“Give the Garzas my best.” Meemaw scowled into her empty mug before setting it aside. “Be careful. Both of you.” She waggled a finger at me. “Never accept a first offer, understand? Witches will respect you more if you haggle.”

“We won’t bargain away our firstborns,” Dell promised. “Seconds and thirds though…”

Her grandmother swatted her bottom, and I laughed, an easy sound that once would have been confined to my own living room and my own family’s shenanigans.

Strange days when I had a serial killer to thank for bringing me back to life.

Chapter 15

Fur brushed the back of my hand, a silent hello from the sterling wolf trotting at my side. I took the hint when his wet nose bumped my knuckles a second time and rubbed between his ears. Ahead of us, to the left, loped a golden-furred wolf who entertained herself by snapping at pesky mosquitos while guiding us to the Garza homestead.

As luck would have it, they lived within hiking distance of Silverback Lane. Luck and hiking distance being relative since each time Dell had ventured to the witches’ lair, she had been sent to fetch Graeson and gone on wolf paws there and back. The only person who might have offered his opinion on her route was more concerned with me itching the base of his left ear, which I had discovered was his favorite spot for me to scratch with my nails.

Being on two legs made each fumble, every heavy breath from exertion, that much louder and the trek that much lonelier. I wasn’t sure which I longed for more—for them to join me or for me to join them.

What would it be like to dissolve into a sleek wolf’s form? To shake out my fur and chase the horizon as seen through the pines guarding my home? To catch my own dinners and bump cold noses with a comrade? To hear the night’s song whispered in my blood?

Such wildness in their hearts. Such freedom under their paws. Such boundless joy they found in nature and in themselves.

As glorious as the wargs were in their wolves’ skins, all I could manage was a pale echo of their majesty. The sting of energy racing up my arm didn’t surprise me. Without meaning to, I had tapped into the mysterious reservoir of recalled magic brimming with lupine attributes that somehow had cobbled themselves together to create the fine black-tipped pelt of my warg aspect.

Sniffing me fingertips to palm, Graeson sighed happily at the change in me. He licked my wrist, leaving a cowlick set by drying wolf drool, and grinned wide, bearing lots of teeth.

Mate, he seemed to say, join us in the hunt. Good eats roam these hills, and their scents are freshest near the earth.