Wolf at the Door - By MaryJanice Davidson Page 0,2

Minnesota . . .

“Keep an eye on,” he said again. “Okay? Keep an eye on. That’s all. I’ve already arranged for you to rent a house in her neighborhood—”

“Rent?” She tried, but not very hard, to keep the sharp tone out of her voice. She hated renting. Land was the only thing they could not make more of; owning property was the way to go. It had been true a thousand years ago, it had been true five hundred years ago; it was simply that the masses teeming over the planet knew that, now.

Her cousin knew that, now.

“Rachael, I’m sorry.” He spread his hands and gave her a wry smile, no teeth. Werewolves were terrible at deceiving each other, and she and her cousin had grown up together. She knew he was sorry.

She didn’t care. Because she knew what he was sorry for, and it left her unmoved.

I’m sorry I’m sending you away from your home and everything you’ve known. I’m sorry you have to leave your lands. I’m sorry I’m making you uproot your life for my whim du jour. Sorry, sorry, so sorry, hey, you want to go play with my kids while I explain that to keep their way of life safe I have to uproot yours? No? Maybe another time.

Or maybe never.

“Rachael, your house here on the Cape will always be yours. It passed to you when your mother died; it will be yours, and your children’s, and theirs (assuming that part of the Cape doesn’t drop into the bay) forever.”

Well. That was something, at least. She restrained herself from sniffing.

“While you’re away we’ll take care of maintenance, send someone out to shovel and mow, get in there for some light cleaning every month or so, pay your utilities, keep the lights and phone going . . . things like that.”

“That’s the least of it,” she replied, and he nodded. It was. He was a billionaire. He could keep a thousand houses going with electricity and garbage service. It wouldn’t take up much of his time. It wouldn’t take up much of his assistant’s assistant’s time. “What if I can’t get established in Minnesota? All my clients are from around here, and I’m only licensed on the East Coast. Super-sneaky paranormal intrigue is one thing, but I have to earn a living. I have to be able to fund,” she finished, “my super-sneaky paranormal intrigue. Which isn’t covered by my CPA.”

Her licensing issue was a result of her mother’s insistence, years ago, before she died. Probably died. They’d never found the body, and if Rachael learned one thing from reading comic books, they gotta find the body.

Gah, she could actually hear the woman. Had for years . . . before she (probably) died. “Why limit yourself to Massachusetts? What, because most of the weres in this country are here? What, you’ll never need to help the family in, say, New Hampshire?”

Sound advice, but it hadn’t covered the Midwestern states, so right now, she couldn’t, either.

“We’ll get you licensed for Minnesota. Paperwork’s already in motion.”

“No doubt,” she said dryly.

He shrugged and kept his expression neutral. They were close kin, but he was still her Pack leader. Just because he had never, ever asked her to jump before did not mean he never would . . . or that she never would.

She studied him while he droned about licensing and software and boys who mow. It was funny how, the older he got, the lighter and denser he got. When they were kids, his hair was jet black, long, and curly. He started getting gold streaks in his teens, streaks that exactly matched his startling yellow eyes.

Now in his thirties, his hair was the dark gold of an autumn sunset; he remained one of the few men on the planet who could pull off a mullet. (Perhaps the only . . . ? But that could be mere Pack loyalty.)

The older he got, the less like one of them he looked. Funny how the humans never noticed. But then, as a species, they weren’t known for such things.

Lucky for us.

“. . . and your laptop goes everywhere. What’s the difference between a living room ten blocks from here and a living room in a rented house in St. Paul?”

Oh, let’s see. Ambience, lighting, wallpaper, smell, windows, carpeting . . .

“Same laptop, same software, right? You’ve been telling me for years you hardly have to visit your clients face-to-face anymore.”

And now to pay the price for candor.

“You already get