Its body flexed under me as I squeezed for all I was worth and pulled the “reins” back hard enough to tuck its head tightly to its chest. “No eating the interviewees!” I yelled as the wolf twisted hard to the left, throwing me part way down its side, hanging there like a stunt rider. I still had the “reins” and I held them as taut as I could, keeping the wolf muzzled, and me barely still on its back. Its fur was black and mottled gray and smelled like a swamp of stagnant water and rotting something.

“Gawd in heaven, you stink! You need a groomer!” I yelped as it twisted again, that giant head swinging my way which threw me upright on top of its back once again. From behind it, I saw movement. A side-to-side, swaying shuffle moving in our direction.

“Robert! Grab him by the ear!” I yelled.

Ears were sensitive on dogs—they had to be sensitive on wolves too. The wolf didn’t move this time. Maybe it thought I was bluffing.

But in a flash Robert was on its ear, tearing at it, the sound like a thick sheaf of wet paper being pulled in half.

Robert ripped the ear off as easy as if it were paper, and then ate it.

The wolf howled and swung its head hard toward Robert, which sent the skeleton flying through the air. My purse and the wolf disappeared into the fog, the sound of its whimpering fading into nothing after a few frantic heartbeats.

I grabbed for the edge of the gravestone closest to me, clinging to it as I stared at Robert pulling himself up from the ground. “You ate his ear.” I mean, saying he ate it is relative, seeing as the tuft of ear was on the ground, having passed through his skeletal guts the way the chocolate bar had.

I could barely speak, my heart was racing, and sweat covered every part of me, down my spine and right into my butt crack where I was sure it was pooling. Legs shaking, I slid down the side of the tombstone. “Robert?”

“Help. Friend,” he muttered and then did that weird swaying, if not quite as fast.

“Thanks,” I whispered, only because I was still trying to breathe normally. I made myself push to my feet even though my limbs were full of strange tingling sensations that told me this was far more exertion than I was used to. I held a hand out, watched every single finger shake, and then shook my head. “A little adrenaline, right? Not a bad thing.”

Robert just swayed where he stood in the slowly dispersing fog.