Chapter 4
MADDIE
The rain had lightened up by the time I reached my building.
I lived in an ancient condo building that had been built by a Greek immigrant who believed in outdoor living but hadn’t quite grasped the Northwest’s rainy season.
My third-floor unit had a magnificent balcony that I covered in flower pots and sunshades for six months of the year, and I stared at gloomily through the French doors the other six months.
But tonight, I danced through the raindrops and dashed into the lobby.
I tapped my code into the interior lobby door with a happy rhythm and then optimistically ran up the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator.
Or at least, I hurried up to the second floor and then huffed and puffed my way to the third.
I was always so ambitious at the start of the stairs and regretful by the time I reached my front door.
I shut the door and leaned against it, breathing heavily but grinning as I kicked off my shoes.
Pumpkin Spice Day had come through with a massive win.
I had changed to sweats and was carrying my dinner of leftover chicken salad and wine back to the living room when I heard a plaintive meow out on the balcony.
“It’s not locked!” I yelled around my wine glass at the bobcat-sized feline on my deck. Shayla had climbed up the willow tree and jumped onto the deck as usual. I kept meaning to replace one of the panes on my French doors with a cat door, but I was a little worried about raccoons coming to visit.
There was the sharp hum and low yowl that accompanied Shayla’s shifts, and then the door opened.
“Brrr!” exclaimed Shayla, hurrying to grab the robe I kept for her on the hook by the door. “What a crappy night!”
“Yeah, it’s really wet out,” I agreed.
Shayla tied her robe closed and gave me a once-over. She had calico hair that matched her coat when she was a cat. She’d dyed it when she worked in an office, but now that she worked from home, she didn’t bother.
“You look suspiciously happy,” she said. “Didn’t you have that networking event tonight? I thought I was going to have to feed you sadness pizza. You’ve come home from the last two totally bummed.”
“I met someone!” I hesitated. “I mean, I met one of the mentors. Well, technically, I already met him earlier today.”
“I thought the only person you met today was Mr. Yummy when you doused him in Pumpkin Spice.”
I froze. I’d forgotten I’d texted Shayla about that already.
“Your mentor person is Mr. Yummy?” she guessed, grinning.
“His name is Felix Faraday, and he said he’d look over my plans for a second location, and he wasn’t mad about the coffee, and he stood up for me to this other complete jerk, and he walked me out to my car.”
“Oh, cool. So, he’s the Quiet Gentleman, not the Grumpy Jerk model of the man brand.”
“Yes! Although I almost ruined it when I had one of my moments.”
“Yeah, you dumped the latte on him?”
I gave a heavy sigh as I flopped down on the couch.
“No. When he was walking me to the car. There was a homeless guy who needed some money. It was important. Kind of life or death. I know that sounds silly, but sometimes, ten bucks can go a long way. Anyway, I tried to just keep rolling, but I know he thought I was weird.”
Shayla chuckled. “I don’t know why you spend so much time trying to pretend you’re normal. You have a gift. You should embrace it.”
“That’s easy for you to say. Your family are all Shifters, and they’re used to magic.
In mine, I’m the only one with any sort of psychic powers.
Basically, it’s just me with my five-minute viewing window into the future, which doesn’t tell me everything and leaves me looking like a complete weirdo to anyone normal.
I wish I could get all my visions at the start of the day, and then I could plan ahead, but nope.
I don’t mind having a gift, but I wish it wouldn’t make me look like a spazz. ”
Shayla took a breath as if she were going to say something, but shut her mouth.
“What? Whatever it is, just say it, or I’ll wait until the next time we get drunk and ask you then.”
Shayla groaned. “You’re never going to let me live that down.”
“It works every time,” I said unrepentantly.
“Sadly, for me, yes, it does. But OK, I guess I was going to say that I don’t think your gift makes you look like a spazz. It’s when you try to cover it up that things seem to go wrong.”
I thought about that and then shook my head.
“There isn’t a way around that. I can’t go around telling people that I’ve had a vision of the future.
Particularly not Felix Faraday. He was nice, socially competent, and professional.
Telling him I’m psychic would make him think I was insane. He’d never help me then.”
I looked sadly at my chicken salad. I’d been so happy only a few minutes before, but now I couldn’t help feeling like my friendship with Felix was doomed to failure.
FELIX
I sat under a tree and smelled the breeze.
The rain had finally lightened up, but everything was still wet, so my top layer of fur was soaked, but I was warm enough.
It took a lot of rain to get down to the underlayer.
However, with the rain stopping, the rabbits were coming out to forage, and I was going to get a snack.
Talking to Maddie had left me energized and restless, so I’d shifted once I got home and gone for a run. Now, I had less energy, but I was still restless.
Maddie was human. And I was a wolf.
Those facts sat like boulders in my way.
I’d spent decades in the corporate world, and I knew for a fact that humans didn’t deal well with magic. They could barely deal with different kinds of humans. Entirely different species pretty much fried their brains.
Being a Shifter was supposed to mean that I had one foot in the human world and one in the animal world.
And that was true. But for me, it meant that I was never truly accepted in either.
Other wolves, particularly my family, thought business wasn’t a proper wolf endeavor.
Everyone seemed to think wolves should be lone bikers or forest rangers or something manly and outdoorsy.
The humans who had discovered my abilities generally ran the other way—corporate wolves weren’t supposed to be able to take actual bites out of the competition.
I didn’t blame any of them, but it made me lonely.
That was why I’d finally retired. I wanted to find a community and maybe a mate.
So far, the closest I’d come was Deja Brew.
But Maddie was a human, and I was a wolf.