Page 78 of Relics of the Wolf

“Will we see the lone wolf again?” From her tone, it was hard to tell if she wanted that or hoped Duncan had left the area permanently.

“You seemed concerned about him.”

“Yes, but I have been thinking about that. He was powerful. Were he to become a trusted ally, perhaps he would be tolerable.”

“I’m positive my cousins don’t want the pack tolerating him.”

They didn’t even tolerateme.

“Whattheywant is immaterial,” Mom said. “If they keep troubling you, we will kick them out of the pack.”

I didn’t know if she and even the sturdy Lorenzo were a match for all of them, but I didn’t say so. The last thing I wanted was to be responsible for a brouhaha within the pack.

“Duncan helped me get the artifacts back,” I said to change the subject. I also wanted her to know that he had assisted me, that he wasn’t a bad guy. I almost told her that he could take the two-legged form, but he’d confided his story to me in private, so I felt compelled to keep his secrets.

“Did he? That is good.” After a thoughtful pause, Mom added, “As I said, heisvery powerful. I believe he is from an ancient bloodline without much dilution.”

“Yeah.”

“When you two came before, you should have brought him in to meet me.”

“The brute squad on the porch wouldn’t have let him enter. Besides, he was busy sniffing lavender.”

“You will bring him for an introduction next time,” Mom stated, an order rather than a request.

That would be a hard order to obey if Duncan was in the clutches of a new master. No, a veryoldmaster.

Not wanting to disappoint my dying mother, I said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Good.” She yawned and closed her eyes.

I patted her hand and left the medallion, as well as a few squares of chocolate.

EPILOGUE

The pressure washerrumbled on a low setting as I perched on the two-story roof of one of the buildings in Sylvan Serenity and sprayed moss off the shingles. In the Pacific Northwest, moss was as ubiquitous as mold. Early that summer, I’d applied a chemical that was supposed to retard its growth, but the stuff here thumbed its fuzzy green nose—inasmuch as moss had a nose—at the various solutions I tried every year.

“Maybe Bolin has a potion that could address this.” Alas, it would take gallons and gallons of apotionto handle the roofs on all the buildings. I imagined him standing over a cauldron with a mixing paddle the size of an oar and decided he was unlikely to do that in his apartment. “Or a spell.”

Letting the moss guide me, I climbed to the apex of the roof. It wasnot, I told myself, so I could check on the parking lot again but only because I needed to clean both sides.

Duncan’s van remained in the same spot it had been before we’d driven up to Arlington. It had been three days since our battle there—since I’d had to battlehimthere. Even though I believed he belonged to Abrams now, I couldn’t help but hope he would find a way to escape.

The thought of not seeing him again—or of having him arrive as a mind-controlled enemy—was distressing. I’d just started to like him. No, that wasn’t true. I’d liked him more than I should have from the beginning. But I’d started totrusthim. That meant everything, but now…

“Luna?” came a query from the walkway below. It sounded like Bolin.

I turned off the noisy pressure washer and picked my way to the edge, glad the weather had warmed and the roof wasn’t slick. We’d had a couple of clear days, with more sun predicted, so I’d taken the opportunity to get this task out of the way.

Bolin stood at the corner of the building, eyeing one of the downspouts spurting out water and bits of removed moss.

“It’s the weekend,” I said. “You don’t have to be here, do you?”

Usually, he showed up from eight to five on weekdays, as if this were a normal job. For an intern, it was. For me… Well, it kept me busy most of the time. Especially when my personal life added to the maintenance load. I’d spent the last two days cleaning up the crashed in, died in, and otherwise maligned parking lot. I’d been appalled by the price of a new cluster mailbox. The post office had told me to get stuffed when I’d gone down there and implied it was USPS property and that they should replace it. Of course, I didn’t have to pay for the expenses out of my pocket, but I tried to keep the business’s bills down—and make as few insurance claims as possible.

I looked toward the parking lot, twitching in surprise at the blue Mercedes SUV that had arrived since the last time I checked. Bolin’s auto was ensconced in… I wasn’t sure what to call it. Some kind of transparent protective bubble.

“Guess that’s one way to fend off bird poop,” I muttered.

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