I smirked back, my tongue lolling. Goodfellow buying clothes at the equivalent of Wal- Mart; it was worth the car getting blown up to see that. I wondered if polyester would actually burn his skin or simply jump off his body and scoot away. We’d walked to the McDonald’s curb and Rafferty sat down on it. My eyes drifted back to the car where Cal and Delilah were arguing. It was too far for a human to hear, but for a Wolf, I might as well have been a foot from them.

“I don’t give a damn who you sleep with,” Cal was saying, his tone sharp but cold too. Ice-cold. I’d seen Cal only a few times in my life, but I knew what he was capable of. I wondered if Delilah did or only thought she did. “This isn’t Weres and Vamps 90210. We’re not going fucking steady. You can go bang the bag boy at the goddamn grocery store if you want, but leave Catcher and Rafferty alone. And when you do screw the bag boy, have the damn decency not to do it in the car where I can smell it all day long.” Cal pretended he didn’t care that Delilah might try to kill him, but he cared-too much. But it wasn’t making him reckless; it was making him… less. Less of what he was and more of what he wasn’t-or what he didn’t want to be.

“Told you will do as I want,” Delilah countered. “What I want is not to kill. Not you.” I could smell it on her, the truth and the lie. She might not want to, but it didn’t mean she wouldn’t if it were her only resort. “The Kin can say, but I am Kin too. Better Kin. I do as I please,” she said. Cal looked as if he wanted to believe it, and he didn’t have any reason not to. Her words rang with truth. She was a good liar and when it was only half a lie, it was even easier to be convincing. Cal wasn’t a Wolf. His sense of smell was Auphe, but they hadn’t been able to smell the emotions of truth or honesty; only fear-the dark, sharp scent of a prey’s terror. He had to trust his instincts. I was glad I wasn’t human. It would be like being half blind, depending on only what you could see and hear, on the human oddity of subtext. How they managed to get anything accomplished amazed me.

Cal bowed his head. He had yanked Delilah out of the car either because she let him-human strength was less than werewolf strength-or because of that concept I didn’t want to consider, that thing I didn’t want to know-the other half of Cal that was growing, spreading. I shifted my weight on my paws and Rafferty murmured, “I know.” But knowing and being able to do something about it weren’t always the same.

Now Cal had her backed against the car, and Delilah, being who she’d shown herself to be, was enjoying it. He wasn’t. His fists were clenched, knuckles white. “Then don’t ignore me either. Change your mind and do your best to kill me, but don’t fucking ignore me. I’ve been happy, except for that damn Suyolak, for the first time in my life. The Auphe are gone. I’m free. Don’t ruin it, got it? Don’t goddamn ruin it.”

Cal was human, Cal was Auphe, but Cal might have the spirit of the wolf in him too. Being dead, being killed in battle, being seen; it was better than being nothing. It was better than nonexistence or the wrong kind of existence. Cal knew that.

“Happy,” Rafferty murmured at my ear. “He has been less moody than the other times I’d seen him.” Happy? Okay, everything is relative. What I paid attention to was that an upbeat Cal equaled a downbeat cousin, but Raff didn’t elaborate on why it did. We both already knew. As I’d thought, as I’d seen, as I’d smelled, the Auphe in him was growing.

“Puppy!”

I turned my head just in time to have a McNugget shoved up my left nostril-or at least a good attempt at it. A toddler with a dandelion fluff of wispy blond hair was trying to pet me with one small hand and gift me with questionable chicken parts with the other. Puppy he knew; the difference between a nose and a mouth, not so much.

I loved little kids: manic balls of energy with four limbs waving like drunken windmills. They always were up for Frisbee, grabbing their bikes and going, running and shouting, racing, playing hide-and-seek. They were just like wolves, except at the end of hide- and-seek they didn’t eat what they caught. They lived in the moment-not yesterday or tomorrow or even the next minute. It was a good philosophy, especially for my life now.

I opened my mouth and patiently let him stuff the food down around my tonsils while he giggled and his mother looked horrified, frozen, clutching several paper bags. I waited until the little boy withdrew his hand; then I swallowed the chicken and held out a polite paw to the mom. See how harmless? Shake the doggy’s paw. See what a good doggy?

She didn’t take it, but only grabbed the child and swept him up with one spare arm to bolt to her car. “You should have that thing on a leash,” she told Rafferty in the most righteous of tones over her shoulder.

“Humans,” he muttered, and looped an arm over the barrel of my body.

I chuffed in agreement to make him feel better, but actually I didn’t mind humans. I’d dated enough of them in college. It was true that most of them started out fine, but some usually went wrong and lost their sense of play. Those you just ignored. I’d long since stopped taking it personally when I’d gotten locked in the fur coat. If I hadn’t, I would’ve eaten someone and been in my right mind when I did it. I had to let it go, and I did. Bad emotions will eat you up as fast as any cancer. I saw that in Rafferty every day as another tiny piece of him was gobbled up by guilt and despair. But no matter what I said or did, I hadn’t been able to change it. That was who he was, spending his life trying to stop the unstoppable, with me and every other patient he took on. In the end, he would always lose. For a Wolf and a healer, he was remarkably blind about death-stubborn to his lupine bones, denying nature itself, and he’d never be any different.

I would’ve given anything to hear him laugh.

Niko-another one who didn’t do much laughing, not on the outside anyway, although I could often smell the silent humor on him-walked up to us across the Wal-Mart parking lot while carrying a bag in each hand. He looked down at us with a neutral gray gaze. “Have you seen-” Interrupted by the ring of his cell phone, he switched one bag to his other hand and answered it. “Yes, Ishiah?”

I’d never liked caller ID. It took the surprise out of life, and life could use all the surprises it could get as far as I was concerned-good ones at least. Of course, with the way things were going, this wasn’t a good one. But I didn’t know that yet.

A Wolf’s hearing is more than exceptional and I had no ethical problems listening to Ishiah’s side of the conversation. I wasn’t entirely the goody-goody suburban Wolf Delilah labeled me. No Wolf alive was. And, hey, I was nosy. My life had been limited for a long time. Eavesdropping was a minor sin for a little entertainment value.

This Ishiah, the monogamy quandary-or victim, depending on your opinion of Goodfellow-didn’t waste time on pleasantries. “Where’s Robin?”

There was a thrum under the voice that vibrated the air in a way a human couldn’t hear-in a very unique, deep, and musical way. A peri. A puck and a peri: That had my eyes crossing. The profane and the pure. It wasn’t precisely a Match dot com dream come true.

“I was about to ask my traveling companions the same thing. Still in the store, I was assuming.” Niko looked over his shoulder back at the building. “Although considering the type of store it is, I would’ve thought he would have been in and out in five minutes.”

“He just called me and he doesn’t sound… himself. He sounds drunk and confused. You need to find him. Now.” All right, a righteous and pure peri, but a pissed-off one. And worried too.

“Now,” Niko confirmed, flipping the cell shut with a brisk snap that showed how concerned he was. “It has to be Suyolak. Robin certainly wouldn’t drink any alcohol he could purchase from liter bottles in that store. Rafferty, Catcher, can you find him?”