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“The wolf in the forest....” Slim rose and took a step toward us, his stance more inquisitive than menacing. Still, I considered retreating up the stairs and fleeing out the back window. Too bad Bastion lacked the energy to even stand upright without help.
I shook my head, pushing aside cowardice. If Slim shared what he guessed, the result could be as catastrophic for woelfin-kind as the loss of my family’s pelts had been a decade earlier. We couldn’t just leave. We had to fight.
“Honor.” Justice’s voice behind me was tense, demanding. “This is on you. My hands are full.”
His hands were quite literally full of his dozing brother. Meanwhile, my pelt draped across Bastion, the separation dulling my senses and reaction time.
Still, I took a step down. Another. “Slim,” I started. “You’re making a mistake. This isn’t your battle....”
As I walked, my gaze skipped over his weaponry. Or rather, over my weaponry. Slim had belted the stun gun I’d left behind onto his waist, but his hand drifted beneath the opposite arm to caress the butt of the pistol. His voice, when he spoke, was high-pitched and almost girlish. “Your eyes are glowing.”
They weren’t glowing. Woelfin eyes didn’t send out beams of light like you’d see in a comic book. But I was located in the dim, windowless edge of exposure where light might reflect off my corneas and make my eyes appear luminous. The clouds outside were deepening. The effect wasn’t helping my cause.
What I needed was a distraction. Something to make Slim forget what he’d guessed, to turn us into comrades united against a shared enemy....
As if answering my silent plea, a throat cleared. Not Justice’s or Slim’s. Instead, all of our gazes were drawn to Luke’s body filling the opposite doorway.
“Honor’s right. You’re sniffing up the wrong tree,” he growled.
Yes, growled. The words came out half wolf and half human. Even as he spoke, his skin began rippling.
He was starting to change.
As kids, we’d learned to strip before shifting. Transforming from one body to another is complicated enough without tangling yourself up in unwieldy fabric in the process.
But Luke was a professional. He sidestepped with the grace of a dancer while his body contorted. Clothing fell smoothly away as fur emerged underneath.
“Whoa.” Slim slumped to the carpet, totally missing the edge of the sofa he’d been sitting on moments earlier.
“Yeah, whoa.” Bastion’s voice was loud in the silence. “You have now officially been deputized into the werewolf militia.”
And just like that, my fiction-loving cousin was back.
***
“YOU KNEW ABOUT THIS?” Slim asked as he unlocked his car door and offered Bastion shotgun. Being part of the werewolf militia agreed with the aging bounty hunter. After regaining control of his muscles, he became ready and willing to lead the charge.
He did, however, have questions. Dozens and dozens of questions. Luckily, Bastion was well enough to answer or divert as he saw fit.
“Did you really think Freckles was just a dog?” my cousin replied. “Even when it leapt into a burning building to save a baby?”
I rolled my eyes as I always did when Bastion wrote me into his stories using my childhood nickname. Woelfin had to be called something other than “hey you” before choosing our self-names. Still, if Bastion had asked me, I would have requested that he make up something dangerous-sounding for my fictional wolf form.
Fang. Bruiser. Anything other than Freckles.
Speaking of dangerous...I grabbed onto Slim’s headrest to pull myself forward from my spot behind him. “You can’t share this.”
His eyes in the rearview mirror were wide. “Of course not. I’ll take it to my grave.”
Maybe that was true. If not...we’d deal with Slim’s loose lips if and when they started flapping.
For now, Luke leapt into the back seat to press up against me in fur form while Justice slid in beside him. I glanced at the clock—we’d wasted so much time already. The instant Justice’s door clicked shut, I demanded: “Drive.”
Slim was an efficient chauffeur, but the weather was against us. Wind buffeted our vehicle before we’d traveled a block. Dense thunderheads loomed in the near distance. The first soft patters turned into a staccato of heavy drops against the metal rooftop, then the pounding deepened as rain was joined by hail.
The windows fogged. The car slowed. Minutes ticked past faster than they should have. What would Clarence do if I was late?
Start cutting off fingers and toes maybe? I kicked myself for not dreaming up some magical reason why Grace had to remain safe and whole until I returned to them.
Luke’s head landed on my knee. Warm, comforting. My fingers slipped into the soft fur at the base of his ear.
Then we were fighting traffic as cars streamed away from the Smythewhite residence. The garden party must have ended abruptly with the onset of foul weather. Whatever the reason, we might as well have been walking....
“Pull over,” Bastion called over the drum of hail. Within seconds, Slim was angling into a parking spot.
Rain gushed around my feet as I opened the door into a curtain of water. At least the foul weather gave us an excuse to run.
Excuse notwithstanding, clipboard lady materialized as we turned in through the gate of the Smythewhite residence. She was dry beneath a tremendous black umbrella. The papers attached to her ubiquitous clipboard barely curled from the damp.
We were drowned rats in comparison. No wonder she took a step sideways to block our entrance. “No.”
“What? I work here....”
My voice trailed off. Clipboard lady wasn’t talking to me. She’d taken offense at Luke’s furry body. Dogs, apparently, were forbidden on the Smythewhite grounds.
Grace could have talked her way out of this. I instead froze...which meant Slim was the one to save us.
“Okay,” he shrugged, reaching down to grab the ruff of what he knew was a werewolf. “Come on, poochie. We’ll go back to the car.”
***
I DIDN’T WANT TO LEAVE behind half of our forces, but there was no alternative. Smiling tightly at clipboard lady, Justice, Bastion, and I sidestepped her. The instant we were past, Bastion slumped like a windup toy whose spring had abruptly unwound.
“Hurry,” Justice demanded, teeth gritted. His arm dropped down until it hugged his twin’s waist, the support allowing the two of them to keep moving forward.
Bastion’s skin was red, and I had a feeling rain wasn’t the only thing that had slicked his hair flat against his cranium. The burst of energy my pelt had offered was fading quickly. We had to get to Clarence before it ran all the way out.
“This way.” I led them in through the front door, ignoring the way water puddled on the marble as we stepped inside the residence. If I hadn’t lost my job already, I’d be fired as soon as someone saw the trail dripped across an intricately hand-woven rug.
Not that it mattered. Once we regained Bastion’s pelt and my twin, there’d be no reason to remain in the Smythewhites’ employ....
At the top of the stairs, I pointed at Clarence’s door in silence. No need to alert him prematurely. Instead, I trusted Justice to guard this obvious entrance while I snuck in around the back.
Given the storm, Clarence would likely be expecting me to enter through the door my cousins now hovered outside. After all, the only other entrance—the balcony—was inaccessible using human hands and feet.
But I wasn’t merely human. My feet squelched within soaked shoes and socks as I slipped into the master suite, dropping clothes right and left as I hurried through the opulence. Within seconds, I’d pushed out the French doors, back into the deluge.
This balcony was ten feet from Clarence’s, the latter barely visible through pounding rain. At least it was no longer hailing. Still, my pelt became soaked so rapidly I found it hard to spread across my back.
After that, though, the transformation was easy. One shiver, then I stood on four paws.
Four paws...with a body less than half the height it had been a moment earlier. The railing was unclimbable. Good thing a lounge chair eased my path aloft.
Even so, claws refused to cling to the slick metal surface. Clarence’s balcony was further away than I’d imagined.
But Grace needed me. Bastion needed me. This was for my family.
Eyes wide open, I leapt.