Page 2 of Relics of the Wolf (Magnetic Magic #2)

2

The twenty-year-old clerk watched in bemusement, or possibly condescension, as I counted bills out of my GAS envelope and laid them on the counter. I was used to it. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to use plastic or the various online payment processors, but sticking with cash had helped me get my budget locked in and pay off my debt. Given all the extra driving I’d been doing this month, not to mention buying gift boxes of salami and smoked salmon for werewolf bribes, my budget needed all the help it could get.

“Sixty on nine.” I waved toward the pump where my beat-up truck waited.

“Anything else?” The kid flicked a finger at an assortment of cheap candies, gum, and bottled vitamin boosters that promised to give me the energy of a puppy on amphetamines.

My gaze trailed over a chocolate bar, and I sneered almost as much as Bolin did every time he talked about the neighborhood of the apartment complex. It wasn’t my fault gas stations sold inferior chocolate.

“No, thanks.” I had already picked up a couple of quality almond-and-sea-salt dark-chocolate bars.

Depending on how this meeting with Duncan went, and what I was able to sus out about his involvement with the missing case, I would either bribe him with the sweets or torment him by enthusiastically eating them in front of him.

I never minded having to nosh on fine chocolate and practiced doing so regularly. Such treats were non-negotiable in my budget. More than once, I’d put back cauliflower or broccoli to pay for desserts. It wasn’t as if werewolves needed that many veggies anyway, right? I’d mostly purchased such things for my boys when they’d lived at home. Given all the other crap they’d eaten, I’d figured cruciferous vegetables played an important role in scouring out their innards. Like a Brillo pad.

After filling up, I drove to the Ballard Locks and cruised through the nearby parking lots until I spotted Duncan’s blue-and-white Roadtrek, the vehicle modified for off-roading. At the least, it had atypically large tires. They’d been helpful when I’d needed to ram into a belligerent werewolf.

I would have expected Duncan to have wandered through the botanical gardens to the walkway, where he could toss his magnets on ropes over the railing and into the ship canal, but the side door was cracked open. Maybe he was inside, taking a nap. Or waiting for me?

A curious silver cylinder in the shape of a bullet—or maybe a rocket—squatted on the pavement next to the open door. And there was a satellite dish mounted to the van that I hadn’t noticed before. Maybe the rocket was a gift from his mother ship.

I snorted at the idea that Duncan might be an alien. No, he was a werewolf—I’d hunted with him in wolf form the week before. He was just oddly strong for one.

Maybe it had to do with his old-world origins. My pack had originated in Italy, but they’d been in the New World for generations, hunting in the Pacific Northwest since Seattle had been a logging town and launch-off destination for prospectors heading up to mine in the Yukon.

When I parked and opened the door of my truck, a scintillating scent of cooking beef wafted to me. Brisket? Oh, was the bullet-shaped object a smoker ?

My nostrils and salivary glands drew me for a closer investigation.

“Greetings, my lady!” Duncan said with enthusiasm as the door slid farther open and he hopped out of his van.

Halfway to the smoker, I paused with one foot in the air. Why did I feel like a cartoon rabbit led toward a box trap by a carrot lying innocuously underneath?

I put my foot down, reminding myself that I’d reached out to Duncan. Okay, technically, Bolin had. But, either way, Duncan hadn’t lured me here.

“I’m delighted to see you.” Smiling, he stuck his arm out, as if sweeping a cloak wide, and bowed as deeply as a medieval knight. A briny breeze wafting in from Puget Sound tossed his wavy salt-and-pepper hair and stirred the scents of the meat, the scintillating smoke tempting me closer. “I didn’t know if I would encounter you ever again.”

“My intern thought I should ask you about something.” I eyed Duncan, trying to tell from his expression if he was scheming or had deception in mind. Also if he had my case.

But if he had hired that thug and stashed the artifact in his van, would he be lingering in the Seattle area? Where I—or my large werewolf family—might find him?

“You mean you weren’t pining achingly and deeply for my company?” Duncan peered past me toward the truck. “Did you bring your big wrench?”

“Do you want to be pounded by it?”

“No, but you’re appealingly fierce when you wield it.” He winked.

“Don’t you think you should be more respectful and less irreverent, given that you accepted a gig to break into my apartment and steal from me?”

“I did leave you an apology gift.”

“So, all should be forgiven?”

“Perhaps not.” His expression grew more sober, and he bowed again. “I do apologize for allowing my craving for adventure to entice me into rummaging in your apartment and deceiving you.”

