Reese Cooper heard the soft sound of sobbing long before he got to the entrance of the ramshackle shed in his backyard. It was a low, broken sound that tugged at his heart and froze him in his tracks.
Damn . . . He clutched the brown paper bag filled with the bacon cheeseburger and fries he’d ordered from the Cougar’s Den, his friend Liam Keller’s bar, and shifted uncertainly from foot to foot. He’d wanted to eat the food there with his friends. Keller and his new mate, Samantha, and her sister Sadie and her mate Mathis had all been eating lunch. But then Fiona ShadowTree, the town’s resident pharmacist-slash-wise woman, had informed him that he had to take the food to go because there was someone crying in his back garden shed.
How she had that information, Reese had no idea and he didn’t ask. Fiona wasn’t someone you ignored, though, so he got the food packed up and left. But despite the wise woman’s words, he still hadn’t really expected to find a damsel in distress sitting between his lawnmower and the bag of potash he kept to fertilize the hydrangeas. And yet, the sounds coming from the broken-down garden shed were unmistakable.
Not that he was sure it was a damsel—he still hadn’t looked into the shed, after all. But the soft sobbing sounded feminine. Reese, who had grown up in a house full of sisters, knew the sounds of an upset female better than the average single guy would.
Inside himself, he felt the Fox, his other half, lifting its pointed nose to sniff with interest. Who was this intruder and what did she want with him? People always said, “sly as a fox,” but Reese thought that was a misrepresentation of his kind, who were extremely rare even in Shifter country.
True, Foxes could be sly and cunning when it came to protecting themselves and the mates they claimed, but his own beast was more curious than crafty. The soft feminine sounds of distress tugged at his Fox as much as they did on Reese.
Hang on, he told it. We’ll check it out but we don’t want to scare her—whoever she is.
Taking quiet, cautious steps, he approached the front of the shed where the warped wooden door, which was hanging halfway off its hinges, was only partially shut.
Sitting inside, in a dark corner, was a petite girl with long red hair and a pale face smudged with dirt and tracked with tears. She’d rubbed some kind of gray dust on her skin that smelled strange and made his nose itch. Reese couldn’t see what color her eyes were because they were cast down, looking at what she was holding in her hand. Which was . . .
Holy shit! Reese’s eyes widened. The girl had a long silver dagger with a black handle in one hand and she was holding the wickedly sharp-looking blade over her wrist. Her hand wavered and the knife dipped—it looked like she was trying to nerve herself up to slice into the tender bracelet of blue veins that pulsed under her pale, scratched skin.
Reese felt a surge of distress from his Fox, which echoed his own emotion. This poor girl, whoever she was, was clearly at the end of her rope and she’d somehow decided his garden shed was the right place to off herself. He couldn’t let that happen.
“Hang on now, honey,” he said, taking a step into the shed. “Don’t do that. Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad. Just stop and think a minute before you do something you can’t take back.”
The girl started and the knife jumped in her hand, making a long but hopefully non-lethal slice in the pale skin of her arm. She looked up and her eyes grew huge with fear as she stared at Reese looming over her.
“Get back!” She jumped to her feet and the wickedly sharp blade was suddenly pointed at his heart. “Get back you . . . you man!”
As a curse word it wasn’t very cutting—not nearly as much as the dagger in her hand would be, Reese was certain—but he had the idea she said it with the same venom anyone else might have called him a bastard or a son of a bitch.
“Now look, darlin’,” he said, trying to make his voice low and appeasing. “I’m not going to hurt you—”
“I know you’re not because if you come one step closer I’m going to stab you through the heart!”
There was a wild, fierce light in her eyes that told Reese she was absolutely serious even though the top of her head didn’t quite reach his shoulder and she was probably only about a hundred pounds soaking wet.
“I mean it!” she said, waving the knife threateningly. “Get away—get back! I may look helpless but I’m not and I won’t let you . . . let you do that to me no matter what. I’d rather die first.”
