Tigers I and II: Germany's Most Feared Tanks of World War II
Author: David Doyle
Date: 2019-11-28 00:00:00+00:00
Description: Germany's Tiger tank, whether in the form of the Tiger I or later Tiger II (King Tiger), was the most feared tank of WWII. Despite production totaling fewer than 2,000 units, its heavy armor, its power, and perhaps the even more powerful Nazi propaganda machine ensured that the Tiger remains well known over seven decades after last being on the battlefield. Through more than 175 photos, this volume chronicles the design, development, and deployment of this famed German tank. Full-color photographs of rare surviving examples from around the globe augment carefully selected war-era photos in bri
Publisher: Schiffer Publishing, Ltd.

SWITCHBACK

A New Adult Werewolf  and Paranormal Romance

Knightsbridge Canyon Series Book 1

by

Drew VanDyke
and

David VanDyke

© Copyright 2013 by the authors. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means whatsoever (electronic, mechanical or otherwise) without prior written permission and consent from the author. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, businesses and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Table of Contents

Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue

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Prologue

Dear Diary:

Life is really a pain in the butt right now.

Now, before you start going off on me, let me tell you that this pain is not metaphorical. It’s not merely because I’ve been relegated to staying with my identical twin sister back in our hometown of Knightsbridge, California, for the first time in years, or having to figure out how I feel about my old boyfriend Will.

No, this pain is due to some overenthusiastic animal control officer with a dart gun, plus poor adherence to Steam Room Sterilization and Sanitization Techniques by an unnamed resort and spa somewhere near the border of Idaho and Washington State.

So, armed with a secret I can’t tell my other half and a chunk taken out of my derriere that hurts like a son of a bitch, I’m playing invalid to my own twin version of holiday misery.

Let’s just hope we make it to Christmas alive.

Chapter 1

“Ashlee Scott! Get that ruler away from your rear end!” My usually sweetness-and-light twin sister Amber grabbed it out of my hand before I could take care of the itch I’d been dealing with all day.

“Amber, you give me back that ruler or so help me…”

“What? Like you’re gonna take me? In your condition?” Amber smiled and turned to her partner Elle, who was planted on the plush and comfy davenport, remote control in hand, trying to catch up on NFL scores. Elle was in her late thirties, which kinda made Amber a trophy chick, I guess. Booby prize, maybe?

“Honey?” My twin flashed Elle that dazzling Scott smile.

“Oh no, you don’t,” Elle wryly dribbled from the side of her mouth without taking her eyes from the split screen ESPN channel. “I am not falling for that one again.”

Amber furrowed her brow, frustrated for the moment.

“Amb, don’t frown,” I said, mock-sweet. “You’ll need to get Botox before you’re thirty.”

My sister turned to me with a flip of the bob she had going this week and sighed. “And you need to keep all sharp objects away from your rear. At least until that butt wound…”

“Bullet wound!” I interrupted.

“Fine. Bullet wound. Only you would manage to get shot in the ass by a hunter’s ricochet, hiking around in God-Knows-Where, Idaho.”

That was my story, anyway.

My twin tossed her head again and rolled her eyes. “Until that heals…” She turned to J.R., her five-year-old son, my nephew, and tickled him.

Seriously, who names their kid after a nighttime soap opera character from the eighties? Okay, it was short for John Robert, but still. At least it wasn’t “Junior.”

“We’re locking up the cutlery until your Aunt Ashlee is all healed up,” Amber said. J.R. giggled as my sister tickled him. Then Elle decided to join in on the fun and took playful swats at him with the rolled-up sports section while he shrieked in fun.

I, on the other hand, seized the moment’s distraction to drag myself painfully upstairs to my room – well, the guest bedroom I occupied – while the girls got domestic. Yuck. Sometimes being around the Gordon-Scotts was so sugary I thought I’d develop a whole mouthful of cavities.

I tried to sit on the bed, but having to favor one cheek didn’t make things easy, so I rolled over and lay on my stomach. Besides, it still itched like crazy…and then came a knock at the door.

“Hey, Sis.” Amber poked her head in. “You know, the sooner you heal up, the sooner you can be back doing what you love to do.”

I cocked my head, threw back my own Jennifer Aniston locks, the ones that somehow managed to put Amber’s to shame despite sharing a gene set, and said, faux-sweetly, “Don’t worry. I’ll be out of your hair before you know it.”

Amber’s eyes narrowed. I knew she’d get the dig. She wasn’t happy with her latest stylist and it took time for her hair to grow out. We both used to have the same length tresses, but this year she’d opted for what was supposed to be a hot shoulder-length bob, and it just wasn’t quite working the way she wanted it to.

Trying to recover, she turned and tossed over her shoulder, “Yes, well. Remember what I always say.” She looked back just as I was pushing the door closed with my foot, which in turn pressed on her retreating Bebe-branded ass.

“I know, I know. Guests are like fish and family.” I smiled back at her.

We finished in unison, “They both stink after three days.”

“Remember what else they say?” I yelled as she retreated down the hall.

“What’s that?” my sister yelled back.

“You can pick your nose, but you can’t pick your family.”

“That makes no freaking sense. Kleenex!”

Sigh. By the time I get out of here, I’ll probably be ripe as rotten fruit and smell just as bad. So, tell me, God, what the hell did I do to deserve this?

No answer.

Chapter 2

There comes a time in every girl’s day when she’s just gotta sit down and scratch. Make that in every bitch’s day, when she’s just gotta…even if her ass hurts like a sonofabitch. I’ll spare you the details.

See, I’m a werewolf.

Scratch that. No, it’s not supposed to be a pun. Never mind. Okay, strike that. I’m technically a lupine. A lycanthrope, some might say.

I had researched the subject after my first change, and gorged myself on as many werewolf tales as I could get my hands on. In my favorite, the goddess Hera was supposed to have made twin girls into wolves to protect a Thracian poet as he wandered the Earth spouting prophecy and oracles to the masses, until they fell prey to the wiles of Romulus and Remus. Something like that anyway. Hey, I’m not a big reader of the classics.

Well, there isn’t any Thracian poet in my life, and the only oracle I consult is my daily horoscope when I want an uneasy laugh, and I’m sure not wandering the Earth as much as I’d like to right now. No, the closest thing to any Thracian poet I know is my editor, and he’s not too happy with me lately as my galleys keep coming back redlined with chunks of text missing.

See, I’m a travel writer. Ashlee Marie Scott by name and pen. Twenty-nevermind years old, and terminally single according to my dead mother. Unlike, that is, my vacuous sister Amber Michelle, who got married young and had a son before deciding she wanted to bat for the other team. I might have that out of order, but you get the idea. They divorced and then she fell in love with a lesbian chief-of-police-turned-high-powered-city-attorney. Makes her, well, whatever. In love, I guess. I wouldn’t know. Never really been. Not for sure.

I, on the other hand, specialize in luxury health spas of the high seas and high mountains, the cities and the coasts. My latest find had me a third-world country, also known as Idaho, with a wicked staph infection and an HMO surgical team determined to turn a pound of flesh into an ounce of cure. Thus, as I mentioned before, I am now grounded, stuck in my hometown of Knightsbridge, California, staying with my sister, her partner and my five-year-old nephew in a house that could be photographed at any time of the night or day for Good Housekeeping.

Not my idea of comfortable living: a place for everything and everything in its place. I’m more the bra-on-the-doorknob kind of girl, at my loft back in the City.

Did I tell you that I hate my sister even while loving her? No, really I do. She’s perfect. Even my parents think so. Except for the fact that she’s bisexual in a lesbian phase, but they’re slowly coming around to that, too.

Oh, did I tell you I’m also a werewolf? Right. I did. Must be the medication. Snort. Wonder how that one’s gonna go over with the in-laws? Oh, right. I don’t have any. Never mind. So, let’s just say, at certain times of the month, Mother Nature’s even more of a bitch with me than with most women.

I’m sure you’re wondering about that bullet wound, so I’ll tell you a long story short before the short story gets long.

I was doing a piece on Pacific Northwest spas. Hardship, yeah, but the job paid diddly squat so I might as well enjoy the expense account. Besides: cold, bad. Heat, good, and every now and then I meet a cute guy. I mean, I can rock a bikini with the best of them, and nobody expects me to have perfect makeup in a spa.

But I digress.

For the story I got the full package, comped for the magazine of course. Steak and lobster, Eggs Benedict, and one of everything on the spa menu. It was glorious. I took pictures and my editor got his five thousand words, for which he paid me almost nothing, but that was the deal. Live high on the magazine’s dime, cheap on my own.

The resorts all knew who I was, of course, and were happy to oblige. How else would I get the freebies? And I wasn’t writing exposés after all. My job was to sell magazines, whether print or online editions, which sold advertisements to paying customers.

Long story short, yeah, yeah.

So I worked my way through lockers, changing rooms and the amenities therein to the pools. I did a full set of lap work to check the workout box for the day and then, ah, the fun started. Sauna, cold dunk, heat lamp, cold dunk, steam bath with herbal infusion, and so on. Wonderful. After that came a mud bath, hot rock massage, lunch at the wine bar, mani-pedi, facial – you get the picture. Most fun a girl can have alone.

I spend a lot of time alone, I guess.

On the afternoon in question, I hurried upstairs to my room and banged out a rough draft, quick and dirty because tonight was MoonFall; that is, a full moon, which for me makes the usual girl’s monthlies seem hella tame. Anyway, I packed my day pack – okay, night pack – with the stuff I’d need – change of clothes, wipes, water and food, handheld GPS – what a godsend – and so on.

My usual MO was to hike to a landmark before sunset, like a mountaintop or tip of a lake, load it into the GPS, clip the little unit to a collar and put it on. Then I’d have a nice dinner, a tiny fire if I could, get naked and wait for the change.

After doing it for years, I was pretty lucid in wolf form, but I could easily get distracted, which was where the GPS came in, just in case I changed back somewhere other than the campsite. It would help me sneak in the buff across country to my stash. Either way, I’d clean up and get back to the other twenty-seven days of my life before the next change.

This time, though, someone had shot me with a tranquilizer dart, in the middle of the night no less. Who does that? No idea, never found out, don’t want to know. Narcotics don’t work well on me in wolf form, by the way, which was why I didn’t go down. Nothing less than a bear dose would probably do it. I managed to make it back without trouble.

The next morning I did the steam room, and then the infection showed up. I made up a story about a hunter’s ricochet and went to the ER expecting to be sent on my way with antibiotics, but they said it was a drug-resistant strain so boom, straight into surgery. From the way it felt afterward, the surgeon used a steak knife and an ice cream scoop to excise the necrotizing tissue. They told me they got it all, and shot me full of the latest thing, gave me pills to take and orders for a regimen of bleach baths for the next three weeks.

I was able to get three more free days at the resort by hinting that the infection was their fault, caught from the steam room bench, but eventually I had to go recuperate where assistance was near. Among my relatives, Amber was my best choice. I really do love her, you know, even if we are like oil and vinegar. We may taste great together but we still don’t mix very well.

Want to guess who’s the oil, and who’s the vinegar?

Chapter 3

I watched Amber primping in the mirror, envious as sin. She’d bought this darling new turquoise collection from Sephora and was wearing some Jimmy Choos that I would have killed to afford. Sigh.

Don’t ever let any of those sparkly werewolf books or movies fool you. Unless our injuries are cured by some kind of magic, we also have to heal over time. Oh, it may happen faster, especially in wolf form, but when it comes to infections, colds and viruses, we’re just like the rest of you. And since I was trapped at home nursing an oozing sore, I was stuck with what the girls had on disc in the den or what J.R. had in his bedroom. Hell, I could always play Singstar, but a girl gets tired of hearing the sound of her own voice. I had my phone, but as I paid for the data myself, I had to go easy on it when I wasn't working and able to expense it.

I couldn’t even figure out how to work the streaming TV channels, and the only internet this retro household had was a cheap hotspot from five years ago. I think Elle deliberately made everything complicated so nobody could mess with her sports.

“So, where you going tonight?” I asked as Amber put herself together.

“Oh. Nothing special,” she answered. “Elle has this charity function sponsored by the Animal Rights Coalition.”

“Animal Rights?” I sneered. “What about people’s rights? I mean, some of us treat our dogs better than we treat each other. Don’t we Spanky?” I threw that last bit out at the miniature Schnauzer who sat in the doorway staring up at Amber’s transformation. I turned back to watch my sister go from beautiful to breathtaking in the Clairol-quality lighting over the mirror. She’d mesmerized me ever since I was child with her ability to use makeup in its most subtle and glamorous ways.

“That’s because Spanky’s special,” Amber singsonged. “Aren’t you, Spanky?”

He barked in response and his stubby tail began to wiggle.

Amber sighed and touched up her lips with a darling cinnamon custard. “Don’t think you’re missing anything. Just a lot of ho-hum and small talk. You’d find it very boring. I know I will.”

“Hey, hey, now,” Elle said. I watched her look over from where she stood putting on a few last touches of her own in the other mirror. His and hers…I mean, hers and hers mirrors; it was so decadent. “I’m standing right here, you know.”

Amber launched another of her dazzling smiles and gave Elle a peck on the cheek as she exited the master bath. I followed, feeling frumpy in my Jaclyn Smith flannel cotton white PJs with the intersecting black, blue, and brown stripes down the side.

“Besides, Jeanetta Macdonald will be there and she can’t help but seethe whenever she sees me. Just another perk for looking like you, Ashlee,” Amber skewered.

Shane’s sister, I thought. Crap. I was hoping she’d get out of this town so I wouldn’t have to remember. The truth was, I didn’t have to remember, at least not right now, so I flipped a switch in my head and chose to think of other things.

“Anyway, I’m sure you can keep yourself occupied for a couple of hours by yourself. J.R.’s over at his Dad’s and Mervin won’t be bringing him back till the morning.” Amber strode forward out of the bedroom, down the stairs to the landing, and almost fell down the steps.

“Damn it, J.R.!” She shot into the air as she grabbed for the banister. “Honey!” she yelled. “Did I or did I not tell J.R. to move his things from off the stairs?”

“You did.” Elle’s voice came out of the bedroom. When it came to raising J.R., Elle was pretty hands-off.

“I thought so.” Amber shook the exasperation from her eyes and smiled. “Kids. They may just be the death of me.” She bundled up the nylon jacket that J.R. had left on the floor and tossed it into the laundry room around the corner.

“Elle? You ready?”

“Hold your horses, woman!” Elle snapped from the bedroom. “I’m coming.”

I strangled a laugh. “Ah, domestic bliss.”

Amber glared and carefully flounced down the hallway.

“Yeah, well, don’t you worry, sister.” Elle sucker-punched me in the arm as she breezed by. “Your time will come soon and then we’ll see who’s laughing.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it!” I yelled from my position at the top of the staircase, cradling my elbow.

Amber yelled back, “And don’t even think about sneaking into my room tonight to try on my clothes. I’ve booby-trapped the closet.”

And with that, the door slammed and my sister and her partner were out for the evening. The dog barked while I tried to do my happy dance. I thought better of it as a twinge of pain reminded me of my wound. So, I just sang.

“I do the hippie-hippie shake…ye-eah…I do the hippie-hippie shake.” And I headed off to see what latest additions Amber had made to her wardrobe. Booby trap, hell. I eat booby traps for breakfast.

“I am so depressed,” I said three hours later from the Berber-carpeted floor of my sister’s humongous walk-in closet. Scratching Spanky behind his ears and calculating the deficiency of my own wardrobe, I realized what having two healthy incomes can do for a woman’s choices. Amber and Elle had racks and racks of top-of-the-line name brands, and even J.R. had designer stuff to work with. “Maybe I should become a lesbian,” I said to the uncomprehending Spanky. “Or at least bisexual, and marry a successful lawyer. They seem to get all the attention, and the swag.”

The little schnauzer cocked his head at me and bumped his nose up for more pronounced attention. He didn’t usually like outsiders, but since we came from the same zygote and he likes my sister, I guess he likes me too. “Huh, Spanky? Should I become a lesbian?” I asked him in my girliest voice, but he only licked my nose and then looked away.

“Ashlee, you would make a terrible lesbian,” Amber said as she breezed by me through her walk-through closet into the master bath. I’d heard her come in, of course, but I was too depressed to move. “You like guys too much.”

“I do, Spanky,” I baby-talked as I rubbed shnozzes with the dog’s cute little muffin nose. “I do like guys too much. It’s horrible. I know. But I just can’t stay away from rock-hard abs and tight butts.”

“You are really disturbing me,” Elle said as she hung up the expensive-looking slick-black-with-pearl-piping power blazer she’d worn that evening and took off the sensible but Amber-influenced brand-name flats she always wore. “Put the dog down and back away slowly.”

“I know! I disturb myself.” I groaned and rolled onto my back on the floor. “Ow. Ow. OW!”

Amber stuck her head out of the bathroom and looked worried.

“Ash? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I’m just so pathetic!” I cried as I cradled my wounded hip.

“Hey Amber. I think I’ll let you handle this one.” Elle smirked and headed downstairs for a late-night snack. Women of society never eat much at social functions; hence the voracious appetite afterward.

“Ashlee Scott! You are not pathetic!”

“But I am! I am!” I moaned and curled up into a fetal position while Spanky played leapfrog over my aching ass.

“No. You are not. Mother would roll over in her grave if she heard you talking like that. You are a powerful, wonderful girl.”

“Amber, shush,” I muttered into the dog’s fur. I did not want a visit from my dead mother just at the moment.

Oh, didn’t I tell you? My mother haunts me. Maybe she haunts other people, but as far as I know, only I can see her. I’ve spotted some other ghosts from time to time, but I always shy away and act like I don’t.

This ability has something to do with the lupine gene, I believe. Amber didn’t get it. Only one per zygote. So, I’m the one with the weird menstrual cycle and the need to turn hairy at every full moon. Amber knows nothing, of course, about me or Mom, and I intend to keep it that way.

Sigh.

“What do you know about being pathetic?” I whined, picking up a pair of her Manolo Blahniks and bringing them to my nose to inhale. I was in heaven. They still smelled new.

“Because you and I are two peas from one pod and I am NOT pathetic. So, ergo, neither are you.”

“Oh, well then. That clears everything up!” I had to laugh. Amber grinned right back at me.

“I love you, you know,” I said, and right then I really meant it.

“I know.” She did a quick kiss-kiss to the air as she went back into the bathroom to undress. “I am lovable, after all.”

I think my sister got all the cute genes in the family. I know I didn’t come off half as adorable as she did, even when I was trying, which wasn’t often. Where Amber was like Pink Chandon, I was more like any hard drink you had to muddle sugar into to offset the bitters: an acquired taste.

I crawled on my hands and knees back to my bedroom as the dog followed behind me, playfully nipping at my heels. Time to take a pain pill and sleep off the looming depression. Maybe tomorrow would be a better day, I thought. I hoped. I prayed.

I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

Chapter 4

“Hey Amber!” I called as my sister finally made an appearance at nine in the morning. “I just got the weirdest email!” I continued as she stepped blearily to the door of the den. “Look at this!” I swiveled the screen at her and let her read.

“Who said you could use my laptop?” she said.

I gave her a shit-eating bear grin.“Grrr?”

“Yeah, grrr.” She looked and read.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

IT HAS COME TO MY ATTENTION THAT YOU MAY NOT BE AWARE BUT THAT YOU HAVE BEEN TARGETED AND I HAVE BEEN COMPELLED TO HELP TERMINATE YOU. I TELL YOU THIS BECAUSE I DO NOT BELIEVE THE ACCUSATIONS THAT MY EMPLOYER HAS LEVELED ABOUT YOU AND FEEL THAT YOU SHOULD KNOW SO AS THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN VERY OFTEN, IN FACT NEVER, AS I AM A PROFESSIONAL, BUT I TRUST YOU AND WANT TO HELP YOU.

SINCERELY,

A FRIEND

The sender’s address was nothing but a bunch of characters. It must be some kind of anonymous email server.

“What the fudge?” came the words from my sister’s usually righteous mouth.

“That’s kinda what I said, but with a c and a k.” I stared at her.

“This can’t be serious.” Amber looked more like me when she wasn’t all dolled up. She the lipstick lesbian and I the tomboy, go figure, but sans makeup, two peas and all that.

“That’s what I said. And God, what a hack. J.R. could write better copy.”

“You get a possibly threatening email and you’re critiquing the sender’s writing skills?”

“I’ve gotten threatening emails before,” I said with an offhandedness I did not feel, “but usually they have something to do with an article I wrote.”

We looked at each other with a slight tension in our eyes.

“Hey Elle!” Amber yelled at the top of her lungs. Before we knew it, Elle was at the door with a baseball bat, looking thoroughly disheveled.

“WHAT? What’s the matter? What?” Elle brandished the bat like she was trying out for the San Francisco Giants, shook the morning sleep from her eyes and blinked at us uncomprehendingly.

Amber handed Elle some reading glasses, one of the many sets she had lying around the house. “Look at this email.” She swung the laptop around some more. “Ashlee just got this and I don’t know what to make of it.”

Elle read quickly, mouthing the words. When she got to the word “terminate,” she looked up at me and her eyes got wide.

“DUCK!” she screamed, and we all did as I heard the sound of breaking glass over my shoulder and caught it on the chin as a baseball sailed into the room.

The sound of quick footsteps padding up the walk and J.R.’s voice were the next things I remember as Amber shook me where I lay.

“Is everyone okay? Why is Aunt Ash on the floor?” J.R. asked.

“Ashlee! Wake up!” My sister’s voice now.

“Am I dead?” I murmured. At least, I thought it was me as I struggled back to consciousness with the dog licking my face.

“Spanky, knock it off.” I pushed him away, but he came right back, thinking we were playing some new kind of game.

“Spanky! Go lie down,” my sister ordered, and when my sister used that tone, you knew you were in trouble. The dog slunk out the door and collapsed on the tile, laying his head on his forepaws and giving us that “what did I do?” look. “Be careful, J.R., there’s glass all over.”

“Gee, Mom. I’m sorry. I didn’t think I could hit the thing that hard. I wasn’t even trying.” J.R. apologized profusely from the doorway of the den. My ex-brother-in-law Mervin, and I emphasize the X, as in crossed out, no thanks, buh-bye, stood behind my nephew smirking as his face wandered into focus.

“Damn, Mervin. Next time you want to take out the ex, why don’t you make sure you’re aiming on the right twin sister.” Amber sponged me toward consciousness with a cool cloth. “And you can stop that now! I’m up! I’m up!” I growled. Just had to get my knees under me as I rose from the carpet.

“Better put something on that,” Mervin joked. “Or you’re gonna have rug-burn all over the side of your face.”

I snarled, “You oughta know. Doesn’t your new girlfriend like to drive?” Let him figure it out. “Amber, can you please get your smarmy sperm donor out of my sight?”

“Mervin. You’re not helping,” my sister carped as she pushed his sorry ass toward the door. “And you’re paying for half the repair.”

“Well. Ex-cuse me,” he called and headed out. “Take it easy, champ. You played a good game today.”

“Thanks, Dad!” J.R. called and waved goodbye. He turned back to me with a cute little pout and said, “I’m really sorry, Aunt Ash.”

“I know you are, sport.” I gritted my teeth, smiled and waved him off to clean up in his room. Then I turned to my sister.

“I really hate that guy.”

“Don’t you say that about my son!” she said with a grin.

“I wasn’t talking about – never mind.” I hobbled back into the chef’s grade kitchen.

“You know Mervin has always been a fan of yours,” Amber continued. “I have no idea why, but he likes you.”

“That’s just ’cause I’ve got all the looks of the woman he married but I don’t hate him as much as you do so he thinks he might get some from me sometime. And I don’t like him like I used to, before I wised up. That’s bound to make him a little insane.”

“Wow. You know, I’d forgotten you liked him back then. Maybe we should have swapped places when I was married instead of getting divorced. Then we would have both got what we wanted. He would have never known the difference.”

“Yeah. Right.” I laughed ruefully. “Like substituting a sow’s ear for a silk purse.”

Amber and I used to do a lot of self-swapping in high school, mostly just for grins, but every now and then, when one of us wanted to go out with a guy who asked, but the one he asked didn’t, we’d trade without him knowing.

After the first full moon of my sixteenth year, we didn’t play that game anymore. Amber still felt guilty it hadn’t been her on that fateful date, like it should’ve been. I was just thankful that if somebody had to die, it wasn’t me.

I’m sorry. Maybe being a wolf has made me callous, and Shane was an omega anyway.

Tell you about it later, I promise.

“I’m serious, Ash. I think we need to report this email to the police.”

“Elle is the police,” I said as I grabbed ice cubes from the freezer and stuck them in a plastic bag. A few pieces ended up on the floor. My sister glanced over at me, wondering if I was going to take care of it. I’d get to it, but if it wasn’t soon enough, I knew she’d be pissed off. She was already frowning at the floor where the ice was melting.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Amber! I’ll get it!” I said and took a moment to wipe the puddle of water off the floor. Then I stuck the ice-filled bag to my head. Sometimes I hated being a twin.

“And she’s right. I am the police.” Elle kissed her on the cheek as she went past.

“You used to be the police. But then you took a job with the city,” Amber reminded her, all syrupy-like.

“So, maybe I’m out of practice, but I’m still the city attorney. That’s gotta count for something.” She cocked her head and winked at me. “I’ve got connections. And a gun.”

“Yeah! That’s gotta count for something,” I echoed and stage-winked right back at her.

Elle was very much a cards-to-the-chest kind of gal, but she could be real amusing when she let her sense of humor show. Amber, on the other hand, had a tendency toward taking things way too seriously.

“Still.” Amber sniffed at us. She hates any ganging up, unless she does the ganging.

“Still.” Elle drew my sister out and did a quick waltz with her around the room.

“Still,” she re-echoed, “I think if it happens again, we need to report it.”

“I’ll report it right now, if that makes you feel better,” Elle said. Then she started getting handsy with Amber.

“Um, guys? Can you just…take it somewhere else?” I asked, ever so humbly.

They stopped and looked condescendingly at me.

“What? You homophobic or something?” Elle pulled my sister into a twirl and then dipped her.

“No,” I said. Then under my breath as I walked away, “Just envious.”

It was true. Total sister-envy, ’cause she had the life. She had the house. She had the child, whom I adored, and the dog that I liked as well. And she had the tall, dark, and handsome S.O., only not so tall and handsome as I imagined, the kind I wished I could come home to each night.

Let’s face it, she had it all. And what did I have? A lot of frequent flyer miles, fab trips, upgraded hotel rooms, and free spa treatments.

Okay, maybe I didn’t have it so bad.

Chapter 5

It was day three and I was totally bored. No really! Abso-bloomin-lutely out of my freakin’ gourd. And I said so as I perched on one butt cheek on top of the dryer watching my twin fold laundry.

“Move your legs. You’re in the way,” Amber said.

I scooted over to give her access, wincing.

“You know, when J.R. tells me he's bored, I usually send him out to play,” Amber said, matching pink socks and folding polka-dot underwear.

“Are you crazy? Don’t you know? Suburban neighborhoods are incredibly dangerous!” I made a face at her, only semi-mock-horrified.

“Ashlee, this is Knightsbridge, not Oakland. And J.R.’s a smart kid. Besides, he knows not to go far, and we have a Neighborhood Watch program.”

“Yeah, after that email, it’s the neighbors I’m going to be watching,” I ran my hand along the dust-free blinds and peeked out the window of the laundry room, squinting into the morning light. See, I thought: even the dust knows not to mess with Amber.

“Go walk around the neighborhood. Play Auntie Security. The fresh air will do you good.” She looked at me, chagrined. “Oh my God! I sounded just like Mom.”

“Yes you did.”

“Did someone call me?”

I blanched when I heard my mother’s voice coming from the heavens. “Not exactly,” I muttered.

“What?” Amber asked, uncertain.

“I think I’ll go take that walk.” I hopped to the floor, much to my butt cheek’s dismay. Then I hobbled downstairs and out the front door.

“Leave the door unlocked. I don’t have a key!” I called out behind me, and then wondered if I should have yelled so loud. I mean, Amber and Elle lived in a fairly safe neighborhood, but in places like this, there were always older kids and crimes of opportunity.

