o 35b0a02a46796a4f (23 page)

Har-har.

The metabolism of a werewolf was much faster than that of a human, and without the concern of cholesterol poisoning and a nasty dose of heart disease, the possibilities were endless.

Four cheeseburgers with a side of onion rings, fries,
and
cheese curds? Two steaks, baked potato with melted butter and bacon, broccoli with cheese sauce? Go nuts.

Why would anyone want to go back to the way that they’d been?

Alex bobbled the tray but managed to keep all the food from sliding onto her customer’s head. Her thoughts these days didn’t seem like her own.

“Breakfast is served,” she said brightly. It hadn’t taken her long to remember that the more chirpy she was, the more tip she got. Since she’d come here with nothing but fur, Alex needed all the money she could get.

She barely managed to fit all the plates on her tray in front of her customer, considering the guy next to him had ordered an equal amount of food and had five or six plates of his own.

“Anything else I can get for you, Daniel?”

Daniel Finnegan appeared to be in his midfifties, with salt-and-pepper hair and a nearly white mustache. He wore a gray tweed suit from an era long past, though Alex wasn’t sure which one, complete with a hat and shiny black dress shoes.

He’d introduced himself as soon as he’d taken his seat, refusing to allow Alex to call him by anything but his first name. “We’re all family here,” he’d said when she tried to call him Mr. Finnegan.

Everyone had the same attitude, introducing themselves as if they were sitting at Alex’s kitchen table instead of her station at the EAT.

They talked to her as if they were sitting in her home, too, as if they were lifelong friends. She should feel bad about that, but every time she started to she merely. brought up the memory of her father’s last night in the mountains and all the guilt went away.

“I’ll take a bit more coffee when you get a chance,” Daniel said, tucking into his meal with a gusto at odds with his demeanor.

Alex made the rounds with the coffeepot, topping off the cups of all her customers and Cyn’s, too. She’d discovered years ago that to walk by someone who had only half a cup of coffee while you were carrying a full pot and not offer them any was a good way to get snarled at—and that was
before
she’d started waiting on werewolves.

Conversations ebbed and flowed. Alex learned quite a bit just by wandering past the tables filling those empty cups. Of course no one admitted to killing a
Jäger-Suchers
or snacking on an Inuit. Had she really thought they would?

“No,” she muttered. -

“No, what, dear?”

Alex had made her way back to Daniel and poured him a refill. “Just thinking aloud,” she said. “So, how long have’ you been a werewolf?”

Daniel, who had just taken a persnickety bite of bacon, choked. Then he began to cough. Alex began to worry, until the rest of the room’s lack of interest reminded her that while Daniel might be choking, he couldn’t choke
to
death.

Alex handed him a glass of water.

“Why would you ask that?” he managed eventually.

“Shouldn’t I?” Alex leaned over the divider that hid the workings of the restaurant from the dining room and set the pot on a burner. “Is that ‘not done’?” She made quotation marks in the air around the last two words.

Daniel sighed and took another sip of water, his sober chocolate-brown gaze contemplating her over the rim before he set it down. “All of us agreed to become like this, which meant we had one thing in common.”

“What’s that?”

“Either imminent death, or a very shitty life.”

Alex was glad she’d set the coffeepot ‘down or she just might have dropped it. Hearing
shitty
come out of Daniel Finnegan’s prim mouth was both shocking and slightly hilarious.

This time Alex choked, and Daniel offered her his water. She took it—no worries anymore in sharing cups, utensils, spit; germs wouldn’t hurt her—and took a swallow.

“Better?” Daniel dabbed at the pristine corners of his mouth with a napkin that did not appear to have been used at all. When Alex nodded, he went on. “We don’t ask one another how we came to be like this because we don’t want to remember what made us choose to leave behind our humanity. It’s never a pretty story.” His gentle gaze became shrewd. “Is yours?”

“No,” she said before she even thought about it.

Her life hadn’t been anything to write home about. Because she’d had no home to write to. No mother, no father, no family left at all. Her life had been death, or the distribution of it, with the certain knowledge that one day she’d find herself bleeding out from a werewolf attack just like her father.

If she’d been asked at that point—death or lycanthropy— would she have chosen this?

