Night Owl Books (A Story in the World of the Sea Wicche #1)

1. A Quiet Evening Disturbed

ONE

A Quiet Evening Disturbed

T he Night Owl New and Used Bookstore sat atop a hill, a sentinel watching over the dark city slumbering below. Candle-like, a meager glow shone from the windows, serving as a night-light to neighbors.

The bookstore held strange hours. True to its name, it was for night owls, opening at eight in the evening and closing at six in the morning. Most Monterey residents wondered how it could possibly stay in business, getting only the occasional sleepless customer wandering in and looking for a book to fill those misplaced hours while the rest of the world slept.

When I, Orla, owner and proprietor of Night Owl Books, moved to Monterey nine years ago, I’d found this old beauty looking the worse for wear. In her heyday, she was a stately Victorian home, three stories high and situated at the edge of a forest. I fell in love and purchased her and all the property I could around her.

A contractor renovated it for me, turning the first and second floors into one large retail space with twenty-four-foot ceilings. The third floor is my home, my bedroom in the turret closest to the woods. A round room might seem awkward, but I thought it perfect.

The bedroom had an almost three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view, with windows all around. When I stood in the middle, I saw the ocean in one direction and the forest in the other. More important than the view, though, was the privacy.

The house was at the top of a narrow lane. I owned the property on either side of the road and well into the woods surrounding it. The nearest neighbors were at the bottom of the hill, just far enough away to let me settle.

What confused those confused Monterey residents was that I didn’t much care if anyone bought my books. They were mine and I was slowly making my way through them. If anything, I found customers anxiety-making. I didn’t enjoy dealing with strangers, but if I didn’t push myself, I’d become a complete recluse. It was what my mother had always said. Enough with the books! You’re becoming a hermit. Go make a life for yourself.

So, in deference to my mother, who was no longer here to yell at me in person, I forced myself to engage with others by making my library a bookstore. A few customers wandering in each week was about my speed.

You might wonder how I was able to afford such a large parcel of land and all the home renovations when I was only thirty. It was a good question with an unusual answer. I had plenty of money. It was neither a concern nor interest of mine. For the most part, I measured the worth of my fortune by the number of books I could purchase.

My parents were killed—it was horrible and I don’t discuss it—a few years before I settled here, leaving me all their money. They’d lived very long lives and had accumulated full coffers. I wandered for a time, unable to make sense of a life without them, a life all alone. I chose apartments near vast libraries, spending my evenings in the stacks, reading to my heart’s content. I did my best to escape a reality I wasn’t ready to face. I would have probably continued like that for hundreds of years if the libraries hadn’t kept such disappointing hours.

Bookstores often stayed open later than libraries, but then I had to deal with irritatingly upbeat music and salespeople asking if I needed assistance. The worst were the men who behaved as though my standing in a bookstore meant I wanted to be talked at about the book I was holding.

When I looked up from the page and skewered them with the golden eyes of a predator, they usually retreated quickly. The ones who didn’t were the ones I needed to watch out for as I walked home.

I didn’t fear them. Shifters are much faster than humans. Stronger too. Unless someone was hunting me—no, I said I didn’t want to discuss that. Anyway, regardless of whether they found me attractive, one look from me usually turned their bowels to liquid. I preferred it that way. The solitude felt safer and therefore more comfortable.

What kind of shifter am I? It’s right there in the name of my bookstore. I’m a Eurasian eagle-owl shifter. We’re known for our bright orange eyes and being one of the largest raptors in the world. Unfortunately, there aren’t many of us left, at least as far as I’ve found. In my thirty years on this planet, I’d yet to find another one like me—other than my parents, of course. Perhaps we’ve all but died out in the modern world.

My bookstore was a maze of tall, carved wood bookcases, overfilled with books. Did I sometimes double shelve? Absolutely. Did I keep an inventory? Yes, but I never needed to consult it. When customers asked about specific books, I always knew where they were and could take them there—unless I was planning to read that one next and didn’t want to sell it. In that case, I lied and told them I didn’t carry the book. It was my book after all.

So, as it happened on the evening this story begins, I was sitting in relative darkness on the stairs to the top floor. My favorite spot was right above the bookstore pendant lights that I kept shining at a nice, dim forty percent power and level with the windows above the bookcases. I enjoyed looking out over the sleepy town when I paused to consider a particularly beautiful turn of phrase.