“On second thought, I’ll take the spare!” I yelled, and grabbed it out of its hidey-hole, sticking it in my shoulder bag.

“Good idea,” my sister called back, as I locked the door behind me and turned to greet the day.

Ugh, I thought. It’s much too bright out here. What the hell is that hot thing doing up in the sky at nine a.m.?

I grabbed the Donna Karan sunglasses I’d nicked from Amber out of my bag and took a big inhale of the grassy-sweet smell of cow manure. I could still feel the residue of my dead mother’s presence and I hurried away, keen to escape from the force of nature that is her spirit. Ghosts naturally retain more power when they are near a symbiotic frequency of shared experiences, an exorcist once told me.

Are you wondering why I was talking to an exorcist? Um…

When people get together, shared desires often manifest visitations from the other side. Put enough people’s concentration on one thing and a thought can achieve critical mass; hence the number of Elvis sightings, no doubt.

Amber and Elle lived in a burb-district on the edge of Knightsbridge proper. Directly behind their house, placed at the east end of the development, rose steep hills and a deep cut that led up into Knightsbridge Canyon. To the north and south sides of their subdivision were open acres where the valley began a gentle rolling into a land of almond orchards, horse stables and dairy farms. When we were younger, we actually got milk from one of those dairies, but not anymore. It was cheaper to buy from the grocery store, and safer, so they said.

I liked it better back then. Waah.

With determination in hand and a fresh pack of slim clove cigars – I didn’t want Amber to know that I still smoked sometimes, but hey, it was better than tobacco – I headed down the road toward an in-town walking trail. With the pain in my ass, I wasn't ready for any serious hiking.

The path near my sister’s home was paved, and it bordered the rows upon rows of similarly styled homes with precisely varied color schemes that housed the upwardly mobile middle class of Knightsbridge’s finest. I wondered just how similar and precisely varied the lives of those who lived in them were as I stretched my legs. I stripped off the extra sweater I’d woken up with this morning, leaving myself braless in a tank top and sweats, and I seriously hoped that I didn’t run into anyone I knew since I hadn’t shaved my pits in a few days.

In contrast to my home in San Francisco where fog was typical, I aimed to soak up the dry San Joaquin sun as I made the rounds. There weren’t many people out as it was a bit winter-nippy, but not so bad that you could see your breath, maybe fifty. I continued around the corner away from the house. Before I knew it I’d reached a large park with four baseball diamonds and decided that this was about as good a time as any to light up.

I know nonsmokers look at those of us who have a puff in the morning like we’re crazy, but to a smoker the act has the same effect as meditation. Besides, it was nice to not be so distracted by all the other scents that the wolf inside me had access to in its catalog. There’s nothing worse than feeling like you’re sniffing your way through the neighborhood on two feet. News flash: most smells are disgusting, even the nice ones, if your nose is sensitive enough.

“Ahem.” I heard a voice behind me and turned. There, staring at me with the most beautiful blue eyes, was the one guy I was most worried about having to face again: my ex-boyfriend and former star of the Spartans football team, Will Stenfield. Six foot two and stocky, without an ounce of fat on him, he still had the prettiest eyelashes you ever did see. I won’t even talk about the abs.

Anyone who doesn’t believe God has a sense of humor just ain’t paying attention.

“Got another clove, or aren’t you willing to share?” he asked as I stared at him, speechless. I realized he was just as breathtaking as I remembered. I’d tried to forget. Hell if I would let him know, though.

“You know, that buzz cut really works for you,” I deadpanned, bracing my smoking arm with the other one under the elbow. Hey, he’d caught me off guard and it was the first thing that popped into my head.

“Really? Ya think? ’Cause your sister just calls me cue-ball.” He grinned and my knees went weak.

“At least she’s consistent. She called you cue-ball when we were growing up too.”

“And you haven’t called at all, Ash. Now, why is that?” Will picked the clove right out of my hands, took a drag, and then handed it back. I stared at the moist filter, thinking of the other places I remembered those lips being. A shudder moved through me for a moment, and then I came back.

“Poor cell plan?” I cracked.

No, the truth is, Will was my first crush and longtime on-again-off-again boyfriend from way back. During an off phase, I made the mistake of going out on a pity date with one of my sister’s castoffs, Shane Macdonald.

Will and I got to be even more off when the guy ended up dead.

Dad sent me away for my junior year to a private boarding school because of the small-town hoopla and what it did to me. Most thought I was shattered over Shane’s death the night of our date. Some suspected I was pregnant. Trust me, I was not.

In fact, after the full moon fiasco that set off my first transformation, I was still too messed up to be interested in anyone. When I came back for my senior year, Will and I danced around but never really got back to where we had been. I knew even then that I wouldn’t be staying in Knightsbridge, and he was a small-town boy all the way, always intending to take over the family landscaping business. I remembered a lot of tension when I left.

I guess Will got over it, because he was talking to me now.

“I waited, you know.” He said it with a serious look on his face. I believed him, but back then I was running away, and Will, well, he was just part of what I’d left behind.

“It was never about you,” I told him. It’s amazing how much can be said with so few words when you have that connection like Will and I did.

Do?

Maybe.

“I know.” He smiled. “Can I at least get a hug? I read all your magazine stories about those fancy places.”

Straight to a writer’s heart that went, so I obliged. Hell, I did more than oblige. When he opened up his arms, I buried my face in his ratty old sweat-stained lawn-jockey t-shirt, smelling of musk and dead leaves, old wounds and memories.

“So, what are you doing back in town?” Will asked a few moments later as he gently escaped from my clinging embrace and returned to the lawnmower he’d been pushing down the walk.

“Oh, you know. Just slumming.” I grinned. Despite it being what, five or six years? I’d come back for the summer after high school and seen him a few times then, but not seriously. Now, it was like no time had passed at all. He was still a redneck and maybe somewhere inside me, I was still a redneck’s girl.

California version, of course. We don’t drawl. We do drink beer and drive pickup trucks.

I’d heard Will had taken over the family landscaping business when his father semi-retired with a back injury, and more often than not came home smelling of tree sap, grass and loam. It was woodsy, a little nutty and always made my head spin.

“You doing Parks and Recreation now?” I asked as I watched him load the mower into the trailer he had hitched to his Chevy pickup.

“That and everything else under the sun. You know, Ash, if you’re not too busy, why don’t you slum with me for awhile?” He cocked his head. “Let’s go hang out. Talk about old times.”

“I don’t know,” I told him. The pain pill was wearing off and I had no idea how I was going to hobble over to the truck, let alone get up into it. “I kinda had a little surgery.”

Will put out his hand, reflexively. “Oh crap. Was it something serious?”

“No. No.” I waved the matter aside. “I got shot in the butt up in Idaho. Just hurts to sit down for long periods of time.”

“Shot?”

I fed him the same simple half-truth I’d been using with everyone else. “Just a ricochet off a rock. I was hiking, some asshole was hunting and thought my blue North Face looked exactly like a twelve-point buck, I don’t know. Whoever it was didn’t own up, and I limped back to town, went to a spa the next day and it got infected.”

He stared at me like I was a bad little girl, which wasn’t all bad.

“I know, I should have gone in to the ER right away and gotten antibiotics, but…”

Will laughed. “Butt.” He mock bowed.

“Hey, staying at Amber’s is penance enough, and sitting down is a real bitch.”

“Then you can stand on the seat with your head out the roof and hold onto the roll bar. Your chariot awaits, my lady.” Will held out his hand.

He was so cute, I had to give it a go.

Chapter 6

“Elle! You are not going to believe this!” Amber stood on the front lawn of the house, cell phone in one hand, talking while she watered the lawn with the other as we drove up. “It looks like Ash and Will are together again.” I could hear the sounds of exclamation coming from the other end as Will lifted me down from the tailgate.

“Hi, Will!” Amber called and waved. “I’ll talk to you later,” she told the phone and hung up on Elle. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“Yes, well I found this poor handicapped bag lady wandering the streets smoking a clove and had to stop and lend her a hand,” Will said to Amber as he walked me over.

“Don’t let him lie to you like that,” I said quickly, trying to divert her from the smoking tipoff. “It was me who took pity on the poor schmuck, because he had to stop and ask for directions.”

“Now I know you’re lying. Men never ask for directions. Besides, he’s lived here all his life.”

“So sue me.”

The diversion did not work. “Ashlee, I thought you’d given up that nasty habit,” Amber said, so I whacked Will in the back of the head with the palm of my hand.

“Thanks for spilling the beans, loser.” I turned back to my sister. “Will’s staying for lunch,” I said, hoping to avoid a lecture and almost positive she wouldn’t pull rank and nix his invitation.

“Oh no he’s not,” Amber said.

“Oh no I’m not,” Will echoed.

“C’mon. I bet you two haven’t talked in a while. It’ll be good for all of us,” I said. “Besides, I’m cooking.”

My sister rolled her eyes. “Now this I’ve got to see.”

“See, I told you I make a mean pot of spaghetti,” I teased as I cleared the dishes and set another helping of pasta before the man I realized I wanted to get to know better again.

“Please, Ash. I really couldn’t eat another bite,” Will said.

"Oh, come on. Just one more wafer-thin mint?"

Will grinned, deliberately stuck his fork into the center of the bowl and started slurping anyway, much to my delight.

“Actually, Ash, that wasn’t bad for spaghetti. It was pretty good in fact,” Amber added as an aside to her S.O., who had come home for lunch. Benefits of the small town: short commute. “Wasn’t it, Elle?”

“It was very good, Ash.” Elle played her role as the grownup to the hilt. “If it wasn’t for Amber, I’d probably be having another helping myself.” Elle laughed as Amber tickled her, pinching the pudge that she never could seem to lose.

“So, why don’t we go take that drive?” I suggested to Will, who perked up at the sound and put down his fork. I’d taken another pain pill by now, so I figured I could at least make it through a two-hour reunion tour of the hometown, and besides, I didn’t think I could stand the lovey-dovey around here anymore. “Catch up on the dish. Tell me who’s divorced who and who’s still having babies when they should have stopped years ago. And stuff.”

“And stuff,” Will echoed solemnly.

“You still have to clean up this mess,” Amber tossed over her shoulder.

“I’ll handle the dishes.” Elle put a hand on Amber’s wrist and squeezed. “I think Ash could use the time out of the house for a while.”

Amber got it, smiled and then gave me a quick wink. “Fine. Take your time. Keys still in the same place, and don’t forget to reset the alarm after you come in.”

“Thanks guys!” I gave them a quick hug and limped enthusiastically out the door toward the pickup past Mervin and J.R., who were just coming home from soccer practice.

“Hi guys! Bye guys!” I sang.

“Hey, isn’t that Will Stenfield?” I heard Mervin ask Amber as he handed her J.R.’s muddy cleats, which she took with two fingers and walked them into the garage.

“I think he dated Denise once,” Mervin commented, referring to Amber’s replacement and J.R.’s new step-monster, then shrugged and walked away.

“Amber,” Elle said in a warning tone as she poked her head into the garage.

Amber turned and put her hands on her hips.

“What?”

“Love you,” Elle said.

Hearing that, I was seriously tempted to toss my cookies, but with Will there I was already too far away, reminiscing.

“So, where do you want to go?” Will asked as he revved the engine while I went through his CDs. I pulled out a scratched-up copy of the Cars’ first album, one that he’d inherited from his dad. I still remember it playing from the work truck as Stenfield Landscaping groomed the school grounds when I was a kid. We both ended up loving the eighties music of our parents, I guess.

Or maybe it was because Will was frozen in the past and I had no time to figure out “what’s a Bieber?”

“Can we go by my old house?” I asked. “I want to see how much it’s changed.”

“Um. Sure.” He hesitated, looking at me funny.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Will laughed as he pulled out onto Walnut Avenue and over to the west side of town.

“Tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“Tell me.”

“No.”

“Weirdo.”

“Freak.”

“Fine.” I folded my arms and faked a sulk.

When Amber and I were growing up, we lived on the good side of the bad side of town, a couple houses down from one of the retired mayors. His raised brick ranch-style sprawled out over a half-acre lot and held lemon trees we used to swipe fruit from during the summer. These weren’t the cute little things you get in grocery stores, the ones that look like they were made from plastic lemon molds. These lemons were frickin’ monsters, grapefruit-sized. I had no idea why. Anyway, we had this weird thing about sucking the juice from lemons after coating them with salt, kind of like our older brother Adam did with cold sliced potatoes and equally cold slabs of butter.

Had to be there, I guess.

Will drove us down Golden Boulevard, which used to be part of the old highway before they put the bypass through, and pulled into the parking lot of the Boxcar, an abandoned set of railroad cars that had been turned into a nice restaurant. I had worked there the summer I came home.

For some, Knightsbridge was a college town, for others it was a great place to raise kids, but for single people, it seriously sucked. Just one more reason why I had taken the travel writer’s apprenticeship, seldom went back, and didn’t look people up.

I know, thin, right? Bad memories, I guess I’ll admit to.

“Remember this place?” he asked as we stared at the outside.

“God, yes!” I’d spent that whole summer as the hostess greeter, since I was too young to carry alcohol and too new to serve food and get tips. I did help bus tables. Minimum wage, go me. “I met Palmer Courtland here and he tried to put a hand up my dress. You know, the guy from one of those daytime soaps where no one ever ages? I think he was seventy. Looked forty if he didn’t move his face.”

“Come on, can you blame him?” Will waggled his eyebrows, mock-lasciviously. Or actually lasciviously. Made me feel all tingly.

“Guess not, but I’m worldly and wise now. Back then…ew.” I laughed.

“And what about that Sid guy who used to be the chef?”

“Omigod! That’s right. He had such a filthy mouth,” I remembered. “If the customers only knew the way he talked about them! They would have just died.”

“I think he knew it offended you and if I remember correctly, you told me it got even filthier, that is, until I had a chat with him.”

“That was you? I never knew. That was sweet.” I lay flat on the bench seat, put my head in his lap and stuck my feet out the window, taking the pressure off my ass. “Remember when we all dressed up in white and played croquet in the park?”

“I wasn’t there for that one, but I remember driving by. You looked adorable in white.”

He was right. I did. I do. I smiled.

“You’re still pretty adorable.”

That made me sit up and look at him, searching his face.

Will leaned over and put a peck on my forehead. I lifted my face and he kissed me for real this time. Very softly. My mouth parted involuntarily and his tongue flicked in and touched the tip of my own in an intimate caress.

Was I really doing this?

“Um. Is it hot in here, or is it me?” I asked as I moved away from him, opened the door and climbed out of the cab. Just down the road from the Boxcar was a place called the Nordic Chalet where they still sold winter sports equipment. I marveled how it seemed some things changed and some things never did.

“Come on, let’s walk,” I said, just to clear my head, and proceeded to stroll down my hometown version of Main Street USA, Will trailing a bit behind.

“I can’t believe the Frosty Freeze is still here.” I kept up a running commentary as we walked. “And there’s the studio where Amber and I took jazz class. Knightsbridge School of Ballet was just around the corner, up there in that window, see?” I pointed and Will sneaked up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist.

I folded myself into him and looked up into his smiling baby blues. “What are you doing?” I asked, my heart pounding in my ears.

“Reminiscing,” he said as he leaned down and kissed me again. Long and slow, and soft, like a lover. My body melted into his. I whimpered as my heart threatened to crack and I knew that I had it bad.

Where the hell did this all come from? Old flames rekindled from banked fires.

“Um, that was nice.” I inhaled his scent as I hid my face in the crook of his arm.

“You’re welcome.” Will laughed and kissed me again on the forehead. Lots of kissing going on here. I liked it.

This was the last thing that I was expecting. But there’s something about the people in your hometown, something very familiar, the same familiarity that breeds contempt, but when the right strings are played, it makes you feel like they know you inside and out…even when you know they really don’t.

But you can never go home again, though I thought I could right then.

I slipped out of his arms and walked a few steps ahead of him again. “I know what you’re doing.”

“What am I doing?” he asked, daring me to answer.

“Don’t think you can come in here all hella wonderful and worm your way back into my life that easy.”

“Hella wonderful?” Laughter from him.

“I got out of this hick town years ago and I’m not going to be dragged back here in the lined bed of a Chevy with intertwined hearts on it,” I said, referring to the etching on his back window.

“I never thought you would,” he told me, eyes glittering in the sunlight dappled through the maples. I hated it when men did that, with their eyes. Hated it.

Okay, I’m lying.

“Well. Good. So back off, ’cause this girl’s not ready to settle.” I crossed my arms and looked at him defiantly.

“Since when have you settled for anything, Ash?” he asked and grabbed my elusive hand. “And if I was that kinda guy, I’d be insulted. Come on. I want to show you something.”

I let him drag me a few paces, then decided that with his bulk it would be a losing battle anyway and matched his steps. Before we knew it, we were in front of Crave.

Keith and Dawn Snyder had opened Crave Donuts when I was a kid when one of those horrible chain donut shops was the only game in town. Pretty soon the other place closed. How’s that for entrepreneurial? They made the best Bavarian crème I have ever tasted in my life, so when he pulled me in the door, I thought I was going to die.

“Hey Ash!” came a voice from behind the counter. “I didn’t know you were in town.” Jill Snyder, now Jill Blumenthal, came around the corner and gave me a big hug. I was taken aback for a moment. We’d never been that close in high school, but it just goes to show you that people’s memories of the past are often more rosy than we expect.

“Yeah. I’m holed up at Amber’s for a few weeks recovering from a surgery. Bullet wound on assignment. I see you’re still in the doughnut biz.”

“Bullet wound?” she said, her mouth a big O.

“Just a ricochet. Nothing serious. Forget I said anything. You look great by the way.” And she did. Married life looked really good on her.

Jill’s face lit up. “Oh, you’re so sweet.”

That was the difference between her and a city girl, who would have taken my comment as one-upmanship. She was married to a tall, blonde and dishy silent type I knew from school but not very well, and now they had a few kids. I fought back a pang of annoyance. I was so not going to settle, down or otherwise.

You know, God laughs at people’s plans, my brother always said, and if you swear you’ll never do something, guess what? That’s what will happen.

“Hey, Jill.” Will gave her a smile. “Can we get some of your custard-filled chocolate bars?”

Jill smiled back and went behind the counter.

“I just made up a fresh batch,” she said and I had a sudden déjà vu as I remembered that her mother Dawn used to tell me the same thing. I watched with anticipation as she took the oozingly creamy custard and filled the warm doughy chocolate-covered orgasm before my very eyes.

Will paid her for the donuts and a couple of milks and we sat over at a table by the window. When I bit into it, I thought I was going to die and go to heaven right there. One thing I never had to worry about was getting fat, by the way. Yes, all you girls can envy the hell out of me, but it has something to do with my monthly romp in the woods.

Silver linings? Frankly, I don’t think it was a good trade. You try waking up with your face covered in blood. You’ll see.

“So, are they as good as you remembered?” Will leaned his forehead into mine across the table in an intimate gesture and I sighed.

“Better,” I said, savoring every bite in silence as I watched him demolish his own donut in two seconds flat. I took a napkin and wiped his chin.

Jill was looking at us with interest from behind the counter and I knew that the social media gossip line was going to be hard at work this evening. Local Girl Returns, Reignites Old Passions!

“Let’s get out of here,” I said under my breath as we downed our milks and headed for the door.

“Bye guys!” Jill called after us. “Don’t forget Homecoming’s next month! Alumni games are first and then Trojans versus Spartans!” Her voice drifted out. “Everybody would LOVE to see you!”

“Trojans versus Spartans?” I asked. “Since when are Knightsbridge and K-Christian even in the same league?”

“Boy, you have been gone a while, haven’t you?” Will teased. “KCHS even has a football team now. It’s grown a lot.”

“You’re kidding,” I said as we headed past the Shell station and back to the truck. “Where are they getting the money? We had to buy our own cheerleading outfits when I was in school.”

“Yeah, well times change, Ash.” He held the door of the truck open for me. “And so do people. The town’s not so small, and it got a lot richer with the influx of wealthy conservatives fleeing the Bay Area. K-Christian went from being That Other School to the place the elite all send their kids, at the same time the public schools were cutting their budgets.”

“Wow. Weird.”

“Yeah, never mind. Back on topic: believe it or not, lots of people remember you with fondness,” he said, and I could see he meant it.

I felt bad. I had been a pretty mixed-up kid, and after Mom died and the date-getting-killed thing, which nobody ever talked about – don’t worry, I’ll tell you about it soon – I had a tendency to see the glass half empty rather than half full. It made me feel small, and I thought that perhaps I needed some new glasses. Half-sized ones, maybe, that would be full, with half the…

Sorry, my metaphor just broke down. Not so good for a writer, but I always swore not to revise my diary, so I’ll just keep on telling the tale.

I sighed as he drove me down past the boutique where I’d worked in the basement the summer in middle school, putting price tags on bras before I even had a need for one. He pointed out the old Woolworth’s I swiped fingernail polish from and the Safeway turned into a Von’s on the corner where we shopped for groceries back in the day. The small-town mansions that fronted the west end of town didn’t look so large anymore, and as we turned right onto Broadway and then onto Floral, the street where I grew up, I was floored.

“Wow. This place has really gone to seed,” I said. Maybe it was just childhood, but I could have sworn most families in this neighborhood never had more than two cars, and none of them ever on blocks in the middle of the lawn.

Will laughed. “It’s not the good side of the bad side of town anymore. All the money went up to the outskirts. New houses nearer the freeway for all the Bay Area commuters.” He looked apologetic.

“You know, I’ve had dreams of coming back here and buying the old house. Dad sold it when he remarried and we had to move into the house on Devonshire. After that, it wasn’t really home-home, you know? Now, I think if I wanted to buy this place, I’d have to move it somewhere else just to feel safe.”

We parked outside. It actually didn’t look too bad from here. Clearly it was the best-kept house on the block, if the neatly trimmed lawn and new paint job were any indication.

“Let’s go in,” he said.

I looked at him aghast.

“What?” I shrugged. “Just walk up to the front door, ring the bell and say ‘Hey! You know I used to live here. Can I look around your house for a while?’”

“Why not?” He smiled as he got out of the cab. “People are still people. They’ll understand.”

“No way!” I refused to budge, but I watched as his cocky self walked right up to the painted concrete steps and then he turned to me.

“Are you coming?” He threw his arms wide, like he was in a movie or something. I shook my head, scrunched up my face, then jumped out of the truck. I had to see this.

He rang the bell.

Nothing. I was so relieved.

“See. They’re not even home,” I said.

“No kidding. Come on, let’s sneak a peek inside.”

If I really wanted to, I could come back the next full moon in wolf form and check the place out and no one would be any wiser. It would be safer. I wasn’t a scaredy-cat when I was in wolf form. In fact, when I was shifted, I wasn’t afraid of anything. But now…now I was just petrified.

Will reached out his hand and tried the handle. It turned and he pushed the door open. I was in shock.

“Come on,” he said. “Aren’t you curious?” He took a step inside the door.

“What? Will. Stop!” I yelped and grabbed his arm, trying to pull him back and away from breaking and entering. Well, entering anyway.

“Hello?” he called as I tried to shush him. “Anyone home?” And then, “Mom?”

Mom? And then it all came crashing into my head and I shoved him.

“You slimy shitbird,” I yelled as he turned and I beat on his chest. He grabbed me and pulled me down to the tan-carpeted floor. I was so surprised I didn’t even notice my butt pain. “YOU OWN THIS PLACE?”

“I own this place.” He grinned and I wanted to wipe that bird-eating kitty grin off his face once and for all. All the feelings that I ever had about this home washed through me and I began to beat on him, slapping him for making me feel stupid and scared, and then I began to cry.

“Well, that wasn’t the reaction that I was expecting.” Will kissed my forehead, held me and stroked my hair. I heard a sound and turned to see a woman’s shoes and stockings out of the corner of my eye.

“Hi Mom,” Will said.

I looked up bleary-eyed as his mother bent down to greet me.

“Hello dear. And who have we here?” I buried my face in Will’s chest. “Well, Ashlee Scott, as I live and breathe.”

“Hi, Mrs. Stenfield,” I muttered, as I turned my tear-stained face to her.

Will’s mother gently touched my chin. “Now, what’s a nice girl like you doing with a rough boy like mine?” she said with a chuckle. “Get up off that floor, young man, and let me greet this girl properly.” She stepped back and allowed us to rise.

I smoothed the velvet crush of the fancy sweats I’d borrowed from my sister and ran my hands through my hair, pulling my locks away from my face.

“Come here and give us a hug.” She pulled me into her and wrapped her small thin frame around me and I sighed contentedly. Mrs. Stenfield always knew how to make you feel at home. “Why don’t you sit down? I’ll make us some tea and we can catch up,” she said and then disappeared through the dining room and into the kitchen.

“How could you buy this place and not tell me?” I turned on him. “If your mother wasn’t here, I’d kick your ass to hell and back.”

“Well, then I’m glad she’s here. And when was I going to tell you, anyway? You took off so fast after that one summer, and we weren’t dating anymore, and the few times you did come back home I hardly saw you, so when was I going to tell you?”

“You could have emailed me. The address is on every article.”

“I’m not an email kind of guy.”

I knew that. He didn’t even have a smart phone, just a beat-up old Nokia that could barely text, and he probably only carried that because his work required it. I always felt Will was born too late, and would have been more comfortable in Mom and Dad’s world.

“You could have told Amber. She would have told me.”

“I asked her not to,” he said. “I wanted to surprise you, if ever…”

“If ever what?”

“Nothing. You know.”

Will’s mother came back with a serving tray and a tea cozy as I slid into the soft lining of the brown suede sofa. I took the cup she offered, almost overwhelmed with the memories.

“So, what brings you back to town, Ashlee? Last I heard you were doing some articles for Contemporary Cruising.”

I forced myself to focus on talking to her rather than reminiscing. “Really? Where’d you hear that?” I avoided the first question. I so did not want to talk to her about my bullet wound. Once I started that I’d be sounding like everyone’s grandparents talking about their medical conditions. Why is it that the older people get, the more readily they pull out their aches and pains? Probably because there are more of them. I guess I could relate, or at least, my butt could.

“I think you told me, didn’t you, Will?” She turned and I looked at him out of the corner of my eye.

“Huh?” He was blushing. “Um, yeah. I guess so.”

Mrs. Stenfield turned back to me. “Will has everything you’ve ever written. Asks Amber to call him when you’ve got a new article and buys it up before it hits the stand.”

“Oh, really?” I looked at him with pursed lips. I wondered what other secrets my dear identical twin had been keeping. I made a mental note to interrogate her when I got home.

“Oh yes,” Mrs. Stenfield went on with enthusiasm. “I think my son just might be your biggest fan.”

I could not believe it. Will Stenfield? He’d never be comfortable in a five-star hotel and spa. Then again… “Well, then. I guess I’ll just have to hit you up when I finally organize my fan club.” I laughed.

How natural this all seemed. Smooth. Easy. Not like any of the other conversations I’ve had with the parents of the guys I’ve dated. Actually, scratch that. I rarely got around to meeting the parents of the guys I dated, because I normally didn’t go longer than three dates with any of them. Sound familiar?

Will settled back and popped the leg rest up from where he sat at the end of the sofa sectional. He looked really comfortable and at home here. In my old home. Who would believe it?

We chatted a bit more, small talk and things.

“You know, you really should go visit Sam and Muriel next door. I bet they’d love seeing you again,” Mrs. Stenfield continued. “Darcy’s over there a lot, with her husband and the kids. After Oliver died, they needed the grandkids around to fill the place with gladness.”

Darcy and Oliver were our neighbor playmates growing up. Ollie died of diabetes complications years before and I didn’t get back very often. I sometimes felt guilty about that, but dammit, my life wasn’t easy and coming home always intimidated me. I was a moody bitch growing up and still am sometimes, and didn’t like being reminded of that fact, which is why I usually avoid things like Homecoming and class reunions.

Forgive yourself, the little voice in my head said. I promised to try.

“Yeah. Maybe I will,” I replied to her and myself both.

Will threw the kickstand back on the recliner and pounced out of the chair. “Hey Mom. I’m gonna show Ashlee the rest of the house. Let her see what we’ve done with the place.”

