The sudden outburst left him lucid and aware, but Savannah was clearly disoriented, having awoken to the sound of her own scream. Her eyes darted frantically around the room.

Cole spoke her name and she jumped. “Cole!”

“Yeah, it’s—”

“Cole—”

“It’s me, Savannah! I’m right here.”

She scanned the room, lit only by the gray slivers of dawn that were visible around the edge of the curtain.

“It’s okay,” he said. “You must have had a bad dream.” He placed a hand on her back and felt cold sweat on her shirt. Her heart was racing.

“Cole, where … what time is it?”

He glanced at the clock. “It’s early. Just after six.”

“In the morning?”

“It’s okay,” he said. “You just fell asleep, remember? While I was in the shower?” Her eyes were still wide with alarm. “Must have been some dream.”

“A dream?” Her eyes shifted to the curtain above the mattress. She stood and in a single swift motion slid the curtain away from the window.

Cole took in the broken glass with the smear of blood at its center. “Jesus, what the hell is that?”

“It wasn’t a dream, Cole.” Her voice was shaking. “It was real.”

Cole took her hand and led her back down to the edge of the mattress beside him. “Savannah, tell me what happened. When did it happen?”

She told him what she had seen out the window the night before, describing Coodles’s horrifying transformation in vivid detail. He listened patiently until she had finished, then he took a moment to consider what she had described. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t imagine that a housecat—even an undead housecat—could be capable of such ferocity.

“Savannah, don’t take this the wrong way, but are you sure you’re not making this out to be more than it really was?”

She pulled her hand away. “Are you saying you don’t believe me?”

“I just think that—”

“I know what I saw, Cole.”

“Think about it. We’re talking about a cat whose owner hasn’t been home in two days. He hasn’t been fed. He probably can’t get inside Mona’s trailer, and he’s stuck in a rainstorm. If he was trembling, he was probably just cold and scared. You know, skittish.”