Selkies Are a Girl's Best Friend E-Book

Molly Harper

• Herausgeber: NYLA
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 325

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Molly Harper is back with the next wickedly funny, wildly enchanting Mystic Bayou novel! Sonja Fong isn't afraid of a little chaos. As director of the League's research center in Mystic Bayou, a tiny town in Louisiana that's home to supernatural creatures and humans alike, she's responsible for making sure things run smoothly. It's not an easy task when her daily memos include lines like "new equipment is needed because the old equipment was destroyed by a temper tantrum involving dragonfire." Her job puts her in the path of Dr. Will Carmody, a mysterious shifter who's returned to Mystic Bayou after a long absence only to find that he's now considered an outsider. To make matters worse, the rift – a tear in the fabric of the universe that is leaking supernatural energy into the bayou - is unraveling at an alarming rate. Now Sonja and Will must team up to fix the rift and save Mystic Bayou from certain disaster, all while their own romance is heating up. Can they have a future together while the whole world is falling apart? This book is based on the Audible Original audiobook.

Leseprobe

Selkies Are a Girl’s Best Friend

Molly Harper

This book is licensed to you for your personal enjoyment only.

This book may not be sold, shared, or given away.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the writer’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Selkies Are a Girl’s Best Friend

Copyright © 2019 by Molly Harper

Print ISBN: 9798618077965

Ebook ISBN:9781641971409

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

This ebook is based on an Audible Original audiobook.

No part of this work may be used, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

NYLA Publishing

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http://www.nyliterary.com

Contents

1. Sonja

2. Will

3. Sonja

4. Will

5. Sonja

6. Will

7. Sonja

8. Will

9. Sonja

10. Sonja

11. Will

12. Sonja

13. Will

14. Sonja

15. Will

16. Sonja

17. Sonja

Excerpt from Nice Werewolves Don’t Bite Vampires

Also by Molly Harper

About the Author

1

Sonja

Sonja Fong didn’t need magical powers. She had formidable wi-fi and an extremely questionable browser history.

Sitting in her veritable biosphere of a workspace, Sonja tapped the keys of her laptop with a flourish and then raised her fists in triumph. She had just ordered a gross of certified-unbreakable test tubes, weirdly delicious Turkish snack cakes and a metric ton of industrial air freshener in Spring Meadow Clean, from three different suppliers in less than ten minutes and arranged for express shipping. (So the poor employees in Building Eleven wouldn’t have to suffer through Adam McTeague’s insistent microwaving of tuna noodle casserole for any longer than necessary.) Only Sonja could achieve office supply provisioning at this level of mastery. No one else should even try.

She let herself enjoy the win for one more moment, closing her almond-shaped brown eyes and breathing in the fresh green scent of her lovingly tended potted plants she kept arranged around her massive desk. Grinning, she checked the items off her to-do list, and continued to the next item. She muttered to herself as she returned to her keyboard. “No rest for the alarmingly competent.”

The next item happened to be typing a memo to the International League for Interspecies Cooperation’s head office requesting funding for a new smartboard for the conference room. It was a perfectly reasonable request, but she had to find a way to word it without stating, “because there was an incident involving a porcupine shifter throwing quills when confronted about a lab time dispute, destroying the old smartboard.” Her boss-slash-best-friend, Dr. Jillian Ramsay, tended to be a little too forthright in these matters, and they really needed another smartboard ASAP. The conference room meetings were dry enough without the aid of audio-visuals.

After the memo and lunch, she was going to be inspecting the proposed site for the new community free clinic, which happened to be an old veterinary hospital on Main Street. The previous clinic had burned down in an unfortunate dragon fire incident right after the last medical doctor left town three years before. And so, a reliable community medical facility was now one of Sonja’s priority projects.

With the town’s economy flourishing, there were few commercial properties available for the venture. It was either the vet’s office or a building that used to be a hair salon, which seemed to be less practical. Building a new free clinic would take months, and frankly, the residents of Mystic Bayou had been without a local doctor for too long. While it was easy to talk physicists and geneticists into moving to a remote location to study a rift in the fabric of the universe that was slowly leaking supernatural energy and changing the cellular make-up of nearby residents, somehow, it was difficult to talk a medical doctor into moving into that same remote location. Especially when you considered that the doctor would be paid a flat salary by the League in exchange for providing free medical care, as opposed to private practice. Also, all those pesky six-digit medical school loans.

