Smoke Bitten

6

The shop where the parts had been dropped off was in east Pasco, a couple of miles from Uncle Mike’s Tavern, where the fae tended to congregate. It hadn’t been a bad drive from the shop or my house when the Cable Bridge had been up and running. But a troll, with the help of one of the Gray Lords of the fae, had destroyed it.

Construction had begun just a few days ago on a new bridge—by popular demand, a copy of the old bridge, which had been something of a landmark. It would be a year or more before it was functional, though, and in the meantime the shortest way to Pasco was over the Blue Bridge.

For everyone.

Before the Cable Bridge had been destroyed, I’d avoided the Blue Bridge as much as possible because of the heavy traffic. Now it was miserable, but my options were that or driving all the way through Kennewick and crossing the river on the interstate bridge and driving all the way back through Pasco.

I took the Blue Bridge and crossed it, with all the rest of the traffic, at a walking pace. Not too bad, considering.

Once I turned off onto Lewis Street, the main east-west artery in this part of Pasco, traffic returned to normal speeds. I wondered, briefly, if I should stop in and see if Uncle Mike would talk to me about our jackrabbit. We still weren’t sure it was the creature that Aiden thought it might be—we weren’t even sure that it was an escapee from Underhill. We were just operating on best guesses.

I decided half a block before the turn that would take me to Uncle Mike’s not to go. If that old fae knew something, he was more likely to talk to Zee than he was to me. So I stayed on Lewis and headed toward Oregon Avenue, where a host of industrial businesses were located: heavy farm and construction machinery sales and services, metalworks, industrial fasteners, agricultural irrigation—and the auto shop where the people had dropped off our parts.

A block or so before Oregon Avenue, a collection of train tracks crossed Lewis—and all other east-west traffic in Pasco. The trains were active here and stopped traffic on a regular basis.

Lewis Street was the major thoroughfare on the east side of Pasco because of the short tunnel that dropped under the railroad tracks to allow the free flow of traffic from the city to Oregon Avenue.

The tunnel itself, built around World War II, was . . . odd. Lewis Street narrowed from four lanes to two lanes and dropped below ground level before burrowing under the tracks with pedestrian walkways on either side. That narrowing was the root cause of the accidents that happened around the tunnel.

The pedestrian walkways in the tunnel were creepy. They were unlit, and the decorative concrete barricades with pillars that kept the walkways safe from traffic also kept them safe from light. Even on the brightest summer day, those walkways were an invitation to trouble.

The weirdest thing about the tunnel was the way it was just plopped into the middle of the intersection with South Tacoma Street. On the south side of the old intersection, South Tacoma took an awkward ninety-degree turn to parallel the tunnel traffic and rejoin Lewis, where it broadened to four lanes again.

On the north side, South Tacoma dead-ended at the tunnel—which wasn’t too surprising. However, the dead end was announced by shabby but movable wooden barricades flanked by orange cones—after seventy years of not being a through street. It was as though they put in the tunnel and then forgot about finishing the project so that it looked like it belonged there—forgot about it for decades.

Like everyone else still traveling down Lewis, I had planned on taking the tunnel to Oregon Avenue, but it was blocked off with police cars and yellow tape—and what looked like a semi that had tried to jump into the tunnel rather than take that ninety-degree turn onto Tacoma. I wasn’t sure a semi could have taken that ninety-degree turn.

I slowed, with the rest of the traffic, with the intention of taking another, much longer route—and I would have except that my Jetta had no air conditioning. Nights might be starting to cool off, but it was ninety-seven degrees Fahrenheit this afternoon so I had the windows down. And through those open windows I scented the magic I’d first found on Dennis Cather.

I pulled out of the line of traffic and looked for a parking spot. This part of Pasco was on the edge of the only-Spanish-spoken-here business district where bakeries, restaurants, and clothing shops sporting quinceañera and First Communion dresses in the windows all prospered. I parallel parked in a tight space in front of a Mexican bakery, which was emitting delicious smells that almost drowned out the scent I’d caught nearer the tunnel.

I still didn’t have the locks working properly on my Jetta, but it looked disreputable enough that I didn’t think anyone would bother breaking into it. Towing it as an eyesore was a possibility, but not breaking into it.

