The Thing About Weres

The scent came first.

Flowers. Freesias, to be exact.

A howl was quickly stifled from the woods.

I strained to listen. Yes. There. A rippling noise coming from the pond, as if water were being agitated. Above the pond, the air seemed to thicken, and then a mist was born. Faint, white, and transparent. It began to thicken in density and color, turning from just a hint of fog into a stream of white vapor that rotated in a circle above the surface of the agitated water. The empty hollow of the circle was filled out as the vapor swelled in size. Denser now and different in color, too.

It will turn to pink and then deep purple.

My heart started to pound in my chest as the vapor blushed. An uneven blush, I realized, looking down at it. Purple blotches, blooming like anemones in the stream of white-pink fog. They began to multiply, changing the hue of the rotating air from soft pink to amethyst.

Bring the fireflies next, please, oh please, my Goddess. Bring the fireflies next.

A bright, tiny spark of gold light. There. Just a quick blip. Then another and another. Here. There. Bright stars of iridescence splintering the dark plum-colored mass of swirling air. I watched them, waiting for the next step where the lights would grow in number, until the whole swirling purple mass would appear pinpricked with starlight.

Casperella’s face split into a smile. She held a glowing palm up to the sphere—for all the world like Mariah when she was aiming for that top note—not quite touching, but close enough that I fancied I could see a faint electrical stream between her and that ball of my Fae magic.

She hit a high note.

And then everything seemed to happen all at once.

The thing she called—the portal to Merenwyn—responded to her song and her magic. The purpled air began to swirl, the lights to multiply, and then she threw out her other hand—as if she were the telegraph pole between two long stretched wires of communication—and with a flash of light, the magenta mass consumed the fireflies, and the air turned violet-pink in hue.

Rapidly, so fast that later I couldn’t be sure how long it took, the vortex changed in aspect. No longer a whirlpool, it separated and redefined itself until it was now a stage of sorts. A back wall of violet smoke surrounded by two billowing columns of fog and a lazy, wreathing floor of mist.

I stopped breathing.

I think everyone did. The frogs on their lily pads. The shivering wolves in the woods. Even the dark birds perched in the old elm fell silent. Not a single wing adjustment among the flock of them.

Her song finished.

There were just three final words for her to say. She’d called the portal—it’d returned to the exact spot it had disappeared from half a year ago. At the midpoint of the oval pond, hovering a good ten feet above the surface of the water. Now all she had to do was utter the short command that would make the gates materialize. I knew two thirds of it. It was just that very last word that I could never duplicate. That heuh sound the Merenwyn Fae make with their palate was beyond the curl of my tongue.

But for the record, she didn’t sing those final three words.

I know she didn’t say them.

Because I was shocked when—unbidden—the backdrop of mist started to curl in a clockwise fashion, and then clear in the middle, disappearing like the mist on your bathroom mirror when you held a blow dryer to it … from impenetrable to thinning, from thinning to frustratingly coy blotches of barely perceptible shapes, and from that, to a crystal-clear fifteen-foot round window.

A picture window into another realm.

Through it, I saw the field of Merenwyn, its grasses still long and green in eternal summer. The sky was blue. Why was it always daylight in Merenwyn? The Pool of Life shimmered down in the valley below. Dazzlingly pure, enough to make me close my eyes in pleasure. At the sound of chiming bells, I opened them, in time to catch a blur of movement inside the gate’s picture window. Two men were running up the hill full bore, shoulder to shoulder, with a little brown wolf keeping pace by their heels.

One dark haired, one blond. Both tall.

They’d been bound together, wrist to wrist. It should have made them awkward, but no, they ran smoothly, their legs in perfect harmony. The blond was fully dressed; from his toes—knee-high, glossy boots—to the natty bowler hat rammed on his head. But the other man … he was a wild, bearded warrior with long dreadlocks of dark hair. He wore nothing but a pair of tattered pants. The sun gleamed off his bare chest. His free hand gripped a rough rope that served as a leash for the wolf-mutt beside him.

My heart started slamming into my chest. I knew. Even if his scowling features weren’t distinct. Even if his dark hair was improbably long and Rastafarian.

I knew.

He’d found a way home. He’d come back to me—when I had all but given up. My left knee went out in relief and joy, and I sagged momentarily against my chains.

Trowbridge, Trowbridge.

They didn’t pause to calculate or reconnoiter the portal area. Without breaking stride, as one, the three leaped. Their images were frozen inside through the gates’s picture window for an instant. The Fae, to whom my mate was bound, had leaped with his head down, his free hand tight on the brim of his hat. My mate’s body was strained, tied between the Fae and the tug of the wolf’s leash. His face was taut, set in a fierce snarl. The little brown wolf’s body was extended, front paws up to its chest, its tail a plume behind it.

And then I blinked, or the image shattered, and they plunged through the veil between this world and Merenwyn. Trowbridge landed hard, and braked harder—the misty floor billowed upward as the little wolf landed right by his heels. It went skidding toward the edge, to be pulled up short by the rope around its neck.

But the guy with the bowler hat didn’t know that they had only a four-foot landing pad, or that Trowbridge would stop suddenly and brace himself. His feet kept going, but his arm didn’t. His reaction to having his shoulder almost wrenched from its socket was a stream of fluid, fierce, and incomprehensible Merenwynian curses. He half spun toward Trowbridge, his free arm lifted.

Trowbridge bared his teeth into a triumphant sneer.

Mine.

Violence simmered between them, until the little brown wolf gave an anxious yawn, and tugged at her leash. They stalked over to the edge, and for a moment, stood, refugees from Merenwyn inspecting the lily pads. My mate’s forehead creased—I could almost see him thinking, where’s the freakin’ log?—and then he lifted his nose high to scent the air. His body tensed as he caught the smell of the pack.

I’d have sold my soul to have a scent signature of my own at that moment. Hell, I’d have signed on for another bruising engagement with Karma just to watch his face break into joy when he caught my scent.

The wolf snuffled at the fog and sneezed.

Screw it.

“Trowbridge,” I called.

All three heads snapped upward, though I only really cared about one.

One cherished face.

A hundred quick impressions. His cheekbones seemed more pronounced and his curls were no longer finger-soft. They’d grown into long unkempt spirals of fuzzy hair that covered his face and blanketed the swell of his shoulders. One dense ringlet dangled by his eye, before he flung it out of his vision with a feral flick of his head.

He had some beard thing going on, too, that I wasn’t overly keen on.

As a matter of fact, in no way did he match the man who visited me in my dreams … and yet … you could strip Trowbridge down to a pair of rough trousers, you could daub him with mud, you could cover his lower face with a straggly beard, and he’d still be a work of art. My body would always recognize him—it was already tightening with anticipation.

My Trowbridge. Here. Finally, mine again.