“Apology not accepted.” If someone besides my cheating ex-husband had hired him, maybe I could have gotten over it, but Chad was an ass who’d slept all around the world on me. Worse, and even more unforgivable in my eyes, he’d stolen the kids’ college funds before the divorce had been finalized.

“Not even if it’s accompanied by brisket?” Duncan lifted the lid on the smoker, revealing a perfectly cooked haunch of meat dripping with juices and allowing out an even more intense aroma of delicious, mouthwatering seasoned beef.

“No,” I said, though I couldn’t help but lean closer and inhale.

My primal werewolf side wanted me to spring upon the brisket, rip it from its mount, and drag it off into the forest to enjoy. Not that there were many forests remaining around the Locks in Ballard. Maybe the bare-branched trees in the botanical garden would do.

“It was your intern’s idea to reach out to me, you say?” Duncan asked, though he’d fielded Bolin’s messages and knew.

“Yeah. We’re searching for something.” I tore my gaze from the brisket so I could study him.

He merely lifted his eyebrows.

“Did you hire the guy who mugged Bolin and stole the case?” I watched his eyes for a reaction.

He blinked a couple of times. “The little magical wolf case that I came looking for?”

“Yes. I assume you still want it. That your employer still wants it.”

Duncan had the grace to wince. “He’s not my employer. I was just… doing work for him.”

“We can check the dictionary later, but I’m pretty sure that makes you an employee.”

“More of an independent contractor. There aren’t any benefits. As to the rest, yes, I’m sure he still wants it, but I told him I wouldn’t get it for him.”

“Is that so,” I said in a flat tone.

A part of me wanted to believe Duncan, but a part of me wanted to punch him in the nose. I didn’t even know if I could blame my savage werewolf instincts. Wouldn’t any woman feel this way about someone who worked for— independent contracted for—her loathsome ex?

“It is. I thought about putting that in my note, but I didn’t know if you would even read it.” Duncan scratched his jaw. “Uhm, did you?”

Was that a hopeful look in his eyes?

I was tempted to quash that hope out of a desire for retribution, but I reminded myself why I’d come. Bolin thought Duncan could help. And maybe he could. On the chance that case was pertinent to werewolves, I wanted to get it and show it to my mother. And maybe Bolin and his father could learn more about it—and what it had to do with wolf bites—if they had more time to study it.

“I read it. And I got the potion vials.” Maybe I should have said thanks, but I couldn’t dredge the words from my soul. With my body still tight from the feeling of betrayal, I… couldn’t be that big of a person. Besides, I didn’t know if he’d truly stopped working for Chad or if that was a lie and he was trying to get back on my good side in the hope of getting a second chance at the case. Asking him for help was probably dumb.

“But you haven’t consumed one of the potions,” Duncan said in a curious tone. “I can tell from the feral way you looked at my meat that the wolf still lurks close to the surface in you.”

“Your meat, huh.”

Duncan grinned. “I refer, naturally, to the brisket.”

“Naturally.”

I didn’t doubt that he could tell I hadn’t taken the potion. A werewolf, even when in human form, had keener senses than normal people, so he would be able to sense and smell what I was. What I, if strong emotions or the full moon roused me, could become.

Since I didn’t want to discuss my decision not to take another werewolf-sublimation potion, I pulled out my phone instead. “Do you know this guy?”

I showed him the photo that Bolin had shared with me and the footage of the thug beating up my poor intern.

“I already told your assistant, but I haven’t seen that man before.” Brow furrowed, Duncan leaned closer to my phone. “Will you play that video again?”

Hoping he’d decided he did recognize the guy, I did so without question.

“He’s strong,” Duncan said. “Abnormally so.”

“Yes. Bolin commented on that after the guy hurled him into a lamppost. He’s lucky that he didn’t need a cast for broken bones to go with his stitches.”

“Quite,” Duncan murmured thoughtfully, his gaze locked on the video. “I don’t think he’s a werewolf though.”

That caught me by surprise. “You don’t? What else would he be?”

“I’m… not sure, but he doesn’t move like an animal. Like we do.”

I twitched a skeptical eyebrow. Though I didn’t deny that wild instincts guided me at times, I didn’t think I moved like an animal, not when I was in human form.

“If I could smell him,” Duncan said, “I would have a better idea of what he is.”

“Sorry, we haven’t upgraded to security cameras with scent receptors.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

“If you want to sniff this guy up, you’ll have to help me find him.”

