Lucky for me, no one did.
As the wolf reached out and shook my hand, I could make out a dusty green fog surrounding him like an aura. It was enough to distract me from what he actually looked like until the moment his hand wrapped around mine, shaking it briefly before letting go.
He was strong, but that wasn't a surprise. He stood several inches taller than my five-nine, with thick black curls, and green eyes that I would have sworn could see right through me. His body carried the typical strength of the wolves, impossibly fit and all kinds of deadly. It was only part of the reason I'd spent my life avoiding the entire species.
"I'm Ethan," the man said, studying me like a puzzle. "Thank you for coming out so late." He stepped aside, gesturing me to follow him inside.
"No, it's a rental. We're here for a," he hesitated for the quickest of moments, "business retreat. It's why we didn't want to wait on repairs."
"Ahh." Was all I could manage in response.
"It's just through here," Ethan continued, leading me down a wide hallway. The murmur of voices died down as we approached. By the time we passed what I thought was the living room, every person inside had gone quiet. I only let myself look for long enough to see that the same green haze surrounding Ethan followed all the six people in the room. They were all wolves. I forced my gaze toward Ethan's retreating back, taking a few quick steps to catch up.
"It's in here," he said, revealing a large office, equipped with a dark-stained desk and wall-to-wall bookcases.
I didn't have to ask what was wrong with the router. One look was all I needed to know that the damage wasn't internal. Someone had smashed this thing against the wall, or considering the crowd sitting not far outside the room, crushed it in their bare hands.
My eyebrows rose against my will, and I looked up to find a wry smile on Ethan's face. "Sorry," he mumbled, looking a little sheepish. "Can you still fix it? The only way I managed to convince my daughter to come out here with me was the fact that this place is supposed to have great Wi-Fi."
Daughter? Ethan did not look old enough to have a daughter old enough to care about having a nonstop connection to the internet.
Right. Werewolf, I reminded myself. They all looked to be in their early-thirties or so, no matter how old they really were. "And now it doesn't," I finished for him, not bothering to ask what had happened.
"So it seems. She's upstairs freaking out because she was supposed to have her homework emailed in by the end of the day yesterday. Can you do anything?"
"I'll have a look," I said. For the first time that night, I didn't have to force my smile. This guy could end my life in an instant. Hell, I was probably still going to have to pack up and move now. But he obviously cared about his kid, and that was the kind of guy I could root for, at least long enough to get him back online.
"I'll do my best," I promised.
"Sounds good. If you need anything, I'll be in the kitchen. Just hang a right and keep going until the end of the hall."
Away from the room full of werewolves I noted, before nodding.
As soon as Ethan walked away, I shut the door behind him, leaning my back against it for what little extra security that would offer.
I was so beyond screwed. I'd never been that close to a werewolf before. The closest I'd ever gotten was ending up at the same restaurant as two of them when I'd visited Dublin on a summer break from college. I'd left without paying my bill, determined to disappear. I’d almost bumped into a glamoured fae on my way out the door.
My nerves on fire, I'd thrown up right outside the restaurant, drawing even more attention to myself as I cursed my own stupidity.
It had been a risk to visit the capital. I could have been spotted by any number of supernatural beings. But I'd been young, and stupid.
So I'd gone anyway, having a great time until my first night. Until I got my first real look at all the people I'd trained myself to avoid.
It had taken almost a year to fully shake the nightmares.
Now I was in the same house as six of them.
Sweat dripped from my temple as I forced my breathing to slow before I started to hyperventilate.
All I had to do was fix the router and go. I took a hesitant step toward where the nearly shattered device sat on one of the shelves.
The only way I knew how to fix something like this was by magick. Something this damaged probably didn't stand a chance without it anyway.
And magick could be sensed. Not by wolves, but things were never that simple. At least not for me.
There were more than a few witches or fae who could sense when magick was being used nearby, and even if they couldn't tell exactly what I was, I'd have a lot to answer for. And from everything I'd read, the wolves didn't always keep to themselves, frequently allying with the other greater magick races. Could I guarantee that there were no witches or fae inside too that I just hadn't seen?
Would I bet my life on it?
I picked up the router, examining it from all sides.
This stupid thing really wasn't worth my life.
My eyes flicked to the window before I quickly dismissed the possibility of just running. It was the middle of the night, and I wasn't totally sure which direction home was in. Ireland was small, but it wasn't that small.
Meaning, if I wanted to give myself the best possible odds of getting home safely, I was going to need to avoid using magick all together.
Which would be fine, if I actually had any idea how to fix a router. I'd never seen the need to learn the ins and outs of technology. I didn't have to. My magick could do more for a computer than tech support ever could, so why bother?
There were a lot of things I could fix, mostly using skills my dad had taught me growing up. But neither of my parents had ever had much use for the internet, or anything more modern than mid-century technology. And this was going to be a problem.
Meaning that if I was going to get out of here any time soon, I needed to learn a whole new skill set, all while being surrounded on all sides by potential enemies.
