CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Walt
Walt eased off the accelerator, pulling carefully into the gas station driveway. The slip of paper Elysian had given him with the address on it slid across the dashboard and fluttered to the floor. Even now, with his reunion with his real girlfriend seconds away, his mind would rather focus on the memory of Elysian’s fingers wrapped around his hand, folding the paper into his palm. She was so concerned about keeping it safe, about getting him back to this other woman. But at the last moment she had dropped her eyes to the floor instead of looking at him as she said goodbye.
He chose to blame the memory tea.
He half expected to find nothing. Half hoped. When the witches divined that his girlfriend was at a gas station, he hadn’t expected to get there in time. But there she was, cleaning the windshield of an old green truck with Washington plates.
The woman’s eyes widened as she spotted Walt, her face twisting into a mix of confusion and something else he couldn’t quite identify. He can’t imagine what she must be thinking, having her boyfriend disappear, only to turn up at a gas station wearing clothes a size too small.
“Walt,” she said, her voice cracking a little. “I’ve been looking for you.”
She was pretty, with blue eyes and long honey-colored hair gathered in a high ponytail. She was dressed in the same fitted white shirt, green canvas jacket and blue denim jeans he remembered, showing off a figure that was nice, but not as nice as Elysian’s.
He hated himself for it, but he immediately compared every feature of hers to Elysian’s. This woman might have been a stranger, but she was owed his loyalty and didn’t deserve to be measured up against some other woman, no matter what complicated feelings had taken hold in his heart before he remembered the truth.
“I’m sorry,” he said, holding his hands out, palms toward her in apology. “I know this is going to sound crazy, but I was under a spell. A witch wiped my memories.”
“A witch?” her face hardened. “How did you get away from her?”
“It’s not like that,” he said quickly. “It was an accident. She’s actually really—” lovely, he almost said, but self-preservation kicked in at the last moment. “Nice. She’s really nice.”
The woman scoffed. “A nice witch.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I don’t remember your name. Or mine.”
Her demeanor shifted, her face softening. “You don’t remember anything?”
“I remember you,” he admitted. “A little. I remember being with you. And then you calling after me—”
“Yes,” she said. “I was so worried. One minute we were at the bar, and you just walked off like a zombie. I assumed your alpha had summoned you.”
“A bar?” he repeated. “Had we only just met?”
She stared at him for a long moment. He’d clearly hurt her feelings, and he hated himself, but he couldn’t help what he didn’t know.
“Of course not,” she said. “We’ve known each other for years.” She smiled softly. “It’s not your fault. I’ll start at the beginning. I’m Willa, and you’re Walt.”
“I know,” he said. “I remembered that much. But I don’t remember my whole name. I thought it might be Parke, because I found some documents…”
“Yes, Walt Parke,” she said. “You should take me to this witch. We’ll make her give your memories back.”
“She can’t,” he said. “But I can take you to her. If we go back to her house, we can talk more openly. We shouldn’t be talking out here.”
“Of course, because you’re a werewolf,” Willa said.
“Wolf shifter,” he corrected, a frown furrowing his brow. Surely his own girlfriend wouldn’t make that mistake? But then, what did he know? He was guessing at absolutely everything about his life, and now he was going to get answers.
“Of course,” Willa said with a laugh. “I’m sorry, I know I’m acting like a complete weirdo. You just freaked me out, hon.”
She threw herself against his chest and tucked her head under his chin. He wrapped his arms around her instinctively, but nothing about it felt comfortable or familiar. Overwhelmingly he felt relief, joy at having found a thread of his old life that he could follow back to his pack, his family, everything. But no matter how hard he dug, he couldn’t summon up any feeling at all for the woman in his arms.
Do you think that’s the spell? he asked the wolf.
I don’t know, the wolf said, radiating frustration. I… there are things I remember. More than you. But still not much. This girl is not one of them.
“We should go,” Willa said into his chest. “I think we’ve got a lot to discuss.”
“Do you want to follow me in your truck?” he asked. He glanced over at her truck. There was a man sitting in the passenger seat, watching their interaction in the rear view mirror with a blank expression.
“I think I’ve done enough of that,” she said cheerfully. “I chased you all the way from the bar in Seattle to the outskirts of this town. I was so scared when I lost sight of your truck. I’ve been searching this town in a grid pattern since yesterday trying to spot it again, and I didn’t even know if you’d stopped here or kept going.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That must have been terrifying.”