“Is that what brought you here?”

“I’m more interested in locating the case than the thief, but they might be together. Bolin pointed out that your supposed expertise is finding things.”

“ Supposed . Really, Luna. I located all sorts of interesting things in your bedroom.” Duncan might have decided that sounded odd—my mind went to the tube of estradiol cream he’d shrieked over—because he added a finger point upward, no doubt to remind me of the magical hidden cameras we’d uncovered in the ceiling.

“It’s almost as if you knew paranormal items would be there to find.”

“I… did possibly have that information. About the wolf case, though, not anything else.”

“Maybe Chad thought it would be skeezy and creepy to admit he put cameras in the bedroom of his ex-wife to spy on her.” I didn’t have verification that he’d been the one to do that, but, given that he’d placed the case, it seemed likely. “Next time you chat with him, let him know he’s a douche, will you?”

“I wasn’t planning to chat with him again. As I said, I told him I wouldn’t take further actions against you or send him that case, should it reappear.”

“Okay. Good.”

Duncan’s handsome face, his jaw outlined by his carefully cultivated three days’ beard growth, held an earnest expression.

A little twinge in my gut, or maybe my soul , made me want to believe him, but too many years of life being hard and people lying to me made me wary. If I had a nickel for every time a tenant had told me the rent wouldn’t be late again or the check was in the mail, I could have bought my own apartment complex by now. At the least, I wouldn’t be carefully divvying up my paychecks under the guidance of a strict budget to make sure there was money left to eat at the end of the month.

“Do you think it’s possible your lovely cousins could be associated with that fellow?” Duncan pointed to the paused video on my phone.

“It is possible. I asked Augustus if he was responsible, but it was after I shoulder-butted him off a train trestle and into a raging river. He wasn’t cheerfully inclined toward me at that moment.”

“He did seem the sort to hold a grudge.”

“Absolutely.” I eyed the blond guy in the video. “I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if Augustus lied to me, but… it’s also not very werewolfy to go outside of the pack for help. Assuming things haven’t changed since I was a kid, Mom wouldn’t even call a handyman to fix a leak in the roof. She expected Uncle Carlo to handle all the maintenance.”

“Was he who taught you how to wield your big wrench?” Duncan leaned into his van and pulled out a carving fork and knife.

“I did assist him numerous times.”

“I could ask Rue, the alchemist who made your potions, if she knows of anything that could give a regular human greater than typical strength. And I can poke around the paranormal pawn shops and check if anyone has seen your case.”

“If you get any leads, I’d like to come along.”

“Because you don’t trust me not to take off with the case if I find it by myself?” Duncan sliced off a piece of the brisket, more juices dribbling out and making my stomach growl.

“I don’t trust you, no. You keep bad company.”

“I met him randomly, chatting about treasure hunting on a dock on an island in Costa Rica. We didn’t keep company for an extended period of time.”

I wanted to snap that Chad’s evilness and sleaziness should have oozed off him and informed Duncan about what a loser he was, but that was silly. Chad could be quite charming and cordial. After all, I’d fallen in love with and married him. It hadn’t been until years later that I’d learned about the deceitful, double-timing, thieving side of him.

“Okay.” I lifted a hand, as much of an apology as I could muster. “It’s not personal. I just… after being…” I couldn’t bring myself to use duped to describe myself, at least not out loud. “After he did me wrong, I’m not quick to trust anyone. Like I said, it’s not personal.”

“I can accept that.” With a smile and a flourish, Duncan extended a piece of meat toward me. “Please accept this small token as a further apology for my poor behavior.”

“It’s almost as if you knew a werewolf would visit you today.” I plucked the brisket off his knife, my rumbling stomach demanding that I accept his offering.

“I’m ever hopeful. I’ve felt bereft without having someone to show my day’s finds to.” He pointed to a box of grime- and seaweed-covered metal whats-its, proof that he had been magnet fishing earlier.

“Don’t you record yourself and share all that with your YouTube followers?”

“It’s not quite the same as sharing with a real person. I—” Duncan paused, cocking his head to listen to something.

Once he stopped talking, I heard it too. Night hadn’t come, but the howl of a wolf floated across the ship canal toward us.

It sounded like it originated out on the point in the largely wooded Discovery Park. Since the area was surrounded by busy neighborhoods, it would be an unlikely place for a normal wolf to show up. I had a feeling my family was still keeping an eye on me.

“Did you ever find out why your cousin was trying to kill you?” Duncan gazed in the direction of the howl.