“Of course, dear.”

Omigod! Why did he have to be so cute with his mother? And me without mine, since I was eleven. At least corporeally.

But he was, and he pulled me up off the couch and motioned me over. “As you can see, I stripped the paint off the mantel and off all the floor and sideboards, leaving the natural walnut to breathe. This place was made simple, but they used really good techniques in the joins.” He rambled on about renovation as I ran my hand over the polished grain. It looked like he’d put a lot of love into the job and I said so.

Will smiled shyly and my heart went pitter-pat. I was such a goner! Inwardly I groaned. What the hell was I doing? This wasn’t going to work, me the world traveler and him the small-town guy.

Will showed me how he’d done the same refinishing with the French doors that slid into the wall, and talked about hand-beveling and then showed me the wall with the china cabinet where we used to keep only the best dishes for when guests were over. We usually ate in the kitchen otherwise. The etched panes of crystal seemed to glitter and the light from the chandelier over the dining room table refracted rainbows along the wall as he opened and closed the cupboards, showing me the gleaming burnished solid brass hinges. God, I loved this place, though I really didn’t understand as a child how nice it all was.

We hardly ever do.

They’d cleaned up the sun porch that opened off the dining room and added a settee and a breakfast nook and I smiled as I remember how often I’d retreated to this room as a child to read about the Patchwork Girl in Oz, and Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. Will then let me out the side door of the house and showed me the well-tended gardens where my father and I had pulled weeds and the now-huge chrysanthemums we’d planted years ago. He walked me around the back and showed me how he’d turned the tomato garden where we used to have mud-fights in the late summer into a small rock garden and how he’d resurfaced the patio and rebuilt the sandstone outdoor barbecue that was still shaded by a couple of plum trees. Sliding open the garage, I caught the whiff of gasoline and the same smell of freshly mown grass that clung to his well-oiled tools occupying the back wall. And he showed me the motorcycle he was building from scratch that looked like he hadn’t worked on it for a while, but would get back to, once the landscaping season slowed down in winter.

“Hey! Is that crawlspace still up here?” I asked and climbed up the slatted wall on the left side of the garage to peek my head into a small storage area. On a sleeping bag up there we’d felt each other up for the first time, hiding from the world and discovering clumsy teenage lust.

“Don’t go up there!” he said, but I already had.

“Looks like you haven’t been up here in a while.” I saw it clean and empty. I climbed down, snickering.

“Yeah, well, there’s this thing called the internet now,” he replied, sheepish.

“What, no girlfriend to take care of your base carnal needs?” I asked with false lightness.

“No, Ash. Not since you.”

Wow. I felt honored, and more than a bit pressured. He really had waited. I gave him a peck on the cheek.

“What was that for?”

“Because you’re so cute when you turn red.” I hugged him again and then stepped away.

“Let me see the rest of the house.” I ran toward the garage door, pulled it shut behind me and latched it.

“Don’t you dare lock me in here!” he called, but I already had. He pounded on the door and I giggled.

“Ash. It’s not funny.” He pushed hard against it and I thought the lock was going to snap.

“Okay. Okay. Step back and wait a second.” I unlatched it. When I slid the garage door open, I saw anger in his eyes.

“What?” I remarked. Boy, he was actually pissed.

“You of all people should know that that’s not cool.”

And all of a sudden, it dawned on me how right he was. I’d gotten locked in the garage more than once back when I was a little kid, and the last time I did, it took a couple of hours for someone to find me. It happened to be Will. By that time I was so distraught, I thought the Rapture had occurred and I’d got left behind. I shivered at the memory.

See, there were these movies some friends of ours had been into when I was little, about getting left behind after the Second Coming, and then the Antichrist showed up and everything went to hell, Christopher Walken style. Freaked me out so bad I had nightmares for days and prayed the sinner’s prayer every night for the next two years. So, when I got locked in the garage after falling asleep there one day, I was understandably distraught. My brother and Amber had just laughed at me.

“You’re right,” I said and hugged him. “I should know better.” I looked into his eyes and apologized. “Forgive me?”

He nodded. “Of course I forgive you.”

People don’t apologize enough anymore. Instead, they say something like “I’m sorry,” or even worse, “my bad.” But forgiveness? Only seemed to happen in certain circles and I’m sorry can mean so many different things including sucks to be you.

Coming home was hard. It reminded me of all the things I’d done that I was ashamed of. So why was I back here?

Will said, “C’mon. Let’s see the rest of the house.” He pulled me close and sniffed my hair as we walked toward the back door past the fruitless Mulberry tree that our family had to trim as a ritual every Thanksgiving. I looked up into the newly sprouting branches.

“You know, when I was younger, we had to cut this damn thing back every Turkey-Day. I spent hours here on the ground, waiting for the branches that fell. Amber would drag them over and I would cut them up into manageable pieces that we’d tie with string and when the bundle got large enough, we’d tie it all up and drag it out back to be hauled away on trash day. I always envied my brother Adam, who got to be up in the tree running the chainsaw.”

Will laughed. “Well, then. Next Thanksgiving, you can be chainsaw-girl and I’ll handle the ground work.”

“Aren’t you ever afraid you’re going to fall?”

“Naw. We strap ourselves in with harnesses nowadays. Too much liability with insurance if we didn’t.” He opened the swinging door to the back porch where the washer and dryer still sat.

I ran my hands over the cream-colored appliances and experienced a sense of déjà vu all over again.

“I think that’s the same washer and dryer your mom used when you guys lived here,” Will said.

“How do you know?”

“They came with the house.”

I looked closer at them.

“I’ve replaced a lot of the parts over the years, but they’re still the same housings.”

“You’re so – handy!”

He laughed. “That’s me. Jack of all trades, master of none.”

“One or two, I bet.”

He blushed. I liked that.

Mrs. Stenfield puttered in the kitchen like my mom used to do, rinsing dishes and putting them in the dishwasher as we entered the house. The squared white linoleum floor and the sunny-yellow kitchen were almost like I remembered. Only the trim was different and the countertops had been updated with colored tile and the stove was a new glass-top electric instead of the gas that we’d had years before. Nothing fancy, but I didn’t care.

My old house. My old home, now Will’s and his mother’s. Wow. I remembered his dad and mom had gotten divorced, and that made it seem a little less idyllic, but still, there was this…glow.

A tray with a pitcher of lemonade sat on the sunny kitchen table and Will poured us each a glass.

“Wow. I haven’t had real lemonade in forever.”

“It’s just from frozen, Ash.” Will laughed. “Not like your mom used to make off those lemons you and Amber brought home.”

“Oh, you remember that?”

“Like it was yesterday.”

“I’m glad you like it,” Mrs. Stenfield said. “Well, I’ll just leave you two alone for a bit. I’m headed downtown to meet Joanne at the White Rabbit. Do you need anything while I’m out?”

“No thanks, Mom.” He rose and gave her a quick hug. “I’ve got everything I need right here.”

I thought I was going to die. Alone with Will Stenfield, and with his mother’s blessing! In high school, I was always considered the wild one of the “terrible twins” and now I was being left all alone with a man, unchaperoned! What was this world coming to? Of course, objectively I knew we were both in our twenties now, but parents always seem frozen in time, at least in their kids’ minds.

“See you later, Ashlee?” Mrs. Stenfield said.

“Um, yeah, sure,” I stammered.

“Stay out of the cookie jar, Will.” She slapped his hand as he reached for the lid of the Winnie-the-Pooh honeypot on the counter. He cradled his hand in mock injury, but she had looked at me when she said it.

Now I really thought I was going to die. What did she think, I’d jump her baby boy’s bones on the sofa while she ate dinner with a friend?

Hm. Not a completely unattractive idea. She breezed out of the house without a word. Will held out the honeypot to me and I grinned.

“No thanks,” I said. “I’m watching my figure.”

“So am I.” His eyes roved me up and down. It felt good, and I loved his laugh.

On impulse I got up and opened the door to the basement and went down. It seemed they’d turned it into some kind of artsy rumpus room.

“Well, this is cozy,” I said, as he came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. That was getting to be a habit.

“Yeah it is,” Will said, and I elbowed him gently in the gut.

“I was talking about the basement, nerdling.” The tiny space contained a La-Z-Boy, a reading lamp, a few shelves of model cars and airplanes and a mysterious work in progress. I walked over to the easel and lifted the tarp from off the canvas that was sitting there.

“Your mom’s?” I asked, as I viewed the Italian landscape on it.

“Actually, it’s mine,” he said, and he blushed.

I turned back to the picture. “It’s good. Your perspective is off a bit, here and here. But overall, it has nice composition and your color palette is very Tuscany.”

“I didn’t ask for a review, but thanks anyway.”

Now it was my turn to blush. “Sorry. Force of habit. Travel writer, critic. Goes with the territory.” I bit my lip. In my job I was used to being free with my judgments and opinions of the world and sometimes it was hard to turn it off.

“That’s okay. I may not always like it, Ash. Like what you have to say. But at least I know where you stand.”

“That’s rare.” I blew a strand of hair out of my eyes. “Most people aren’t so appreciative and just think I’m a bitch.”

“I’m not most people.”

I turned to look at him. Really look at him. He’d grown up since I’d been away and I said so.

“Naw.” He stuck his tongue out at me. “I’m still the same old guy. Lucky in life, unlucky in love.”

“Well, at least you’ve got part of the equation.” I touched a finger to the painting. It came away tacky, leaving a fingerprint.

“Oh no, Will. I thought it was dry.”

He laughed and dragged me over to the sink.

“Don’t worry about it.” He took a rag, dabbed a little thinner on it and proceeded to wash my finger.

Something inside me stirred and I felt lightheaded again. “Must be the fumes,” I whispered. But when he turned me in his arms, my knees wobbled as he pressed his body up against mine.

“I’ve missed you, Ash.” His voice came out low and purr-fect and he leaned his mouth over mine and caught my lips with his own. Warm. Wet. Probing. The tip of his tongue flicked against mine and my breath came out panting. There was a stirring in my belly as I felt him press against my hips.

“Too fast,” I said and pushed him away. “Sorry.” My head swam and I forced myself up the stairs and out of his reach.

Yeah, I know I wanted him, but thinking about something and then actually doing it are two different things.

Once I was back in the kitchen I relaxed. “You know, when we were kids, we used to have Halloween parties down there. Used blankets to create walkways and strung stringy stuff up for cobwebs, and made things that jumped out to scare each other.” I laughed as I ran water into the kitchen sink and splashed my face with it.

Will handed me a towel. “I know. I was one of your victims, remember?” He shut the basement door behind him.

“I remember. We used to blindfold you guys, then make you put your hands into bowls of cold spaghetti and gelatin mixed with fake fur. It was disgusting, but hilarious.”

“To you, maybe.” He smiled.

“And this was my brother’s room,” I said as I pushed open the east side door off the kitchen. Apparently Will had turned this into a widescreen TV room. “Adam used to lie on the floor below the turntable with his head between two speakers and blast Coldplay into his ears.”

“You know I love you so, you know I love you so.” Will sang and strummed an air guitar as we both sounded out the bass line. “Duhdahduhdahduhdah. Duhdahduhdahduhdah. DUN. Dunt DUN. DUn. Dunt DUN!”

We just looked at each other and laughed.

“We are such geeks,” I said. “Now, let me see my room.” I turned and lurched out the other door, through the sun-porch, across the dining room, back into the kitchen and flung open the door off the west wall.

“You mean my room now,” he said in my ear as he came up behind me.

I don’t know why I did it, but all resistance crumbled and I turned and kissed him.

The next thing I knew we were on his bed and groping each other like two kids drowning. Will had his hand up my shirt and I grabbed his jean-clad buttocks as we kissed like starving children. When the phone began to ring, my addled mind suddenly hit clarity and I laughed.

“Aren’t you going to get that?” I asked as he nibbled on my ear.

“Ignore it,” he mumbled as he nipped my lobe and sent spasms of pleasure through me. His right hand had found the underwire to my bra and his thumb slid over my breast and I gasped.

“You like that?”

“Maybe too much.” I was a good girl, after all. Oh, yeah. Aren’t we all, in our own minds.

The phone continued to ring, then the machine picked up.

“You still have an answering machine?” I laughed. He kissed me stupid and I shut up.

“You have reached…” The rest of the message fuzzed in my brain as he pulled off my shirt and unsnapped my B-cup, his tongue taking the place of his fingers.

“God, Ashlee. I love you,” he whispered into my navel as he slid down my body.

Shock woke me right up out of my lust-filled delirium. “WHAT?” I grabbed his shoulders and pushed back. “What did you say?” My left eyebrow went up and I stared him down like a wombat in a cage, whatever that means.

“Umm…Ashlee, I love you?” He said it as if I hadn’t heard it the first time.

“Well, that’s just great.” I snapped my bra back together and threw my shirt on over my head. “Here we are getting along all fine and dandy and you have to go and drop the L-bomb.”

“Ashlee, I’ve loved you since high school. I’ve never stopped loving you. I thought you knew that.” He looked so forlorn, on his knees, on his bed, in my old room.

So, do you really wonder why I’m a mess?

“And how, pray tell, was I supposed to know that?” I asked. “I mean, animalistic teenage lust revisited, I get that! But love? Will, you don’t even know me anymore.”

“I know you.”

“Well, maybe I don’t.”

“You know me.”

“I didn’t mean – never mind.” I growled, “Men are so exasperating!”

“What?”

“You all just think you can cat around until the day you decide it’s time to grow up and settle down. Well, I don’t want to!”

“I didn’t cat around, and I’ve always wanted to settle down. Ashlee, I’m the same guy.”

“Yeah, maybe too damned much the same. Look at it from my perspective. You’re a guy who lives with his mom and sleeps in my old room!”

“I thought it would be romantic.”

“Argh!” I screamed and I marched out of the house with my buttons all askew.

“Ashlee, where are you going?” he called from the porch as I headed down the dilapidated block into the evening’s slanting light.

“Anywhere but here!”

“You know this isn’t the best neighborhood to be walking around in,” he yelled. “Let me at least take you home.”

“I’d rather have a gang-bang with a bunch of Cholos,” I yelled back, then looked around as a few faces peered out the windows at me. “Ha ha! Just kidding!” I singsonged, but I decided that now was as good a time as any to get back to the jogging I’d missed while my ass was healing.

I ran.

I knew it was a mistake, but after the first stabbing pain and the endorphins kicked in I found myself reaching a good steady stride and forgetting about my injury. All I could think about was my breathing and keeping my bag from hitting me right on the wound as I slung it across my back. I cut through a couple of alleys and back onto the Boulevard and then slowed when I hit the tracks and passed into what I felt would be a safer neighborhood.

Night began to fall and soon I found myself walking alone with a designer handbag and a serious ache in my behind, in the dark next to Piccadilly Park. Don’t ask me why they called it that. If you ask me, if they wanted a classic London reference they should have called it Hyde Park for its high crime rate.

“Hey! I like your bag,” a voice called out behind me.

“Why don’t you hand it over,” another voice beside me said.

“If you do, maybe we’ll let you walk away and keep that pretty face of yours.”

My heart skipped a beat and I looked up and around, realizing that in my self-righteous anger, I’d walked right into a herd of biker chicks or something. At least, they had a lot of leather and piercings and ink.

“You know, my twin sister’s a lesbian,” I said, trying to distract them as I slid away from the phalanx they were creating around me.

“Hey, Arnott. I think she just called you a lesbian,” one of the hard-faced girls spoke up.

“No, she didn’t. She said your sister is a lesbian,” said another.

“I already know that. Although what that has to do with giving me her bag, I got no clue,” the more well-spoken leader said. “So, why don’t you just hand me that purse and we can all go on our merry way?” The circle began to close.

Oh no, this was not going to happen. I looked at the sky and thought about trying to shift. If the moon was up at all I might be able to induce the change, though most times I no more wanted it than the average girl craved a visit from Aunt Rosie Flow.

“And why don’t you take your big old ass…” I began, but didn’t get any further, as suddenly the sound of a Chevy V-8 roared up behind me and Will threw open the door, scattering the crowd.

“Get in, Ash,” Will yelled and he grabbed for me as I leaped into the truck.

“Ow. Ow. Ow.” I yelped as my butt slid across the seat and I could feel skin and stitches tear. “Get me to a hospital.”

“I’ll do better than that.” He said something vulgar. “I’m taking you to my sister.” His hands gripped the wheel and he put the pedal to the metal.

Will’s big sister Samantha “Sam” Stenfield was a nurse practitioner at Knightsbridge Hospital and worked the swing shift. Used to work graveyard, but when she got the chance she changed to evenings. Too many crazies on nights, she’d said. About ten years older than Will and I, but she looked at least a decade beyond that. I guess that’s what the ER will do to you, but she had a good bedside manner and didn’t even blink when Will rushed me over.

“Oh, hi, Ashlee. Nice to see you again,” she said matter-of-factly. “Strip and let’s see what we’ve got.”

“Get him out of here first,” I told her.

“Will.” She gave him that older-sister-to-younger-brother look and he retreated behind the curtain she’d pulled in front of his face.

I dropped trou and laid face down on the examination bed. I was so humiliated.

“So, you want to tell me what happened?”

“Not really,” I said. “Oh, you mean with my bullet wound. I mean, it was a staph infection. Hunting. A ricochet. The bullet wound got infected,” I amended.

She scowled. “Doctors these days. Better safe than sorry, they say. So let’s just get a surgeon in for a consult, they say. And surgeons love to cut stuff anyway. When you got a hammer, everything looks like a goddamn nail.”

I winced and then bit my lip as Will’s sister went on her rant. I was so not going to complain. It was my fault anyway I was in this predicament, I figured. I may be from here, but it wasn’t my Knightsbridge anymore.

“Well, you may have set yourself back a few days, but I’ve cleaned the wound and used a little skin seal instead of stitches. What do they got you doin’ for wound care?”

“Oh, you know. Bleach baths and fresh dressing.”

“Well. Keep it up. Looks like you’ve got a week or so to go, then you’re out of the woods, but I’d continue the bleach baths until the wound is totally closed. Make sure that all the bacteria stays dead.”

“Can I come in now?” Will asked.

“No,” I warned him.

“Hey Will. Give me your sweatshirt,” Sam called, and he handed it to her through the gap. She turned it inside out as it still had a few grass stains.

“Here. Step into this and wrap it around your waist. I’ll put your sweat pants in a bag. There’s bloodstains on them,” she said. “And Will, you take her straight home, you hear? Are you good on pain medication?”

I nodded. “I’m good.”

“Cool.” She let me get quasi-presentable before she pulled the curtain open and let in her brother.

“Good seeing you again, Ash. Take care of yourself,” she said, as if I came in every Friday. Hadn’t seen me in years.

Nurses. Can’t faze ’em.

I let Will bundle me off to the truck and back to Amber’s doorstep. “I’ll call you tomorrow. See how you’re doing,” he promised. Then he drove away.

I kind of hoped he would and I kind of hoped he wouldn’t. I sighed as I let myself in the door and slipped upstairs while the rest of the house slept. I was not going to tell this to my sister. No way, no how, I thought as I brushed my teeth and went straight to bed.

Chapter 7

Will called several times the next day but I didn’t answer. I hadn’t given him my cell phone number, so he was stuck leaving messages on the landline until my sister got sick of it and cornered me.

“Ashlee. Why haven’t you called Will back?”

“I dunno,” I mumbled. I so did not want to get into this with my sister.

“You know, you can’t run away from all of your problems,” she said. “Whatever it is, you’re going to have to face it sooner or later. Preferably sooner, ’cause I’m getting sick of making excuses for you.”

“I never asked you to make excuses for me.” I rounded on her. “So, why don’t you mind your own damn business?” Okay, I must be going crazy, because you do not take that tone with Amber.

“As long as you’re under my roof, it IS my damn business,” she said. “You know, sometimes you are so ungrateful.” She was right, but I was mad, and when I had my mad on, my stupid mouth got the best of me.

“Fine. I’m an ungrateful bitch. You hate me. This town hates me and now, probably Will hates me too!” I wailed and I broke down and began to cry.

My sister stared at me like I’d grown another head. I never cried. I was the tomboy. I was the scrapper. I was…I was, I was a big ol’ mess.

My sister sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at me with concern. J.R. and Elle both poked their heads into the room and she waved them away.

“So…do you want to talk about it?”

“Do I look like I want to talk about it?” I sobbed.

Amber patted my foot through the down comforter. She was not making this easy on me.

“I’ll tell you about it later,” I promised. “Right now, I’d just like to sleep a little.”

Amber looked at me with kindness and brushed my hair from off my face. Then, she kissed my forehead like Mom used to do and I about lost it. That is, until she said, “Tomorrow, we’ll go get mani-pedis. Just the two of us.”

As if that would make it all better. I laughed between sobs as she shut the door.

I was such a schizoid.

“Ashlee Marie Scott!” Mom’s voice came out of the woodwork and her disembodied head floated into the room.

Oh, dear mother of God, I thought. Now I’d done it. It wasn’t enough to be humiliated and have a nervous breakdown in front of my identical twin, but now Mother had to get involved and I knew that she wasn’t going to be put off so easily.

“Stop that sniveling at once,” my dead mother said as she halfway materialized into the room.

I say halfway, because the lower half of her body seemed to be having trouble catching up to the rest and was banging its shins against the door. She whistled and her stocking feet finally found their home. “There. That’s better. Now what’s this all about, young lady?” she intoned and sat down into the bed.

I would have said “on the bed” but it seemed like holding a visual pattern of molecules against the solidity of the real world was a process she hadn’t fully mastered.

I opened my mouth, but before I spoke, she plucked the thought from my mind.

“So, Will’s in love with you.”

I growled, “I really hate it when you do that.”

Mom ignored my outburst. “So, why does that bother you?” she asked.

I knew she was referring to Will, but I deliberately called up a brick wall in my head and said, “Because my thoughts should be my own and I’d like to think that there’s such a thing as respecting my privacy.” If I wouldn’t let her read my diary when she was alive, I was sure as hell not going to give her the opportunity to read my mind after she was dead.

“Talk to me, Ashlee,” she said. “You know I’m not very good at this.”

“Yeah, well that makes two of us.”

“So, why does Will loving you bother you so?” she badgered me.

I sighed and threw the covers over my head. “Because I don’t even know how I feel! How can he say he still loves me after how many years has it been now?”

“I don’t know how to answer that, Ash. Time doesn’t work the same for me as it does for you.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, suddenly curious. I was always trying to trick Mother into telling me what’s on the other side, but she usually saw through my subterfuges.

“Hmm. How can I say it?” Her eyes closed and her head got denser, and the rest of her tea-length gown went diaphanous as if all her energy was centered in her noggin as she thought long and hard about what she could or would say.

“I know.” She opened her eyes and the color washed out of her cranium and she got all ghostly again. “See. Time is a continuum, a mental construct created for physical bodies. As I no longer have the same type of physical body that you do and am not bound by time, I see you as a complete entity. You are all ages at once to me. Maybe Will sees you the same way. You’re still the girl he fell in love with in high school, and even more so now.”

“But people change,” I told her.

“Not as much as you would think.”

“I’m not sure if that makes me feel bad or good.”

“Then don’t let it make you feel either,” she said. “Feel what you decide to feel. Will loves the Ashlee Scott you were and there’s something in him, that metaphysical something that is timeless, which loves the Ashlee that you are today.”

“But I’m a werewolf, Mother,” I let out in exasperation.

“Only temporarily, dear.”

“You mean there’s a cure?” I said, sitting up so quickly I got a little dizzy from the meds.

“No, I mean, temporarily the rest of your life.”

“Oh.” What a letdown.

I heard a scratching at the door. Mom turned to look. “That would be Spanky,” I said.

“I know that.” Mother waved her hand and the door cracked open to let him in. The dog sat at the foot of the bed, looked up at her, and cocked his head.

“He can see you, can’t he?” I said, amazed. Even Amber couldn’t see our mother.

Mom looked at me before I could get my mental shield up, and we both said what I was thinking. “Must be a dog thing.” We laughed as Spanky pawed at the bed. I lifted him up and he curled into my arms and suddenly I got really, really tired.

“Can we talk later?” I asked, and Mother nodded. Spanky and I drifted off to sleep as she floated slowly away.

Chapter 8

“Damn it! Damn it! Damn it! Damn it! DAMN IT!” I pounded on the keyboard in frustration.

“Hey! Hey! HEY! HEY!” My sister called from the living room as I swore at my outdated computer with the sticking H key. “I hope that’s your own laptop you’re abusing and not mine this time!”

“Yes, it’s mine. And my scumbag of an editor has reassigned my upcoming trip to Cancun. He’s giving it to one of his golfing buddies who’s been twisting his arm to do the western Caribbean. Listen to this. ‘Considering your current physical challenges, we’re concerned about your ability to fulfill your obligations at this time.’ That shithead word pimp.”

“Ashlee. Language,” my sister complained as she passed my doorway putting fresh linens into the guest bathroom.

“Is J.R. home?”

“It doesn’t matter if J.R.’s home or not. We don’t talk that way in this house,” she said, obviously forgetting the F-bombs she had dropped the other night in between cosmos with Sheri and Renee. My sister has an inflated sense of propriety until she’s had a few and then she can swear like a sailor.

“Sorry. But, if it wasn’t for me, he wouldn’t even have that assignment. I brought that contact with me and now he’s going to try to pull it right out from under my bullet-ridden ass! I don’t think so!” I shot off an email to my contact in Cancun. “Let’s see him try to fu-, I mean, screw with me,” I snarled.

“You’re such a lady, Ash,” my sister remarked. “And could you please remember to rinse and wipe the tub after you bathe. We have hard water here and it’s not easy to get the stains out once they’ve set in.”

“I thought I did,” I said, looking up at my perky-nosed sis from where I lay.

She gave me a look that said she didn’t believe me.

“Obviously not well enough,” I said as she went back down the hall and into her bedroom. “You know, the way you run this house, I’m surprised you don’t ask for military corners on all the beds,” I muttered.

“I heard that!” Her voice floated back toward me.

“Bite me.”

“I heard that, too!”

“Love you.”

This time, nothing. Yeah, sure. See? Selective hearing.

I got up and ran myself a bleach bath, then peeled out of my clothes and stared at myself in the mirror. Like my sister I bordered on petite, but I was much more athletic and she hung somewhere around model thin. I’d gotten soft not being able to work out and I was determined that within the next week, I was going to actively pursue some kind of toning regimen.

I turned around and tore off the bandage, wincing as the tape peeled another layer of skin. The wound, which started larger than an everlasting gobstopper, had finally shrunk to the size of a quarter and filled in quite nicely. There was still discoloration and would probably be a slight scar, but surprisingly, it wouldn’t be unsightly. Not that anyone that mattered had seen my ass lately.

Which made me think about Will.

I stepped into the bath and settled in, taking the latest Nora Roberts with me. I loved to read in the tub and since baths instead of showers were now a regular part of my routine, it gave me time to catch up.

I had just cracked the spine when Mother materialized in the toilet. Again, I would say “on the toilet,” but as usual, her aim just wasn’t that good.

“Mother!” I hissed. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, I just thought I’d check in and see how you’re doing.” She had that gleam in her eye that told me she was up to something.

There came a scratching and whining at the door and I looked at her, exasperated. “How come he always knows you’re here?” I asked.

“Animals are more sensitive to energies and emotion than we give them credit for,” she replied. “Or it could be the dog thing again.”

Hmph. I laughed. Maybe I should get my own miniature Schnauzer. Use him as an early warning system. Warning. Dead Mother Approaching.

“So, Mommy dearest, tell me again how I managed to get lycanthropy and Amber only got allergies?” I settled back for a bath-time story.

“Once upon a time, your great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother Louisa Scott was visiting relatives in Scotland,” Mom began.

“Hence, the Scott in our name.”

“Am I telling this or you?” She sank deeper into the porcelain bowl.

I bit my tongue and smiled as she continued with her obviously fractured fairy tale. Never tells it the same way twice, no matter how many times it’s been. I keep hoping she’ll slip and tell me something that sounds true, but hell, how would I know? Nah, I’d know. I’d feel it, right?

That’s what I keep hoping.

