Chapter 2

Jeans (D&G), T-shirt (Armani), jacket (Cucinelli). A quick squint in the mirror for the state of my shave. Left side, right side, lift chin. My hair is long and red-brown, though the tips are banded a darker color. Agouti is common enough for a sable wolf. Less common for corporate lawyers.

The one time I cut it, I spent two moons fighting wolves who made fun of my crewcut hackles and a near-constant chill across my withers.

I wonder if this was how Aldrich felt toward the end. If he felt a little sicker with every breath that came from the HVAC system. With every drink of water that tastes like chlorine. With every meal of denatured things from half a world away. With every cab that stinks of human.

“Keep the windows open, please,” I say, leaning forward so the driver can hear.

I wonder if he was as desperate for the hunt as I am. Did he indulge in the same pathetic stopgaps that I do?

Nothing marks Testa but a dark-green door, a brass number, and a prime spot on the narrow New Street in a location that is convenient to the courts, City Hall, and the Financial District. There are a handful of clubs like this scattered through lower Manhattan that offer privacy, exclusivity, and smoking. Testa charges five hundred dollars for a single night’s membership; there aren’t any other kinds of membership, because the owners want to be able to refuse the man who’s already wasted and likely to be an embarrassment. The man who misbehaved last time. The man who is under investigation by the SEC.

Men. Women—if they’re young enough, beautiful enough, trim enough, and well-dressed enough—get in for free. Members then stand them drinks.

The lights are always low. There are no large tables, only booths with high, tufted backs to mute the sound. It’s all about giving the illusion of privacy so we can hunt our prey without distraction.

I’ve learned that I don’t need to bother with the booths. The bar is just fine. My back is to the room, but I can see as much as I need to in the mirror behind the brightly colored bottles of gin.

“Hey,” says a voice. The voice’s long, blond hair falls in carefully blown-out waves down either side of her lightly tanned face with perfectly regular features. Dressed in a white, backless dress with a low-draped collar showing supremely full breasts, she promises the warmth of summer in the dead of winter.

“Hey.”

“My drink’s a Moscow mule,” she says, swinging onto the empty seat beside me.

I nod to the bartender and tap my glass for a refill.

“Wow,” she says, putting her hand on my arm. “D’you play football?”

I shake my head, then throwing my chin back, I bolt down a handful of wildly salty nuts.

“Basketball?”

“No. Not much for sports.”

“Are you, like, in financial services?” she asks.

When you’re hunting, all sorts of things happen. Without making a move, your heart starts to pound faster, your muscles tighten, your senses become razor-edged. Adrenaline-primed, you are so ready to leap that the real strength, the real power, is in holding back until the moment is absolutely right.

It used to be like that—watching a beautiful woman, knowing that beneath the tape on her breasts, her nipples will be tightening, that she will be feeling an uncomfortable warmth.

Or will she? I can’t really tell anymore.

“Lawyer.”

“Oh,” she says, a slight tinge of disappointment in her voice. Noah, one of Testa’s owners, comes over and hands me back my credit card. I lean up on one hip, retrieving my wallet. As she watches me slide in the black-and-pewter card, she brightens. “Oh,” she says. “That’s interesting. I haven’t seen you around here before.”

“Hmm.”

Tomas, the “mixologist,” slides me my seltzer with bitters and lime. Wolves can’t really drink. Does something awful to our livers. Tomas is discreet about my drinking habits because it’s his job to be discreet, because the ownership certainly doesn’t mind customers who don’t use the bar as an all-you-can-eat buffet, and because I tip him well.

“Thanks, I guess,” she says, lifting her Moscow mule toward me. She slides around on her seat, scanning the room, looking for someone who might be more responsive.

“Elijah Sorensson?”

In the mirror caught between the tall, emerald-green bottle and the square, blue bottle, the woman in white pauses as a sloppily drunk man I’m supposed to know slaps my shoulder. Pale-gray tweed jacket with black piping and a black shirt. Elaborately stitched jeans. He smells vaguely familiar. Like wild onion and rubber. I didn’t say pleasant, just familiar.

“This man…” he slurs. “You remember, we bought Alacore? In 2015, we bought it. But the big abattoir around our neck”—I’m assuming he actually means albatross, not slaughterhouse—“was a busted-up cement plant up near…I don’t know where.”

Now I remember. His name is Dante something. “Fort Miller,” I say.

“I think you may be right. State says we’re goin’ to have to clean it up. For a lotta money.” He rests one foot on the rung of my stool. “I don’ remember how much, because this genius, he makes it out so that we don’t have to do shit. Says the rotting concrete is good for climate change.”

I’m not in the mood to explain the mechanics of concrete carbonation to Dante Something from the Mergers and Acquisitions Department at LMSC. It’s part of my job. I’m very good at my job, and when I’m good at my job, I make money. Money that is used to protect another piece of land and a different wilderness up there. North.

“Well, anyway, the thing is still rottin’ away.” He guffaws again. “Rottin’ from the inside out. Being good for the environment.” He removes his foot from my stool but doesn’t slap me again. Humans don’t. They do it once to be comradely, but there’s something about what they feel under my bespoke jacket that makes them nervous about doing it again.

I take another drink. The woman in white stands closer, her breast pressed against my arm.

“I haven’t seen you here either,” I say. Now I’m just going through the motions, mouthing the words to an old script. “I would certainly have remembered. No man could ever forget you.” She looks exactly like half the beautiful women in this place. The other half have dark hair.

When she finishes her Moscow mule, I order her another. She’s jabbering something about some start-up. An app that does something I don’t have any use for, so I hear but don’t actually listen. When her voice goes up in a lilting question, I nod or frown slightly, concerned. When conversation lags, I look intently at her irises for a beat or two past the norm and say something about the sky or storms or chocolate, depending on their color. It’s a body part humans set great stock in.

“Your skin is so soft.” Lifting my arm is like lifting lead when I brush her hair back from her face and my fingers trace her cheek. “You should never wear anything but silk.”

Her bleached-blond hair is dry and crisp and feels like late-autumn sedge against the back of my hand.

I don’t know when the thrill of the hunt died. My cock is so jaded now, but I can’t help myself.

In the end, I am left looking at the ceiling, waiting for her breathing to even and slow. I don’t know how many Moscow mules this one had, but it must have been a few. Her breath is sickly sweet, and she snores in the way women do when they’re chemically relaxed.

I can’t take this anymore.