I hurried over to the mess at the tunnel and wondered how I was going to talk my way into the area—and saw a familiar face. It must be a pretty bad accident if George was here, because traffic wasn’t his usual job. And if he had been working at five in the morning . . .

A wave of magic washed over me and the bite mark the jackrabbit had left on my neck burned uncomfortably. I clamped a hand to my neck and quit trying to work out George’s schedule because there were more important things to worry about.

I waited, but I didn’t feel any homicidal or suicidal urges and my breathing was unhindered. But my head felt pressurized, there was a faint ringing in my ears—and the scent of the magic was powerful.

Deciding that scaring myself was unproductive, I dropped my hand off my neck (because that wasn’t making it hurt any less) and started for the tunnel bridge again. I gave a sharp whistle before I got close enough for the officer directing traffic to send me on my way. George looked up and I met his gaze. He said something to the uniformed officer he was standing next to and jogged over.

“It’s okay,” he told the traffic officer, with a hand on his shoulder. “She’s with me.”

The officer took a second look at my face and his eyes widened. Being the wife of the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack made me something of a celebrity.

“Of course,” he said. Then he turned his attention back to his job.

“Did anyone catch you up on the meeting this morning?” I asked him as we walked past the police line.

“Werewolves and a demonic jackrabbit,” he said. “And you banged happy back into our Alpha—for which not only the pack but everyone who works for him is very grateful. That last I have from both Carlos and Elliot.”

I rolled my eyes and ignored my blush. I was getting better at that—better at ignoring the blush. “Well, the scent of that jackrabbit’s magic is all over this place.”

“Yeah, color me not surprised,” George said, “because what we have here is an abnormal incident. I just got through texting Adam some photos.”

“Lots of police,” I commented, looking around.

“Yep, people are safe to speed anywhere in Pasco at the moment,” George said. “I’m off duty—and I’m not the only off-duty cop here, either. When the sheriff’s department and the fire department hear about this, we’ll be drowning in them, too.”

The burning sensation in my neck was growing.

“Hey, George,” I said casually.

“Yes?”

“If I suddenly quit breathing or”—heaven help me—“start to act really weird, throw me in the river, would you?”

“Sure thing,” he said without hesitation. “I heard you got bitten.”

“Yes,” I said. “But I am working under the assumption that this magic is one of those that have bounced up against my coyote weirdness and failed. But still, if I try to hurt someone who doesn’t obviously deserve it—”

“The river,” George finished for me. “I’ve got it.”

“Okay.”

We rounded the trailer portion, which looked pretty normal, and I got my first good look at the tractor, which had climbed up the decoratively functional concrete barrier. It hung, tilted awkwardly, the front four feet of the rig over the open roadway below. But the tractor wasn’t in any danger of falling—the bottom half of the big rig had literally melted into the concrete barrier.

I touched the top part of the tire, which was level with my chin and somehow still holding air. I ran my fingers down the rubber and paused over the transition between rubber and concrete.

“Huh,” I said.

“‘Huh’ is right,” agreed George. “The accident probably happened because the guy driving the rig is high as a kite. He claims he hit the barrier to avoid killing a bunch of kids. Says his girlfriend grabbed the wheel and aimed at the kids. After the truck wrecked, she said, ‘Good luck with your beloved truck.’ Expletives deleted. Then she took off.”

“Witnesses?” I asked.

“Yes. We’ve got two ladies who were heading into the bakery to order a wedding cake who saw the whole thing. Truck looked like it was going to go down the tunnel—suddenly swerved to the right—and there was a group of maybe six kids walking across the street. Ladies thought for sure that truck was going to hit them, when it jerked suddenly and impacted the barricade where so many other vehicles have met their doom. They did not see the girlfriend.”

“So do we believe the girlfriend exists?” I asked.

“And did she have a bite mark?” He paused dramatically. “Yes, yes, she did. Our driver, who did not know his own girlfriend’s name on account of him picking her up at a gas station in Finley, said she had a—and I quote—‘weird-ass mark on her arm, man—like she’d been bitten by a vampire’—unquote.”

It fit. Everything except the way the truck had melded with the barricade, anyway. It didn’t seem like the mind-control stuff went together with changing the bottom of a semi tractor into concrete. But my nose didn’t lie—the smoke beast had been here.

“Is the driver still here?” I asked.

“Nope, they took him in for questioning.”