Mom continued, “The story goes that she was out picking wolfsbane and moonflowers in a fairy circle one starlit night in the Highlands when Titania took umbrage and caused her to fall into a deep sleep. While asleep, Titania enchanted a passing wolf into the circle and turned it into a man, who lay with Louise and on that night she conceived. Upon returning to America, much to her husband’s delight, who thought that they couldn’t have children, she gave birth to twin girls, the first of many sets down through the generations. One twin is always a lupine, the other, an oracle of some kind: a seer or a prophetess. I don’t know what happened this time around to your sister, except for the nightmares and migraines, and the fact that she always seems to win when they go to Vegas, and she has a keen eye for fashion trends…anyway. You’re the one with the more demonstrable powers. Which reminds me of the reason I’m here.” She pointed at the ceiling. “Full moon’s coming up soon and you’re going to have to make a shift.”

“I know I have to, but I don’t wanna,” I whined. “It’s such a pain in the ass. Hurts like a son of a bitch. And it’s totally disgusting.”

“Yes, well. Either you choose the time and the place, or the change will choose it for you. And you know what happened the last time you let that happen.”

“I know. I know. I went through a whole herd of sheep before I tired out and changed back. Thank God I didn’t hurt anyone. The only good thing about the shift is that I seem to lose most of my body fat when I turn back.”

“It’s a metabolism thing,” my mother said. “And you should be grateful. Some women would kill to have your bone structure.” She floated over to caress my face with icy digits.

“So, how many days have I got?” I asked, as if I didn’t know. Believe me, I always knew. I sighed and tapped the hot water faucet with my foot to heat up the by-now-lukewarm bath.

“Ten days before the next cycle,” my mother said.

“Bummer,” I mumbled.

“Oops, gotta run.” She apologized and condensed to a small drop of water that plinked into the bowl.

“Aunt Ash?” came J.R.’s voice through the door. “Who are you talking to?”

I cringed. Great. Now even my nephew thinks I’m a freak.

“No one, honey. Just to myself. Do you need something?” I asked sweetly, testing the air.

“No. I was passing by and Spanky was sitting here listening to you talk and I thought it was really weird. I almost thought there was somebody else in there with you. Anyways, I need to brush my teeth and my toothbrush is in there.”

“Nope. Nobody but me, myself and I. I’ll be out in a sec.” I said and stood up, dried off and let the kid have his space, retiring to my room and puttering on my laptop while I thought.

Ten days. Cripes. First the dog, now the kid. And a full moon coming up. I really needed to figure out how I should handle the next change. I supposed I could just do what I used to when I lived in town, which was to leave the basement window unlatched and set so I could enter in whatever form I happened to be at the time.

Only this house had no basement, unlike the one I’d grown up in. You know, the one where Will was now. The one where, if I could just get my head screwed on straight, I could probably stay over and do the same thing. Only, how was I supposed to sneak out of Will’s bed without him noticing?

I thought about drugging him. Hey, it was a plan, but there had to be a better way. Maybe I should just go home to my place in the City and take my usual laps around Golden Gate Park.

I was still thinking about this when my email beeped, and I brought it up without even reading the subject line.

Oh, great. Another one.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

I AM STILL WARNING YOU ABOUT WHAT MY EMPLOYER WANTS TO DO TO YOU FOR SOME REASON. LIKE I SAID BEFORE I DO NOT BELIEVE YOU ARE WHAT IS SAID ABOUT YOU BUT I HAVE NO CHOICE IN THE MATTER SO JUST BEWARE. THERE IS CERTAINLY A CONSPIRACY SURROUNDING THIS SO TRUST NO ONE NOT EVEN THOSE CLOSEST TO YOU AND DO NOT DO WHAT ANYONE WANTS EVEN IF THEY WANT YOU TO.

SINCERELY,

A FRIEND

I felt like I was back in first-year creative writing class, willing to drive icepicks into my eyeballs rather than suffer through another round of insufferably sophomoric prose. Yeah, I know here in my diary I take liberties with the language but holy freaking Grammar Girl, what are they teaching kids these days in English class?

Then I forced myself to focus on the meaning and ignore the execrable delivery.

It seemed as if he, if it was a he, was trying to give me a friendly warning that someone was trying to force him to do something to me, along with the implication that someone close to me was not to be trusted.

Master of the obvious, right? But I was no detective, and besides, nothing other than these emails themselves had appeared to threaten me since I had returned to Knightsbridge. Also, there was a kind of lunatic, conspiracy-nut quality to the messages that made me think the sender wasn’t really all there.

So.

I had to figure out whether or not to tell anyone. After a moment’s thought, I moved the email to my saved file and decided not to say anything. It would just get everyone spun up again and worried about nothing. I would just have to keep my eyes open and stay away from animal control officers, biker chicks, local hunters or old flames trying to entice me to crawl back into the cozy shell of my former life.

Chapter 9

Busted. I was busted.

The next morning when I opened the front door, I ran into Will Stenfield camped out on the porch, and he wouldn’t leave until I talked to him. I guess I could have slammed the door and not come out, or tried to run out the back, but…he was right, in a John Cusack, Say Anything sort of way. I had to deal with him sometime.

“Hi,” he said tentatively, waving a sack of sweet-smelling custard-filled chocolate donuts like a peace offering.

“Hi,” I replied, not really sure how to feel about anything at this point, but I decided I was not about to pass up a mouthful of Bavarian crème.

“Figured since you weren’t returning my calls, I’d need something to get me in the door.”

“Well, since you’re here, you might as well come all the way in,” I told him, motioning from the foyer.

“Where’s the rest of the gang?”

“Hell if I know.” I went to the fridge. “Milk? Amber only buys the nonfat crap.”

“That’s okay.” He whisked out a couple cartons from the bag he was carrying. “I know how you like whole milk, so I brought some.”

“Humph,” I said skeptically. “I don’t know if that screams stalker or sweet.” But inside, I was getting all gooey again, like the donut. I shook it off. “Let’s go sit outside on the patio.”

Will followed me and Spanky followed him, sniffing.

Amber and Elle had the best backyard. An awning-covered patio with a glass table that seated six comfortably, eight in a pinch, and a black-bottomed swimming pool with an attached hot tub that spilled water over the beveled edge in sheeted columns at just the right height to dip your head under – oh, and at least four chaise lounges for sunning, which I had yet to use. The sound of the water soothed me, and we sat in silence as we ate. The not speaking was kind of nice, until it got awkward.

“So, are we going to talk about it?” Will asked.

“Talk about what?” I replied, dreading the answer. He was going for the RDT, the Relationship Defining Talk, and I had no idea what I was going to tell him.

Sitting there staring at me, all muscly and stuff.

“Fine. Let’s talk about it,” I finally said.

“I said I loved you.”

“I heard you.”

“So, how do you feel about me?”

“God, Will. I don’t know!” I sat back, exasperated.

“Ouch.”

“Give me a minute. I’m not good at this stuff.” Now where had I heard that before? “And why is I don’t know so bad? It just means I don’t know.”

“Okay. Pretend you’re talking to someone else. Pretend I’m just a sounding board.”

“A sounding board. What is a sounding board anyway? Who ever saw one? Is that from when they used to make violins by hand or something?”

“They still make violins by hand, Ash. Pretend I’m an objective third party, who doesn’t have anything at stake. What would you say to him? If I were Amber, what would you say to her?”

“Well, first she’d ask me, ‘So, Ashlee, how do you feel?’” I said, getting into character. “And I’d say, ‘I don’t know, Amber. I mean, I like him. I care about him.’”

“But…” Will prompted.

“Butt?” I looked over my shoulder at my ass, drawing a strained laugh from Will. I know, in the middle of an RDT, right? Humor as a defense, that’s all. “Not but…” I went on. “And…and, and the part of me that knew you back in high school and loved you then, loves you now.”

Will moved toward me.

“But I’m not that girl anymore. And you can’t try to make me be.”

“So, let me get to know the new Ashlee.”

“The new Ashlee’s a bit more complicated than the old one,” I said as I picked Spanky up and cuddled him to my chest while he licked up the crumbs off the tinted table. I think I figured while I held Spanky, Will couldn’t hold me.

“Of course. We’re both older and wiser. And I like complicated, sometimes.”

“Not this kind of complicated you don’t.”

“How do you know if you don’t give me a chance?”

I sighed. “You have a chance.”

That brightened him up. “So,” he said to me.

“So,” I said right back at him.

“So, you’ve never been what you’d call low maintenance.”

“You must be thinking of Amber, ’cause in comparison…”

“I’m not talking about Amber. I’m talking about you. You’ve got layers, Ash. You’ve always had them. Only before the…” He stuttered off.

“Before the incident.”

“Before the incident, you were willing to talk to me about them.”

“Yeah, well. I’ve got trust issues.”

“We’ve all got trust issues, Ash,” he said. “I keep wondering if it’s me you don’t trust, or if you just don’t trust yourself.”

My ego defenses went up. “What are you, my shrink?” I put Spanky down on the ground and got up to pace. He’s getting too close, a voice in my head started singing. I began walking the edge of the pool, circling it and coming back again.

Will stood and stopped me. “Ashlee. What are you afraid of?” He held my shoulders and bent his knees to look square into my eyes.

Trapped.

“I’d never knowingly do anything to hurt you,” he said.

I shrugged him off and collected the trash from the table. “Yes, well, it’s the unknowingly hurting that I’m worried about.”

“Life is a risk, Ashlee. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

“No pain, no gain, right, Will?”

“Not the same. Like I said, I won’t hurt you Ash. At least not intentionally. I love you.”

“I wish I could say the same thing,” I muttered, not sure whether I was talking about loving myself or him.

“Ashlee. Stop it.” He took the bag of garbage from my hands. “Just tell me, whatever you need to say. I can take it.”

My palms began to itch. “God, Will! I’m a bitch. I’m sarcastic, obnoxious, rude and opinionated. I don’t look at the bright side and clouds don’t have a silver lining. I walk into a room full of people and can’t help but wonder what their angles are. That’s why I’m a writer. That way I can put everything that I’m thinking into a palatable form, and when I don’t get it right, I have an editor who does it for me.”

“And…” He put his hands on my shoulders again, and looked me in the eyes.

“You can’t love me!” I pushed him away.

“Why not?” Whipping me back around to face him, his voice rose, not caring if the neighbors heard.

“Because, I don’t even love myself!” I cried and collapsed into his arms.

“Then that’s where we’ll start.” Will held me and rocked me and let me cry it all out.

Chapter 10

For the next few days, Will treated me like a queen. I was still pretty wiped, so it was kind of nice being waited on hand and foot, much to Amber’s dismay. I found that out when I overheard her talking to our father on the phone one day when she thought I was asleep.

“But Dad,” I heard her say. “She needs to get over herself and make a move. Do something,” she said. “I know we’re twins, but where does my responsibility end and hers begin? Well. Yes, she’s contributing to the household. She wrote me a check just the other day, but I haven’t cashed it…I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel right. Fine. I’ll cash it. But I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I mean, Ashlee is one thing, but having Will over here all the time is seriously putting a damper on my own relationship. I mean, I haven’t had a guy in the house this much besides J.R., since I lived with his father. I know. I don’t mean to dump this on you, but can’t you take her for awhile? Either that or Elle and I are going to have to go away for the weekend just to get some time to ourselves. And that’s not fair, is it?”

I decided that I felt guilty enough as it was without adding eavesdropping to the list of my sins, so I slipped out to the back yard to have a smoke and think. That was where Will found me, lost in thought when he stuck his head over the fence.

“Hey Spongebob.”

“Hey Patrick,” I popped right back at him, just like we were back in grade school.

“Whatcha thinkin’?”

“Thinkin’ about blowin’ this popsicle shop.”

“Yeah? Where to?”

“Home.”

“Home?” he said. “Like Frisco?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Home, like San Fran. The City. The Ice Cube by the Bay. The Big Queasy. Don’t call it Frisco.”

“Come here and help me over.” He pushed himself up from the ground on the other side and sort of fell on me as he dangled by his hands.

“You’re not as young as you used to be, sport,” I said. “Next time you might want to try the gate.”

“Hey Ash! Can you tell your boyfriend that we do have gates? Climbing over the fence lowers the property values,” my sister called from where she stood in the upstairs window.

“See?” I shot Amber the finger, but thankfully she wasn’t looking. “Seriously, Will, I need to get out of Amber’s hair,” I sighed. “I overheard her talking to Dad today and she actually asked if I could go stay with him and my stepmother.”

“Come stay with me,” he said.

“Yeah, right,” I said. “Your mother would just love that.”

“Actually, she would, I think.” Will grinned. “Sam works so much and Mom’s been feeling deprived. You can be a new daughter figure. And we’ve got the spare bedroom.”

Was I really thinking about doing this? I didn’t want to leave, but it sounded like I was becoming a burr under Amber’s saddle and I wasn’t ready to go back to my lonely loft in the City.

“Say yes, Ash,” Will said.

“Say yes, Ash,” I heard my sister whisper from where she stood in the bedroom overlooking us on the ground floor.

“Say yes, Ashlee.” My mother’s voice bubbled up from where she lay at the bottom of the pool.

“Fine. Yes,” I said, exasperated. I knew when I was outnumbered. With that, I went upstairs to pack.

“Is there anything I can get for you? Here, let me help you do that,” my sister offered, then had my folded laundry tucked into my suitcase and my bag in my hand before you could say Versace. “Now, don’t worry about a thing. I’ll come visit at least…” She mouthed four, three “…no, twice a week and you are always welcome for dinner, if you call ahead of time. Bye!” she said as she pushed me out the door and into Will’s waiting arms.

We looked at each other and had to shake our heads and laugh. God I loved and sometimes hated my sister. But isn’t that the way it always is with family?

Chapter 11

Will put me in my brother Adam’s old room and I had flashbacks of him there – his writing table, his old springy bed that came with the house, his D&D stuff. He’d been such a geek back then, before he buffed up. Now he was all into medieval reenactments, playing knight-errant, wearing real armor and swinging swords. I mean, a grown man, playing King Arthur or something. Real men should take out their aggressions on mature, adult things like football or WWF, right?

If you don’t get the irony, try harder.

Will brought my suitcases in and as I began to hang up my clothes in the empty half of the closet, his mother came in to put fresh linens on the bed.

I felt a catch in my throat and choked back a sob.

Mrs. Stenfield looked at me with concern.

“I’m sorry,” I said and sat down on the bed with a slight butt-wince. “It’s just…” Suddenly the waterworks poured forth. The emotional rollercoaster of what I called PCS, Pre-Change Syndrome, was starting to get me, which really sucked, because it was exactly fourteen days off of my PMS, which meant every damned lunar month I got twice as much insanity as normal women.

And you wonder why I’m a mess?

Will’s mother sat on the bed and held me and rocked me as I cried out my sorrow. All of my longing for family. All of my hunger for belonging. All of the heartache from not being able to feel my mother’s arms around me came rushing back, here in this place. In my home that wasn’t my home anymore, but still felt like it.

“You were very young when your mom died, weren’t you?” she said.

How did mothers know just what to say?

“We were eleven,” I said, my nose running as I blew long and hard into the tissues she pulled from her pocket. See, I thought. Some women were just born to be mothers. I began to cry even harder. “I forgot how much I missed her,” I sobbed, darting glances around the room to see if Mother was going to materialize. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful, seeing as how I could still at least talk to her, but I hadn’t realized just how much I missed her presence. The softness of her arms around me, the smell of her hair.

Mrs. Stenfield just stroked my hair and held me, waving Will away when he passed by the doorway.

When I came back to myself, I felt awkward and unkempt.

“Why don’t I just leave you alone for now?” she said, the unspoken “while you pull yourself together” hanging in the air between us.

I nodded and sniffled as she shut the door behind her and left me alone. I could hear murmuring in the dining room, then the sound of the evening news on television drifting from the living area. With the sounds of normalcy gathered about me, I curled up into a ball on the bed and went to sleep.

I woke up later, in the middle of the night. The clock read 2:23 a.m., and I got the impression I had heard something outside. After looking though the windows and seeing nothing, I went into the kitchen to the back door, carefully turning the deadbolt so it wouldn’t make a sound, and left it open. I stood on the screened-in back porch next to the old washer and dryer and stared at the moonlit scene.

Inhaling deeply, I smelled the half-familiar smells of my childhood – wisteria going dormant, wild onions that infested the back lawn, Mexican food from one of the neighbors, damp old rusting steel screens that hadn’t yet been replaced with aluminum.

I looked up at la Luna hanging there in the sky and felt the tug, the pull, the urge to get naked and change and run free through the backyards like I used to do. I realized I could do the basement window trick, do it tonight, but I had never changed this early. A day before, sure, which hurt like a son-of-a bitch for some reason. Once I’d held it off until the night after, which was painful too, but I’d been aboard a cruise ship that got stranded at sea an extra forty-eight hours and didn’t have anywhere to go. Could have locked myself in my cabin but that was its own kind of agony, all that energy bursting from me with nowhere to put it.

If I changed this early, would that mean I was done for this cycle? I really did not know for sure. What if it didn’t really count? What if I ended up with some kind of extra bonus change, or what if it threw my cycle off and I have to start changing mid-moon? No, it was safer to just wait a while, do it when it was easiest and I was sure of the results.

Something moved off in the shadows by the fence where the gate to the next-door neighbors used to be. My eyes narrowed and I squinted,focusing on…what? Something small…a striped piece of fur. A cat. Just a cat, doing a bit of nocturnal hunting. I relaxed. See? Nothing to worry about.

I went back inside, locked the door, and settled back to sleep.

Chapter 12

When I awoke, it was to the sound of a light tapping. Night still reigned and a soft light wove its way through the lace curtains on the windows. Will cracked the bedroom door and stuck his head in.

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty,” he said and I rolled onto my back and stretched like a cat. He softly closed the door and knelt down at the edge of the bed and put his arms around me. I curled up against him, my face next to his. His essential maleness assaulted me and I sneezed.

“Ow, ow!” My butt protested the violent explosion.

“Bless you.” He laughed.

I groaned, absolutely mortified. “Sorry.”

Will chuckled as he grabbed a pillow and wiped his face with it. “What’s a few germs among Germans?”

“I’m Scottish.”

“I’m English. Who wants to revisit old feuds?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Guess I didn’t think how being back in this house might affect you,” he apologized.

“No. It’s not your fault.” I paused, thinking. “It’s actually really good for me,” I said. “I need to face this. Face my past. Battle my demons.” I cleared my throat and inhaled his scent and it stuck in the core of my being.

“Yeah, well. Make sure that you at least leave me something to slay,” he teased.

I pulled my head back to get a better look at him, his eyes glittering in the dark. “You know, that’s probably one of the sweetest things any man has ever said to me.”

He began to make another smart remark when I kissed him. Some men just need to learn to shut up and not ruin the moment. That’s why God made women. To kiss them stupid, like I was doing right now.

When we came up for air, he said, “What was that for?”

“Just because,” I said and rolled off the bed and onto my feet. “So, what’s for breakfast? I’m starving.” Nervous breakdowns do that to a girl. They make her incredibly lightheaded and voraciously hungry.

After we ate we decided to go for a drive and watch the sun rise over Knightsbridge. I settled against Will and enjoyed seeing more of the town I grew up in and how it had changed.

“You know, I never get to do this anymore,” I told him.

“Yeah, I guess in the city you don’t need a car.”

“And people don’t usually get in a car unless they’re going somewhere.”

“Guess there aren’t many Sunday drivers in Fr-…San Fran.” He smiled.

I laughed. “Probably not.”

We drove through downtown Knightsbridge again and talked about how we used to cruise Main Street on the weekends. How the city council had threatened to prohibit cruising due to a few small skirmishes that had broken out one summer, until the kids had protested and a band of parents who remembered the glory days of their own youth formed a Main Street watch on weekends to prevent any future violence. What with that and the curfew it for minors at midnight,  it appeared to be workkng.

We drove past our alma mater and I wondered what the kids that went there now were like. High school seemed like just yesterday, and yet, a lifetime ago.

I recalled how when we were younger, we would go swimming in the irrigation canals, even though we weren’t supposed to. Later on they ended up fencing them off in the city limits. We talked about simpler times, and a simpler world, and how, even though Knightsbridge had changed a lot, it was still simple.

We held hands. Eventually we parked, and when we kissed, it was without intent. Will was being the perfect gentleman and it felt good to be with him, without the pressure of sex.

Okay, for me anyway. I wasn’t thinking about how it might be for him, but like Amber says, sometimes I’m too focused on myself.

I didn’t want to think about sex. I don’t know how sex is for regular humans, but for a werewolf, it seemed to have extra pitfalls. Speaking of which, I looked out the windows and stared at the waxing moon, and my palms began to itch. MoonFall, the full moon, was in seven days and I’d have to find a way to disappear for the evening, so I could at least make the shift and be back by morning.

Contrary to popular belief werewolves, or lupines, retained most of their capacities for intelligence even in wolf form. When I’d had to go out at night in the City – pretty much anyone from the Bay Area meant San Francisco when they referred to “the City,” – I usually hit Golden Gate Park where I could run free and get rid of the excess energy that came after the shift. I wondered where I could do the same around here anymore, what with all the growth. Just out into the hills and the Canyon, I guessed, away from the stupid suburban developments.

Yeah, it would be nice to go back to the Canyon…assuming I could face up to something I’d put off for a long time.

Chapter 13

We woke the next morning to a call from my sister.

“Ashlee?” Amber’s voice came out all echo-ey over the speakerphone. She sounded spooked and Amber was almost never afraid.

“Amber, what is it?” I asked as Will rolled off the bed, fully dressed but plenty rumpled. We’d fallen asleep side by side in the guest room, still in our clothes from the day before.

“Um, we found a coyote’s head on the porch this morning.”

“Oh my gosh. J.R. didn’t see it, did he?” I asked. How horrible!

“No. Elle put it in a bag before he woke up. But there was a note stuck in its mouth.”

“A note?” How strange. “I don’t understand.”

“The note was addressed to you, Ashlee.” Amber’s voice took on a tone that could only be disapproval, but for once I couldn’t read her intent. “Elle took it all down to the police station. You might want to stop by this morning as they have a few questions to ask you.”

“But – what did it say, Amber?”

“I don’t know. Elle wouldn’t let me read it. She said it’s best if I don’t worry about it. And then asked me to call. So I did…I’m scared, Ashlee. What is this? This is freaking me out.”

“I’ll handle it.”

“You better.”

I resolved to try, though my record with handling things was no better than fifty-fifty most days.

I showed up at the station with Will in tow, asking him to wait outside as Elle met me in the new Chief’s office, which used to be hers before she became the city attorney. She handed me a plastic evidence bag with the note inside. It was written with black permanent ink, so even against the dried blood the words were evident.

It said, I know what you are. I know what you did. Payback’s a bitch and so am I.

My stomach dropped inside me and I sank into a chair. A cup of water was shoved into my hand and I gulped it down. No natural wolves roamed California, but there were plenty of coyotes, the closest thing. This one had been killed as a message to me.

“We pulled your file, Ashlee,” Chief Hernandez said in that brittle tone cops use when they are questioning someone they don’t suspect, but want to. “You want to tell us what you think this is about?” Like every good cop, bad cop scenario, someone had to start and it looked like the chief was going on the offensive, giving Elle the conciliatory role.

“I – I have no idea,” I told him, but I was a horrible liar and I think he knew it.

“Maybe you know something,” Elle interjected. “You just think you don’t.”

“Now listen,” Hernandez said. “You got to be straight with us. I’ve read your file, but I want to hear it from your point of view.”

Now, before I write down what happened, let me assure you that what follows is the real story. The Knightsbridge police force got the same account, just without all the furry parts.

Chapter 14

A crisp autumn morning dawned in Knightsbridge. The last of the rising fog was just burning off by the light of the amber sun peeking its way through the clouds and it cast a hazy glow over everything. The leaves had begun to turn and the smells of nature in repose shifted from summer to fall.

Just past my sixteenth birthday, my body had begun to blossom, a bit late by current standards but that’s common with exercise junkies. Suppresses puberty or something like that. Or maybe it was the change. Who knows, with this thing?

My metabolism was spiking and I had so much energy to burn that I ended up running just for the meditative aspects of it. I’d finished my early morning climbing run out to the far top of the Canyon – yeah, to the locals it has a capital letter on it, the Canyon – and was taking a break before heading back. I’d found a picnic table that had escaped the moisture of the morning dew and I stretched out on its weathered slats, staring up into the dappled canopy of the sunrise through the spreading walnut tree above me. All was peaceful and quiet out here, even if it wasn’t in the rest of my world.

I should have known that it was too good to be true.

The sound of a revving engine broke the silence and I sat up quickly, heart beating faster, my pupils dilating as I focused in on the source of the disturbance. Shane Macdonald sat idling his tuned black Camaro, beaming at me from about twenty yards.

Shane was a senior at Knightsbridge Christian High, and was also the new standout on our varsity basketball team, having moved to town during the summer. Starting center on defense and point guard on offense, six foot three with a curly mop of auburn that you just wanted to run your fingers through, a stocky broad frame and shoulders, and big hands to palm the ball. He told me he came from a school down in L.A., where he barely ever got off the bench.

“They were all huge black guys,” he’d joked, and I could see he must have been overshadowed and outmatched – not because they were black, but because despite his aspirations, he just wasn’t as good as he thought he was. Not in a big city like L.A. Now it looked like he was enjoying his Big Fish in a Small Pond status. Our town was mostly white and brown, and let’s face it, Latinos are generally on the shorter side.

“Hey Amber!” he called. “Wanna ride back to town?”

I grinned and grabbed my things. I mean, so he’d got my name wrong. Who was I to look a gift horse in the mouth? And when you’re an identical twin, chances are unless people know you really well, they are bound to make that mistake half the time.

“Hey Shane. It’s Ashlee, not Amber,” I said, leaning down over the open passenger side window and winking at him.

“God!” he laughed. “You guys are really hard to tell apart.” Dimples puckered his chiseled Hollywood jaw.

“It’s pretty much impossible since you’ve only been in town what, a couple of months now?” I teased. “Still want to give me a ride? Amber’s probably still snoozing, getting her beauty sleep.” My sister’s idea of the perfect workout was something indoors, with music and a juice bar within reach.

“Sure, no problem.” He smiled. “But she ought to know, a little less rest and a little more exercise doesn’t seem to be hurting you any.”

“Oh, she gets her exercise.” I chuckled as I climbed in and belted up. “She just does it through things like cheerleading and being chased by guys like you. I’m the one with the runner’s high addiction.”

“I’ll have to remember that.” He glanced over, scrutinizing my face as if trying to memorize the differences between us by analyzing my laugh lines.

“Don’t worry. Even most of our teachers can’t tell us apart.”

“I guess we should be glad that you and Amber aren’t in the same classes at school. That would be impossible.”

”Yeah, we worked that one out years ago.” Different home rooms and class schedules whenever possible. Although in a small town, we still ended up with a lot of the same teachers. We sometimes swapped schedules when we were bored and wanted to liven things up. “Never let ’em see you sweat and always keep ’em guessing,” Mom used to say. I bit back a tear and put a smile on my face. I am so not going there today, I told myself.

Instead, I took the time to examine Shane’s face as he concentrated on the road. There were quite a few switchbacks coming down the Canyon into the valley and I had to admit, the guy handled the car like a dream.

“So, I guess Amber told you we’ve got a date tonight.”

“Uh-huh.” I nodded. “Second date, right?”

“No. Third,” he responded.

I winced.

“What?”

“Nothing,” I told him. What’s a white lie when the truth is a bitch named Amber? Don’t get me wrong, I love my sister. But I don’t even think she’s human sometimes. Like Kim Basinger playing opposite Brad Pitt in Cool World, she rarely spends a day with the rest of us in the third dimension. Speaking of thirds, the third date is when Amber dumps them. She says if a boy’s not the one, she knows it by the third date. She said this when we were like twelve and for the last four years my sister has been nothing if not brutally consistent. I don’t know how she thinks she’ll know he’s the one if she’s never even met a “one” to compare him to, but she seems to think she’s got a handle on it.

