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  I thought Tindall was starting to warm up to me until he mentioned talking to the local alpha. From what I'd read, alpha werewolves could be intimidating creatures and were notorious for stonewalling law enforcement. Most likely, this alpha would be even less cooperative than Valentino and want to handle the whole situation within the confines of the pack. Putting any pressure on the leader of the pack probably wasn't going to do anything other than making him less cooperative.

  I agreed to go with Tindall, and we walked the two blocks down the street to a sandwich shop. A sign in the window advertised that they sold lotto tickets. Tindall grumbled something about his partner and we went on inside.

  Sure enough, there was only one other customer in the tiny diner, and he was sitting in a booth with a pile of scratch cards, going to town and scratching away at them with sweat racing down his forehead. He was so invested in his lottery scratch-off that he didn't even notice Tindall and I approach until Tindall's shadow fell over him.

  He smiled a cheeky smile and raised his head, pushing his chubby cheeks back to form dimples. “Heya, Hoss.”

  I was impressed. Tindall held onto his scowl through the introductions. “Judah Black, this is Morris Quincy, my partner. Quincy, this is Special Agent Black, BSI.”

  Quincy's grin only widened, and he lifted his white plastic cowboy hat. “Howdy,” he offered in earnest. “My, ain't you a sight for sore eyes. The last woman BSI agent they had down here—” He broke his statement off when Tindall cleared his throat. “Anyway, you don't want to hear about that. Come on. Sit down. Join me for a spell. You want coffee? A Coke? They got a mean lemonade.”

  The waitress, a sluggish woman with sagging cheeks and too much makeup, came over as if she were the one asking what we wanted. “Water for me,” I said. “And do you have a menu?”

  Her lip curled upward, and not in the amused way. “Special of the day is the meatloaf. Comes with potato skins.”

  “I guess that's what I'm having then.”

  “How about you, Detective? The usual?”

  “Yeah, Laura. And a Coke with ice, will you? It's ten degrees hotter than Hell outside.”

  She turned and yelled the order back to the kitchen without leaving tableside before going to go see about getting us some drinks.

  Once the ringing in my ears stopped, I pulled out the papers I'd managed to print in the station and started reading over them while Quincy and Tindall struck up a conversation about the weather. There wasn't a lot in Elias's file beyond what I didn't already know. He'd been picked up a couple of times for drug offenses and did time in California for an assault. BSI tagged him about three years ago when he initially filed for residency there in Paint Rock. His application was approved, but it looked like he was still waiting on housing to become available. All in all, his file read more like he was a poor kid crying out for help and attention rather than the lost and violence-prone addict everyone wanted to believe he was. If someone would have cared a little more, done a little more, Elias might still be alive.

  Valentino's sheet read more like a success story. Like Tindall said, he'd been in trouble in the past, but the only recent thing was a year old. He owned a garage and posted a respectable yearly income. He'd also gone through all the proper channels to file for marriage and housing. Somehow, while Elias got hung up in the system, Valentino sailed straight through on every application but one. I squinted my eyes and re-read the title of his denied application two more times before I spoke out loud. “Does Valentino have a kid?”

  Quincy and Tindall's conversation halted. The two of them locked eyes, and Tindall paused in bringing his cup to his mouth. “Why? That important?”

  “It would be a major violation,” I said, flipping through a few more pages in his file. “BSI denied him and his wife a breeding permit almost two years ago, and I've got no record of a child in the house.”

  “Then there's no child in the house,” Tindall said, taking a drink. “Simple as that.”

  “According to police station records, there are four people living in that house: Valentino, Nina, Elias, and an unnamed minor.”

  Tindall was silent.

  Quincy tapped his fingers on a tall, sweating glass of sweet tea. “Darlin',” he drawled, “sometimes what's good for the gander ain't so good for the goose, you know? Best forget you read that part. I'm sure it's a mistake.”