Reese frowned. “Do what to you? And this is my shed you’re in, you know. I have a right to be in here.”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean, you man,” she spat, using the word as a curse again. “I know what you want—I’ve been through it before but I’m never going through it again. I’ll kill you and then myself if you try it! I swear I will!”
“Whoa . . . okay, all right . . .” She was serious, Reese could tell and not just by the fire in her red-rimmed eyes. Under the strangely scented dust she’d rubbed on her skin, his sensitive Shifter nose detected the smell of fear and desperation like a strong perfume. The girl was nearly suicidal and it wouldn’t take much to push her into being homicidal too.
Then her words began to sink in. “I won’t let you do that to me,” she’d said. “I’d rather die first.” And she seemed to think he was a threat just because he was a man.
Someone hurt her in the past—hurt her bad, he thought, and a surge of anger went through him. Growing up as the only brother in a houseful of sisters meant his protective instinct towards females was strong and well developed. If someone—some male—had hurt or abused the little red-haired female in the past, no wonder she was frightened now.
It also probably doesn’t help that you’re looming over her like a fucking monster, Reese, muttered a voice in his head. She’s so tiny and you’re so big—she’s already upset and now you’re scaring her half to death just being so close. You need to back up—give her some space.
His Fox agreed with the idea and Reese knew it was the right thing to do.
“Look,” he said, raising his hands, one of which was still gripping the bag with the cheeseburger and fries in it. “I’m backing up. I’m not going to hurt you.” He took a step back and the fries inside the bag rattled as the warm scent of the cheeseburger wafted from the sides of the paper sack.
The girl’s eyes tracked the bag and Reese saw for the first time how skinny she was. She had on a tattered black dress with thin straps that showed her dust-smeared arms and he swore he could see her ribs through it. Her collarbones, as delicate and fragile as a bird’s, were clearly visible above the rounded neckline.
It gave Reese a sudden idea.
“Hey, are you hungry?” he asked, trying to make his voice low and coaxing. “Want some food?” He rattled the bag again, deliberately this time. “Why don’t you come out of the shed and into the house with me? We’ll split this cheeseburger and get that cut on your arm taken care of, and you can tell me why you decided my garden shed was the right place to shuffle off your mortal coil.”
For a moment the dagger she held sagged and Reese saw her lick her lips hungrily. He felt a surge of pity. Oh yeah, she was starving. She looked like she hadn’t eaten in a week, if not longer.
But then her gaze hardened and she lifted the silver blade of the dagger again.
“Go into the house with you? I don’t think so,” she snapped. “If you want me out of your shed, fine, I’ll go. Just don’t try to stop me.”
“I’ll let you go,” Reese said, taking another step back. “As long as you tell me you’ve got someplace to go. Where do you belong, anyway?”
The girl’s eyes went wide and her lush lower lip trembled for a moment.
“Nowhere,” she whispered. “I . . . I don’t belong anywhere anymore. I just know I can’t . . . can’t go back into the forest. Not at night, anyway.”
Reese’s heart fisted in his chest.
“Look, honey—” he began but the girl waved her dagger at him threateningly, a motion that caused the blood dripping from the cut on her arm to spatter on the ground below.
“I said I’ll go—I’ll leave your shed and you won’t even know I was here. Just leave me alone.”
Reese felt a surge of frustration. Clearly she wasn’t going to trust him. He was too big—too male. He was six foot seven and muscular, as most Shifter males were. If she’d been hurt by a man before, someone his size was going to look scary, no matter what he said to try and assuage her fears.
Someone your size, yes, whispered the Fox in his head. But what about me?
It was a good idea—Reese felt it in his bones.
“I’ll go,” he said to the girl. “But I’m not kicking you out. In fact, I wish you’d stay—as long as you don’t kill yourself, I mean,” he added hastily.
“Why would you want me to stay?” Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. They were amber, Reese saw as she moved into the light slanting in through the half-open shed door. When they flashed with fear and anger they were almost gold. Her hair, when the sunlight fell across it, lit up like a flame—it was a pale red with hints of orange, not unlike the color of his Fox’s coat when he Shifted.
