Free Shadow of the Moon by Lori Handeland Page A

beauty, grace and his
great big . . . brain-- How was a girl supposed to think when a guy looked like that?
    Will gave me a lazy smile and strolled over
to join me. As soon as he was close enough, he took my hand. He was
very touchy-feely. For a girl whose dad had taken off before she’d
known what the word "father" meant and whose mom’s idea of
affection was not telling her daughter she was an unfeminine
embarrassment for one whole day, Will’s openness had been more of a
puzzlement than a revelation.
    “Why are you here, Edward?” Will was very
good at getting to the point. He was also one of the few people
who’d dared to call our boss Edward right out of the gate and get
away with it.
    “We have a problem.”
    “ We meaning Jessie, me and
you? Or we the Jager-Suchers ?"
    “We in the universal sense. Humankind may be
in dire trouble.”
    “Isn’t it always?” I asked. “Foil the
werewolves, save the world. That should be our motto.”
    Except mottos aren’t too common in the secret
agency biz.
    “I do not have time for your humor,
Jessie.”
    I guess that meant I should lay off the
sarcasm. But then what would I have to say?
    “I had a call from headquarters,” Mandenauer
continued. “I need the two of you to pack your things. And he--“
Mandenauer waved his hand vaguely in Will’s direction. “Should
bring his computer.”
    “ He has a name,” I said.
    Though Will had no trouble calling Edward . .
. Edward, the old man couldn’t seem to get his tight lips around
the word Will . I wasn’t sure if that was because Mandenauer
really didn’t like him, or because he didn’t know how to be
anything other than cranky.
    I suspect having your world turned upside
down when you were still a young man wasn’t easy. Devoting your
life to killing the monsters Hitler had ordered his insane pal
Mengele to make meant Edward had been on the hunt for over sixty
years. I didn't know if he’d ever been married; the idea of him
dating was scary enough.
    Mandenauer grunted but didn’t bother to
apologize, and Will didn’t seem to care. He was the least likely
person to take offense I’d ever met, which I guess was a good thing
considering how annoying I could be. There were also a lot of
people in small towns all over the north who didn’t much care for
Indians, and weren’t shy about saying so. It didn’t take fur, claws
and teeth to make some folks into monsters.
    Will went into the bedroom and returned with
his laptop. Then he sat at the table, booted up the computer and
started searching for his glasses.
    “Here." I snatched them off the end table
where he’d left them earlier.
    Will was forever misplacing the things,
sometimes right on top of his head. I don’t know why I found that
absentminded professor stuff both sexy and endearing. The
combination of that face, the body and his wire rimmed glasses . .
. Let’s just say I asked him to wear those glasses a lot.
    Glasses and nothing else.
    “Where, when and what?” Will's long clever
fingers skated over the keyboard.
    “The village is called Riverview,” Edward
continued. “For the past several months citizens have been going
insane at an alarming rate.”
    “When you say insane . . . “ I let my voice
trail off. In our world, insane covered a whole lot of a
territory.
    There were those who believed they were
werewolves and those who actually were. Both were nuts, but the
latter had enough supernatural power to cause major death and
destruction, not to mention turn normal, everyday nice people into
murdering evil beasts.
    And that was only the werewolves. According
to Edward, there were a whole host of other things out there we
didn’t even know about yet.
    “In this case,” Mandenauer answered, “I am
talking about normal insanity.”
    “Isn’t that an oxymoron?” Will murmured,
still staring at his computer.
    Edward ignored him. “The afflicted degenerate
into gibbering fools. Nothing medical science has at its disposal
will stop