“I’m not letting you get away again,” she said. “I’ll ride with you. My brother Doug can follow us.”
“Your brother?” he repeated. That must have been Stoneface McGee in the passenger seat.
She giggled. “Wow, you really don’t remember anything, do you, sweetheart?”
“I have so many questions,” he said, punching ‘return to previous destination’ into the GPS. Elysian’s address popped up and his stomach did a little flip-flop of guilt while the route calculated.
“I’ll answer as best I can,” she said. “Like I said, you’re Walt Parke. You’re a wolf shifter. What else? Um… we live in Seattle—”
“Seattle?” he said. “Why is my truck registered in Montana?”
“You just moved,” she said. She kept her eyes glued to the rear view mirror, ensuring that her brother was still driving behind them. “To be with me.”
“So my family didn’t know I went missing?” he asked, relieved. It had been preying on his mind, the idea that people were worried about him. “Except, duh, you would have called them. Can we call them now, let them know I’m OK?”
“I didn’t call them,” she said. “I was too preoccupied trying to find you.”
“Oh.” He glanced at her out the corner of his eye, uneasy. It would only have taken a moment to call. “Speaking of calls, do you know why I don’t have a phone or wallet?”
“You left them at the bar,” she said. “They’re in my car with Doug.”
“Can you call them from your phone?” he asked. “You’ve got their number, right? I really want to talk to my parents.”
“Just relax, honey,” she said, shooting him a smile. “There’s plenty of time.”
The uneasy feeling was spreading. “I remembered a bit about my parents,” he said, keeping his voice as relaxed as he could. He remembered the registration documents in the glove box. If he was Walt Parke, then his father was almost certainly the James Parke who owned the truck’s title. “My dad’s name is Roger, right?”
“Absolutely.” She slid her hand inside her jacket and rested it at her side for a moment, then folded her hands in her lap. “What else do you remember?”
Walt tried to glance at the GPS as subtly as possible, where Elysian’s address was still glowing at the top of the screen. “We have a dog, right?” he invented. He stared at the controls on the steering wheel, trying to find one that would switch off the GPS display without her realizing what he was doing. “An Irish Setter named Subwoofer.”
“That’s right. Poor little dude must be so upset you’ve been gone,” she beamed at him.
OK. So whoever this woman was, she definitely didn’t know a damn thing about his life, and was just going to agree with anything he threw out there.
His mind raced. He could keep driving, sail past Elysian’s house and head back to the highway. He didn’t know how far he would get before Willa realized he’d made her. Not to mention Doug on their tail, which would make any fight two against one.
Two humans against one wolf shifter was decent odds, but he suspected the reason she kept reaching into her jacket was to adjust the holster of a gun. That tilted the odds considerably.
Or did it? Maybe only silver bullets could hurt him. What were the odds she had silver bullets? She knew he was a wolf shifter though, which meant… what?
Was she even human?
“Are you a human?” he blurted. “Earlier you said ‘you’re a werewolf’, not ‘we’re werewolves’.”
“I’m not a werewolf,” she said quickly, a note of disdain in her voice that she covered with a sunny smile.
Neither am I, he thought. He was an idiot. She’d called him a werewolf, why had he let her get in the truck after such an obvious mistake?
Because you wanted it to be true, the wolf said.
No, he hadn’t. It was the opposite, really. He’d been fighting his guilty feelings about Elysian so hard that he’d ignored his instincts, so worried about treating Willa unfairly that he’d over corrected.
“You’ve missed your turn,” Willa said.
“Sorry?” Walt said, turning back to the GPS. Sure enough, a circle was spinning on the screen as the route recalculated.
“You missed your turn,” she repeated. “To number 8 Willoughby Way, Salem. The home of a nice witch.”
She smiled, her face lighting up with far more genuine happiness than she had shown when she first saw him. She knew that he knew.
“It usually takes so much work to identify you freaks,” she said casually. “And it’s even harder to separate you out from your packs. But you just fell into my lap. Twice.”
There was a strange relief in actually seeing the gun. Hidden inside her jacket it had been a nightmare, but once she pulled it out and rested it in her lap, it was just a thing. A dull gray lump of metal. A problem to be solved.