Page 7

"Is 'ask' what she said, or is 'tell' what she said?"

The corner of Kieran's mouth lifted. "She said ask. I'm telling."

"There it is." Criss rolled his neck and listened to it crack. "Sure. I'll move some tables and look pretty. It's what I'm good at."

Kieran looked at him for a beat too long. The look that said he wanted to push, to pry open whatever Criss kept wired shut behind the jokes and the swagger. But Kieran had learned over the past two months that pushing Criss was like pushing a cat off a counter. You could do it, but the cat would just jump right back up and knock something over out of spite.

"Storm's clearing," Kieran said instead. "Should blow through by evening."

He was right. By six o'clock the sky had wrung itself out and the clouds were breaking apart to let through long, golden shafts of late light. Everything smelled washed clean, that particular after-rain freshness where the earth and the magic and the green of the woods all blended together into something almost sweet. Puddles steamed on the cobblestone as the last warmth of the day hit them.

Criss needed to get out. Two months of Kieran's cabin, Kieran's routine, Kieran's quiet competence. Two months of being the Holt who tagged along. The walls weren't closing in exactly, but they were leaning, and if he stayed on that porch one more hour he was going to start a fight just to feel something other than useful.

He changed into clean jeans and a dark shirt that fit the way he liked, tight enough through the chest and arms to make a point without making a production. He caught his own reflection in the hallway mirror on his way out. Amber eyes, sharp jaw, the kind of face his mother called "too handsome for his own good," which was really just her way of saying he relied on it too much. The thin scar above his left eyebrow, barely visible unless you were close, a reminder from a bar fight in his early twenties that he'd won but shouldn't have started.

He looked good. He always looked good. That, at least, was never in question.

"Going out," he called back toward the cabin.

"Don't start anything," Kieran's voice came from somewhere inside.

"When have I ever?" he shouted over his shoulder, not waiting for a response.

The walk into town took fifteen minutes along the main trail, the air cool and damp against his skin. Hollow Oak was coming alive after the storm, people emerging from shops and homes to reclaim the evening. He passed the Mercantile where Edgar was sweeping water off the front step, and the bookstore where a warm glow in the upper windows meant someone was reading late. A couple of shifter kids chased each other around the gazebo, one of them flickering between forms fast enough that Criss couldn't tell if the kid was a fox or a very small wolf.

The Griddle & Grind sat on the corner of Main and Birch, its windows fogged with steam and warm light spilling out onto the wet sidewalk. Criss could smell Twyla's coffee from half a block away, rich and dark with something underneath that might have been cinnamon or might have been magic. With Twyla, you never could be sure.

He pushed through the door and the bell overhead chimed. The café was half full, the post-storm crowd settling into booths with mugs and plates of whatever Twyla had decided they needed to eat. The woman herself was behind the counter, wheat-colored hair twisted up with what looked like a wooden spoon, those soft brown eyes with their strange bright flecks already locked on him before the bell stopped ringing.

"Criss Holt. You look like you need caffeine and supervision."

"Just the caffeine tonight, Twyla. Large. Black. And whatever that thing is." He pointed to a pastry under the glass dome that looked like it had been assembled by someone who genuinely loved butter.

"Apple galette. Freya brought the apples this morning." Twyla plated it and slid it across the counter with a look that managed to be both maternal and deeply suspicious. "You staying out of trouble?"

"Define trouble."

"Anything that makes Kieran show up at my counter with that face he makes."

"He has several faces. You'll have to be specific."

Twyla handed him his coffee with the particular smile of a woman who had been watching people lie to themselves for far longer than her youthful face suggested. "Sit down, eat your galette, and try not to charm anyone who doesn't want to be charmed."

"That eliminates nobody, Twyla. I'm universally appealing."

"Mmhm." She was already turning to the next customer.

Criss took his coffee and the galette to a table near the window, dropping into the chair with the loose-limbed ease of someone who'd learned to look comfortable everywhere he went. The coffee was perfect. The galette was better. He leaned back and watched the street through the fogged glass, the wet cobblestone reflecting shop lights, a couple walking arm in arm past the gazebo, the last clouds pulling apart to show the first stars of the evening.

This was manageable. This was fine. A cup of coffee, a good pastry, an evening in a town that wasn't his and didn't need to be. Temporary. That was still the plan.

The bell above the door chimed again.

She walked in still wearing mud on her boots and rain in her hair, dark curls escaping from whatever had been holding them back, damp and wild around a face that caught the warm café light, making Criss's hand stop halfway to his mug. Olive skin flushed from the cold, a canvas jacket shrugged open over a flannel that had seen better days, and hazel eyes flecked with gold that swept the room with the sharp, quick assessment of someone used to cataloguing everything she saw.

She was tall for a woman, carried herself like she'd walked miles today and could walk miles more, and there was a tool belt slung low on her hips that should not have been as attractive as it was.

His tiger stirred. Not the lazy, half-interested attention he felt around most women, but something alert and focused, like a muscle tensing before a sprint.