“If anything happens to you, I’ll get revenge on the spring rolls.”
“Thanks, buddy,” I said with a laugh. “I’ll see you later.”
Grabbing my wand from the counter, I slipped it into my back pocket and made my way out into the night.
Chapter 16
It was cold out, so I immediately grabbed my wand and cast a warming spell, creating a bubble of eighty degree weather all around me. I could have just put on a jacket, but I wanted to keep myself nimble in case I had to chase down Raoul or climb up a hole in the basement of a store near the bank. A giant puffy jacket probably wasn’t going to come in handy in that situation.
Willow had to be right, it was too cold for a wolf shifter to spend the night outside. It was only ten o’clock. Because it was winter, that meant the sun had dropped below the horizon hours ago, but we were still a few hours away from the real dead of night, when the cold got so bad it seeped into your bones and you wouldn’t feel warm again until you’d stepped into a nice, hot shower for a few minutes.
At least, that was how the cold affected me. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to live in the Rockies or on the East Coast where the winters were even more intense than here. But at least I had my magical warmth bubble.
As I got closer to downtown, I cast an invisibility spell on myself. I didn’t want to accidentally come across Raoul and scare him off. I quite literally didn’t want him to see me coming. It was kind of eerie, walking through downtown Mt. Rheanier late at night in the winter. There was absolutely no one out and about – given the chill in the air, all the paranormals had long since gone home and were curled up on couches or in bed with a fire roaring or the heat cranked up. Even at the other end of downtown, where the vampires were all just starting their nights, there was only a little bit of noise.
I was glad it hadn’t snowed recently – my footprints magically appearing in the snow would have given away my location, and it was harder to hide the sounds of my footsteps when snow and ice crunched beneath my feet. But luckily, it was perfect weather for sneaking around, and I quickly made my way to the bank and had a look at the nearby stores.
If I were a wolf shifter who had to break into somewhere nearby, which shop would I choose? The bank backed onto a vacant lot, so that was out. Not only was the ground frozen solid, making it insanely hard to dig through, but I was fairly certain even two wolf shifters wouldn’t have been able to dig a hole through the vacant lot and under the bank in a single night. And it wasn’t like the vacant lot was subtle enough that he could just leave the hole there for a day and not have it spotted.
That left the two stores on either side of the bank. One was an little hole-in-the-wall ice cream parlor that did very minimal business in the winter – the owner kept the shop open, but didn’t have any staff. In the summer, however, when paranormals from all around the world flocked to Mt. Rheanier for the incredible views and to enjoy nature in an environment that was hot but without making you feel like you were going to die, the store did incredibly well. The line at Mountain High Ice Cream on a warm July weekend could easily stretch down the block.
To the right of the bank was the old second-hand bookstore. The owner, a fairy named Ascella, lived in a tiny apartment at the back of the store.
That meant the ice cream parlor was by far the better target. Not only would Raoul risk waking up Ascella if he went into the bookstore – I imagined he would have scoped out both places before choosing a target – but the basement of the ice cream parlor, where the extra ice cream would be kept, would be practically empty at this time of year. Perfect to have lots of space through which to tunnel to the bank.
I walked up to the front window of the ice cream parlor and pressed my hands up against the glass, peering into the empty shop.
There was no sign of life, no sign of anyone having broken in. However, if Raoul was already in there digging away in the basement, I wouldn’t be able to see him.
I tossed up my options: I could wait out here and keep lookout, trying not to die of boredom, or I could sneak inside and have a quick look in the basement to be sure Raoul wasn’t already ahead of me.
It didn’t take very long before I settled on door number two.
I went down the alley at the side of the building and made my way to the ice cream parlor’s back door. Taking a quick, furtive glance around to make sure there were no snoopy neighbors about to notice a door opening and closing by itself, I cast a quick spell to check for wards and cursed when it glowed red.
I repeated the spell at the tiny window next to it but was relieved to find the window glowed green, indicating that it wasn’t warded. It was a tiny window; frankly I wondered why the builder had bothered with it at all. But I wasn’t about to complain.
I was going to need all of my energy to slip through that tiny window.
“Why can’t I be as thin as Willow?” I muttered as I cast a spell to unlock the window and pried it open. It wasn’t
