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I didn’t get home until dawn and nearly lost my mind when I opened our front door and found a wolf sleeping on our shabby rug.

The only reason I didn’t get the broom was that I knew it was Basselt.

I didn’t know how much of that wolf was Basselt and how much of him was wolf and would bite me if I startled him.

There were two amber eyes staring at me. Of course, he knew I was here. I stayed perfectly still as the wolf got up to stretch. The air kind of vibrated around him and then I was looking at Basselt again.

“Sorry, I didn’t get to ask the last time I met a Theran and I’m totally not trying to check out your arse, but how do your clothes appear and disappear?”

“You’re your mother’s daughter because she asked me the same thing when she saw my wolf and I couldn’t speak.

It’s part of our magic and it’s a safety thing, especially since humans came to Nestran.

Sometimes, we need to shift far from home and we wouldn’t have clothes.

Humans are weird about naked bodies and some of them might try to rape our women if they saw one naked. ”

I nodded.

“I get it, but wouldn’t your women just eat them?”

“Not all of us are predators. We’re assigned an animal based on our jobs. Some wouldn’t be able to fight back and would probably get killed.”

“That makes sense. Why are you sleeping on our rug?”

“It was more comfortable than sleeping on your couch and I needed to speak to you. I just didn’t realize you were going to be out all night. I’ve got news about your quest.”

“What?”

“Ollie and I plotted behind your back. He got me the locations where the Ghoul struck. I was able to pick out his scent, but there’s something wrong with the Ghoul. It’s not a disease the Theran have. I’ve picked it up here in Guttertown, but whatever it is, the Ghoul has it bad.”

“Might be a bedroom disease. The Madame watches for it and has the girls trained if someone is showing signs when they get them to their rooms. Guttertown healers are really good at treating those and most of them don’t need copper instruments to make.

“It happens outside of Guttertown, too, because some of them cheat without coming here. Their healers should be able to take care of it. And most of them can afford treatment unless we were completely wrong, and the Ghoul is Lower Cutwart born and bred instead of a Baron or related to a Baron. But nothing makes sense if they weren’t a Baron. ”

“He’s pissing in the house. On the walls,” Basselt said.

“That’s how I picked him out from his victims because no one else would piss in the house.

I was able to pick up his regular scent and where he went in the house.

There was one particular room in each house where he rolled in the bed.

That’s a thing we do to leave our scent, but I can’t imagine why a human would do it. ”

“Can you tell whose room it was?”

“A woman. I could smell her perfume. It wasn’t the matron because there wasn’t an overwhelming scent that a man shared the room. A daughter most likely. Not a youngling, but not an adult yet to leave the nest.”

“There was a beautiful girl named Elsbeth in Lower Cutwart who was going to marry out. I thought she was the reason they were targeted, but her neighbor seemed sure she hadn’t picked a suitor that someone would have snapped.”

“She probably is, but I don’t think the Ghoul was her suitor.

He’s pissing blood and pus. The rest of him doesn’t smell exactly healthy, either, and you don’t need to be Theran to smell it.

The only reason I did was because it was faint, but in person, it would be overwhelming.

He’s probably not spending a lot of time around people unless he’s killing them.

I’m shocked he’s got the energy for it.”

“That honestly helped. Since it’s probably a Baron, you might want to let Neco and me take it from here.”

Basselt chuffed at me like a wolf. Yeah, he was part of an Ollie plot, so that meant they were just going to ignore me. It was one thing for us to end up in the Guttertown cells, but it wouldn’t be the same if Basselt got arrested stalking a Baron, even if the Baron was a murderer.

“You’re going to ignore me, aren’t you?” I sighed.

“I’m trained for this, Lucy. I know a lot more about this than I do about healing. Let me be useful.”

I understood. Basselt was a protector. He had been a bodyguard to the Theran prince. I thought what happened had been a terrible accident, and it wasn’t his fault, but he did and his people did.

Basselt wanted to protect me and it was honestly nice because the man who sired me was blackmailing me to get a serial killer off his streets.

“If you get hurt, I’ll murder you.”

Basselt just smirked at me.

“I won’t. They can’t tell a Theran from a human when we are wearing your clothes unless they see us shift and I’m way too good for that.”

“Thanks.”

I needed to rope Neco in and then we needed to talk to an expert. The leading experts on bedroom diseases in Guttertown were the Madame, Athan, and Tarja. I could grab the Madame when I got Neco.

I was under no grand assumptions that the Madame wasn’t going to make this as mortifying as possible unless I was crystal clear I was asking about the Ghoul and not for me.