Which is why I saw the woman running up the hill. Her eyes were wild, scanning right and left, looking over her shoulder. I put down my book and blew out a breath. It looked like I was about to have company. The quiet part of my evening had come to an end.

The front door flew open with a bang as I hit the bottom steps.

“Hello! Is there anyone here?” Her voice was pitched high in panic. I could hear her racing heart, even over the sound of her gasping breaths.

“Yes,” I said, rounding a bookcase and coming into view. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, thank God.” She bolted forward and stood behind me, staring out the front windows.

“Is someone chasing you?” She had the look of prey, so it seemed a reasonable guess.

She grabbed my arm. “Yes. Can you call the police? Please!”

Her eyes were huge and darting to every shadowy corner of the shop.

“Sure, but I need my arm back,” I said.

She let go and held her clutched hands over her chest, her shoulders pulled in, seemingly trying to make herself smaller. All predators know, when confronted by an aggressor, you make yourself bigger, not smaller. Her brown eyes were huge and dilated; her long blonde hair was falling out of its ponytail.

I pulled my phone out of the back pocket of my jeans and dialed 911 as I went to the front door and locked it. I didn’t see anyone, but I thought it would help her feel more safe.

The scared blonde woman was dressed casually, a hoodie and jeans. She didn’t have a bag with her, which seemed odd. My observation has been that most human women carried a bag of some sort when they left the house.

“Did you drop your phone?” I asked.

Her nod was fast and panicked. She stank of fear but under that was another scent that wasn’t hers. The dispatcher picked up and I explained what I knew. The woman’s breathing was beginning to even out, so I handed her my phone. “Why don’t you tell her what happened?” I suggested.

She took it and lifted it to her ear. “Hello? ...Yes…McKenna Martin…I was walking home from a friend’s house…Oh, just down the block and around the corner…I don’t remember…I don’t know. What time is it now?...It just happened. Maybe five minutes ago…I was walking down the street, and a truck came up behind me…I don’t know. I’m not good with cars…I don’t know what kind…I’m not sure. There’s only one streetlight and it’s down at the far end of the street. Dark, I guess…He pulled up beside me—his window was down—and he asked if I wanted a ride. I said no and he said it was no problem, the road was dark and dangerous; a pretty girl like me shouldn’t be all alone. I just kept walking. He was driving slowly, keeping pace with me. I said no again, and his voice changed. He called me names and said he’d enjoy hurting me. Stuff like that. He turned the wheel really fast, and I had to jump off the road into like the ditch beside the pavement. He revved his engine and I just started running.”

Reliving it was making her heart speed up again. “He drove off the road and followed me. There’s a—whaddayacallit?” She looked at me, tilting her hand up.

“An incline?” I guessed.

“Yeah, an incline on that side of the road, going up a hill. The truck jumped forward and almost hit me. I ran into the trees and tripped, but I knew his truck wouldn’t be able to follow me if I was in the trees. I heard the truck door open and I ran for the light, for the bookstore at the top of the hill.”

Her eyes were still on the front window, though nothing could be seen, as it was lighter in here than out there.

“Is it locked?” she asked me.

I nodded. I hadn’t seen a truck following her up the road, so he must have given up the chase before she got close to the bookstore. Too bad. I wouldn’t have minded scaring him, as he had her.

I walked back to the window to look out. “A vehicle’s coming.”

At her gasp, I added, “It’s not a truck. It looks like an SUV’s headlights.”

“Oh, okay. The dispatcher says that’s the officer.”

I unlocked the door, stepped out onto the porch, and waited. As the SUV started up my hill, perhaps a hundred yards away, the driver and I locked eyes. Ah, he was like me. Not an owl shifter, but some flavor of shifter. His dark skin was illuminated by the light reflecting off his dashboard. I’d need a better look or, more importantly, a better sniff to know what kind of shifter he was.

Over the years, I’d found that a preponderance of shifters had careers in law enforcement. Their innate need to assert power and control was rarely conducive to office work. Snarling at a client in a marketing meeting was frowned upon. Tussling with a rowdy drunk? Always a good time.

