Gifted: A Holiday Anthology Read Online Free PDF Page B

least an hour left, he hated even skirting the edges of irresponsibility.
    It was then, as he turned, that he caught the scent. He stopped in his tracks, lifted his nose and inhaled.
    It smelled like a dog, which was weird. With the Pack roaming these woods, other canines steered clear. Once, he and Kate had spotted a fox ambling across the road, and, when it caught their scent, it practically went into spasms before it tore back to its own side.
    This definitely smelled like dog, though. That made Logan curious. Okay, most things made Logan curious. He liked learning and discovering. He also liked testing boundaries, though not in the same way as his sister. Kate pushed the ones that would get her into trouble. With Logan, boundaries were about knowledge and exploration. Lately, he’d been testing how close he could get to domestic animals before he startled them.
    He walked toward the scent, but it remained faint. Then it was gone. He looked around. He saw the road, and trees and snow. Lots of snow. When he backed up, the smell wafted by on the breeze.
    Had a dog passed this way earlier, its tracks now covered in snow?
    No. His gut told him that whatever caused this smell was still here, and he paused, analyzing that. Gut feelings were for Kate; Logan preferred fact. He decided that it was the strength of the scent. As faint as it was, it was more than the detritus shed by a passing dog.
    That still didn’t answer the question of where the dog could possibly be, when all he saw was snow. The forest started ten feet back from the road, the edge too sparse to hide anything bigger than a rabbit.
    Maybe it wasn’t bigger than a rabbit. Like the one when Uncle Nick took them to visit Vanessa, and they’d been out walking on a busy street and passed a woman with a tiny dog in her purse. The dog freaked, escaped and ran into traffic, followed by Kate, who’d nearly gotten hit catching it. Uncle Nick had decided it was a story their parents really didn’t need to hear. Logan agreed. He’d also pointed out to Kate that, while rescuing the dog had been a fine impulse, she’d nearly given the tiny beast a heart attack when she scooped it up, which would have rather undone the point of saving it.
    It could be a small dog, then, cowering behind a tree, waiting for Logan to pass. Which meant he should just move along. Except that, well . . . curiosity. He had to see if his theory was right.
    As he started through the ditch, snow billowed over the top of his boots. He should have worn snow pants, but, on the first snow last month, he’d declared he was too old for them. The price for maturity, apparently, was wet jeans and snow sliding down the inside of his boots.
    His foot hit something buried in the snow. A rock or a root. When he went around it, the smell faded. That’s when he decided curiosity wasn’t always such a good thing.
    He had a good idea what he’d just kicked in the snow. A dog. Or the body of one that was struck by a car and made it into the ditch before dying. He scowled at the thought. Sometimes, you can’t avoid hitting an animal on the road, and it isn’t safe to try, however much Kate would protest otherwise. But if you did hit a dog, you should at least stop. Help it if you can, and find the owner if it’s too late.
    He didn’t need to see a dead dog. But, when the snow melted, Kate would see it, and that would upset her. A lot. She’d been trying for the past year to convince their parents to let them get a puppy. Reese had dogs growing up, and he said if you raised them from pups, they were fine with the werewolf smell. But werewolves and pets were two things that didn’t normally go together, and, with everything else that was going on, this was one time when their normally indulgent parents held fast. Maybe in a year or so. Not now.
    Kate didn’t need to see the dead dog. Logan would move it deep into the woods on the other side of the road. It wasn’t something he wanted to do—at all—but