No. She knew what lay on the other side. Or at least she’d thought she knew.

Until she’d come here.

“You’re telling me no one chooses this life unless their other one sucks so badly they can’t wait to leave it?”

“Yes,” Daniel said.

“But.
.
. you like being a werewolf, don’t you?”

“I do.” He straightened his tie, adjusted his hat.

“Then why wouldn’t someone prefer to be one without the motivation of death or a really shitty life?”

He smiled at her as if she were a foolish child. To him, she probably was. “Humanity isn’t something to toss off lightly, Alex, there are things you give up that you can never get back. I hope Julian made that clear.”

Not so much,
she thought.

“What things?” she asked.

Daniel contemplated Alex for several seconds, and she feared he might press her on the issue of what Julian had made clear and what he had not. She really didn’t want to lie to Daniel anymore, but she couldn’t exactly tell him that Julian had not only neglected to give her instructions, he’d neglected to give her a choice.

Eventually Daniel glanced away with a sigh. “Pets.”

Alex blinked. “Did you say pets?”

“Dogs are afraid of us. Cats hate us.”

“Cats hate everyone,” she said.

“Not the person with the can opener,” he muttered. “Unless he isn’t a person.”

Huh.
Alex never would have taken Daniel for a cat lover.

“I think I can live without pets.” She’d done just fine so far.

“Children.”

What on earth would she do with one of those?

“Next,” she said.

Daniel turned to her and frowned, “I have to believe that whatever you left behind was sufficiently horrible that you chose to forfeit any chance of having a child in order to escape it.”

“Okay,” Alex said agreeably. So far she hadn’t heard anything she’d given up on this side of furry that she’d wanted in the first place.

“Peace of mind,” he said. “A pristine soul.” Except, maybe, for that.

“You better explain, Daniel.”

“You killed someone after you changed, yes?”

Alex didn’t think so, but still she nodded.

“It’s the price we pay for immortality.” Daniel laid his

hand atop hers, and Alex’s throat went thick. She must not be as over the choking fit as she’d thought. “It’s a very high price.”

“What if the guy—” Daniel lifted a brow. “—or girl you killed deserved to be dead?” A thousand times over.

“Ah, Julian’s method,” he murmured. “A very—”

Together they said, “—bad man.”

“You still killed a human being,” Daniel continued. “Your soul is no longer white.”

“It ain’t black, either.”

“Perhaps,” he said, though he didn’t sound convinced.

“You agonize over who you killed,” Alex murmured. “So you have no peace of mind.” If that was the case, it was going to be a very long eternity for Daniel.

“No,” he said. “Well, yes. I do agonize over the person who ensured my immortality, and I always will. But that isn’t the loss of peace I’m talking about.”

“What is?”

His eyes met hers and within them she saw a stark fear that gave her an unpleasant little jolt. “We’re hunted, Alex.”

“The
Jäger-Suchers.”

“We can never be completely at peace because there is always someone—” He took a breath. “—many, many some-ones, and they aren’t all
Jäger-Suchers,
who live and breathe to kill us.”

You’d think Alex would be happy to know that she’d struck fear into the hearts of werewolves everywhere.

Strangely, she wasn’t. She felt like Godzilla, stomping on all the little racing ant-people.

“You’re safe here,” she said soothingly.

His dark gaze seemed, to bore into hers. “Are we?”

Did he know?

That was impossible. If Daniel thought she was working for Edward, he certainly wouldn’t be this nice to her.

No one would be.

The reminder of the second reason that she was here, and what she was supposed to do once she had what she’d come for, made Alex’s stomach pitch and her skin crawl.

She had a sudden image of Edward Mandenauer and a posse of J-S agents descending on Barlowsville, shooting wolves like fish in a barrel.

Alex gave a mental wince. She should probably stop being so buddy-buddy with the enemy.

“You don’t think you’re safe?” she asked.

Daniel shrugged. “I know Edward.”

“Personally?” Alex’s voice lifted with surprise, and the older man smiled.

“Unfortunately, yes.”

Alex opened her mouth to ask for this story, forgetting her resolve to stop befriending every werewolf that sat in her station, and Daniel’s smile bloomed, happiness lighting his eyes and causing his slightly slumped shoulders to straighten. However, the expression wasn’t for Alex but for the young man who’d just walked through the door.

