Page 3

3

Heading back south, the traffic was worse, and I gripped the steering wheel, knuckles flexing. Bolin hadn’t given me any more details before hanging up, and I worried that the motorcycle gang was harassing the apartment complex again. Or, what if my cousins who had been kicked out of the pack had shown up to exact revenge?

My skin buzzed with heat, magic pricking at my veins. I almost laughed. The wolf magic that hadn’t wanted to let me draw upon it when I’d been thinking of breaking into the lavender compound was stirring now, my strong emotions calling to it.

But turning into a wolf while driving down the freeway was a bad idea. A very bad idea. I took a few long, slow breaths, willing my body to calm. Fortunately, I reached my exit without fur sprouting from my arms.

When I turned into the parking lot for Sylvan Serenity, there weren’t any motorcycles, police cars, shattered windows, or other signs of fresh chaos. Instead, it appeared peaceful, the wan winter sun gleaming on cars and throwing long shadows from the evergreen trees edging the lawn. Bolin’s blue Mercedes G-Wagon was parked under some of those trees, his translucent portable garage blown up to protect it from bird droppings.

“Such a strange druid.” After pulling in beside the SUV, I peered around for the promised trouble.

An unfamiliar BMW in a guest parking spot was the only thing potentially amiss. Neither it nor Bolin’s ride were the types of vehicles that my tenants owned.

The door to the leasing office was open, and Bolin leaned out as I walked up. Behind him stood an older man with lighter skin than Bolin but who had his same mussy red hair. My step faltered. That was his father, Rory Sylvan.

Were both of his parents here again? Hopefully, they hadn’t come to discuss selling the property. When they’d shown up the week before, that had been the first time I’d seen them in years. I preferred that frequency of visitation from the owners—my employers.

Since my errand had taken me away from the property in the middle of the workday, I quickened my pace. Until werewolves—and thieves of werewolf artifacts—had inserted themselves into my life, I’d never randomly taken off during the day unless it was to pick up parts to repair one of the units. But now… I grimaced with guilt, hating that I had become a less-than-ideal employee, especially during a time when the owners were paying extra attention. At least the place still looked good. It hadn’t always been during office hours, but I’d kept up with all the maintenance requests and regular seasonal issues.

Bolin stepped outside to meet me, and I heard Kashvi Sylvan’s voice. Yes, both of his parents were in the leasing office. She seemed to be talking to someone besides her husband.

“Is this the trouble you mentioned?” I nodded toward the office but also rested a hand on my chest, half-wondering if I was the trouble. Or the one in trouble, rather.

“I thought you might find it concerning,” Bolin said .

“People in the leasing office? Nah, I dusted and took out the trash this morning. It’s not that concerning.”

His grave look told me that wasn’t what had prompted his call. “They’re showing a potential corporate buyer around the property.”

I groaned, my gaze drifting back to the BMW.

Before, I’d dreaded the idea of motorcycle thugs, but now I wished vandals would roar through the parking lot. Or what about my ghost-hunting tenants? Couldn’t they wander past with their glowing and beeping equipment? I needed something to happen to convince a buyer that this place was too weird to be interested in. Especially a corporate buyer. Yuck.

Sure, the Sylvans had gotten super rich over the years and were a long way from qualifying as a mom-and-pop business, but they also weren’t a heartless, publicly-traded company cutting costs at all expense to make their wealthy shareholders happy.

Alas, the sun was doing an excellent job of highlighting the well-tended grounds, the recently pressure-washed roof, and birds flitting about as they chirped appealingly in the trees. There wasn’t even any freshly chewed gum stuck to the side of the cluster mailboxes. If I were a real-estate photographer, I would choose this day to take pictures.

As if the thought had summoned such a person, a young man with a drone tucked under one arm wandered in from the parking lot.

“I’m here to take the photos,” he called when Rory Sylvan looked out the door and waved at him.

