Epilogue

As morning settled over Shoreline, I drove into the parking lot for the apartment complex. Since I hadn’t been able to summon the wolf again, it had been a long walk back to my mother’s cabin and my truck. The sun had come up before I’d made it out of Monroe, my body aching and weary.

I scanned the lot for Duncan’s van, and it wasn’t there. That should have given me relief, but a touch of wistfulness crept over me. He’d been… entertaining. More, he’d understood the werewolf thing, and he’d been decent company. Too bad my first impression of him had been right, that his arrival here had been suspicious. In the end, I’d been foolish to let my guard down.

Yawning, I parked in a staff spot, glad to see Bolin’s hoity-toity SUV already there. By the time I’d been able to call him, he’d long since finished getting stitches in the ER and returned home. He’d been groggy on the phone and said he would talk to me in the morning, after acquiring coffee.

My wounds twinged as I eased out of the truck, and I wished I could rub pain-relief cream all over myself and sleep for a week. That wouldn’t happen, but maybe I would get lucky and nobody would fill out a maintenance request today or come to complain about a noisy neighbor.

“Doubtful,” I muttered.

Bolin stood in front of the office door with his two cups of coffee in hand, a black eye, and stitches above his eyebrow. I winced in sympathy. We both needed pain-relief cream.

“Sorry about the case,” he said. “I shouldn’t have brought it into this neighborhood at night.”

Somehow, I doubted the neighborhood had been the problem. Crime might have been increasing a bit of late, but I still believed it had been a werewolf who’d attacked him.

“I shouldn’t have asked you to bring it. It was safer where it was.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry you got clobbered.”

“Me too.”

Surprisingly, Bolin offered me one of the coffees, the one in a simple paper cup with a flat lid. The iced whatever topped with whipped cream he clutched possessively to his chest.

“I thought you always got two for yourself,” I said.

“I do, but you look even rougher than I do this morning.”

I considered his tousled hair, stitches, black eye, and the slump to his shoulders.

“That’s concerning.”

“Yup. Did you sleep in the woods?” His gaze drifted toward a spot above my eyebrows.

My ponytail had long since fallen free, and my hair hung in tangles around my shoulders. I swept my hand back from my forehead, dislodging a few fir needles and a scale from a pine cone. The movement made my shoulder twinge, and I remembered my fall from the bridge. I’d been lucky not to break every bone in my body—or be shot. Fortunately, the bite wounds in my leg and hip weren’t that bad. The locket had to have helped, at least in some minor way.

“I didn’t sleep at all actually,” I said.

“But the woods were involved, right?”

“The depths of the forest.”

“A logical place to go in the middle of the night.”

“For some.” I accepted his coffee offering, taking a deep swig in case I needed to be alert that morning. A surprising hit of sweetness bathed my tongue. It was a mocha, the kind of thing I’d consumed in my twenties but that would now send my blood sugar levels on a roller coaster. Oh well. At least it seemed to have some extra shots of espresso in it.

“Being an intern here might not be as bad as I thought.”

“Given how your night went, I’m surprised to hear that. What changed your mind?”

“You’re weirder than I am.”

“That’s a plus?”

“You hardly ever stare at me like I’m a freak.”

No, a kid with druid blood wasn’t that strange when compared to someone who turned into a wolf and howled at the full moon.

“I’ve met some quirky people in my life,” was all I said, wondering how long it would take him to figure out that I was one of them.

“Oh, there goes Mr. Davis.” Bolin pointed toward the man with the plumbing and mold problem we’d been addressing. Bolin must have texted him, asking for permission to enter today, because a response popped up on his phone. After reading it, he said, “I can show you his apartment. It’s all done.”

“Okay.” The last couple of days, I’d been so distracted that I’d half-forgotten about that issue. I did know the plumber had repaired the pipes and we’d had fans on in there to dry out the interior before putting the drywall back up.

“His apartment looks and smells so good now that you could raise the rent.” Bolin led me down the walkway toward the next building.

“As long as it’s not moldy, and pipes aren’t leaking, I’ll be delighted.”

“You’ll be more than delighted.” He walked faster, his back straight.

Was he proud? The kid who’d oozed resentment and superiority when he’d arrived and had made it clear he didn’t want to be here?

When he unlocked the door and pushed it open, no hint of must wafted out of the apartment. Instead, the air smelled clean and faintly forest-like. I assumed the tenant had plugged an air freshener into an outlet, but when we walked inside, my senses pinged, picking up a faint hint of magic. A fern in a pot that hadn’t been there before seemed to be the source.

“I trust you put that there, not the tenant.” I pointed at it.

Bolin blinked in surprise. “How did you know?”

“It’s oozing druidness.”

“I enhanced it to clean the air even more than it naturally would. Of course, that isn’t necessary because of the enchantment I found for in here.” With a flourish of his arm, Bolin led me into the bathroom.

The repair work was done, fresh drywall and paint in place over the fixed pipes. The air also smelled clean in there, and I detected another slight hint of magic. It came from the walls—the paint?

“I applied the anti-mold paint you mentioned you kept in the maintenance shed, and I used it for a medium for my enchantment. It’s extra extra anti-fungi now.”

“All fungi? Not just mold?”

