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“I can feel him. I can’t… I can’t talk to him, but I can feel ghosts. I know it’s him.”

Cold plunged through me again, and I gasped.

“Why is he hurting you?” Taavi asked, and I could hear the emotion in his voice. Worry. Fear. Anger.

“I—I can’ttalkto him,” I repeated. “But I think he’s upset.”

Cold.

“Definitely upset.”

I straightened up and started moving deeper into the house. I was going to go to Elliot’s room, but the cold stopped me. Almost as though it was moving me… I turned and went toward the living room.

This time, when I froze, it had nothing to do with the cold of the dead.

The patio door was open, and there were thick claw marks in the wood and in the carpet just inside the door. There was also blood. Quite a bit of it. And fresh.

“Ay, mierda y chingados,” Taavi breathed. I didn’t know what the words meant, but I knew the tone.

But before I could fully process what was happening, he was stripping out of his clothes, leaving them on the floor.

“Taavi—”

“Follow me,” he ordered, and then, with a painful groan and that strange-awful sound of shifting bone and muscle, there was a massive Xoloitzcuintli standing where my human-shaped boyfriend had been about thirty seconds before. Taavi stuck his nose in the carpet by the door, barked at me once, and then took off out the door at a run.

I followed.

I also called Smith.

“Hart, to what—”

“Elliot’s been kidnapped. Badger-napped. Whatever. Someone was in his house and they took him.” I steamrolled through it, needing to get it out. Needing Smith to hear what I was telling him.

“Where are you?”

“Following the trail through the Cranes’ back yard.”

“Hart, you should not—”

“I’m not letting these fuckers hang my best friend, so yeah, I abso-fucking-lutely should be,” I snapped.

“It’s snowing. The trail is going to be covered.”

“I’m following Taavi.”

“What?”

I did not have time for this. But I also knew he needed to understand. “Taavi’s a shifter. He’s following the scent, and I’m following his pawprints.”

“What is he?”

“A wild dog.” I wasn’t explaining to a Northwoods cop what a Xoloitzcuintli was.

“Hart—” He stopped himself. “Try not to get killed. I’m on the way and calling Olsen.”

“Thanks.”

I hung up, put my phone in my pocket, and started running.