Standing on the corner of Benefit Street, sweltering in the heat of August, Buffy Summers felt as though she were peering into a tunnel that led back through time. The eighteenth-century houses that lined the street fronted right on the road, with only the brick sidewalk separating them from the pavement. The street lanterns were electrical now instead of gas, but during the day the illusion was complete. Trees cast long blocks in shadow that seemed to blur her view of the clapboard houses with their heavy shutters and sturdy doors.
Once upon a time Edgar Allan Poe had walked this street, over and over, while courting a young woman who’d lived here. The local legends of Providence, Rhode Island, claimed the ghost of Poe could often be seen standing beneath the boughs of the old trees, looking up at the face of 88 Benefit Street, or walking back and forth along the block.
But in broad daylight, nobody would be out looking for ghosts.
Nobody except Buffy Summers. It came with the job, after all. Slayer. Chosen One. Meant to stand in the face of evil, combat the darkness, blah, blah, blah. But these days, Buffy was more House Mother than Chosen One. The Slayer gig wasn’t a solo act anymore. Thanks to some serious desperation and Willow’s witchery, all the girls in the world with the potential to become a Slayer had been transformed all at once.
Now, along with friends and allies, Buffy spent just as much time traveling the world in search of those new Slayers, helping to gather them and explain their destiny, as she did fighting the forces of darkness. The Slayers were being trained, as well, and some of them were much further along in the process than others. It had taken an enormous amount of pressure off of Buffy to have so many other Slayers in the world. There were always evils to be confronted and crises to be averted, but she wasn’t alone anymore. Sometimes she could even take a little time for herself.
On the other hand, she’d sort of lost the knack for vacations during her years as the Slayer.
And sometimes it was nice to get off on her own, find a little bee’s nest of evil, and start poking it with a sharp stick.
“Is this hell?” a voice called.
Buffy glanced down the side street she had just ascended, a steep hill that led up to the plateau that was Benefit Street. Xander Harris might have been in the best physical shape of his life—with the possible exception of that stint working construction—but he looked like he was climbing Mount Everest. Bent toward the incline, he trudged up the last hundred feet or so to the top of the hill, reaching the corner of Benefit Street. His T-shirt clung to his sweaty body in a few places. The plastic bottle of water in his hand had only a few ounces left in it.
“Not hell. Rhode Island in August.”
Xander grunted and flopped down to sit on the curb. “Funny. Kinda seems like hell. Or San Francisco. Steep. Hell is steep. And sweaty.”
“The sweat just makes you look manly,” Buffy assured him. “Look, and smell.”
Xander glanced up at her. “Smell?”
“Nah. That was me mocking you. Has it been so long that you’ve forgotten what that’s like?”
“Twelve minutes. Maybe thirteen, tops. I haven’t forgotten.”
Xander lay back on the brick sidewalk. He squinted against the sunlight, though Buffy could only tell judging by his right eye. The left was covered with a black patch. Technically, of course, it was the eye socket that the patch covered, because there wasn’t an eye in it anymore. An evil bastard named Caleb had torn it out. The patch served as a constant reminder to Buffy of who Xander really was, beneath the kidding around and the self-deprecation. Of course, she’d learned his true nature long before he’d lost the eye.
“Y’know, it’s actually hotter down here on the ground,” he said. “Do you smell that? I think I’m frying. Or broiling. And now I’m debating whether I should get up or have you baste me with my own juices.”
“Thanks for that image. I have enough trouble sleeping.”
Buffy reached down. Xander took her hand and she pulled him to his feet. He uncapped his water bottle and drained the last few swigs, then looked at her guiltily.
“Sorry. Guess I should have offered you a sip.”
She put a hand over her belly. “Mmm, yummy, but I already had my backwash cocktail for the day.”
“That’s repulsive.”
Buffy smiled. “My point.”
Xander gestured toward the long, shady blocks of Benefit Street off to the left. “So, what’ve we got?”
