I bolted upright, breath catching as every pixy in the sanctuary was abruptly eight feet higher. Shrieks and calls echoed, and suddenly the air was full of little black paper bats dangling enticingly from thin strings.
'Rex!' Jenks shouted, darting to land right before the black-eyed animal, which was entranced and frozen by the overwhelming sensory input of twenty-plus dangling bits of paper. 'Bad cat! You scared the fairy-loving crap out of me!' His gaze went to the rafters. 'Everyone up there?'
A shrill round of 'Yes, Dad,' made my eyeballs hurt, and Matalina came out of the desk. Hands on her hips, she whistled sharply. A chorus of disappointed complaints rose and the bats fell. A flow of pixies vanished inside the desk, leaving three older kids to sit and dangle their feet from the rafters as casual sentries. One of them had Jenks's straightened paper clip, and I smiled. Jenks's cat patted one of the fallen paper bats and ignored her tiny master.
'Jenks…,' Matalina said in warning. 'We had an agreement.'
'Ho-o-o-oney,' Jenks whined. 'It's cold out. She's been an inside cat since we got her. It's not fair to make her stay outside just because we're inside now.'
Her tiny, angelic face tight, Matalina disappeared into the desk. Jenks streaked in after her, a mix of young man and mature father. Grinning, I snagged Rex on my way to the door and the two shadows standing hesitantly in my threshold. I had no idea how we were going to handle this new wrinkle. Maybe I could learn how to make a ward to let people through but keep felines out. It was just a modified ley line circle. I'd seen someone do it by memory once, and Lee had put a ward up across Trent's great window. How hard could it be?
My smile widened when the light from the sign over the door illuminated who was there. It wasn't a potential client. 'David!' I exclaimed when I saw him next to a vaguely familiar man. 'I told you I was okay earlier. You didn't have to come over.'
'I know how you downplay things,' the younger of the two men said, his face easing into a few smile wrinkles as Rex struggled to get away from me. ''Fine' can be anything from a bruise to almost comatose. And when I get a call from the I.S. about my alpha female, I'm not going to take that at face value.'
His eyes lingered on the faint mark on my neck where Al had gripped me. Dropping the wildly wiggling cat, I gave him a quick hug. The complicated scent of Were filled my senses, wild, rich, and full of exotic undertones of earth and moon that most Weres lacked. I drew back, my hands still on his upper arms, peering into his eyes to evaluate his state of being. David had taken a curse for me, and though he said he liked the focus, I worried that one day, the sentient spell would risk my anger and take him over.
David's jaw clenched as he reigned in an urge to flee that stemmed from the curse, not himself, then smiled. The thing was terrified of me.
'Still got it?' I said, letting him go, and he nodded.
'Still loving it,' he said, dropping his head briefly to hide the need to run shimmering behind his dark eyes. He turned to the man beside him. 'You remember Howard?'
My head bobbed. 'Oh, yes! From last year's winter solstice,' I said, wiggling my foot at Rex so she wouldn't come in and reaching to shake the older man's hand. His grip was cold from the night and probably poor circulation. 'How you been doing?'
'I'm trying to stay busy,' he said, the tips of his gray hair moving as he exhaled heavily. 'I never should have taken that early retirement.'
David scuffed his boots, muttering a quiet 'I told you.'
'Well, come on in,' I said, waving my foot at the disgusted cat so she'd go away. 'Quick, before Rex follows you.'
'We can't stay.' David hotfooted it inside, his old business partner quick on his heels despite his accumulated years. 'We're on our way to pick up Serena and Kally. Howard is driving us out to Bowman Park and we're going to run the Licking River trail. Can I leave my car here until morning?'
I nodded. The long stretch of railroad track between Cincy and Bowman Park had been converted to a safe running surface shortly after the Turn. This time of year, you'd only find Weres on it at night, and the rails-to-trails path ran fairly close to the church before it crossed the river into Cincinnati. David had used the church as an endpoint before, but this was the first time he had the ladies with him. I wondered if it was their first long fall run. If so, they were in for a treat. To run full out and not get hot was exquisite.