  I closed the file folder and gave Quincy a good, hard stare. “I don't like being lied to. Whether you and Valentino like it or not, I'm going to search that house. Now, I'd like to know what I'm walking into and I'd like to know you guys have my back. If you don't, then say so, and I won't waste my time.”

  “Black,” Tindall said with a sigh.

  “I'm not the bad guy,” I continued. “I'm on your side. I'm not here to punish people for living their lives, but things have got to be done through the proper channels. There's more at risk than your pensions, detectives.”

  “Black!”

  “I'm not going to sit here and pretend I'm okay with being jerked around.” I stood up.

  “Sit down, fool.” Tindall stood and pushed down on my shoulder, forcing me back into my seat. “That's not how it is. You got to realize this isn't like everywhere else, Black. Rules get bent, not because we don't care. It's the opposite. We do care. We don't have the time to go chasing down every little violation. We have to pick our battles to do what's right.”

  “You call shoving a body in the trunk of a car doing what's right? Or how about one of the department's lead detectives spending half his shift doing scratch-offs at a diner? Is that the kind of prioritizing this department has?” I stood, and again, Tindall urged me to sit back down.

  “No,” I said, tossing a ten on the table to pay for my uneaten lunch. “A man is dead, Detectives, and our leads are getting colder by the minute. Let's get out there and work them.”

  Tindall and Quincy looked at each other before Tindall cursed, grabbed his hat, and stood. “We'd better get going.”

  “Can we stop so I can cash in my scratch-offs?” Quincy inquired, gathering them all up and slipping a rubber band over them. “I'd be much obliged.”

  “Do that on your own time,” Tindall grumbled and grabbed his hat. “And wipe that mustard off your tie. Try to look presentable, Quincy.”

  “Yessah,” answered Quincy and used spit and a napkin to smear the stain around so that it was only slightly more noticeable.

  “Black,” said Tindall. “Your lead. Where are we going?”

  I thought for a minute. “Let's go meet this alpha.”

  “Your wish is my command,” said Tindall dryly, and we walked out of the restaurant.

  Ten minutes later, we pulled into the parking lot of a pawn shop with a big, wooden Indian out front. Signs in barred up windows advertised that the shop paid top dollar for unwanted gold and silver. A dust-covered security camera blinked in the corner of the building facing the lot. I stared at it, wondering if the alpha was staring back at me through a screen. For a minute, I thought about pulling my trusty nine-millimeter Beretta PX4 Storm from the glove compartment of my car and taking it with me. As a BSI agent, I carried only the standard silver-and-iron alloy bullets. They wouldn't stop a werewolf, not with one or two shots, but they would slow one down.

  Alpha werewolves were supposed to be aggressive, difficult to deal with, and, above all, approached with caution. Still, if I walked into his territory carrying a weapon, I'd look like I was there to pick a fight.

  I left the gun in the car and climbed out to greet Tindall and Quincy. “How do you want to handle this?” I asked them.

  Tindall walked on by, a stack of smoke trailing above his head. Quincy paused to offer me a pleasant grin. “Watch and learn, sistah,” he said. “Will you take a word of advice, Agent Black?”

  “If it's free and to the point.”

  “People in this town aren't who they seem. This is a city full of cheats and liars that'll take your last dime and offer to sell it back to
you. Now, this place we're about to go into? It took me and Tindall months to convince the supernaturals in this town to talk to us. After three years, most of them still don't trust us. This guy we're going to go see, he'll talk, but he ain't one of them interested in your money, especially since you're a woman. He's a rough customer. You let me and Tindall do the talking, and you stand back and observe. You might learn a thing or two.”

  I smiled a sweet smile at Quincy, even though what I really wanted to do was punch him. He wasn't the first detective to question my abilities because I was a woman, and he wouldn't be the last. It's the kind of thing you get used to in my position, even though you never learn to live with it. Truth was, all it ever did for me was make me more determined to prove everyone wrong.

  “I'll keep that in mind,” I said and took the lead.

