It still astonished him that golems and the whole range of other creatures he’d thought were myths were not only real, but alive and peacefully co-existing in a magical sanctuary town in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. In the rest of the world, territory fights, bigotry, greed, and ancient rivalries prevailed far too often among shifters, fairies, elves, and magic users, and that was a walk in the park compared to what would happen if ordinary humans discovered their existence. Too bad he couldn’t stay in Kotoyeesinay.
Aurelio smiled. It was always startling, because he looked scary, with skin too pale to be human, velvet black hair, intricate red tattoos, and metal-studded eyebrows to go with his Goth wardrobe. He wore a sanctuary illusion charm, so there was no telling what the tourists thought he looked like. “I’ll take you up on your offer of a repair job, if you’ll let me buy your dinner.” He pointed toward the kitchen. “The back storeroom has some wood scraps you can use.” He cast another baleful look toward the tourists. “I’ll tell Su Yen so she doesn’t use you for target practice.”
Chance screwed in one more fastener to hold the temporary brace in place. He gave a quick hand-sanding to the repurposed strip molding he’d applied to keep the plywood edge from splintering, then swept up the plaster and sawdust debris. He enjoyed the opportunity to use his skills again. He missed working with his hands and building things, even if it was just a makeshift countertop. Kotoyeesinay didn’t need his skills, and the town didn’t have what he needed, either. His increasingly restless beast refused to wait any longer.
He gathered his tools and found Aurelio up front at the cashier station. The front door’s magic spell pulsed as another customer entered. The spell felt like a variation on the friend-or-enemy type. He’d never been able to control magic himself, other than when shifting, but thanks to his mother’s lineage, he could sense even the smallest use of it.
“It isn’t pretty, but it’s usable.” He pointed a thumb toward the serving station. “You might ask whoever does the restoration to reinforce the half-wall with steel angle brackets. Whoever built it back in the day just butted it in.”
Aurelio smiled. “You’re a pal.” Chance started to turn away, but Aurelio unexpectedly grabbed his arm and pulled him closer to speak quietly. “Don’t go yet.”
Chance blinked in surprise. Did he know Chance was resigning from his job that evening? As much as he liked Aurelio, it wasn’t his business or anyone else’s that insistent pressure from his beast wanting to continue the search for a mate was compelling him to hit the road again. He’d initially resented the beast’s nagging, but had come to admit he was as lonely as his beast. He’d hoped that in a town full of all species of shifters, he’d find a mate, but it hadn’t worked out that way. If he only got one shot at the mating dance, he didn’t want to miss it, so that meant moving on. “Uhm, I...”
Aurelio tilted his head toward the tiny waiting area near the door, where a single figure stood, wearing an embroidered maroon hoodie and holding a backpack, looking out into the night. A roundness of hips and the long, thick braid of dark hair suggested she was female, but he couldn’t see her face. “Could you walk her to Tinsel’s? Her car broke down—that was the noise we heard—and I told her I’d find her a place to stay for the night so she wouldn’t have to sleep in her car.”
Chance relaxed and told himself to get out of his own head. “Sure.” Crime in Kotoyeesinay usually consisted of mischief by young shifters or vampires and the minor thefts reported by casino guests. In the rest of the world, smart women were understandably cautious in strange towns. “Is she a tourist?” That was code for asking if she was an ordinary human, or something else.
Aurelio gave the woman a considering look. “Well, she talks like a tourist and her aura feels human, but I think she’s here for sanctuary.”
That explained Aurelio’s interest in helping her. His own beloved Su Yen had arrived with an entire criminal gang on her heels, so he had a soft spot for people in need of sanctuary. Usually, however, the person in question knew the nature of the town and petitioned the council immediately.
The multicultural, multi-species, peaceful community wasn’t for everyone, especially those who couldn’t let go of old feuds, or wanted to prey on others. Conceit, fear, and prejudice weren’t exclusively human traits. The only bad things he’d heard about Kotoyeesinay were from people he wouldn’t trust even in a well-lit alley. The woman’s presence was a puzzle.
“I’ll be careful with her, then.”
