A loud clopping of hooves made them all turn. A rider emerged from the side street. You noticed the horse first. You couldn’t help it. Built like a small draft horse, with powerful hindquarters and a solid body, she had a muscular neck and the stupid hair on the shins that made it hard to see where her hooves were when she kicked you, which she’d tried to do the first time she’d smelled him. The horse itself was black, or rather almost black, spotted with very faint grey dapples, but the leg hair—feathers, he remembered, although why the hell they called it feathers made no sense to him—was white. The mane was white too, ridiculously long, and wavy. It was wavy because the horse’s owner braided it and sometimes put flowers into it. Because she couldn’t get a normal horse. She had to have a draft version of My Little Pony.

“What the hell kind of horse is that?” the jackal asked.

“Gypsy horse.” He couldn’t keep the distaste out of his voice. That and the Friesian were the only two horse breeds he recognized, because he had had no choice about learning them.

The Gypsy horse moved into the moonlight, carrying her rider without any effort, which wasn’t much of an accomplishment, since the rider was sixteen years old, barely five-and-a-half feet tall, and weighed maybe a hundred and twenty pounds. If she was soaking wet and wearing all her clothes and carrying both of her tomahawks.

He opened his mouth and closed it. Julie was wearing a bluish T-shirt with the words Wild Magic stitched on it and a pair of jean shorts. Her long bare legs stood out against the horse’s black hide. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail, leaving her long neck exposed. A neck that would be frighteningly easy to snap even for a normal human.

The cat was checking her out. She was a kid. He was looking at her like she was dessert. Nothing good was going through his head.

Derek bit off the words, fighting a snarl. “What the fuck are you looking at?”

The cat grinned, baring his teeth. “Bonus.”

So that was the cat’s plan: Kill him and get Julie. Good plan. If Derek had both hands tied behind his back and his feet chained to the ground.

Julie waved at him and winked at the three shapeshifters. “You shouldn’t corner Big Bad Wolves like him on a dark street. It’s bad for your health.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” he growled. She shouldn’t be here. Not in the middle of the night and not in front of this house. He didn’t want to tell her what had happened in the house.

“I’m working,” she said.

“Why are you dressed like that?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Dressed like what?”

“That.”