I’d been casually looking around. Funny how easy it was to tell the cops, in uniform and out, from everyone else—and there were a few onlookers now. It was a subtle thing—an in-crowd, out-crowd. Pasco wasn’t that big—all of the police officers knew each other and their body language gave it away.

My eyes caught on one of the onlookers. A dark-complexioned girl wearing shorts and a pink tank top—and her expression was wrong. She was looking at the wrecked vehicle and she didn’t look amazed or worried or excited like everyone else. She looked smug.

“George,” I asked, not taking my eyes off the girl. “Do you have a description for the missing girlfriend?”

She looked up at me at just that moment. There were probably a dozen yards and twenty people between us—and she looked at me as if she had known exactly where I was standing.

She smiled at me and the bite on my neck flared in a bone-shivering spike of pain that made me stagger before it died completely, like something had short-circuited. As it did, her face twisted with pain—and then malevolent anger.

“That’s her,” said George, coming to alert as he saw who I was looking at. “Hispanic female, pink top.”

He didn’t speak loudly, but I think, from her change of expression, she heard him, so her hearing was at least as good as ours. As we started toward her, she looked around at all the police surrounding her. Briefly she looked frustrated—and then she looked at us again. Her shoulders relaxed and she smiled—right before she ran.

George bolted after her—and I bolted after him.

“George,” I called out, because—wouldn’t you know it—George was one of the very few werewolves who were faster than I was. “Let her go—if she bites you, you belong to her! Then you die! George, wait!”

I couldn’t tell if he was paying attention or not. The call of a hunt is pretty strong, and I wasn’t Adam.

The woman fled down a side street that was edged with automotive boneyards, warehouses, and empty lots. She reeked of that distinctive magic and she was moving as fast as a werewolf. I was pretty sure we’d found our jackrabbit. George was hot on her heels, gaining a few inches with every stride.

I was twenty or thirty feet behind them and losing ground rapidly. Neither of them seemed to be having trouble with the rough and uneven sidewalk, but it tripped me up once and I almost tumbled head over heels. I kept my feet but it slowed me down.

The woman dropped out of sight down a narrow dirt track between a pair of industrial-looking buildings that wore an air of abandonment. When George disappeared around the corner, too, I found an extra burst of speed from somewhere.

At the same time, I ripped at the closed bond between Adam and me. It gave in to my frantic attempt, but I’d done something to our bond . . . it felt wounded somehow, bleeding. But I would worry about that later. I needed to keep George safe.

I turned the corner and saw George closing in on the woman quickly—I was pretty sure she had deliberately slowed her pace. There was a woman curled up against the building in a fetal position, her face pressed against the wall as if she were trying to hide. But she wasn’t moving and my instincts told me she wasn’t a threat, so I ran past her.

“George, stop!” The command rang with the power of an Alpha werewolf because I had stolen it from Adam.

George stopped in his tracks, and so did the woman—who was the smoke beast. They had run past the building and stood in what might have been, in better days, a small parking lot. I stopped, too.

“Get back here,” I told George. In my back pocket, my cell phone started to ring. Probably Adam wondering why I’d torn at our bond. But I was busy. I told George again, “If it bites you, it will steal your will. Aiden says that once it takes you over, it will kill you.” Or he would die. Aiden hadn’t been clear on that point, so I wasn’t, either.

When it hadn’t been able to steal my will, it had tried to kill me, though, so I thought what I’d said was a good bet. The running water had severed the connection between it and the bite—but I thought of the smoke I had swallowed. Maybe there had been enough left in me for it to try again today. It hadn’t worked.

George kept his eyes on the woman, but he obeyed me—backing up rapidly until we stood shoulder to shoulder.

“George,” I said. “There’s someone on the ground against the wall of the building behind us, to my left.”

He glanced over my shoulder and growled, “Missed that.” He strode behind me—paying me the compliment of trusting me to guard us from the creature.

The woman stayed where she was, frowning at me.

“Who are you?” she asked. She spoke as if English was difficult for her, and not as if she spoke Spanish. Her accent was nothing I’d heard before. If her word choice was odd, it didn’t take away from the edge of rage in her voice. “My power is big. Why are you not mine?”

“I don’t know,” I told her. “What do you want?”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “If the stupid man had not stopped us. There would be many dead and I would have more power. More enough to take you.”