Sonja’s very impressive brass nameplate deemed her “Director of Operations” for the League’s research center, a sprawling village of temporary buildings the League had built over the last year to delve into the secrets of Mystic Bayou and its supernaturally diverse population. In exchange for access to the rift and said population, the League was providing support in the mode of well, money, not to mention much-needed new roads, medical personnel, and other necessities the town had been lacking.

Technically, Sonja had stepped into the recently vacated place of Jillian’s executive assistant – who had turned out to be a murderous loon, which was beside the point – but Jillian thought that since Sonja would be keeping the research center open and functional, she should have a commensurate title and raise. And she got permission to re-engineer the administrative building so Sonja could have her own office space. She was in charge of keeping the place running so Jillian and her team of geniuses could do their work. Geniuses tended to forget things like ordering office supplies or remembering that people need to eat. (Hence, the order for pre-packaged chocolate-y hazelnut cupcakes from Turkey called Topkek. The genetics department was crazy for them, and sometimes it was the only nutrition they would willingly absorb during their workday.) So, it was Sonja’s job to keep the lights on, the printers inked, and the scientists fed.

She might have resented the arm-long to-do list of relatively menial tasks, considering her title had the word “director” in it, but those tasks also involved the words “dragon fire” and “porcupine quills.” Sonja was aware that she could have gotten a job anywhere in corporate America with a much larger office with a view and a disgustingly high salary, but the corporate world certainly couldn’t provide magical fire and quills. For that matter, she could have stayed in the League’s national office in Washington, D.C., where she’d been up for a considerable promotion. But she’d missed Jillian; and not to put too schmaltzy of a point on it, but for all the League’s history of shadowy maneuvers and questionable agendas, Sonja believed in what they were doing here in the Bayou. They were making life a little easier for the people here, which was something else corporate America rarely accomplished.

Just outside of her own office, the well-oiled swish of the trailer’s front door caught Sonja’s attention. Perhaps her assistant, Leonard O’Donnell, had come back from lunch early? Leonard was a lab tech from the geology department, who Sonja had transferred to the receptionist desk about a month after she took her position. For one thing, Sonja was spending too much time answering phones and manning the front desk to manage operations properly. And two, he happened to be the reason that Sonja was ordering shatter-proof test tubes. Leonard’s whole paternal line had been cursed by a particularly vindictive fairy to become clumsier the more stressed out he became. While Leonard was perfectly at ease in the field, his work in a high-stakes lab situation was a disastrous hellscape littered with glass shards. But he was a very sweet guy who had a nice relaxed phone manner and a dab hand at making visitors comfortable, so the job was a perfect fit. Also, Sonja was ninety-eight percent sure he wasn’t a murderer, so it was already a vast improvement over Lara.

But Len usually called out to her as he was walking into the office, and he generally announced that he’d brought her back a piece of pie from lunch. Because any time in Mystic Bayou was pie time. It was one of the things she really liked about this town.

“Hello?” Sonja called, poking her head out of her office, giving her unrestricted visual access to one of the most attractive men she’d seen in her lifetime strolling through the door. Her breath caught slightly at the way the unrelenting Southern sun backlit his broad shoulders and narrow hips.

Sonja’s carefully groomed sable brow rose as he strode through the door, wearing a suit that her trained eye estimated cost about four thousand dollars. It was the most expensive item of clothing she’d seen since entering the state of Louisiana three months before. She’d intentionally left her own designer wardrobe pieces in her D.C. apartment because Jillian had warned her that people in the Bayou preferred a less pretentious style of dress. But seeing a bespoke silk suit sent a strange pang of longing through Sonja, affecting her even deeper than the man’s rather admirable swimmer’s build. Her own forest green knee-length skirt and white blouse were perfectly darling and appropriate for the heat and humidity (even in October). And her shoes were a respectable department store designer brand. But these items weren’t even second-tier players in her extensive wardrobe.