“Yeah,” he continued. “My big sister thinks I’m crazy. Says I’m playing way out of my league.”

She may be right, I thought to myself. “I don’t think I know your sister.”

“You won’t, unless you get caught makin’ out on Lover’s Leap. She’s the new chief ranger up at Knightsbridge Canyon State Park. Ex-Military. You know, the one who usually kicks everyone out just when the fun is starting.”

“Oh, right…” I remembered now. “Amber says she looks like she’s got a cucumber up her butt and she’s trying to scrape off all the pricklies.”

Shane broke out in a big belly laugh. “That’s so wrong,” he guffawed “and so right. That would be Jeanetta. My dad calls her the changeling. You know, like a fairy child, only meaner. Mom says it’s a recessive gene from my dad’s side of the family. Jeanetta just says that we’re all suckers programmed by society to be good little consumers.”

“She may be right,” I said. I was thinking of my twin and her addiction to whatever brand-name thing was in the latest Vogue. “By the way, what are you doing out this way so early in the morning? I thought you lived on the other side of town.”

“Can you keep a secret?”

“That depends.”

“Depends on what?” he countered. This was getting fun.

“Depends on how good a secret it is.”

“Oh, it’s good,” he assured me.

“So, spill.”

“Promise not to tell your sis.”

“Promise not to hurt her,” I replied, not entirely joking. After all, she was my sister. In fact, sometimes I thought she was almost me. Other times…not so much.

“Naw, this is good. Get this, I drove my trailer up to the ranger station and left it parked on the overlook. For once Jeanetta’s ranger status will come in handy, because she said she’d leave the patrol car parked nearby to scare off the townies and catch a ride back home with her creepy boyfriend Sean Gottlieb. She helped me decorate it with Christmas lights, and I had my mom pack us a picnic lunch like they do in the movies. Seafood ceviche, oysters, smoked salmon and capers, the works. I even have a bottle of champagne on ice in the cooler.”

“Oh my God, that’s so romantic,” I said. And corny. To his face, I oohed and ahhed, but as I was listening to him, I was cringing inside. Here he is, going on about oysters on the half shell and I didn’t have the heart to tell him that besides being allergic to shellfish, Amber was probably going to dump him anyway, third date and all, and she had yet to go out with anyone, and I mean anyone, on a fourth. Oh, she’d say she loved the date afterward, but more like a good anecdote you told to your girlfriends than even for the sentimental value. It just didn’t come with a high enough price tag.

“What type of champagne?” I interrupted his soliloquy. I gotta spare this guy just a bit of heartache, I thought. He is much too nice for my sister. She eats up nice guys and spits them out for breakfast.

“Dom Perignon.” I breathed a sigh of relief. At least the alcohol would pass muster, but my sister is truly a brand snob. If you’ve got caviar, which she won’t eat anyway, it better be Beluga. “My parents had a bottle left over from the housewarming. Why?”

“Um, Shane,” I began. How the hell was I going to break this to him gently?

“Uh-huh?”

“I’m afraid that Amber’s allergic to shellfish.” Okay, not so gently. Hey, I don’t do gentle.

He slammed on the brakes and I was really glad I’d buckled my seatbelt.

“Are you serious?!” He looked over at me and I gave him a sheepish grin. Then he put his head between his hands and I swear I thought the guy was going to begin crying, but he was only pounding his head on the steering wheel.

“Sorry,” I said. “But if it’s any consolation,” I added, “I love seafood.”

Shane began to laugh, but it sounded more like a choked scream.

“What the hell am I going to do Ashlee?” he said. “I am so stupid, stupid, stupid.” Shane repeated the word “stupid” and punctuated with the head-banging-on-the-steering-wheel routine. “What kind of idiot doesn’t ask if his date likes seafood?” he asked. “I spend all of my money on this one idea and I don’t even have a plan B!”

“How much are you out?”

“A hundred bucks!”

“Seriously?” I marveled. “Damn!”

“She’s all I think about.”

Oh shit. I was really going to have to get Amber to let this one down easy. He seemed really head over hind legs. Infatuated, I think is the word.

“Tell you what…” I made a decision. “Drive by the bank. I’ve got a Christmas club I can cash out and she will never be the wiser. You can buy something else to make the date special. Maybe a nice filet steak and some fruit.”

“Yeah, but what will I do with all the seafood?”

“Eh, I’ll take whatever won’t keep,” I told him. “Yum.”

So, when he pulled up to the bank, I hopped out, sauntering by my on-again-off-again beau Will Stenfield, as he was watering the grass in front of the branch. He glanced at me, then at Shane’s car, and he almost sprayed a passer-by. It was hilarious. Then I watched him seethe as I sauntered back to Shane’s car. Slam and Dunk, Ashlee Scott. Sometimes I really enjoy being a girl. I shoved an envelope of twenties at Shane as I slid into the seat next to him.

“You know Ashlee, I really appreciate this.”

“Just remember your promise.”

“Promise?” he asked. “What promise?”

Ah, how quickly they forget. I shook my fist at him. “Hurt her, I hurt you. Capisce?”

“Capisce.” He was kind of adorable when he laughed. Maybe I was gonna have to go out with this one, I thought. Too bad I’m still stuck on Will.

“Hey, you and that Will fella still goin’ out?” Shane asked me.

“Not right now. We’re kind of in limbo.”

“That’s too bad.” He seemed sincere. “So, who’s your plan B?”

“I haven’t decided,” I said. “Got any ideas?”

“Who, me? No, but if I think of somebody I’ll run it by you.”

“Yeah, you do that.” I smiled.

“Well, here we are.”

“Yeah, thanks for the ride.”

“Not a problem. Tell your sister I expect to see her ass jogging up the Canyon one of these mornings.”

“Yeah, like that’ll ever happen,” I shot back as I watched him drive away. This guy was much too cute for Amber, I mused as I headed up the walk and went in the front door, only to find my twin sister waiting behind it.

“Shit, you scared me.” I held my hand to my heart as it pounded in my chest. “And what is that crap on your face?” I eyed her. She was wearing one of our mother’s silky robes, which was always creepy, and like me she had her brunette hair back in a pony tail. It was the gunk on her skin that made her look extra-scary.

“It’s an avocado herbalesque masque if you must know. And don’t try to distract me. Just what do you think you were doing with Shane Macdonald?”

Crap.

“You’re probably going to dump him anyway, Miss Third-Date-Termination Clause. And seriously, Sis, if you don’t let him down gently, he might never recover. He’s really got it bad, and he’s a teddy bear. But what do you care?”

“I don’t.” She flashed me her most feline grin and flounced back through the entryway into the living room forcing me to follow behind her.

“Amber, it was nothing. I ran out to the Canyon and Shane offered me a ride as I was heading back. No big deal.” What was I apologizing for?

My family as a whole can be brutally honest, but when she’s got a mad on my sister can be downright vicious. Her voice rose to that superior mothering tone she affected when she really wanted to get my goat. “As you’ve decided to poach off my leftovers again, let me throw you a bone. I was going to cancel on the guy, but since you two seem so chummy, why don’t you be me for the night?”

“You know,” I said, “thanks, sis. But I’m really not interested. If I ever go out with Shane Macdonald, I want it to be as myself.”

Amber lifted her index finger as if to say ‘hold that thought,’ then brought the phone that I hadn’t noticed in her hand up to her ear. “Shane. Hey.” Her morning voice took on a calculatingly manipulative sugary tone. “Hey. It’s Amber. I just want to apologize for doing this on such short notice, but you and me, we’re just not that compatible. Now I know you’re probably disappointed as you were looking forward to our third date, but here’s Ashlee. And she just happens to be free.” She handed me the phone.

“You are such a bitch,” I hissed at her as I held one hand over the speaker.

“Grow up, Ashlee,” Amber tossed over her shoulder as she turned and flounced off.

“Why should I bother, since it seems that you are mature enough for the both of us?”

Weak, Ash, weak, but I was never as good at the repartee as she was.

She shrugged and kept walking.

“Hey…Shane.” While fuming at my sister, I still felt bad for the guy. “I’m sorry Amber did that to you. But the good news is, I’m not allergic to shellfish.”

And with that, it looked like I had a date.

My sister spent the rest of the day in bed with a migraine. Serves her right, I thought, if it’s real. Third Date Termination Clause Punishment. And yet, when I looked in on her before running off to volleyball practice, she was tossing and turning with cold sweats and fever. I put our tiff aside and went in to comfort her.

“Don’t go, Ash,” she said, her eyes unnaturally bright in the room’s dimness. I could see her pupils dilated so far her irises seemed almost black, a deep shiny obsidian.

“I wish Mom were here,” I told her as I stroked her hair, so like my own. “She was always so much better at this.”

Amber grabbed my wrist with surprising strength. “Ashlee, don’t go!”

“Oh come on, Amber,” I said suspiciously. “You’re not going anyway, and the guy bought a hundred bucks of seafood for you. Don’t be like that. I’m sorry you got a migraine.”

“I’m not being like anything,” she said, angry. “I just have a bad feeling about this, that’s all.”

For some reason this pushed my buttons and pissed me off more than it should have. Amber was always trying to control me and my life, and now she just wasn’t going to let me enjoy myself out of some twisted passive-aggressive impulse, I figured.

“Forget it, Amber. I’m going, and that’s that.” I leaned over and kissed her forehead while prying my wrist out of her grip. “Get some rest.”

She closed her eyes and whimpered, rolling over and pulling the blanket over her head.

A part of me was glad she was suffering. I’d sure suffered during the last few years from her bitchiness and rivalry. This was one of the rare times that it looked like I was going to come out on top, to get the guy, to be the winner in one of the innumerable ongoing string of sisterly contests I called life.

I made sure to tell Dad how Amber was doing, and that I was going to go to practice and then out until my curfew at eleven. He nodded absentmindedly and kept grading papers from one of his classes, as he usually did in the evenings. Ever since Mom died, he’d seemed to live in kind of a daze, even after years, like he was stuck in the denial stage of grief or something.

As I went out the front door I made sure to lock it, the glass reflecting me as I did. And though it seemed to be a trick of the light, I thought I saw my sister’s face instead of my own.

Sure wish I’d listened to her.

“So, are you horribly disappointed?” I asked Shane as he picked me up from the school gym parking lot after volleyball practice that evening. I’d dressed in jeans and a layering of sports bra, cotton short-sleeved white button-down with epaulets and a sweater over it all. Instead of a pony tail I opted for a French braid so that the one-carat princess cut diamond earrings showed, compliments of a comatose Amber and her jewelry box.

Shane was in the typical uniform of jocks at our school – jeans, white high-tops and a baseball jersey. The car gleamed as if he’d polished it since I saw him last.

“You know, I kinda knew I was hangin’ by a thread anyway. All the guys warned me about the Third Date Termination Clause, but I’m actually not disappointed at all.” It was the kind of humor that could hide a lot of hurt behind it. “I mean, you are the spitting image of each other.”

“Maybe, but we’re not interchangeable, you know.” I frowned. Guys say the stupidest things and I was really hoping that Shane was more than another dumb jock with threesome fantasies of identical twins running through his head.

“Right. Yeah. No. I mean, I know that.” He held the door open for me, smiling. “Your chariot awaits my lady.”

“You’re such a dork,” I told him, and threw my gym bag in the back seat, then settled myself in the already warm car.

It was wasteful, but there is nothing more comforting than driving out into the country on a nippy night with the windows open and the heater blasting. My feet were warm and my face was cool, just like I liked it. I pulled out my cell to check in with Amber. She was my sister. Though I hated her, I loved her.

“Please don’t tell me you’re texting.”

“Amber’s sick.”

“Aw, tell me you’re not texting the evil twin. That would just be adding insult to injury.”

Crap. He was right.

“You know what? You’re right. Cell phones off,” I said, and hit the power button, then made him turn off his.

“Satisfied?”

I smirked.

He laughed and pulled away from the school, my volleyball teammates watching. “So, tell me about yourself.”

An open-ended question. Point in favor, Shane Macdonald.

“Well, let’s see. If we’re talking stereotypes, then I’m the tomboy and Amber’s the vapid cheerleader.”

“And…?”

Score another point for Shane Macdonald. “Well, while I’ve got my sights set on being valedictorian, Amber is busy securing the popularity vote for Homecoming Queen.”

“Ouch!” He laughed. “Sounds like a little sibling rivalry run amuck. Must be weird having a twin. Well, if it’s worth anything, I think maybe I got the better deal.” He motioned. “Oh, and your cash is in the glove box, as I didn’t need to buy anything after all.”

“Thanks!” I pulled on the handle and the envelope flopped out. I took it and slid it in my back pocket. I’d thrown my gym bag in the back seat and I was so not carrying around a purse.

He looked at me funny.

“What?” I asked.

“You’re not going to count it?” he teased.

“No. Should I?” The verbal sparring was kind of fun. It was the kind I did with my dad and my brother Adam before Mom died of cancer a couple of years ago. The family had seemed to lose its center, flinging us all away from each other. I winced and tried to put it out of my head.

Shane laughed again, bringing me back to the now. He had a nice laugh. Musical, I thought.

“So, what kind of music do you like?” he asked before I could.

“Believe it or not, I’m kind of a country girl,” I told him. “Oh, I like most genres, not really into rap or hip-hop unless it’s got a melody you can sing to. And though I like alternative rock and contemporary Christian when it’s not all ‘Jesus is My Boyfriend,’ I also like pre-80s classic rock.”

“Wow. And here all I wanted to know was what station you wanted to listen to.” He hit a few buttons and some crossover country sprang from the speakers.

“Oh.” I looked sheepishly at him as he slid his hand into mine. Amber says guys don’t like girls who are chatty, but I’ve got a lot of guy friends, emphasis on the friend instead of the guy, and I was comfortable with them, mostly. Unless things became all, you know.

“Aw, now you’re turning red,” he needled.

“It’s dark, nimnoid. You can’t possibly see my cheeks.”

But the funny thing was, I could, just fine. See his cheeks, I mean. Over the course of our drive through town and up the Canyon, my vision had taken on an incredibly acute clarity. What had seemed only a pale wash of illumination before had taken on a solidity of the full moon’s beams in patterns that I could easily discern. The stars seemed to wink at me, dazzling to my eyes as I gazed out the window and yet when I focused, I could see eerily into the underbrush as it sped by. My senses opened, and I could smell Shane’s musky scent overlaid by the acrid tang of evaporating alcohol.

Evaporating alcohol? Huh. Mexican beer is more like it. Corona by the smell, I concluded as I tried to get the cloying taste of it off my soft palate with my tongue. I sneezed, reflexively pulling both our hands toward my face.

“Ew!” He pulled his hand from mine and wiped it off on his jeans. “Bless you!”

“Oh my God! I’m so sorry.” Mortified, party of one.

Shane laughed and yanked some tissues from the glove box and handed them to me, taking some handy-wipes for himself. How guys manage to multitask in vehicles when their hormones are cavorting is beyond me. After using the lemon-smelling towelettes, which he told me his mom made him take along, he held out his hand again for me to hold. Good hygiene but not freakishly OCD about it. I chuckled. Gotta give the guy props.

His hand was huge in both of mine and for some reason I became fascinated with it, running my fingers against his palm, exploring every crack and crevice of his skin. His palm was both smooth and rough, a mixture of textures that told a story with every scent and taste that came with my indrawn breath.

“Ashlee, what are you doing?” I realized that we had stopped and I was nuzzling his palm with my face. He stared at me and pulled his hand away.

I wondered what the hell was wrong with me, and pulled an Amber.

“Sorry. I just think hands are fascinating, don’t you?” I giggled and exited the car before he could respond. I think hands are fascinating? OMG! Again, what the hell is wrong with me?

“I think you’re kind of kinky is what I think.” Shane said it as he joined me in leaning against the hood. “It’s all right, it’s cool. I like it,” he continued, as if he was such a worldly senior.

I took a few deep breaths and we watched in silence as the clouds passed patches across the moon. A mouse looked at me from the shadows and my lip curled up in a snarl. Better run, little morsel, I thought as I watched him scamper away.

Shane caught me by my arm and wrenched me to a stop. I was actually moving to follow the mouse. What the – was I insane?

“Hey, Ashlee. Where you going? Camper’s over here.” He pulled me toward him and it was then that I noticed our now illuminated dining spot. It was enchanting, really. They’d done a good job. Then my stomach began to growl

“Oh good,” I breathed. “I’m starving.”

Later I found out that Amber had woken up screaming, my Dad and brother at her bedside holding her down. She was babbling about blood and death and wolves and Ashlee and danger. When she’d calmed down sufficiently she dialed my number, which of course went straight to voicemail.

Sure wish I hadn’t turned my phone off.

Shane held the door open for me and I entered the camper. I have to admit, the place was cozy, like a redneck version of a Moroccan restaurant. No chairs, just a couple of matching futons, throw pillows, a fabric-covered makeshift table in the middle and a small refrigerator against the wall. A mass of Christmas lights followed the lines of the flexible A-top and he lit a few candles that let out a waft of evergreen and bayberry. A picnic basket sat on the table waiting and there really was a bottle of Dom Perignon chilling in the cooler on melted ice. A mass of Christmas lights followed the lines of the flexible top and he lit a few candles that let out a waft of evergreen and bayberry.

I promptly blew them out. “You don’t use scented candles when you’re eating doofus.” I told him. “Messes with the palate.” I cringed inwardly as it came out sounding like something Amber would say.

“Duly noted. Now, get comfortable,” he told me, handing me a flute. After popping the cork on the champagne, he caught the foam in my glass.

“To Plan B,” he joked, and we toasted.

We dug into the smoked salmon with gusto and polished off the champagne with abandon. Maybe I was trying not to feel so guilty about being here with Shane instead of Will because I drank more than the two glasses we were allowed ever since we turned sixteen. Dad was pretty cool that way, but had warned us never to come home drunk unless somebody else drove.

Funny thing is, I was actually enjoying myself. Shane was cute, kinda dorky, very jock-hunky and we were funny together in a city-boy-meets-small-town-girl kind of way. Don’t ask me what we talked about, but I seem to remember a similar taste in science fiction versus science fact. The champagne was nice and bubbly, but to be honest, a bit dry for my taste and I kept downing bottles of water like a reverse fire hydrant.

“Damn, Ashlee, you’ve gone through six of those in the last half hour!” Shane laughed as he threw me another that I caught deftly out of the air.

“I’m sorry! I love seafood, but the salmon is incredibly salty. And it’s a bit stuffy in here.” I motioned around the cloth-top camper. We sat across from each other, our dwindling gourmet feast between us.

“I can fix that,” Shane said as he pulled back the blinds and left the fabric screens in place. I still decided to peel out of my sweater and maneuvered around him to the door.

“I’m gonna get some fresh air. Join me when you’re done,” I teased as I slipped down the steps and out into the night. I pulled the shirt-tail out of my jeans and unbuttoned my button-down, tying it in a knot at my sternum. I still had my sports bra on so I was perfectly covered, I told my inner critic who sounded just like Mom.

In fact, besides hearing her in my head, I could almost see her ghostly form walking down the trail. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, but she wasn’t there, thank God.

The night blazed stunningly clear; the pine trees and eucalyptus opening up into a vast expanse of velvet sky. The breeze felt cool against the patches of my bare skin and my head throbbed with a twinge of a headache. I shut my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to draw in the serenity.

I felt a cold wet trickle of water against the skin of my arm and gasped, then laughed aloud as Shane handed me another bottle of water. I turned to look up at him.

He was so beautiful.

“Are you sure you’re okay, ’cause you look a bit flushed.”

“I know it’s considered cool to be doing it, but I’m really not much of a drinker,” I confided.

“Yeah. Unless you count spring water. Wanna walk a bit? Might cool you off. Clear your head.”

“Sure,” I said, and then immediately strode away, suddenly eager to see if I could find the mouse I noticed earlier.

Shane grabbed his jacket and caught up with me and tried to hold my hand, but the minute we touched, it was like a combustion wave of heat flowed through my body.

“Damn, Ashlee. You’re hot!”

I scoffed, “Yeah, I bet you say that to all the girls.”

“No, I really mean it, Ashlee. You’re burning up, like you got a fever. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine,” I laughed, and I was. In fact, I felt great. Sure, I maybe felt a bit warm and I decided that if I took my shirt off, I was still covered in my royal blue sports bra. I tied my shirt around my waist and kept walking.

Shane jogged up behind me as I finished pulling my hair up and off my neck. It was then that I put on some speed.

“Race you to the promontory!” I shouted, and then took off running flat out.

Now normally I am a distance runner, but at the time I had no idea what it was: the bubbly, the night, a hot handsome guy chasing after me. Before I knew it I’d rounded the bend at the place they called Lover’s Leap overlooking the Canyon. Story has it, many people have jumped to their deaths from these rocks over the years, pining for loves they couldn’t have.

Only now I was the one out on the tip of the jutting rock past the sign that warned me not to.

“Um, Ashlee, what are you doing?” Shane called from behind the wooden barrier.

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of heights,” I teased, but when I looked into his eyes, I knew he was. “You are afraid of heights! Oh, that’s so…cute.” Actually I wanted to say “chickenshit,” but decided not to spoil things by being the bitch that I sometimes am. I walked back toward him smiling. “Now, catch me!”

I don’t know why I was being a show off, but I decided to do a gymnast’s dismount off the rock like it was a balance beam. And I gotta hand it to him, he did try to catch me, but it was more like cushioning my fall with his body.

The air rushed out of him as I landed in his arms, taking him to the ground and straddling his solar plexus. He moaned and wheezed, trying to get the oxygen back into his lungs.

When he did, I kissed him.

I didn’t plan it. It just happened. I’d meant for tonight to be a simple let-down, a consolation date to offset the wounding of my sister’s callous disregard for real people’s feelings, but it was turning into a bit more than I expected.

His arms wrapped around me as he gave himself over to the lusts of every teenage boy. Though I normally would have taken it a lot slower and been more hesitant, I wasn’t a virgin back then, but almost. I’d only ever been with Will, a couple of times.

I felt like my whole body had turned to heat.

We made out like a couple of bandits, him kissing me and our tongues twining and before I knew it, I was nibbling on his ear, lathering my tongue and teeth upon his earlobe – until I heard a screaming sound, felt a ripping, and smelled the metallic tang of blood in the air.

It was then that I realized that the screams were my own.

Waves of excruciating pain washed through me as my stomach clenched around itself and my body curled up in a fetal position. Shane slid back and away from me and held his head, a look of abject horror on his face as blood poured from where I’d bitten off a chunk of ear.

The pain inside me subsided for a moment. I caught my breath and had the wherewithal to say “9-1-1” through gritted teeth before my body betrayed me again. I would have wondered what was happening if it didn’t hurt so bad as I felt my spine snap and my ribs rearrange themselves. I heard in the background a very frightened Shane punching numbers on his phone.

“No. No. No. NO. NO,” he cried. “Just hold on, Ashlee, I can’t get a signal,” I heard him say, and his voice got farther away.

Now, I don’t know what it is, but hearing his feet pounding down the trail seemed like the last straw that broke the camel’s back and with a primal scream, my body vomited itself into a new configuration. My face broke out into a long muzzle with extremely sharp teeth, a nose for blood, and a hunger for chasing down prey.

I bounded after him on four legs.

On four legs? A miniscule part of me wondered about that, but for the moment, the chase was all I knew.

***

“But, you don’t understand, Jeanetta! Shane is in trouble and Ashlee is in danger.” Amber banged on the aluminum door of the Macdonald family home, my dad and brother Adam in tow.

“What the hell kind of stunt do you think you’re pulling, little missy?” Jeanetta Macdonald pushed Amber back as her boyfriend lurked in the background. She wore what we often call a wife-beater underneath her uniform kaki shirt and she still had her polyester ranger’s pants on and her black polished shoes.

Amber wasn’t the type to be hysterical, but she sure was doing a bang-up job this evening.

“Just tell me where she is. Tell me where Shane is. I know he was planning something outrageous, but you’ve got to believe me. Something is wrong! Something bad is going to happen!”

“Oh my God! Listen to yourself!” Jeanetta screeched, her nose reddening with anger. “First you go out with my brother twice, and then you don’t even have the courtesy of extending him the Third Date Termination Clause.”

“What’s the Third Date Termination Clause?” my dad asked.

“I’ll explain later,” Adam told him.

“And then you pawn your sister off onto him like sloppy seconds and now you want to interrupt his date because you had a bad dream?” Jeanetta ranted. “You are in serious need of professional help.”

“Good one, Jen,” Sean the loser boyfriend murmured from the background.

“Miss Macdonald,” my Dad reasoned. “If you could just tell us where they are…”

“Ranger Macdonald,” my brother interjected. “Jeanetta.” His voice softened, slipping past her defenses. “I’d really appreciate it if you could help me make sure that Ashlee is safe. I know she can be a pain in the ass, but…she’s still my sister.”

Adam doesn’t assert himself very often, but when he wants to, he can really command attention and response. Jeanetta looked at him like an aberration, then her brow furrowed as if she seemed confused, which was when she shifted to acquiescence and let out a huge sigh.

My brother has this weird effect on people. It’s almost like he can convince you of anything. One Halloween, when we were ten, and he was like, thirteen, as we were dividing up the stash, he convinced me that I loved tootsie rolls. By the time the night was through, he had all the chocolate, and I had…tootsie rolls. It’s a great story, but I rarely eat tootsie rolls anymore.

“Fine. They’re up at the overlook. But you better just do a drive-by. I was gonna run up there in a couple of hours myself. Make sure the kids aren’t trashing the place. So, why don’t you just give me a call so I don’t have to waste a trip,” she called as my family rushed back to the car.

“Crazy townies,” Jeanetta muttered as she watched us hurry away and then shut the door.

I felt cool hands on the back of my neck and a whisper of night breezes down my naked skin as I vomited up copious amounts of blood. Bits of flesh surrounded me, and a haze of insects sucked the moisture out of the air as it evaporated from my skin.

My poor dear, I heard. My mother’s voice echoed in my head as soft hands petted the pelt of my hair. My throat felt raw from the acid bile, my head in shock, my heart in anguish.

“I think I killed something,” I croaked.

I know dear. My mother’s arms held me and rocked away my horror till I fell asleep.

My family found me naked and sound asleep in a pool of Shane’s blood. And though I know what must have happened, because I’ve turned every full moon since that time, the sheriff’s office, unequipped to deal with the supernatural, named it a tragedy of nature and they even brought back the carcass of a mountain lion to prove it.

Jeanetta Macdonald said she forgave me for “dragging my brother out there.” After all, the investigation showed she had allowed Shane to use the camping trailer parked on public land in violation of policy. She tried to claim it was for her own use and that her brother had brought me up there without telling her, but the remains of the feast made it pretty clear what was going on, and with Amber’s testimony about what Shane had claimed, Jeanetta was forced to accept at least some responsibility. I heard later she got a bad performance report and was denied a promotion she wanted.

You know what was weird? It seemed like she was more upset over the mountain lion than about her brother.

And now you know what really happened.

Chapter 15

Chief Hernandez’s voice brought me back to the present. “It says here in the file that after Shane Macdonald was killed you got threatening letters like this all of the time.”

“Letter, not emails. And not all the time,” I protested. “It was every year on the anniversary of his death, and those were direct threats, like, ‘You’re dead, bitch, for what you did to Shane.’ These are more like warnings. And it stopped when I left Knightsbridge for good.” Or I thought it had.

“Ashlee, I wish you would have told me, told Amber, told someone,” Elle said.

“I was in the file. I wasn’t hiding anything. Besides, I’d hoped never to have to think about it again.”

“Sounds like someone isn’t happy you’re back,” Hernandez said. “Any idea who that might be?”

“Jeanetta Macdonald blamed me for Shane’s death, but you guys didn’t find anything,” I said. By “you guys,” I meant the cops in general, of course. Neither Elle nor Hernandez had been with Knightsbridge PD back then.

“What about other friends of Shane’s? Some ex-girlfriend or something?” Elle asked. “Or other family?”

“As far as I know Jeanetta and Shane’s parents are dead. They have cousins, in Utah or something, but aren’t close.”

“We’re not going to get very far on a cold case like this by questioning the victim,” Hernandez broke in, shooting Elle a look. “We need to review all the files and assign an investigator.”

