascot." She laughed, a high falsetto that made Jake briefly turn.

"Tali?" Russ said after a moment. "I want you to call Molly and let her know about this. Make sure she doesn't open the door to anyone. You either."

Tali's heart squeezed. "You know him," she said with a mother's instinct. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, you know him, don't you?"

"Of him," Russ said carefully. "Stay calm, Tali."

"Molly can't protect Dante. Can't protect herself or the renters," she was saying, stretching for the gun. Goosebumps ran down her arm. She'd have to do it herself.

"If he's after you, he's not after them," Russ said in a relaxed tone nearly lost on the woman. "Listen to me, you'll be fine. Dante'll be fine. You can't go out there. I don't want to scare you, dear, you know that. But this isn't some chickenshit freshman prank. There's a killer stalking the northeast woods. Been in New Hampshire most recently. Dresses the way you described. Law enforcement's been doing a tight job, keeping it off the news. Teddy's on the way. He's just down the road for a coyote incident. I'll be over soon. Have to make a phone call to another guy whose spent a long time trying to track this bastard down."

Jake's head moved steadily forward. The thing he heard seemed to be approaching the front corner, near the porch steps.

"I'd really prefer you stay on the line while I grab the office phone to call Molly."

"Why's that?"

"He's at my door," she hissed, balancing the phone on her ear, gun in hand. Her pulse ticked skyward. The office was so far and then theres Jake to worry about and Dante, oh god, Dante, and why couldn't she have more hands to do everything?

Her scrambled thoughts were cut short with the wailing screech of a dying rabbit, a sound she'd heard several times before. Familiarity didn't keep her from shuddering. "Jake," she told the lab. She heard Russ calling Teddy on his wife's cellphone to hurry his ass on over. "You're a good boy, Jake. Sit down. Stay down, please. Jake."

Hackles raised, nails scraping the ground, Jake whined and finally sat.

Tali turned the phone on speaker and set it gently on the desk. With two hands free to hold the gun she raised it to a comfortable level and walked past the now growling dog. The office phone was too far. In her state she'd forgotten her cell phone could handle two calls.

All her attention quivered at the sight of the front door.

The porch glowed with a yellow autumn light against the closed blinds and display case in the window. The shadows of large moths darted like rabid bats around the highest pane.

From behind her Jake rose with a snarl the likes of which she'd never heard from the lab. His snarl was nasty and vicious. The dog had never bitten anyone before. That was going to change tonight, Tali thought.

She braced herself, focusing her energy on keeping her arms straight and locked on target, watching erratic moths droop and rise in the drawn light through the tiny red sight lines of her semi-automatic.

The old steps groaned under a heavy weight. A man's shadow crossed in a flash, too fast for her to think to shoot. But Tali knew better than to squeeze the trigger just yet.

The door knob wiggled. Stopped.

Tali drew a deep breath. As long as the killer was here, he wasn't with her son.

But that meant the killer was here.

The pounding began then. The man started to holler and yell. "Hey!" he shouted in a hurried voice, a strained mixture of whining and terror. "Let me in! Let me in! There's a wolf out here!"

Tali wanted to close her eyes but she kept them focused on the shuddering door.

"He's gonna kill me!" The man screamed. For a moment it'd gone silent. For a moment Tali panicked, thinking he might move to the inn, that he might lure Molly or one of the guests. Then the glass window cracked under the weight of a heavy fist.

With the gun pointed at the shadow, Tali crept forward and yanked up the blinds. For a moment she could've sworn she was staring into the feral brown eyes of a wolf, and then the pale man blinked. His hands slapped the glass softer this time. A ruddy streak trailed in its wake.

"Please!" he mouthed. He was covered in sweat and blood, wearing a torn jogger' s suit. One of his sneakers was missing. A cracked headlight flickered when he moved his head to wipe the sweat from his forehead.