Sonja missed the niceties of the big city. She was a little ashamed of it, her yearning for something more sophisticated than dinner at Bathtilda’s Pie Shop and Netflix. But she was used to certain luxuries in her life, just like Mayor Zed Berend was used to fresh honeycomb from his mother’s hives, or the postmistress, Bonita De Los Santos, was used to using her psychic gifts to read other people’s mail. Sonja’s taste for the finer things was a by-product of the life she’d lived so far, or at least, that’s how she justified some of her pricier online purchases.

And she had been staring at the attractive stranger for the last several minutes, which was not like her, to be distracted from her duties by a man—no matter how handsome.

Pull it together, Fong.

It seemed the gentleman was scanning the lobby, with its very bland decoration meant to keep any clues from people who walked in without knowing what was done in the office or unaware that fairies and monsters existed.

So, at least he didn’t see her staring as he somehow managed to sit very lithely in a chair Sonja was ninety percent sure was specifically ordered by the League to make the occupant as uncomfortable as possible.

Now that she could focus on more than just the suit, Sonja could see that the man had reddish-brown hair that was styled to hide the bit of wave that had it curling slightly at his ears. It would be an insult to simply call those deep-set eyes “blue.” They were the haunting grey-blue of the Baltic Sea, which had been one of the few things she liked about that boarding school in Denmark. His features were almost delicate for someone so tall, but the strong lantern jaw and high cheekbones kept him from being too pretty.

Maybe she should take Adam McTeague up on his repeated offers to “take her out for a nice time.” It was counter-productive for her to become so lonely that she got this side-tracked at work.

No, no, not even for her job. She would not stoop to dating a fish-microwaver.

She smoothed her regrettably off-the-rack skirt over her hips as she rose from her chair. She tossed her straight, dark hair over her shoulder and tried to paste her most welcoming-but-not-too-welcoming smile on her face.

“Hello, welcome to the Mystic Bayou satellite office of the ILIC. How can I help you?” asked Sonja.

He smiled, showing her the sort of brilliant white smile that only occurred under the influence of impressive orthodontia or shifter DNA. “Hi, I’m Dr. Will Carmody. I have an appointment with Dr. Ramsay.”

Sonja was careful not to twist her mouth into a scowl. There was no “Dr. Carmody” on Jillian’s schedule for the day. Two pie breaks and a meeting with a contingent of resentful gnomes? Sure. But no Dr. Carmody. Also, the problem with “doctor” in a complex full of academics was that he could literally be an expert in anything, giving her no clue as to what department his business could be related to. The complex was going to give her a complex.

Oh, no.

Only her continued iron control over her facial expressions prevented the inevitable eye roll.

This happened about once a week—overzealous vendors. The League had plenty of money to spend on their Mystic Bayou projects and suppliers in all areas of research knew it—even if they didn’t know exactly what the League was doing. So they would send these slick sales guys into the office uninvited to pitch their newest gadget. Pretending to have an appointment with Jillian was the opening act of the routine. And the “doctor” thing wasn’t that unusual. Some of these biotech companies employed PhD’s as their salespeople, particularly the PhD’s who weren’t well-suited to the classroom. But this guy didn’t seem like he would fall into the “too awkward to interact with students” group. Unless he was some sort of creep who would sexually harass co-eds or something.

Again, none of these thoughts showed on Sonja’s face, because she was a damn professional. She simply continued smiling as she said, “I’m sorry. I’m afraid I don’t have a Dr. Carmody on Dr. Ramsay’s schedule.”

With absolute confidence, he told her, “It was a last-minute appointment. Dr. Ramsay called and I drove right over.”

A displeased little murmur escaped Sonja’s throat before she could cover it with a cough. She hated when they lied to her, like she was too dumb to know when she was being lied to. Sure, she was attractive, stunningly so by some estimations, but she wasn’t a bimbo. Jillian didn’t make her own appointments. And she certainly didn’t make her own last-minute appointments. If Sonja allowed that, Jillian would never go home at night.

“You called just before driving over?” Sonja said, trying very hard not to scoff. “It’s more than a two-hour drive from New Orleans.”

