But he ended up at the back door of the bookstore before he realized he didn’t have his keys. Or clothes. He found the back door of A Little Bite open and crept inside, wary of running into Tess if she was in a deadly mood.

Instead of Tess, he found Nadine in the back room where Tess sometimes baked cookies.

“Couldn’t sleep, so I’ve been here a while,” Nadine said. She tapped a container that sat on the edge of her worktable. “Special delivery from Eamer’s Bakery. Wolf cookies. I guess they were up early too, working. A lot of us are going to be up early. I heard you lost a friend yesterday. I’m sorry for that.”

He whined to let her know he’d heard her. Then he went to the lattice door, let himself in to Howling Good Reads, and went up to the office. Not to deal with paperwork or read e-mail. He had added a simple wooden trunk—simple if you didn’t count the carving Henry had done on the lid—to the office furniture as a place to store a set of clean clothes and a pair of shoes. He dressed and went back downstairs. He’d check the stock, shelve a few books. Wouldn’t stay long since he hadn’t told Meg he was coming to the store and she’d be expecting him at the apartment.

As he turned toward the stock room, he heard the familiar slap of paper on pavement. Copies of the Lakeside News.

Fetching the spare keys from the office desk, he opened the front door, grabbed the newspapers, and dumped them on the checkout counter. The headline said, “Humans Triumph!” Beneath the words was a photo that filled half the front page.

Simon stared at the photo. Stared and stared. Then he whispered, “Joe.”

•••

Pouring himself a large mug of coffee, Monty half listened to the television news report and ignored the looks from some of the other police officers packed into the station’s break room to hear the news and see the “graphic proof” of the Humans First and Last movement’s triumph.

“Humans have taken possession of thousands of acres of prime land through the HFL’s audacious strike against the terra indigene, creatures who have held a chokehold on Thaisia for decades. But not everyone is applauding the HFL’s actions toward land reclamation. One rancher near the Midwest town of Bennett had this to say.

“‘They’re damn fools, the whole lot of them. My family has been raising horses and cattle here for four generations, and we have never had trouble with the terra indigene.’

“When asked about the loss of livestock to Wolves, Stewart Dixon told the reporter, ‘It’s called rent.’

“And now here’s a recap of the photographs that were sent to news stations all around the continent.”