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attacked while fixing his mountain bike, but he hadn't been riding a trail; he'd been cutting his own path through the foliage. Following his scent, I found wolf tracks, big wolf tracks, but still no smell of wolf, not even from the tracks. Which was, of course, impossible. A wolf couldn’t mask its scent from another wolf.
    I followed the tracks through the woods, and they changed, grew further apart like…
    Like the wolf walked on two legs.
    Impossible.
    I reached a river and lost the track. Whatever left these prints must have crossed the river, but I didn’t see anything more on either side.
    My ears perked up as voices alerted me to the presence of the police at the crime scene. They would be looking for a wolf.
    A wolf just like me.
    I ran, darting behind trees and keeping my distance from the hunting party, until I found my clothes stashed in a hollowed out tree. Pine needles poked at my bare feet and hands as I shifted back to human, my body stretching and bending until I was myself again.
    I dressed quickly, slipping on my shoes as one of the officers spotted me from a distance and shouted at me to stop.
    I ran, faster than most humans, but not as fast as a wolf, and looked down at my footprints, wolf to human. Using a branch, I covered my tracks until I reached my car, and drove back home in silence, my heart pounding hard in my chest.
    What kind of beast were we dealing with? A new kind of shifter? But what kind of shifter left no scent?

CHAPTER FIVE
     
Fall of a Sparrow
     
R OSE
     

     
     
    Not a whit, we defy augury. There is special providence in
    the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to

    come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come—the
    readiness is all. Since no man, of aught he leaves, knows what is't
    to leave betimes, let be.
    — William Shakespeare, Hamlet
     
     
    THE BARLEYS LIVED near the forest where Jared had been killed. Curtis and I pulled up to their house, a small one-story with peeling paint and rotting wood. One shutter hung off its hinges, looking like it was about to fall off as a giant black spider scurried across it.
    The sun beat down on us, and a trickle of sweat tickled the back of my neck as we waited on the porch for someone to answer the door. I turned to Curtis, whose body was tense. “You okay? We can leave if you want.”
    He shook his head. “I need to do this. Thank you for coming.”
    The door opened, and a stooped old woman with white hair, tinted blue, shuffled into view. “May I help you?”
    “Mrs. Barley, it’s me—Curtis.”
    He was more formal than I expected, but I held my tongue.  Curtis had told me that Jared’s grandparents had raised him after his own parents had died in a car accident.
    Mrs. Barley’s milky blue eyes widened, the wrinkles lining her face crinkling into deep wedges as she gave a grimace that looked like an attempt at a smile. “Curtis, hello. It’s been too long.” She opened the screen door. “Come in, please.”
    Curtis stepped aside to let me walk in first. “This is my friend, Rose. Rose, this is Jared’s grandmother, Mrs. Barley.”
    I smiled and held out my hand. “Nice to meet you.”
    Her hand felt like a bird’s, so tiny and fragile.
    The house smelled old and musty. It was clean enough, though quite run down. She gestured to the couch, a pale peach floral pattern so faded it looked stained. We sat as she called her husband down and disappeared into the kitchen.
    Family photos and needlepoint pieces cluttered every surface and wall in the living room. I recognized Jared’s face from the news, and saw his progression from childhood to manhood spread out on the mantel over the fireplace.
    Mrs. Barley returned a few minutes later with a tray of tea and cookies. “Here you are. Please help yourself.”
    I wasn’t hungry, and the cookies didn’t look particularly fresh, but I took the tea to be polite. “Thank you.”
    Curtis took a cup as well, as an older man stomped