He tilted his head at her, his blue eyes narrowing ever so slightly. “Why would you assume I drove here from New Orleans?”

She laughed lightly, which came across a little more derisive than she meant it to be. “Well, you’re certainly not from around here.”

“Why, because I wear shoes and don’t shout some random French curse word every few minutes?” he asked, lifting a brow.

Sonja’s mouth dropped open. Sure, what she said could have been construed as sort of snotty, but he honestly didn’t seem like he was from anywhere near Mystic Bayou. For one, the suit, which she already noted. And there was a slight Southern lilt to his voice, but certainly nothing like the strange gumbo of French, Cajun, intense Southern, and occasionally Norwegian accents that she heard at the grocery store. And he was just too city to live in the Bayou. He was polished and poised. She appreciated the kindness and verve of the locals, but she would hardly describe them as polished.

Oh, good grief, she was being a snob.

“That wasn’t what I meant,” she told him.

The eyebrow arch became more pronounced. And despite the incredibly attractive package, she was really starting to dislike this salesman.

“Wasn’t it?” he asked.

“I just …” she struggled to find the words to explain her conjectures that didn’t sound incredibly condescending.

“Assumed?” he said, smirking. “You know what they say about that, right?”

“I inferred that you were from somewhere northward.”

“Why?”

She cocked her head to the side, enjoying the expression of interest quirking his handsome features. “I don’t think I’m going to tell you.”

He opened his mouth to protest, but the door behind Sonja opened, interrupting him. Jillian stepped out of her office, giving Sonja a grin as Dr. Carmody rose from his chair. Jillian hadn’t changed much since her arrival in Mystic Bayou. She had the same tall, slender frame and pale coloring, but since becoming a phoenix shifter, she just seemed to glow with more – more luster to her blue eyes, more shine to her golden hair. Since Jillian had never had Sonja’s confidence in her looks, Sonja tried not to begrudge her friend the upgrade. Then again, Jillian occasionally burst into flames when she was upset, which seemed like a high price to pay for a makeover.

Also, Jillian was using her best smile. That was not the smile she used while dealing with pushy salesmen. That was more of a “I will crush you and everything you love if you show up to my office unannounced again” smile. Sonja preferred that smile, because it was hilarious to see grown men tremble before her, the same woman who had a stuffed dragon she called Drogon Jr. on her bed.

Dr. Carmody extended his hand and a bracelet slipped out from under his sleeve, catching Sonja’s eye. It certainly didn’t complete his look, the small irregular-shaped polished gray stones, strung on a thin strip of leather. It was the sort of piece you would see on a college student at a music festival, not on a doctor of any kind.

Well, maybe of anthropology.

Sonja pondered this strange fashion choice as Jillian gave the doctor a firm handshake.

“Dr. Carmody, nice to meet you. Bael and Zed speak very highly of you,” Jillian said.

“Everybody I’ve met since coming back to town has had nice things to say about you,” Will drawled smoothly. “Even Siobhan, and that’s saying something.”

Jillian laughed. “Well, you have to keep in mind how hard I had to work for that.”

“Oh, I do.”

Jillian motioned towards her office door. “Please have a seat in my office. I’ll be right in.”

Dr. Carmody smiled at Sonja in a way that could be construed as a smirk and strolled into Jillian’s office like he was about to take it over.

“Do you want me to sit in on the meeting? I could take notes on whatever he’s trying to sell us, and then find three vendors who will sell us the same thing but cheaper while sitting there in front of him, Googling on my phone? The last guy looked like he might cry when I did that, but it did get us a good deal on copy paper,” Sonja said.

Jillian snickered. “As much as I enjoy the sweetness of salesman tears, this is not a sales meeting, it’s a job interview, so your special brand of ‘negotiations’ won’t be necessary.”

“Wait, what? You always tell me about interviews ahead of time. We have a strict ‘Sonja runs her version of a background check before interviews to prevent hiring another murderer’ policy! I even wrote that down on a Post-It and left it on your monitor, where you can see it every day.”

