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The snow had nearly melted by the time our headlights swept across the face of the abandoned theater, illuminating the marquee. The Importance of Being Earnest. Were even long-ago playwrights giving me tips on how to live my life now?
“I brought a crowbar,” Gunner started, then swore beneath his breath as a police cruiser came toward us from the opposite direction. I’d never known the cops to have such a presence in the Warren, but perhaps they figured an event serious enough to make the local papers merited a follow up visit...or three.
So we couldn’t park out front as originally intended. Instead, we continued past our destination and waited to pull into a side alley once the police car was long out of sight. We hugged the shadows, walking like octogenarians on the way back as the previous evening’s tight muscles and scabbed-over wounds hindered our progress. But aches and pains were forgotten when Gunner slipped his crowbar under the edge of a board-covered window, prompting me to stop him with one hand lightly touching his arm.
“That’s going to be crazy loud,” I protested, remembering the awful screech of a pried-up nail the one time I’d tried—and failed—to make our shabby apartment a little bit spiffier.
“Alternatives?” Gunner countered, cocking his head and waiting for me to come up with another way in.
Rather than answering, I tilted my chin to gaze at the barely-visible stars, trying to remember when I’d started telling alpha werewolves what to do. And as I forcibly relaxed my neck muscles, I caught a square of darkness in the third story, a broken window too high for the owner to have bothered boarding up.
“Look.” I pointed upward, only realizing as I did so that neither a human nor a wolf would have even considered making such a climb.
But Gunner had already seen firsthand what I was able to shift into. So I ignored decades of conditioning and spoke openly about my secret for the very first time. “It’ll be easy to get up there as a fox. Then I’ll come downstairs and let you in.”
I expected Gunner to growl at the overtness of my offer. But, instead, his voice was almost too level to be natural as he answered me after a short pause. “You’ll fall.”
“I won’t. The climb is easy. Especially if you give me a boost onto that ledge.”
There was something flowing between us that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, and I held my breath waiting for the other shoe to drop. But instead of acting the way I’d always been told werewolves would respond to my foxishness, the alpha merely waved one hand. “Be my guest.”
Which is when I remembered the prerequisite for donning red fur. Getting naked. Right here in front of Gunner, with no other eyes present to depersonalize the effect.
It took three throat clearings before I managed to spit out the solution. “Turn around,” I demanded.
Gunner was amused, I could smell that in the air between us. Still, he obeyed me, and I quickly slid out of Allen’s jogging suit and Kira’s sneakers before assuming my animal form.
Only then did I realize my companion had been peeking. Caught the glint of his eyes skimming across my completely un-wolf-like fur and body. The contact was nearly tangible in its intensity....
But Gunner didn’t growl or move to attack. Instead the big, scary alpha werewolf got down on one knee and offered his left arm as a ramp leading up onto his shoulder. “Come on. I’ll give you a leg up.”
***
I SLIPPED THROUGH THE window as easily as if I spent hours every day four-legged rather than donning my fur once every other blue moon. No wonder Kira seized every opportunity to frolic as a fox. Light-assisting vulpine pupils made it a breeze to scamper through the upper story in near darkness, and I barely managed to force myself back into human form upon reaching the closed door at the top of the stairs.
Thumbs, I reminded myself. Doorknobs require thumbs.
Shivering out of my fur, I came to stand two-legged atop the rough floorboards. And, at first, I thought the goose bumps breaking out on my skin were the result of unheated air brushing up against abruptly furless skin.
But my seldom-utilized animal nature refused to go back to sleep now that it had been wakened. And the stairs yawned dark and cavernous before my dilated eyes.
Shaking off the strange case of the willies, I tiptoed down without calling upon my star ball for illumination. There was always a slight chance an enemy remained in the building, or that one had returned after the police sweep to mop up curious foxes like myself. Better to stub my toe than to arrive heralded by the glow of a magical flashlight....
Unfortunately, walking blind resulted in more than toe stubbing. I was halfway down the stairs when my heel brushed against soft fur in the darkness. And I’m ashamed to admit I emitted a rather feminine “Eek!” as I leapt a foot into the air.
The mouse—it was only a mouse—ran chittering into the darkness. Get a grip, I told myself firmly. After multiple police sweeps, the theater was unlikely to house critters larger than a rodent.
So I pushed open the door at the bottom of the stairs at a normal pace and strode directly out onto the back of the stage area. Huh. This wasn’t where I’d expected to end up when I started down the stairwell. Still, I was here, so I might as well poke around a little. Grab the laptop. Maybe even head up to the catwalk and collect my discarded clothing so I didn’t end up facing Gunner a second time in my birthday suit.
But the laptop wasn’t present. Instead, the thinnest trickle of sound caught at the edge of my consciousness as I batted aside dusty curtains and got down on my belly to peer at the floor below the stage. I didn’t even realize I was hearing something, actually, until I found myself humming along to a tune from both my distant and recent past.
Mama’s music box. For the first time all night, my teeth sharpened into the fox equivalent of a werewolf’s hunting instinct and I padded silently toward the dressing rooms from which the trail of melody had emerged.
He’d come back. Of course the serial killer hadn’t depended upon an anonymous computer voice to make contact. Not when my vulpine curiosity was bound to bring me here before the sun rose....
Which meant I was finally going to get a chance to vanquish Kira’s kidnapper, to ensure that my sister never again worried when she walked the streets alone.
There was a light before me now. The flickering glow of a candle visible as I entered the hallway leading to a series of changing rooms. My prey must have grown tired of waiting in the darkness, choosing to camp out in the room at the end of the line. This was almost too easy....
I took one step forward...then spun faster than mere human muscles would have been capable of as I felt the presence of something much larger than a mouse materializing behind my back.
Of course he wasn’t waiting by the candle. Any good warrior knows you feint before you attack.
Sure enough, the cloaked figure who arose out of the shadows before me was as anonymous as he was dangerous. His face was hidden beneath a pitch-black hood, the enveloping fabric preventing me from telling anything other than his height—which, as usual, was considerably taller than my own.
But I didn’t spend long trying to eke out the being’s identity. Because he held in his hand the root of this entire hassle—my mother’s star ball converted into a glowing sword.