Chapter 1

1

If something weird was going to happen in my life, it was guaranteed to occur when I was carrying a ninety-pound toilet across the parking lot.

It was a heavy load for a forty-five-year-old woman, even one whose werewolf blood gives her extra strength, but that didn’t keep me from stopping to frown at a guy wielding a metal detector. Whistling cheerfully, he swept it back and forth through the woods along the property line of the apartment complex.

With wavy salt-and-pepper hair that fell to his jaw, a tidily cultivated three days’ worth of beard stubble, and a black leather jacket, he could have walked off the front of GQ . Had I seen his picture on a magazine, I wouldn’t have thought much of it, but in person… there was something about him that put my hackles up. Something… feral.

“You can do whatever you want on the city land,” I called to him, “but once you step onto that lawn, the grounds belong to Sylvan Serenity Housing.” I waved to indicate the five acres of grass, trees, and pathways that sprawled around the complex’s two-hundred-plus units that were clumped in several two-story buildings.

As the property manager, it was my job to shoo away treasure-hunting trespassers, even if he hadn’t crossed the line yet. After almost twenty years working for the owners, I felt obligated to watch out for their interests and also for the tenants. And maybe I was a touch territorial. I blamed the wolf blood for that, even though the monthly potions I consumed kept my lupine tendencies on the down-low.

The guy looked over at me, his brown eyes widening in surprise, probably because the person addressing him held a new one-piece toilet. “Why, my lady, I wouldn’t dream of trespassing.”

My lady ?

His accent was vaguely British but muddled, as if he’d left home a long time ago and lived many places. My experiences with James Bond movies—all watched due to my ex-husband’s preferences—and Monty Python—a reflection of my preferences—did not lead me to believe anyone in the UK said my lady anymore. Nor were Europeans wandering a greenbelt in a suburb north of Seattle common. Shoreline wasn’t a tourist area, especially not this stretch, with the freeway traffic roaring past beyond the woods.

“Glad to hear it. Is that your van?” I jerked my chin toward an old Roadtrek with half the back windows blacked out—or maybe blocked. The vehicle occupied a guest-parking spot. White with blue trim, it had been modified for off-roading, with large studded tires that lifted it several inches higher than usual. On the side, blue cursive writing read: Full Moon Fortune Hunter .

“She’s a beaut, isn’t she?”

“That’s not what I asked. If you’re not a guest of a tenant, you can’t park there.”

“You’re very strict for… the plumber? The maintenance woman? What did you say your name is? ”

“I didn’t.”

“Well, as a gentleman, even though we haven’t had formal introductions, I feel compelled to ask if you need assistance in toting that large, ah, are you carrying a… loo, my lady?”

“A Kohler Highland with elongated bowl and quiet-close lid. Only the best for our tenants.” Only the best that had been on sale and was a model that had proven reliable in the complex. Since I was the handywoman as well as the property manager, that latter was important.

“So it is a loo.”

“You’re swift.”

“Actually, I’m Duncan. Duncan Calderwood. Now that you know me, who might you be?”

“The person who watches over this place.” My instincts told me not to give him my name—or anything about myself. If that van was still here tonight, I would call to have it towed.

“Like a security guard?”

“I can be.” I gave him my best warning glower, one that people tended to find intimidating, even if I was only five-foot-three and one-hundred and ten pounds. Not only did I have sharp canines, but enough magic lingered about me that they could sometimes sense the danger in my past, even if it had been decades since I’d been anything but a mother, wife, and employee. “By choice,” I murmured to myself.

“Ah.” He—Duncan—smiled, not intimidated in the least. “That burden can’t be light. I believe your muscles are aquiver. Do you need assistance?”

“They’re not quivering, and I don’t want help.” Grudgingly, I made myself add, “Thanks,” though the guy rubbed me the wrong way.

He twanged even my dulled senses. If not for the potion, I might have more easily detected what was off about him. I might have smelled what was off .

I shook my head. The toilet was getting heavy, so the mystery would have to wait until later. I continued up the meandering walkway to A-37 while Duncan went back to whistling cheerfully and sweeping the metal detector from fern to clump of mushrooms to cedar log. What he expected to find out there, I couldn’t guess. Now and then, homeless people camped in the woods, but they weren’t known for stashing strongboxes full of gold and jewelry around their tents.

As I set the toilet down and fished in my pocket for the master key for the apartments, a faint beeping drifted across the lawn. From the metal detector?

Duncan bent to investigate a fern as a pair of motorcycles roared into the parking lot. The noise startled him, and he spun, raising the metal detector in both hands like a staff while dropping into a practiced fighting crouch. With those reflexes, he had to have been in more than a few skirmishes in his day.

The male motorcycle riders, neither wearing a helmet, tore through the parking lot, circling it twice as they eyed the cars. They glanced toward me, then at one of the tenants driving in, and roared back out.

I glared at them, suspicious since crime had increased in the area lately, and glanced toward the cameras mounted around the grounds. The two men had looked like they’d been scouting the place. Hopefully, the modest vehicles of the tenants hadn’t interested them that much.

Duncan lowered the metal detector, waved at me, and went back to investigating the fern.

“Yeah, you’re sus too,” I muttered, borrowing one of the words my younger son favored.

Thinking of my boys sent a twinge of loneliness through me. Cameron had been gone for two years, but Austin had left for Air Force training only that summer. I’d only been an empty nester for a few months .

Wanting to keep an eye on my visitor, I made more trips back to my beat-up pickup than necessary to collect my tools, a wax ring, and the new toilet innards. Apparently done with the fern investigation, Duncan had returned to wielding the metal detector over the damp fallen leaves and brown needles under the trees.

A stray black cat that lived on the grounds, despite my many attempts to evict it, avoided me as it sashayed through, on its way to mooch from people who left food out for it. The reaction was typical. Human males still hit on me now and then, admiring my curves, olive skin, blue eyes, and thick hair that I ensured stayed black. Animals were another matter. Felines, in particular, sensed the lupine in me and either avoided me, hissed at me, or, if they could manage it, bit me.

The cat spotted Duncan in the woods and halted abruptly, its back arching and its fur going up. A hiss of pure loathing escaped its feline lips.

“Now isn’t that interesting?” I murmured.

The word feral came to mind again. But maybe the term I wanted was lupine .

Could Duncan be a werewolf? One who, like most, didn’t take alchemical substances to tamp down the need to shift into wolf form every full moon?

The cat’s reaction certainly suggested something odd about him. That was a more extreme reaction than the stray gave to me.

If Duncan was a werewolf, what could have brought him here?

As far as I knew, the Snohomish Savagers—my family’s pack—were the only werewolves in the area. And they didn’t take well to trespassers. None of them consumed potions to dampen their magic, so they were even more territorial than I.

I looked at the metal detector with more consideration than before. Was Duncan looking for something specific rather than random lost prizes?

He either didn’t notice the cat or ignored it. He turned his back toward the apartments—and the feline—and ambled deeper into the woods.

After staring at him for a few more seconds, the stray slowly backed away. Finally, fur still up and tail straight out, the cat ran into the parking lot to hide under a car.

“I’m only the property manager,” I told myself. “It’s not my job to confront lupine strangers.”

Duncan shouldn’t have been able to hear from that distance, but before I stepped into the apartment, he sent a long look over his shoulder in my direction. His eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

I sighed. Something told me this guy was going to be a problem.