The people slowly milled into the house, stopped only by a gentleman with a clipboard and a constantly upturned nose. They chatted with him only briefly before he inspected the board and waved them through. Marc and I slipped into line just as the steady flow hit a snag.
“But I’m sure my name should be on there!” The insistence came from a man of thirty. His well-dressed wife clung to his arm as he glared at the uniformed door watcher. “Look again!”
The man lifted his nose even higher. “Your name is not on here, Mr. Sufta. You must leave the line and the property this instant.”
Mr. Sufta stamped his foot on the walk. “I refuse to leave until Lady Worthington herself informs me why my wife and I have not been invited to this party!”
A dark scowl twisted onto the door watcher’s face, and his eyes glowed a soft yellow color. “You cannot remain here, Mr. Sufta. Please leave at once, or I will be forced to remove you myself.”
Mrs. Sufta’s mouth dropped open. “You wouldn’t dare!”
The man turned away and hung his clipboard on a hook attached to the wall. The lights from the house cast his shadow across the couple, and it grew larger as he turned back to them. Fur sprouted from his flesh, and his hands lengthened into claws. He grabbed the pair by the backs of their collars and lifted them off the ground. The man stretched his head up, and his whole body stretched with him, increasing his frame to well over six feet tall. His face stretched into a snout, and his ears stretched up into sharp, furry points.
The servant strolled off the porch, and those in line hastily made room for him. Marc pulled me onto the grass as they passed, and a tingle of fear ran up my back. The monster’s nostrils flared at passing us, and I could have sworn his eyes flickered in my direction.
I shrank against Marc, who was only too glad to take me in his arms. The servant stomped past and reached the road, where he held up his captives and opened his hands. The pair was deposited without ceremony onto the cold, dirty ground.
The woman let out a screech like a cat and kicked her legs against the ground. “Do something, Harry!”
Harry lifted his gaze to the shadow that still hung ominously over them and shrank from his duty. “There isn’t too much I can do right now, darling.”
Laughter erupted from the crowd. The two scrambled to their feet, their cheeks ablaze with embarrassment. They hurried to a parked carriage and climbed inside. One of them struck the ceiling so hard that the driver jumped and cracked his whip. The horses took off down the road with the din of the crowd following them.
The servant turned and stalked up the walk. Everyone who had stepped onto the path once again scurried out of his way.
“You show him, Whelan!” someone in the crowd shouted.
The wolf man whipped his head around and snarled at the speaker. “I do not do this out of delight, sir, but because it is my duty.”
The man shrank from that hideous glare and bobbed his head. “Y-yes, of course! Carry on!”
Whelan returned to his post, where he shrank back to his human shape. He took up the clipboard and turned to us. “If you will return to your places in line, we will resume the admission.”
The crowd jumped back to their spot, with not a person out of place. I bit my lower lip as I imagined Marc and me being likewise rejected. Or worse. His teeth had been very sharp, and he had given me a funny look.
I leaned toward Marc and lowered my voice to a whisper. “Are you sure we’ll get in?”
He grinned and replied with a volume that made me wince. “Of course we’ll get in, darling. They won’t refuse someone who has so much to offer them with those trade routes.”
The man in front of us, a hefty gentleman of fifty, twisted around. “You deal in trade routes?”
“Only between the Starfall Strait and the Obsidian Current,” Marc replied.
“Truly? And what do you offer the islands along that route?”
“Stormglass.”
The man’s face lit up. “That must make you quite a lot of money. I have heard it’s also quite difficult to harvest.”
Marc wrinkled his nose. “It’s not so much the difficulty as the waiting. A mana storm doesn’t come up just any time. Sometimes my ships must wait for weeks before one passes.”
“Might I ask if you own your enterprise outright?”
My companion chuckled. “Naturally. The stormglass trade has enough risks without adding a disagreeable partner to the mix.”
“What if you were to find the right partner? Or perhaps investors?” the man persisted.
Marc stroked his chin with his fingers. “That may be something I’d be willing to consider. That is, if the right person came along for either of those options.”