I shut the door and ushered the men from the unlit foyer into the sanctuary. David's duster brushed his worn boot tops, and he took off his hat as he entered, clearly uncomfortable on the holy ground. As a witch, Howard didn't care, and he smiled and waved at the tiny hellos from the ceiling. I probably owed Howard a big thank-you—it had been his idea that David should take me as his new business partner.
David set his worn leather hat on the piano and rocked from heel to toe, looking every inch the alpha male, albeit an uncomfortable one. The faint hint of musk rose from the sturdy but graceful man, and his hand nervously ran across the hint of stubble the almost-full moon was causing. He wasn't tall for a man, standing almost eye to eye with me, but he made up for it in sheer presence. 'Sinewy' would be the word I'd use to describe him. Or maybe 'yummy,' if he were in his running tights. But like Minias, David had a problem with the different-species thing.
He'd been forced to assume the title of alpha male for real when he accidentally turned two human women into Weres. It wasn't supposed to be possible, but he had been in possession of a very powerful Were artifact at the time. Watching David accept his responsibility left me both proud and guilty, since it was partly my fault. Okay, mostly my fault.
It would be a year come the winter solstice since David had started a pack with me, pressured into it by his boss and obstinately choosing a witch instead of a Were female so he wouldn't have to take on any new responsibilities. It was a win-win situation: David got to keep his job, I got my insurance cheap. But now he was an alpha for real, and I was proud of him for accepting it with so much grace. He went out of his way to make the two women he had turned with the focus feel wanted, needed, and welcome, taking every chance he could to help them explore their new situation with joyous abandonment.
But I was most proud of his refusal to show the guilt he lived with, knowing that if they knew how bad he felt for changing their lives without their consent, they might feel that what they had become was wrong. He had gone on to prove his nobility by taking the Were curse from me to save my sanity. The curse would have killed me by the first full moon. David said he liked it. I believed him, though it worried me. I appreciated David for everything he was and who he was becoming.
'Hi, David, Howard,' Ivy said from the top of the hall, her hair freshly brushed and shoes now on her feet. 'Can you stay for dinner? We have a slow cooker full of chili, so there's plenty.' Ivy, however, just wanted to get in David's pants.
David had started at her voice. Shifting his long coat closed, he took a step back as he turned. 'Thanks, but no,' he said, eyes down. 'I'm going for a run with the ladies. Howard might want to come back after dropping us off, though.'
Howard mumbled something about a meeting, and Ivy turned to the stained-glass window and the moon, just shy of full but hidden behind clouds. Weres could change anytime, but the three days of a full moon were the only time it was legal to roam the city's streets on four paws, tradition turned to law by paranoid humans. What Weres did in their own houses, though, was their own business. The moonlit trail would be busy tonight.
Ivy's foot twitched like a cat's tail as she sat, turning her magazine over to hide the headline. I had to work to keep a straight face. It wasn't often that she was smitten enough by anyone to look like a high schooler with a crush. And it wasn't that she was obvious about it, but she was so closed with her emotions that any indication of attraction was as clear as finding love notes strewn on her bedroom floor. She'd probably recognized the sound of his car and had gone to tidy up, using the excuse of lowering the music.
'You should have called me when the demon showed,' David said, edging to the door.
Jenks's wings clattered as he darted from the desk to the center of the room. 'I was there to save her ass,' he said belligerently, then added a belated, 'Hi, David. Who's your friend?'
'This is Howard, my old partner,' David said, and Jenks's head bobbed up and down.
'Oh, yeah. You stink for a witch. Whatcha been doing?'
Howard laughed, the sound echoing into the rafters and setting the pixies giggling. 'Some freelance work. Thank you, Mr. Jenks. I'll take that as a compliment.'
'It's just Jenks,' the pixy muttered, giving Howard an unusual, cautious look as he landed on my shoulder.