Aurelio smiled broadly, revealing blood-red gums and wickedly sharp pearly teeth. “I know. That’s why I waited for you.” He walked around the counter and led him to the woman. “Ms. Graham, I found you a free room at a bed and breakfast called Tinsel’s.” Aurelio waved toward him. “This is Chance McKennie, my handyman buddy. He’ll show you where it is.”
The woman turned and pushed back her hood. “Please, call me Moira.”
Even with a streak of grease across her forehead and exhaustion etching dark circles under her eyes, she was striking, with coppery brown eyes so wide and warm that he wanted to drown in them. Her thick, dark hair, strong nose, and flawless light brown skin spoke of an ethnic heritage as mixed as his.
The beast inside him perked up immediately and pushed him to get closer, to find out what she smelled like under the grease and road dust. Lately, his beast wanted to smell every new female he met, regardless of species. Behave, he ordered, or I’ll eat nothing but salads and tofu for the next week. His beast retreated sulkily.
Aurelio handed Moira a piece of paper. “That’s Tinsel’s address, and the address of the business on Wizard Street I told you about that might have a job. Shepherd will move your car to his shop overnight, so don’t worry about that.”
Moira was already beautiful, but when she smiled, she was stunning. “You’ve been truly kind, and I appreciate it.” She turned to Chance. “I’m not inconveniencing you, am I?” Her voice was as warm and expressive as her eyes.
He shook his head. “No, it’s only a few blocks from here.” He opened the diner’s door for her, then followed her outside. The sun had only set half an hour ago, so the sidewalks still radiated warmth. “I’ll just put my toolbox in my truck, and we can go.” He hesitated. “Unless you’d rather ride?”
“No, I like walking,” she said. “I want to read more of the names of the businesses. It’s kind of like the aliens theme in Roswell, New Mexico, except it’s fantasy elves and fairies. Oh, and psychics. ‘I Knew You Were Coming Prognostication Services.’” She gave him another smile and a thumb’s up sign. “Best tourist gimmick ever!” She pointed to the top of one of the aspens that lined the downtown streets. “Besides, I love looking at the color waves of twinkling fairy lights in all the trees.” She shook her head. “It must have taken days and weeks to put these all up, but at least the weather is nice. I once had a job hanging outdoor Christmas lights in Chicago. Nearly froze my butt off.”
Chance shrugged one shoulder. “I think they pay a company to do it.” Actually, the town had traded a small plot of land to a troop of forest pixies in exchange for lighting up the trees for the summer tourists every year. The lights were conventionally solar-powered, but the color waves were pure pixie magic. Which she wouldn’t have been able to see, if she were an ordinary human.
He led her to his truck, where he put his toolbox in the locker box in back. “Do you need any luggage from your car? Where is it, by the way?”
She pointed to a mostly cream-colored, dusty four-door wagon across and down the street, under a street lamp. “I call it the Frankencar.”
He could see why. It looked like it had been assembled with spare parts from a salvage yard. The main chassis was from a Subaru, but the two doors he could see didn’t match the Subaru’s color or each other, and the front bumper looked like it came from an old Jeep. The hood had a jagged hole that looked like something had exploded from underneath.
She glanced down. “I have everything I need for tonight in my ba
ckpack. Besides, I gave my keys to the nice man from Knight’s Garage.” She deftly slipped its padded straps onto her shoulders and pulled her frayed braid out from under it. “How do you pronounce the name of the town, by the way? I don’t want to insult anyone.”
“It’s a mangled Native American place name, but it’s easier than it looks. The accent’s on the third syllable. Koto-yee-si-nay.”
He pointed toward the intersection as she repeated the town’s name. He purposefully shortened his steps to match her pace, because underneath her alert interest in the storefronts they passed, she was clearly running out of steam. Silence with her felt comfortable, but he found himself wanting to hear her voice again. “You’re looking for a job?”
“Yeah. I’m pretty sure that hole in the hood means old Frankie threw a rod, or maybe a carburetor, if that’s possible, which means a new engine. Which costs more money than I have. Hence, the job.” She sighed. “I have the worst luck sometimes.”
