He clamped his mouth shut around his sucker, and those big shoulders shrunk an inch or two. If he’d had a tail in this form, I suspect it would have been tucked between his legs. The more I interacted with him, the surer I was that he was not some ancient wolf in a young man’s body.

He was just too much of an idiot to be anything but a young man.

I don’t think it was my glare that had chastened him, though—it was Annie’s.

I put the rest of the deck face down on the table and waited for her to give me the card and tell me what it meant for me.

She slowly turned it over, and I found myself staring at a dragon’s head. Though that wasn’t quite right, the dragon’s head was in fact a skull. The colors were blues and greens, and the card was obviously hand-painted. An original if I ever saw one. The number thirteen was etched into the top corner. I reached out and slid a finger over it. “You did this? It’s beautiful.”

“The card, yes.” Her tone tugged my eyes to her face, which was quite pale.

I looked back at the card, really looked at it, and then I grimaced. “Damn it, not again.”

The Death card looked back at me. People usually freaked out when they got it, but it rarely meant that someone was going to actually die. It usually meant something in life was going to change. In my opinion, that was a big enough deal on its own.

“Again?” She leaned forward. “How often do you pull the Death card?”

I leaned in, too, and pulled a grimace, hiding it from Sarge with one hand. “More often than I care to share.”

You would think her already pale face couldn’t get any paler, but you’d be wrong. “This card is not just any death card, honey. It is . . . death is coming for you in a way that I can’t understand. It is going to be all around you, and you are somehow the balance between life and death. Not a good place to be for someone so new to the shadow world.” She slid the card across to me. “Take it with you. To remind you to be careful.”

I picked up the card and stood. “Thanks.”

She crossed herself, then lit a stick of sage on fire and smudged the air around me as I stood waiting for her to be done. Sarge leaned forward. “What card did you get?”

I already had the dragon death card tucked into my pocket. “You didn’t see it? How could you not see it?” And wouldn’t his wolf ears have heard every word we said?

“She puts a block on anyone trying to peek.” He grinned. “What did you get?”