Elle glared at Hernandez but the chief spread his hands. “It’s a dead coyote and a threatening note. I can’t justify some kind of all-out effort unless something happens. Especially not just because it’s your family.”

Elle relented. “Yeah, I get it. Put someone good on it, though, and start with some decent forensics. I’ll back you up at budget time.”

Hernandez sighed and nodded. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Come on, Ash,” Elle said. “Let’s go home.”

“I need to go back by Will’s. He can bring me home afterward.”

Elle pointed her finger at my nose. “Straight there, straight back, and keep your eyes open, the both of you. If you see anything funny, call me right away.”

“Oh come on, Elle. Nothing’s going to happen in broad daylight.”

“How do you know?” And she was right, I didn’t. Except, bad things happened at night. That’s what I’d always believed, and ever since that night, I am living proof.

As Elle was licensed to carry concealed weapons, and was clearly on my side, at least for Amber’s sake, I wasn’t going to argue with her.

On the other hand, Amber wasn’t happy, because Elle had invited Will to stay with me, but it eventually saved her from feeling like she had to be hospitable all the time. It probably helped our sisterly relationship in the end, especially since Will turned out to be a better domestic than I was, and kept the house spotless. How humiliating!

Elle ordered spotlights on motion detectors to be installed around the property and my sister seemed to settle into a new rhythm. This was just one of the reasons I imagined my twin loved Elle so much - she was a bastion of safety and security. She radiated alpha during these moments and, knowing my own limits, both of us siblings accepted beta female roles. I think this is where I first began to consider just what it meant to be a pack. Though they weren’t lycanthropes, this felt like a home now, as if Amber’s attitude had now changed. It seemed I was back inside something, instead of outside, for the first time in years.

Will accepted his beta male role with equanimity, which was funny as there was no alpha male, unless you counted Spanky the Schnauzer, who was about as un-alpha as dogs came. I guess Elle got to play both roles.

Detective Bromley came by and interviewed us all again, and said it would be a couple of weeks before anything came back from the lab. He was a big, florid man who sweated too much and exercised too little, but Elle said he was competent enough. Not much evidence to go on, though, so I didn’t get my hopes up. He did say he was interviewing everyone, including my chief suspect, Jeanetta Macdonald, but he wasn’t about to disclose any details, not even to Elle apparently.

Chapter 16

“You know, Will, I think you should take Ashlee out of town,” Elle announced at the breakfast table on the morning before the night of the full moon. I’d been wondering how I was going to work that one, and this seemed like a pretty good idea to me, no matter what prompted it.

“Cool!” J.R. said. “Can I come?”

We all laughed, a bit raggedly I’ll admit.

“What?” he asked us, with the most innocent lack of guile on his face.

“Maybe another time, sweetie,” my sister said. “I think your Aunt Ash and Uncle Will want to be alone.”

“Wait. What?” my nephew said. “When did Will become my uncle?”

“Yes, Amber,” Elle teased. “Just when did that happen?”

“Just thinking ahead,” she singsonged. “Don’t blame me for stating the obvious.”

Will grinned and looked at me, but I pouted, not exactly certain why except to reflexively oppose my twin. “The obvious is rushing things, sis. I only just got back into town and you’re trying to marry me off to my high school sweetheart?”

“Is that what I am?” Will leaned forward intently.

“And what’s wrong with that?” Amber chimed in.

“Maybe you soured me on marriage.”

“Ouch,” Amber said, and I saw my barb had scored. Perhaps too deep.

“Sorry, low blow,” I said. “I know it wasn’t your fault.”

Her look tried to wither me where I sat. “Been there, done that,” she said coldly, and in that moment seemed older than I was, which was actually our usual relationship.

“I love when two beautiful girls fight over me,” Will broke in, “but I agree with Elle. We need to get out of this fortress. The investigation’s going nowhere and unless whoever is sending the notes makes another move, it won’t.”

“Yeah, I knew this was too good to be true,” I said. Why was I always getting kicked out of places? If I wasn’t being asked to leave by boutique hotels that didn’t like my reviews or cruises because I had a bad habit of sneaking into the crew’s mess in my search for the human part of the story, then I was being passed around from family member to family member like the perpetual problem child. Damn, and just when I thought the crisis had brought us closer.

Then again, I guess I was a handful sometimes. “Fine. I’ll take Will back to the city with me.”

“Great! I finally get to see how the other half lives,” he said. There were hisses and boos all around, except for J.R., who laughed uproariously like the kid he was. I doubt he knew what he was laughing at, except his elders’ antics.

Elle said, “Actually, I think you and Will should go stay in a hotel. Someone might be watching your place. I’ll be guarding Amber and the house back here, and I called in a favor with a bail bondsman I know who has a couple of security guys.”

“Why?” I pointed an accusing finger at Elle. “Are you trying to dangle some bait for the, the, what do you call it…”

“Perp. Perpetrator. So what if I am?”

A smile spread across my face. “So what if you are. Anything to get away from here.”

“Love you!” Amber said.

“Love you too,” I replied, “but I don’t see you objecting.” In fact, it had been frustrating as all hell, sleeping in the guest room with Will but not, you know, sleeping with him. At least, not the full Monty, if you know what I mean and no, I will not give details. You can fill in the blanks. But anyway, fun and frustrating, because I hadn’t fully convinced myself getting back with him was the right thing to do and going all the way was just going to make the inevitable breakup that much harder, pardon the pun.

That was our usual pattern, anyway, back in high school. Things would go along good for a while, closer and closer and even, yes, that close, and it was wonderful, but then the explosion would come. My explosion. I knew it was me, always me. Will hardly ever got mad, just irritated, when I would sabotage things when I felt like we were getting too close.

That’s what it felt like now, getting too close, so going away would either finish the pattern with fireworks, or maybe we could derail the speeding train and do something different. Maybe if we got away from my family and this pressure and I was on my own home ground, I could get past my fear of flying and think about being with Will the way he wanted to be with me.

Then I thought about what I was, and all the fear came back again. There was just no way I could tell him…if he would even believe me. Until I proved it, that is, perhaps by ripping him to shreds the way I’d done to goofy dorky hunky innocent Shane.

I felt sick.

“Ash,” Will jogged my elbow. “I think we lost you.”

“Just thinking,” I said with a forced smile. I turned to the alpha female. “Okay, boss, what do we do?”

Elle laid down the plan. Will and I were okay with it, and surprisingly, so was Amber. I guess I didn’t expect her to be willing to play me in hopes of drawing the threat into the open. Never thought of her as brave, but there are different types of courage.

Will took me to the Claremont Hotel in Oakland, not my apartment after all. The place was a marvel, towering like an ostentatious grande dame on the hills overlooking the Oakland-Berkeley line. Like a California version of the hotel Christopher Reeves and Jane Seymour haunted in Somewhere in Time, it nestled among the pines and towering fragrant Eucalyptus trees across the slope. Hard to believe that the old Highway 13 was just over the rise, it gave such an illusion of remoteness.

Since I’d written the hotel a stellar review, the management offered to comp our stay, as I normally couldn’t afford a couple hundred a night just for grins. I must admit I did imply that I was going to do a follow-up article, sometime in the future.

I might.

You never know.

Will laughed and said he could handle it. I reminded myself that he had taken over the family business and was actually reasonably well off, if not super-rich. That got me thinking about the fact that none of the local hotties had snapped him up yet, and that I was pretty lucky that he wanted me after all these years.

That led me to wondering about the house he’d bought – my house! Which was so weird, but so romantic. You know, a lot of girls think they would kill for a guy like Will, but like most fantasies, when they actually start happening they aren’t quite the same as you think they will be. One girl’s romantic beau is another’s creepy stalker, and what was I supposed to think about him sleeping in my room – I mean, in my old house – every night? Was that love, or infatuation, or obsession?

We settled in for an afternoon at the pool and a cozy evening on the veranda. Shrouded in secrecy that I claimed was necessary to avoid my legions of rabid fans – ha, ha – the hotel had even let us come and go through the employee entrance.

We stayed up late and got up late the next morning. I dragged Will out to Mill Valley, where I ran him ragged hiking from the shadows of Muir Woods on up and over the Dipsea Trail to the bluff above Stinson Beach and back. MoonFall was coming that evening and I had so much energy, I thought it would just be easier to tucker Will out so I could sneak away and make the change without interference.

We had dinner back on the terrace of the hotel’s restaurant. He ate enough for two and me for three. “Damn, girl,” he joked, “I’m gonna have to get a side job just to feed you.”

“Oh, it’s your responsibility to feed me now, is it?” I teased.

“If you want it to be.” He took my hand and caressed it, and I let him. “I think Uncle Will sounded pretty good.”

“Will…”

“I know, you don’t want to talk about it.”

“Just not yet, okay? Not until this thing with the threats is resolved, and…”

“And what?”

“Nothing.”

“Look,” he said, “we can leave Knightsbridge. If it’s Jeanetta, she’s so attached to the Park and the Canyon she won’t follow you, and you’ll be gone and once you’re out of her field of view she’ll stop. She and her animal rights wacko buddies can kiss my ass as we leave them in the dust. I can get a manager for the landscaping business and travel with you, or sell out entirely and start over somewhere far away.”

I sighed. “That sounds lovely. Like paradise.”

“Then why not?”

I just couldn’t tell him. Not yet. Besides, there was Elle’s plan, which Will almost seemed like he’d forgotten about. He was such a sweet, live-in-the-now kind of guy, which I guess fit with my personality too, except I tended to be the worry-about-tomorrow kind of girl. You can tell by my bitten fingernails, so different from Amber’s long perfect ones.

“It’s complicated, Will. Look, I really like you.”

“You used to say you love me.”

“I…I do love you,” I admitted to him. “But that may not mean exactly what you think it does, or it may not be enough, or the timing might just not be right. So can we just leave it at that for a while?”

“That we love each other.”

“Pushy bastard, aren’t you?” I smiled to soften my words.

“I know what I want, and what I want is you, Ash. Always have.”

“You’ve been waiting around all this time for me? Never went out with anyone else in all these years?”

“Not so many years. I’ve kept busy.”

“You didn’t answer me.”

Will sighed. “I never asked anyone out. I took Denise Paulos out a couple of times on pity dates, because Carl begged me. We didn’t even hold hands. That’s all.”

“You really did wait for me?” I guess the disbelief came through in my voice, because he showed a touch of anger.

“Yes, I did. You say that as though it was a bad thing.” He stood up. “It wasn’t. It was a noble thing, a good thing. I wanted to wait, because you’re worth waiting for, Ashlee Scott, and I’m really sorry you can’t see it. But don’t try to diss me for it. I gotta pee,” he ended, and stomped off toward the restaurant’s facilities.

“Will –” Grrr. I signaled the waiter and ordered a bottle of champagne. That had not gone well. Maybe I could smooth it over. When he came back, face and hands damp from the sink, I had two glasses poured. “A toast,” I said.

“To what?” he asked, intrigued.

“To my stupidity.”

“Did you order a magnum?” he quipped.

“Watch it, buddy,” I winked. “I’m trying to apologize here, okay? Now drink your toast.”

“I’d rather drink my champagne.” Will raised the glass. “To your stupidity.” He drained it.

So did I. “Look…it was really romantic, or noble or whatever for you to have waited for me these past five or six years, but it’s a lot of pressure. I’ve been footloose and fancy-free for all that time and now I come back to my hometown and you want me to just pick back up like nothing has changed.”

“Some things have changed, but not others,” he said a bit cryptically. “That’s life. Okay,” he held up a hand, “I’ll back off. I’ve waited this long. I’ll wait some more.”

I wondered how long he would wait, and for a moment almost gave in to the impulse to polish off the bottle, drag him up to our room and give him the night of his life. Or maybe vice versa, since I hadn’t had my ashes hauled in quite some time, and it had never been as good as it was with Will.

That thought stopped me in my musings for a moment. I realized it was true. No sex had ever been as good as with Will, even though it was just early, awkward teenage backseat stuff, mostly. I guess what they say is right: it’s not so much about what you do as who you’re with, and I had brought Will with me in my mind to a lot of lonely nights on the road.

Then why the hell was I fighting him so hard?

I glanced up at the twilight sky and could feel the moon getting ready to break over the horizon, and that gave me my answer, at least for tonight.

Later I slipped a crushed Ambien into his glass and made sure he drank it all, and then led him up and tucked him in after a hot bath. His snores assured me that I could do what had to be done that night with him none the wiser. Maybe it was just putting things off, but sometimes, that’s all I could do.

“Sleep well, Tree Jockey,” I whispered and kissed his forehead as I headed out to answer the call of nature and the autumn moon.

Chapter 17

There’s a kind of intoxication in fear. Just a tingle of excitement that leaves a catch in the breath, a chemical reaction that spikes the endorphins and leaves you with the sigh of relief as the tickling jitters pass. The scent of fear that cocks the head of a wolf, sensing prey and the thrill of the chase rushing through the spirit, like a hot flush of blood to the veins. That’s what was overtaking me now.

I was ready. It was time, past time. I had to change. I’d put it off too long.

The shift was upon me.

My head snapped back, my back bowed, and my legs collapsed under me as I slid to all fours. A ripple through my belly heaved and I heard my bones crack and felt the slice of pain across every aspect of my synapses. I dry-heaved and the wave of nausea washed the pain through me as my skin slit and slid over my flesh and my muscles took on a meaner and leaner look.

The wolf came over me in waves, like the mirage on a horizon, rippling hair and fur and blood and bone. My feet elongated and it seemed like my fingers splayed from hands to claws and back again. When I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, my head snapped out and I screamed as the muzzle slid into place, replacing mangled flesh. I howled and a hundred thousand howls called back. I crouched and shook my pelt, sending blood and gore flying all directions as once again, I was reborn.

I knelt, my forepaws in the grass, then sprang.

On my feet or my paws, whatever word described them best today, I raced along the edge of the patch of forest, past blurring brush and trees. Smells surrounded me, overrode me for a while and humanity deserted me for at least a mile.

I ran.

I ran until I could comprehend what I was once again.

Ashlee Scott. Werewolf. Writer. Sister. Twin. Mate of Will Stenfield, though he didn’t know it yet. Nor did my human half, but the bitch part would work on that.

My eyes saw into every shadow. They pierced the depths of the dark with a fluorescence that human vision cannot. I’d forgotten the joy of truly being free. As a wolf, my only responsibility was to my belly, to my heart, to my family.

I thought of my mate asleep back at the hotel room and smelled him on my fur. I licked him from my skin and tasted him upon my lips once again. The musky scent of mown lawns, the rich loam of moist earth, his tangy sweat and salty acrid taste until he showered, all melted into earthy scents of cedar, pine and vetiver grass.

My man, I marked him and I found myself upon his trail. We’d walked here today, I thought as I bolted out of the trees near the hotel’s pool.

Night full of shadows, I slipped beneath the gate to the pool house where I’d left a spare change of clothes earlier that day. As I’d given them a great review, the staff at the Claremont gave me more access to the workings behind the scenes. This served me now as I knew the areas that were often overlooked in the quiet dead of night. I told myself I could just sleep in a corner underneath the benches inside the locker room until the dawn, when Ashlee would take over and the wolf would slip away once again.

My mind seemed so much clearer when I let out the wolf, like cobwebs being swept out of my brain. Everything distilled into its simplest forms. Love. Eat. Sleep. Pray and thank God above that I was what I was.

Right then, I wanted nothing else.

Unfortunately what my mind wanted, what the rational human me said, didn’t make the wolf bitch happy at all. She wanted to run and hunt and run some more, to smell and taste and howl and mate under the looming moon. She wanted Will to be there with her. She wanted him to be what she was.

The she, the I, the whoever we were took over and, despite best intentions, ran us out of the pool house, back under the gate, and off into the night of the hills above Berkeley.

Tilden Park and other state and local lands formed a wall against development to the east, and so I ran northeastward along the ridges and hills all the way to San Pablo Reservoir. In that peculiar pellucid state my two minds melded, the animal and the woman, into something more than either.

I knew what I was doing quite clearly. The animal did not control me now, not after threescore or more changes, but neither did I control it. Instead, I was just myself, in a different state of mind.

Have you ever been consumed by desire or other strong emotion – anger, grief, depression? You were still yourself, but changed, different. That’s what it was like for me.

In human form the thought of chasing down an animal and sinking my teeth into its warm flesh would have revolted me, but now it seemed like the most reasonable and desirable thing, and I had to have what I desired. If I could not have Will in this form – and oh, wouldn’t that be a surprise, a hundred-pound furry wolf bitch leaping into bed with him – then I would hunt, kill, and eat.

I picked up the trail of a yearling buck, full of power and life. He would be small – this part of California was too hunted out of really big racks to ever see the magnificent stags the Pacific Northwest boasted – so I had no fear of being gored. There was a good reason wolves in the wild hunted in packs: not even a great grey male could take down something like a full-grown caribou by himself, much less a beta bitch like me, but this one smelled hardly larger than I was.

He’d meandered here and there, nibbling on shoots and low-hanging branches, dropping scat and leaping small streams. I leaped them too, closing in on the buck until I spotted him in a thicket of manzanita.

When he spooked, I was after him, and over a short sprint I was faster, with my ranging lope eating up the ground between us. In the night, my senses outmatched his, my strength the greater, my hunger tipping the balance. I sank my teeth into his haunch, and when he shook me off I snapped and hamstrung him. After that, it was a mercy to open his throat and let his life spill out on the ground.

Don’t weep for the buck, dear reader. He has his place in the great web of nature. Without him we would have no children of the night, no songs to the moon of wolf and cousin coyote, no grace of puma or, in times long past, no great grizzly or even tribes of Man. And without those ferocious predators, the trees and bushes and all the growing plants would be stripped of their flowers and shoots and bark, and all would soon fall under the predations of the herds of millions of grazing creatures.

Nature is a balance, and for this one night, I was truly part of that.

If you want to weep for something, weep for yourselves, who have never known this kind of life.

Once I had eaten my fill, I left the kill for the others that would come – the bobcat and the vulture and the condor and the other carrion-eaters that must also feed: nature’s garbage crew, who would render death into new life in a never-ending cycle.

Chapter 18

The pool house gave me a place to clean up and change. Despite the joys of the change, I always felt relieved when it had ended. It was so fraught with danger, from trigger-happy hunters to traps, or merely the possibility that my stash would be found and I would have to try to sneak back to the room naked at six in the morning.

Speaking of returning to the room…

“Oh Miss Scott.” The concierge waved me over. “You have a package.”

My heart thudded against my chest as I stared at the box in his hand. This wasn’t in the plan. No one should be sending me anything.

About the size of a compressed oval hatbox, it was shrink-wrapped with my name in black permanent ink on the outside and no return address.

“Um, do you know who left this for me?” I asked as he handed it over. It smelled like flowers and the green scent of grass and cut stems, but that didn’t make sense. No one was supposed to know I was here, which meant someone was following us or had bugged us or something, maybe through one of our phones. I was always suspicious of those GPS apps.

“It came in with the flower delivery guy.” The concierge tilted his head. “Ooh, maybe it’s a gardenia. They sometimes wrap them up on ice like that. Maybe your boyfriend got it for you.”

“Maybe,” I said, but I wasn’t betting on it.

I woke Will up when I got to the room and opened the package. It wasn’t a gardenia. It was an animal heart, a canine’s to be exact, bigger than a Chihuahua, but just about the size of a cocker spaniel. Before the first change I wouldn’t have known that, but now, somehow, I did.

The room phone rang.

“Don’t answer that,” I said. I was spooked and all I wanted to do was get out of here.

“It’s just the wake-up call. I set it for seven, and if I don’t answer it’ll just keep ringing.”

The minute he picked up the hotel landline, my own cell phone went off. I looked at the caller ID. “It’s Amber,” I said, and answered. But it wasn’t Amber, it was Elle, on Amber’s line.

“I just wanted to tell you, Ashlee.” Elle’s voice was muffled, and it sounded hoarse, like there was a catch in it. “Spanky’s gone. Got any ideas?”

Elle wasn’t usually sentimental, but she was about that dog if anything.

I stared in horror at the heart on ice, dreading the thought that passed through my brain. Nobody could be that sick, could they?

“Umm…” I told her about what I’d just received.

Elle cursed like a sailor, dropping F-bombs left and right. “There goes the plan, having Amber wear a wig and pose as you while we keep her guarded. Somehow the perp figured out where you are.”

“Yeah, I got that,” I said drily. “What now, Maestro?”

“You’re not safe there anymore.”

“I’m not safe back at your house.”

“Safer than in some hotel.”

“Why don’t Will and I go to my apartment?”

“There’s no one to help protect you there either,” Elle argued.

“Come on home, Ashlee,” I could hear Amber say in the background. Funny, I think that’s the first time I’d heard that in a long time.

Home.

Maybe that was the difference between love and like, between family and friends. Your family might drive you crazy and vice versa, but when the chips are down, they’ll be there. It brought a lump to my throat.

“Okay,” I husked. “We’ll come home.” Will nodded solemnly as I clicked off my phone, then I took the battery out. “Yours too,” I said, pointing at his old Nokia. “No battery, no tracking.”

“Let’s search our stuff,” he said as he complied. We did, but didn’t find anything. Hey, we’re not some kind of secret agents, all right? Maybe the police have a scanner or detector gizmo.

I put it out of my mind as we packed, making sure to keep the bloody carton intact for evidence. Come to think of it, I doubted it was Spanky’s. I would have known by the smell, wouldn’t I?

I hoped.

I prayed.

When we got home, the house seemed like a tomb. Amber stayed seated on the davenport in the family room, a big glass of wine in her hand, and looked at me with accusing eyes red from crying. Elle met us halfway and quivered with energy and anger. My mother floated above them, her ethereal arms outstretched as if she wanted to hold them. They couldn’t see her, but it made me feel a bit better to know she was there.

“Where’s J.R.?” I asked as Will dropped our suitcases.

“At his father’s,” Elle replied. “We thought it best to hold off a few days on telling him. Just in case Spanky comes back.”

“He’s not coming back.” Amber stood up. “Not until Ashlee gets her shit together…” She trailed off as Elle put a hand on her arm. My sister looked at me with wounded resentment and I couldn’t blame her.

“I know. I know. I’m sorry.”

Amber looked like she wanted to say something nasty and cutting, but held back. You gotta give her credit for that. Like Dad says, we’re not responsible for our feelings, just our actions.

Sometimes I can’t stand him too, because he’s usually right. It’s annoying.

Will made himself scarce and went up to my room. We’d dropped off the cooler at the police station on the way into town and had spent a few minutes talking with Knightsbridge’s finest.

“This is all my fault, Amb,” I apologized again.

“Damn straight it is.” Amber sniffed. She looked miserable, and this time that didn’t make me the least bit happy.

“Amber,” Elle scolded. “We talked about this.”

“No,” Amber turned on Elle. “You talked, I listened. Well, I’m tired of listening. Somebody’s going to have to take matters into her own hands,” she said and she headed for the garage.

“Amber, don’t do anything foolish.” Elle followed her, sounding just like my mother.

I winced, remembering all of those fights we had when we were in high school and I had refused to give my sister the car keys when she had a mad on. She loved to drive recklessly at high speeds when she was pissed off. Hopefully Elle could talk her down.

Alone in the room for the moment – at least, with no corporeal beings – I rounded on my mother, who was looking at me with sorrow in her eyes. “Can’t you do anything?”

Mom sighed and looked heavenward as if listening to a voice I couldn’t hear. After a moment, she said, “I can tell you this, dear. You are going to have to stop playing the victim and take responsibility for your actions.”

“What does that mean?” I railed at her. “I can’t just tell everyone I’m a werewolf. How will that solve anything?”

“Blood calls to blood, Ashlee, and you have a blood debt on your hands. Maybe it’s time you figured out what the spirits want from you.” She said this as she briefly cradled my cheek, and then disappeared.

I sighed and went to the bedroom. Will was sound asleep and snoring, which bugged me. You’d have thought he’d had the best night's sleep last night, going to bed early and all.

Guys.

I pulled my laptop out from under the bed and started scouring the net. By dinnertime, I had some idea of what I had to do. After a glum meal of leftovers, we all went to bed early. I fell asleep immediately; after all, I hadn’t had much rest last night.

Will had gone down to the living room and watched television, and I didn’t even notice when he crawled back under the covers with me.

Chapter 19

This part I pieced together from talking to Sean after the whole thing was over, and filled in a few details. Okay, I made up a few details, but hell, I am a writer.

Sean Gottlieb finished cleaning up after the dog in the pet carrier, cursing the day he ever took up with Jeanetta Macdonald. He stared at the poor little miniature Schnauzer, who looked at him with the saddest eyes. He’d had to kidnap the pet and keep him at his place, as the animal shelter was the first place they would look, or maybe Jeanetta’s. Eventually he was supposed to pretend to find the dog, which would give him the opportunity to cozy up to one of the twins.

“I’m sorry, Spanky, but the bitch has got me wrapped around her little finger.”

Spanky cocked his head and then settled his muzzle on his front paws to listen.

“Always, Sean do this. Sean do that. Sean take out the garbage. Sean drop your pants and bend over and take it up the ass. Sean, –”

The sound of high heels clicking on the linoleum of his kitchen floor cut him off.

“Sean dear.” Jeanetta’s sculpted tones matched her sculpted body and Jeff couldn’t help but lose his train of thought when she came at him like that. To him, Jeanetta was drop dead gorgeous, and buff as a female bodybuilder. If she wanted to beat the shit out of him, she could, and he knew it.

After her brother had died, she’d turned over a new leaf, went back to school on the Park Service’s dime and gotten some kind of environmental degree. She’d eventually become the full-time head of the Animal Rights Coalition as well as keeping her status as part-time ranger at Knightsbridge Canyon State Park. Obviously the salary at the nonprofit suited her better than the pay the government could provide.

If she treated him like a scrub, she definitely made up for it in the bedroom. Today she was dressed in one of her favorite leather and latex outfits, suitable for indoor wear only.

“So, where’s the little mongrel?” Jeanetta singsonged in a way that made Spanky cringe. It made Sean think of Cruella de Vil in that dog movie. “Why there you are! I bet your owners are worried sick about you. But don’t you worry. You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.”

With a flick of her single-tail whip, she soon had Sean Gottlieb crawling on all fours behind her. Every time the leather tip hit him, he shuddered with a mixture of pain and pleasure, anticipating what was to come.

It was so bad, but so good anyway.

Spanky hunkered down, put his paws over his eyes, and dreamed about home.

Chapter 20

I woke up the next morning to a silent house and a note from Will:

GONE TO SEE MOM. BACK LATER. STAY SAFE. –WILL. XOXO

I padded down into the living room and got a glass of orange juice from the kitchen when I heard voices coming from the garage. I tiptoed into the laundry room and put my ear to the garage door as my sister began to talk.

“It was him, Elle. It was Sean Gottlieb. He was Jeanetta’s boyfriend back in high school and they’re still together. I saw it all in my dream. He’s been doing the dirty work for Jeanetta, and she’s still pissed off because Shane went out with Ashlee that night instead of me, and he got mauled by a mountain lion or whatever it was back when we were in high school.”

“What do you want me to do, Amber? Dreams aren’t exactly probable cause, not to mention the overtime costs to the city,” Elle argued. “I have to have a good reason to request Hernandez put him under surveillance. Something better than my girlfriend had a vision and our dog has been kidnapped.”

Holy shit, I thought. Maybe Amber’s talents weren’t so latent as Mom suggested.

Speaking of Mom – “It’s not polite to eavesdrop on your sister, you know,” she admonished, sticking her ghostly head up out of the washing machine. I yelped and retreated out to the back yard, Mother following me as I lit up a clove and stared at the sky. Who thought that such a cozy little town could harbor such unknown weirdness? Then again, in all those books and movies, it was always in some little town or remote place, usually in Maine or Idaho or Vermont or somewhere. Amityville Horror. Pet Sematary. The Shining. Misery. Twilight Eyes. Casper the Friendly Ghost. Yeah, that one had scared the hell out of me as a kid.

“She learned that from you and Dad, you know,” I snapped at her.

