It took me a moment to realize my flashlight was gone. My purse was gone. I did a turn and could see in the distance the gate and the single light above it. I could leave. I could walk right down the path, take a cab back to the loft, and take the waitressing job at Pirates Restaurant, where I’d make good tips off the tourists. If I left, this would all just be a crazy moment.

Another crazy moment, for a crazy woman.

But then Corb would be right.

Himself would be right.

And I had a feeling that it would let Gran down if she was watching from somewhere.

My back straightened like I’d been hit in the ass with a paddle. I was finishing this, one way or another, even if it left me sore for a week, even if I had nightmares for months of a slavering amber-eyed wolf coming straight for me and being saved by a skeleton who liked candy bars.

Maybe the job would suck, and I’d turn it down even if they offered it to me, but I was finishing this interview.

I scrubbed my hands over my face in a quick motion. “Okay, Robert. You still with me?” I mean, at this point, he was my only option. Even if he did eat the wolf’s ear. I frowned. “Wolves aren’t common in Georgia, never mind Savannah.”

Robert, of course, made no comment as I forced my jelly legs to start walking again. My mind shifted to my gran’s book, a great big tome bound in red leather which she’d used to chronicle her spells and information about various creatures in the shadow world. Some had names, some didn’t. I’d loved reading that book when I was younger.

The way the wolf had looked at me, the way it had reacted to me talking to Robert could only mean it wasn’t really a wolf. It was . . . maybe a shifter of some sort? I gritted my teeth as my legs tried to shake again. Sure, I’d been raised with knowledge of the shadow world, but that was so, so different than being immersed in it. Gran had said it would take something big to bring me fully into the shadow world.

Maybe a divorce would do that?

The answer came to me then, and I said it out loud. “Gran dying.” The wind stilled around us, the night noises fading as I realized that was exactly what had made the change. The night she’d died, I’d woken in a sweat, alone as I so often was with Himself working late.

I could feel the sensation of something sinking into my skin that night, and then the phone rang, and Gran’s best friend Hattie sobbed out that she was gone. Gran was dead.