Frying a little herself, Buffy lifted her ponytail off her neck to let what little breeze there was caress her skin. This close to the ocean, she would have expected at least some relief from a sea breeze, but no such luck. Not today, at least. It had to be nearly a hundred degrees, maybe more up here on the bricks.
“Not much. I was just waiting for you. You ready to go on?”
He nodded. “There’s shade. Let’s dive in.”
They crossed the intersection toward the tree-lined block ahead. Buffy again felt that sense of passing backward through time. If the street had been cobblestoned, she was sure she would’ve heard the clip-clop of horses’ hooves as they drew carriages through Providence.
“Y’know, it doesn’t really seem like the Hellmouthy kind of neighborhood,” Xander said.
Buffy narrowed her eyes, studying the street ahead. “What does? Hellmouths don’t tend to open up in the places you’d expect them, like Calcutta or Las Vegas.”
“I guess . . .”
“Besides, the Hellmouth that was here has been closed since the mid-nineteenth century,” she reminded him.
“We hope.”
Xander fished a hand into the pocket of his light cotton pants and pulled out his cell phone, checking the time and seeing if he had any messages. Buffy didn’t understand why he wasn’t wearing shorts on such a steamy day. She had on a dark, floral-patterned skirt and sandals. If evil reared its ugly head, it wasn’t the best outfit for a brawl, but in weather like this, a girl had to sacrifice practicality for comfort.
They’d come to Providence because of a recent spate of apparently supernatural occurrences. The sightings of supposed ghosts in the area had increased twenty times over in the past week. Several people had vanished in the vicinity of Benefit Street. Local authorities had captured a huge reptilian creature that zoo officials and university professors had been unable to identify as any existing species. Two Providence police officers had been badly wounded in an altercation with a bar patron who’d resisted arrest and escaped after biting one of the officers in the throat. Then, less than forty-eight hours ago, hundreds of people across the city had apparently witnessed some kind of bizarre manifestation. For two full minutes, they had seen a cyclops—a one-eyed giant with a single horn on its head—towering above the trees in the woods at the far side of town. Then, in a blink, it had disappeared.
Ordinarily Buffy might have sent a team of Slayers-in-training, probably with Xander as an escort. With Giles in London, and Willow and Kennedy in Greece, that would have been the sensible move.
But with a Hellmouth involved, dormant or not, she’d decided to come to Rhode Island herself. It felt good to be away from all of the Slayers-in-training for a while. Xander knew her so well and they had been friends for so long that she could just be herself with him. No need to perform for the trainees, try to be a good role model, or teach anyone anything.
Here, she could just be Buffy.
“It could all be normal supernatural activity,” she said as they reached the other side of the intersection and stepped up onto the sidewalk. “Providence is one of the most haunted cities in America. Or, hey, it could just be pranksters.”
“Wacky kids?” Xander said.
“Exactly.”
They stepped at last into the shade of the massive oak trees that lined Benefit Street. Immediately the coolness of the shadows enveloped them and it felt delicious. Even the breeze seemed cooler here. Buffy actually shivered with the temperature change.
“Okay,” Xander said, “this is me officially achieving Nirvana.”
Buffy smiled as they walked past the first of the houses on the block. She admired the construction, which seemed both rough and formidable.
She shivered again, gooseflesh rising on her skin. She hugged herself against the sudden chill and faltered. Buffy and Xander looked at each other.
“I know I asked for this, but—,” Xander started.
“Definitely not normal,” Buffy said.
“What number was the Hellmouth house again?”
“Eighty-eight.”
They kept walking. As they went on, the effect began to diminish, and by the time they came to 88 Benefit Street, the heat of the day had returned. Yet somehow the climate still was not quite the same. Xander had been sweating before, and Buffy had also built up a light sheen of sweat, but now the air felt so dry it was almost arid.
“This is weird,” Xander said.
Buffy only shot him a glance. If it wasn’t weird, they wouldn’t have been there. He knew that.
“So what now?” he asked.
“What do you think? We knock on the door?” Buffy replied.