Jillian grimaced. “I know, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about it. But it all came up last minute. I just found out we had a qualified person within parish limits about forty minutes ago. Bael and I were talking, and he mentioned Will being in town and I pounced. I’ve been on the phone trying to track him down, and then there were several calls to the head office to make sure I had clearance to even interview him. It was a whole thing.”

Sonja practically blanched. The League didn’t hire from the outside. That’s why she was able to hire Leonard as her assistant quickly and with little fuss. Once an employee passed their rigorous vetting process, the administration didn’t want to let them go.

“And they gave the OK?” asked Sonja.

“It turns out Dr. Carmody’s worked as an outreach volunteer for the League for years now, so he passed with flying colors. They’ve been trying to recruit him for a full-time position, but rightly so, he doesn’t trust us,” Jillian said.

“Yeah, you’ve got to stop saying things like that, honey, now that you’re management,” Sonja replied

Jillian scoffed. “You’re management, I’m just a science nerd who broke the Peter Principle.”

“Fine, fine, but I’m running the background check,” Sonja said. “Wait, you mean he just walks around town, looking like he’s ready for a spring runway show?”

“From what Bael said? Probably,” Jillian said, nodding.

“He must have gotten teased a lot, going to high school around here.”

“Well, fashion outcast or not, we need him, so cross your fingers, sweetie,” Jillian whispered and backed into her office, closing the door behind her.

Sonja threw her hands up in the air and asked no one in particular, “What?”

Speechless, Sonja crossed the room and slid into her office chair. She tried to analyze the last few minutes to determine what exactly the fuck was going on. Nothing about this morning was making any sense. First, this Dr. Carmody was throwing her off her game, making her flustered. And she was never flustered. She didn’t even have the presence of mind to ask Jillian what position Dr. Carmody was interviewing for—and the village had multiple openings. How was this happening? Was she slipping? Was the lack of urban amenities wearing her down?

No, that was impossible. She was mistress of all she surveyed. This was just a blip on the radar of an otherwise amazing grasp of the League’s operation.

Maybe Sonja just needed more coffee, the good stuff that creepy Portenoy girl brewed. It would be worth a trip to the morgue … But then she might miss Dr. Carmody’s exit from Jillian’s office and some hint as to whether Sonja would have to work with that frustrating specimen of man. Of course, if he did get hired, she could order him a shorter desk so he constantly whacked his knees when he sat down.

Not that she would do that to a coworker.

Again.

Leonard returned just as Sonja typed her first search in her browser, a slice of Siobhan’s heavenly pumpkin custard pie in hand, and cheerfully took over his reception desk position. Unfortunately, he also brought back a full sheaf of official paperwork from Mayor Berend, including several receipts for building and road materials the League agreed to reimburse the parish for in their agreement. And since it took considerable time for the League to reimburse anything, Sonja needed to process them personally, leaving no time for her to deep dive into Carmody’s background. The accounting department tended to process paperwork chronologically, according to date delivered, instead of considerations like, “this town can’t afford to spend this kind of money so we need to get paid back immediately.”

So, for the next hour, Sonja worked at her desk, entering numbers into the League’s online financial reporting system, pretending that she wasn’t listening to the pleasant hum of conversation coming through Jillian’s door.

Occasionally, she could hear laughter spike from inside the closed office. It appeared that Dr. Carmody’s interview was going well. Just as Sonja entered the last receipt, to replace desperately needed water lines throughout the parish, the office door opened. Jillian was laughing, her real “Tyrion just said something biting and hilarious on Game of Thrones” laugh, not the polite office laugh. Sonja hastily closed the browser window displaying an array of petite office equipment.

“Sonja!” Jillian exclaimed. “I’m pleased to introduce you to the new town doctor, Will Carmody. And you, too, Leonard O’Donnell, this is Dr. Carmody. You’ll be seeing him around the office a lot over the next few months.”

Leonard waved affably from desk. “Looking forward to it, Dr. Carmody.”

“Nice to meet you, Leonard.” Dr. Carmody nodded to Len, and then turned to Jillian and delivered some parting words in an accent much more distinct than the one he’d used with her just an hour before. It was smooth, like a ribbon of honey through whiskey, and a bit more sophisticated than that of his neighbors. Frankly, it sounded like something she might have heard in her brief stint working in the League’s Atlanta office. Maybe this guy had seen Gone with the Wind too many times? “Ah, Dr. Ramsay, I told you to call me, ‘Will.’”