“Wow” was all Alex could manage before the new arrival’s gaze went to the counter, zeroed in on Daniel, and the same smile blossomed all over his face.

The guy was Calvin Klein model handsome—with feathered black hair, deep blue eyes, chiseled cheekbones, and a body that would make a werewolf jealous. Hell, she was.

He wore a blue, white, and black plaid flannel shirt over what appeared to be an extremely tight white wife beater. She had time to wish it was warm enough in here to take off the flannel before she was distracted by how he filled out his jeans.

He strode straight for Daniel, and the older man stood, waiting for him with obvious pleasure. Alex figured he was Daniel’s son, or maybe his grandson, produced before whatever tragedy had made Daniel choose to become a werewolf. Though what could have induced this specimen to become one, too—and hide himself away here in the Arctic when he could be strutting shirtless on a catwalk somewhere—Alex probably didn’t want to know. Then Hot Guy reached them, cupped Daniel’s jaw, and planted one right on his lips.

Alex blinked. Then she blinked again. Then she glanced around the coffee shop, but no one appeared as shocked by this as she was. She suspected they’d seen it before.

Eventually the new arrival stopped giving Daniel the tongue and lifted his head, meeting Alex’s eyes and winking. “Probably want to close that mouth, ma’am, ‘fore you catch flies.”

He had the most gorgeous southern accent, incongruous with the flannel shirt and heavy boots he wore, and the land of ice he’d just walked in from.

“I—uh-----yeah,” Alex returned. Why she’d thought all werewolves were straight she had no idea. In truth, she’d never thought much about werewolves beyond how she could kill them.

Daniel turned, stars in his eyes, goofy smile on his lips, and the young man reached for Daniel’s hand with a gesture Alex found very sweet. They stood there, the tall, muscular, youthful demigod and the short, skinny, dapper old gentleman, both grinning like idiots. Alex just hoped Daniel didn’t get his heart broken anytime soon. She didn’t want to be here to see it. She liked Daniel.

And since when did she like a werewolf?

“This is Josh,” Daniel said.

“Hi.” Alex offered her hand. “I’m—”

“Alex.” Josh placed his palm against hers. His was toasty warm, despite having just come in from the cold without gloves. “I know.” He shrugged, and his lips quirked engagingly. “We all do.”

“Right.” She’d met them in the town square while naked. That should bother her, but it didn’t. There were a lot of things that used to bother Alex that didn’t any longer.

“We’re off to the market,” Daniel said.

“We need to get some hamburger,” Josh informed him.

Alex hoped hamburger was actually hamburger around here.

“Don’t you have a job?” she blurted.

Daniel cast her a quick glance, and she realized she might as well have asked:
Is he your boy toy?

But Josh just laughed. “We own the movie theater. Don’t have to go in until later.”

“There’s a movie theater?”

“It’s a town. Why wouldn’t there be?”

Considering that the inhabitants of this town liked to

spend their evenings running on four paws beneath the light of the moon, Alex didn’t figure a theater would get much business.

“What do you show?” she asked.
“Wild Kingdom
kind of stuff?”

Josh’s forehead creased. “What?”

“Caribou? Rabbits? Whitetail? Maybe some zebra and antelope to jazz things up?”

Josh glanced at Daniel, who shrugged. “She thinks we show films of prey.”

Understanding spread over Josh’s face, quickly followed by confusion again~. “Why?”

“She’s still new?’ Daniel patted Josh’s arm. “She’ll catch up?’

“Catch up?” Alex echoed. “To the caribou?”

But the two were already headed for the door.

“See you tomorrow!” Daniel called as they left.

“You seem worried.” Rose had left her perch at the cash register to join Alex behind the counter.

“I hope he doesn’t get hurt.”

“Hurt?” Rose repeated, appearing genuinely puzzled.

“Young guy, older man. Usually doesn’t last?’

Rose laughed. “They’ve been together since 1783.”

“They— What?”

“You thought they met here?”

Alex wasn’t sure what she’d thought.

“You know’ Rose said quietly. “We’re people most of the time?’

Alex tilted her head, studying Rose’s serene face~ “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say?’