“Excellent. So, upon signing the NDA and our work contracts, we will receive not only our first week’s wages, but the two thousand dollars needed for our equipment.” I didn’t move from my spot in the middle of the kids. Jesus, they would have been eaten alive without me. Maybe literally.

Louis pursed his already thin lips. “I’m not sure I like you anymore.”

“We’re going to work together,” I said, not sure of that in the least, but I was bluffing all the way now. “Wouldn’t you rather work with someone who has a shrewd brain? And remember that these negotiation skills will at some point work in your favor.”

“Give them the money,” Tom said with a shake of his head. “I’m tired and my bones are aching. A storm is coming in off the water.”

Louis spluttered, snorted, and grumbled the whole way, but in the end, we signed the work contracts and NDAs that they apparently had ready, and were each handed three thousand dollars in cash.

Talk about a sweet way to end the weirdest night of my life.

Then again, the next morning wasn’t a whole lot better in terms of weirdness.

6

The next morning, I rolled onto my side in a bed that was not really mine, in a home that belonged to Corb, to get a blast of dog breath in my face. When had Corb gotten a dog? Was I not at his house? Sleep confusion made my brain fuzzy and uncertain, except for one undeniable fact. That breath was rank.

“Get out of here,” I grumbled and pushed blindly at the offending face, my hand going deep into a mouth full of tongue and teeth. I opened one eye and yelped, scrambling back from the wolf looking straight at me. The night before came rushing back, the night that I had partially thought I could chalk up to having eaten some sort of accidental hallucinogen.

Apparently not.

“Sarge,” I croaked his name out through a dry mouth and probably nearly as bad breath.

“What are you doing here?”

His wolf eyebrows rose, and he shook his head.

The thing was, Corb’s place was in downtown Savannah, on east Perry, not far from the Colonial Park Cemetery. I mean, really there was no place in Savannah that was far from some sort of cemetery or graveyard, it was just a matter of knowing where you stood. And who you stood on. That wasn’t the point, though, of my rambling.

The point was that there was a wolf. In a loft. In the middle of downtown super busy Savannah and I was struggling to understand how he’d gotten in unseen. “Did Corb let you in?”

Sarge grinned and his tongue lolled out, along with that rumbling voice that made me think of Gmork. “I was hoping for a better scream than that, but I’ll take it.”