Preorder Book 1, Crystal and Claws, today
Matt took a deep breath, shocked for the thousandth time by the cleanliness of the air and the lack of oxygen. He spent his life in New York, and even with his shifter senses, he rarely smelled the car exhaust, garbage, or overcooked hot dogs unless he was close to the source. It was only after he stepped out of the car halfway up the vague suggestion of a road that he realized he’d never truly had a breath of fresh air in his life.
He’d also never been above sea level. There was no air in the air here. As he walked up to the cabin, he kept taking deep, sucking breaths and only got more winded. He had to rein in his wolf a little bit as it panicked. It kept flashing images of prey getting away and fights lost because it didn’t have any wind. Matt considered trying to explain the concept of altitude and gave up.
Fortunately, the house distracted both him and the wolf. He’d expected a rundown hovel from Mateo’s descriptions, but it was a mansion. There were houses like this in New York City, but not many, and not even the Amatos owned one.
And then he saw her, and his wolf forgot about breathing.
She asked him a question.
He was fairly sure he answered her, more than once, but his brain wasn’t really there as he wandered around rooms as big as auditoriums. Everything was done up in forest greens and dark woods. He hated to admit it, but the colors did soothe something deep within him. The wolf was both more alert and less vigilant. It didn’t have to sort through a constant bombardment of sights, sounds, and senses to pick out threats. For once in its life, it felt like the master of this environment. Ancient instincts to find threats and snacks flowed through its mind as Matt stood at the truly gigantic window in the living room, looking out at a range of mountains that made the Empire State Building look like a child’s toy.
Maybe that crazy old lady wasn’t crazy. Maybe she had a point. This wasn’t even his land, and he was having this reaction.
“So, if there’s anything else you need?”
His wolf immediately forgot about snacks and everything else. She was leaving.
At first glance, there wasn’t anything remarkable about her. Her height and brown hair were average, and her face was more strong than beautiful. But the closer he looked, average fell apart.
She packed some serious muscle on her compact frame, and her green eyes were sharp and intelligent. Her stern features were transformed when she smiled.
In a second, he’d be drooling.
“Do you know when your, um, people are arriving?” she asked at last when they stood in the kitchen.
“No,” he said honestly. “I know your life would be easier if I named a day or even a remotely accurate timeline, but it would be false hope.”
“No, I get it. I’m used to working fast. If you could at least promise me to let me know when their plane is in the air, the steaks will be defrosted by the time they touchdown.”
“Deal.”
She was also, obviously, amazing at her job. He had the dual sensations of relief to be working with a kindred spirit and envy, because he could never have pulled this together like this here. Mateo called him a fixer, and Matt supposed that’s how he thought of himself, no matter how much he rolled his eyes at the title. But it turned out he was a New York fixer. Hell, his skills probably didn’t extend much beyond Midtown.
“Thank you,” he said impulsively. “I know a little of what this takes, but I don’t really have a clue when you add the small town craziness to this.”
“Not gonna lie, Aspen’s easier.” She had a low alto voice that sent a shiver through him and made his wolf sit up and pay attention.
For the first time, he realized she was nervous. He frowned and focused on her for the first time—not the air, not the view, not the insane house, and not her eyes or her biceps or the curve of her…
She was another human being in this house with him. He’d been treated like the help enough times to know how much it sucked. Was that why her heart was going faster than his?
“What do you need from me?” he asked and spread his arms wide but didn’t move any closer.
She froze for a second, like an animal cornered just before the wolf struck the moment they knew they were caught, then a professional smile slid onto her face. Her lips curved in the right direction, but her heart did not slow down.
“Aside from the airport warning? Actually tell me what they think. Please don’t spare my feelings or something. You’ve been marvelously frank and not at all polite, and please don’t start now.”
He let out a bark of laughter. “Brutal honesty every day. I promise.”
“I wish,” she breathed.
He frowned. Without the wolf’s ears, he would never have heard her say that, so he tried not to react.
