I must have talked to her, otherwise I wouldn’t have written myself such detailed notes about the bike, or about making sure she had a cellphone.
The bike’s handlebars halted and slipped, and I shook my head. “You need to go to the repair shop in town,” I said. “I don’t have the tools or parts you need here.”
I’d take it into town. Ellie couldn’t use it until spring, anyway.
I should probably leave the cellphone, though.
The crunching of tires on my gravel drive and the purr of an engine rolled in through the open garage door. I dropped the rag on the table and walked out into the open area between the garage and the house.
Axlam waved as she pulled her sedan around and parked next to Maura’s by the front door. She often came by on the weekends with Jax. The kids played while she and Maura had coffee on the deck. But today she was alone.
She fiddled with something on the passenger seat, then unfolded herself from the vehicle.
The wolves were all graceful, but Axlam’s grace often matched an elf’s, and I’d long suspected her poise would have been there even if she wasn’t an alpha werewolf.
Today she wore a silver-blue headscarf that matched her innate magic in both color and shine.
“Sometimes I think you can see magic, too.” I circled my finger around my face to indicate the scarf. “You match exquisitely this morning.”
She smiled as she walked over. “It seemed the correct color to wear today.” She pointed at the sky. “With the storms coming, ya know,” she said with her slight Northern Minnesota lilting accent. Axlam mostly sounded as if she lived in The Cities—it helped with City Manager business, she liked to say—but her thirty years in Alfheim did register in her voice.
Up until recently, she’d been the only person of East African descent in the city. There’d been some harassment issues with a few of the outside-of-town locals this past year, but regional Alfheim seemed to be better behaved with our recent immigrants than several other small Minnesota towns.
I was pretty sure the mundane issues wore on her. They wore on Ed, too. And like with Ed, she really didn’t share those rough edges with me.
I figured that if they needed my help, they’d ask.
Axlam pulled her blue jacket tight around her frame.
“Got the new plow.” I pointed at Bloodyhood. “So don’t worry about your drive while the family’s out running.” Plowing wasn’t something they needed to ask about, though. They lived about three miles up the road, on one of the other local lakes. Once it became clear that Axlam was as alpha as Gerard and Remy, the pack rearranged a bit. Gerard and Axlam built a big pack-ready house outside of town, while Remy stayed in Wolftown with most of the members.
“Thank you,” she said.
“No problem.” I nodded toward the car. “Can’t help but notice you’re little-wolf free.” Even though Maura said there’d been a few moments of semi-disruptive behavior at school this week, I expected Jax to visit. He usually never passed over a chance to see Akeyla.
Axlam did the maternal version of an eye roll—that face I’d seen so many times in my two hundred years when a mother wished her child would get on with the process of learning a lesson. “Jaxson has not yet fully come to terms with his behavior, so Gerard took him to Duluth to pick up Remy for some quality alpha male time.” She grinned and shook her head.
“Ah,” I said. Remy must be flying in today. I was kind of surprised the elves had brought him straight home on a charter. But then again, that was Magnus’s territory, and he was in New Zealand. “I hope I didn’t make things worse,” I said, “when I talked to Jax.”
Axlam patted my arm. “You helped. He needed to hear that his behavior was inappropriate from an adult male of Akeyla’s family.” She glanced at the house. “Better you than one of the elves.”
Her shoulders shifted under her coat. Perhaps she hadn’t come to have coffee with Maura.
“The house across the lake,” she said, “the one destroyed by that vampire who claimed to be your brother?” She never entertained the possibility of my brother actually being family. “It’s owned by a lawyer, correct?”
She was probably here to talk about what happened with the interloper. “Aaron Carlson,” I said. “He specializes in immigration law. His wife does intellectual property, I believe.”
Axlam nodded. “What was your impression of him?”
“Arne put the fear of Odin into him. He also seemed to be an overall good guy,” I said. “Honestly, I haven’t talked to him all that much.”
Axlam rubbed her hands together. “We may need him,” she said. “The elves can work their magic, but they can’t update Federal databases.”
“True,” I said. Modern mundanes and their technology had presented a whole host of new thorns in the sides of many magicals.
Axlam looked up at my face. “Do you have his contact information?”
This was about more than the pack, or the interloper at Raven’s Gaze. “Everything okay?” I asked.
She patted my arm again. “We are trying to be proactive about mundane protections. That’s all.” She sighed. “That man, the one who lied about being a photographer and made the scene, what do you remember about him?”
So this wasn’t a “that’s all” kind of situation, after all.
The man had been a walking cliché. “He seemed too rich for his own good. Arrogant, too. He knew much more about the magicals living here than he should have, and like you said, he’s a liar.”
Axlam stared at the wine bottle gate longer than I expected, then inhaled sharply. “He felt… familiar… in the park.”
Familiar? “How so? Like Old World familiar?” The wolves did sense something dark when he showed.
“We aren’t sure, but the consensus among the pack is that he’s involved with some sort of wolf magic.” Her magic flared ever so slightly. “And with
