She slowed down, turned her car around and headed back to the empty lot. There was a mailbox there, with the number 110 on it. But there was no house behind the mailbox.
She climbed out of the car, standing there with her door open and squinting into the woods behind the empty lot. Was the house back there somewhere? She had pretty good eyesight, and she didn’t see it anywhere.
She heard rustling from the underbrush, and a woman’s voice called, “Hello?”
She felt a wave of relief roll over her. Maybe her third cousin twice removed lived in a tent? Or a treehouse? Whatever it was, she’d take it. She could hardly be choosy; she had eleven dollars left to her name, and everything she owned was crammed into two suitcases and two plastic bins.
“It’s gone,” the woman’s voice called from the shrubbery. Then the woman, who appeared to be in her forties, pushed her way through the underbrush, striding towards her. Too old to be her cousin; Mel was twenty-two.
She looked at Chelsea with her yellow wolf’s eyes, the only physical sign that she wasn’t human. Chelsea caught a faint scent of wolf as well, but unlike most shifters, she had a terrible sense of smell and wouldn’t have been able to scent her from a distance.
“I beg your pardon?” Chelsea said uneasily. “What’s gone?” Was the woman referring to her cousin Mel as an it?
“The house. It’s gone.”
The woman walked closer. She had brownish hair streaked with gray and yanked back into a bun, and wore a flowery apron over her jeans and T-shirt. There were suds on the apron; Chelsea must have interrupted her washing dishes.
“”I’m supposed to meet Mel today. She lives here.” Chelsea gestured at the empty lot, as if by waving her arms around she could conjure up a house and a person where there were none.
“Lived. The house is gone.”
Were the people up here crazy? Some strains of shifter were definitely a little weirder than others. That was what came of government experiments gone wrong.
“It’s a house,” Chelsea said patiently. “How could it be gone?”
The woman wiped her hands on her apron. “It was a mobile home. She upped and left yesterday. She’s always been kinda a rover. Comes and goes. There’s not much to keep a young gal here these days. There’s some gypsy pack in California she said she’s going to join up with.”
“Oh,” Chelsea echoed stupidly. “I see. She’s gone.”
The woman gave a short, sharp nod. “Ayuh. Gone.” Then she turned and walked back towards the underbrush.
Now Chelsea felt panic tightening in her chest. No house, no pack, no job. Half a tank of gas. And eleven dollars in her pocket.
Pepper wandered up to Chelsea, leaned on her leg in seeming sympathy, and let out another blast as if to comment on the general undesirability of the situation.
“Your sense of timing always was impeccable, Pepper,” Chelsea sighed.
Chapter Two
Sunday, May 16th
The sounds of snarling and snapping and the chants of “Fight! Fight! Fight!” yanked Roman out of a sound sleep.
He tried to sit up, but something was sprawled across him. No, someone. Someone with long hair and way too much perfume. He opened his eyes, his head feeling vaguely thick and fuzzy. What fucking time was it? It was still dark out.
He didn’t recognize the woman sleeping on his chest, which was nothing new. It was definitely someone he hadn’t slept with before. Maybe. Vague memories from the night before told him her name was something like Brittany.
He rolled her off him, and she sprawled on the mat on the ground, groaning and rubbing at her face.
“Washup? What time ishit?” she groaned, crawling back onto the bed as he stood up. His bed was a king-sized mattress on two wooden pallets which he’d made into a bed frame of sorts. A kerosene lantern rested on the wooden cable stool night-stand. He glanced at the clock, which hung from a hook on the tent’s wooden frame. 3:30 a.m.
One of the women who’d slept over a few weeks ago had informed him that his décor was actually very trendy these days. She’d called it rustic-industrial chic.
“Wash all that noish?” The woman currently taking up space in his bed was still drunk. She was pretty, but the beery fumes rolling off her, mixing with the thickly applied perfume, definitely dimmed her appeal. “No idea,” he grunted. “Be right back.”
“Hey, come back to bed.” She patted the mattress next to her.
He ignored her and headed out of his tent, not bothering to pull on his pants.
His tent was set high on a slope overlooking all the others, so he could keep an eye on his pack and see any threats that might be headed their way. A silver crescent moon hung overhead, and light from a dozen torches illuminated the clearing among the towering pines where they’d built a stone-ringed fire pit and placed tables and benches.