"Well thank you for the tour," Konrad says again as I exit his sports car, both of us returned safely to the parking lot of McNamaras' Café. "I really appreciate you doing this."

"Of course," I say, standing on the concrete stoop, my hand rested on the top of his passenger door. "Anytime."

"Maybe we can do it again?" He asks, leaning across the armrest to see me better. "I've got your number."

He's got my number... "That would be great," I say, and think that if I force my smile one more time my teeth will fall out of my head. ...How could I forget?

We say our goodbyes and I shut the passenger door, the tinted windows obscuring any further view of the interior. I step away from the car where he'd dropped me off at the café's doors and he drives away, carefully, as a gentleman would—or as a werewolf driving as he thinks a human would.

Konrad is not off the suspect list. He's only moved a tier down. There was no trace of Sophie on him or in his car, and I'm still alive after spending the day with him. His only crime thus far is being sickeningly flirtatious, and if we prosecuted for that the entire country would be overran with inmates.

I'm suspicious of Konrad, but not so much for murder anymore.

"Leila!!" Lattie's panicked exclamation gives me barely a warning before she's barreling into me, squeezing my midsection with every muscle in her body. "I'm so sorry!! I didn't know you were wary of him, I was just trying to mess with you! Are you okay?!"

"I'm fine, Lattie." I hug her back loosely, more focused on continuing to breathe than returning her affection. "I'm not mad."

"Really?"

"Really."

It needed to happen. I needed to take a closer look at Konrad, but I wish doing so had harbored more definite results. It could have gone better. Recalling how it ended—the incident over the cracked sidewalk—it could have gone a lot better.

"How is Nanni?"

"She's great. But she's been waiting on you to come back. She's still not letting me work up front and I think it's starting to tire her out."

I arrived here only three years ago, but it feels like I've known the McNamaras for a lifetime. Nanni has aged as if it were. She worries me sometimes. Even Lattie, with her rose colored vision and her sheltered view of the world, will get a look in her eyes every now and then, a pinch of worry on her happy, unmarred face. When she does, she won't say it. Lattie, who shares with me her every thought, won't breathe a word about her grandmother's age. But I know she thinks it. I know she sees it, hears it when Nanni groans sitting down or standing up, when she can't stand for very long or needs help with steps or has a new prescription added to her daily medications.

I won't say it, either.

Lattie and I go inside. When I switch shifts with Nanni she doesn't mention my oversleeping or nearly standing Konrad up—that's a dreaded conversation for later—but she does brief me on which customer needs what, who's waiting to order, who already has. She hobbles off to the kitchen with Lattie and stays for a couple of hours more whilst I speak with customers, serve their pastries, and take their orders.

She bakes cakes and brews coffees until six o'clock in the evening when she comes out to tell me she's heading home, that she doesn't feel well. I ask if Lattie or I should drive her. She says no, though a series of harrowing scenarios rush through my head for if she had said yes.

Lattie and Nanni will be apart, and I can't be two places at once. What if the stalker or the serial killer—be they the same or different—finds Nanni home alone? Intercepts her on the drive? Is waiting for her outside in the front garden's bushes as she goes to unlock the door? And Lattie... if I drive Nanni, she'll be left to run the café alone. What if he pays her a visit? What if someone asks her about Sophie—Local Girl Murdered—and upsets her?

I'm being ridiculous, I tell myself, until I second guess that evaluation. It could all happen. It isn't so absurd, not with Sophie dead and a man who tried to enter the McNamaras' house in the middle of night, or with two werewolves suddenly arriving in Heisenbühl, allegedly werewolf-free since its founding in 1821.

"Here, Nanni," I say abruptly, my chest alight with nerves as I hurriedly untie my apron, "I'll drive you."

I'll tell Lattie to lock the doors; to close temporarily and stay in the back until I return. I'll tell the few current customers that they have to leave, that we're having a family emergency and—

"Leila, I love you to death, I do, but you've gotten away from work too many hours this week," Nanni says, tired and humorless where she has paused, a hand on the café's door. "Stay with Lattie, please. I'll be fine on my own. Thank you, dear." With that she goes, out into the evening where the dimming sunlight is golden and orange, where somewhere a predator is hiding.

Unless he isn't... unless he's here, having already infiltrated our walls and now he sits among one of the booths, waiting on me to serve him.

"Are you okay?"

I startle, my eyes jerking back into focus. I had slipped into a daze standing in the middle of the café.

"What?"