I stood at the top of my steps, barring his way, a clear sign that this was my territory. He parked at the base of the stairs and got out. Oh . I couldn’t recall ever seeing someone quite so good looking: warm, liquid brown eyes, dark skin over chiseled features, a short beard on a strong jaw.

We stared at one another and then he dipped his head. “I’m Officer Nick Garra, ma’am. I’m told there’s a woman here who’s had a rough night.”

I stepped back and tilted my head toward the door. “She’s inside.”

When he passed me, I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply. Bear.

While he talked to the woman, I stepped off the porch and circled my home, scanning the forest, looking for anything out of place. I knew my woods like the back of my hand and I didn’t see anything amiss. When I came back around the front, the cop was standing where I had been on the porch, his nose up, scenting the air.

Keeping my voice low, I said, “I don’t have your sense of smell, but I don’t see anything.”

Nodding, he came down and handed me my phone. “Let’s take a look around.”

We moved silently down the drive, each looking for any clues. When we got down to the cross street, I went left, and he followed. This was the direction she’d come from.

“There,” I said, pointing down the road to a thicket of grass.

“What do you see?” he asked, coming up beside me.

“Her bag. The hardware on the strap is reflecting the moonlight. That’s probably where he tried to hit her.”

He jogged ahead, took some pictures on his phone, and then picked up her small handbag. Moving back to the narrow road, he studied the pavement and then took more photos.

I’d been trying to catch that strange scent I’d noticed on the woman, but I couldn’t find it. The officer would have a better shot at catching that than I would.

The truck driver must have taken off when the woman—McKenna—went into the trees. I left the cop to do his cop thing and headed into the woods. I found the route she’d taken and the place where she’d fallen. What I didn’t see was any evidence of the man. There was a flash behind me and I turned to find the cop taking pictures of the rock and disturbed dirt where she’d tripped.

“I don’t think he followed her into the trees,” he said. “I don’t smell any fresh trails besides hers. And yours.”

I shook my head. “I didn’t see or hear anything either.”

He pointed toward the light from my bookstore, barely seen through the dark trees. Senses on alert, we followed her path, both moving silently through the woods.

Once we emerged and were walking back up the lane, he asked, “Did you see the truck?”

I shook my head. “Just the woman running up my hill. No truck.”

He nodded. “Can I ask? I don’t recognize your scent.”

I saw a candy wrapper fluttering in the tall grass. When I reached for it, he tapped my shoulder.

“Let me get it,” he said, pulling a baggie out of his pocket.

“Trash sometimes blows onto my property,” I explained.

He put his hand in the baggie, picked up the wrapper without touching it, and took a sniff. Shaking his head, he crumpled it into his pocket. “Just trash. That hasn’t touched a hand in at least a day. I’ll throw it away.”

We kept walking and I finally answered his question. “You don’t recognize my scent because you’ve probably never met one of my kind. I don’t know how many of us are left.”

He stopped walking, so I did too. He was a tall Black man, even taller than me, maybe six-eight. He had the shoulders of a linebacker and crinkles around kind eyes. He waited.

“I’m a Eurasian eagle-owl.”

His head tilted as he took me in, all six feet of me. My bright gold eyes were what people noticed first. On my driver’s license, it read that I had brown eyes. They weren’t, though. They were gold with specks of orange. I had a woman in a grocery store once cross herself at the sight of me and then run out into the parking lot. I started having food delivered after that.

I have long brown hair—almost the exact shade as the feathers around my face in my other form—and horribly pale skin, which was probably due to my being nocturnal.

“I’ve never met an owl shifter,” he said.

I shrugged and started walking again. “Like I said.” I didn’t like leaving a stranger in my home all alone. “That McKenna better not be stealing any of my books.”

He gave a low chuckle. “They should be safe. I put her in my rig while you were circling your home. I’m sure she’ll appreciate you finding her bag. Now she has her glasses and the keys to get into her place.”

“You’re driving her?” I asked.

“I am.”

We stepped up beside his SUV and the woman jumped in her seat with a yip of fear. The cop held up her bag and her body relaxed in relief.

He turned back to me and tapped the metal nameplate on his chest that read Garra and then held out his hand and smiled. “If you notice anything, call the station and ask for me. Okay, ma’am?”

Uncomfortable with all that beauty aimed at me, I froze a moment before looking down at his proffered hand, shaking it and mumbling, “Okay. And it’s Orla.”