“So simple, right?” Xander said. “Why does it feel like a really stupid idea?”
For a long moment, the two of them gazed up at the silent house, its windows staring back like dark, empty eyes. They shared a glance, exchanged a pair of shrugs, and then started up to the door.
The wind kicked up. A sudden gust whipped at Buffy’s skirt and she had to hold it down. Sand skittered along the brick sidewalk, blowing hard enough that the grains stung as they peppered Buffy’s legs.
Xander said her name.
Buffy followed his gaze and saw that farther down the street a storm had begun brewing. Her eyes widened and a trickle of fear slid down her spine. Whatever this was, fists weren’t going to stop it. A cloud of churning air spun in the middle of the street, blooming larger, growing and spreading, and it began to move toward them.
Impossibly, a sandstorm had blown up along Benefit Street, where neither sand nor storm could have been found moments before. In the midst of the sandstorm, Buffy could make out the silhouette of a man—or what appeared to be a man.
The wind howled and gusted harder, and Buffy squinted against the flying grit.
“Ever see anything like this before?” Xander asked.
“No!” she called, having to raise her voice over the howling of the wind. “I’m guessing magick.”
“Ya think?”
Buffy took a step toward the storm and the dark figure in its midst. Xander grabbed her arm to hold her back, shouting something at her, but she couldn’t make out the words.
Then the sandstorm began to roar. It tore down the street toward them. Street lanterns bent over with a shriek of metal. Shutters tore off of houses. The sand stripped paint from clapboard siding and shattered windows. A car parked halfway up the block rocked and trembled, and then its windows simply imploded from the force of the wind.
A three-legged German shepherd charged into the middle of the street and started barking like a lunatic at the oncoming storm. Buffy shouted to the dog, but it couldn’t hear her over the screaming of the wind, and then it was too late. The raging, churning storm sucked the dog into its twisting heart, and the animal vanished in the swirl of sand.
Buffy took a step back.
“The house!” she shouted to Xander.
He cupped a hand to his hear, squinting his one eye.
“Get inside!” Buffy yelled.
But she knew words would do no good. She grabbed Xander by the hand and pulled him back to the door of 88 Benefit Street. The sandstorm surged toward them. Buffy shot a kick at the door, just beside the lock, and wood splintered as it burst inward. The wind did the rest of the work, practically tearing the door off its hinges.
They ran inside and took cover behind furniture in the living room as the storm reached the house. Glass shattered. The wind pushed inside, tore knickknacks off of shelves and paintings off of walls. The sand scoured every surface in the rooms on the first floor. Thankfully, it didn’t seem like anybody was home. Whatever was going on, it hadn’t originated in the former Hellmouth.
“Stay here!” Buffy shouted at Xander.
Another guy might have tried to stop her, or exhibited foolish heroics. But Xander had learned the hard way what the limits of an ordinary guy were, and what the Slayer could do when she set her mind to it. He wasn’t going to get macho about it.
He gave her a thumbs-up from his fetal position behind the couch.
Buffy vaulted over the sofa and headed for the door. The wind thrashed her but she struggled through it, bent over. Whoever the man at the center of the sandstorm was, he had to be responsible for it. She had a theory that beating him unconscious might put an end to the storm.
As she reached the door, the wind died.
Sand cascaded to the pavement and the brick sidewalk, covering every visible surface as though a beach had just fallen from the sky.
Buffy stepped out onto the sidewalk, her sandals sliding into the sifting sand.
“Well, that’s new,” she said.
Xander came out the door behind her, looking around. “I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess the weatherman didn’t see that coming.”
* * *
As the sun rose over the Mediterranean, Willow Rosenberg rode her rented bicycle along the narrow streets of Thira, the largest of the islands that made up the group that the Greeks called Santorini. In a way, it was all one island, since the entire land mass—the large island and her smaller sisters—had once been whole, and the people who lived on Santorini spent their days and nights on the rim of an active volcano, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.
