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That’s how it was: get through the next minute, the next five, the next half hour, the next hour, the next day, the next night, the next week, the next month, the next year.
The bank was a squat single story building at the end of a block. We were obliged to park two blocks away. Hamid did not like that. That was not part of the plan, but his original plan had been swept away by a truck smashing into a fire hydrant and some poles and other cars, and where he had originally planned on parking was now more like a mini junkyard nobody was in a hurry to clean up.
“Walk close,” he muttered, “we’re a couple.”
Sure. What was one more male acting like I belonged to them? Hamid walked close enough his sleeve rubbed against mine as our arms swung while we walked down the street. I tucked my hands into my pockets. He did not. But his posture went from watchful and lurking to easy and affable.
“Are you training for any events?” I asked.
“What?”
“Are you training for any events?” I caught the scent of wolves through the MoonDark obscuring my senses. Mom had chosen a bank smack dab in the center of all of as many human witnesses as possible, in a city that was, at best,technicallyneutral. Neutral, in the way arguing over the last taco was neutral. There was a right answer to that question, and everyone better know what the answer was.
We turned a corner and were obliged to stop for traffic.
“Fifty miler in South Africa,” Hamid finally said, eyeing traffic. A few other people waited to cross.
The scent of wolf reached my nose. The man on my left, tall, dressed just like Hamid and I, complete with scuffed up, worn boots. He was staring at me. I caught myself before I made eye contact: I was supposed to begone human, which would mean I’d eschew staring contests with wolves. The etiquette here was to quickly convey I did not actually want tobehere.
“Really,” I said, forcing a dour note into my voice. I bumped into Hamid to simulate an affectionate, aggravated jostle. “Really. So you drag me up here under the pretense of ‘let’s go see some orcas’ when I tell you I don’t want to go to Alaskaeverand we both know it’s so you can do cold-water conditioning and now you’re telling me you’re doing South Africa again? I thought you said Slovakia.”
Hamid looked down at me. “Slovakia is our anniversary weekend.”
“And you PR’ing sounds like a great anniversary gift.” There. I had conveyed to the wolf on my other side that I was only in Alaska because my human partner had decided we needed to go, and he did not know I was a werewolf, so I’d been fresh out of reasons I couldn’t go to Alaska.
“I—” Hamid started to say.
I grumbled. “If you don’t want to do it, just say so. Don’t put it on me. You know I barely remember when our anniversary is, anyway.”
Hamid hooked my forearm in his hand and pulled me forward across the street. The guy on my right followed, then accelerated past me, head high and cocked slightly backwards, angling himself into the breeze. He was trying to catch another whiff. Well, I reeked like MoonDark, and smart gone-human wolves didn’t come to Werewolf Central.
The werewolf turned his head just enough so I could see the disgusted expression on his face as he notably took in Hamid, then me, then turned around and went back the other way.
Good. One threat down. Just another couple hundred or so to go. And the bank was up the block in front of us.
Although the bank smelled of wolves. The little lobby, with its old carpeting, smelled like a hint of mold, a lot of cleaning chemicals, andwolves. A few people stood at the counter sorting things, two people worked at desks with a few decorative fake plants trying to be walls.
One of the tellers at the counter instantly made me as a she-wolf. One of the other desk clerks was a human, but another one was a wolf. The customers were a blend of human and wolf.
Well...fuck.
Hamid gave me a nudge. We were two minutes early. Hamid tried to look casual while he stood next to me, scrolling through his phone.
The client talking to the desk-wolf stood, shook hands, and said thank you before leaving. That must have been our plant, because almost instantly, the desk-wolf approached, tugging his cheap blue sport coat into position. The coat might have been cheap, but that’s because it was window-dressing on that physique. Branch manager wasn’t his only job. That was a wolf who spent his nights deciding who got to eat the last taco.
He pinned me with a look. “Mrs. Carter?”
Oh, excellent, yet another name. Where had this one come from? And who had given it to me? I stood, wincing over my still-sore side. It had not appreciated eight hours in a high-altitude tin can. Hamid caught my elbow and hauled me the rest of the way up. I painted a smile on my face as I shook the wolf’s hand. “That’s me.”
“Cole,” he said, tone pleasant but gaze dark. “Come to my desk.”
Every wolf in that place watched me. I pulled off my hat (didn’t have a choice) and kept my face to the glass while Hamid stayed close. Cole sat opposite me.
My insides tap-danced with anxiety while my left fingers twitched uncontrollably and the skin of my scar tried to dance off my bones. Was this a FrostFur? One of the other packs in the area? I’d come under an assumed name, but I had to reveal who I really was in order to get to the deposit box.
He moved to his computer. His face melted from a vaguely displeased mask at my presence to a wash of... something. Grimness, maybe. Shock? I couldn’t say. Reminded me of an avalanche peeling down a hillside the way it wiped the old surface clean and in its place was a distinctly new presentation of the exact same thing.
I dropped my gone-human pretense.
