“All werewolves can talk,” he grumbled, his voice deep and gravelly, just the way Gmork sounded in The Never Ending Story, and damn it if it didn’t do the same thing to my legs, turning them right back to jelly. I had to lock my knees to keep upright.

“See?” Corb strode around to stand beside the wolf sitting up now. “He agrees with me. You don’t pass the interview. You’re out. Get the whiskey for her.”

There was movement behind me, and then a glass was pressed into my shaking and all-too-pale hand.

The dark-skinned man nodded to me. “Drink it down, girl. It will erase this night; you won’t remember a thing.”

The golden liquid beckoned to me to drown myself in it, to forget the adventures—yes, let’s call them that. But I didn’t want to forget again, no matter how much it shocked me that I was living in the shadow world. I moved to turn the drink upside down.

The wolf stood on his hind legs, and with one swift move knocked the drink from my hand. “I agree with the others, not with you, Corb. She stays.”

5

All the way down the other side of the mountain that shouldn’t exist, down to the graveyard I’d never heard of, Corb tried to convince his weird buddies I shouldn’t get the job.

“. . . too old. And slow. You saw how slow she was coming up the mountain.”

“. . . and she won’t listen. She’s unteachable because she’s so set in her ways.”

“. . . doesn’t have what it takes.”

Which was about all it took to keep me moving forward even though every damn part of me hurt like I’d been pulled through a knothole backward. A few strands of my strawberry blond hair fell forward, and when I went to brush them back, they came off on my fingers. I’d lost a chunk of hair somewhere along the line. So now I was old and balding? Awesome, that was what my already fragile ego needed.

“Rogaine,” I muttered under my breath.

“She’s too old! That alone should keep her from training!” Corb threw at Eammon, and I could feel him losing it as he lost his argument. “It’s your fault she’s here in the first place. Why the . . . why the fu . . . ? Why did you give her the card?”

Part of me was totally gratified that he was so upset, because I’d proved him wrong just by finishing the “interview.” Part of me was astounded and hurt that he was still pulling the “she’s too old” card among other things.