“I know what you mean.” He shook his head ruefully. “I think my name is a curse.”
She gave him a teasing smile. “As in, after all the good fairies blessed you with chivalry and a smoking-hot body that would make a fitness model jealous, the bad fairy twisted the meaning of your name so bad things happen to you?”
She thought he was hot? He chuckled, glad for the darkness that hid his blush. “Well, unusual things, at any rate.”
“Really? Like what?”
He ducked his head, not wanting to talk about himself any more. He was dismayed to find himself telling her things he hadn’t told anyone in Kotoyeesinay in the nine months he’d been there.
“No fair,” she complained with exaggerated outrage. “You can’t just say ‘unusual things’ and not explain.”
He held up his hands in surrender. He couldn’t tell her about any of the incidents in town because they mostly involved the supernatural residents. “Uh, last year when I was in St. Louis, I was stuck in a hospital elevator and had to help a woman give birth, because her husband passed out when he saw the first drop of blood.”
“Lucky you were there to help. Did she name the kid after you?”
He laughed. “No, I think they stayed with Amelia Jane.” He pointed to indicate they were turning left. “They sent me a bottle of wine, though.”
“Okay, what else?”
Her attentiveness made him want to tell her tales of glory, but he wasn’t a hero, just a man. Most of the time. “While I was working on a remodeling job for a high-tech company in San Francisco, one of the managers tried to pay me to help her and her pals build a secret storeroom for stuff they wanted to steal from the company.” He shrugged. “Out of eleven other contractors, they chose me.” He didn’t mention the part about how the woman had aggressively tried to bed him, but that to him and his beast, she smelled like death and tasted like ashes. He later found out she’d been dabbling in death magic.
“What did you do?”
“Played along until I got enough recorded on my phone, then sent the file anonymously to the company president and board of directors.”
She gave him a quizzical glance. “Not the police?”
“No way.” He snorted. “Knowing my luck, they’d have arrested me as the ringleader.”
No one with magic or a non-human nature wanted much to do with human law enforcement, especially the more ruthless agencies that would study them, kill them, or worse, turn them into weapons. Besides, like most predator shifters, he hated cages with a passion, and police buildings had too many of them.
“Yeah, the police seem to like the easy answer.” A troubled look crossed her face for a moment. His beast nudged him to find out what was bothering her and fix it, which was odd. Usually, his beast ignored humans, even pretty ones, unless it considered them a toy or a threat.
His sensitive ears heard a flurry of wings and a low-pitched, taunting squeal. He disciplined himself to keep his eyes down and not watch as a young wyvern flew by, hotly pursued by a young griffin apparently intent on catching the other’s tail. Moira wouldn’t see or hear them, so she’d think he was crazy.
“Huh,” said Moira. She was looking up where the wyvern and gryphon juveniles had flown a loop-de-loop before zipping off to the north.
"What?”
“Oh, nothing.” She frowned and shook her head. “I’m just tired, I guess. Ever since we left the diner, things keep flickering. Maybe I need to see an eye doctor.” She shoved her hands in the pockets of her hoodie. After a few more steps in silence, she squared her shoulders and gave him a too-bright smile. “You seem to travel a lot.”
His beast inexplicably pushed at him to comfort her, while his human side wanted to keep her safely ignorant of things she didn’t understand and would very likely terrify her. Such as, she was walking in the dark with a dangerous shifter, in a town full of even scarier creatures.
He gratefully seized on the change of topic. “I go where the jobs are. I have a temporary night job, stocking the general store. I prefer woodworking and handyman work, but it’s feast or famine. Construction is a seasonal business, so I’ll probably head up north for a while for the summer. Maybe Canada, where it’s cooler.”
She nodded. “I’d hate to work outside in the heat of the south. I worked on a framing crew for a while in South Carolina, doing hurricane repairs. Most of the crew came from up north and were happy for the work, but the spring heat was hard to take. Summer would be killer.”