It was turning into that kind of night.
I unplugged the router and sat it down on the desk, pulling my toolbox up as well. Inside were my favorite pliers, wrenches, and everything else I needed to get me through almost any job.
And hidden away in a secret pocket beneath those supplies, were two more tools that I valued above all the others.
My fingers found the cool metal of my gun first, running along the muzzle to reassure myself it was there. Beside that sat my still-sheathed blade, both delicate and deadly. Between my two weapons, I could take out any threat, mundane or magical. I still hoped I'd be able to get through the night without them, but I’d long since learned to be ready for anything.
"Umm, are you done yet?" A voice interrupted as the door beside me creaked open. I whipped my hand back out of my toolbox, letting it hang limply by my side as I came face-to-face with a teenaged girl in polka dot pajamas. She had the same thick hair as Ethan, but her lighter brown hair matched her eyes. This must be the daughter he'd mentioned. There was no trace of magick around her, werewolf or otherwise.
"Excuse me?" My body was still in full alert mode, ready to take on any threat.
"The internet. Are you done?" Her gaze dropped to the table. "You haven't even started."
I managed to keep myself from pointing out that I'd only gotten there a few minutes ago. "Just assessing the damage." I picked up a piece of plastic that had completely broken off from the rest of the unit. "Someone did a number on this thing."
The girl shrugged, but didn't answer. Odds are it had been a werewolf who had taken out the router, but if this girl had grown up around wolves, she'd know enough to keep her mouth shut.
"I'm Melanie," I said. "You're Ethan's daughter?"
"Katie." The girl looked to be about fourteen, hair cut in a long bob that suited her round face.
Working quickly, I began pulling apart the router to see how many of the pieces I actually reco
gnized on my own. I wasn't completely devoid of technical know-how, but the mess of wires, circuits and who knew what else I found inside was still something of a mystery for me.
I didn't even know where to start.
"Is it that bad?" Katie asked before biting her lip.
No. Maybe. But I was pretty damn hopeless.
"Maybe you can get an extension on your assignment and go buy a new router?"
"Maybe." It was hard to miss the quiver in the girl's voice as she looked around the room, anywhere but right at me. "Can't you at least try?"
Right. Doing my job. There was an idea.
"This isn't the kind of damage I'm used to," I pointed out. "Usually there's a part that needs replacing, and then everything's better, like magick." Katie's eyes flicked up to meet mine, making me instantly regret my words. "But they don't exactly teach this kind of thing in nerd school." Not that I'd ever been to school for this stuff. My English degree was currently collecting dust in my closet.
Katie laughed, sitting down behind the desk. She wasn't going anywhere until she could get online again, meaning I now had a problem, and an audience to go along with it.
It was obvious where the damage was, but the question still remained. What exactly I was supposed to do about it?
I picked up a long, thin piece of metal, flipping it around in my hand. Antenna? It was probably a bad sign that it wasn't actually attached to anything else.
"Why don't you look it up on YouTube?" My sole audience member suggested. "There's a million videos on how to do this kind of stuff. I tried it myself, but figured I'd screw it up worse if I did anything wrong."
"Brilliant!" It was an idea I should have come up with on my own. I was always telling my parents that when in doubt, look it up on YouTube. But I'd kind of had other things on my mind that night.
I couldn't exactly search for router crushed by a werewolf, but armed with the device's model number and a vague description of the damage, it didn't take long to get where I needed to go.
"Alright, it looks like the antenna may have just broken off the control board. I won't be able to put the case all the way back together, but if I can reconnect the antenna, we may be in business."
"I don't know what that means," Katie said, "but if you can get it working, I'll love you forever."
"Plug this in for me," I said, handing over the power cord to my soldering iron. "And then you might want to step back."
The whole thing took less than ten minutes, and the solution I came up with wasn't exactly elegant. But it was something. Together, we held our breath, and I let Katie hold down the power button. A second later, the device flashed green.
"It's alive!" I said. "Now comes phase two. Use your phone and see if the network is showing up."
Like most kids her age, Katie needed no explanation on how to connect her phone to the internet.
"Got it!" she said, showing me her screen. The network name was a random string of numbers and letters, but it was getting four bars of signal.
"Success!"
"Thank you, thank you, thank you."
"Hey, it was your idea that got us here. You are my hero," I said, barely resisting the urge to hug this random girl who I sincerely hoped never to see again.
With anyone else, I might have even pressed my luck and asked her not to share the fact that I hadn't made this happen on my own. But at that point, getting paid my full fee was the least of my problems.
Besides, Katie was already rushing out of the room, probably to get back to her beloved laptop.
And now I could get the hell out of here and never look back.
Chapter 3
Well, I could say one thing for the wolves. They paid well. I left Ethan's rental house with a check for three times my usual rate. He insisted, even before I’d had a chance to argue—not that I’d been going to. The extra money would go a long way, but my main priority was still getting out of that house as quickly as possible without drawing unnecessary attention to myself.
