the room, but quickly calmed down after Cole handed over enough cash to settle the entire account. On his way out, Cole took his complimentary muffin, then ducked back inside to snag a second one.
Twenty minutes later he and Paige were headed north on I–94. Paige was doing the driving while munching happily on the treat Cole had brought her. She looked so happy that, if her mouth wasn’t stuffed full at the moment, she might have been ready to sing.
“Wha ki id di?”
“Did you actually form words just now or was that some sort of code?” Cole asked.
Chewing up the rest of the muffin and wiping the crumbs from her chin, she said, “What kind is this? The muffin?”
“Oh, uh, I don’t know. One of the dark, healthy looking ones.”
“Damn, that was good.” Reaching for the coffee she’d bought at a gas station, Paige sipped from the foam cup, blew on it, and then sipped again.
As he watched her, Cole couldn’t help but smile. “You’re a morning person. Strike one.”
“Not a morning person, but I do like breakfast,” she amended.
“Now that you’re done stuffing your face, how about we pull over to get me some clothes? I think these are about to start walking on their own.”
She shook her head while taking another pull from her coffee, which resulted in dripping enough to produce a nice, dark stain on her shirt. “Not yet. There’s an outlet mall near the state line,” she said while swiping at the spilled brew. “We’ll stop there.”
“Like you’re so strapped for cash. What about that bundle you showed me at the hotel?”
“Those are funds to be used when necessary,” she said, as if quoting from a manual. “And before you ask, they come from a pool made by other Skinners and any number of fine people who feel they owe it to us to keep us properly outfitted.”
“So, you save someone’s ass from a werewolf and they chip in for the cause?”
“Pretty much.”
“I guess that makes sense. So, what’s a Mongrel?”
“They’re shapeshifters,” Paige explained. “But not werewolves. Werewolves turn into wolves, or something along those lines. Mongrels turn into everything else.”
“Like what?”
Paige shrugged, and rolled down the window to let a breeze rush through the car that felt just as capable of separating flesh from bone as the subject of the conversation. “I’ve seen some cats and foxes,” she said casually. “One or two bears. Those are very tough, by the way. Snakes, lizards…”
Cole started laughing, and wrapped his hands around his foam coffee cup. “It was a real question, Paige. No need for the bullshit.”
“I’m serious!” Holding up her hand to tick off her fingers, she added, “Leopards, tigers…but I haven’t seen all of these myself. Lions, coyotes…”
“Such crap,” he muttered.
Paige stopped, but only to take a sip of coffee. Although there was still some good humor in her eyes, there wasn’t enough there to make Cole certain she’d been kidding. Finally, she said, “All shapeshifters are tricky and dangerous. They don’t need to feed on people, which means they don’t need to expose themselves like the Nymar. They’re territorial, so they fight for turf and kill to keep it. One Skinner from way back said he found evidence that shapeshifters used to try and live away from humans so they could just do their own thing. According to him, the more humans pushed into the wilderness, the more the shapeshifters pushed back.”
“Sounds like an environmentalist’s worse case scenario,” Cole grunted.
“It may go a bit further back than that.”
“The sixties?” Cole offered.
“Eighteen sixties, maybe.”
“Seriously?”
Paige laughed and let her foot off the gas so she could slide past a cop while doing something close to the speed limit. “Don’t sound so impressed. They’re common legends and most are recorded in devices called books. You know, those things where words are written down on paper and not on a computer screen?” Seeing the dry look on Cole’s face, she eased up a bit. “Skinners don’t live forever,” she said. “Considering our line of work, we barely get to live as long as Gerald. We mostly pass on what we know one on one, but there’s a lot to be learned from history and folklore.”
“Do the vam—I mean Nymar, get to live forever?”
“I don’t think so. There are legends, but those could just be about one man living in the same castle, passing his disease down to his servants or cousins or something. The legends about the Mongrels and other shapeshifters have been proven, though. You open up a mythology book from just about anywhere in the world and you’ll find werewolves, wereleopards, weretigers, you name it. We’ve documented enough actual sightings to verify them and a lot more.”
“Yeah,” Cole said. “So have I.”
“There you go. Start keeping a journal. That’s not a request either. We can’t afford to open a school, so we need to make sure to pass it along before we…” The casual, easygoing smile on Paige’s face dimmed for the first time in a while. Focusing on the road and hanging one arm out the window, she said, “When we die. Everything we’ve picked up builds on what everyone else has learned. Hopefully, someday we’ll know enough to take back our spot at the top of the food chain. Until then, we’re just another bunch of sheep hoping the wolves don’t get hungry.”
“I like the learning idea better,” Cole said.
“So do I.”
After a deep breath, he asked, “Are all Mongrels invisible?”
Paige settled right back into her comfort zone. “They all have their own abilities. Some breeds don’t do much, but others can surprise you. There’s always something behind it that explains how they do their tricks. Once we figure out some of those tricks, we can use them for ourselves.”
“That’s why you collected that grease from the hotel?” he asked.
“Yep. With all the Skinners in the world, there’s bound to be someone who can figure out a good way to use the weird stuff we find.”
“You don’t know how great it is to hear you say that,” he said.
“Say what?”
“That something’s weird.”
Paige laughed at him and said, “You haven’t seen the worst of it yet, my friend. You’ve been real lucky to make it this far. Just stay close to me and do what I say. When we reach that diner, let me do the talking. When we meet Prophet, you listen and watch.”
“Prophet,” Cole repeated. “Is he psychic?”
“More or less. He claims to have dreams about the future that are accurate enough for him to be in the right place at the right time to catch certain people or track certain things. He mostly works as a bounty hunter, but does some tracking for us when he can. Charges an arm and a leg, but it’s usually worth it.”
“Must be awfully nice to have a psychic on your side.”
She groaned and slowly shook her head. “He’s a great tracker, but a lot of that’s pure talent. The dreams he has are…I don’t know. At least he’s a great tracker.”
Cole nodded and resisted the urge to chuckle. “How’d you find this guy?”
“Actually, he found one of us. A Skinner named Rico was doing work in St. Louis when he ran into this guy who claimed to have a psychic vision or something that told him where to find a nest of monsters. The psychic stuff sounded iffy, but he led us to a den of Half Breeds, so we put him on the payroll.”
“And his name’s Prophet?” Cole snorted. “Maybe his mother was psychic too. Can’t wait to meet him.”
“His name’s Walter, and I’m sure you two will get along just fine.”
“Sure! All of us Skinners got to stick together, right?”
“He’s not a Skinner,” Paige said with a laugh. “Although we’ve tried to recruit him more than once.”
“Aw, come on. All you’d need to do is go in there and bat those pretty eyelashes at him and I bet he’d cave.”