Willow thought Santorini looked more the way she imagined heaven ought to than any other place she’d ever been. The sky seemed an endless blue, and the ocean had a deep azure hue like nowhere else in the world. The whole island of Thira had a rare beauty, dotted with whitewashed buildings, shops, and churches, many of which had blue tile roofs and blue shutters that blended with that particular shade of the ocean. And the people . . .
As she rode her bike up long hills, passing wineries, and then through the rows of boutiques and restaurants that catered mostly to tourists, the island came alive. Many of the locals were up and about their business before dawn, when it was coolest. Willow waved to them as they passed, and received kind smiles in return. She and her girlfriend, Kennedy, had made several stops on other Greek islands before coming to Santorini. Several friends had raved about Mykonos, and everything had been much less expensive there than elsewhere, but Willow and Kennedy had not felt very welcome. On Santorini, everyone seemed happy to meet them.
Of course, with the prices they charged for everything, they ought to be very happy indeed. Still, Willow had fallen in love with Santorini. She had found a serenity here that she had never achieved anywhere else in the world. The heat baked the streets, so she kept her fair skin covered by light cotton as much as possible, but otherwise it all seemed so pure, and everyone so alive.
Tara would have loved it here.
The thought took her so much by surprise that her foot slipped off the pedal. She scrambled to get control of the bike again as it wobbled, and squeezed the brakes so that the tires slid on the dusty street. When she looked up, a white-haired old man was watching her with concern. Willow smiled at him and he smiled back, nodding, happy she was all right.
Yet another example of the very thing she’d just been thinking of. Tara truly would have loved it on Santorini. There seemed a general benevolence, a respect for one another that had become rarer and rarer in most of the world. That had been all Tara had ever really wanted from the moment Willow had first met her—and fallen in love with her. Peace. Kindness. She had grown up in difficult circumstances, never accepted, never fully embraced for who she was. Willow knew that most people would be hard-pressed not to become spiteful after having endured that kind of childhood.
Tara wasn’t like most people.
She had been the light of Willow’s life, but more than that, her presence had always made it much easier for those around her to feel hopeful, to be optimistic about the future, and to search for peace within themselves and with others, as well.
Right up until a stray bullet took her life.
The heat baked into Willow’s back as she bent over the bike, pedaling harder as she began to ride up a hill. Cars swept by her on streets barely narrow enough for two of them to pass each other, never mind with a bicycle on the shoulder. At least the buses hadn’t started running yet. The drivers were lunatics who would pay little attention to the redheaded tourist girl on the bike.
If they knew she could put a hex on them, they might be more careful—the Greeks had a lot more belief in witches than Americans, that was for sure—but Willow didn’t use her magick that way.
Not anymore.
A chill went through her as she remembered the terrible things she had done, the savage magick she had performed in the madness that had overtaken her after Tara’s death. Darkness had seized her for a while—revenge, as well.
She pedaled harder. Tiny rivulets of sweat ran down her face and chest.
The darkness was behind her now. Tara’s murder had left a hole in her heart that no amount of time would ever heal. Her life would always be split between the person she had been before and the person she had become after, forever in the shadow of that loss. But people endured the loss of love and the tragedy of murder every day. They went on. They lived their lives.
Willow had done the same. It was what Tara would have wanted.
With a sigh, she reached the top of the hill and coasted on the bike, catching her breath. In the distance she could see the small, whitewashed villa that she and Kennedy had rented for their stay here. Beyond it the land fell away in a precipitous cliff, overlooking the ocean below and the other islands of Santorini.
The peace of the place seeped back into her, easing her heart.
Kennedy would be sleeping still, no doubt. Even on her best day, she would have to be dragged out of bed this early in the morning. A mischievous little smile touched the corners of Willow’s mouth. She could think of a few fun ways to wake Kennedy up.
Willow felt so grateful for her. After all she’d been through—meeting Tara, falling in love with a woman, losing her to violence, and then turning to dark magick—Kennedy had helped her to put the pieces of her life back together. Willow had spent a long time working to find her center again, to be at ease with even the gentlest magick, to remember who she’d been, once upon a time.