“You get power from the people you kill?” I asked.

“Stupid you,” she sneered. “Death is powerful magic. My puppets kill and give me magic to be this.”

George approached me and stood just to my right. “Dead body,” he told me—and he sounded a little freaked out. It took a lot to freak out a police officer who was also a werewolf. “Her dead body.”

“Dead that one,” the woman said, running her hands down her body in a way that was a little obscene without being sexy at all. “I own this now. In this shape I kill you and the magic is wasted. Cannot eat death in my own body, only through puppets. Rules. Stupid rules.”

She was giving us a lot of information, I thought—but it was almost as if she weren’t talking to George and me. As if she were clarifying her thoughts.

This creature had lived in Underhill for who knew how long—and Underhill was a place where magic was plentiful. Maybe the rules were different here than in Underhill—and this creature was working them out aloud. It sounded like she had trouble powering her own magic and she was killing people to make up for it.

She made up her mind about something—I saw it in her eyes before she spoke. “Dead and you are not a problem, little dog. Regret because much power to eat from you. But prefer dead now to power later.”

And she charged us.

I skidded back, drawing my Sig as George engaged her. He hadn’t had to warn me off—we both knew who was the better fighter in this kind of scenario. I had the gun out and pointed, but the fight was moving too fast for a safe shot.

George wasn’t just better than me, he was one of our best fighters in unarmed human combat. He’d had experience, Adam had told me, before Adam took over his pack, and Adam had pushed him to sharpen those skills.

The beast seemed to be having a little trouble fighting in the form of the woman. I could tell that she was used to being heavier by the way she tried to use her weight. She was also used to fighting with teeth and claws instead of leverage and blunt force. Even so, the fight looked pretty even to me.

“Don’t let her bite you,” I reminded George, though he already knew that. That I repeated it again was more because I was horrified at the idea of something being able to take over your mind.

I wasn’t even certain that it was useful advice, because I wasn’t sure that it was only a bite he had to worry about. She’d turned a semi into concrete. I didn’t understand the rules of her magic and that scared me. Without knowing what she could do, I couldn’t keep anyone safe.

Her weight might not be what she was used to, but she was strong. And as she and George fought, she was getting better at using what she had. She twisted and George—who looked like he should be able to crumple her up and put her in a trash can—flew through the air.

I shot her three times before George hit the side of the building. My Sig held a ten-round magazine and I didn’t quit shooting until it was empty. I wasn’t standing more than fifteen feet away—every shot was on target.

She stopped dead in her tracks when the first shot hit her in the middle of her forehead. The second and third shots went into her cheekbone, just below the eye. The first three shots had jerked her torso a little toward me, angling her body so that I had a three-quarter frontal view.

I put the next three in her chest where a human’s heart would be. Because I didn’t know what she really was, the next three took the other side of her chest. I put the final round in her right eye.

I kept the empty gun in my hand because it could make a pretty good weapon. I set my feet into horse stance—a good balanced position. George had bounced back to his feet and taken two running steps to stand just in front of me, so he’d be the first to engage her again.

She . . . she just stood there—swaying a little. There were dark holes where the bullets had gone in. But there was no blood, nor even the scent of blood, only the acrid scent of gunpowder and the smell I’d come to associate with this creature.

Behind us, pounding footsteps announced that the police officers gathered at the semi accident had heard the shots and were coming. The creature heard them, too, tipped her head, smiled at me—and dissolved into smoke that quickly dissipated, taking with it the scent of magic. A soft metallic sound accompanied ten bullets hitting the hard-packed gravel.

“Fuck,” said a woman’s voice behind me.

I turned to see a police officer in uniform, her gun out and aimed at the place the woman had been. The next officer, who hadn’t seen the beast dissolve, had his gun pointed at me.

“Drop your weapon,” he said.

George flung his hands up into the air and growled. “Greenhorn.” He sucked in a breath, trying to get a handle on his wolf, as the little space between buildings filled up with Pasco PD. His eyes flashed bright yellow, a sign that the wolf was still ready for a fight, when he said, “We’re all good guys here. Stand down, Patton.”

I set my gun on the ground anyway, not wanting to get shot by an overzealous or scared officer. It wasn’t like it was going to be much of a defense against a creature that I could shoot ten times with a .40-caliber weapon and not do much more than surprise it.

