“Yours?” David said, surprised. “I thought she was Rachel’s.”

Embarrassed, I shrugged with one shoulder. “She doesn’t like me,” I said, pretending to check on the pizza.

Jenks landed on my shoulder in a soft show of support. “I think she’s waiting for you to turn back into a wolf, Rache,” he teased.

I went to brush him off, then stopped. A ribbon of memory pulled through me—of how he had treated me when he was big—and I made a soft “Mmmm” instead. “Have you seen her stare at me?” I turned, seeing her doing it now. “See?” I said, pointing at her in the middle of the threshold, her ears pricked and a curious, unafraid look on her sweet, kitten face.

David pulled the scarf from the collar of his duster and wrapped the focus up. “You should make her your familiar,” he said. “She’d like you then.”

“No fairy crap way!” Jenks shouted, wings a blur as he went to hold the box open for David. “Rachel isn’t going to draw any ever-after through Rex. She’ll fry her little kitty brain.”

Might be an improvement, I thought sourly. “It doesn’t work that way. She has to choose me. And he’s right. I’d probably fry her little kitty brain. I fried Nick’s.”

A shudder rippled over David. The entire kitchen seemed to go still, and I looked worriedly at Ivy and Kisten. “You okay?” I said when they met my blank stare with their own.

“Moon just rose,” David said, wiping a hand across his dark stubble. “It’s full. Sorry. Sometimes it hits hard. I’m cool.”

I gave him a once-over, thinking he looked different. There was a smoother grace, a new tension to him—like he could hear the clock before it ticked. I yanked open the drawer for the pizza cutter, shuffling around. “You sure you can’t stay for some lunch?” I asked.

There was the skitter of cat claws on the linoleum, then David gasped. “Oh my God,” he breathed on the exhale. “Look at it.”

“Holy crap!” Jenks exclaimed, and Ivy took an audible breath.

I turned, pizza cutter in hand. My eyebrows rose and I blinked. “Whoa.”

The cursed thing had turned completely silver, malleable like liquid. It looked entirely like a wolf now too, lips pulled from her muzzle and silver saliva dripping down to melt into the fur at the base. And it was her. Somehow I knew it. A shudder went through me as I thought I might hear something but wasn’t sure. “You know what?” I said, my voice shaky as I looked at it in its box, cushioned by David’s scarf. “You can have it. I don’t want it back. Really.”

David swallowed. “Rachel, we’re friends and everything, but no. There is no way in hell I’m taking that thing into my apartment.”

“It’s not going back into my house!” Jenks said. “No freakin’ way! Listen to it! It’s making my teeth hurt. I already get misery once a month from twenty-three females, and I’m not putting up with it from some weird-ass Were statue on the full moon. Rachel, cover it up or something. Tink’s tampons, can’t you all hear that?”