Gorgeous, he couldn’t help thinking. Despite the dirt and tattered clothing and the tear tracks down her cheeks, she was so beautiful it took his breath away. But this was no time to start handing out compliments—it would only make her more suspicious.
“I just don’t want to push you out in the cold with no place to go,” he said. “Okay—I’m leaving now,” he added when she waved the knife at him again.
Turning, he walked quickly across his lawn towards the backdoor of his house, which was a big, rambling Victorian with a wrap-around porch he’d inherited from his dad. Leaving the brown paper sack on his back steps, he stepped around the side of the house and began rapidly shedding his clothes.
The girl was never going to trust him—not in his human form, anyway. But he’d rarely seen a female who could resist a cute, cuddly little animal and that was exactly what Reese intended to become.
It was late afternoon and the moon was nowhere near full yet, but Reese was an Alpha, able to Shift anywhere and anytime he needed or wanted. Of course, it hurt—Shifting was an agonizingly painful process, made worse by the fact that Lady Moon wasn’t out to help him—but Reese managed.
He felt his bones bending in different directions and his muscles shifting even as his mass decreased dramatically. With most other Shifters, the change would have gone a different way and their mass would have increased. That was because when most Shifters turned into their animal counterparts, they became much, much larger than they were in human form.
Reese’s friend Liam Keller, for instance, turned into a cougar the size of a draft horse with six-inch serrated fangs. Mathis Blackwell became an Irish Elk—the largest deer to ever roam the planet. It had gone extinct around eleven thousand years ago, as had the kind of saber-tooth cougar Keller became—except among the Shifter community.
The Shifter race had started back in the Stone Age—the Paleolithic Era, technically. That was when Lady Moon—the goddess who lived in the moon and watched over the world at night—had consecrated a special cave where only the bravest and fiercest warriors could enter. The legend went that on full moon nights when a warrior entered the holy cave and painted the shape of the animal he wished to become on the wall, Lady Moon would endow him with that animal’s shape and strength on the nights when she was full.
Reese didn’t know if the story was true but he figured Shifters must have started somewhere and it was certainly true that it was easier to Shift during the full moon.
He considered his size in his Fox form and then made himself a little smaller—until he was about the size of a Chihuahua. Reese had the extra benefit of size control, unlike most Shifters. There was even a neat little addendum to the Shifter legend to explain it—Reese’s father used to tell it to him at bedtime when he was a kid.
The story was that one full moon night a brave warrior made his way to the holy cave. On its walls rather than painting the massive cave bear or the fierce saber tooth tiger or even the swift and deadly dire wolf—instead, he painted the fox. A plain, red fox which was only a little larger back in the Stone Age than its modern counterpart today.
On seeing the fox, Lady Moon spoke and asked in her silvery voice, “Warrior, why do you seek to become such a small creature when the world is filled with predators much larger and fiercer than the fox?”
“Lady Moon,” the warrior—presumably Reese’s very distant ancestor replied—“the fox may be small but he is also swift and cunning. He is fast enough to stay out of the way of larger predators but fierce enough to fight for his mate if need be. And he can get into places larger animals cannot and needs much less food to sustain himself. The Fox is also wise—I want wisdom and knowledge, not just brute strength. Given all this, why would anyone wish to be other than a Fox?”
Lady Moon had given a silvery laugh.
“Why indeed, Warrior?” she replied. “Wise you shall be, but never defenseless. I grant you the ability to change your Shifted form. You will be able to shrink to the size of the smallest mouse or grow as big as the cave lion at will. Go and use your power wisely.”
Reese hoped he was using his power wisely now. His instinct told him that the girl in his shed would respond better to him in Fox form than as a human. Also, he was taking care to use what he thought of as his “little” size. He thought for a moment of going tiny—the size of a mouse—but rejected it. She would think that size was strange and he was too vulnerable in it. Likewise, he wasn’t about to show her his largest form—what he thought of as his “holy shit!” size. Seeing a red fox the size of a cave lion—which had been a huge prehistoric beast that put modern lions to shame—would only scare her.