“My mom is dying and planning to leave a family heirloom to me.” I almost described the magical medallion, and how it had glowed when I’d touched it, apparently a sign that I was a proper heir for it, but that wasn’t information that I could trust Duncan with. Maybe he was telling the truth that he was done hunting for treasures located under my nose—or my bed—but he might be lying to me. I dared not let myself be fooled twice.

“And he’s irked because he’s not in the will?”

“Sort of. It’s magical and I guess attuned to women.” Maybe I should have asked Mom more about the medallion. “My cousin believes it should go to his wife. He also doesn’t think I’m worthy to inherit it because I walked away from the pack all those years ago.” Worse, in his eyes, I’d taken that potion that had kept me from feeling the call of the wolf and changing into our true form.

“I’d imagine that would be for your mother to decide. More meat?”

I blinked, hardly realizing I’d wolfed down the first piece. It had been so tender I’d scarcely had to chew or pause my speech. “Yes.”

“I thought so.” His eyes gleamed.

The image of a rabbit lured in by a carrot came to mind again, and I looked frankly at him. “Are you trying to win my trust with food?”

“A certain amiability, perhaps. You’ve explained why trust might be difficult to earn, and I understand. I did originally come to you with deceit in mind.” Duncan bowed again. Apologetically. Then he sliced off another piece of brisket. “I was making this for myself since there’s nothing like returning from a hard day’s work to a perfectly smoked haunch of meat, but I’m most pleased to share it with you.”

“I was skeptical from the beginning that there was any treasure in the greenbelt by the freeway.”

“Oh, there were all sorts of fascinating things lost in there. I found not one or two but three antique hubcaps.” He extended the slice of meat on his fork. “But you’re correct that it wasn’t my treasure-hunting research that led me to that particular patch of woodlands. Does it even have a name?”

“Smoker Woods is what the teenagers who lurk back there against their parents’ wishes call it.” I pantomimed tagging a puff from a cigarette. The recently vacated apartment wasn’t the first smoke-tainted unit I’d cleaned over the years. Not by far.

“Catchy.”

“I can’t say that it’s a tourist hot spot.”

As Duncan and I ate, sharing the delicious brisket, another howl sounded. Was it closer? It was hard to believe a werewolf would cross the Ballard Bridge and attack us in a public area during daylight hours, but night wasn’t that far away.

“Perhaps we should vacate the premises. I doubt it’s my brisket that’s prompting that wolf to howl.” Duncan absently rubbed his side, the place where he’d been gouged in the fight with my cousins. Since werewolves had magical regenerative powers, the wounds should have healed, but the memory would doubtless linger. His gaze shifted toward my phone. The screen had gone dark, but maybe he was thinking of the mugger. “The alchemist who made your potions was full of knowledge, not only about alchemy but about the paranormal scene in Seattle. Why don’t we visit her first and ask about magical ways in which a man’s strength might be enhanced?”

“There are plain chemical ways that can be achieved.”

“I don’t think that bloke was a victim of ’roid rage,” Duncan said dryly.

Maybe not. His face had been calm as he’d hurled Bolin into the post. Even the punch after the vial throwing hadn’t been accompanied by much expression. Maybe that was what made Duncan believe the guy wasn’t a werewolf. When our wild savagery surfaced, calm wasn’t an appropriate descriptor.

Duncan disassembled his smoker and placed it beside the van’s tiny sink for cleaning later, then sliced up the rest of the meat, storing it in a compact, counter-high refrigerator. He laid three slices of brisket on a post in front of the van.

“In case the wolf comes to investigate,” he said.

“Are you trying to win his amiability too?”

“It’s more likely the seagulls and crows will find the meat first, but you never know.” Duncan looked wistful as he opened the passenger door. “May I offer you a ride to the alchemist?”

I hesitated. Nothing bad had happened when I’d ridden with him before, but…

“There’s not much parking down there.” Duncan waved in the direction of the Space Needle and downtown. “Oddly, alchemists don’t have reserved spots for clients.”

“That is odd.”

“The package-shipping place under her second-floor apartment has three dedicated spots for customers.”

“The power of being part of a large corporate chain.” Though I didn’t know if it was wise, I locked my truck, grabbed the chocolate bars I’d brought, and climbed into Duncan’s passenger seat.

Whether I should trust him even this much, I didn’t know, but the odds of finding the case would be better with his help and expertise. If we did find it, I would have to make sure to get to it first.