"That's not a dog," Sean said.
Beast let out a tiny snarl, astonished at the insult.
"She weighs what, about six, seven pounds? Now, I'm willing to concede that somewhere in the distant past one of her ancestors might have been a dog. But now she's an oversized chinchilla."
"First you insult my house, now you insult my dog." I leaned on my broom.
"She has little ponytails," Sean said, nodding at the two tiny ponytails above the Shih Tzu's eyes.
"Her fur gets in her eyes. She's due for a grooming."
"Aha." Sean tilted his head to the side. He seemed completely feral now. "You're asking me to take a dog with two ponytails seriously."
"I'm not asking you to do anything. I'm telling you: get off my property."
He bared his teeth at me in a slightly deranged smile. He looked hungry. "Or what? You'll hit me with your broom?"
Something like that. "Yes."
"I'm so scared right now I'm practically shaking."
He was within the inn's boundary. I was clearly an innkeeper --the broom was a dead giveaway. Yet he showed no respect. I'd met some arrogant werewolves --when you were a highly effective killing machine, you tended to think the world was your oyster --but this one took the cake. "Go away, siri." There. That would fix him.
"Name's Sean." He tilted his head again.
No reaction to the insult. Either he had a bulletproof ego or he had no idea I'd just called him a sniveling coward in his own language.
Sean tilted his head. "So how does a girl like you know about werewolves?"
"A girl like me?"
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-four."
"Most twenty-four-year-old women I know sleep in something more revealing. Something more adult."
I raised my eyebrows. "There is nothing wrong with my Hello Kitty T-shirt." It was thin and comfortable, and it reached to my mid-thigh, which meant that if I had to get up in the middle of the night to dispatch any intruders, I'd do it with my butt covered and modesty intact.
Sean frowned. "Sure, if you're five. Got a touch of arrested development happening there?"
Argh. "What I have happening is none of your business."
"It fits," he said.
"What?"
"The T-shirt. It fits your whole lifestyle. I bet you grew up around here too."
Where was he going with this? "Maybe."
"Probably never left the town, right? Never been anywhere strange, never done anything crazy, and now you run this bed-and-breakfast and drink tea with old ladies on a balcony. A nice quiet life."
Ha! "There is nothing wrong with a nice quiet life."
"Sure." Sean shrugged. "When I was twenty-four, I wanted to see the world. I wanted to go places and meet people."
I couldn't resist. "And kill them."
He bared his teeth at me. "Sometimes. The point is, if you've stayed around here all your life, how do you know about werewolves? There isn't one for miles, and if there is, they're dormant. I combed this territory before I took it. The closest werewolf is in a suburb of Houston, and when I spoke to him, he confirmed that there hasn't been an active werewolf in this area for years. So how do you know about werewolves?"
"Don't like your own kind much, do you?"
"Do you always duck the questions or am I just special?"
"You're special," I told him, sinking as much sarcasm into it as I could. "Now shoo. Go on."
He dipped his head and stared at me, with unblinking, focused intensity like a wolf in the middle of winter sighting his prey. His eyes shone, catching the moonlight. Every hair on the back of my neck rose.
"I'll find out. I don't like being out of the loop."
And now he was threatening me. That does it. One more word and he'd regret ever opening his mouth. "Leave. Now."
The werewolf grinned at me, his eyes full of wild. "Fine, fine. Sleep tight."
He dropped off the branch, fell two stories to the ground, landed in a soft half crouch, and took off running. His long legs carried him out of my orchard, and a second later the magic chimed in my head, announcing that he had left the inn grounds.
I turned and walked back to my bedroom, the balcony door closing softly behind me. Obnoxious smart-ass. Never been anywhere, never done anything, huh. Arrested development, huh. Considering that it was coming from a man who spent his nights peeing on his neighbors' fences, that was rich. Shoot, I should've told him that. Oh well, too late now.
I climbed back into bed. They didn't call his kind lunatics for nothing. At least he decided to do something about the dog killer.
Half an hour later I decided it was time to stop thinking up witty and inventive insults involving werewolves. The house was quiet. Beast snored softly. I yawned, flipped over my warm pillow, and scooted deeper under the covers. Time to go to sleep...
The magic rippled, splashing against me like a tide. Someone was running along the edge of the inn's grounds, skimming it. It was moving fast, too fast for a human. It could be Sean, but somehow I doubted it.
Chapter Two
I knelt by the spot where the intruder had veered off from the inn's boundary. Four triangular indentations marked the hard soil--claw marks. The trespasser had sunk its claws into the ground as it turned on its foot and dashed off. I had just missed it.
In front of me the street lay silent, the trees mere charcoal shadows rustling softly in the wind like sheets of paper sliding against each other. The subdivision was hardly rambunctious, and even on Friday nights, the activity died down by midnight. It was close to one o'clock.
I breathed in quietly, listening, watching. No hint of movement anywhere. No stray noises. I'd taken three precious seconds to throw on some shorts and a thicker T-shirt and snap a rubber band around my hair, and now the thing with claws was gone.
I raised my hand, focused my power on the tips of my fingers, and then touched the indentation. A pale yellow trail ignited on the ground. It faded almost instantly, but not before I registered its direction. It was heading down the street, deeper into the subdivision.
Chasing it would mean leaving the inn's grounds, where I was at my strongest. I should stay out of it. I should turn around and go back to bed. It was none of my business.
If it killed a child, I wouldn't be able to live with myself. I'd made my decision, for better or worse. Now wasn't the time to have doubts.
I needed a weapon. Something with reach. I concentrated. The broom flowed in my hand, the "plastic" of its handle melting into dark metal shot through with hairline fractures of glowing, brilliant blue. A razor-sharp blade formed on one end while the shaft of the broom elongated to seven feet. An old line from an Italian martial-arts manual popped into my head: the longer the spear, the less deceiving it is. Seven feet would do.