“Learned what?” my mother said as she stepped down onto the twelve-inch sunning slab that cradled one corner of the black-bottomed swimming pool.

“Having your fights out of sight and out of earshot. It’s incredibly frustrating, you know. And now Amber’s just like you two. No PDA in front of the peasants and no arguing in front of the children. Made the rest of us feel like mental defects, going at it all the time.”

“Yes, well your father wanted to show a united front when it came to parenting. And we were much too concerned about what other people thought than what kind of damage we were doing to you kids at the time.”

“I think you passed on that little foible to Amber as well. Sometimes I don’t think she’s even human! Always worried about how it looks on the outside, when who gives a shit about comportment when your family is being threatened. I swear, you wouldn’t even think she was gay except she and Elle sleep in the same bedroom.” Ouch. Did I really go there? “They’re more like…”

“Sisters? Like you two used to be, before you started squabbling all the time? Are you jealous of Elle?”

“No.” Maybe. “And when did that happen, Mom? Huh? When did we start squabbling all the time? When you…”

Mom looked sad. “You say that as if I wanted to die and leave you kids alone. If you just thought about it a minute, you’d realize it’s just the opposite.”

Know what? I did. With all the stress and stuff, maybe this wasn’t a good time to have arguments with my dead mother, but then again, when is a good time? But I knew what she meant, I think – that she was here now, as best she could be, because she hadn’t wanted to leave us.

“I get it, Mom. I’m sorry. Hard to argue with cancer.”

“Your father and I did our best, dear,” she said sadly. “We were flawed human beings too, just like everyone. Your sister is also doing the best she knows how, Ashlee. Don’t judge her until you can walk a mile in her shoes. You can’t even fathom the responsibility she feels.”

“Responsibility? What responsibility?”

“She has a son now, and she always felt responsible for you, and when I died, she felt responsible for your father and Adam, and now with Spanky gone…”

“Hey, where is Spanky, anyway?” I asked off the cuff, hoping to surprise her into answering.

“I don’t know, Ashlee. I’d pass it on if I knew, but even though I’m like this, I can only be in one place at a time. I can’t go floating through thousands of houses checking every room.” Mom sighed. “You have no idea how much strength it takes to manifest even to you.”

I ignored her troubles and said, “Oh, and by the way, when were you going to tell me that Amber’s visions were back?” I remembered she’d had a few over the years. They seemed to come in clusters.

“It wasn’t my place.” My mother gave me that sad smile, the one that said it was only going to get worse before it got better, and then she faded out.

The back door opened right then and my twin came out to join me. The morning was fairly quiet and unseasonably warm. Amber handed me my favorite, a glass of cherry limeade with a sprig of mint on the top, and then crossed her arms and stared into my eyes.

“I need to tell you something,” she said, after a few moments’ silence.

I kept my mouth shut, and just nodded. When my better judgment was in control, I’d learned that the less I said, the better I did when it came to our relationship. Seems family always takes aim at each other until a common antagonist comes along. Maybe this was an opportunity.

“You know those visions I used to have as a kid? Like the night we found you on the slopes of the Canyon near Shane’s body?”

“Uh, huh.” I sat down on the edge of the pool and wiggled my toes in the cold water, more from an excuse to do something than a desire for relief.

“Well, they never really stopped. In fact, they’ve been getting clearer and more frequent, lately.”

“Uh, huh,” I murmured again.

“I think Jeanetta Macdonald wants you dead, Ashlee. Or at least, she wants some kind of revenge. I saw it last night in a dream. Remember her creepy boyfriend, Sean?”

Snort. “You mean her weirdo plaything.” I laughed again.

“Yes, well, that. I dreamed that Sean is going to try to kidnap you. I don’t know when or how, but it’s going to happen and we’ve got to try to prevent that.”

“What did you see?” I asked, an uneasy trepidation creeping over me. Werewolves and shape-shifters, sure, those I could handle. But seers and oracles? I was way out of my depth.

“It was just flashes. But I think you should stay away from the caves up in the Canyon. I think she’s going to try to get you up there. And if she does, it’s not going to be good.”

“We should tell Elle.”

Amber shook her head. “She doesn’t believe me, not really. I mean, she believes I had the dreams, but she’s a cop first and a lawyer second and neither of those professions are big on the visions or clairvoyance or whatever it is.”

“So you want to do something behind her back?”

“Not really. Just…without telling her.”

“Same thing, Am,” I snapped.

“Fine, whatever!” She threw up her hands and started to walk away.

“Amber, Amber…I’m sorry.” I got up and put my hands on her arms from behind, turning her around. For a moment it was like looking in a mirror. “I think I’m just so used to saying no when you say yes…I’ll try to work on that, okay?”

I could see her eyes tear up for a moment. “Okay.” She hugged me for real for the first time in a long time, and I hugged her back, and for a little while I wondered why I was ever mad at her.

“So what are we going to do?” I finally asked as we broke our slightly awkward embrace.

Amber grinned, showing a bit of that cruel streak I knew so well. “I think we need to even the odds.”

I wept as my gorgeous tresses hit the floor. No, really. I mean it. You think Bambi cried when his mother died? That was nothing! It had taken me three years to grow my hair out and get the color right. And to add insult to injury, it was my sister who did the cutting. Oh, didn’t I tell you? Amber had been a beautician before she got her job with the city manager’s office. Unlike other hair stylists, she could never cut her own hair. She could do other people. But whenever she took the scissors to her own hair, it turned out looking like a hack job performed by a weed-eater.

With my hair? I had to admit, she had always been good at it. So, when she got through with my new bob, once again we looked exactly alike.

It was cute. But it wasn’t me. I sighed.

“Don’t worry Ashlee,” Will said. “It’s just hair. It will grow back.”

“I wish you’d stop acting like it’s the end of the world,” Amber said. “Better a few strands of hair than getting your head chopped off by a psycho killer.”

“Well, gee. When you put it that way.”

The key was to make sure that most people, Jeanetta Macdonald and Sean Gottlieb particularly, weren’t able to easily tell who was who when it came to Amber and me. We would make sure to never be alone and trade off, swapping cars and outfits and significant others.

I laughed ironically as I looked forward to dolling up in Amber’s designer outfits. For once Amber couldn’t complain that she was worried I would ruin her clothes. All I had to do was give her some of her own medicine. “Better a few scrapes on the Dior and the Blahniks than getting my head chopped off,” I would say.

That was something to look forward to.

Chapter 21

After a couple of weeks of the Amber and Ashlee switcheroo revue, with nothing to show for it but a bunch of pictures of us doing the doublemint twins, no movement on the case and no new threats, we stopped worrying about who was wearing what and where and we just tried to live our lives the best we could.

The hole in the family where Spanky used to be remained constantly in our minds – less in mine and Will’s I have to admit, as he wasn’t our dog. Amber seemed to take my word for it that the heart hadn’t been his, and she hadn’t had any bloody visions of his death – or any visions for that matter – so she managed to get by.

Elle was hit the hardest. Cops, or former cops anyway, don’t like to be stymied and helpless. They want to do something, solve something, bring the bad guy to justice.

Suffice to say, it was an uneasy two weeks.

My bullet wound was nearly healed, although Will found some sadistic pleasure in tickling the sensitive skin around the area in the few times when we were able to forget about the threat to my life. I snapped at him, he growled good-naturedly at me, and I kept wondering when I would screw things up again.

I thought about going all the way with him, I really did. I know, some of you girls are just screaming at me right now, “Get it done already,” but that’s an irrevocable step I just didn’t want to take right then. Not that my body didn’t agree with you. Besides, Mother had warned me that lycanthropy could make hormonal birth control fail, and other methods were too iffy. A girl’s gotta think about these things, you know, and I wasn’t ready for a baby or a litter of puppies or whatever might come forth.

As long as I held a furry secret, I didn’t know how I was going to make it work.

But as I said, we did the best we could, and Will didn’t seem like he was going anywhere. What did I do to deserve him? He kept telling me that love wasn’t about deserving things. That all of us deserve love, but none of us can earn it, which made no sense to me at the time, but I know it’s true now.

My editor had finally called with a new contract for Spa Review magazine and a promise never to let the “boys” try to do a guest column again when their patently sexist version of my work was met with extreme disapproval by my female fans. Guys just have no idea what a woman wants in a spa, but us girls know that it’s not about how hot the steam bath is or how long the lap pool is. It’s about the service and the pampering.

Never send a man to do a woman’s job, I smirked internally. Serves them right. And it gave me leverage to take a much-needed vacation until the holidays were over, though I made a mental note to keep some kind of general column in reserve for situations like this. Well, not exactly like this, but you know what I mean – anything unexpected. I tried to draft something but my heart just wasn’t in it.

A dark shadow hovered over Knightsbridge and the Canyon that Halloween. We all spent it out at the movies, sick of staying home. Our parents had made this a Scott family tradition, as Mother hadn’t approved of all the death and darkness underlying the campy celebrations, and Dad just didn’t like all the kids ringing the doorbell. Talk about your total irony, huh? If I can get Mom to stay still for long enough, I think I’ll bring that up to her sometime and see what she has to say.

Chapter 22

At the end of another frustrating day I opened up the newspaper. Yes, Knightsbridge still had one in real print, delivered by real paperboys on real bicycles, in the afternoon. I was taking my life in my hands being the first to see it, because Elle liked to sit down to dinner and be the first, but I figured I could roll it up again and put the rubber band around it with no one the wiser.

I wish I hadn’t.

The Gazette offered up a one-two punch with an article about Jeanetta McDonald’s Animal Rights Commission and their ties to the local animal shelter. Below the byline was a picture of a miniature Schnauzer and although I tried to keep it from my sister, the sixth sense she had didn’t let me get that far before she questioned me about what I was hiding behind my back.

Reluctantly, I showed her. “It’s not Spanky,” I said. “It just looks like him. Will and I already went over to look.”

“They’re rubbing it in our faces, Ash! What the hell are we going to do?” She looked at me with puffy accusing eyes.

“Something I should have done long ago,” I told her, and grabbed the keys to the pickup I’d borrowed. Will hadn’t shown up from work yet, so I didn’t have to fend him off. I wasn’t going to drag him up for a supernatural rendezvous; at least, not yet.

I headed up the Canyon as night fell and a sliver of the new moon showed above. Fortunately I didn’t have to worry about being dragged into a change. Lovers’ Leap looked just like I left it ten years ago.

Shane Macdonald was still waiting.

“Hello Ash.” His ghostly form took solidity as he leaned against the rock, crossing his arms.

“Hey Shane. Been waiting long?” I asked, and then grimaced. What was I thinking? I still wasn’t used to this “I see dead people” thing and though I saw ghosts from time to time, I never investigated, never talked to them.

Until now.

Shane laughed sadly. “Seven years too long. Or is it eight? I’m kinda losing track.”

“It’s been ten. You’re my second, you know,” I told him.

“Second what?”

“Second real ghost I’ve talked to. But the other one is Mom, so I guess you’re my first non-family haunting.”

“How did you know I would be here?” he asked.

“I…I just knew. I’ve always known you were waiting, not at peace,” I said. “If it’s any consolation, I’m really sorry I chickened out of coming up here before. Oh, and that I killed you.”

“Oh that…no biggie,” he said. “So, Ash. Now that you’re here, we really need to talk.”

“I know why I need to talk to you, Shane. To, pardon the pun, lay some ghosts to rest. Why do you need to talk to me?”

“Same reason, except the ghost is me.”

“Same reason?”

“Yeah. You need to forgive yourself, Ashlee.”

“I know that!” I pounded the heels of my hands lightly against my head. “In my brain I know that, but in my heart…a hell of a lot easier said than done.”

“At least you’re facing up to the problem now, instead of running away.”

“Yeah. I am, amen’t I?”

“Amen’t isn’t a word, Ash,” Shane said with a flash of that smile.

“It is now. I write for a living, so I should know.”

“You run away for a living, Ash. You write for a paycheck.”

“Yee-ouch. And how do you know all these things? Have you been haunting me?”

Shane smiled. “Now and again. When you do something near enough to here. The farther away, the harder it is to go there.”

“That makes sense. Maybe I should become a ghost writer. Interview the spirits.”

“Funny. That’s what I always liked about you, you know. Your sense of humor. Too bad your sister is losing hers.”

I sighed and ran my fingers through my irritatingly short hair. “It’s not her fault. Like Mom said, she feels responsible for everything, and she hasn’t run. I ran, and now that I’ve come back, I kinda know what that’s like. Feeling responsible, I mean.”

“Like for my death. But you weren’t responsible. It was your first change. How could you know?” Shane put his ghostly arms around me and I could almost feel them.

“If not me, then who?”

“Nobody, maybe. Sometimes in life shit just happens.”

I grunted. “Tell that to your sister.”

“I’ve tried. She won’t let it go. Jeanetta hates me, she hates you and she hates herself. In fact, she hates everything around her. I can’t even get near her anymore, there’s so much black energy coming off her. I don’t know what she’s gotten herself into but it’s not good.”

I turned around and Shane’s arms blew away into wispy mist before reforming where they were supposed to. “What about Spanky?” I asked.

“Who?”

“Elle and Amber’s dog.”

“Oh. I have no idea.”

“Dammit!” I rubbed my arms as the wind started to pick up across the plateau. “Can you find out?”

Shaking his head, he said, “Not really.”

“Why not?” I snapped, then realized how selfish that sounded. “I mean, I would really appreciate it if you could.”

“Because I’m at peace now, Ash. I’m leaving tonight.”

“What? You can’t be! What about me forgiving myself and all that?”

“You’re on your way, Ash, and the other side is calling me. I have to face up to my own ghosts and their judgment now.”

My mind whirled, and I wanted to ask him a thousand questions about everything ghosts knew – the afterlife, and souls, and God and stuff like that – but it was too late. Shane had already started to fade. His fingertips brushed my cheek, and this time I did feel them as tears flowed down my face.

“Goodbye, Shane. Forgive me.”

“I did. I do,” were the last words I heard from him.

Now there’s irony for you.

Chapter 23

“Still no dreams or visions, huh?” I asked Amber the first morning of the Homecoming Week festivities. The Knightsbridge high schools always held theirs later than anyone else, right after Halloween. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was because being in the western foothills of the Sierra extended our autumn weather and people liked to have something between the end of October and Thanksgiving.

“I can’t manufacture them, Ashlee. They come when I don’t want them, they don’t when I do.” She changed the subject. “So, I guess you’re playing in the game tonight.”

I laced up my high-tops, and the smell of leather hit me. I inhaled and relaxed. I was actually looking forward to getting rid of some of my feeling of helplessness, anxiety and aggravation on the basketball court at the alumni games that night.

“Yeah,” I replied. “I figured as long as I’m here, it’s a good enough reason to slam some backboards.”

“Yes, well, don’t be alone, and don’t take any drinks from strange water bottles.”

I looked at her, alarmed. “Will and the team will be with me the whole time. But do I really need to worry about getting roofy’d?”

“Just…be cautious.” She pulled me into her arms.

“Yeah, well. You too.” I hugged her back then stepped out of Elle’s way as she poked me in the side.

“Besides, I’ll be there and packing,” Elle said.

“Why doesn’t that make me feel better?” I teased. But I really did. Feel better, I mean. In a big place like that, surrounded by lots of people.

What could happen?

Shit, I so did not think that, did I?

The women’s varsity versus alumni game was like a Powder Puff match on steroids. I’d forgotten how good it felt to work as a team and my former classmates seemed to take it all in stride. I still had my jump shot, and my hang time was legendary. But what these girls didn’t know was that I had a lupine ace up my sleeve…I could dunk, at least on a regulation high school basket. Like I said, my monthly wolf run seemed to put my body into top physical condition.

Lucky me.

It was late in the fourth quarter when the scent came to my nostrils. I stood at the free throw line after sinking the first of two when I smelled him. Smelled Spanky. At least I thought it was Spanky. But there was a stale aspect to the spoor, as if the vitality of the dog was layered in an olfactory residue of other canines, some of them dead. My lip turned up at the thought of the violation of my pack.

Yeah, somehow, with the scent came the reminder that Spanky was just that. A pack mate.

I nailed the second free throw. As soon after as I could, I ferreted out the location of the Spanky smell.

Sean Gottlieb was wearing the uniform of the Animal Rescue Clinic and stood on the sidelines behind the other basket, holding a covered pet carrier. That was where it came from.

We took up defensive positions around the key and I waited to make my move. Cassandra Jenkins, wiry hotshot and point guard, took a dribble past me when I snatched the ball right out of her hands. Before I could even think, I had loped down the court and, after hitting my layup, I sent my body flying into Sean Gottlieb, knocking the carrier to the floor.

On the ground, I rolled over to look into the crate. Inside I could see a frightened miniature Schnauzer.

It wasn’t Spanky.

Sean paled as I looked into his eyes.

“Ashlee, isn’t it?” He smirked nervously. “Just couldn’t pass up a good game of B-Ball, could you?” It sounded like a line he had memorized.

I snarled and left him standing there. The bastard was taunting me, but his heart wasn’t in it, so I knew who had put him up to it.

Amber looked over from the sidelines. She and some of the other alumni cheerleaders had squeezed back into their old outfits and were doing a creditable job of rallying our fans. I shook my head and shrugged.

Time to finish this basketball game, and then we needed to finish the other game that someone was playing. Because I had smelled Spanky on Sean, even though our dog hadn’t been in the carrier. His scent had been fresher than the three weeks it had been since he’d gone missing, so the little weasel had to know where he was, had to have been in contact with him at some point.

I hate to gloat, but we toasted those kids. I knew when I was in high school that alumni games were about celebrating the ones who’d gone before. Why not let us bask in being a big shot for one night, even if I’m only reliving the fading dreams of my childhood? Back then I’d thought about going and playing college ball, even maybe working my way to a women’s pro league, before the Incident sidetracked me.

I even had a standing offer to assistant coach if I was willing to move back to town. It wouldn’t have been hard. I had to admit, it made me feel pretty good to know I wasn’t a total pariah as I collected quite a few pats on the back or the ass as I headed back to the locker room. I took a shower with the rest of the team and then hurried back out to the bleachers to watch Amber announcing the year’s nominees for Homecoming Court.

Standing there on the sidelines with Will at my back, feeling guilty for feeling so good, I asked myself what kind of person I was and what did I really want? Lonely but glamorous travel all over the world, or coming home to deal with real life and, oh by the way, no more free spa trips and an expense account.

What a quandary.

Then my hackles started to rise.

Jeanetta Macdonald stood behind the platform, next to the stage, and I realized that she was waiting to make an announcement, as she wore that Animal Rescue Clinic uniform and carried a pet crate. If she hadn’t come here for something official, she would have been dressed to the nines as she usually was.

I grabbed Will’s arm and pointed.

Will turned to where I was looking and said, “Stick close to me,” as he pulled me through the crowd.

Elle got there first. “And may I ask what you have there, Ms. Macdonald?” she was saying as we rounded the back of the bandstand where they were waiting.

“Well, since you know the Animal Rights Commission and the Animal Rescue Clinic has long been a supporter of the community, we thought we’d drum up some compassion for the animal shelter by showing one of our adoptees. Hopefully, we can find him a good home.”

“Him, eh?”

“Oh, yes. He’s just the cutest little thing. A couple of kids turned him in a few weeks ago and even though he was in pretty bad shape, we nursed him back to health and now he’s better than before.”

“May I?” Elle said. Amber was watching out of the corner of her eye and I shrugged my shoulders. I already knew it wasn’t Spanky.

But Amber didn’t know that and I could see her disappointment as Elle removed the animal. He looked like Spanky, but up close Amber could see he wasn’t.

I looked into Jeanetta’s eyes and saw a flash of victory there. Her pulse rate sped up and I gaped at her. She was actually getting off on this. I was so going to terminate that bitch.

“Let’s go,” I said to Will. “I don’t think I can stomach this anymore.” He walked me back to the locker room.

“I’ll just get my things,” I told him and I slipped inside to retrieve my gym gear from the locker, ignoring the “Cleaning in Progress” floor sign.

The place was a haze of moisture as I maneuvered around the wet patches yet to be mopped up by the janitor. The man shoved his mop here and there as his head bobbed and he hummed to himself beneath long hair and a ball cap, his shoulders hunched. My sense of smell got overwhelmed by perfumes, deodorants and cleaning fluid scents, or maybe I could have avoided what happened next.

My bag was right where I left it on top of the lockers and as I climbed up on a bench to retrieve it, I felt a sharp pain in my ass overlaid right on top of the still-healing scar. Instinctively stepping down, I slipped in soapy water and landed on my back.

I smelled blood and rolled over, reaching down to where the pain had bit me. My hand came away bloody and in my palm was a smashed tranquilizer dart.

Seriously? In the ass again?

Those were my last thoughts before darkness took me.

Chapter 24

When I awoke, I found myself tied back to back with my sister in a hot, smoky cavern deep in the heart of Knightsbridge Canyon. I’d been here before in wolf form, as I’d explored every bit of the area around town between the Incident and leaving home. A certain set of stalactites that looked like a hanging line of banners made me sure.

My eyes watered and my pulse raced, fighting off the effects of whatever they’d shot me with. I knew my body was trying to drive the drug out of my system. Looking around I saw that Amber and I were flanked by a deep depression like a medieval fire pit, filled with red hot coals and rising heat waves. To the left I saw the climbing flames of a bonfire. Large ancestor rocks ringed it, touching the flames. I recognized them from research I had done on the Cherokees for a travel piece about casino resorts.

Wicker scaffolding arched above us, what I realized was the skeleton of a sweat lodge.

A sweat lodge in a cavern? Okay…

Sean Gottlieb tended the fire, half-naked with his shirt tied around his waist and a handkerchief across his face like a bandit. He had welts and scars crisscrossing his back and shoulders and I wondered what had made them, then winced as I speculated about his and Jeanetta’s relationship.

I heard a bark to my right and saw Spanky pawing at the bars of a cage, looking worriedly at me.

“Spanky,” I breathed. “Amber, it’s Spanky!” I hissed.

Amber didn’t answer. Must still be out from whatever they shot her with, I thought. I was a lupine, and in better physical shape than my sister, so naturally I would awaken first.

I felt the heat begin to rise as Sean shoveled some hot ancestor rocks into the depression near my feet. I stared up at him, but he didn’t look at me until I spoke.

“Why are you doing this?” I croaked.

Spanky barked and Sean looked away, not saying anything. He went over to pour some water into a bowl and slid it into the cage.

Well, he seemed to like animals. That might be something I could work with.

“Could I get some water over here?” I coughed.

He didn’t answer, but brought a water bottle to me and held my chin up as he poured some into my mouth.

“Thank you,” I said. “Now give some to Amber.”

“She’s still out.” He looked at me for a moment in apology, and then turned to walk away.

Before I could pursue that thought, Jeanetta Macdonald strode through the cave entrance. She wore a dark bustier and a pair of black chinos, with matching Doc Martens laced up the ankles, and I had to admit, she looked kind of hot.

For a raving lunatic, that is.

At least Amber would approve of her taste in S&M fashion. Wouldn’t want to be murdered by a tacky Vogue reject after all.

“Ah, you’re awake. Good. It’s just about time to start the ceremony.”

“What the hell are you doing, Jeanetta?” I coughed and elbowed Amber in the back. I got a grunt in response, which made me think she was playing possum and buying time, hopefully thinking of a way out of this mess. Mother! I sent out a silent prayer, or plea, or mental message, whatever you do to call ghosts.

What I thought she could accomplish, I had no idea.

“You’ll find out soon enough.” Jeanetta smirked and turned toward me, taking a burgundy colored velvet bag from her belt and raising it up to the ceiling while she began to chant. The cloth in her hands was threaded with amber strands that caught the light and seemed to spangle symbols across the cavern walls.

Sean proceeded to pull dark cloth over the bamboo and the little light we had dimmed as he affixed blankets to the semicircular poles. Jeanetta approached with a wooden mixing bowl and pulled a hunting knife off her leg harness. “It’s probably obvious that this is going to hurt,” she said with glee, grinning triumphantly as she sliced a gash in my jeans and thigh, and then held the bowl beneath it.

I clenched my teeth, hissing against the pain as I tried to jerk away, but we were too securely held, not like in the movies where the villain always leaves the bonds too loose, or easy to reach and untie.

Amber wasn’t so stoic. “You bitch!” she screamed when Jeanetta cut her.

“Language, Amber.” I laughed sardonically.

“Bite me, Ashlee,” she snarled. “You got us into this.”

“Funny you should say that,” I replied, but Jeanetta cut us off.

“Girls,” Jeanetta chided us as she took her knife and sliced a few hairs from both our heads and added them to the bowl. She then went to the cage and had Sean pull Spanky out.

Shit.

“Keep her talking Ashlee,” Amber muttered and I could feel her manipulating her wrists to try to get her hands free. Good luck with that. I had already tried, and I was stronger and more limber than my sister.

“Hold him still,” Jeanetta ordered as Sean lifted the squirming dog. Spanky hated being held by anyone but our family.

“What are you doing?” I demanded as she raised her knife. “I thought you were an animal rights activist? Or was that all bullshit, like the rest of your life?”

Hey, it was all I could think of at the time.

“Oh, don’t worry. I like dogs more than I like people.” Then she turned to back to Sean, who was frowning at her. “Present company excluded, of course.”

Spanky froze in Sean’s grip. He seemed to know when danger was coming and he bared his teeth.

“Don’t even think about it.” She narrowed her eyes at him as Sean held Spanky’s mouth shut while he snarled.

“If you hurt my dog…” Amber began, but then I smelled an acrid smell of hair burning, and heard a yelp of surprise and a curse as Spanky went flying out of Sean’s arms to hit the ground running. I could hear his barking fading in the distance and I thanked the Lord that at least one of our pack had made it out unscathed.

On the other hand, you would think that he’d show a bit more loyalty.

“I didn’t know you were such a witch, Jeanetta,” Amber snarled. “A bitch, well, that I knew. But blood magic? Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

Interesting. What did Amber know about magic beyond reruns of Charmed and Once Upon a Time? I started to get the feeling she’d been holding out on me again.

“You don’t think I came into this unprepared, do you?” Jeanetta mocked.

I looked at her blankly, and sensed Amber doing the same, if perhaps with slightly more comprehension.

“See, I know what you are,” Jeanetta continued.

“Oh really.” I matched her haughty tone. “And what do you think that is?” I coughed.

“Yee Naaldlooshii…” The words came out of her in a hiss, and a malevolent gleam sparked from her eyes. A shiver ran through me. Jeanetta poured more noxious herbs over the fire. “Ánt’įįhnii!” Her voice got louder and I could I feel an ache behind my jaw. “Adagąsh!” Her voice took on the cadence of a song as she screamed the last words. “Azhįtee! Nee Yaaldlooshii!”

“Ashlee!” Amber’s voice rose into a different register and I could feel my own anxiety begin to rise with hers as I felt the pads of my fingers tear and claws burst out from my  knuckles, straining the tension of the rope that bound us. Blood ran down my wrists and the smell made me woozy.

Holy Shit! I thought. She was doing it. Jeanetta Macdonald was making me shift.

Yee Naaldlooshii. Skinwalker. She’d called me a skinwalker. I’d run into the Navajo legend when I first started researching werewolf mythology back in high school. But I wasn’t a skinwalker – I was something else, product of a different magic.

“I don’t know how you managed that,” Amber whispered. She couldn’t see that the sharp things her hands touched were actually a part of me rather than rocks or knives. Who knows what she thought? But I could feel her sliding the hemp fibers across my claws causing them to part, bit by bit, as she sawed at our bonds.

“Me neither,” I said.

“Werewolves, shifters, all the same thing,” Jeanetta cackled. “I knew it all along!”

But she was wrong. The legend of the skinwalker said that a shapeshifter utilized rituals to assume the form of a beast. In doing so, she would shed her human skin to become the shape of the animal she wanted to change into. But it cost a blood sacrifice to do so. In order to return to human form, a skinwalker had to consume her own human pelt, eyeballs, scalp and all.

Besides being totally gross and nasty, I wasn’t a skinwalker. Or a Navajo.

On the other hand, there had to be some kind of overlap, because whatever she had done had affected me.