No, Chihuahua size was about right, he decided. Leaving his discarded clothing in a pile, he trotted out from around the side of the house and headed back to the shed.
* * *
Jo kept a firm grip on her athame and watched the door of the shed alertly to see if the huge man with the reddish-brown hair was coming back. She didn’t trust his seeming kindness or his promises not to hurt her. She’d heard such promises before—many years ago.
“What’s the matter, baby? Where are you going? Stay here and just talk to us—come on, we won’t hurt you,” whispered a voice from her past.
Jo shook her head, her long hair whipping around her dirty face as she tried to push the memory back. No—I won’t think of that now. I swore never to think of it again!
It had been so much easier when she lived with her coven. Back at Avalon, the all-female retreat and commune she’d lived in for the past twenty-two years, she knew her place and her station in relation to her sister Wiccans. She’d had the Elders to look up to and the respect of the younger members of the community as she taught them spell-craft, weaving, meditation, and healing. On every Tuesday and Thursday she had ventured into town to teach a children’s Yoga class at the local YWCA. And best of all, she’d never had to come into contact with any men.
Men. Jo shivered with disgust. Since being kicked out of Avalon, it seemed like men were the only people she saw. She’d been traveling in the forest alone in fear for her life for what felt like years—though it was really closer to two weeks. In that time she’d been attacked three times—every time by men.
Jo frowned. Well, she thought all the attackers were male. The group in the forest certainly were men . . . until they suddenly weren’t human anymore.
She thought of the male voices that had turned thick and growling, of the hungry howling and the blur of shadows in the moonlight as they became . . . something else, Jo didn’t know what. She’d heard of Skin Walkers before—evil beings that could skin an animal and wear the pelt to take on the form of the beast they had killed. But she’d never encountered them until the horrible night of the full moon—the first night after she’d been kicked out of Avalon, the only home she’d known from the age of nineteen.
She’d escaped, but just barely and then the pain had started—the awful, burning, tearing sensation that made her feel like huge hands were trying to rip all her limbs out of their sockets. It felt like she was falling apart—like she was dying. And after a while, Jo had wanted to die—had wished for death and begged the Goddess to take her. A request that had not been answered, or she wouldn’t still be here wondering what was happening to her.
The pain had been just another sign that something was going wrong with her—something terrible and possibly fatal. But Jo didn’t know what her mysterious new disease was or how to stop it. She’d only known that she had to keep moving somehow, despite the pain. Had to keep the Skin Walkers—if that was what they were—from finding her.
And they weren’t the only ones stalking her either.
Stumbling through the forest with the howling pack behind her and her body in agony, she’d come upon a white ash tree that had been struck by lightning. Knowing the magical properties of the wood—associated with protection and wisdom—Jo had rubbed her skin with the ashes she scraped from the tree’s blackened husk.
The horrible pain had eased some and the pack of Skin Walkers had run past her in the night, mercifully oblivious to her presence as she crouched in the shelter of the dead tree’s split trunk. She’d stayed there all night, shivering and alone, yet not alone because always, always she felt a presence at her back—a menacing something that was glad to see her pain. The shadow creature coming for her . . .
Jo pushed the thought aside. The shadow creature which had chased her into the safety of the shed couldn’t come out during the daylight hours—it was a thing of darkness, she was certain. Somehow she’d survived last night and she would again—she just had to find another safe haven before the sun set.
Her mind returned to that first awful full-moon night. The ashes from the holy tree had helped hide her scent and the awful, tearing pain hadn’t reoccurred . . . so far. But there were other pains—less pressing but still enough to make her miserable—that the white ash tree’s ashes couldn’t help. Like the headache in her temples that wouldn’t go away. Or the strange throbbing between her thighs that seemed to grow worse all the time.