Sometimes she had felt like she might stumble, but then Kennedy had entered her life and helped to steady her. She would never replace Tara—no one ever could—but Willow had fallen hard for Kennedy. It didn’t hurt that she could not have been more the opposite of Tara. Kennedy was brash where Tara had been so shy. Kennedy had ebony hair and olive skin, while Tara had been blond and fair. Kennedy was volatile, and Tara had only ever sought to soothe.
“Morning, babe,” Willow said to the breeze that rose off the ocean as she let the bike cruise downhill toward the villa.
She and Kennedy had made a life together. Willow still had her witchcraft and Kennedy had been trained to become a Slayer before the spell had given all Potentials that power. They made a hell of a team. A community had begun to spring up around the world as Buffy, Xander, Giles, Willow, and Kennedy sought out Slayers and brought them together for training. And Faith loved teaching the new girls combat.
Somehow the world had shifted on its axis, but they had all survived. She supposed everyone felt that way when they reached a certain age.
When she reached the front walk, she climbed off the bike and set it down on its side. There was no kickstand. Willow stretched, feeling the muscles in her legs throbbing from the ride. She had spent the entire night halfway across the island studying ancient Greek witchcraft rituals at a supernatural locus on the limestone rocks at Mesa Vouno.
It had been a wonderful night, but she hadn’t gotten much sleep. All she wanted to do now was climb into bed beside Kennedy.
Willow used her key to unlock the front door and slipped it back into her pocket. The windows were all wide open and the sheer white curtains billowed in the breeze, keeping much of the morning heat at bay.
As she entered, she heard the refrigerator in the tiny kitchen shut and blinked in surprise. Smiling, she moved through the living room and came around the corner.
The girl in the kitchen wasn’t Kennedy.
She had a glass of juice tipped back, but froze when she saw Willow, staring over the rim of the glass before she lowered it. Her smile was lopsided and awkward as she reached up to push her unruly black hair away from her face.
Willow’s studies had been only a happy by-product of this trip. Their real purpose for coming here had been to seek out a nineteen-year-old island girl named Stefania Kamari, whom they believed had become a Slayer. Willow recognized the girl from her photograph. But in the picture Stefania had been wearing more than a black lacy thong.
Her smudged makeup, wild hair, and almost total nakedness told Willow all she needed to know. If any confirmation had been necessary, there was no sign that anyone had slept in the living room, and the villa had only one bedroom.
Only one bed.
A strange calm fell over her, a kind of icy silence that gripped her heart. Brittle.
The Greek Slayer tried to talk to her in halting English, but Willow barely heard her, and was grateful that Stefania did not try to follow her as she strode back through the living room and into the bedroom.
Kennedy lay sprawled upon the bed, gloriously nude, the single light cotton sheet wrapped around one leg as she snored softly. An almost empty bottle of ouzo sat on the nightstand and another lay on the floor at the foot of the bed. The place reeked of licorice.
As quickly as she could, Willow packed her suitcase, grateful that it had little wheels on it so that she could carry it swiftly away from here. She knelt on the floor and removed her things from drawers and from the closet, folding them neatly, and then, as her hands began to shake, throwing them into the suitcase.
She sniffled, and realized she had started to cry.
She heard a tiny sound, full of sorrow, and it surprised her to realize it hadn’t come from her. Willow looked up to see that Kennedy had woken. The Slayer sat up in bed, watching her pack, tears in her eyes. She raised a hand to cover her mouth as though she might scream.
“Baby, I’m sorry.”
Willow shook as she zipped the suitcase closed and stood, sliding out its handle.
“Please,” Kennedy said, “just let me explain.”
With a laugh full of grief, Willow paused and looked at her. “You have an explanation you think will make me understand this?”
Kennedy’s eyes hardened. “We both knew it wasn’t going to be forever, Willow. I’ve never been one to be tied down. I wanted to give it a shot with you. I love you. But you? You loved me with everything you had, but it’d never be enough. When it comes down to it, Tara’s always going to be first in your heart. I can’t compete with a dead girl.”