“After you killed my brother I spent years researching the legends of your kind. In my travels, I found a tribal elder who was willing to share with me the secrets of your people.”

“What, Scottish people?” What my people? I barely knew what I was.

“He said if I could force the shape of the wolf onto you while the moon was waning, and then burned your skin, you would be bound into your shifted form for the rest of your days.”

“You’re insane!” I laughed uproariously, which made Jeanetta furious.

“Ashlee,” my twin said, “don’t antagonize the psycho.”

“We’ll find out who’s insane now, won’t we?” Jeanetta said tightly. “Sean, cover them up and then go look for that damn dog. We need it.” As she said this I realized that I could still hear Spanky barking from outside the cave. I guess the little furball hadn’t run off after all.

Amber whimpered as the cloth concentrated the smoke around us. The heat began to become unbearable as Jeanetta chanted and threw blood and herbs into the fire, causing more choking fumes. My head began to swim and I could hear Amber retching.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” she said and then she passed out, her body going slack against me. Jeanetta’s annoying noises stopped and it sounded like she moved away, probably to prepare her next round of tortures. I could hear her chanting start up again, farther away.

“Hold on, Amb. I’ll think of something.” My claws were already out and I could feel my lupine side come out and take on that monochromatic perception where the olfactory senses filled in the visual details.

I wondered if I could continue this partial shift. I never could quite do it before and I ran the risk of hurting Amber badly if I had to go all the way, but if Jeanetta could force me into my wolf form, I couldn’t guarantee that I could control it anyway. I didn’t think I’d hurt my twin, but I hadn’t ever been forced into the change before.

I centered myself and felt the ropes dig deeper into my flesh. My vision began to blur and I got a bad taste in my mouth as my canines began to lengthen.

“Amber, forgive me for getting you into this mess,” I said softly as darkness covered us and the muffled sounds of Jeanetta’s chant faded away into the background. The sound of pine sap popping and the crackling of the coals around us seemed to get louder in my brain.

Sweat poured down my face and I could feel it drenching my sister’s back. She was unusually quiet, and I wondered if she’d passed out again. I kind of hoped she had, just in case…in case...“Amber?”

“I’m here.” She coughed. “I’ve found if you take shallow breaths it’s not that bad.”

“I have a confession to make…”

“What, that you’re a werewolf and spend your full moons running around the hills and munching on forest critters?” she said offhandedly. “Ooh, big secret.”

“You knew?” I barked. The sound of betrayal echoed around me in the muffled silence.

“Of course I knew! Why do you think I worry about you all the time? And haven’t you noticed that I always call you after a full moon to make sure you’re okay? Seriously, Ashlee, you’re not a very good liar. Remember, we have the same face and I can read you like a book. Besides: visions, hellooo!”

I was floored. All this time, she knew my secret and she never said a thing.

“So, when were you going to tell me that you knew?”

“It wasn’t my place.” When she said that I could hear echoes of my mom in her words.

“Do you see Mother too?” I asked, and before it was out of my mouth, I knew it was the wrong thing to say.

“What do you mean?”

Crap. I was so not good at this.

Finally I felt the rope fibers part and I stood. My mother’s face hovered in the darkness and I could see her putting her finger to her lips.

“Nothing. Just visions, helooo,” I said with as much snark as I could muster. I tore the restraints off my ankles and proceeded to set Amber free. There wasn’t much room to maneuver, but I slid to the ground and lifted the cloth tarp to look out into the cavern. I couldn’t be sure that Jeanetta didn’t have more tranquilizer darts ready and I wasn’t about to waste this opportunity.

I couldn’t see much of anything.

“Amber, I need your eyes.”

“Sorry, I’m using them, thank you,” Amber said as she joined me on the ground. Her voice quavered a little as she stared into my face. “Your eyes are different. Wolfy.”

“Yeah, and that means I’m color-blind and can’t see worth shit in this smoky mess. So, tell me what you see. Where’s Sean? Where’s Jeanetta?”

“She’s right outside the cave entrance and, um…”

“What?” I asked.

“Well, she’s naked…”

“Glad I can’t see that.”

“Actually…”

“Focus, Amber. No time to go admiring her killer bod.”

“That's a bit too apropos. And she’s holding some kind of pelt up to the sky.”

The sound of chanting rose again and then came a whoosh.

I felt my whole body go rigid. “Uh oh,” I said.

“What?” Amber whispered.

“What just happened?” I ground out, my tongue getting hung up on my teeth.

“She dropped the pelt into the fire.”

I moaned and could feel my bones begin to turn and bend and crack.

“Ashlee!” Amber grabbed my face and looked into my eyes. She must not have liked what she saw there, because she scrabbled back away from me.

“What?” I coughed. My body…I hardly felt human anymore, and I probably wasn’t mostly.

“My, what incredibly big teeth you have…”

Yeah, well, humor was one of our strengths. Laughing in the face of danger. That, and, making lemonade out of lemons. Someone should tell Jeanetta to be careful what she conjured, or she might get it.

Or it might get her.

I struggled with my clothes for a moment before I got free of them. With a roar, I leaped from the folds of the sweat lodge and slammed headlong into something. Stars danced in my optic nerves as I stumbled leftward, rubbing up against a barrier I couldn’t see or smell.

Looking up, I saw Jeanetta continuing her ritual incantations, and I instinctively tried to rush her again, but I couldn’t reach her. I felt as if a wall of glass stopped me, and made my sensitive nose burn as I pushed against it.

On the ground I could see an elaborate symbol drawn, some kind of wheel-shape, like a dream-catcher or magic circle. I tried to scratch at it with my paw but nothing I did could reach it.

Turning, I growled and whined, looking around for some trick or way through. Whatever it was, it kept me out, and suddenly I was wracked with another wave of pain, a convulsion that threatened to drive away my human mind, leaving only the animal. If that happened, Jeanetta would have the perfect revenge, destroying me with no real evidence of what had been done – nothing that would convict her in a court of law, anyway.

“Ashlee!” my sister screamed from inside, and I rushed back into the cave. Amber grabbed the bamboo center-post and brought the fabric down into the coals of the fire like the collapse of a teepee. Smoke poured out of the chamber as the material caught fire, and I leaped in to tug at the ropes still ringing one hand, leading her out into the open air. She collapsed, coughing and helpless.

Another spasm went through me and I screamed, a horrible gut-wrenching sound never meant to proceed from a canine throat. Spanky charged forward out of the darkness to nuzzle me in that way that dogs have, sensing another of its kind in pain. Or maybe he just knew I was family.

Rolling over to stare into his eyes, I tried to make the little Schnauzer to understand. I nudged him with my forehead, pushing him toward Jeanetta as she danced and gestured and spoke words of power. Crawling toward the crazy witch, I tried to tell Spanky what to do.

Somehow, he got it. Maybe it was a dog thing, or maybe that “Speak With Animals” spell I always liked when we used to play D&D really worked, but he turned and began scratching at the design. Formed in the dirt by colored chalk, it only took a few strokes of Spanky’s forepaws before he made a gash in its perfection and I was able to press in close to help him. A few seconds more and we had an opening.

I leaped through, and moments later, Jeanetta lay in shock beneath my snarling muzzle.

At that moment, Will charged out of the darkness. Mom must have gotten through to him, or maybe he just decided to search Jeanetta's old stomping grounds and saw the fire. Or both.

Unfortunately he carried an axe, and he lifted it over his head in preparation for cleaving me in half.

I froze with shock, disbelieving that he would ever do such a thing to me, before realizing that all he saw was a big wolf attacking a human woman. A naked human woman. Ew.

“WILL!” Amber screamed as Spanky sank his teeth into Will’s calf.

“What the –” Will cried as he slapped at Spanky with one hand, forgetting about splitting my skull. The Schnauzer dodged and barked, frantic.

I backed away and then slunk in a circle to where Amber was climbing to her feet, fairly certain Will wouldn’t attack her to get through to me. “Will, leave the wolf alone. Jeanetta just tried to kill me and Ashlee.”

“Where is Ashlee?” Will asked, looking around, still hefting the axe.

I held my pose and tried to will my sister to do what needed to be done. I guess some of it got through, or we simply thought alike, as she said, “Ashlee’s fine. Just tie that bitch up and gag her.” It warmed my heart to hear my sister call someone else the b-word.

Confused, Will put the axe down, bound Jeanetta’s hands, gagged her, and then threw a blanket over her. Our nemesis didn’t protest or resist, seemingly in shock.

“Honey?” Sean stumbled up behind us in the dark after giving up on catching the frantically dodging Spanky. Smoke continued to pour from the cavern as a wind drew it from the chamber. I leaped on him, driving him to the ground, and then Will tied him up too as I stayed out of the way. He kept looking at me, trying to figure it all out, but it was just too bizarre, I was sure. I mean really, if it was you, would you deduce some wolf was your girlfriend without a lot of persuading or proof?

Nearby, Spanky barked joyously around the ghost of my dead mother. She made a shushing motion and he calmed down and sat, staring up at her.

“What’s he looking at?” Amber asked me as she tried to brush her clothing clean, a hopeless exercise.

I gave a noncommittal yip as Mother put her finger to her lips. Why I couldn’t just tell Amber, I had no idea. Some kind of otherworldly rule, or something, I guessed.

“Fine, be that way,” my sister said, as if she understood. Which she probably did. “So much for an honest relationship.”

Ouch. That stung, but I wasn’t much on defying Mom when she was alive and I sure wasn’t going to when she was dead. Then I remembered Shane, and wondered if this all would mean that she would find peace and cross over.

Maybe that was why she didn’t want me to tell Amber. Maybe resolving all that would send her away, and I abruptly knew that I did not want that to happen, not at all. I’d rather have some of Mother here than all of her gone.

Maybe that was part of what family is about.

“Who are you talking to, Amber?” Will asked, still completely befuddled. He’d been all ready to rescue me and instead found most of the rescuing all done, and me apparently not around to be saved. That’s got to let a guy down for sure.

Suddenly, Spanky tore away and scurried down the hillside toward the trailhead parking lot below. I could see lights from a car, and after baring my teeth at our prisoners one more time, I sat down and leaned into Amber, huddling together for warmth in the chill November breeze. She put her arm around me like I was a dog or a child, and I rolled my shoulder and head into her lap while she ran her hand through my fur. Weird, I know, but it felt right. When in lupine, do as the lupines do, I guess.

“Well, what do you know?” Elle climbed up to the trail to the cavern, her hand on the .357 she carried at her hip. “Looks like the gang’s all here,” she said as she strode over to look down at the two bound miscreants. She didn’t seem at all discomfited by the sight of a hundred-pound wolf laying in her lover’s lap.

Lover’s lap, Lover’s Leap, whatever.

Spanky cavorted around her feet until she told him to calm down, at which point he went over to sit next to the very subdued Sean, as if guarding him. Or maybe he was making some kind of statement about his human captor, that he was just as much a dog as any domestic canine. Jeanetta had certainly treated him like one, I found out later.

My older brother Adam trailed behind Elle, a sword from his collection slung incongruously over his back. “Hey there, girl.” He winked at me and ruffled the fur on my head. What, did everyone know what I was, and no one bothered to let me know they knew? I felt like I was left out of my own secret.

I wondered if Dad knew. We kids had kept a lot of secrets from him growing up, or thought we did, but I had to assume one of my siblings or Mom had informed him. In his phlegmatic way, he’d probably just shrugged when he’d gotten the news and said something like, “Oh. That’s interesting.”

Then I wondered what other things I didn’t know that the others were keeping from me. I mean, if I had this werewolf thing going on, and Amber had her visions, and Mom was a ghost, and here my brother was carrying a very real and very sharp sword, ready to smite our enemies…it hardly bore thinking about. Really made my eyes water with that cringey feeling I get when I’ve been stupid or oblivious for quite a while, and suddenly realize it.

I heard Elle talking to Chief Hernandez on her cell, directing a unit up the canyon to the trailhead. “Yeah. The old Indian cave. Will Stenfield saw the fire up here and called me.”

Moments later we saw flashing lights wending their way up the road’s switchbacks toward us.

Elle called, “Hey Will. Why don’t you meet the Chief down at the trailhead. And look for Ashlee while you’re at it. She’d bound to be around here somewhere.”

Will obeyed like the beta he was.

As I didn’t have human speech just then, Amber filled Elle and Adam in on what our kidnappers had done. They walked over to Jeanetta and Sean, who lay on the ground in their bonds, defeated.

Elle took the woman’s gag off. “You’ve been a very bad girl, Macdonald. You too, Gottlieb.”

“She made me do it,” Sean said.

“Shut up, Sean,” Jeanetta said without heat.

“No, Mi-…no, Jeanetta.” He spat her name like a curse. “You can’t make me do things anymore.”

“Oh, Sean,” she sighed. “I never made you do anything you didn’t already want to.”

I thought as I watched, isn’t that how life’s devils always do it?

The bound woman turned her smarmy smile up toward Elle. “Actually, for the record, I didn’t do anything at all. In fact, I tried to rescue these two from this nut here.” She jerked her head at Sean.

“Save it,” Adam said. “If Sean testifies – and I bet the city attorney here will offer some kind of deal – there will be multiple witnesses telling all about your crimes, not to mention the physical evidence, such as misused tranquilizer darts from the Animal Clinic’s inventory.”

“But if it goes to trial, I’ll tell everyone what she is.” Jeanetta pointed her chin at me, and I pulled my lips back from my teeth.

“Right,” Adam laughed in that superior way he had that I had always hated. Right now, though, I could have kissed him. Or at least licked his face, whatever. He continued, “They’ll just cart you off to the nuthouse. Unless that’s your strategy? Insanity plea?”

Jeanetta sagged and lowered her eyes. “Just get it over with,” she muttered.

When we saw the cops climbing the trail, Will in tow, Amber suddenly shook me. “You gotta go,” she whispered, and I realized she was right. “I’ll tell them you got away first and must be out there somewhere. That’s not even a lie,” she grinned.

I chuffed once, nuzzled her neck, and then ran up the hillside. Spanky barked, and I could see my mother waving to me from her position floating above the whole scene like some Christmas angel.

“I guess there really are wolves in Knightsbridge Canyon after all,” I heard Adam say as I loped off into the darkness.

Chapter 25

“Hey,” I said to Will as he rolled the rototiller back to his work trailer and up the ramp.

“Hey,” he replied as he strapped it into place. Not looking at me. Thoughtful. Pensive. Piccadilly Park was nearly empty on a school day, at least in this corner of the sprawling green space, and the overcast day made everything turn gray, muting the sounds of town around us.

“Lunch?” I asked. I’d jogged over from Amber’s where I’d stayed last night, after slinking back in wolf form.

“Sure. Taco truck?” Will took off his battered straw cowboy hat, wiped his head and neck with his bandana, then put the hat back on.

“Sounds good.” I climbed into his Chevy, and then buckled in. Didn’t look at Will. He didn’t look at me. A wall seemed to stand between us, some kind of barrier that could only be torn down by talking about things neither of us seemed to want to talk about.

A few blocks away Will pulled the truck and trailer into a parking lot and looped it around in an open space at the back, away from the people crowding up close to the taco truck at one end. Several of these plied the lunch crowd in town, providing cheap Mexican food to Hispanics and gringos alike. For five bucks you could get a kickass lunch better than most of the restaurants around. The smell of grilled beef, peppers and onions drifting downwind got my mouth watering.

I expected us to sit down at one of the picnic tables there under the awnings after we got our order, but Will took the bag of food and walked back to the truck. Taking down the tailgate, he hopped up on it and patted the spot next to him.

I sat. Woof.

After we’d demolished half a monster burrito each, he turned to me with that look a guy gets when he has to put his hand into the fire, like he’s getting ready for pain. “So…”

“So last night,” I interrupted. “What can I say? Jeanetta still blamed me for Shane’s death, and wanted to take revenge.”

“But what was all that Indian stuff?”

“She was just crazy, that’s all.”

“Ash, she tried to burn you guys alive!”

I shook my head and almost explained to him that the fire was just to provide extra power for the magic, as well as to try to force me into wolf form, but I just couldn’t. Not yet. “She’s nuts. Look at all the stuff Sean was babbling about – whips and S&M and the occult. Who knows what she believes?”

Will stared at me over the remaining half of his burrito, then wrapped the foil around it and put it down. “You’re not telling me everything, Ashlee.”

“Nope,” I said, surprised at myself for being so blunt. Maybe it was just that kind of day.

“Why not?”

“I tried to tell you that you didn’t know me, Will, but you didn’t listen. You just pushed what I said aside, as if I was telling you that out of fear or something, like I didn’t know what I was talking about and you know best. Guys do that, you know.”

“Do what?” I could see him getting annoyed with me lumping him in with other “guys,” but I couldn’t help it.

“They want what they want so they don’t listen. They discount girls’ – women’s – insights, especially about themselves. Think they know best.”

“Maybe it’s because the women won’t just talk plain to them. Won’t tell them what the hell is going on, in words us dumb guys can understand.”

My eyes narrowed as I took another bite of burrito, feeling the burn of fresh grilled jalapenos that was nothing like those pickled ones most people are used to. I bought some time to think by pulling out a little clear plastic container of chopped cilantro to add to the juicy goodness in my hands, making a ritual of it.

“How bad do you have to know?” I asked.

“What does that mean?”

“I’m serious. How much would you sacrifice to find out everything, all at once, right now?” See, I was getting sick of the dance, too, and I was tired and still hurting from everything that happened yesterday. I guess what I mean is, I was about ready to say to hell with it and just dump it all on him and damn the consequences. Double or nothing, roll the dice.

“I…I’d do anything for you, Ash.”

“But what if the price was me? What if by learning everything you lost me?”

“That’s impossible.”

“Here we go again.” I chucked the rest of the burrito in the bag, suddenly not hungry anymore. “You love me but you dismiss me and what I say. That’s not love.” I hopped off the tailgate and started walking away.

“Ash! Ash, I’m sorry. I’ll stop asking. Really. I love you, and I don’t care about your secrets.”

I stopped. Turned. “Yes, you do.”

“Okay, I do, but not as much as I care about you. I’ll wait for you to explain, okay? You’re the most important thing in my life, and if that’s the price…okay.”

“Okay?”

“Whatever it takes.”

He looked so forlorn there, twisting his straw field hat in his hands like some kid in a Dickens novel, that my resolve crumbled. “Okay,” I said, and came back to him. Once I had returned and we were standing there, I just had to kiss him, right? Kiss him stupid, as Amber used to say, though this time I got kinda stupid too.

We only broke up the clinch when a bunch of boys on BMX bikes started on the wolf-whistles. I smiled in embarrassment while Will winged a dirt clot at the road by their tires, and they took off, hooting.

“Want to take the afternoon off?” I asked with a sidelong grin.

“I think I can arrange that, seeing as I am the boss…just gimme a minute to call Rodrigo.”

On the way back to Will’s house, my house, I took my shoes off and stuck my feet out the window, rolling off my newly skewered butt cheek and laying across the bench seat to put my head in his lap. He stroked my hair and all was right with the world again, at least for today.

Epilogue

It didn’t surprise me when Sean confessed to sending me the emails, which actually helped him as they seemed to be warnings, if rather confused ones. In fact, after the shrinks got done with him they convinced the DA to let him plead to a year of inpatient treatment and a suspended sentence, as long as we, the injured parties, agreed.

Amber took some convincing but I knew Sean was under Jeanetta’s spell, not innocent but almost as much a victim as we were. That enchantment may have been metaphorical or may have been literal but no matter what, it was true and Amber agreed, and if Amber agreed, eventually Elle would too, I knew.

Jeanetta got eight to ten in the state women’s prison down at Chowchilla – I know, funny name, sounds like they should make cheap fur coats there, but look it up – and so for at least that long I don’t have to worry about her. The next time I went up to Lover’s Leap and waited, Shane didn’t appear. I even took Spanky with me, but he didn’t seem to see any ghosts.

Mom still haunts me but not Amber as far as I know, but won’t tell me why. I want to figure out what she needs to be at peace, but then again, a ghost mom is better than no mom at all. Dad and Adam seem to be cool with me staying with Will, which surprises me a bit, at least in Dad’s case. He always was old-fashioned when it came to premarital sex. It would probably surprise him to find out Will and I did it – badly, I have to admit – when we were in high school, and surprise him even more to find out how long we waited to do it again.

But yeah, we’re doing it now.

Carefully, with precautions.

Will says he loves me, and I said I love him at least once, but I’m still not at all sure we're speaking the same language. We still haven’t talked any more about that night, and what he saw. I think he’s afraid to push, so we keep putting off that conversation, but it will come eventually.

Amber says I’m overthinking things, as usual.

So is this happily ever after?

I’m not at all sure. I still have a career, and I’m not going to drag Will around all over the world. He’d just get in the way. Oh, come on, it’s true. No matter how much the guy says he’d give up everything, it just doesn’t work that way. Guys need their stuff, and their buddies, and more importantly they need something to do, to achieve. Will wouldn’t be achieving anything as my take-along boy-toy.

For now, until my editor comes up with an assignment, I guess it’s just ever after, happily enough.

THE END of SwitchBack

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Read on for an excerpt from MoonFall, Knightsbridge Canyon Book #2

“This is absolutely crazy-making!” My twin sister Amber’s voice echoed off the pristine ivory walls of the guest bedroom where I’d temporarily holed up while we prepared for the remodel of the pool house, but I think my welcome was wearing as thin as the fabric in my socks. “You realize that you are certifiably insane, don’t you, Ashlee?” Her voice ratcheted up a notch at the end and sent the skeeby-jeebies down my spine.

It’s not every day you tell your identical twin sister that you see dead people. But Mommy Dearest doesn’t take “no” for an answer any better than Joan Crawford tolerated wire hangers. And if you think our Mother was a force to be reckoned with in life, you have no idea the kind of power she’s wielded since she’s been dead.

“I know it sounds nuts, but hear me out!” I yelled right back, following her out into the foyer.

Foyer. Sheesh. I thought they only had foyers in churches, but Amber’s entryway sure qualified, with gleaming marble tiles and a pin-light chandelier.

“You know you’re handling this all wrong.” Annabelle Scott, aka Ghost Mom, breezed into the room on a ray of light and with the musical scent of Jean Naté – at least her top half did. Her lower body got stuck outside the front door. She still seemed to be struggling, getting the hang of the translocation or bilocation or whatever you call it since she’d taken up residence with us in the sprawling single-story ranch-home Amber and Elle had recently purchased in the gated community of Knightsbridge Commons.

Stupid name, if you ask me. There was nothing common about any of the seven-figure homes that fronted the sloping wilds of Knightsbridge Canyon, not to mention the increase in property value I brought to the table when I turned the dilapidated old pool house into my own private writer’s retreat. I mean, hell, I loved my sister, but we really needed to have our own habitable space since she married Elle, and since Will and I were now officially dating and since I still did that wolfy thing every full moon.

“Really? You think?” My sister glared at me.

“I could so say the same thing,” I deadpanned, returning the thread of conversation to my mom as I went to the front door and let in her wandering lower half while Spanky pawed at the air beneath her torso.

“Do not even try to pull that one on me.” Amber pursed her lips, tossed her hair over her shoulder and stuck her hand on her hip.

“Now, Amber. You know that Spanky has been acting odd lately,” Elle said on her way to the garage for a beer during halftime.

My twin looked past me in confusion when her miniature Schnauzer stood on his hind feet and pawed and licked at the air as my dead Mother ruffled his muff and made kissy noises in his ear.

“Yes, but to tell me it’s because our deceased mother is haunting us is just a bit more than I can stomach. Oh, and that not only you can see her and apparently speak with her, but that the dog can too. That’s just adding insult to injury.” Amber crossed her arms, pressed her glossy lips together and began to tap her toe.

“So, you can accept that I’m a werewolf, but you can’t accept the fact that Mother’s an apparition?”

“The word is ghost, Ashlee. G-H-O-S-T. Why do you always have to be so pretentious?”

“I’m pretentious? Who has to wear brands on their clothes in order to keep up with the Joneses and suck up to traditional society! I’m a writer, in case you forgot. Are my words too big and scary for you?”

Holy Crap. I must have done it this time. You know, they say honesty is the best policy. But sometimes saying nothing is better than saying anything at all. My mother must have thought so too, because the next thing I knew she’d vanished like Hurricane Endora in a displacement pressure zone and all of the doors in the house suddenly slammed open with the inrushing wind. Spanky and I cowered on the floor, hands and paws over our ears.

“Honey, we really need to have the airflow in this home analyzed.” Elle sauntered by on her way back to the living room, detouring to shut the front door. “My ears just popped. And why are Ashlee and Spanky on the floor? Oh, and, cute shoes,” she said as she picked up my mother’s flats, which had miraculously stayed behind and taken on physical form when she disappeared. And please, don’t ask me. Ghost Mom defies all logic.

Elle continued, “And they don’t belong in the middle of the room, anyway. You taught me that.” Then she sauntered away to wherever she goes after she drops her one-liners.

I looked up into Amber’s face and she gave me a look that about broke my heart.

“Ouch.”

Ouch is our safe word. If you don’t know what a safe word is, Google it. In this case, it means that in the sparring of our everyday lives, one of us has crossed the line. It’s like the difference between guilt and shame.

Simple metaphor? Ouch is like the bell and the referee returning us to our own corners to lick our wounds. A little too much truth in a raw and angry moment can often feel like betrayal. Amber would probably explain it better, but suffice it to say this was like ramming a katana blade through her abdomen.

Yeah, I know, right.

Ouch.

“Amber. I’m sorry.” I looked up at her as she stood there with tears brimming in her eyes. “I didn’t really mean it.”

“Yes, you did.” She turned her ire against me. “You judge me, Ashlee. And I don’t need it. Elle and I get enough of it from the closed-minded community around here. And we do our best not to complain about it. I really don’t need it from my family too.”

“You’re judging me too. It’s not like I asked to have Mom flitting around like the blobby green thing in Ghostbusters. It’s her choice who to manifest to, I guess. Either that or it’s an unexplainable supernatural thing, just the way it is. Anyway, not my fault!”

“It never is, Ash, but you keep running away anyway, gallivanting around on your spa junkets.”

I pointed a finger. “Now that’s just envy.”

Amber put her hands on her hips. “Okay, so what if it is? Do you ever invite me along?”

I stared at her. “I never thought about it.”

“Exactly!”

“But you have Elle, and JR, and…”

“And I’d like to get away now and then, don’t you think?”

“It’s my job,” I mumbled, but she’d made her point. “Okay, tell you what. You have a standing invitation to join me at any resort I’m reviewing – but it’s on your own dime, unless I can get it comped. It’s not like the magazines are going to cough up.”

“Fine.” It didn’t sound fine, but that was progress.

“Okay.”

“Good.” Amber glared.

“Well, you started it,” I mumbled, as if that was a good reason for overreacting.

Elle walked past again shaking her head and I felt even worse.

I looked to Spanky for comfort, but he scurried away.

Wow. Why do I even try?

You know you’d better take stock when even the dog cringes from your presence and your ghost of a mom refuses to haunt you. But Amber was right. I was out of line. Here I was spinning the story of her life into my interpretation of reality and that never gets you anything except a bunch of hurt feelings.

I swear, I get so mad at myself for some of the stupid things I do I just want to disappear for a while, make myself invisible, you know.

So, I did the next best thing. I left the house.

THE END of the excerpt from MoonFall, Knightsbridge Canyon Book #2

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Drew's Acknowledgements:

For Leslie Suzanne:

You always were and always will be
My better half
Love, Andrew

Thanks to Dave for believing we could do this and for making it happen

Thanks to Caitie Daphtary for being my (IDTBR) "identical twin beta reader."

Thanks to Dad and my hometown of Turlock, California for giving us such fertile ground to grow our stories, and thanks to my mom, Joan Elaine, whose presence continually haunts me, for better or for worse.

David's Acknowledgements:

Thanks to Nick Stephenson, Ryan King and Bella Roccaforte, great authors all, for the feedback provided that made this a better book. Thanks to my lovely and talented wife Beth, my first, last and best beta reader, for all her hard work and support.

Formatting by LiberWriter.com

Cover by Shardel