“What was that thing?” asked the police officer who’d been first on scene.

“We don’t know,” growled George. “But that’s what turned the semi to cement.”

“Concrete,” said one of the police officers in a small voice. “Cement is what you mix with water to get concrete.”

George ignored him, instead stalking over to the body still curled up against the old building just beneath a wannabe gang tag. He knelt without touching.

“She’s about sixteen,” he told . . . me, I thought. “Her scent is all over that tractor. Freaking driver is forty if he’s a day.”

“Forty-two,” said someone. “We can get him for statutory.”

I left my empty gun on the ground and walked over to the body. I couldn’t smell anything out of the ordinary. I dropped to one knee beside George and said, “I have to touch her to be sure.”

“Do it,” he said.

I put a finger on her neck—and realized that she was wearing the same clothing the creature . . . beast had been. Before I could process it, the smell of magic flooded over me. It was as if, I thought, sitting all the way on the ground, the magic had been entirely encased in the body until I touched it and released it.

“That sucks,” said a voice just behind me.

I turned my head and started, bumping into George pretty hard. As he put a hand out to steady himself, he turned to look where I was looking, his body tight and ready to move.

The beast had seemed old, even in the shape of a young woman. This girl looking over my shoulder at the body, at her body, was very young. It was the same face and body the beast had worn—but whatever animated this one, it was not our monster.

She met my eyes, her arms wrapped around her rib cage.

“Damn,” she said. “Guess Mama was right. She told me that someday I’d regret jumping in a car with any stranger willing to pick me up.” Her voice was similar to the smoke beast’s, but her English was unaccented and the rhythm of her words was smoother.

She might not have ID on her, I thought reluctantly. She might have information we needed. I decided to risk strengthening her, though condemning anyone to haunt this sad little space didn’t seem kind. Maybe she could make it to the cheerful bakery down the street.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Liv—like that actress, the one on the white horse in the movie with the monsters,” she said. “Liv Mendoza.”

“Can you tell me what happened?” I asked.

The ghost shivered. “I was out behind the gas station—” She gave me a guilty look. “Never mind what I was doing. Not your business. Anyway this rabbit just came out and bit me—right here.” She stretched out her arm—and two crusted wounds appeared. “And then something sat in my head and ran the show. It just took over.” A tear appeared and she wiped it off with the back of her wrist. “I couldn’t even make a phone call. And when it was done with me, it discarded my body like a, like a snake sheds its skin.” She looked away from me. “I wish,” she said, “I had died on a beach somewhere. Or in one of those meadows you see in movies, the ones with flowers. I like flowers.”

“Who are you talking to, Mercy?” asked George.

I held up a hand—but she was gone, leaving me with most of the Pasco PD staring at me. Hopefully she was gone for good.

I shrugged, sighed, and told them, “I see dead people.”

My phone rang as I was crawling back over the Blue Bridge toward the garage with the parts in the trunk of my car. I took a chance and glanced at the screen. It was Adam. It took me another five or six minutes to get across the bridge and on a street where I could pull over to call him back. I had six missed phone calls from Adam.

“Hey,” I said.

“I have a headache,” Adam said without preamble. “What happened?”

I did, too, now that the adrenaline from the confrontation with the smoke beast was starting to die down. I prodded our bond. The weird bleeding sensation was gone, though the bond was definitely the cause of my headache. My fooling around with it made me wince.

“Quit that,” Adam said. “Tell me what happened.”

So I did.

I had to repeat the whole story to Tad and Zee when I got to the shop, parts in hand. I restarted the story from my first sighting of Anna’s ghost up through today’s confrontation, adding in the pieces that I’d left off or glossed over when I’d talked to them earlier.

“Is it a skinwalker?” asked Tad when I was done.

Zee just grunted and continued to loosen bolts with his ratchet, which had chattered at us most of the time I’d been talking. Tad had stopped working about halfway through the story, but Zee, although his expression had been getting grimmer and grimmer, had continued to work.

My phone chimed with a text—and with the way things were, I couldn’t ignore it.

“I don’t think so,” I said, getting out my phone. “There are vampires in Underhill, but I don’t know that I’d believe in skinwalkers there.” I’d never run into one of those, and I didn’t care to do so, either.