I groaned again, managing to muffle it when Rory noticed us and acknowledged me with his wave. I attempted a smile as I returned the gesture, not wanting to share the bleakness I felt, that I was about to lose my home and job of twenty-plus years.

Would a new corporate owner want to keep on someone without a college degree? Someone who kept drawing trouble, especially werewolf trouble, to the complex?

“Any chance the prospective buyer has read the news and has concerns about the rising crime in the area? And the incident that happened here?” I pointed casually toward the parking lot, though I felt guilty about downplaying the night Duncan and I had changed into wolves to battle the thugs Radomir had sent to kidnap me. It had been self-defense, but there had been deaths . Multiple deaths. Thanks to my crazed wild werewolf instincts taking over, I had been responsible for them.

“It did come up,” Bolin said. “The guy is negotiating and trying to imply that this place should go for a steal, due to those incidents, but my parents had me get out the financials and show them off. The complex is extremely profitable, great cap rate.”

I bared my teeth. That was something I’d always striven for, but, in this situation, it wasn’t a boon.

“It’s amazing how much work you do that they would normally have to pay contractors and other service providers for.” Bolin looked at me with bemusement, as if I were odd. “Was that part of your original deal when you first got the job?”

“No, but I’ve never seen the point in paying for things I can do myself.”

“I don’t know where you find the time, especially considering how busy your life is.” Bolin glanced at Duncan’s Roadtrek in the lot and also toward the greenbelt.

“It wasn’t that busy until recently.”

“Well, you’re a hard worker. That’s good.”

I squinted at him. “You don’t usually throw compliments around. Are you about to let me know I’m being fired? Or do you want something?”

“It’s in the job description of an intern to suck up to one’s superiors. ”

“Two days ago, you didn’t know the meaning of the term suck up .”

Bolin’s eyebrows flew up. “I know the meanings of all terms. Suck comes from the Middle English souken and Old English sucan , to use the lips and tongue to draw liquid into the mouth. As for slang variations, those are more twentieth century and imply, er, sexual acts. Though the terms are removed enough in the present to rarely suggest vulgarity.”

“That’s a relief. What is it you said that you want from me? If not to warn me of my impending firing?”

Bolin hesitated, no doubt recognizing me trying to trick him into confessing. Ultimately, he shrugged and answered. “I was wondering how your niece, Jasmine, is doing. You know she asked me where I get my coffee, right? Did she go visit Rocket Espresso? And get an orange mocha? That’s my favorite drink. It’s the one I gave to her. She must have liked it, right?”

His expression reminded me of a golden retriever seeking attention. If he’d had floppy ears, they would have been perked with hope.

“I’m not sure if she’s been there.” I tried not to bare my teeth at the photographer as he put his drone into the air for aerial shots. Damn it, why had I removed all the moss from the roofs a couple of weeks ago? The place would look great in his photos. He would doubtless take them in such a way as not to include the traffic-filled freeway on the other side of the greenbelt.

“Oh.” Bolin’s shoulders slumped.

Busy scowling at the drone, I almost missed his disappointment.

“She might have gone there.” I figured I should bolster my intern, not wallow in my own worry and distress. He’d helped me out numerous times. But, thus far, Bolin hadn’t proven himself to be the kind of guy that girls fell head-over-heels for. Or even the kind they noticed was flirting with them. “I can ask her the next time I talk to her.”

“That would be great. She’s pretty. And vivacious. I had to spell vivacious to win my fifth-grade spelling bee.”

“That was a good memory for you, huh?”

“Oh, yes. That was before the words got excruciatingly obscure and difficult and the competition stiff.”

“Before I talk to Jasmine, I do feel compelled to ask if you realize she’s my relative. And all that that entails.” I raised my eyebrows.

Bolin paused before answering. “More than that she inherited the same sense of sarcasm that you have?”

“That does run in my family, but yes. More.”

“Your son didn’t get more, right? He seems normal.” Bolin had only met Austin in passing, but, as a fledgling druid, he had the power to sense if people were magical.

