Elemental Moon: The Eldritch Files, Book Three by Phaedra Weldon Read Free Book Online

motioned Jack over. Jack also leaned in and sniffed. Then he reached in and ran his bare finger over one of the bare, exposed bones and stuck it in is mouth.
    After I slapped my hand over my mouth to prevent myself from dry-heaving, I looked at Kyle. Good. He looked as green as I felt 'cause I bet he'd been kissing that mouth.
    "She is not wolf."
    What? I imagined the sound of a needle being dragged across a vinyl record again. I leaned to the side and looked up at Bastien. "What do you mean she's not wolf?"
    " Chérie , this is not a Lycan," he wrinkled his nose as he sniffed it again. "It smells like human…like wolf but…"
    "It's too human," Jack filled in from his side of the gurney. He moved to the left and sniffed again. "Whatever this is, it isn't right."
    I had two Lycans sniffing a ravaged corpse, telling me the body wasn't right. I absently rubbed at my chest before I gestured to the gurney in a circular manner. "So you're both telling me this girl isn't a Lycan?"
    "She's…" Bastien screwed his handsome face up into something akin to a worried expression. "She's not, not Lycan. But she's not all Lycan." He finally shook his head and looked at Jack. "Pischouette, mal pris?"
    Jack shook his head and shrugged. “I’ll say.”
    I pointed to Bastien. "I didn't catch that last bit." I was pretty good with Acadian most of the time, but there were words when pronounced that just slipped right by.
    He gestured to the body. "The little girl was caught in mid shift. She…she's stuck, not making it either way."
    I think he means the girl was stuck between being human and being Lycan.
    Staring at the mutilated mess, I sighed. "So, she was an apogee?"
    Jack nodded. Bastien shook his head.
    A turned wolf, but not turned enough. "Can you tell who might have done this to her?"
    "Normally—yeah," Bastien scratched the back of his head. "But this…I don't recognize this."
    "When I was turned," Jack said, taking up the slack. "Bastien knew who turned me without me ever saying. In fact he knew before I did and sought me out. But this…" He shook his head at the body.
    "Smells bad," Bastien made a face and zipped the body bag up.
    I wondered, "Bastien, what do you smell that's bad? Can you describe it?"
    "Yeah, like rotten chicken. Like when I don't take out the garbage," he pointed at me. "It's like your magic, but it's not."
    Bingo! Arcane. I'd discovered over the years that smells could on occasion be subjective, but not with Arcane. Everyone described it the same way. I smelled it because I'm a Witch. Was a Witch?
    Still a Witch…technically. And I figured Bastien and Jack smelled it because of their keen canine noses.
    Sam—the guard is heading your way. You got a second to get that body back where it goes and hide.
    Kyle and I relayed Ivan's message. It took us less than that second to get the gurney back in the freezer and us hidden in the back. We waited until Ivan gave us the all clear. Once we had that, I walked them out the back door to the van.
    "Want a lift back to the shop?" Jack asked. "I don't think Bastien would mind seeing where you worked."
    "Yeah…" I hesitated getting in the back as I looked at the door we'd just stepped out of.
    "Sam, what is it?" Kyle asked.
    "Crwys got a call while we were in the hospital. They found another body. Which means there's another player out there that not only might have kidnapped Bastien's people, but they're using Arcane to shift humans into beasts."

SEVEN
    " T wo bodies ?" Kyle said as Bastien pulled the van around the back of Bell, Book And Candle and shut off the engine. "Where's the other body?"
    I stepped out of the back along with Kyle, followed by Jack and Bastien. The January afternoon was cool enough to put a chill in the air and I noticed it had rained while I was in the hospital. It was two o'clock the following day, Thursday, and the sky threatened more rain, along with the aberrant ray of sunshine bursting through over the city. I smelled fish and oil as I