Page 63 of Relics of the Wolf

“Just a hunch.”

Nerves tangled in my gut. We were only four minutes from our destination now.

“Thanks for the research,” I told Jasmine. “I’ll let you know if anything comes of it.”

“Welcome. If you find the guys and kick their asses, make sure you tell your mom that my dad helped, okay?Hedidn’t ask for credit, but I know he wishes he could fit in with the family more. Nobody shuns him, but most of my cousins and aunts and uncles don’t talk to him much or invite us to all the hunts.”

“If you mean Augustus and his thugly brothers, it’s probably the lack of common interests. From what I’ve observed, they aren’t the robot types.”

“That’s the truth, but, really,nowerewolves are the robot types.” Jasmine lowered her voice—maybe she was calling from her parents’ home. “Dad’s kind of a nerd,” she whispered.

“He sounds like a good guy.”

“He’s offered tech support to everyone in the pack.Someof the family appreciate it. Some of them just throw their router across the room if it stops working and get a new one.”

“Ah, Luna?” Duncan asked, a weird note in his tone.

We were two minutes away now, driving back roads that ran near Arlington. House lights were visible from the road, but the homes were on acreage, so it felt like we were still in the country.

“I need to go, Jasmine. I’ll talk to you later.” I hung up and asked Duncan, “What is it?”

He lifted his hands from the steering wheel and gave me another significant look.

“Did you activate the self-driving? Teslas have that, right?”

“They do have that, but I didn’t touch anything.” His hands remained in the air, not on the wheel.

“Can you brake and deactivate it?” I had no idea how the self-driving feature worked.

Duncan tried pumping the brake. The autopilot didn’t disengage.

He toggled the levers and tapped different spots on the display, but nothing happened. Only the navigation map with our route remained, the screen showing us getting closer and closer to our destination.

The car signaled and made a turn of its own accord.

“That’s ominous,” I said.

“I concur.”

18

No longer acceptinginput from Duncan, the Tesla took us to a property surrounded by fields, with a stone-paver driveway wider than many streets. Mounted among artfully placed boulders forming a pond and waterfall, a plaque read TBL Luxury Perfumes and Potions. Spotlights shone upon it, and many more lights lined the long driveway as it meandered through a tidy lawn. It ended at a fountain in front of a blocky adobe building—or maybe that qualified as amansion—that brought to mind architectural styles of the Southwest rather than Washington State. Up here, quality homes were, of course, made from logs.

Signs pointed to a gift shop and offices, so maybe it wasn’t a mansion but the company building, though balconies and glass doors on the second story made me think at least part of it might be living quarters.

Before reaching the turnaround, the Tesla signaled and headed onto a side driveway that led toward a large corrugated-metal building, a garage with multiple tall roll-up doors. Beside and beyond it lay fields of low shrubs that I thought might be lavender. Those fields were dark, obscuring the details.Mostof the area the car was heading to was dark, save for a few lights by the doors. A high stone wall appeared to enclose more buildings, maybe an entire compound, between the garage and the adobe structure, but we couldn’t see over it to guess what was inside.

As the Tesla approached, one of the roll-up doors opened.

“What are the odds that it’s taking us right to your stolen artifacts?” Duncan asked.

“Low. Everyone knows you don’t store valuable magical items in garages.”

“Your wolf case was in a heat duct under the floor.”

“Only because my ex is an idiot. Had I known it was in the apartment, I would have found a more appropriate hiding place.”

“I watched you put it in your sock drawer under your tube of, uhm, female cream.”

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