  Tindall shifted his hat on his head and started down the sidewalk in front of the building. He stopped in front of one of those security systems that required you to buzz yourself in, but the lock clicked open before anyone even pressed the buzzer. Tindall stepped aside.

  Quincy grabbed the door and held it open for me. “Ladies first,” he insisted.

  I wasn't two feet inside the door before I was facing down the business end of a twelve-gauge shotgun. The man behind it was probably old enough to be my grandpa, with miles of wrinkles on his face. The sun-bronzed, leathery skin clung tight to his bare arms, betraying only a slight loss of muscle tone with age. Old ink, paled by time, crawled up his arms in a kaleidoscope of images, to hide beneath the sleeveless scrap of the Rolling Stones t-shirt he wore.

  I froze in front of the gun, struck more by the man holding it than the presence of the weapon itself. That wasn't the first time I'd had a gun in my face, though it was the closest I'd ever been to having my brains blown out for no good reason.

  Everyone's always talking about this so-called fight-or-flight reflex as if those were your only two options when facing a threat. Either you could run, or you could turn and fight. That's not true. There's a third possibility: you stand toe-to-toe with the threat, and out of either stubbornness or stupidity, you refuse to engage. That was my reaction to having the shotgun dropped in front of my nose. I stared down the barrel at the man behind the gun, trying to match the firmness of his glare with my own.

  A clock somewhere in the shop ticked away the seconds for what seemed like an eternity before the old man grunted and lifted the gun. “Who's this?” The question was directed at one of the detectives beside me.

  “BSI,” came Tindall's quick answer. “I told you I'd swing her by.”

  “You told me to expect an agent, yes. You never said it was a she.”

  I let out a sigh and redirected my eyes to the ceiling.

  “Make light of it if you want, girl, but it still matters here. Change is slow to come, especially among those betrayed by change in the past.” He balanced the gun on his shoulder and extended one hand toward me. “Chanter Silvermoon.”

  “You always greet people with a gun in the face, Chanter?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.” He grinned a toothy grin and tossed the gun to me.

  I caught it awkwardly and opened it to find it was empty. Son of a bitch.

  “I find that the quickest, most accurate measure of a man is to put him face-to-face with his own mortality and see how he reacts. Cowards flee. Fools fight. Wise men sidestep the barrel altogether.” He turned and walked back behind a glass display of swords and daggers. “But it's more than how folks react to the threat of death. There's something that happens in their face. The veil falls away for a moment, and a trained eye can see the truth that lies beneath.”

  I gave a half-laugh. “What are you, some kind of fortune-teller?”

  Chanter reached under the counter and brought out a few boxes, searching through them. “If it's fortunes you want, you're in the wrong place, girl. There's no magick in it. It's simple attention. Most people these days look without seeing, listen without hearing, and speak without words. People are lost. Everybody's looking for something. The sad thing is most of them don't even know what. You, for example. You may think you know what you want, how to cure what ails you, but you feed your wounds poison. All it does is dull your spirit to the truth.”

  I opened my mouth to object to what he was saying, but my throat became tight when we made eye contact. The thought I'd been holding in my head fluttered away, leaving behind nothing but the pounding of my blood in my ears. I felt small and weak, but more than that, I was aware of all my flaws and weaknesses all at once. Overcome by an urge I couldn't explain, I had to lower my eyes away from him to make my brain work again.

  “Cut the mystic talk, chief,” said Tindall going up to the counter. “You know why we're here.”

  Chanter dropped his head and went back to sorting through his boxes. “Bullets? Knives? Perhaps a good rope is more your style, detective, given your history of hanging my people out to dry.”

  Tindall put his hands down on the counter hard enough to make the box Chanter was sorting through jump a few centimeters. If he was trying to look intimidating, it didn't work. Chanter didn't even spare him a glance up. “One of your werewolves was found dead in the laundromat this morning.”

  Chanter pulled a few smaller boxes out of the big box and placed them on the counter. “Issue me a citation, and I will pay it when I'm able. Arrest me if you have a warrant to do so. Otherwise, get the hell out, Tindall.” He looked up. When he did, I was sure I caught a strange, golden halo around the brown of his eyes.

