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Those were tears.
    Why was the huge ogre crying over a few werewolves? Jessie’s stomach clenched at the idea she was responsible for those tears.
    Teresa, on the other hand, kept her stare as cold and blank as ever. “Are you telling us you aren’t the one controlling your mojo?”
    “I’m telling you…I’m not telling you anything.” Jessie turned to Adam. “I’m sorry. I was trying to help. I didn’t want to upset you.”
    Adam cocked his head and gazed at some point beyond her without speaking.
    Jessie looked to her dad. “What else was I supposed to do? Let the wolves kill us?”
    Craig crossed his arms, said nothing.
    Teresa jabbed the device into Jessie’s sternum, pushing the metal part hard against her breast bone. Then she thumbed the rocker switch.
    The whole world lit up. The sky, the clouds, the buildings around them, all seemed to turn into pure light. A thousand watts of pain crackled through Jessie’s body. She couldn’t tell her hand from her head. Everything just hurt. Her body shook. Foam curdled from her mouth and she felt it run down her chin.
    Then it stopped.
    The world had taken back the darkness. Everything looked the same as it had. No blinding light. The pain lingered, but at least now she could differentiate the parts of her body, could feel things besides the pain alone.
    Her limbs went weak and she collapsed to the ground. She wiped the drool off her mouth with the back of her hand and tried to stop the mewling sound coming from the back of her throat. Control yourself. Don’t let the bitch know she hurt you.
    A stupid thought. She had foamed at the mouth and fallen to the ground. Of course Teresa knew she had hurt Jessie. The question was how?
    Jessie craned her neck back so she could look up at Teresa looming over her. “What did you do to me?”
    “Think of it as a Taser, tailor made for supernatural creatures.”
    “How?”
    “Like I said. A gremlin invented this. I have no idea how it works. I just know that it works. Good enough for me.”
    The disgust for this woman never felt stronger within Jessie. She knew Teresa hated her ever since the vampire king had turned Jessie into one of them. And Jessie had never begrudged Teresa for that hatred. Even though Jessie had all but brought the woman back to life, and had only been able to do that because she was a vampire.
    But this was more than hate. Teresa had become sadistic. Jessie could see it in the woman’s eyes. She had enjoyed hurting Jessie. So much so, she couldn’t see the blatant hypocrisy in her last statement.
    “Good enough to know it works even though you don’t know how?” Jessie pushed herself up onto her hands and knees. “That’s pretty much what I told you about my power. But the rules are different for you, huh?”
    Teresa sneered. She opened her mouth to say something, but Craig talked over her.
    “She’s right,” he said. “We’ve been messing with supernatural tech, biology, mojo…name it and the Agency played with it. And we never questioned the method once we got the means.”
    “This is different,” Teresa said.
    “It’s no different.” Craig stepped around Teresa and offered his hand to Jessie.
    She gave the hand a derisive glare and then got to her feet on her own. “You’ve been looking for an excuse to use that thing on me since last June,” she said to Teresa. “You feel better now that you know it works on me?”
    Before Teresa had a chance to answer, a wolf’s howl echoed through the night.
    “The ones that retreated,” Adam said. “They’ve probably sought reinforcements.”
    “Let’s go,” Craig said, his attention pointed at Teresa.
    “She’s not telling us everything.”
    “We can talk it out later.”
    Hearing her dad become her advocate again after he let Teresa hit her with that device turned her stomach. He was acting like a politician. She didn’t want his help or protection.
    “Forget it,” Jessie said. “You want to know how I learned to use my