“Yeah, that’s what the enchantment was for. I assumed we wouldn’t want toadstools sprouting up in people’s apartments either. ”

“No, and nobody needs to start a ’shroom grow lab in their bathroom either.”

Bolin blinked. “Has that… happened?”

“Six times in the years I’ve worked here. It’s usually marijuana, but one couple was doing mushrooms. I saw the delivery of wood chips and inoculation logs, or whatever they’re called, and caught them.”

“Huh.”

“All right, thanks for taking care of all this.” I clapped Bolin on the shoulder as we headed out.

“You’ll tell my parents that I’m doing good work? Without, uhm… If you don’t mention the druid oozing, that would be ideal. Especially if my mom is around.”

“I wouldn’t dream of mentioning it to anyone.”

“Really?” Bolin squinted at me, as if he couldn’t believe someone would keep his secrets for him.

“Really.”

“Good. Thanks.”

As I headed for my apartment to comb the rest of the forest out of my hair, shower, and put on fresh clothes, I decided having an intern might not be bad after all. Oh, I didn’t expect Bolin would stay long—his parents would eventually give him the dream job they’d promised him—but maybe I could get him to mold-proof the rest of the units before he left.

When I unlocked my door and stepped into my living room, I sensed right away that someone had been there while I’d been gone. He’d been there. Duncan’s scent lingered in the air.

I scowled at the door lock, as if it had betrayed me. The windows were securely closed, and I knew I hadn’t left the door open. How had he gotten in?

“Bastard probably has a magnet that turns locks.”

I stalked around the apartment, searching for anything that had been disturbed, though it wasn’t as if there was much in there worth stealing. Just the wolf case. And he or someone else had already gotten that.

A small gift bag and an envelope on the table caught my eye. I squinted suspiciously at them. Duncan hadn’t left me some hokey tchotchke in the hope that I would forgive him, had he? As if I could forgive him for working for Chad.

“Bastard,” I grumbled again and strode toward the table.

I intended to tear up the envelope and hurl the gift bag in the trash without looking inside, but it clinked when I picked it up. That made me pause. Had he actually gotten my potions?

I pushed aside colorful tissue paper to draw out the contents. Four vials of liquid were nestled inside along with a business card. The name of the alchemist who’d made them? It said apothecary , but I knew witches rarely put their real business in print for people to find. This country didn’t have a history of being kind toward those suspected of witchcraft.

At the bottom of the bag, there were also two dark-chocolate bars and a rusty fork. The fork he’d found in Lake Washington with me? Or another? I didn’t know, but I flattened my hands on the table and stared at the gift, tears threatening my eyes. It wasn’t so much that I was touched but that I was frustrated that he was the enemy instead of someone… someone I could let myself like.

“Bastard,” I whispered for a third time, but I opened the envelope instead of tearing it up.

A card showed a cartoon dog in a fishing boat on a lake, holding out a rainbow trout in offering. It read I’m sorry .

Inside, Duncan had written a note in execrable handwriting that I struggled to decipher.

My apologies, my lady, for not being honest with you. When I accepted this mission—and, of course, the promise of adventure!—I didn’t expect the wife that your loathed ex-husband had described to me would turn out to be an appealing person I’d like to know better. You may not believe it, but I enjoyed our time together. I’ve not had another wolf to hunt with in a long while. I hope you will accept this small gift as an adequate apology.

Best wishes,

Duncan

He hadn’t left a phone number or any way to get in touch. It was for the best. I would accept his gift, but I still couldn’t trust him. Nothing had changed. And it was entirely possible that he’d sent the thug who’d beaten up Bolin for the case.

Sighing, I walked into the bathroom with the vials. I studied them for a long moment, then removed the cork from one and sniffed the contents. The liquid looked and smelled correct. As promised, Duncan had found another alchemist who could make my potions, one who hadn’t been scared off by a well-meaning but meddling relative.

Did I want to take the potion? A few days ago, I would have answered that question with a vehement yes and quaffed a dose. But things had changed, and I waffled with indecision.

On the one hand, dealing with cousins trying to kill me didn’t make me eager to return to the embrace of my family—and the werewolf life. Nor did I feel good about the way the face-off with those hunters had gone, that I hadn’t been able to control my rage, my animal instincts. Nothing, it seemed, had changed with time.

But, on the other hand, damn if I hadn’t enjoyed being out there on the hunt. Even a hunt that had ended in disaster. Over the years, I’d forgotten the exhilaration, what it was like to truly be alive. It would be hard to give that up for a second time.

And my mother… My mother was dying, and she needed me. To turn my back on her, on our legacy, would be much harder to do today .

I thought of Mom’s indifference to the deaths of the hunters, a similar indifference that she’d displayed years ago after Raoul’s passing. I had been challenged by others, and I’d killed. That was just how it was. It was the way of the wolf.

It was as hard for me to accept that today as it had been then, but my gut told me that the future would bring more surprises, and it would be better to have power than not. All week, I hadn’t heeded my gut when it had repeatedly warned me of danger, both with Duncan and with Augustus, and I’d regretted it.

“You win, Mom,” I murmured.

I put the cork back in the vial and placed the potions in the medicine cabinet. For now, I would once again heed the call of the wolf.

THE END

Thank you for picking up Luna’s story!