Lost Soul (Harbinger P.I. Book 1) by Adam J Wright

How can I help you?”
    “I don’t know if you can,” he said. His voice was high-pitched, scared. “I’ve been bitten by a werewolf. Can you cure me? Can you lift the curse?”
    “Do you know much about werewolves?”
    He nodded, his glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, I know some things.” He pushed the glasses back up to where they belonged.
    “Okay, tell me what happened.” I sat back and gave him all the time he needed.
    “This all happened three weeks ago,” he said. “I’ve been going crazy since then because nobody will believe it was a werewolf that bit me. Everyone said it must have been a dog or a raccoon or something, but I know what I saw. Then I saw that you were opening a preternatural investigation office here in town and I knew if anyone would believe me, it’d be you. You believe me, right?”
    “You haven’t told me what happened yet,” I said patiently. Whatever had happened to Timothy, it was wreaking havoc on his nerves. I was willing to listen, but I would reserve judgement until I’d heard the whole story.
    “But you must know about werewolves,” he said. “You know they exist, right? I’m not crazy.”
    I could see he was going to need some guidance to tell his story. “Where were you bitten?” I asked him.
    “Right here,” he said, lifting the Rush T-shirt to show me a nasty-looking wound along his ribs. It had been stitched and was covered with a dark brown scab. “See, that isn’t a raccoon bite, or a dog bite either.”
    “It’s difficult to tell,” I said. “What did they say at the hospital when they stitched it up?”
    “They just said it was some kind of animal. I had to have a course of rabies shots. But no shots can lift the werewolf curse.” He frowned and then asked hopefully, “Can they?”
    “No, rabies shots can’t lift the curse of the werewolf,” I told him.
    “So I still have it. I’m still cursed. When the moon is full….”
    “Where did this happen?” I asked, guiding him again.
    “In our back yard. We live out on Cowper’s Lane at the edge of town.”
    “We?” I asked.
    “Me and my mom.”
    “Did she see what bit you?”
    “No, she doesn’t get out of bed much. She’s ill. The doctors say it’s depression because my dad died a couple of years ago. She never got over that. I’m all she has now. I look after her.” His eyes widened in horror. “I can’t be a werewolf. What’ll happen to my mom?”
    “Tell me how you got bit,” I said, bringing him back on course.
    He nodded and took a moment to calm himself as best he could. “We were watching Family Feud on TV and we heard a noise in the backyard. It sounded like, I don’t know, like there was a dog out there or something like that. But it wasn’t a dog,” he added quickly.
    “So you went out to investigate?”
    “Yeah, but first I went down to the basement to get my dad’s shotgun. I thought that if it was some kind of animal, I could scare it away. We have a cat, Mr. Picard, and I didn’t want him to get eaten by something bigger than him. He’s been in fights before, mainly with other cats, and he doesn’t always win. He once had a fight with Marmalade—that’s Mrs. Green’s ginger cat from down the street—and….”
    “You went outside with the shotgun,” I reminded him.
    “Yeah, I went outside with the shotgun,” he said, getting back on track. “It was a quiet night and the noise in the yard had stopped by the time I got out there. I could hear Mr. Tobin’s dog, Belle, barking at the end of the street, but it sounded far away. The moon was full, of course, and the yard was lit by the moonlight, but I couldn’t see what had been making the noise. So I walked over to the woodpile and took a look behind it.” He swallowed. “And that’s when I saw it.”
    He stopped and put his hand to his mouth, trying to hold back tears but failing. They ran down his gaunt cheeks and landed on the Rush T-shirt, making wet stains in the