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I recognized my employer-to-be by the rose on her blouse, just like she’d promised. Unfortunately, my handshake wasn’t up to her standards.
“What have you been handling, Athena?” Marina offered in lieu of a greeting. Pulling a dainty, lace-edged handkerchief out of her handbag, she dabbed at her fingers as if we were attending a tea party rather than hovering at the edge of a roiling crowd.
Oops. I’d lost track of the grease from my sister’s fries in the midst of my werewolf sighting. Still, I wasn’t the only one who’d overshot societal cues.
“I replied to your message telling you this was a bad time,” I countered, “but your account had been closed.”
As I spoke, my gaze dropped to my cell phone. Harper’s weekly visiting window started in two hours. And while I’d been willing to be late to this job interview, if I didn’t show up in a timely manner at my sister’s boarding school afterwards, her dad would sneak in and “visit” instead....
“Do you have somewhere more important to be?” Marina’s voice was steely as she interrupted my contemplation of time and sisterhood.
I was losing whatever chance at this job I’d once had. Still, I answered honestly: “Yes.”
The word hovered between us for several seconds before Marina shrugged. “Then we might as well get on with it.”
As she spoke, she gestured up at the pseudo-Grecian facade of the museum behind us. Surely she didn’t mean...? I’d assumed this was a neutral public meeting place, not....
“I don’t steal from museums.” That clinched it. Marina was too much trouble and....
The check materialized out of nowhere. One moment my right hand was empty. The next moment, my fingers clasped a crisp rectangle of paper sporting more zeroes than I’d ever seen in my life.
I blinked. Magic? Or just my tired eyes playing tricks on me?
Either way, my free hand slipped into my pocket, feeling for the salt packet that went with my sister’s weekly fast-food treat. Harper liked her fries double-salted. She’d be sad if I lost her favorite seasoning.
Still, I found myself worrying one corner until it frayed open. Then I let a few grains dribble out onto the pavement. Better safe than sorry, right?
And...Marina took a single step backwards. Coincidence, I was sure of it. After all, magic didn’t exist. Well, I mean, magic other than werewolves.
Shaking off my uncertainty, I stuck to the tangible. “What’s this?” I asked, waving the check between us.
“The first half of your payment.” Marina leaned in closer than was really appropriate by human personal-space standards. She didn’t, however, step over the line of salt.
Still, she was close enough now for me to count her pores...or would have been if she’d had any. Instead, her skin was so smooth she might as well have been airbrushed. My nose, though, didn’t report any metallic hint of makeup.
Instead, Marina reeked of rose petals. Not from the flower at her lapel, which appeared to be a simple, unscented supermarket offering. But if the rose aroma emanated from a perfume, why couldn’t I distinguish an oil or alcohol base?
Curious. Still, it was the zeroes that prevented me from taking my own step backward, that prevented me from hightailing it away to my more important engagement. “What do you want in exchange for another check like this one?” I asked finally.
Marina’s lips didn’t turn upward, but I scented her smugness. I’d been the first to cave. She’d won that round.
“Follow me,” she promised, “and you’ll find out.”
***
SHE TURNED AWAY, HEADING up the stairs without waiting to see if I’d follow. I flared my nostrils...and something furry and wild impinged.
Wolf. Not from Marina. Not from the ugly-fascinating man I’d met inside either. Instead, the scent rose from behind me, the variety of sub-odors suggesting multiple shifters were present amid the chattering humans entering and exiting the museum.
I itched to swivel and hunt for trouble. Instead, I kept my eyes on Marina. After all, she was the more immediate danger and I’d run out of salt.
“The museum doesn’t own the object in question,” she called back, heels clicking as she strode up the marble steps away from my stationary figure. “It’s on loan from a rich, white dude. And isn’t your sister’s tuition due soon?”
Her knowledge of my preferred thieving target—complete with slang that sounded awkward on her lips—plus my familial weakness was chilling. More dangerous than shifters because it was more focused. I dismissed the wolf scent and jogged to catch up with my maybe-boss.
“I chose you for this job because of your special abilities,” Marina continued as we wended our way past the recommended donation box. She ignored it while I dropped in a ten-dollar bill.
“Special abilities?”
“Furry abilities.”
My feet froze on the stairs I’d been following her up. My nostrils flared again.
But there was no wolf scent about Marina. No fur. No wildness. She shouldn’t have known what I was capable of.
Still, I disabused her of that notion. “I don’t use any furry abilities on the job.”
Not since making a deal with the local alpha, that is. Not since Harper had begun attending boarding school so close to the heart of Rowan McCallister’s pack.
“What, never? Well, no matter.” Marina’s voice was perfectly museum appropriate as she dismissed my refusal to use my wolf and returned to the object of her fixation. “Before the current owner took possession, the item had been in my family for generations.” She paused long enough to spear me with eyes bluer than the sky. “I’m not asking you to steal, Athena. I’m asking you to return what’s already been stolen.”
Again, she turned away, this time leading me into a well-lit gallery. We didn’t speak as she made a beeline for a glass case housing a metal bracer.
It was a decorative arm cuff, meant to be worn at the wrist. Three inches wide, made of pounded gold and silver.
The pattern portrayed a running wolf.
I shivered. A wolf...like me? Like the scent outside? Like the world I did my best to steer clear of?
Ignoring what felt like more than a coincidence, I focused on the sign beside the artifact. What I saw there made me shake my head in disappointment.
Of course Marina had lied. All of my employers lied sooner or later.
“This is over a thousand years old,” I noted, raising my eyebrows. “It was dug up last month somewhere in England. You couldn’t even bother dreaming up a story that matches the obvious facts?”
“It was stolen from a cemetery,” Marina countered. “A cemetery in which my ancestors were buried. Do your research. Then cash the check if you want the job.”
The sweetness of rose petals wafted past my nose as Marina turned away. She was leaving. Walking out on me.
Which was good. Safe. And yet....
All those zeroes prompted me to call after her. “What’s to prevent me from cashing the check then disappearing?”
At first, I thought she wasn’t going to answer. But Marina spun in a cloud of flowing fabric when she reached the arch separating the gallery from the hallway. Her hair looked more blue than black there. Her teeth appeared werewolf sharp.
“I wouldn’t recommend it. Harper would regret anything that prevented me from receiving my prize.”
Her use of my sister’s name chilled me down to my marrow. My breathing didn’t slow until the scent of rose petals had faded to nothing on my tongue.