Dangerous Diabolical: Book 1 (Iridescent) ✔️

4.4

I scratched my jaw, looking around. "Some crazy guy decided to fire off magic at me." My voice was higher pitched than I intended, and from the way Leofstan began to shake his head, I think it rocketed into ultrasonic.

"I was just working, and this thing," I pointed to the puddle, "wanders into the store."

"And this was using magic?" His, eyebrows shot up, a slight twitch in the corner of his mouth.

"No, it was a wolf-girl thing. It was the other one!"

"So there were two, and one is now a pile of blood and bones and the other...?" His voice trailed off as he placed his hands on his hips.

"You just missed him." I supplied helpfully. "He was firing magic out all over the shop." I pointed my chin toward some of the damage. The council glanced at the toppled shelves, eyebrows rising even higher, but he said nothing. After several seconds of silence, he merely sighed.

"It squished the werewolf," I whined. Well, aided squishing it. He tilted his head, puckering in his cheek and taking another deep breath, unblinking. "It's true!" I exclaimed.

Saying nothing he untied his blazer from around his waist and shrugged it on. For a moment, I thought he was just going to leave. Instead, he knelt, studying the remains of the wolf-girl.

"That's no werewolf." He noted dryly, holding out a hand and pushing magic into it, muttering something under his breath. I leaned over him to get a good view of what he was seeing.

And I could understand how he'd be confused. The face was neither here nor there. It was a bone and flesh jumble of neither one, what was left of the arm structure was distorted beyond recognition. I couldn't see a tail.

"It is too," I argued, "it shifted from girl and everything, it just didn't do a good job of it. Looked worse before it tried to wolf out actually. The cashier girl saw it, she can back me up."

He paled."A human saw this thing."

"Oh yeah, rotten maggots crawling out of the eyeballs and everything." I threw a thumb over my shoulder to where I'd last seen her behind the fridges.

It was empty. I groaned audibly, running a hand down my face. "She was there, I swear!"

Lefostan stood. "So you're telling me, you were attacked by a female werewolf?"

"Yes!"

He frowned but reached up to fish around in his inside pocket. Slowly he drew out a picture. "Did she look like this?" A young smiling teen girl in school uniform smiled shyly on a plain background. Her cheeks were flushed and she looked better for wear.

"Kinda." It was hard to tell without being able to smell her. She had similar eyes but the rest of the face was too deformed to tell. "Wait. Is this Jessie Chambers?" I hoped he said yes, Willow would be positively sprouting at the news that the corpse from her story had appeared in real life.

Leofstan merely grunted, "You knew her?"

"Plur-lease." I dragged out the word. "Everyone on this side of the neighbourhood knows she bailed on her own funeral."

His lips pressed tightly together. "Did you recognise the second attacker?"

"Nah, had a hood down the entire time."

From outside there were slams of van doors signifying the human law enforcement arriving.

"And the human?"

"I think her name was Jo-something?"

"Joanne?" He supplied, growing a little paler.

"Maybe." I shrugged, taking advantage of him looking towards the arrivals to snatch the photo. There was nothing special about her, and no way to tell she was dual-natured through the picture. A smear of red spread from under my thumb. Only then did I realise I'd used the gemmed hand and that the wounds had opened up.