We took a seat by a corner table, Samuel looking as comfortable as a wolf in a china shop in his surroundings. Having inhaled his half-muffin, Bo wasted no time in making friends with a brownie at a nearby table who was eating a slice of cake roughly the size of the Husky’s head.
I gave mydog a hard look.
“I’m just being sociable,” he said without breaking eye contact with the cake.
The brownie waved at us. It was one of the Hendersons from my old apartment building.
Ellie peppered me with questions about the mansion, Pearl, and whether I was coping with my new luna duties. Virgil delivered our coffees and scones with the careful precision of a man trying not to spill anything in front of an alpha werewolf, then hovered nervously near the counter.
“I should visit the Alliance one of these days,” my best friend observed animatedly halfway through her drink.
Samuel lowered his brows. “It’s not a social club.”
“They could do with some lightening up,” Ellie said, blatantly ignoring this. She beamed. “Maybe I should bring some cake. Everybody likes cake.”
“Wendall has an egg allergy,” Samuel grunted not too unkindly.
I swallowed a smile as I felt some of his tension fade.
Ellie had that effect on people.
For a moment, I forgot about the case. Ellie told us about the new menu items she was experimenting with, a customer who’d tried to pay in enchanted coins, and Virgil’s attempt to introduce a loyalty card program, which had ended up being sabotaged by a pixie with a hole punch.
I was mid-sip and gradually mellowing when Ellie’s chatter cut off suddenly. Her head turned toward the front window, her nostrils flaring.
I stared. “Ellie?”
I was distracted by Bo returning from where he’d been investigating the room for unattended plates. The Husky’s tail was down.
“It’s back,” my dog huffed nervously. “That black cat.”
I straightened and followed his gaze, my pulse quickening.
Across the street, sitting on a low wall beside a mailbox, was the black cat we’d spotted in the parking lot the other day. It was perfectly still and watching the coffee shop.
Ice flooded my veins.
“That cat.” Ellie’s voice had dropped. “It smells like a vampire.”
My wolf slammed to attention so hard it physically hurt.
Samuel caught my reaction through the bond before I opened my mouth. His chair scraped back.
“Stay here,” I told Ellie urgently.
I was already moving. The bell above the door jangled as I burst onto the sidewalk. Samuel was a step behind me, his wolf bleeding through in the set of his jaw and the predatory speed of his stride. Bo followed us, his ears pinned flat.
The cat’s golden eyes locked with mine for a frozen heartbeat.
Then it bolted.
It was fast. Unnaturally so. It streaked off the wall and down the sidewalk, weaving betweenpedestrians who didn’t even glance down. Samuel broke into a run. I matched his pace, Bo sprinting at my heels.
The cat cut left down an alley between a bookshop and a dry cleaner. We followed.
It was already at the far end, a dark streak against the sunlit street beyond. It squeezed through a gap in a chain-link fence that was barely wide enough for a rat.
Samuel hit the fence a second later and vaulted it in one fluid motion. I scrambled over after him less gracefully, my body clumsy under the effect of the white wolf powers surging through my blood. Bo found a gap lower down and wriggled through.
