Page 5 of Wolf Lost

“Two guys chased him in here. They were shady little ankle-biters, so I ran them off.” It was his own code term for other werewolves, and Asher hated it a little. But he also loved Dez and didn’t complain. Not often, anyway.

Dez stood and almost toppled over when his calf cramped. He hunched over it, breathing hard and mentally running through his extensive vocabulary of expletives in three languages. It was childish, sure, but it was a good distraction from how fucking much his leg hurt.

He looked up at where Ash was leaning Sawyer against a wall and asked, through clenched teeth, “He gonna be okay?”

Asher nodded. “He’ll be fine. It looks like he hasn’t eaten in a while. That’ll do crummy things to”—he glanced at the realtor and back at Dez fast—“your average ankle-biter. Faster than other people.”

The realtor cleared his throat. “Maybe we should call the police?”

“What the hell for?” Dez asked, pushing himself upright and clenching his jaw against the pain. “Sawyer didn’t do anything wrong, and the jokers who were harassing him are long gone.” He pretended not to notice when Gavin raised an eyebrow at him. So Dez wasn’t usually one to learn the names of strangers, let alone defend them, so what? That didn’t mean he wasn’t allowed.

The realtor—Dave? Dan?—had a sour look on his face as he held up the building keys. “This is private property, and it’s closed. He can’t just wander in.”

Dez narrowed his eyes at the little man and reached back to grab his cane. “Then he’s with us. And you brought us here to sell us a building.”

Predictably, that perked the guy right up. “So have we found a winner?”

Asher and Dez both looked to Gavin, who was leaning against the granite front counter looking thoughtful. “Asher says the kitchen’s going to need some renovation, and new appliances. Those are from the seventies?”

“It was a mom-and-pop shop. Everything was running right up until the owners passed away,” the realtor said, as though that would change Gavin’s mind about the age of the ovens. “The heirs say everything is functional.”

Gavin gave the guy a thoroughly unimpressed look. “Yeah, I’m sure they don’t have a vested interest in saying that. Do they even live in town? Have they been inside? Tested the ovens?”

The way the man’s gaze shifted away said it all. “It’s prime real estate. Someone is going to buy this shop. It’s practically smack in the middle of downtown Kismet, and there isn’t another coffee shop within a mile.”

Asher started to open his mouth, no doubt to express shock at the lack of Starbucks, but Gavin shot a quelling glance in his direction, so he went back to hovering over Sawyer worriedly.

“And yet it’s been on the market for almost six months,” Gavin said, conversationally. Dez recognized that tone all too well. It said Gavin knew something, or at least suspected, and he was about to go in for the kill.

“The, uh, ovensareold, of course.” The realtor shifted his shoulders in discomfort, and like a nervous cartoon character, reached up to adjust his collar.

There was a loud creak, and a feminine voice said, “Some people are worried it might be haunted.”

“Kareni,” the realtor hissed. “I’m with prospective buyers. And that door is supposed to be locked!” The door in question was in front of the counter, and Dez hadn’t noticed it before. Was it to another part of the shop?

The woman on the other side of the door shrugged completely unapologetically. She looked to be in her fifties, a little plump, with gray hair piled into a bun on top of her head and reading glasses pushed halfway down her nose. “I read a book on lockpicking. Had to test it out somehow.” She looked around the room at all of them, pausing on Sawyer. “Is he okay?”

“He’ll be fine, ma’am,” Asher told her. “We’re just going to get him some food and rest.”

“And a coat, I hope,” she added.

“And a coat,” Asher agreed.

Gavin cleared his throat, looking at the realtor.

The man crumpled a little, shoulders falling. “This is Kareni Noble. She owns the bookstore next door.” He waved in her direction, or possibly past her to her shop.

She smiled brightly at them and motioned behind herself. “When the Kozlowskis ran the bakery, we always kept the door open.”

Gavin rounded the counter and looked into the bookstore. “Sounds nice. Daryl was about to tell us why no one wants to buy the shop. Haunted, you said?”

“Youcan’tbe takingthatseriously,” the realtor said, rolling his eyes. “Just because the Kozlowskis died here doesn’t mean that ghosts are real. And the gas leak has been fixed.”

As though synchronized, all three of them took a deep breath, scenting the air. There wasn’t a trace of the rotten egg scent added to natural gas.

The realtor muttered something about how everyone did that, and sighed deeply. “The building is sound. The leak is gone. There’s even a natural gas detector now.” He flung his hand up to indicate a little white square high on the wall.

Kareni nodded sadly. “There’s one on my side too. If I hadn’t smelled the bread burning when I got here that morning, I might not have realized what was going on. I might have thought they were working on the sewer outside or something. I wish I’d noticed sooner, or done something, or...” She looked at the floor and sighed.

---