She glanced over at me. “Hey, Daise! It’s about time.”

I made myself smile in response. “Yeah, sorry. I was hoping Mogwai had forgiven me.”

Jen laughed. “After you had him snipped? Not likely.”

Cody acknowledged me with a studied casualness. “Good evening, Miss Daisy Jo.”

“Officer Fairfax.” I shot him a covert glare. He raised one eyebrow in response.

Members of the eldritch always recognize one another, and we can usually identify one another by nature or species in time. Cody knew perfectly well that I knew what he was. After all, in some circles in Pemkowet, it was common knowledge. But the soothsayers aren’t the only ones with a code. There’s a code of honor in the eldritch community, too. You don’t out one another. Everyone in town knew about me because the story had gotten around when I was conceived, even before Mom and I moved back here. It was different with the Fairfaxes. And I wouldn’t out Cody for spite or any other petty reason. I’d catch some serious flak if I did, and his reclusive clan was rumored to be pretty dangerous, too. But that didn’t mean I was about to let him work his wiles on Jen. She’d had a hard enough life.

I just wished he weren’t so damn good-looking and that I didn’t have a crush on him.

I couldn’t help it. For me, it went back to the fourth grade. Cody was in the seventh grade, and we rode the school bus together: me to the mobile home community alongside the river out in the marshy sticks where Mom rented the double-wide she owns now, him to his clan’s place out in the county woods.

There were bullies on the bus, and if I wasn’t exactly afraid of them, I was afraid of the reaction they might elicit from me. They had heard the rumors. They made it a point to pick on me.

Cody made them quit.

It was as simple as that, and I’d been infatuated with him ever since. Even through his transformation from a promising young JV basketball star to a semidropout loser and alleged stoner, through his myriad high-school-and-after conquests, none of which ever lasted longer than a month or two, and through his surprising rebirth as an officer of the law.

Once, he had protected me.

It was enough.

“Ladies, I should be going.” Uncrossing his legs and hoisting himself from propped elbows, Cody rose to his feet. He did it in one effortless movement, the kind you might expect of someone who had been a JV basketball star. Or, say, a feral someone who occasionally howled at the moon and turned into something wild, untamed, and bloodthirsty, possibly quite furry. “I’m on duty tonight.”