The text was from Aiden, sent to both Adam and me.

Tilly confirms smoke beast. Says no other escapees. She is sad she cannot help hunt him. Knows from me that you are good at killing monsters. Wishes you good luck. This is my fault, I am VERY sorry.

I read Aiden’s text to them out loud—everything except for the last sentence, which was nonsense.

“No,” said Zee. “It is not a skinwalker. Skinwalkers are native to this land. This is something from the Old Country.”

“You know what it is?” I asked.

“Nein,” he said. “A creature who transforms one thing into another. Who can infest someone with magic that appears as smoke. Using that magic, it turns its victims into puppets to kill for it, in order to gain power from those deaths. And then can mimic the forms of those it has used as puppets.” He frowned. “Magic has rules, Mercy. Especially for the fae. Transformation magic—that is rare and belongs to only a few types of fae—but, with the exception of several of the Gray Lords, generally those are not powerful creatures.”

I thought about what it had done and not done. “It didn’t turn George or me into concrete,” I told him. “Though maybe it can only do that with nonliving things?”

“Generally living or nonliving doesn’t matter to that kind of magic,” Zee said. “But that it didn’t transform you suggests that it had used up all of its magic.”

“Okay,” I said.

“So,” he agreed. “But this other magic that it has—this is oddly complicated for fae magic.”

He shook his head. “Bite and infest a living being with magic that manifests as smoke that allows it to take over the body. Then it has to use that body to kill in order to gain enough power to assume the shape of the person it has killed.”

“It sounds so weird when you put it like that,” Tad said.

Zee nodded. “More like something you’d find on a cursed artifact. A series of steps followed by results that allow you to take the next steps. I know of a few of the fae who have magic that is like this—it allows weaker fae to work complex magic. But their magic uses none of these steps.”

He shook his head again. “I will go tonight and speak with Uncle Mike.” He gave me a speculative look. “You might contact Beauclaire. He will talk to you before he does me.”

Aiden had suggested that, too—I raised my hands. “I am not in the personal communication circle for Lugh’s son. The Gray Lords are, one and all, above my pay grade.”

Zee eyed me suspiciously for a moment before shrugging. “All right, Liebchen. Perhaps Uncle Mike can talk to Beauclaire.”

My phone chimed again, this time from Darryl—also addressed to Adam and me.

Ogden called. Worried that there is something amiss at his house. Auriele and I are joining him and the three of us will go back to his house. Will update you as necessary.

Adam responded almost immediately.

Do you need help?

To which Darryl said: No. Might be an attempt to move resources. Auriele has sent out a general warning to pack.

Adam responded: Okay. Keep me updated.

Watching my face, Tad asked, “What’s up?”

“Auriele was right,” I said. “The invading wolves have begun their game.”

Tad grabbed my phone and read the texts. “Who is Ogden?”

“One of our wolves,” I said. “He is quiet. Keeps to himself and doesn’t cause trouble. He’s a contracts lawyer.”

Ogden was one of the less dominant wolves. He showed up for the moon hunts and enough of the pack breakfasts that Darryl or Warren didn’t appear at his door and haul him over. I had maybe spoken four words to him since I’d joined the pack. But he was well-liked and respected by the pack mates who knew him.

“Do you need an escort home?” asked Zee.

I thought about it. “Maybe a good idea—but let’s get those two cars done first. That way I might have enough money to pay you for today.”

“I am not worried,” said Zee serenely. “People always pay me one way or the other.”

He was joking—a little. But not really.

Adam stopped by to escort me home just as we were finishing the last of the cars for the day.

We all looked at him when he walked into the office, but it was Tad who asked, “Did you hear from Darryl? Is everyone okay?”

Adam snorted. “What do you do here all day besides gossip?” He grinned at Tad. “They’re fine. No bodies on either side.”

He seemed in a better mood than I’d seen him in for a long time. I thought of why that might be—and managed, finally, not to blush.

“So what happened?” I asked.

“Darryl and Auriele found two of Harolford’s pack hiding in Ogden’s backyard, both in wolf form. There was a fight, but it was brief because the others had obviously been told not to engage. We aren’t sure if they ran because they didn’t expect to face Darryl and Auriele, too, or if they had never intended to do anything more than scare Ogden.”

