Long Shadows: The Lycanthropy Files, Book 2 by Cecilia Dominic Page A

my shoulder startled me awake. “It’s over,” she said.
    “I’m sorry,” I told her. “I should have come to get you. You didn’t get to say goodbye.”
    “I will be following her soon enough.”
    I looked at her. “Why? Are you ill?”
    “Not exactly.” She looked at my aunt and then said with a relieved sigh, “Do not fear, ragazzina , she is at peace. Let’s go back to the house, and we can talk more there. The staff here will make the necessary arrangements with the funeral home. She had prepared for everything.”
    “Shouldn’t there have been a doctor?” I asked. “To confirm time of death?”
    “There was one,” she said. “A nice young man with reddish hair and eyes like the ocean. He just left. She died at midnight.”
    The clock said twelve fifteen, so I had only been asleep for a few minutes, but I felt alert with all she had told me and the strange feeling of simultaneously being hollowed out by grief and full of confusion and fear with what I had learned.
    She turned and left the room, and I followed her. This has gone from strange to very strange. Max couldn’t have found me, could he?
    The lights flickered in the hallway, and my breath caught. I didn’t see any staff, just Gladis Ann’s broad back ahead of me. All the doors stood closed, and nothing stirred or moved. The plaster walls of the old house seemed to bow and wiggle when my eyes moved away from them, as did the white molding.
    “Slow down,” I panted. “Please! You’re leaving me behind.”
    “You must hurry,” she said and turned her head, although she kept moving. Her formerly black hair was now streaked with white.
    “What’s happening?” The blinking of the lights increased in frequency until it was like we moved under a strobe light.
    “We are not the only ones to say goodbye, and I must protect her.”
    I followed her outside, but once she passed through the door, she disappeared.
    “Gladis Ann?” I asked, but the night had no answer. “Where did you go? Come on, this isn’t funny. Who are you protecting?”
    The white columns of the antebellum mansion glowed in the lights, which flickered. I searched every corner of the parking lot, but I didn’t even see my aunt’s large blue Buick, which Gladis Ann had ferried her around in. When I tried to call her number, I got the cheerful message that the number had been disconnected or was no longer in service.
    “What the hell is going on?” I asked out loud, hoping someone would answer. No human voices came out of the shadows, but I heard the howl of a wolf, which was joined by others all around.
    There are no wolves in Georgia! Are there? The howls grew louder and closer, interspersed with occasional yips and other noises. I couldn’t tell the direction they came from, only that they seemed to be all around me.
    “Gladis Ann, where are you?” I hissed. “Do you hear that?”
    A cold breeze made every hair on my arms stand on end, and I finally heard her. “Get in your car and run away, ragazzina . That is the Padre Superiore, and he will be unhappy to find her already gone.”
    My car seemed miles away although it was only twenty feet across the parking lot, and nothing stood between me and it. I darted forward, but a shadow with glowing yellow eyes blocked my way. It moved too quickly for me to get a good look at it, but every time I moved toward my car, it jumped in front of me and snarled. I bared my teeth at it, willing and hoping to change, even to spirit-walk, but nothing happened.
    A low chuckle caught my attention, and I looked behind me to see a man in black monk’s robes glaring at me. Although he wore the clothes of a religious man, he had the air of a predator.
    “You gave up your gift, ragazzina, ” he said, and he sneered through the only term of endearment my aunt had ever called me. “It cannot help you now.”
    “Why are you hunting me?” I asked. “I haven’t done anything to you.”
    “We hunt witches and wizards, and you have