“Because his father was a normal human, yeah.” I refrained from making that a normal sleazy human who stole money and cheated on me . After all, I was working on my maturity today.

“And it takes two… unnormals to make… one of you.” He gestured at me.

“Essentially.”

“Or a bite.”

“Yes. But hardly anyone can pass along our magic that way anymore.”

“Is Jasmine hardly anyone?”

“No.”

“Okay.” Bolin brightened. “Good. Will you see her soon to talk to her?” A hand on his chest implied about me .

“I’m not sure. She’s researching something for me now.”

“The wolf case?”

“No, that’s....” I hadn’t forgotten that our elusive wolf-lidded magical case had finally opened, revealing a metallic mushroom- shaped artifact that had saved Duncan from a fast-acting poison, but I’d been worried about his disappearance. I had mentally and physically put the case aside to mull on later. It, the lid again closed and locked, was back in the heat duct under my bed. At the moment, Jasmine, who’d witnessed the miraculous healing, was the only person besides Duncan who knew about its contents. But since Bolin had been studying it, maybe he deserved an explanation. It might also take his mind off his disappointment in realizing Jasmine probably wasn’t at home, writing his name in her journal with hearts around it. “The case has had a new development. I’m not sure what to think.”

“Oh?” Bolin’s brows rose with interest.

“When I was fighting my cousins, it popped open.” Speaking quietly so we wouldn’t be overheard, I explained how the artifact inside had healed Duncan’s wound.

“That’s amazing, but how did the case just pop open? We tried everything from pliers to reading the translation aloud in English and the original Ancient Greek to unlock it. We even used lubricating potions on the hinges while chanting open sesame . It seemed fused in place.”

“It’s not fused.” I debated how to explain what had prompted it to open without admitting that Duncan had been cloned from an ancient werewolf with the power to turn into a bipedfuris, the towering two-legged version of our kind with the ability to spread lycanthropy through his bite. “We believe that it opens when one of the threats that it—the artifact inside—was designed to protect against is nearby. Like it senses something with venom or poison.” I didn’t bring up werewolf bites, the third item mentioned in the inscription. “And then it makes itself available to help the person nearby.”

“Oh, how handy. It sensed that the sword your cousin used was poisoned? And that’s when the lid opened?”

I was fairly certain Duncan’s presence in the two-legged form had been the catalyst, but I nodded. It hadn’t occurred to me before, but there was a possibility the poisoned sword had caused the case to open. Maybe I’d wrongly assumed the bipedfuris had been responsible.

“We didn’t get a chance to experiment, but Duncan asked if we had rattlesnakes or scorpions around,” I said. “He wanted to see if a venom-producing creature would cause it to open. Strangely, I don’t keep any of those in my truck, so we still don’t know.”

“Did you try waving the poisoned sword over it again?”

“No. The house was on fire by that point.”

“On fire,” Bolin mouthed.

“When my family fights with each other, we go all out.” Technically, Duncan and his underwater demolitions had been responsible for the explosion that had started the fire, but my vile cousins had prompted that need. “You have siblings, don’t you? Or cousins? You know how chaotic things can get, I’m sure.”

“I guess so. My little brother and I wrestled on the couch once, knocked over a candle, and spilled hot wax on our mother’s newly installed carpet.”

I scratched my cheek. Such an incident wouldn’t count as worth recalling in a werewolf family. Hell, Cameron and Austin had caused more of a mess than that on a weekly basis, and the lupine magic hadn’t even passed along to them.

“We were grounded for three weeks,” Bolin added.

“If you’d been one of my kids, I wouldn’t even have denied you dessert for that crime.” As an ardent dark-chocolate fan, I’d always considered withholding sweets a far worse punishment than grounding . That was more of a torment for the parents than the kids since it meant the rowdy ones were stuck at home, plotting more trouble.