He hadn’t lied, aside from not mentioning the fact that they were all werewolves. Beyond the fundamental truth of his existence, he really hadn’t lied at all. Why did she think he had?
“Is there something else?” he couldn’t help asking.
She bit her lip and took a deep breath. “Why don’t I give you the full tour?”
“Okay,” he said, even though he really didn’t need a guide to wander around a shut-up house, but he didn’t want her to go, and he wanted her to tell him the problem so he could fix it. That’s what he did.
“Do you guys usually stick to one part of the city?” she asked casually as they climbed the stairs to the second level.
He scratched his head. “I mean, do I go play tourist every afternoon? No. Doesn’t everybody stick to their territory?”
“Territory?”
“Neighborhood. Whatever.” We can’t actually be honest with her, he reminded his wolf.
She opened the door at the top of the stairs to a huge bedroom with an even bigger bed. The forest green and dark wood theme continued here. Did it continue everywhere? Did Mateo’s grandfather understand the existence of other colors?
Matt got distracted by a huge landscape on the wall. The painting looked alive and shimmering.
“Does this speak to you?” she asked.
He glanced down at her. The answer was important to her. He looked back at the painting.
“It’s nice?” He’d been to galleries. Art was nice. He’d rather look at that than a bare wall. But the question seemed to have some significance beyond its artistic merit. He was in a conversation he didn’t understand.
Did he call that out? She was clearly brilliant, competent, and gorgeous, but also paranoid? He heard all sorts of things about the people who holed up in the woods, or was he just making a giant deal about an awkward first meeting because he didn’t want it to be awkward?
She led him around more rooms on the middle floor and then started up to the next floor.
“Does it look any different than this one?” he asked at the bottom of the stairs.
She turned back. “No. It’s all bedrooms all the way up until there’s some kind of movie theater in the attic.”
“I don’t want to waste your time. I’m sure you’ve got other fires to put out.”
“Do you worry about fire?” Then she immediately rolled her eyes. “Because every animal and human does, so that wouldn’t matter.”
“I mean, now I am,” he said slowly. Of course, there were wildfires. New York had been inundated by smoke from a fire in Ontario last summer. He hadn’t smelled the smallest breath of smoke here.
“There is one burning a county over, but the wind’s going in the right direction today,” she said with a shrug.
“And you just live with that.”
“I mean, I could go screaming from the room, but I doubt that would make me feel better.”
“Right.”
She made her way back down to the kitchen.
“What’s your favorite food?” she asked.
“Tiramisu,” he said immediately.
“Really?”
“They’re the Amatos, right? I mean, they’re as American as spaghetti is now, but Nonna comes from the old country, and when I started working for the family, the first time she had me over, she made me an entire tray, and I ate it.” And nothing would ever taste as good again in his life.
“Not steak?”
He shrugged. “I mean, I don’t not love steak. What about you?”
“What?”
“What’s your favorite food? No. Your favorite meal. For me, it’s not just any tiramisu, it’s Nonna’s tiramisu, the second time I met her.”
Tori got a faraway look in her eye and licked her lips. “Root beer float.”
“Where and when?”
Finally, she met his eyes. “This is not a sob story.”
“Because all happy stories start with: this is not a sob story.”
She broke out laughing, and he felt a surge of triumph that he could do that for her.
“Once upon a time,” he said, “this is not a sob story, and there was once a beast…” he trailed off, but she didn’t laugh.
“Once upon a time, I spent the first eight years of my life in foster care, and this is not a sob story. Then I met my mom, and she gave me a root beer float, and I’ve never tasted anything better.”
“That sounds delicious.” She wasn’t sobbing, but it wasn’t an easy story.
“Of course, she told me later it was a potion—” She cut herself off and looked at him like she accidentally revealed the nuclear codes.
“Okay?”
“She brewed it herself, the root beer. The root beer was a sort of magical potion? Of family love. You know, with roots…”
He never heard of homemade root beer. “I’m sorry, but does root beer actually have roots in it?
