I started to roll my eyes, but it made the sore half of my face hurt worse so I stopped. "Tell him I had wild, passionate sex with a complete stranger."

I didn't stick around to hear if Zee passed my message on or not. I snatched my coveralls off their hook, and stalked into the bathroom.

Werewolves are control freaks, I reminded myself as I dressed for work. Being control freaks keeps them in charge of their wolf—which is a good thing. If I didn't like the side effects, I shouldn't hang out with werewolves. Which I wouldn't be doing if I didn't have one living with me and another living on the other side of my back fence.

Alone in the bathroom though, I could admit to myself that even though I was really, really angry… I'd have been disappointed if they hadn't checked up on me. How's that for illogical?

When I came out, Zee gave me the next repair job. I may have bought the business from him, but when we worked together, he still gave the orders. Part of it was habit, I suppose, but a larger part of it was that, though I am a good mechanic, Zee is magic. Literally and figuratively.

If it weren't for his tendency to get bored with easy stuff, he'd never have hired me. Then I'd have had to take my liberal arts degree and gotten a job at McDonald's or Burger King like all the rest of the history majors.

We worked companionably in silence for a while until I ran into a job that required four hands rather than two.

While I turned the ratchet, Zee, who was holding a part in place for me, said, "I took a peek under that cover"—he nodded toward the corner of the shop where my latest restoration project lay in wait.

"Pretty, isn't she?" I said. "Or at least she will be when I get her fixed up." She was a 1968 Karmann Ghia in almost pristine condition.

"Are you going to restore it or make a street rod?"

"I don't know," I said. "Her paint is still the original and there's only a little cracking on the hood. I hate to mess with it unless I have to. If I can get her running well with original parts and Kim can stitch up the seats, I'll leave it at that."

There are three groups of old car enthusiasts: people who think a car should be left as much original as possible; the ones who restore it better than factory; and the people who gut them and replace the brakes, engine, and suspension with more modern equipment. Zee is firmly in the latter group.

He is not sentimental—if something works better, that's what you should use. I suppose forty or fifty years doesn't mean the same thing to him as it does to the rest of us—one person's antique is another's rusting hulk.

Since a good part of my income comes from restoring rusting hulks, I'm not picky. I have a partnership with an upholstery genius, Kim, and a painter who also likes to drive around and show the cars so we can sell them. After deducting the actual material cost of the restore and the shows, we split the profits according to hours spent on the project.