When I turned eighteen and left the children’s home, I headed to the mountains, following some innate imperative north and west. After motoring my bike up Wolf Mountain as far as the dirt road, then a trail, led, I found myself at Horseshoe Rock. I hiked down from it into the woods. At the bottom of a narrow ravine, I scuffed through dry leaves and found a quartz boulder, weather stained, canted down the gully. Through the center of it ran a vein of gold.

In the dark and the rain, I crawled inside a sleeping bag and slept near the boulder. And for the first time in six years, though I had no necklace, no marrow to find the snake within, I shifted. Into a big cat. Beast spoke to me like an old friend, long silenced. For weeks, I/we hunted, ate, visited old dens. Hid from humans. Searched for my/ our progeny. All my kits were gone. All others of my kind were gone. I was the last one. Anywhere.

When I shifted back to human, I dug out a few nuggets of gold and tucked them into a pocket. I later had one strung on an adjustable, doubled gold chain, to carry it with me, while the rest went into a safe-deposit box for a rainy day. If I concentrated, I could sense the gold, no matter where I was, both the position of each nugget and the original vein in the boulder deep in the mountains. It gave me security, a sense of refuge. Of comfort.

Now, shaking, I hung the nugget necklace over my head and went inside. I made it to the stove as my cell rang. “Mol,” I answered, “I’m okay.”

“It’s me, Aunt Jane,” Angelina said, sniffling. “You scared me.”

Stunned, I said, “Huh?”

“Don’t be the bird no more, Aunt Jane. You coulda fell.” She was crying.

I clutched the cell, my frozen heart melting. “Okay, Angie baby. No more bird.”

“I love you,” she murmured. “I gotta go. But Mommy says we’re gonna come visit you.” And the call ended.

After a two-quart pot of oatmeal, one of Beast’s steaks grilled nearly rare—but not quite—under the oven broiler, and a whole pot of strong black tea, I felt more like myself, more or less, though I was emaciated and sick to my stomach, and was experiencing vertigo to the point that I held on to the cabinets or furniture when I walked. Angie was right. What I had done was dangerous. Really bad stupid.

Cold, unable to get warm even after steaming until the hot shower water cooled, I curled up under the covers with a pen and pad, and jotted down what I remembered about the night. The location of the chapel—not nonchapel, but chapel. It had contained a cross and a nun. Well, a priestess, but close enough. That made it a chapel, right? The half-remembered location of the house where the creature entered. Had he killed? The TV had been on. Had I mistaken a sound track for a real murder? Had the rogue-liver-eater gone to ground under the house? Questions, no answers, and a fractured, hazy memory.

My last coherent thought was of the priestess, holding aloft a wood cross, shining with light. Wood didn’t do that, not even in the presence of evil, which is why I always carry silver crosses. Weird. Just plain weird. And weirder still—a vamp holding a cross. How did she survive it? Halfway through my recollections and questions, I fell asleep.

I woke up feeling warm and annoyed. Someone was pounding on my door with loud, impatient fists. I wasn’t sure, but it may have been going on a long time. Couldn’t people just let a girl sleep in? Stiff and sore, I rolled out of bed, trailing covers, found the borrowed robe, and slid it on. Through the glass I saw the Joe, Rick LaFleur.

“Crap.” With ill grace, I opened the front door. “It better be freaking damn important.”

He was wearing jeans, boots, and a cowboy hat that he pushed back by the brim, raising it enough to take me in from head to bare toes. A slow perusal that went from inventory to sensual in a heartbeat. His scent changed from business to sex.

A grin spread across his face. “Please tell me you’re alone and lonely.” When I glared, he raised a hand and reached toward me, moving slowly, as if he thought he might get slapped. Or taken down in the street and left bruised. He brushed a strand of hair back from my face, behind my ear.

Beast woke with a sudden lurch. And purred. She drew a breath and fought me for control. It was payback time for becoming Bubo bubo. I felt her claws in my belly. In the old wound across my chest, tightening. Rick’s fingers trailed along my neck to the collar of my robe, a slow caress across my collarbone and down.

Mastering Beast, I caught his wrist before he got too friendly. “What do you want?” I snarled, holding his hand away from me. I was tickled pink that my voice showed only annoyance, not desire. But I had started to sweat behind my knees and along my spine. Beast wanted him. Badly.

“I came to see if you wanted to ride.”

“Do what?” Images poured into my mind of big cats mating, snarling and drawing blood.

His grin stretched with a kind of sexual teasing I had never mastered. “Horses,” he said, drawing out the word as if I were an imbecile and he could see the images in my mind. “You didn’t come to the club last night, so I came to see if you wanted to go horseback riding.” I dropped his wrist. He let it fall, grin in place.

“I didn’t sleep last night,” I said. “What time is it?”