Despite her pain and fear she had journeyed on, though she felt worse by the hour and the shadow creature kept drawing nearer. There was no repeat of the pack of Skin Walkers in the forest but a man had tried to pick her up as she walked wearily down the side of the highway. He seemed nice at first, then grew angry and grabby when Jo declined his offer. She’d had to fight him off with her athame, which wasn’t meant to be used as a weapon at all, but only a tool for ceremonies.
The attacks had brought back bad memories—ones she’d kept buried for twenty-two years. She didn’t want to remember—didn’t want to think of that awful night in the park. And yet the present kept bringing back the past.
She’d run back into the woods and done her best to avoid the shadow creature and get back to civilization—although she had no idea what she would do once she got there. Civilization, after all, appeared to be full of lustful, abusive men who wanted to take what she wasn’t willing to give. Clearly a woman alone wasn’t safe—not even a Third Level Wiccan like Jo. But where would she be safe? Where could she go now that the woods were too dangerous to enter?
After making sure she was safe in the shed, she’d fallen into an exhausted sleep and woken in the afternoon with her temples throbbing and her aching head full of questions.
Who am I? What am I? Where do I belong? What should I do next?
These questions—once so easily answered—eluded her now. Her life was a mess and she had a strange disease—one she couldn’t even diagnose, though she had searched through both her own Book of Shadows and her old mentor’s for clues. She had no place to go and no one to love or care for her. Miranda, her mentor from the time she’d been nineteen, was dead and Jo hadn’t allowed anyone else to get close to her. Her life, once so grounded in routine and tradition, was out of control.
I don’t want to live like this, Jo told herself. And then, somehow, she’d found the athame was in her hand with the sharp silver blade poised over her wrist. Most Wiccans kept their athames dull, the edges deliberately blunted. But Jo liked to keep hers sharp. She felt that chopping the herbs she used in her spells with the implement she used to cast greatly enhanced her magic.
It wasn’t the first time in her desperate journey that the sharpened edges of her ceremonial dagger had come in handy, but Jo told herself it would be the last. She’d been just about to make the first cut when that huge man had showed up and scared her half to death.
Jo had felt frightened and cornered—there was only one way in or out of the shed and he was blocking it with his big, muscular bulk. What was she going to do when he attacked, as she was certain he inevitably would?
And then, to her surprise, he had backed off. He’d even offered her food. Goddess help her, she’d almost been hungry enough to trust him and accept it. Luckily, her sense of self-preservation was stronger than her hunger—just barely.
He was just trying to lure me out of the shed and into his house so he could attack me there, Jo told herself. And yet . . . his aura hadn’t looked violent or lustful. Not that she’d had much time to study it—she was too busy trying to defend herself.
Her stomach rumbled when she thought of the grease stained paper sack and the scent of a hamburger and french-fries that had come from it. The food at Avalon had been strictly vegan, but Jo wasn’t above grabbing a fast-food burger from time to time during her bi-weekly trips to town to teach Yoga to the kids at the YWCA.
Stop thinking about it, she ordered herself. Stop it—it was a trap! He probably wanted—
Her thoughts were interrupted by a short, sharp bark—more of a yip, really.
Jo jumped in surprise and looked down. Standing there, in the open door of the shed, was a fox no bigger than a teacup Chihuahua.
“Hey . . .” She looked at it uncertainly. It was a red fox with a flame-colored coat, a sharply pointed muzzle, and a white tuft at the end of its bushy tail. Despite its small size, she didn’t think it was a kit—it seemed more like a full grown fox in miniature. It yipped at her again and tilted its head to one side, showing the snow-white ruff of its throat.
“Hey, you . . .” Somehow Jo found herself taking a step towards it. She had always been good with animals—beast lore was one of her sub-specialties, and she’d acted as a kind of unofficial veterinarian at Avalon. The other sisters had brought her their familiars to heal when they were sick or wounded.
The fox turned and trotted out of the shed. It went a few feet and then turned its head as if to see if she was following it.
“You want me to come with you, little guy?” Jo asked it.
