Page 5

“Orange.”

“Obviously,” Mirelle agreed, and the knot in her chest loosened another fraction.

The man in the square appeared as she explained Gerri’s call. Through the wide front window, on the far side near the vendor stalls. Dark-haired. Pale. Not moving through the crowd — occupying his spot as he had chosen it. Eyes on her table. Hers specifically. Taking stock. When she met his eyes from that distance, they returned a warmth that was not temperature. Like hearing your name in a voice you had never agreed to recognize. Cold moved through her. Different from the morning’s loneliness, something sharper.

I know that feeling. Where do I know —

“Mirelle.” She turned.

Tor’s attention was on her — all of it, no performance.

“Someone in the square,” she said. “He’s staring at the café. At me, I think.” She turned back. The spot by the vendor stalls was empty — ordinary morning foot traffic, a woman with a stroller, and the chandler propping open his door.

“He’s gone.”

“What did he look like?”

“Pale. Dark hair. His eyes —” She shook her head. “Not rude. Wrong. Like the attention had weight he hadn’t earned.”

Tor and Drayce traded another glance, faster and sharper this time. They’d both spotted the same thing. “Tell me if you see him again.” Low and certain from Tor. Not a request.

“I’ll log it,” Bexley said, already writing.

Mirelle leaned over. “Obviously in orange?”

Bexley raised her eyes. “In orange.” She recapped the pen. Done.

The raccoon knocked another cork off the counter. Caught it in one luminous paw. Set it back down in a new location. “That is strategy,” Pike announced. “It has a plan. I respect the plan.” Tor rolled his eyes. “Do not encourage it.”

“I’m not encouraging; I am observing. Two different things entirely.”

Mirelle glanced at Pike. Then at Tor. Tor had already lost this argument and appeared to have made peace with that. Her gaze swept the table. Valene, in territorial negotiations with the raccoon. Bexley on her eighth pen. Fiora trying to name the other creatures. Garnet, steady and calm, saying nothing because she never had to. And Tor, still by the wall, whose gaze kept finding hers with a frequency she was tracking.

Stop noticing that.

The raccoon knocked over the cork again. Mirelle’s three small creatures turned from the windowsill in unison and regarded Tor with enormous, luminous eyes. “We’re not keeping it,” he told the creatures staring at him.

Three small, glowing faces made their position clear.

“I think,” Mirelle said into her coffee, “that’s going to be a longer conversation than you’re planning for.” She tilted her mug higher to hide a smug grin that begged to stretch from ear to ear.

The raccoon tipped another cork off the counter. Valene pointed at it. “Security deposit. I mean it.” The raccoon selected a second cork.

I am in so much trouble.

For the first time since Cara’s car disappeared around the corner at the end of the street, she was not thinking about her feelings. Especially the glowing ones.

TWO

TOR

The alert board turned gold-white shortly before ten. Founding-line summoning magic: four summons at once, from a single source, and the reading was still climbing. He pulled the residential cross-reference. Found the address. Found the name.

Mirelle Ainsley.

His wolf — which paced its usual restless circuit in the back of his awareness whenever the wards were unsettled, which lately meant always — stopped, dropped everything, and went utterly still. Then it said one thing, the way it always said things, as if it had already decided:

Mate.