Page 35 of Remington’s Mate

Remy: Text me when you get there

Jaeda: If you want. But Fernandez is going to protect me forever now. Because of the toaster pastry

Remy: Wait until you see what *I’ll* do for a woman with pastries

Jaeda: Did you say pasties? Because that’s kind of dirty

Man, he liked this woman more and more.

Remy: LOL now I want pastries *and* pasties

Jaeda: Good luck with that. Now stop texting me, Ethan will be jealous

He closed his messaging app. Don’t get attached, McCall, he told himself. Stick to the mission.

But he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

When Remy went to zip up his duffel bag, he saw that the talisman had somehow worked its way out of the hidden pocket, and was lying on top of his dress shirt.

Fate.

He picked it up, thinking about Jaeda, and that idea that had continued to nudge the back of his mind. He’d thought Jaeda didn’t have an animal, so no part of her was in the spirit world, meaning that the woman he’d been meeting probably was an evil halaika trying to fuck with him by taking on Jaeda’s face.

But he’d been wrong about her. She had something; it just didn’t have a form.

So was Squatch wrong? Was his mystery leopard-owl-wolf not a halaika, but a shifter animal looking for its true form?

If it was, would it even know that?

Even though he knew it was stupid, he closed his fingers once more around the coin. As soon as he got to the spirit world, though, the boy was standing in front of him.

They were on a featureless plain with no sun overhead—only a whitish sky to provide an odd, shadowless light.

I told you to stay away, the boy said. The woman will steal your magic, like she tried to steal mine.

I told you, Remy replied. I have no magic.

You have the owl, and the leopard. They are magic. Without you, they will be lost. Now GO!!

On the last word, the boy shimmered and grew—into a black dragon. A small one—only the size of a camper van—but shit. A freaking dragon. He sucked in a big breath—and blew.

Remy braced himself to be crisped in fire, but all he got was a blast of hot air. It blew him off his feet—and he slammed into the hotel wall, right above the bed.

He landed on the mattress with a thump, the arm he’d broken the day before throbbing.

The coin lay on the pillow, dragon side up.

After he caught his breath, Remy rammed the talisman into his duffel bag and zipped it up.

“Fine,” he muttered to himself. “I can take a hint.”

He’d just pulled onto the highway when he got another text from Jaeda.

Jaeda: Got to work okay, you can stop overprotecting now

His leopard said, We are not overprotecting. We are protecting just enough.

For once Remy agreed with him.