the middle of the day, and I’d proven to the last guy that I wasn’t going to be an easy target. I doubted they’d try again so soon, and I did have a gun handy this time.
The 9mm Glock had been a gift from Secret on my nineteenth birthday. She said there might be times when magic wouldn’t be the best defense, and having a reliable gun was never a bad idea. Considering all the stuff she’d survived, I was willing to take her word for it. I didn’t particularly like guns, though, so normally I kept it in a lockbox at home.
Right now I was pretty happy I’d opted to bring it with me.
I still preferred to use magic.
For good measure I’d also cast a safety ward in a ten-foot radius around the car. I could hold it in place for as long as it took the tow truck to arrive, if I didn’t exert myself too much.
Being both a witch and a werewolf was an interesting mix, even by supernatural standards. I tried to play down my gifts when I was around the rest of the pack. My grandmother Genevieve and her mother before her, La Sorcière, were both powerful witches, and even though the gene had skipped my mother and sister, I’d gotten it full force.
Sure, having the ability to blow things up with the flick of a wrist seemed awesome, until you did it by accident while shifting into your werewolf form. Blow a few cabins up and suddenly no one trusts you. How was that fair?
I’d learned to control my magic since my Awakening—the werewolf rite of passage cubs went through at age thirteen. Now I could change form without hurting anyone, and I had figured out how to compartmentalize my gifts when I was out with the pack. In the few years since I’d returned from the swamps, the rest of Callum’s wolves had welcomed me into the fold. But if I started tossing spells around and showing off, I wasn’t sure they’d be so accommodating.
The smell of fuel caught my attention first, and I stared down the road, narrowing my eyes to refine my vision. A rusty red tow truck was bumping along the highway towards me.
It was so old I wasn’t sure it was going to make it the next mile, let alone pull the Dart back to the garage. But in St. Francisville beggars couldn’t be choosers.
The truck pulled up in front of me a minute later, backing up so the hook end was facing my front bumper. I hopped off the car and circled around to the passenger side to grab my bag, not wanting to leave it in the car.
“Thanks for coming all the way out.” I started talking before I knew if the mechanic was out of his truck yet. Sometimes I had a nasty habit of babbling, something I’d picked up in the swamp with Memere. The old witch rarely spoke except to instruct or scold, so often I ended up having lengthy monologues on my own while I wandered around. I hadn’t yet rid myself of the habit, sometimes I caught myself nattering at length in public places with no one specific around to hear my thoughts. “Hope the drive wasn’t too lo—”
My words got stuck in my mouth as I stood up and saw the mechanic staring at me from the opposite side of the car.
For whatever reason, I’d expected an older man. Some balding guy in his late fifties with a scowl and a beer belly. The only part I’d gotten right was the scowl. The man looking back at me was maybe twenty-five. His angular jaw was tense, and his full lips were set in a humorless frown. But goddamn. He was the single hottest man I’d seen in my entire life.
His eyes were hazel, the color of swamp water flecked with fresh fallen leaves. Something about them reminded me of home. His hair was either dark blond or light brown, though my certainty on which changed with each shift of sunlight over his head. He wore mechanics overalls with the top stripped down and tied around his waist. This gave me a provocative view of his chest and shoulders in an almost-too-tight gray T-shirt. His upper body was so muscular I thought he might be able to lift the car up on his own.
A waft of wolf scent hit me, and my eyes went wide.
He could lift the car barehanded if he