Page 8 of Way of the Wolf

When I returned to my apartment, I went to the medicine cabinet in my bathroom and pulled out a vial without a label. It was almost empty of the red liquid that I consumed monthly. Not a full dose.

I fished in the drawers by the sink, believing I had another full vial. But I didn’t find it. A jolt of apprehension jarred me. As today’s events had driven home, I needed to take the potion soon. A full dose.

My heritage had almost risen up in the parking lot. Battle always tempted the wolf to come, and it didn’t help that the full moon was only a few days away.

At least, with both of my boys gone from home now, changing and losing my humanity to my wolf half might not turn disastrous. But there were plenty of other people around that I could hurt. I always worried about that. Long ago, that had happened—morethan hurting someone had happened—and that devastating night had never stopped haunting me.

“Good thing my dealer lives in the complex.” I put the almost-empty vial back into the medicine cabinet and headed for the door, trying not to beat myself up for letting my supply run low.

Life had been busy that summer with renovations to a lot of the units, along with numerous turns and placements of new tenants. In my personal life, there had been Austin’s graduation and seeing him off to the Air Force.

Cameron had visited for a while too, but he hadn’t stayed long. He’d curled his lip at the idea of sleeping in his old room, the one he’d shared with his brother all through school. As I’d learned, he still hadn’t forgiven me for not having the money to send him to college two years earlier, so he’d mostly come to see Austin.

What was that old saying? That it was easy to love one’s children but not always easy to like them?

I didn’t blame Cameron that much for his attitude though. My ex had always promised the boys that there would be a college fund for them. And, for a long time, therehadbeen. But Chad had emptied it before leaving the country—and abandoning me to figure out how to pay off a car loan and credit card debt on my modest income.

On the one hand, I’d always had free rent at the complex, so that was a plus. But, on the other, I didn’t earn much, and the Seattle area was an expensive place to live, especially with teenage boys with enormous appetites. It had taken selling the car and two years of scrimping to scrape my way out of debt. I’d then proudly paid for my twenty-year-old pickup—an ugly hooptie, as a friend called it—with cash.

Even though I was doing better now, it was hard not to loathe my ex. He’d left without signing the divorce paperwork—fortunately, Washington didn’t require that from both parties—or showing up for the legal stuff that had gone along with our parting. When he’d briefly returned a year ago, I’d lost my temper and thrown him—and all his belongings—out of the apartment and changed the locks. That had been because, among other things, I’d caught him posting photos on an account he didn’t think I knew about, showing him in tropical places with drinks in hand and bikini-clad women balanced in his lap. That account and those photos had dated back to well before our divorce.

“Asshole,” I grumbled as I padded along the familiar lit walkways of the complex, nodding at tenants strolling the grounds with their dogs.

Though I was happy to curse Chad’s memory and hope that he had developed debilitating crotch rot, I blamed myself for not twigging to what a jerk he was sooner. For all I knew, his supposed traveling software sales job had been a farce from the beginning. Iwasn’t that sure where he’d gotten the money that he hadcontributed, however sporadically, to our household finances over the years.

I should have dug deeper into his fishy stories earlier, but I’d been reluctant to rock the boat. The boys had loved him. They probably still did.

When I reached the last apartment in a building in the back of the complex, I pulled out an envelope labeled DRUGSTORE that I’d grabbed from my purse. The monthly allotment of cash inside was for buying things like shampoo, toothpaste, hair dye, and… werewolf-sublimation potions.

Ready to pay, I knocked three times and then two times. Beatrice, a retired nurse and hobbyist alchemist with ties to the Seattle witch community, paid her rent in lump sums six months in advance and didn’t care to be disturbed. But she was usually home and always answered the door for clients who knew how to knock properly.

Or so I thought. The windows were dark, and I didn’t get an answer.

Where might my retired witch have gone after dark? It was hard to imagine quirky Beatrice playing bridge or pickleball at the senior center.

I knocked again, my earlier anxiety returning, the fear I’d felt in the bathroom after realizing I didn’t have more doses. The night sky drew my eye, the cloud cover thin enough to make out the silvery glow of the moon through it. A moon that would be, as I’d noted earlier, full soon. If I didn’t have another dose before then, would I change? For the first time in decades?

“It’s not that big of a deal,” I tried to tell myself.

Before I’d turned twenty, I’d changed frequently, going hunting with the pack, reveling in the chase, enjoying the flesh of a fresh kill. I’d loved being a wolf and welcomed the magic that sang in my blood.

Heat flushed me at the memories that washed over me, not only of those hunts but of how glorious it had been to be what I’d been born to be. Magical. Strong. Proud. Fearsome. It had been joyous.

Until the werewolf that I’d loved had died. UntilI’dkilled him.

My hand shook as I raised it to knock again, desperation making the thumps hard. But Beatrice wasn’t home. There wasn’t any point in continuing to knock.

My hand lowered to the knob, and temptation arose. I could check to see if she’d left the door open. Even if she hadn’t, I had the master key for all the apartments. I could go in, find her stash of potions, and leave the cash payment, the same amount I’d been paying her these past ten years.

It wasn’t breaking and entering when you were the property manager and had a key, right?

I snorted, knowing better. And yet…

I tried the knob. It wasn’t locked.

As I hesitated, torn between needing that potion and not wanting to abuse the trust my tenants and employers put in me, I sensed something. Was someone watching me?

I glanced around, my eyes probing the shadows between the lamps that brightened the walkways. Nobody was in sight, neither near the building nor on the manicured grounds surrounding it, but I eyed the woods that edged the property. Might Duncan be out there? Watching me like a stalker?

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