“Really?” Bolin looked wistfully at me. “Every time my parents grounded me, they took away all my electronics. I had to either read old-school physical books or practice the violin. ”

“I forgot that was on your résumé.” I pantomimed running a bow over strings. “Maybe you should be serenading cute girls while you hand them fancy mochas.”

“I’ve tried that before. It didn’t work as well as the chick flicks would lead you to believe.”

“Did you play super boring classical music or something good?”

“Classical music isn’t boring . And some of it takes amazing mastery with the violin. How could you not fall for a guy who flawlessly played Niccolò Paganini’s ‘Caprice No. 24’ under your window?”

Only the serious earnestness in his eyes kept me from laughing at the question.

“Jasmine likes rap,” was what I said.

I expected my spelling-bee champion to be affronted by the thought of such pedestrian music, but he squinted at me, as if I’d offered him a challenge.

“Which rappers?”

“I’m not sure. I can ask.”

“Would you? Like, gather intelligence for me?”

I hesitated, not certain it was my duty to help Bolin hook up with my niece, but he kept assisting me with my crazy life, and he was doing a good job keeping things running on the property when I was gone.

“Maybe a little.” I texted Jasmine, asking what music she wanted me to load to play in the truck the next time we stormed a castle. A prompt reply came back, and I showed Bolin.

“Kendrick Lamar, Eminem, Doja Cat, 50 Cent,” he read slowly.

“Do you know who any of those are?” I only did because of my sons. Probably a testament to how pathetically unhip I was, my tastes ran toward the eighties music I’d grown up with.

“Of course. I’m just… I need to think about how to use a violin to serenade a woman with rap beats. They’re not exactly… ”

“Romantic?”

“Easy to recognize if you’re playing the beats on one instrument.”

“You’ll have to sing along.”

That earned me an aggrieved look.

“ Can you sing?” I asked.

“Of course. I was in my church choir all through high school.”

“You had a lot of extracurricular activities.”

“Learning music improves cognitive function in children. My mom insisted.”

“You’re a good son. I don’t know if Jasmine will fall for you, but I bet her parents would like you.” I watched the Sylvans walk out of the leasing office with a gray-haired man in a business suit. Instead of heading for the parking lot, they meandered down a walkway toward one of the buildings in the back. For a full tour?

“Don’t say things like that,” Bolin said. “No girl under thirty wants to date someone her parents approve of. They want to go out with guys who are edgy and rebellious.”

“You’d better start practicing your violin rap beats then.”

The rumble of a motorcycle made me spin toward the parking lot.

It wasn’t one of the big Harleys the thugs had ridden but a bright green Kawasaki dirt bike. Swept back in a man bun, the rider’s long green-dyed hair almost matched it. Wooden sticks stuck out of a holder on his back, and I imagined him applying them to car windows.

Scowling, I strode toward the parking lot. Even if I’d been fantasizing about trouble scaring off prospective buyers, I could not, in good conscience, want vandalism to take place.

The rider pulled into a spot meant for bicycles, parked, and hopped off the Kawasaki. He didn’t look to be more than twenty, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be trouble, and I bared my teeth. My canines were sharper than typical for a human, a testament to my lupine heritage, but not so noticeably that people jumped back in alarm. Only those with magical blood of their own sensed that I had power. This guy merely raised his eyebrows.

“Hi. I’m Yuto. Are you Ms. Luna Valens?”

I stopped a few feet away and gave a wary, “Yeah.”

“He said you were pretty, snarky, and kind of feral.”

I blinked at the description. “Who said that?”

The kid—Yuto—pulled out a phone and looked at a note on his screen. “Duncan Calderwood.”

“You’ve seen him? When?” I almost pounced on my visitor.

Maybe Yuto sensed that—and my feral vibe—because he took an uncertain step back. “A few days ago. It might have been almost a week. Sorry about that. We run a camp at the dojo over the holidays when kids are out of school, and it’s been busy.”

“Dojo?” I looked at the sticks on Yuto’s back again. Maybe those were practice swords, not cudgels for vandalizing cars.

