Read The Best Paranormal Crime Stories Ever Told for Free Online

Romania and adopt babies to coo over. They don’t take in foster kids, not without an agenda. But we’re desperate for foster homes . . . and it wasn’t me who approved them.”
    “You said the boy wouldn’t talk. To you? Or to anybody?”
    “To anybody. He hasn’t said a word since the incident. Won’t communicate at all.”
    David considered that, running through possibilities. “Was anyone hurt except for the boy?”
    “No.”
    “Would you mind if I went to see him now?”
    “Please.”
    He followed her directions to the hospital. He parked the car, but before he could open the door she grabbed his arm. The first time she touched him.
    “Could he be a werewolf?”
    “Maybe,” he told her. “That kind of damage . . .”
    “It looked like our house,” she said, not looking at him, but not taking her hand off him either. “Like our house that night.”
    “If he was a werewolf, I doubt your Mr. Linnford would have been about to knock him out without taking a lot of damage. Maybe Linnford is the werewolf.” That would fit, most of the werewolves he knew, if they survived, eventually became wealthy. Children were more difficult. Maybe that was why Linnford and his wife fostered children.
    Stella jerked her chin up and down once. “That’s what I thought. That’s it. Linnford might be a werewolf. Could you tell?”
    His chest felt tight. How very brave of her: she’d called the only monster she knew to deal with the other monsters. It reminded him of how she’d stood between him and the boys, protecting them the best that she could.
    “Let me talk to Devonte,” he said trying to keep the growl out of his voice with only moderate success. “Then I can deal with Linnford.”
    The hospital corridors were decorated with garland and green and red bulbs. Every year Christmas got more plastic and seemed farther and farther from the Christmases David had known as a child.
    His daughter led him to the elevators without hesitation and exchanged nods with a few of the staff members who walked past. He hated the way his children aged every year. Hated the silver in their hair that was a constant reminder that eventually time would take them all away from him.
    She kept as much distance between them as she could in the elevator. As if he were a stranger—or a monster. At least she wasn’t running from him screaming.
    You can’t live with bitterness. He knew that. Bitterness, like most unpleasant emotions, made the wolf restless. Restless wolves were dangerous. The nurse at the station just outside the elevator knew Stella, too, and greeted her by name.
    “That Mr. Linnford was here asking after Devonte. I told him that he wasn’t allowed to visit yet.” She gave Stella a disappointed look, clearly blaming her for putting Mr. Linnford to such bother. “What a nice man he is, looking after that boy after what he did to them.”
    She handed Stella a clipboard and gave David a mildly curious look. He gave her his most harmless smile and she smiled back before glancing down at the clipboard Stella had returned.
    David could read it from where he stood. Stella Christiansen and guest. Well, he told himself, she could hardly write down that he was her father when she looked older than he did.
    “He may be a nice man,” Stella told the nurse with a thread of steel in her voice, “but you just keep him out until we know for sure what happened and why.”
    She strode off toward a set of doors where a policeman sat in front of a desk, sitting on a wooden chair, and reading a worn paperback copy of Stephen King’s Cujo . “Jorge,” she said.
    “Stella,” he buzzed the door and let them through.
    “He’s in the secured wing,” she explained under her breath as she walked briskly down the hall. “Not that it’s all that secure. Jorge shouldn’t have let you through without checking your ID.”
    Not that anyone would question his Stella, David thought. Even as a little girl, people did what she told them to