She laughed. “Sarsaparilla. And mallow. Yes, there are actual roots. I can get you some, if you want to try it.”
“Do you promise magic?”
Her laugh ended with a high wheezing gasp that had him stepping toward her with alarm before she held out her hand.
“You’re funny,” she said thirty seconds later.
“If we’re lucky, we get a couple of those magic moments in our lives,” he said slowly, mostly to get her off the topic of roots, which were apparently pretty stressful.
“Yeah, if we’re lucky.”
He gave her a real smile this time. “Those pastries were a close second.”
Her phone rang, and she stepped away. He could hear a deep voice on the other end of the phone telling her they’d be there tomorrow, and something about the voice lifted the hairs on the back of his neck.
“Yes!” she shouted when she got off the phone. “The crew is confirmed for tomorrow.” Her competent business persona was back in a second, and while he was a little relieved she was okay, he missed even her panicked laughter.
“Who are they?” he asked. Something about that voice had rubbed him wrong.
“A local earth-moving outfit. I haven’t worked with them before, but how hard can it be to smooth some dirt out?”
He had no idea. He was about to probe for specifics when he heard a tumbled crash from somewhere in the house, and he whipped around.
She frowned. “What is it?”
“You didn’t hear that?” he asked and grimaced. Of course, she couldn’t hear that.
“No?” she said. Excellent, now she was looking at him like he was crazy.
He shook his head and dashed out of the kitchen to stand in the middle of the living room. He froze, senses extended, but all he could hear was her pounding feet.
“Don’t move,” he whispered.
She stopped moving. “What—”
“Shhhh,” he said and held up a finger. When she didn’t say anything else, he could just hear snuffling.
He led her to a door she hadn’t opened on her tour of the main level.
“Damn it, I forgot to open that,” she said, froze, and added, “I mean, get a locksmith to open it.”
There was another thump from below. “Can you get a door repairman here instead?”
“Sure? There’s a handyman in town, but why?”
He put his fingers around the doorknob and yanked sideways until he ripped it out of the door. Her mouth dropped open as he handed it to her.
“I, um, work out.”
“Right,” she said as they both stared down the stairs into the basement. “There was no basement on the plans for this place.”
“Right,” he echoed and stepped lightly down the steps.
She reached for the light switch, but he said, “No, don’t.” Belatedly, he realized what might be down here, including cages with bars for out-of-control wolves and other such niceties. “Um, maybe just stay up there?”
“Okay?”
He dashed down the rest of the way and was relieved that he could see in the pale light coming from a tiny window on the far side of the large room.
On one side of the basement, a row of doors had very thick locks, but no obvious bars. The open space left over was full of more couches and another giant screen.
Everything smelled musty, though not with the dankness of a New York basement. It was cool down here, but still dry. He’d never lived in a place with so little water.
Focus, his wolf sent him with a flash of the hunt.
There was another rustle, and he realized the couches were nearly destroyed, with fluff scattered everywhere. Unlike the rest of the house, this clearly had not been hermetically sealed.
A black and white shape came barreling around the couch from under the stairs.
Matt wasn’t sure if it was him or his wolf reaching for the feral creature when Tori cried, “No, don’t!”
Belatedly, he saw the white stripes down its back, and braced as it turned its tail.
Skunk, his wolf sent him, mostly in the memory of that sour/rotten smell. Horror gripped him. Was he really such a city shifter that he didn’t know any better than to go after a damn skunk?
The wolf sent him memories of a week of smelling like this. As the tail lifted, he turned his back in time to see Tori hold out a hand. He spun back to see the plume stop in midair. She held out another hand, and the window across the room opened.
Skunk and stink went flying.
He pivoted back to her, mouth agape.
She was a witch? Of course she was a witch. That was magic.
She lived in Silver Spring, and her mom made literal magical potions out of root beer. There was a coven in Silver Spring.
He looked at the window and then back at Tori, who said, “I work out?”