A woman is standing near me, her arm outstretched as if she were going to touch mine.

"You look ill," she says softly, with bags under her own eyes, "Are you alright?"

I give the room a brisk scan. There are only two customers left: one is paying Lattie for a to-go cup at the counter, the other is looking at me with concern.

"Um, yes. Yes, I'm fine, thank you. Did you need something?"

She smiles gently, as if she understands something about me and sympathizes with it. "No, I'm on my way out. Have a good night."

She leaves with her coat draped over her arm. A minute later, the final remaining customer heads out as well. The café is left eerily quiet.

I turn to Lattie.

"We should close early."

Her jaw drops down momentarily and her eyes dart around the room, as though her grandmother were hiding behind a corner and has just heard my blasphemy. "What? Why?"

I gesture out the window front, where the sun is  descending. "It's getting colder. Town was dead earlier. I can't imagine anyone else braving the temperature tonight for a drink or a dessert. Not until morning." Although a good point, I don't fully believe it as I say it. Someone could show up before our regular closing—it hasn't been abnormal in the past. But I don't like the idea of Nanni being alone; of the sun going down, of a killer following her home as it does.

"I don't know, Leila..." Lattie's face is a picture of nervous uncertainty. "Nanni would be angry. We shouldn't."

I study her face for half a minute before I sigh and concede. It makes her sick to go against her grandmother. I can't force her to, intrusive thoughts of murderers be damned. When I agree to stay open for the full duration of our hours, she happily returns to the back kitchen from where she had been standing at the counter.

Standing in the middle of the café, I look out the window again. Not a soul is in sight. With another sigh, I take a seat at one of the window booths.

"I have your number," Konrad had said. Perhaps I should change it. No: that would be pointless. He already knows where I live—Heisenbühl is a small place—where I work, what I am. Or could he? Could he have pieced it together that easily? Plenty of animals have fast reflexes, plenty of humans. Konrad has no proof, no real evidence. All he has is that damn crack in the sidewalk.

I replay the memory in my head. His fall was fast, despite it being fake, and my reflexes were faster. That's what I'll tell him, I decide, if he ever speaks a word about it.

It all happened so fast. The shock warped your perception. It happens to everyone.

But I remember that look of suspicion in his eyes afterward, and I remember my phone rang.

Zakai.

I have to call him back.

I do a quick survey out the window: there are still no customers; the sun is nearly gone. I pull out my phone and redial the number Zakai had called from.

"Hello."

"Hi," I smile, despite the ringing dying in my ear and an automated voice telling me to leave a message. I put the phone away and get up.

"Sit wherever you'd like," I tell the party of customers who walked through the doors as the phone rang, fighting down the biting, icy feeling I received from the fact that I had checked, and they were nowhere in sight one minute ago.

It's a group of four men, only one of which looks like he wouldn't mug someone in an alleyway. I take their orders shortly after they sit down: they know what they want. They order four waters and a slew of high-carb pastries. As if I needed more evidence—more than their glazed eyes, senseless laughter, and clumsy movements—the smell of booze is so strong that I taste it myself. Jägermeister and schnapps.

I take the written order to the back, where Lattie is waiting expectantly. She'd heard the chime of the bell.

"We have four," I tell her, and she takes the tab of paper. While she reads it, I speculate whether or not she's restraining herself from saying I told you so. I doubt it. That would be un-Lattie of her.

Just as she turns around to start their order, my pocket begins to buzz. I don't allow it to reach the second ring, mostly for the purpose of preventing her from spinning around to raise an eyebrow for her nosy self to question who's calling me. The attempt fails anyway.

"Hallo," I say into the phone, and Lattie warily continues about her business, ever listening.

"Leila," Zakai is breathless and his husky voice is ragged. What the hell has he been doing? "I'm sorry I missed your call."

"Are you alright?" I ask, and Lattie whirls around faster than before, her eyes alight with concern both at hearing my words change to English and seeing my face creased in perturbance.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine," he says, his breathing more regulated. I hear him swallow, as though to further compose himself. "Can we meet up now?"

"Um, sure. Where... where did you want to meet?"

Lattie jumps to my side. She must know who I'm speaking to: my until-recently-lost childhood friend, from a childhood spent in an English speaking country. She takes my hand and shakes it as she points frantically at the floor and mouths, "Here."

"Come to McNamara's Café," I blurt out, latching onto Lattie's suggestion before he can propose an alternative one. "You can come now. I'm here."

I can hear the smile in his voice when he agrees. "I'll be there soon."