She met my gaze and grinned. “My Libor, he has grown cranky. He needs a good meal and his wife to cheer him up.”

“Don’t look at me,” I told her. “I’m not that young, and I’m very much married.”

About that time, I realized several things. The first was that her English was awfully good, complete with an American accent that came straight out of the Pacific Northwest. The second was that she was about four feet from me, and I still didn’t smell her. The third was that Libor, after a quick glance behind him that didn’t land on the woman whose hand was on his shoulder, stared at me intently, his eyes going gold with the presence of his wolf.

“Damn it,” I said with feeling. I was good at this. I was very good at spotting the ghosts. The days of my randomly addressing people and only realizing later that no one else could see them were long gone. Or so I’d thought.

The golem’s odd effect on my ability with ghosts was still making my life difficult.

“I had heard this,” Libor said, frowning, “that the Marrok’s little coyote could see ghosts.”

The ghost behind him smiled at me and brushed at Libor’s hair as if there were something out of place, though his hair wasn’t long enough to be obstreperous. She leaned back and angled her face as if checking to make sure she’d managed everything correctly, and I suddenly knew, without a doubt, what it was that Libor held against the Marrok.

Zack.

If this woman were male and had been starved for six months, then she’d be a dead ringer for our pack’s sole submissive wolf, Zack. It wasn’t just a passing resemblance. I’d seen twins who didn’t share as many similarities.

Zack had come to us a restless wanderer who showed signs of abuse. He’d gradually settled into the pack, losing most of the wariness he’d arrived with.

But Zack still thought he was going to take off again for someplace else someday real soon, but that “real soon” had changed in emphasis as if it were gradually lengthening from “probably tomorrow” to “next week” and finally a vague time receding into the future.

He was rooming with Warren and his human partner, Kyle, another temporary situation that was sliding into a permanent one. Warren’s presence kept the pack happy with the safety of our submissive wolf (something that preoccupied the wolves in a way I’d never understood until Adam had made me part of the pack’s magical ties), and Warren was never obvious with his protectiveness. Unlike almost any other old wolf I’ve ever met (and Zack had once told me he’d been a werewolf for over a century), Zack was not homophobic and seemed content with the place he’d made for himself in Warren and Kyle’s home.

The whole pack was trying to make a home for Zack with us, and we were all holding our breath, hoping he wouldn’t notice until it was too late and he already belonged to us. A submissive wolf was a gift to any pack. They tended to cut down the petty bickering that was part and parcel of having a roomful of dominant personalities, and they settled the pack, made it feel, for everyone, as if pack was more than a necessity, that it was a good thing to be a part of. A submissive made the survival of all the wolves in the pack more likely.