“And I believe I told you to call me, ‘Jillian,’” she responded. “We’re pretty informal around here. Unless you irritated me in a meeting, and then I call you by your full title. It’s like the academic version of your mom using your middle name.”

Sonja felt like she’d lost the thread all over again. Why was Jillian being all friendly? Was she falling for this weird fake Southern charm routine? Jillian was smarter than that. And she wasn’t kidding about calling out other doctors in board meetings. Hell, Rob Aspern had a doctorate in scary complex mathematics and Jillian once pulled him aside to lovingly tell him to get his department’s collective shit together when his assistant screwed up a PowerPoint presentation.

“Sonja, you all right?” Jillian asked Sonja, who hadn’t spoken in the last few minutes. And Sonja was so perplexed by the way her morning was unfolding that she blurted out nonsense.

“So, you’re a medical doctor?” she asked. “That treats people? Who are sick? Jillian said you were an outreach volunteer.”

“Dr. Carmody has volunteered at a League outreach clinic in Seattle for years, providing medical treatment for shifters who couldn’t go to regular human doctors,” Jillian interjected.

Sonja tried not to let that change her rapidly forming opinion of the doctor, even if giving free medical treatment to vulnerable people hit her right in her carefully hidden marshmallow center. Then she remembered the smirk. Nope, he could be Mystic Bayou’s version of a saint—a werewolf Mother Teresa—and she would not be moved.

He gave her that ingratiating smile that she refused to find attractive. “Yes, I understand the confusion, what with all the doctorates around here. I graduated from Tulane and then Duke Medical school. I am board certified in internal medicine in several states.”

“Couldn’t make it in surgery?” asked Sonja.

Jillian interrupted in a too-bright tone, giving Sonja a pointed look. “We’re very lucky to have Dr. Carmody working for us, since he’s a local and has a strong rapport with the locals. It should make for a seamless transition.”

Sonja stared long and hard at the doctor, who was definitely smirking at her this time. So he was from “around here,” and that’s why he seemed to take her assessment so personally.

She felt a faint tug of guilt at her conscience for her assumption, but a normal person would reply to her statement with a simple, “No, actually, I was born just up the road,” instead of turning it into some overblown test of character.

“So, maybe you two should go to lunch at the sweet shop and get to know each other,” Jillian suggested. “Because you’ll be working together very closely for the next few months while you get the community clinic up and running again.”

Sonja glared ever so slightly at her friend. “I don’t have time to take lunch.”

Jillian grinned in response. “Sure you do, it’s written on your daily schedule, starting in five minutes.”

“I still have several items on my to-do list, like justifying the purchase of a new smartboard … and ordering an obscene about of ice cream from Ingrid Asher for the Harvest Festival.”

“I’m sure that you can accomplish all of that after lunch,” Jillian chirped. “And while you’re at it, you can take Will over to the potential location for the inspection, talk, just to get a feel for what you both hope to accomplish with the clinic.”

Dr. Carmody and his stupid handsome face were still smirking at Sonja, handsomely. “I have time in my schedule.”

Sonja muttered, “What joy is mine.”

Jillian snickered, but hid it with a cough. Like a lady.

“If you’ll just give me a minute, I have some things I need to wrap up here,” Sonja told him.

“I’ll meet you at the sweet shop in a few minutes,” he said.

“Wonderful,” she said as he walked out of office door. She turned on Jillian, her outstretched hands shaking. “Why would you do that?”

“You’re unflappable, and it seems the good Doctor Carmody leaves you significantly flapped,” Jillian said, nodding. “And I happen to find that very amusing.”

Leonard snorted and when both women turned on him, he flushed beet red. “Sorry.”

“We’re just going to go in here so I can yell at our boss, OK, Len?” Sonja said.

“Sure thing!” Leonard said, nodding. “I’ll hold her calls.”