Willow stared at her in horror and revulsion. “I never asked you to compete. But you know what? You’re right. You could never have competed with her. Tara . . . she’d never have done this to me.”
Kennedy could only look away.
“Stay away from me,” Willow told her, and then she rolled her suitcase out of the bedroom and across the living room.
Stefania hadn’t moved. She stood in the kitchen with half a glass of juice in her hand, watching her leave. Willow left the door open, and left her rented bike lying in front of the villa, then started up the hill toward the busier sections of the island, where she could find a taxi to take her down to the harbor. The sooner she left Santorini, the better.
She thought of John Milton, and wondered if Kennedy would even get the reference.
Paradise Lost.
* * *
The bar had the atmosphere of a London pub, all brass and dark wood, and the earthy odor of hops and barley seemed ingrained in every surface. Like thousands of other such establishments in North America, it had at some point in the nineties become a micro-brewery, and that beer aroma would never go away.
Oz called it home.
Well, maybe home was stretching it a little, but he and his buddy Eric Katz had picked up a regular gig here, and for the past three weeks had played almost every night in a little corner for decent pay, plus beer and chow. The setup was pretty sweet. Oz had played with various bands and assorted other guitarists and singers up and down the West Coast over the past few years, but Portland, Oregon, had become a kind of second home to him of late.
Even with all of that, he might never have agreed to stick around at one gig for so long if it hadn’t been for the name of the place. How could a guy not want to spend time in a bar called Hootenanny’s? Oz loved words, the more antique the better. Hootenanny’s seemed like heaven to him.
On a rainy Wednesday night, he and Eric ran through a couple of old Grateful Dead tunes, a recent Jack Johnson, and a drawling Bob Dylan, which was the only tune Oz sang vocals on. He didn’t have the voice, really, but that had never stopped Dylan.
As he sang, fat-bellied acoustic resting on his hip, his gaze kept tracking back to Victoria, the barmaid he’d become intrigued by ever since first setting foot in Hootenanny’s. Word had it that Victoria—never Vicky—had just broken things off with her boyfriend. Oz knew better than to get involved with a girl on the rebound, especially when he himself was just passing through. The life of a troubadour wasn’t nearly as romantic as people imagined. Papa was a rolling stone, and all that.
But he couldn’t keep his eyes off Victoria, the way she laughed as she talked to the customers, and the way the multicolored lights of the bar played off of her ebony skin.
Oz didn’t have a lot of “wow” moments when it came to women. The first had been with Willow Rosenberg, back in high school, and he still felt wowed when he thought about her. There’d been one, maybe two others since Willow.
Victoria, though—she took his breath away.
He finished the song, strummed the last chord, and inclined his head in thanks at the polite smattering of applause from the Wednesday night crowd. According to Victoria, Hootenanny’s had been much busier on weeknights since Oz and Eric had started playing there.
It felt a little like a place he could stay—at least for a while.
Eric picked out the first few notes of “Come on in My Kitchen,” a bit of old blues from Robert Johnson, and Oz jumped right in. Halfway through the song, though, his brow furrowed and he began to sniff the air.
Beneath the beer odor was another scent.
The little hairs on the back of his neck rose and Oz had to fight to keep from baring his teeth. He knew that animal stink all too well. His eyes scanned the bar. At the tables, people were drinking and eating pub food, mostly couples and groups of friends. Even at the counter, the patrons were in groups of two or three. But over by the door, a man had just come in from the rain, and though no one else in Hootenanny’s could have smelled it, Oz wrinkled his nose at the wet-dog stink that came off of him.
A werewolf.
The guy moved to the bar and sat on a stool, not ordering anything, not even bothering to remove his jacket. He just watched Oz, not breaking the gaze no matter how long Oz stared back.
To anyone else, he would have seemed like an ordinary guy who’d come into the wrong bar if he was looking to meet single women. But Oz knew the scent immediately and recognized the feral nature in his eyes.
