The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group by Catherine Jinks

‘Yes. That’s what I came here for.’
    ‘Okay. Well . . . choose your spot.’ He waved at the scenery. ‘Tell me where you wanna go, and we’ll see if you left any traces there on Monday.’
    By this time, let me tell you, I had things all worked out. Reuben was a bad-news guy. I had to get away from him. But I couldn’t just run; he’d come after me for sure. He knew where I lived. He had a weird, compulsive agenda of some kind. What I had to do was scare him away, so he’d never return.
    The problem was that I couldn’t exactly threaten him with severe bodily harm. Though taller than Reuben, I didn’t have the muscle. He would have wiped the floor with me. So my best bet was blackmail. If I could record him claiming that the fake paw prints were real, it would give me a bit of leverage. I could say to him, ‘Back off or I’ll use this. I’ll stick it on the Net. I’ll show it to the police.’
    It was my only weapon. In the heat of the moment, I could think of no alternative.
    ‘O-okay,’ I stammered. ‘Let’s try the lake.’
    ‘The lake?’
    I shrugged. ‘It’s where everyone else always goes.’
    He studied me for a few seconds, then gave a nod. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘I reckon you’re right. I reckon those ducks would have got you interested when you were on the rampage.’ As he spun around, I stealthily fingered my phone, unlocking the keypad without even glancing at it. (I learned to do that at school; you have to count your keystrokes very carefully and cough whenever the phone beeps.) ‘You might even have stopped at the lake for a drink,’ Reuben continued, up ahead. ‘Since it was a hot night on Monday.’
    I grunted, then followed him to the lake. While most of the lakeside is lawn right down to the water, in two or three places someone has lined the shore with reeds and bushes and big, jagged rocks. Around the waterfall it’s like that; it’s also like that near the little white bridge. And in both locations, you get a lot of birds as well as a lot of mud.
    So I guess it wasn’t surprising that Reuben headed straight for the very grove where Fergus had left his paw prints.
    ‘We’ll try in here,’ Reuben suggested. He was still on the path, which had begun to wind between two thick walls of foliage. But he soon stopped to look for an opening among the dense, spiky clumps of palm trees and ornamental grass that blocked his route to the lakeside.
    ‘Can you smell that?’ he asked suddenly.
    I stared at him in confusion. ‘What?’
    ‘Can you smell that?’ he repeated, sniffing the air. ‘I can.’
    Cautiously I followed his example. Sniff, sniff. Australian native plants have a distinctive scent, very spicy and antiseptic; it was dominating the Nurragingy smellscape, as usual. I could also smell jasmine, exhaust fumes and hot chips. But there was something else as well – something faint and rank that caught at the back of my throat.
    ‘Dog poo,’ I concluded.
    Reuben clicked his tongue impatiently, shifting from foot to foot. ‘Not that. I’m not talking about that.’
    ‘Cigarette smoke?’
    ‘Come here.’ He beckoned to me with one hand while parting branches with the other. ‘Have a whiff of that. Can’t you smell it?’
    For some reason (don’t ask me why) I wanted to show him that my nose was just as good as his, if not better. So I willingly thrust my head into a murky thicket that stank of squashed dates and stagnant water and . . . possum?
    ‘Is it a dead possum?’
    He stared at me, bug-eyed. ‘ Possum? ’ he squawked. ‘What the hell kind of man-eating possums do you have around here, anyway?’
    ‘Fox?’ I guessed. ‘Or . . . I dunno . . . tomcat?’
    ‘It’s you, Toby.’ Reuben stepped off the path into the undergrowth. ‘Either that or someone else in this neighbourhood has the same condition.’
    It was my turn to gape at him.
    ‘What are you talking about?’ I exclaimed. ‘Are you off your nut? I don’t smell like