In a typical bout of poor planning, I'd finished my job right around the same time that the pubs and clubs closed down for the evening. Neither cab company I called even bothered trying to sound sympathetic to my plight, and none of the ride sharing apps had cars in the area. Leaving me stranded on the front step while I waited my turn, knowing that more than one wolf was waiting on the other side of the door.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come back inside?” Ethan’s rumbling voice, touched with the lilt of his Dublin accent, drifted through the window from the next room over, facing the front of the house.
“I’m fine,” I insisted, too quietly. I knew he’d be able to hear whatever I said, but he wasn’t supposed to know that I knew. I repeated myself a little louder. “I’m sure the cab will be here any minute. You can go to bed if you want to.”
“Suit yourself. But I’ve still got some work to finish up, so feel free to come on in if it gets too chilly out there.”
Was he actually concerned, or was this a thinly veiled warning?
Rubbing my arms, I had to roll my eyes at my own paranoia. We both knew he had nothing to fear from me. He was just being nice. But I was still far more comfortable knowing there was at least one barrier separating me from him. Even knowing Ethan himself probably hadn’t played any part in the conflict that destroyed my family, it had been a wolf that had torn my uncle to pieces on the day I was born. I’d relived the memory myself more times than I could count, and I wouldn’t be forgetting it anytime soon.
Which was a big part of why I needed to know exactly how long these wolves were planning to stay in town. If they were relocating here permanently, it would be the beginning of the end for me, at least here in Galway.
The vampires would send some of their own to counterbalance the wolves new hold on the city, then the fae would redouble their own presence, making each day more dangerous for me than the last.
No matter which species came out on top, I wouldn’t be able to stay.
Lights appeared over the horizon, drawing me briefly out of my predicament. My ride had arrived, and at least for one more night I could get back to my own bed, giving myself a little more time to sort through what would happen next.
I didn’t bother saying goodbye before I slipped into the backseat of the hatchback that had come to collect me, only watching long enough to see the last light on the main floor flicker to darkness.
THE RIDE HOME WAS QUICK enough that the center of town was still crawling with partiers when I was dropped at the curb. People far less eager to get back home than I was. Most chatted with their friends, a few worked their way through fries or pizza. They all took up too much space on the sidewalk, ensuring I had to weave through them to get to the narrow alleyway that led to my flat.
It was a matter of seconds before someone vomited within spitting distance of my shoes.
“Great,” I grumbled, rubbing my flats against a nearby wall even though it didn’t look like I’d been hit. I wasn’t taking any chances.
I was still inspecting my footwear for bodily fluids when a hand clamped around my mouth. Another set of hands yanked my hands behind my back, forcing me to drop my toolbox a second before it clattered to the ground. Before I could so much as kick out behind me, I was being shoved forward by what felt like a crowd of bodies, forceful and demanding.
A crowd of bodies used to shield the fact that I was being forced down a side street against my will. There was no light where I was headed. As I struggled to break loose, my only hope was that one of the drunken masses would notice something was wrong, and say something.
A black bag was wrapped around my head the moment we stopped moving.
No one said a word. Not my attackers, not someone coming to help me get out of this.
Whatever this was.
My body kept moving, kept fighting, as I lost more and more control of my limbs. Something was wrapped around my wrists, binding them tight, as a few voices hushed one another behind me.
I did my best to brace myself for what I was sure was coming next, but still landed flat on my face when I was pushed inside.
Rough hands, grabbed me by the shoulders, the hands, my feet. Maneuvering me all the way in while I tried to work out how many people I was dealing with.
It was only when the door slid shut again that every hand withdrew, leaving me alone to face the rising bile in my throat, the tender skin of a few quickly forming bruises, and the certainty that I was in some real trouble.
I struggled to sit, fear forming deep in my gut knowing I likely looked ridiculous as I pulled myself upward, shifting backward until I found a wall.
The wolves had to have figured out who I was. Somehow.
It didn’t seem possible, but there was no other explanation that made sense.
“Who are you?” I demanded, struggling to keep my voice from wavering. “What the hell do you want?”
“Be quiet,” a man’s voice answered back, English.
The van stayed silent as I tried to find my next angle until a woman’s voice broke through my solitude. “We’ll wait here for a while.” This one was French. “This will be easier once everyone has gone home for the night.”
“What?” I asked. “What will be easier?”
Were they looking to take me out of the city for some reason? Or just kill me?
No matter how many people were in the van with me, every one of them could probably hear just how loudly my heart was beating in my chest.
From what I suspected was the front seat, another voice joined the conversation. “Should I at least get us out of here. We can head for Salthill.” This accent I couldn’t place. Eastern European, probably. At least each new voice gave me one new opponent in my mind. The more I knew about what was going on around me, the better my chances would be to get out of this alive.
“No. We’re not risking any witnesses. You were the one who was stupid enough to rent the van in town. We wait.” It was the woman again. It sounded like she was the one in control of the operation.
Magic in my Bones (Lesser Magicks Book 1) Page 2