The fox yipped and did a little dancing step on its tiny black paws. Clearly it was impatient for Jo to join it.
It could be a trap, a little voice whispered in her head. But Jo didn’t really believe that. Men she didn’t trust a bit, but animals were pure. The Goddess had made them that way—innocent and beautiful. Looking into the little red fox’s big brown eyes, she couldn’t resist.
“Hang on a minute, buddy,” she told the fox. Going to the back of the shed, she grabbed the battered blue knapsack that held her magical paraphernalia and pretty much everything else she owned in the world and came out through the sagging door.
The fox danced and yipped some more and then frisked away on its little black paws through the tall green grass. It led Jo to a huge, rambling Victorian mansion—white with green trim—and stopped at the foot of the stairs leading up to the wrap-around porch.
Here Jo stopped.
“I don’t think so,” she told the fox when it scampered up the steps and poked its sharp little nose at the screen door. “I’m not going in there.”
The fox whined a little but when she shook her head firmly, it seemed to accept her decision. It came back across the porch, its nails tap-tapping on the wooden boards which were the same deep green as the trim, and jumped back down the steps.
There was a brown paper sack that looked suspiciously like the one the huge man with the reddish-brown hair had been holding. It was sitting on the bottom porch step and the fox nudged it hopefully. Looking up at Jo, it whined softly.
“What are you saying? You want me to open that?” Jo looked up at the back door of the house, expecting the owner to come out at any minute. She wondered if he had left the bag of food deliberately for her and then sent his fox to lure her out to eat it. Was it a trap?
The fox pawed at the brown paper sack and whined again. He sniffed the sack, his miniature muzzle wrinkling as his long, black whiskers twitched.
Jo’s stomach twisted in hunger—she hadn’t eaten in three days and nights and she was nearly faint with the need for food.
“All right,” she said at last. Throwing herself down on the bottom porch step, she opened the bag and reached inside.
The food was amazing. Even though it was more warm than hot by the time she sank her teeth into it, the burger was still juicy and cheesy, the bacon crisp and salty and the lettuce and tomato tart and tangy.
Once she took the first bite, Jo found she couldn’t stop. Good . . . so good, so good, so good! she thought deliriously as she gobbled the huge burger hungrily. All thoughts of the big, scary man who had confronted her in the shed were gone. For a moment, she wasn’t scared or wary anymore—she was just a starving creature finally getting something to eat.
As she finished the burger and started on the fries, the fox came up and nudged her leg with its little, pointed head.
“Hey, you . . . hey, boy.” Jo put out a hand to it and it sniffed her fingers, licking away some of the burger juice that remained.
She didn’t know how she knew it was a male. It just seemed obvious somehow, even without looking. But that didn’t bother her—male animals were pretty much the only kind of males she trusted. She’d had a tomcat as a familiar for many years at Avalon. When Rufus died, she had mourned him as though he was a person and she missed him still.
“Hey, buddy,” she said to the fox again, stroking his flame-red fur and scratching around the bases of his big, pointed ears. The fox closed his eyes in apparent delight and nudged her hand, asking for more attention. He was obviously tame and Jo wondered again if he belonged with the big man who had confronted her in the shed.
“Where’s your human?” she asked the fox. Anyone else might have said “master” or “owner,” but as a Wiccan, she didn’t believe in owning or mastering other living creatures. “Is he nice to you?” she asked the fox. “Is he a good guy or a bad guy?” Then she gave a sarcastic snort of laughter at her own question. “What am I saying—he’s a guy. A man. That’s bad enough, right?”
The fox opened its eyes and yipped sharply. If Jo hadn’t known better, she would have sworn the little animal understood her and was disagreeing with her statement.
“Okay, all right,” she told it. “Sorry if I offended you. I just . . . don’t have the best track record with men. I’ve been attacked several times since I got kicked out of my home.” She sighed. “Seems like the other sex hasn’t changed a bit since I swore them off twenty-two years ago.”
