“Need a hand with that?”

The woman on the ramp jumped, and almost dropped the box she was carrying. It was the second box she’d taken out of the truck. The first one now sat at the bottom of the ramp, the cardboard turning dark and soggy as the rain pounded against it. Clint frowned as he glanced at it.

“I hope there’s nothing in that box that isn’t waterproof.”

The woman, who had just recovered her balance, managed a slight shrug even though her arms were occupied with the second giant box.

“I’ll just perform a drying spell on it. I need to get all of the stuff off the van and return it within the next hour, or I’m going to be charged an overtime fee. It took me a lot longer than I thought it would to find this place.”

So she was a wizard. Clint squinted through the rain, trying to get a good look at the woman. The hood on her poncho had blown off, and her dark hair was now plastered in wet ribbons against the side of her head. But even with her “drowned rat” look, and even in the darkness, Clint could tell she was a beauty. In fact, she might be the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. This realization only made him angrier. A beautiful girl like her was bound to be the popular type. He could already envision his tiny cul-de-sac crowded with cars when she threw big parties, and he grunted as he thought about the steady stream of boyfriends she was likely to bring over. His hope of continuing his peaceful solitude was evaporating more with every second. Still, he was too much of a gentleman to let this poor girl unload the truck by herself.

“Let me help you,” he said, reaching to take the box from her. “Although, if you want to get this truck back in an hour, you’re probably out of luck. It takes at least a half-hour to get back to town from here.”

“That’s why I have to hurry. I’m just unloading everything and leaving it in the driveway. I’ll come back and actually put it inside later.”

“Your stuff is going to be ruined,” Clint said as she let him grab the box she was holding. “Wow, this box is really light. What did you pack in here, feathers?”

She laughed, and Clint was startled by the musical sound of her laughter, which drowned out the dreary patter of the rain for a few moments. “No, I put a weightlessness spell on it. Just like I’ll put a drying spell on all my stuff when I get back from returning the van. Nothing will be ruined. Honestly, you shifters. How do you live without magic?”

Clint bristled a little at the question. “I seem to have managed thus far. You really want me to just leave this box in the rain?”

“Yup, just pile it there next to the other one. If we both work together we should definitely get this truck unloaded in time. Thank you so much for your help. I’m Sunny, by the way.”

“Clint.”

“Nice to meet you, Clint,” Sunny said as she went to grab another box. Clint set down the box he was holding and hopped up into the moving truck, not bothering to wait for Sunny to finish walking down the ramp with her box. He tentatively tried to lift another box, and found that it was, of course, as light as air. He had to hand it to Sunny. Weightlessness spells did come in useful when moving. He held the box firmly and hopped off the truck in one quick leap. After leaving the box in the growing pile in the driveway, he hopped back into the truck. There weren’t actually that many boxes, and at this rate they’d probably be done unloading in about fifteen minutes. Maybe less.

Good. Then he could get back inside and back to working on the Dark Warriors problem. Maybe he could even manage to avoid getting too friendly with Sunny. After all, they were rushing to move boxes. No time for small talk, right?

Wrong. At least, wrong if you asked Sunny. She seemed thrilled to have someone to talk to.

“So have you lived in Torch Lake long?”

“Almost two years now.”

“Wow, that’s a while. Wasn’t the town only founded about three years ago?”

“Yup. I was one of the earliest citizens. But certainly not the first. There’s a group that’s been here even longer than me.”

Clint reached to test the weight of a small sofa. He lifted it with one hand as easily as if it were made of paper.

“I’m new here,” Sunny said as she walked by him with a treadmill in one hand and a bar stool in the other.

“I never would have guessed.”

Sunny apparently missed the sarcastic note in his voice, though, because she brightened up at his words. “Really? Do I seem like a native?”

Clint sighed as he set the couch down beside the boxes, wincing as he watched rainwater starting to pool on the leather cushions. He hoped Sunny’s drying spells worked as well as she thought they would. Otherwise that couch was ruined.

“No one here is a native. Except maybe the High Council, I guess, since they started the town. But even the High Council members are just a mix of wizards and shifters from different clans that were destroyed or displaced in the War.”

“Yeah, but still. People who have been here since the beginning seem like natives to someone like me. What kind of shifter are you, by the way?”

Clint gritted his teeth. He already knew what was coming, once she realized what he was. But there was no way to avoid it, unless he lied, which he did not want to do. And, anyway, even if he lied, she was bound to find out the truth eventually. He might as well get it over with.

“I’m a dragon.”

She dropped the television she was carrying, and it shattered into large pieces, but she didn’t seem to notice. “You’re a dragon? I’m going to be living next door to a dragon? My landlord didn’t even tell me.”

So she’s renting. Good. Maybe she’ll leave when her lease is up.

“Yes, I’m a dragon. But we’re pretty much just normal shifters, just like everyone else. No need to flip out about it.”

“Normal? You guys aren’t normal and you know it! You’re freaking dragons! The closest thing to magical you’ll find in a shifter. This is awesome. I feel so lucky. And there aren’t that many of you in town, right?”

“Not yet. We’re working on getting a few more to move here.” Clint turned his back to Sunny under the pretense of searching for another box. He didn’t want to let her see the annoyance in his face, or the unease. She had no idea what a sore spot she’d just hit on. There weren’t that many dragons in town, no. And the High Council blamed him for that, even though it should have been obvious that some sort of dark magic was at play here.

