That day, I'd stood there, looking down at the graves and waiting. My parents were coming back. I knew that. Sure, I'd seen the coffins and had been allowed a glimpse of my mother's body inside one. I'd seen the men lower the boxes into the ground and cover them with dirt. That didn't matter. They were coming back. I had no experience with real death, only the loud, garish renderings of it on Saturday morning cartoons, where the coyote died and died again but always returned in time to plot one last silly scheme before the credits rolled. That was the way it worked. Death was temporary, lasting only long enough to provoke a laugh from kids in pajamas sitting cross-legged in front of the TV set, gorging themselves on handfuls of Froot Loops. I'd even seen this trick performed with real people when my father had taken me to a magic show at his office Christmas party. They'd put a woman in a box, cut her in half, and spun the box around. When they reopened the door, she'd jumped up, smiling and whole, to the cheers and laughs of the crowd. So too would my parents leap from their boxes, smiling and whole. It was a joke. A wonderful, terrifying joke. All I had to do was wait for it to be over. As I'd stood there, over my parents' graves, I'd started to giggle. The pastor turned on me then, fixing me with a glare that condemned me as an unfeeling brat. I didn't care. He wasn't in on the joke. I stood there, smiling to myself as I waited… and waited.

As I stared down at Logan's grave, I ached for that fantasy to return, to allow myself to pretend he was coming back, that death was only temporary. But I knew better now. Dead was dead. Buried was buried. Gone was gone. I fell to my knees, crushing the flowers in my fist. Something inside me snapped. I fell forward and started to sob. Once I started, I couldn't stop, the tears flowing until my eyes throbbed and my throat ached. Finally, a voice pierced my grief. Not Jeremy, who'd stood silently behind me, knowing not to interfere. This was the one who dared interfere.

"-now!" Clay was yelling. "I can't listen to her and not-"

Jeremy's voice, words muffled in a soft whisper.

"No!" Clay shouted. "They can't do this. Not to Logan. Not to her. I will not stand by-"

Another interrupting murmur.

"Christ! How can you-" Clay's voice choked off in rage.

I heard something, a rustling of branches, Jeremy pulling Clay off into the woods to talk to him, leaving me to my grief. As I knelt there, I listened. Clay wanted to go after Logan's killer-not tomorrow or even tonight, but right now. They'd picked up the scent of an unfamiliar werewolf on Logan's body. While we'd been chasing Brandon, another mutt had killed Logan. Jeremy was trying to dissuade Clay, telling him that it was still daytime, he was too angry, they needed to plan. It didn't matter what Jeremy said or how much sense he made. The storm of Clay's fury drowned all logic. I waited for Jeremy to forbid Clay to go after the mutt. I listened for the words. But they didn't come. Distracted by his own grief, Jeremy argued and tried to reason with Clay, but didn't expressly forbid him to take revenge. A fatal oversight. As I rubbed my dirt-streaked hands over my wet face, my grief was swallowed by fear. While they argued, I crept from the grove, and hurried to the house.

Ten minutes later, Clay yanked open the door of his Boxster and thumped onto the driver's seat.

"Where are we going?" I asked, my sore throat barely allowing me a whisper.

He jumped and turned to see me huddled in the passenger seat.

"You're going after him," I said before he could say anything. "I want to be there. I need to be there."

That was partly true. I did need some way to exorcise my grief and, like Clay, I only knew one way to do it. Revenge. When I thought of some mutt killing Logan, the rage that filled me was terrifying. It whipped through my body like some demonic snake, inciting every part of me to anger, moving so fast and out of control that I had to physically clench my fists and hold them rigid to keep from striking out. I'd known rages like this since childhood. Back then, I'd been frustrated at my inability to use them, to lash out in any meaningful way. Today I could use the anger more than I ever imagined possible. That only made the rages more frightening. Even I didn't know what would happen if I ever gave in to them. Knowing I was taking concrete action by going after the killer helped me rein in my fury.

There was another reason why I was going with Clay. I was afraid to let him leave by himself, afraid that if I wasn't there to watch over him something would happen to him and there would be another grave in the wild-flower grove. The thought of that made me feel things I couldn't even admit to myself.

"Are you sure?" he asked, twisting to face me. "You don't need to come along."

"Yes, I do. Don't try to stop me or I'll tell Jeremy that you've gone. I'll make him forbid you to do this. If you're already gone, I'll lead him to you."

Clay reached to touch me, but I turned to look out the window. After a moment of silence, the automatic garage door squealed open and the car's engine roared to life. He backed down the driveway at neck-snapping speed and we were off to Bear Valley.

On the road to Bear Valley, the fog of grief and anger whirling through my brain parted with the prospect of action-clear, definitive action. I focused on that instead. Any impulse to fly into Bear Valley and madly search for Logan's killer dissipated under the cold weight of reality. If I wanted revenge, we needed a plan.

As we entered Bear Valley, we got caught in rush hour traffic and had to wait through an entire light change before making a left turn from Main onto Elm. As the second light turned red, Clay tore through anyway, ignoring the horn blasts around him.

"Do you know where you're going?" I asked.

"To park."

"And then…?"

"To find the bastard who killed Logan."

"Great idea. Precision planning." I grabbed the door handle as Clay spun into the downtown core's only public parking lot. "We can't hunt for him now. It's still daytime. Even if we found the mutt, we couldn't do anything."

"So what do you suggest? Enjoy a leisurely dinner while Logan's killer runs free?"

Although I hadn't eaten since the previous evening, my stomach lurched at the thought of food. I wanted to start hunting Logan's killer as much as Clay did, but reason dictated caution. Not matter how I hated the thought of anything distracting us from avenging Logan, we had to do exactly that. Distract ourselves for a few hours.

"We should find out what happened last night."

Clay slammed into a parking space. "What?"

"Find out how the town is reacting to what happened at the rave last night. Assess the damage. Are they looking for more wild dogs? Are they doing anything with Brandon's body? Did anyone see you jumping through a second-story window? Did anyone see me leading the mutt away?"

"For Christ's sake, who gives a damn what they saw or what they think?"

"You don't? If they decide to submit what's left of Scott Brandon for testing and they find something a wee bit strange, you aren't concerned? This is your backyard, Clay. Your home. You can't afford not to care."

Clay made a noise between a sigh and a frustrated snarl. "Fine. What do you suggest?"

I paused, not having thought this far ahead yet. Thoughts of Logan still filled my numbed mind. I forced them aside and concentrated on our next steps. After a few minutes, I said, "We buy the paper, go to the coffee shop and read it while we listen to what people are talking about. Then we plan how we'll stalk this mutt. After dark, we do it."