Adam grinned suddenly. “Ogden called me to tell me the whole story and he could not have sounded more exhilarated if they had killed all six of the invading army. To celebrate their victory, the three of them are on their way to our house with pizza.” He glanced at Tad and Zee. “There will be enough to feed you, if you’d like to join us.”

“No,” said Tad. “I’ve been enlisted to take Jesse and her friends to the roller-skating arena. I can’t figure out if she asked me to go because she knows you won’t let her go without a bodyguard until the strange-wolf thing clears up. Or if she’s trying to play matchmaker with the girl who keeps trying to talk to me but can’t make herself say a word. Or trying to prove to that girl that I’m the last person in the world she should have a crush on.” He gave Adam a droll look. “I have decided to be amused by the whole thing.”

Adam followed my battered but recovering Jetta in his new SUV. The old SUV had been hit by a semi driven by vampires—this one looked black and shiny, just like the old one except that it was newer. He had resisted my attempt to get him to buy something more daring—like dark gray.

I had the thought that this journey homeward was symbolic of our lives right now. He in his fortress of solitude, me in my battered vehicle that was doing pretty good just getting down the road. Together, but apart. Adam protecting me as best he could from any outside force that might try to hurt me, but not letting me in.

Darryl, Auriele, and Ogden stormed into the house bearing pizza and the remnants of battle. Mostly, by that point, those remnants were dirt and torn clothing that was stained with the blood of wounds that had already closed—and the battle-born adrenaline high of a successful fight. They brought a wave of laughter and chatter as they revisited moments from the fight, their beasts in their eyes.

“I called,” announced Ogden to the whole household. “I drove to my house on the way home from work and there was something not right.” He gave Adam a shy look. “Minding what you said, sir, I did not stop. I drove to the Uptown Mall and called Darryl.”

“And we,” purred Auriele, as happy as I had seen her in months, “found a couple of strays in Ogden’s backyard. Wolf form—so we don’t know which ones. Sent them home with their tails between their legs.”

There was another incident that night. Four wolves tried to blindside Warren as he drove to his house. Kyle came out with a loaded rifle and shot one in the hip. The rest retreated.

“I expect,” said Warren on the phone, “that Kyle and I will get another letter from the HOA. We’ve been looking at moving somewhere with fewer neighbors, but Kyle doesn’t want to leave Dick and Jane behind.”

Dick and Jane were two life-sized naked statues in Kyle’s foyer. They’d been in the house when Kyle bought it. He took great joy in finding outrageous outfits to dress them in. Last time I’d seen them, Jane was wearing a grass skirt and nothing else, and Dick was sporting a squirrel puppet on his manly bits.

“Statues can be moved,” I commented.

Adam was the one on the phone, but we were all listening in.

“Kyle’s stubborn,” Warren said. “And when Mr. Francis, our old contentious neighbor, died, it deflated the HOA’s sails. They are a little afraid of Kyle because he’s a lawyer.”

“And because they’ve met Kyle,” said Ogden; the aftereffects of successfully defending his home had left him chattier than usual. It was said in a low tone, though, so I don’t think Warren was supposed to hear it—but he did.

“And because they’ve met Kyle,” Warren agreed cheerfully. “I don’t know whether they are more afraid of his shark reputation in his chosen field or that if they push him he’ll find some horrible thing to do—like fly a giant penis kite over the house—that is not against the HOA agreement.”

“Could you tell which four wolves?” I asked.

“The two Palsics were in human form,” said Warren. “The other two were wolves and I don’t know which ones. Kyle shot the bigger of the two. He’ll recover—it wasn’t silver ammunition—but it will take him a while. That rifle isn’t as big as Mercy’s .444 Marlin but it was a .30-06 and that has a lot of stopping power. They had to carry him off.”

“Were you injured?” asked Adam.

“No, boss,” said Warren. “Kyle kept the big bad wolves from hurting me. Even though I told him to stay inside and call you.”

“Four to one,” said Kyle clearly. “They didn’t have a chance.” He lied, but he didn’t intend anyone to believe it. “But how many times am I going to get an opportunity to shoot someone without consequences?”

Warren made a noise. I couldn’t tell if it was a growl or a purr. “Got to go, boss. Gotta talk sense into someone.”

I tried to call Stefan twice that night. The second time I left a message on his phone. He didn’t return my call.