Page 66 of Triumph of the Wolf
“Funny.” Bolin grabbed a pack—for this mission, he’d come with a backpack instead of his expensive leather messenger bag—and slung it over his shoulders before jumping out of the van.
I didn’t know what he and Duncan had loaded into the van, but they must not have wanted to schlep around all of downtown Seattle with it. Duncan grabbed a pack, magnets clinking inside, and his magic detector, but that was it. I hadn’t brought anything except a few snacks and the sword. Maybe I’d come underprepared. We would find out.
We gathered at the mouth of an alley that smelled of urine and held garbage bins and a couple of shopping carts with homeless people’s belongings in them. I didn’t see the owners. Nobody we could ask if there was an entrance to a secret garden nearby.
Duncan wrinkled his nose. “A lovely spot for the beginning of an adventure.”
Bolin gazed down at Rue’s vial in his hand. His expression was rightfully dubious, and I wondered if I should have warned him more thoroughly about how unpleasant the concoction was. But one of us had to take it, and I’d just as soon spread the delightful experience around.
“Do you think we’re within ten miles now?” Bolin looked in the direction of the Space Needle, its tip visible over a building at the end of the street.
A breeze swept through, smelling of fish and seaweed. Better than urine, I supposed.
“If my vision was correct, we should be,” I said.
“Vision,” Bolin mouthed.
“We werewolves get them all the time. They’re not weird.” I looked at Duncan.
“Not weird at all,” he agreed, though I doubted either of us had ever had many.
Until the medallion and these other magical artifacts had come into my life, I hadn’t experienced any at all.
Since Bolin still looked dubious, I added, “The whole downtown area is less than ten miles across. Your odds of being close enough for the potion to work are good.”
“Okay.” Bolin removed the cork.
“How’d you talk him into taking the elixir instead of doing it yourself?” Duncan asked. Since he’d been there when I’d taken the last one, he had a notion of how distressing it was.
“True love,” I told him.
“A feeling that he doesn’t direct toward his esophagus?”
“Toward Jasmine.”
“Ah, she is a comely girl.”
“I think she’ll be offended if she hears you use that word to describe her,” I said. “Or any other word that peaked in popularity in the fifteenth century.”
“It’s a perfectly normal word that’s still in use,” Duncan said.
“In historical books and films.” I looked at Bolin, certain he would know all about the word and its popularity over time, but he was holding his nose and tilting his head back.
With a shudder, he swallowed the elixir.
Duncan offered him one of the to-go coffee cups we’d brought. Bolin’s face contorted, and he bent forward, making gagging sounds. Maybe we should have stopped at an espresso stand for something more potent—and laced with a lot of chocolate syrup.
Hoping he wouldn’t throw up, I eyed the overcast sky as another chilly breeze swept through. The warm weather earlierin the week had broken, and I wondered if winter would make a reappearance.
“It’ll be a full moon tonight,” Duncan said quietly, noticing the direction of my gaze.
“Oh? That should favor us, right? If we find our way in and have to battle bad guys.”
“Depends if the bad guys are also werewolves.”
I started to shake my head but thought of Lykos. There’d also been a lupine assistant with the building inspector that Radomir had hired when they’d been pretending an interest in buying Sylvan Serenity. It wasn’t as if Abrams didn’t have access to werewolves.
More gagging sounds came from Bolin.