“Good man!” Sonja herded Jillian into her office, where Jillian flopped into the squashy indigo chair in the corner across from Sonja’s massive desk. “What is wrong with you?”

“I have known you for a very long time. I have never seen you all flustered like that. I think you like the doctor! Which is more interest than you have shown anyone since you got here. And I am going to blatantly encourage that, because I love you and because it will be highly entertaining,” Jillian explained.

“I do not,” Sonja insisted. “In fact, I opposite of like the doctor. I think the doctor is a condescending jerk. And I’ll have you know I regularly check out Zed’s ass when no one is looking, despite the fact that he is permanently matched up with Dani, who I’m absolutely sure could take me.”

“That is probably true,” Jillian mused. “She’s basically a Viking and she can throw energy grenades. But you have to admit that of all the men in Mystic Bayou, Will Carmody is the most likely to be your type. He’s smart and nice—”

“He’s not that nice,” Sonja interjected.

Jillian protested, “He devoted years to working for League-based charities, providing health care for underprivileged shifter babies. I’m not trying to canonize him, I’m just saying, he could have been golfing. And he’s not exactly hard on the eyes. Not to mention, he’s the only man I’ve ever seen whose shoes probably cost more than yours.”

“That’s not true,” Sonja insisted. “All right, it’s probably true. They were very nice shoes. But are we sure he really volunteered for that charity? It could have been court-ordered community service.”

Jillian tilted her head and stared at her. “Honey, no.”

“Fine, he is the werewolf Mother Teresa, but I’m still running that background check!” Sonja insisted.

“Agreed, run the background check because it will make us all feel better. But in the meanwhile, you are going to have to work with him on the clinic project. So go be the miraculous professional you are and get the job done.”

Sonja pursed her lips. “You’re right, I am a miraculous professional,” she grumbled, grabbing her purse. “But I don’t have to like it.”

“No, you don’t.” Jillian nodded as Sonja glided across the lobby to the door. Jillian called after her, “Just so you know, he’s not a werewolf!”

“Don’t care!” Sonja called back as the door closed behind her.

2

Will

Will let the door of the sweet shop close quietly behind him, unsure of the reception he would receive at Bathtilda’s.

Unlike the generally spiffed up feeling of the buildings around town, Bathtilda’s had changed very little since his childhood. The pre-Civil War structure still sported its emerald green pressed tin roof. It seemed Bathilda still painted the walls a blinding white every winter, whether it needed it or not. Mismatched glass cake stands still displayed the shop’s near-magical crusted creations. The booths were still lined with cracked green vinyl, that pinched your ass like a shady traveling Bible salesman if you sat the wrong way. Even the pictures on the walls were the same. The proprietor’s dragon nature meant she craved gold nearby at all times, all of her wall art involved gold foil—a desert landscape, a painting of a gray kitten, an old icon of a Russian orthodox saint. Some of them were garage sale finds, others were ‘forcefully curated’ by Bathtilda herself. It was kitschy on the edge of tacky, so even Will had to admit that it was a look replicated in hipster cafés located on every other block in Seattle.

The sign reading, “Now serving flavors from the Ice Cream Depot!” was new, however.

His entrance lacked the stunned, slack-jawed silence he’d dreaded since he returned just a few weeks before, but it was a near thing. The pie shop was the local center for gathering and gossip, and walking through the door marked his official re-entry into Mystic Bayou more than applying for any job.

It had been a very long time since he’d seen most of the people in this room, more than twenty years. It was a blink of an eye for some shifters. But in a town where most people lived and died within the same ten square miles, it made him a bit of a freak. And considering that a good portion of the local population sprouted fangs and fins, that was saying something.

His neighbors were trying very hard not to look like they were staring at him, which he appreciated. It was better than not being recognized at all, which was what happened at Gene Robichaux’s Gas’N’Get station just outside of town. Old Gene, whom Will had known since Gene was a child, had treated him like any other customer—except, of course, to tell him, “Sorry, young fella, we don’t have one of them electric car chargin’ thangs.”

It had hurt more than Will had expected, so much that he hadn’t had the heart to tell Gene who he was. And of course, Jon offered to go out and buy him some Kleenex and a copy of TheNotebook to make Will feel better, because that was Jon’s idea of brotherly support.