“You’ve had some unusual jobs.” He winced, because it sounded judgmental. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
She laughed. “It’s okay. It’s true. I don’t look for them. They sort of find me. Used to drive my parents bonkers.” She shrugged one shoulder. “I’m not cut out for nine-to-five in a high-rise.” The troubled look was back on her face, deeper this time, with a hint of fear thrown in.
He tried for safer ground. “Sounds like you travel a lot, too.”
“Sure do.” Her tone was genial, but her expression blanked, giving him the impression she didn’t want to talk about it.
As usual, he was bungling his end of the conversation, which always happened when he was around an attractive woman. Except she was actually moving closer instead of edging away, so her discomfort didn’t seem to be about him. Maybe it was the traveling. Maybe it wasn’t her choice, any more than it was his.
He’d left his very rural home in the Yukon Territory of Canada when he was seventeen. It was bad enough that his wily wolf-shifter father and rare magical cougar-shifter mother had defied their respective clans to come together as undeniable true mates and conceive a child, which, according to their oral histories, was supposed to be impossible. They would have been left alone if their miracle child had fit in. When the jealous, insecure leaders on both sides discovered that Chance’s beast was neither a wolf nor a cougar and couldn’t be dominated by either, his very existence endangered everyone he loved. Sooner or later, he’d have had to kill or be killed.
So he’d left. He’d knocked around an endless parade of big cities and rural communities throughout North America since then, adding construction skills to the woodworking techniques his father had taught him, and going where he could find jobs. He’d saved a lot of money because he couldn’t think of things to spend it on, other than his truck and tools. Thanks to a magical driver’s license and passport his mother had supplied, he never had hassles with immigration authorities in any country. He missed his parents and hoped they were doing well, but even sending them a postcard would be too dangerous. Their continued safety depended on him not being a wild card in pack or pride politics.
When he’d turned thirty a couple of years ago, his beast had begun looking for a mate with ever-increasing imperative, driving Chance to keep moving even more than he had. He had no idea if that was usual for his kind, since as far as he could tell, he was the only one of his kind. He knew his human social skills were rudimentary, a result of his itinerant lifestyle and independent nature. He wasn�
��t the type of man or beast a woman would be proud to take home to meet the family.
They turned another corner, and he pointed to Tinsel’s three-story, miniature castle of a house, complete with crenelated towers and granite-block exterior. It was decorated with year-round Christmas lights. Thousands of them. In summer, the house put theme-park palaces to shame. In winter, it could probably be seen from orbit, despite the surrounding cover of evergreen trees.
Moira gasped, then closed her slack jaw with a snap. “Wow.” Her steps slowed. “That certainly explains the name.”
Tourists assumed the owner was just fond of Christmas. Locals knew that Tinsel was a polar fairy, with decorations she’d collected from winter celebrations all over the world. When she’d discovered Chance’s woodworking skills, she’d hired him to build and decorate a miniature wooden sleigh that she used to get around town, since anything but sub-freezing weather was too hot for her to walk in for long. Powered by her magic, it behaved like the scooters he’d seen disabled folks using in the mundane world.
Tinsel herself greeted them at the door wearing a glittery red and green gauzy cloak. “Welcome, dearies, welcome!" She opened her arms wide and ushered them in.
Chance sneezed as he closed the door behind him and felt the magic of her wards adjust to the new visitors. As usual, the scents—mistletoe, frankincense, myrrh, nutmeg—nearly overwhelmed his enhanced sense of smell. His beast urged him to put a paw over his nose and go outside, but he refused to hurt Tinsel’s feelings.
“You have the most amazing house I’ve ever seen,” said Moira, her eyes wide with wonder as she took in the elegant, one-of-a-kind decorations that framed the wide entryway.
“Thank you, dearie.” Tinsel pulled Moira in for a quick hug. “I know it’s a bit much for some people"—she gave Chance a pointed look—"but it makes me happy.”
Moira turned in a circle, laughing. “I love it.” Her energy enveloped him like a whirlwind, with an undercurrent of latent magic so subtle, he wasn’t sure it was really there. Everything about her drew him like a magnet, but if she wasn’t a potential mate to him and his beast, sooner or later, he’d have to leave. Better not to start something he couldn’t finish.
Shift of Destiny Page 2