“Huh, yeah. Well I hope you do get more soon. One of my friends over in Falcon Cross told me not to move here. She said she doesn’t understand why everyone is so gung ho about Torch Lake when your general population is growing so much faster than your dragon population. There are a lot of rumors that the town isn’t going to be safe if things continue this way. People are saying there won’t be enough dragon shifters to hold back dark magic.”

“That’s rubbish. Torch Lake is perfectly safe.” Clint whirled around with another box and jumped off the truck, resisting the temptation to hurl the box across the driveway in anger.

Sunny had stopped unloading and was stroking her chin thoughtfully as her rain poncho flapped uselessly around her. She finally shrugged. “Oh well. I’m not scared of dark magic, anyway. I can protect myself whether or not there are dragon shifters around.”

Clint gave her a sidelong glance. She was tall, curvy, and beautiful, but she definitely didn’t look tough. She definitely didn’t look like the type who could protect herself if need be. But he resisted the urge to give her a lecture on the dangers of not taking dark magic seriously. All he wanted right now was to finish unloading this truck and get back inside his warm, dry house. His warm, dry, quiet house. So he changed the subject.

“Looks like you might be needing a new television,” he said, pointing to the pieces of television scattered around Sunny’s feet. She glanced down and seemed to notice the debris for the first time.

“Oh, shit. Magicae sarcio.” She pointed her magic ring at the mess while speaking the repairing spell, and within moments all of the pieces came back together and reassembled themselves. Clint stared for a moment, a bit surprised. He knew, of course, that repairing spells existed. But he’d never seen anyone other than the High Council members put back together something that had shattered into that many pieces. All of the tiny crystals of glass that had scattered everywhere came back together perfectly on the television screen. Sunny must have noticed him staring, because she laughed.

“I’m pretty good at putting stuff back together. I’m such a klutz that I have to be. I’m always breaking stuff.”

Clint nodded, and went back to unloading the truck. But something nagged at the back of his mind. Sunny may have laughed off her magical abilities, but she had sounded a little uneasy when she did. Almost like she didn’t want to talk about her magic. But why? She was good at spell casting, and wasn’t shy about using spells to make her life easier. Some wizards Clint knew would have considered using weightlessness spells to make moving into a new place easier a form of “cheating.” They were always concerned with appearing tough to other people, and with not using magic as some sort of cop-out. But Sunny seemed completely comfortable in her own magical skin.

“Anyway,” Sunny said, interrupting Clint’s thoughts. “I’m glad you’re not a wolf shifter, at least. My dog hates wolf shifters. I don’t know why. It’s some sort of territorial thing, I guess. During the War, I was staying in Falcon Cross for a bit and we lived next door to a wolf shifter refugee. Mocha growled and barked at the guy nonstop. I thought we were going to get kicked out of our apartment.”

Clint raised an eyebrow. “Mocha is your dog’s name?”

Sunny smiled and nodded. “Yup. He’s in the front seat of the moving truck right now. Didn’t want to come out in the rain, I guess.”

“I can’t say I blame him. You picked the worst time of year to move.”

Sunny’s face darkened. “I didn’t have much of a choice,” she said. Then it was her turn to abruptly turn around and avoid talking to Clint.

Clint sighed. He had no idea why what he’d just said had pissed her off, but he didn’t have the energy to care right now. He worked even quicker than before, and the moving van grew emptier and emptier with every passing minute. It took the two of them ten more minutes to unload completely, and they worked the whole time in silence, much to Clint’s relief. When they were done, he offered to start taking her things inside while she drove the truck back, but she waved him off.

“No, no. You’ve done enough. Thank you. I’ll take my time moving all of this when I get back. Really, don’t worry about it. A few drying spells and it’ll all be good as new.”

Normally, Clint would have insisted, but he was too beat to care about manners and politeness anymore. He still had hours of work ahead of him, and he needed to get back to it if he wanted any hope of actually getting some sleep tonight.

“Alright, see you around then,” he said, giving Sunny a small wave as he turned to head back toward his house.

“See you around, dragon,” she said brightly.

Clint stiffened and quickened his pace. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he’d detected a note of flirtation in her voice. He wasn’t interested in having some ditzy wizard chick drooling all over him because he was a dragon, and he definitely wasn’t interested in having a ditzy wizard chick as a neighbor.

Clint stepped into his house and slammed the door behind him, cursing as a small puddle began to form around his feet where the rain water ran off of him. He could have used a drying spell himself right about now, but there’s no way he was going to ask Sunny for help. Even if he’d wanted to, he could see the lights of the moving truck already starting to dance down the road, away from the house next door. She was in a hurry to get the truck back to save herself the overtime charges.

Clint would just have to dry things off the old fashioned way, with a towel. He’d managed just fine before having a wizard next door, and he would have preferred to keep things that way. Hopefully Sunny would move once her lease was up. She was new here, after all. She’d probably managed to get a good deal on the house since the street was so deserted, but once she realized that there were far better places in Torch Lake for a young, sociable woman to live, she’d move.

At least he hoped she would. He liked having this street to himself. Home was the only place he got any peace these days, and he had a feeling that things with the High Council had barely even started to heat up.

Trouble was brewing. Clint had to stay one step ahead of it if he wanted to keep his job, and his life. Unlike his bubbly new neighbor, Clint did not underestimate the power of dark magic.