“Yeah. I work there for my uncle to help pay my way through school. I heard you’re looking to learn how to fight with swords.”

I had vowed to find some lessons, but… “Are you sure you’re old enough for that? I figured I’d get a Mister Miyagi and have to learn how to wax-on-wax-off first.”

Yuto looked blankly at me. Apparently, making students watch the Karate Kid hadn’t been part of his uncle’s training program.

“I’ve got a lot going on right now,” I said.

“We all do this time of year, but the lessons are already paid for. I came by to get your contact information and have you sign a waiver, but we can have the first practice here, if you like. It’s nice out today, and any flat area would work.”

“Duncan paid for lessons for me?”

“The first ten, yup.”

A lump of emotion formed in my throat. Duncan was watching out for me even though he wasn’t here. Even though he was… Where the hell was he?

I owed him, damn it. He was the one who’d given me the sword and suggested I use it to protect myself—and others—when I couldn’t take, or shouldn’t take, my more powerful lupine form.

“Ten?” I asked lightly, not wanting to admit my emotions to a twenty-year-old stranger. “Is that how many it will take for me to master swordsmanship?”

Yuto opened his mouth but didn’t seem to know if I was joking or not. I was, but with my limited time, I didn’t know how many lessons I could fit in.

“I started training in martial arts when I was four,” he said, “and I’m still learning.”

“So, it’ll take more than ten lessons?”

“For mastery, yes.”

“What if I just want to be able to prong werewolves?” I kept my tone light to indicate it was a joke—even if it wasn’t. With Augustus gone, I might get lucky and not need to prong any more lupine family members, but luck hadn’t favored me lately.

“I… guess that would depend on the defensive skills of the werewolf.”

“They’re pretty badass.”

“You might need twenty lessons then.”

“Okay. Let’s plan on that.”

“Are you ready to get started?”

I looked toward where I’d last seen the Sylvans. They’d disappeared from view, but I wasn’t about to wave swords around on the lawn while the owners were on the premises. If anything, I needed to check my email and see what maintenance orders tenants had sent in while I’d been away.

“I can after work hours. I’m the property manager here,” I added, figuring he might wonder how someone wandering out to meet visitors in the parking lot at an apartment complex could be at work .

“I thought you might be security.” Yuto grinned. “You looked like you were going to kick my ass when I rode up.”

“As someone who’s been studying martial arts since you were four, you had to be terrified by the prospect of being attacked by a middle-aged woman.”

His grin widened. “All my experience has informed me that middle-aged women can be some of the scariest people you’ll encounter.” Yuto held out his phone, a form to sign on the screen. “Here’s the waiver. You have to promise not to sue the dojo if you’re injured while training.”

“No problem.” As I signed, I casually asked, “How much are these lessons?”

I couldn’t imagine private sword-fighting instruction came cheaply. How much had Duncan spent? I appreciated him looking out for me, but I didn’t want to take his money—or the equivalent. After I rescued him, I would find a way to pay him back, assuming I could afford a ten-pack of sword-fighting lessons. Maybe there was an installment plan.

“I believe Mr. Calderwood and my uncle bartered and came up with a non-financial arrangement.”

“Does that mean Duncan paid with something he dragged up from a lake bottom?” I asked with certainty. That was, after all, how he’d found my magical sword.

“My uncle is a great fan of military history, and he has a cannon collection. I understand it now has one more item in it.”

“Is collecting cannons legal ?” Maybe that was a silly thing to ask since I was now friends with someone who regularly purchased grenades and underwater demolitions.

“Historic muzzleloading black-powder cannons are. They’re considered antiques. The rules around other things are fuzzier, I gather.” Yuto glanced at the signed form and took his phone back. “I’ll be ready to start when you are.”

“Okay, thanks.” As I headed to the leasing office, I debated how I could repay someone for sword-fighting lessons that had been financed with a cannon .