About four or five years ago, there had been a nasty coven of witches in Seattle. Their leader had been killed by the Emerald City Pack. When the pack went to clean out the home of the leader, to make sure that there were no nasty magical surprises left behind, they had found, among other things, an emaciated werewolf in a cage. He was missing his leg.

He hadn’t remembered who he was or where he came from—and neither did any of the packs. He also didn’t remember what had happened to his leg. As best anyone could figure out, he’d been brought over from Europe and traded around among various black witches for years, if not decades.

Bran took him home, eventually coaxing him back into human shape. When he couldn’t do anything that could make Sherwood’s leg regrow—yes, that’s as bad as it sounds—he sent Sherwood to doctors who provided a prosthetic for the human form. The wolf just ran on three legs.

Sherwood took his name from two books that happened to be lying on Bran’s desk when Bran told him to pick a name. That Bran would read Sherwood Anderson was not surprising. I wasn’t sure if I was more amused or horrified that Bran had been reading Emily Post.

According to Bran, Sherwood had approached him in January and asked for a transfer to somewhere with a shorter, more congenial winter than Montana. Most places have more congenial winters than Montana, so Bran had a lot of places he could have sent Sherwood, but he sent him to us.

When the call came in about Sherwood and the crane, I hadn’t been able to get in touch with Adam other than to leave him a voice message. His office wasn’t answering, either, which meant whatever he was involved in was some security issue with the government contracts he held. I couldn’t feel anything through the pack bonds that suggested Sherwood was about to kill himself, but Bran hadn’t been able to tell when my foster father had gone out to commit suicide, either. Sherwood felt just as he always did to me—quiet.

I squinted, trying to see him, but he was too far up, and it was too dark.

I might not have known Officer Thorson, but I liked him. When I explained that all the extra people who’d been there when I arrived were problematical, he’d listened gravely. Then, without arguing, he’d dispersed everyone until there were just two guys from Lampson, Officer Thorson, and me. Marley continued to talk to the officer about his crane with the enthusiasm of a golf addict describing his new putter. “So not the biggest—that mark keeps moving. But it is the largest twin-crawler crane in the world, and the biggest crane we’ve ever built. So far, anyway.”