Marisol’s fur rippled in a breeze centered only on her, flowing and fading until there was a woman crouching there, bare skin striped by the moonlight and cloud shadow. Wright made a short, choked-off groan; Sylvie jerked around to see him gaping at Marisol. Still Wright; she’d half expected the Magicus Mundi circumstances to pull out Demalion again. Found herself disappointed that it hadn’t. Foolish. Tatya might be a friend of sorts, but Sylvie’s attention was best kept focused.
Wolves tended to trust instinct over reason. Sometimes that meant instant trust. Sometimes it meant bloodshed and screaming.
Marisol’s growl continued, no more musical in a human throat. “Look away, man, or I’ll have your sac twixt my teeth next.”
“Client, Marisol,” Sylvie said. “I decide what becomes of him. Not you.”
Marisol’s and Tatya’s gazes riveted on hers, and Sylvie thought, Oh yeah, that might have been construed as a direct challenge. Hell with it. She’d helped them when they couldn’t help themselves. They’d back down first. She met their gazes, squared her shoulders, and let them see her gun.
Tatya laughed ruefully. “You’d have made such a fine bitch that I wonder why you were born human.”
“Family trees branch,” Sylvie said. “Might as well wonder why you weren’t born with only one skin. ’Sides, two alpha bitches of the same kind don’t make easy friends. This is better, I think.”
“And men don’t make good company,” Marisol said.
Tatya sighed, but her expression asked Sylvie’s patience.
Sylvie turned, told Wright, “Why don’t you go sit in the truck. Get some AC going. And hey, there’s a first-aid kit under the passenger’s seat.” She tossed him the keys.
He fielded them awkwardly between his damaged hand and the other, and paused. “You’ll be okay—”
“I’m not the one bleeding,” she said. “Go on. I’ll be just a minute.”
Once he had gone, his retreating footsteps loud in the fraught silence, she said, “Mari, I get that you’re a man-eater, but keep it up, and you’ll be courting Animal Control.”
“He’s a wolf,” Marisol said, stuck on repeat. “You brought a breeding dog to our doorstep. He’ll let the others know.”
“He’s not a werewolf,” Sylvie said.
“He . . . has two souls,” Tatya said. Her eyes were focused on the dark shape of Sylvie’s distant truck; she raised her head and scented the air, nostrils flaring. “He smells like cat.”
That made a certain sense, considering Demalion’s non-human lineage. “Cat’s not a wolf,” she said.
Tatya shrugged, liquid and graceful, rather than concede the point.
Mari shivered in her skin, tugged at Tatya’s restraining hand until she was released. “Why bring him here?”
“The better to keep an eye on him,” Sylvie said. “C’mon, I helped you escape your pack, remember? Had sympathy for the girls who didn’t want to be bred? I wouldn’t jeopardize that. I don’t like wasting effort.”
Marisol growled again, and Sylvie said, “Either use the vocal cords or lose ’em, Mari. Actually, either get dressed or go fur. You’re making me itch just watching the mosquitoes going for you.”
Marisol let out a breath, and fur rippled over her flesh again, so easy at the full moon. She ghosted into the night, only the faintest of clicks as her claws touched gravel and bark. Tatya’s skin went fluid for a moment in sympathy.
“Hey,” Sylvie said, “she all right?”
“She feels stronger in fur,” Tatya said. “As do I.”
“Just be careful. Feral dogs get euthanized. Feral wolves? Get shot.”
“Worry about yourself,” Tatya snapped.
Whoops, Sylvie thought. Implied the alpha of this tiny pack wasn’t doing her job. “No offense meant, Tatya. Just concern. You have a name for me?”
“One name—that’s all you want?” she said, with unappealing skepticism. “No little since I’m here or by the way, Tatya . . .”
“Well, since you ask . . .” She and Tatya traded quick, tight grins. Sylvie unfolded the picture of the missing woman. “She disappeared north of here in the ’Glades. You seen her?”
“Pictures,” Tatya said. She shrugged. “I do best with scent.”
“Yeah, I know. Just take a look. If you find any dead women, let me know, and if you find one, don’t . . . go to town on it.” She tried not to think about it often, but Tatya and Marisol were as much a part of the food chain in the Everglades as the alligators and the raccoons. Without Sylvie asking for the information, Tatya would be inclined to eat a body she found. As long as it wasn’t too old. Half her digestion was human, after all.
“No snacking. But that’ll cost you.”
“You find her, I’ll pay.”
Tatya sniffed the air again.
“Something interesting?” Sylvie asked, a little wary. The night was warm; there was an alligator hole nearby—she had never had a run-in with one, didn’t want to start now.
“I thought your client made the stink, but it’s . . .” Tatya sniffed again, raised her upper lip, and sneezed. “What’s in the briefcase, Shadows?”
Sylvie glanced at the briefcase, a dark shadow on the gravel walk, dropped when Wright had been bitten. “I’ve gotten hold of some nasty stuff and need to dispose of it, hence the witch.”
Tatya showed all her teeth. “How nasty? Perhaps I could take it off your hands. If it’s sufficiently nasty, I know a pack leader that deserves it.”
“Sorry. This stays with me.”
Hot snuffling behind Sylvie heralded Mari’s return. She crooned gently, a windup to a moon greeting. The hairs on Sylvie’s neck rose in pure physical response, atavistic response to a predator’s presence. She shifted her weight, made it casual, a normal fidgety movement that just happened to allow her to keep both of them, woman and wolf, in plain sight.
“How ’bout a name, and I’ll get out of your fur.”
“It’s worth something to you. Make it worth something to us.”
Sylvie said, “What’s the going rate for a piece of info I could find out myself if I had more time?”
“For the info, call it a hundred bucks. For the rush? Call it five hundred.”
“Robbery,” Sylvie said. “What do you need cash for anyway? You eat what you catch; there’s no power here for cable TV. . . .” She reached in her pocket even as she griped. She knew what it was for. Their nest egg, should the northern pack decide the truce was over. The Ocala pack was rough-and-tumble, uncivilized, and tied to their territory. Tatya and Marisol preferred the wilds as their home, but push come to shove, they would take a condo in downtown Miami and be grateful for it. And civilization cost money.
Tatya took the folded bills without comment, tucked them under a flat, heavy stone. “Odalys,” she said. “She has a new-age shop down at the edge of Calle Ocho. She’s supposed to be good at dealing with bad, dead things. Sort of like you.”
She shucked out of her loose tunic dress, giving Sylvie a view of tight muscles flexing, before a second wolf rubbed her muzzle against Mari’s. Then with a quick, sharp howl, they trotted off into the dark. Drug runners, small alligators, rapists—a bad night to be out and about when the wolves were on the prowl.
WHEN SHE RETURNED TO THE TRUCK, ITS FINISH REFLECTING THE moonlight in white glosses, she found Wright, first-aid kit unopened in his lap, watching the bite on his hand and wrist bleed. His jeans were wet with it, black in the low illumination of the moon, scarlet beneath the hood light when she opened the door. She swore, reached for his pulse, even though she knew—had seen, dammit—that the wound was relatively minor.
His pulse thrummed beneath her fingers, his skin cool and damp in the swamp air. His blood was sticky under her nails. “Hey!” she snapped, jerking her hand back, rubbing it against her own jeans.
Wright twitched, turned his hand over, and let a rivulet run down his fingers to spatter all over the seat. Great, she thought, just the thing she needed in her cab the next time the police came to harass her: bloodstains.