“It’s four p.m., time to rise and shine, especially in the city that parties till dawn.” He pushed his way inside and I let him, which had to be really dumb. Beast wanted to reach out and slide a hand across his butt as he entered, but I resisted. No freaking way. Her usual payback was less sexual, more in the nature of refusing to shift back when it was time. I think I preferred her stubborn streak to her sensual one.

Beast tightened her claws on me, tearing. It hurt and I gasped in pain. “Put on the kettle,” I said. Spinning on one heel, I went to my room and shut the door. Firmly. Maybe a little more than firmly, but it made my point. I was not happy with Rick LaFleur. But he knew Anna, who had slept with the rogue—no, the liver-eater—when he smelled unstinky. And he had something going on with Antoine, which pricked my curiosity. I wanted to know what Rick knew, which meant I had to spend time with him, get to know him better, pick his brain, always assuming he had one. I needed to go check out the house the liver-eater-rogue had entered. But first—I needed food. A lot of food. I was unexpectedly ravenous.

I brushed my hair, braiding it halfway down my back, tying it off with some yarn I’d seen in a drawer. I dressed in jeans and a spaghetti-strap top. When I looked in the mirror I expected to see dark circles under my eyes, hollowed cheeks, pallid skin. But I looked pretty good, if a lot skin nier than yesterday. The oatmeal and steak for breakfast had helped, but my stomach was growling, and I knew I wasn’t going anywhere until I had protein.

Still barefoot, I padded back to the kitchen and took a steak out of the fridge. Four left. I had to go shopping. But manners pounded into me in the children’s home took precedence over my possible starvation, and I said, “Want a steak?”

“Sure. If you’re having one. Rare. Still kicking.”

Deep inside me, Beast rumbled approval. I flushed a bit at her reaction and wished she’d go back to sleep and find another way to torture me.

Rick sprawled in the chair Bruiser liked, long legs spread, taking up a lot of space. Aware of his body language, of the way his eyes lingered on me, I took out a second steak, co las, and a package of baby spinach put there by Troll. “Hey,” he said, “I got that info you wanted on the property owners out near Lake Catouatchie and the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park.”

I nodded, and when I could speak casually, asked, “Did you hear anything about a murder over near Westwego? Out that way?”

“Nope. Why?” When I shook my head, he didn’t press. “So. We going riding?”

“I’ll think about it after lunch,” I said, and lit the broiler.

I wasn’t able to turn the conversation around to Anna. How did you ask a guy if he was sleeping with the mayor’s wife, especially when you can’t explain why you have an inkling that he is? So, after a steak, microwaved potato, spinach salad with bacon dressing, and some idle conversation, I said, “Much as I like the idea of horseback riding, I need to bike out to Westwego. Rain check?”

Rick was again sprawled in his chair, one arm draped over his middle, the other resting over the back of the chair nearest, a Coke can dangling in his fingers. He shrugged. “I got nothing to do. I’ll ride out that way with you and we can stop and get supper on the way back. Make a date of it.” His eyes sparkled. “I know me a good diner, serves the best oyster po’boys in the state. Fried up crackling crisp. It’s not too far from Westwego.”

I shouldn’t take him with me, not when there might be a house full of dead bodies at the end of the ride. But instead of telling him no, I said, “Sure. Sounds like fun.” And could have slapped myself. But pragmatism reared its head. If I did find dead bodies, I’d need to call the cops, and I’d need a good story. I could practice on Rick.

It was after five when we headed out of town, the sun still far above the horizon and glaring, the air hot and muggy, burning where it hit bare skin, making us sweat beneath the riding clothes. I would heal from road rash if I took a tumble, but rapid healing was not something I wanted to explain. So I wore jeans, boots, and leather jacket despite the heat. Rush hour traffic was snarled everywhere, but having bikes meant we could weave through stopped traffic. Not exactly legal, but no one had ever stopped me, and Rick didn’t seem like the kind to wait patiently on hot asphalt, breathing exhaust fumes. He followed when I motored between stopped vehicles on 90 and across the bridge.

The traffic opened out on the other side of the Mississippi and I gunned the motor, Rick at my side. The world looked different from the road, and it took me a while to orient myself, but I eventually found my way to the exit that led through secondary and tertiary roads, and lastly to the crushed-shell drive of the vamp graveyard.

The drive was blocked by two hinged metal arms on solid stanchions, the arms connected by a chain and secured with a good lock. I slowed to make the transit around the stanchion on the left and gave the bike enough gas to coast along the curving drive, pulling off my helmet and looking the place over. It looked different from nighttime and twenty feet up. I didn’t know what he was waiting for but Rick eventually followed me. I was walking between crypts, the sun broiling down on my bare head when he caught up, his Frye boots crunching shells as he jogged.