Sirens wailed. Teddy's car roared into the driveway, illuminating the man from behind. Tali saw his shoulders drop, his head dipped to the floor thoughtfully. Then he turned, hands raised, and started walking down the steps to greet the officer.

"Stay inside," she heard Teddy yell. "Don't come out 'til I say."

By the time Tali was allowed out, Teddy was waiting by the hood of the vehicle with the man cuffed and pressed against it. Jake's leash in one hand, gun in the other, she rattled down those steps as fast as she could.

"Tali-" Teddy started. And in that moment she realized he wasn't cuffing this man; he was releasing him.

"What the fuck, Teddy?" she screamed, pent up adrenaline pouring through a tight grip on Jake's leash. The lab was snarling, channeling his owner's energy.

Teddy frowned. "You really think holding either of those two things is a good idea? I'm gonna have to ask you to put them back in the house..."

"What the hell are you doing?" she snapped, tightening her grip on the leather leash while showing Teddy that the gun's safety was in place.

Russ's number two wasn't in the mood to argue. He waved a hand at the battered jogger. "Fallon Hayes. Verified guest of Molly's." He gestured at the opposite porch, where Molly and several guests stood huddled under quilts in the red and blue lights. A smaller, quilted ghost was her son, his face taking all the tones of midnight as the patrol car's lights changed.

"Fallon's been going for runs every night since he's come here last week," Molly called, one hand clutching the rail as she headed over to them.

Fallon himself, who was clutching what appeared to be a slashed arm, winced and nodded. "I'd go during the day, but I'm a wedding photographer based out in Litchfield. Don't trust all the tourists. It's safer at night, when they're mostly tucked in bed."

Tali's eyebrows rose in time to Jake's growl. "You think so? On these winding roads?"

He patted tattered yellow strips on his pants. "I'm reflecting, aren't I?"

"And you saw a wolf?"

"Coyote, probably," said Teddy. "Tripped him up and he caught some hell in a fall. I was just up the road looking for one rattling the cages on Theresa's chicken coop."

Tali grabbed Teddy by his elbow and pulled him away. "Did Russ tell you what I saw?" she asked, dark eyes fixed on Mr. Fallon Hayes. The stranger was shaking off Molly's hands, telling her he'd be fine and they were just scratches and an egg on his head, is all.

Teddy's hand was at his hip beside a holstered gun. "Not my job to scare folks," he said. "Russ can do that when he gets here. I'll be doing a perimeter sweep at that point."

"So, knowing there's a killer from out of state, you trust this stranger's story?" She started to round back toward Fallon Hayes. As if sensing the mother's bearish instincts, Fallon made eye contact and flashed a tentative smile. "You're taking him in at least, right? For questioning? Rabies vaccines?"

Teddy grabbed her arm and then, failing to hold her, took Jake off her hands instead. "Tali."

"No, it's fine," the man said, glancing over his shoulder at the darkened woods. "I'll go wherever you want me. Anywhere, as long as it's away from what I saw. Big wolf crossed the road back there. Scared me shitless, so I started running back this way. I took a dive over a log. It fell on me then, biting and tearing, but I managed to hit it with a stick, get myself up and run."

Tali's free hand rested on her hip; she called up to Dante, ordering him to stay put. "But you came from behind my house," she told Fallon. "Not on the road."

"It chased me up a tree," he said. "I was running in whatever direction it wasn't. When it left, I climbed down and tried the front door. The wolf went off toward Molly's, so I thought I'd try this. You're the closest house around. I wasn't thinking I could outrun a wolf further than that."

Russ's car crunched through the gravel. After tying Jake to the rail, Teddy put Fallon in the back seat of his own cruiser, then moved to have a short discussion with the town sheriff. Tali was about to retrieve Jake and Dante both when she heard a sharp rap on the glass pane behind her. She turned, staring through the door at Fallon's pale face. He popped the door a moment later.

"You saw it, didn't you?" he asked through the seam.

Tali frowned. "Saw what?

"The wolf... The wolf with hands."