“Well, Doctor Carmody, are you gonna just stand there lookin’ or are you gonna sit down?” a gruff female voice groused, breaking him out of his reverie.

Siobhan, the shop’s resident baker and cranky brownie, stood all of five-foot-two behind the counter, scrawny arms crossed over her chest. Like the shop, Siobhan had not changed in his time away. Her pixie face was still carved with frown lines. Her salt-and-pepper hair was still just long enough to cover ears he knew to be pointed. He also knew that if he looked over the counter, she would still be wearing the same pair of red Converse sneakers she’d been wearing since before they were cool.

“I’m gonna have a seat back there, Siobhan. Miss Sonja from the League will be joining me, so you might wait a bit on my order,” Will said.

“Don’t need your order,” Siobhan scoffed. “You’ve needed the same thing since you were a pup.”

He shook his head as he headed toward a booth in the back. Bathtilda Boone, one of the many Boone proprietors in Mystic Bayou, was smart enough to know that while she had more than enough business acumen to run the shop, her cooking was a public hazard. She was also smart enough to hire Siobhan, whose kitchen fairy magic enabled her to prescribe just what a customer needed—pie to heal a broken heart, pie to soothe jangled nerves, pie to feed the soul. And then she served it to you without your input, thank you very much.

Of course, you could choose whatever you wanted off of the menu, but it wouldn’t give you what you needed.

He slid into the booth he and Jon had claimed since childhood, and sure enough, it grabbed at the seat of his pants as he slid across the vinyl. He tried not to clutch at his own ass to check for damage to his suit. That was the sort of thing that got you teased around here. Sure, the suit was expensive, but he had a few more at home. Not many, mind you. He’d gotten rid of three-quarters of his “city” wardrobe before he’d moved, donating it to a group that helped homeless people dress for job interviews. He knew he wouldn’t have room for it in his childhood closet at the family home, and there weren’t many places to wear bespoke silk around Mystic Bayou anyway.

From across the aisle, Jimmy Hickens, Earl Webster, Jeb Cho and Karl Bruhl—senior citizens who occupied the same booth in the shop every day from breakfast to afternoon pie time, drinking coffee and solving the problems of the world—nodded to him.

“Hey there, Will,” Earl rasped in his gravelly voice. “Heard you were coming back to town.”

“Nice to see y’all,” Will said.

That was about all of the conversation he could expect from the quartet for now. Like many of the residents of Mystic Bayou, it would take a while before they trusted him enough for casual coffee chat. He hoped that being the town doctor would bridge that gap a bit, though he had to admit there was always a chasm between him and his bayou neighbors. He’d known from the time he was a boy that he would leave the town someday. He’d known he wanted to be a doctor. He’d always been smart, and gods knew he’d been left alone enough to study. He liked medicine. He liked the puzzle of it, and that he could help people with the bits of information that he learned from reading. Books had always been his lifeline.

He turned his attention to the door. He wasn’t sure how he felt about this impromptu “business lunch” with Ms. Sonja Fong. The moment he’d walked into the office he’d staggered at the sight of her, utterly human and utterly lovely. He’d pretended he was letting his eyes adjust to the cool, shadowed interior of the office building, but, honestly, his feet felt cemented to the floor at the sight of the slightly mocking, cinnamon-glossed curve of her smile. He never thought he would describe someone’s eyes as “sparkling.” He was a doctor, and he was acutely aware that eyes were gloriously complex collections of delicate tissue and nerves, not magical glitter and glass. But Sonja’s dark eyes definitely sparkled, like she knew a secret … and it was probably about him. She left him very unsure of anything, and he didn’t particularly like that.

She had what his Gran would have called a cameo of a face, oval and formed with God’s own fingertips. Her skin was a warm shade of gold-under-cream that made him want to reach out and touch the apple of her cheek. Not that he would, because that would probably be creepy. She smelled like frozen violets, all snow and cold and sweet petals, and he wasn’t even sure that was a thing. Also, she didn’t seem to like him very much, which was strange because most women warmed to him immediately. It was just part of his selkie nature.