It took one to know one.
When the Robert Johnson tune finished, Eric turned his back to the crowd. Under the pretense of tuning his guitar, he leaned over to Oz.
“You feeling all right?”
Oz nodded. “Yeah. Let’s take a break, though, okay?”
Eric raised an eyebrow but said nothing. That was one of the reasons Oz liked gigging with him. He didn’t talk too much, and didn’t expect any more from Oz.
“Folks, thanks for coming out tonight. Hope you’re enjoying the music. We’ll be back with a lot more in just a few minutes,” Eric said.
Oz slid off his guitar strap and propped the instrument on its stand. He made his way across the bar. When Victoria passed by, he caught the scent of her vanilla body wash, but didn’t blink. Right now his only focus was making sure nobody in the bar ended the night with their throat torn out.
The other wolf had been watching him closely, so Oz didn’t bother trying to be inconspicuous. He walked straight up to the guy, a tall, broad-shouldered man with shaggy blond hair and a week’s worth of beard.
Oz and the visitor sized each other up, cocking their heads. In a boxing ring, they’d have been dancing around, looking for an opening. When the guy didn’t speak up, Oz took a step closer. His hackles rose and he could feel his teeth get a bit sharper. When he’d first become a werewolf, he’d been unable to control the change. Now he and the wolf inside of him had come to an understanding. He’d found unity.
Which meant he could transform anytime he wanted. Anytime I need to, not want. He never wanted to be the wolf.
“Hunting season’s over. Just so you know,” he said.
The other wolf smiled. His teeth were sharp. Oz wondered if he could control the change as well. Most couldn’t. This guy looked like he had the beast pretty much on a leash.
“I’m not hunting anything except you,” the wolf said.
Oz didn’t flinch, but his breathing evened out. If the guy wanted to go, they’d go. It’d be ugly and bloody and a lot of things would get broken—not to mention that having a hundred people witness him wolfing out would kill any chance he had of gigging in Portland ever again—but no way would he let some wolf track prey right in front of him and not make himself a nuisance.
“Settle down, Mr. Osbourne. That’s not what I meant.”
Oz blinked. The guy knew who he was. It was peculiar as hell.
“What do you want?”
Glasses clinked and voices droned on around them in one huge conversation. Rain spattered the plate glass windows of the bar. Oz stared at the wolf and waited.
“The packs are gathering. We’ve scented it on the wind,” the man said. “Events are conspiring to draw us together. The wolves need to speak with one voice.”
Oz arched an eyebrow. “I’ve never been good with unions. Can never seem to pay the dues.”
“We’ve done our research on you. It’s important that we speak with you.”
Hands sliding into his pockets, Oz nodded. “Yeah. You’d think I’d be flattered, but seriously not. Whoever you’ve been talking to, they’re pretty much morons.”
“Mr. Osbourne—”
“No killing. Kind of a rule.”
“The packs—”
“I’m not part of a pack.”
The wolf growled in frustration. “Shut your mouth, pup, and listen a moment. This is not about killing. Not yet. It’s about listening and deciding where we stand, what our place is in the world. All the wolves.”
It was a question he had been asking himself for a long time. Oz hesitated.
“I’m not much for the big philosophical questions.”
“That’s not what I’ve heard.”
Oz narrowed his eyes. “You should go. I’ve got to play another set. The crowd gets restless without the soothing tonic we provide.”
The man’s mask of arrogance faltered and Oz saw confusion in his eyes. The wolf reached up to scratch idly at the side of his head with claws too long to belong on human fingers. He was dressed stylishly enough not to be totally out of place in Hootenanny’s, but something about him spoke of another age. Oz wondered how old he was.
From his back pocket, the man produced an envelope. He handed it to Oz, who hesitated before taking it from him. What harm could there be? It was just an envelope.
Inside was a plane ticket.
“What’s in Providence, Rhode Island?” Oz asked.
The wolf stood a little straighter.
“Answers.”