The fox whined softly and rubbed against her hand again, then he leaned over her to nose at the brown paper sack hopefully.
Jo reached into the sack and pulled out some fries. They were lukewarm but still smelled amazing.
“You want one of these?” she asked, holding out a single french-fry to the fox. “Are you allowed to have them? I don’t want you to get sick.”
In answer, the fox nipped the fry out of her fingers and ate it in two quick bites. Then he stared hopefully at her for more.
Jo smiled.
“Hey, so you like fast food too, huh?” she asked, giving him another fry.
The fox yipped and spun in a circle, then danced on his hind legs, begging adorably for more.
Jo couldn’t help it, she found herself laughing at the little animal’s antics. It was the first time she’d smiled or laughed in weeks and she was surprised at how good it felt.
She gave the fox another fry and ate some more herself, feeling the heat of the late afternoon sun warming her skin as she sat on the creaky wooden porch step. It felt good to feel good again—even for just a minute. To let go of her worry and laugh and relax a little after the long, stressful journey to nowhere she’d been on for weeks.
“Thanks little guy,” she told the fox. “You’re a sweetheart.”
The fox yipped in agreement and came closer. He put his little front paws on Jo’s leg and looked up at her inquiringly.
“All right.” She patted her lap. “Have a seat.”
The fox gave a little hop and curled up in Jo’s lap, turning himself into a warm, furry donut as he buried his sharp little muzzle in the snow-white tuft of his tail.
Jo felt her heart melting. “Maybe your human isn’t such a terrible guy after all,” she told the fox as she stroked the flame-colored fur gently. “Anybody attached to a guy as cute as you can’t be all bad.”
A soft wind was blowing, bringing the scent of autumn from the forest just beyond the backyard. The nights had been getting colder lately and Jo shivered when she considered where she might sleep that night. Probably buried in a pile of dead leaves, like she had the past several nights—if she could find a secluded spot outside the forest, that was. She’d thought she might spend the night in the shed when she found it but that hope was dashed now.
She wished she had a jacket or even a sweater to keep warm but she’d been forced to leave Avalon so suddenly she’d been lucky to grab her casting paraphernalia and her athame, let alone anything else. She had a few other clothes but nothing that kept away the night chill.
“I wish I had a fur coat like you to keep warm with,” she told the fox, who was still cuddled in her lap. “It’s going to be freezing tonight and it’s no fun camping out in the cold.”
Just the thought of sleeping in the open for yet another night made her feel sad and lonely and scared all over again. She couldn’t help thinking of the past—nights spent in the warmth of Avalon, snug in her own chamber or performing the Great Rite in the moonlight, or simply sitting by the fire trading spell-craft with her sister Wiccans.
And even worse than the loneliness and cold was the fear she felt every time the sun went down. What if the shadow creature came back? She’d be helpless against it if it managed to come out of the forest and attack her.
She couldn’t help the terror that overcame her at the thought. Her happy mood abruptly fizzled and her eyes stung with tears.
“I don’t want to go back out there,” she whispered and a sob caught in her throat. “Back out into the cold and dark. I don’t want to—I’m afraid.”
The fox looked up at her and whined softly. Suddenly, he sat up in her lap. Standing up on his tiny hind paws, the little animal lapped at her cheeks which were wet and salty now. His warm little tongue seemed to bring Jo back to herself.
“I’m sorry, little guy,” she told him, sniffing. “I’m just so tired of going and going and never getting anywhere. I’m sick of being alone and scared all the time and having no place to stay at night. I’m just tired.” She sighed and stroked the soft, flame-colored fur. “I wish I could find someplace to stop for a little while and just catch my breath—you know?”
The fox yipped again and then jumped off her lap. It trotted down the porch steps and around the side of the house.
“Hey!” Jo called after it, feeling immediately lonely. “Hey, don’t leave! Where are you going?”
She stood up and was about to go looking for the fox when the huge man with the curly, reddish-brown hair and brown eyes came suddenly around the corner of the house.
“Hi,” he said. “It’s me again.”