  Tindall pushed away from the display case angrily. “Tell me what you know about Elias Garcia.”

  “I've nothing to say to you,” said Chanter calmly.

  “Then say this to your pack, Chanter.” Tindall leaned across the display case, dangerously close to Chanter's face. “You tell them to cooperate with our investigation. It'll make things easier for all of us.”

  Chanter let out a growl that shook the glass cases. “I've asked you twice now to leave. I won't ask again.”

  “Come on; let's go, Black. This fool's not going to listen to reason.” Tindall started for the door. Quincy opened the door for Tindall and grinned when his partner glared at him.

  I started to follow Tindall out but halted when Chanter spoke again. “Not you. You will stay.”

  I turned around, but only after swallowing the lump in my throat. “Me?”

  “Yes, you.”

  “Good luck,” Tindall muttered from the door. “You're going to need it.” The electronic bell above the door chimed when the door closed behind him.

  Chapter Five

  At first, Chanter stood behind the counter, leafing through whatever was in his box. I wandered the sales floor, the carpet muffling my footfalls and making me uneasy. It was a different uneasiness from what I'd felt standing in the room with Valentino. There, I'd felt like prey being stalked. Here, I felt more like a child sent to my room to contemplate what I'd done wrong. The silence between Chanter and I filled up with questions I didn't know how to ask.

  There wasn't anything much to look at on the shelves. He had the kinds of merchandise you'd expect to find: guns, jewelry, musical instruments, memorabilia, electronics... Bits and pieces of lives and memories for sale. I wondered how many of those memories were his and how many he had on loan from the other desperate folk of Paint Rock. It made me want to dislike him. Try as I might, the only thing I could find to like about him was his candor. I mean, it wasn't like I could trust him. Chanter was as shifty as, well, a werewolf.

  First of all, there was the name. I wasn't sure if it was a nickname or his real name, but one thing was for sure. You don't get a name like Chanter so you can go do great things like run pawn shops on a supernatural reservation. His eyes, and the power they held over me, were a decent indication of his power. When we'd met gazes earlier, I'd felt as if we’d waged a battle, wrestling over which one of us was going to come out of that look on top. If it was a battle, it was one of will, and I
had clearly lost.

  More importantly, Chanter had an amazing presence. Presence is something that most folks didn’t put too much stock in, even though it’s one of their most important assets. It has a lot of names, most of them vague because language fails to capture that extra something that is presence. Presence is a mix between confidence and comfort, power and approachability. It’s the difference between getting hired or fired and getting promoted or passed over, subtle yet unmistakable.

  Chanter had it, and he had it in droves. When he spoke, I couldn't help but listen and when he moved, even doing simple things like sorting through his stock, I paid attention. His every move seemed important. He'd captured my attention and held it against my will.

  I didn't like it, not one bit.

  At length, I got tired of waiting for him to say something and decided to pose a question of my own. “So, did you want me to stay for a reason?”

  “I'm deciding,” he offered quietly.

  “On what?”

  “On you.” He glanced up casually and then back down. “I smell another wolf on you.”

  “Well, I spoke with Valentino this morning, and I was in the room while Dr. Ramis was examining Elias. I'm also the one who found him.”

  “I smell a boy,” he said without looking up. The blood in my chest frosted. “Adolescent. No, prepubescent but close. Eleven, maybe twelve. You must live in very close contact with him. You reek of his lack of discipline. A son, perhaps?”

  I took two steps closer to Chanter at a pace faster than he liked, evidenced by the warning glare he shot me. I didn't care. Not even a hungry tiger could get between me and my son's well-being. “Don't you dare speak about my son,” I said, dropping my tone a few octaves. “Who and what he is has no bearing here.”

  “It has plenty of bearing. You haven't registered him with BSI, or else I would have been notified of his presence through other channels, which can only mean one thing. You're either stupid or you're not as blind as you'd like everyone to think you are.”