An hour later, I found myself standing across the counter at Cat’s 24-Hour Drugstore, facing down the irritated shop clerk with the bull ring piercing. As Lucas had suggested, there wasn’t a bus stop up the street. There wasn’t a highway. From what I could tell, there was only a pine forest on all sides of the town.
“So,” I said as she rang up my incredibly overpriced instant noodles, “About that help wanted sign in your window…”
The woman glared at me and held a hand out. At her feet, the magic feline fluff ball watched me like the cat was expecting to have to pounce at any minute.
When I handed her a ten-dollar bill, the woman threw it in the cash register, slammed it closed, and said, “You don’t have the qualifications for that job.”
I pressed my hands to both sides of my noodle package. “I worked in customer service at one location for ten years, five of which, I was the manager.”
“You stayed in one thankless job for a decade? Is that supposed to impress me?” She watched me, chewing her gum and looking entirely unimpressed. “All right, when you were a manager, did people try to eat you when you caught them shoplifting?”
“It was a coffee shop… but, my personal life probably qualifies me to deal with situations like that, and I’m a fast learner.”
Her nose twitched back and forth. “Sorry, but no. You don’t qualify. And, you obviously didn’t read the fine print on the sign.”
Three minutes later, I crouched down outside the store window, glaring at the help wanted sign.
“Homeless werewolf bitches who dye their hair in my bathroom are not qualified for this job. Ever,” I read.
The words hadn’t been there when I walked into the store ten minutes ago, and I had been meticulous about not leaving a single drop of hair dye behind. Clearly, it wasn’t only the woman’s cat that was magical.
“If you’re trying to find a job, the Grayhaven pack has been looking to hire someone,” a low voice said from just beside me.
I yipped and jumped to my feet, spinning around to find the massive tatted-up werewolf from last night grinning down at me.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.” He held big hands up in surrender, and I could see colorful tattoos peeking out of his jacket around his wrists. “I’m Declan. I don’t think I introduced myself last night,” he had the slightest accent, Irish maybe. I hadn’t noticed it in the noisy bar, but today, I could hear the lilt of a brogue.
“It’s not you, Declan.” I touched my nose. “I’m just used to having a little advance warning.”
This was probably the third or fourth time someone snuck up on me in the last twenty-four hours, and that was inexcusable. I was just so used to depending on my sense of smell to alert me of predators long before I heard or saw them, and I definitely didn’t hear so much as a single footfall before this werewolf was just behind me.
“Grayhaven takes some time to adapt to,” Declan grimaced and shook his head. “It’s the fae… or maybe the witches with their spells going in every which way…” He waved his fingers in the air. “Also probably the ghouls have something to do with it. It could just be Grayhaven too. There’s something weird about the land. Actually, I’m full of shit. I have absolutely no idea what it is, but you can’t even smell vampires out here until they’re breathing down your neck, and then you get the full-blown death breath in your face, at the bar, wanting to toss your cookies all over the woman asking you for a dance. I mean, sometimes it makes your life flash before your eyes, you know what I mean?”
“No.” I couldn’t help but laugh as I slung my bag over my shoulders. “It sounds like your nose is better than mine. To me they just smell like something that’s died but is inedible, I guess.”
“Oh, damn. You spent the night in that vampire hotel, didn’t you? Did I just put my foot in my mouth, then? I have been deemed highly offensive by the town… at large. Just ask anyone, and they’ll say, ‘Oh, that Declan, he’s the town asshole—the town’s sexiest, smartest, funniest… asshole.”
“Okay, then, I’ll be sure to ask around about you.” I laughed. “Anything I shouldn’t believe?”
“Several people might say that they’ve seen me doing my morning runs in only an American Flag thong. Don’t believe them... I’d never do something like that.” From his tone, Declan would definitely do something exactly like that. His smile broadened, making his golden-brown eyes sparkle mischievously. “Wait…are you joking, or am I joking?” he asked, pointing between us, “Or are we both joking, or is this a serious conversation?”
I pulled up the straps of my backpack and nodded to him. “Oh, I never joke about American flag thongs.” Smiling up at him, I rocked back on my heels. “It was nice to see you again Declan, but I have to get going.”
As I turned to head toward the forest, Declan kept pace with me. “See, here’s the thing, Teagan—I’m sorry about this, but Jasper ordered me to watch over you until he’s ready to take over. His orders were that I’m not to give you anything resembling an order on pain of having my nut sack ripped off and fed to me on a bed of rice. However, I do need to make sure you’re safe while you’re still in Grayhaven. Jasper was protecting you up until this point, but he needed a rest, so I took the second shift. I’m also supposed to make sure you have something to eat.”
I held up my dry package of noodles. “Got that covered.”
“Sweet baby Jesus.” He snatched the package out of my hand. “This is not food.” He tossed it over his shoulder, and the package landed squarely in a trashcan on the street corner.
“The fuck?” I spun. “That right there was my dinner. Do you have any idea how much that store charges for food? You think I won’t go fishing through the trash and eat that, but I will.”
“No, don’t… ah, shit.” Declan rubbed his hand over his buzzed head, clearly struggling not to issue me an order. “Listen to me, Teagan. I can’t order you not to, but you’d likely lose your hand before you found your packet of noodles. Most of the town’s trashcans have ghouls living in them, and that’s if there isn’t something worse in there.”
“Ghouls?” I stepped over to the bin, and sure enough, there was something in there. Well, there was more of a great mass of nothingness in there. The filthy metal cylinder seemed to defy the laws of light. My package of noodles floated just at the top of a well of deep darkness, but, somehow, I got the impression that something within the bin was quivering in anticipation.
Declan’s hands were up, halfway reaching toward me. “My head is literally exploding right now. I want to order you not to touch those god-forsaken noodles, but I don’t want to ingest my own ball-sack. Please believe me when I tell you ghouls will eat pretty much anything—which is wonderful for mother nature but a bitch for your fingers.”
“That darkness is a ghoul?”
When I leaned in to get a closer look at the trashcan, Declan tensed like he really might explode into action. “Unless it’s a shade,” he said in a measured voice, “Which is much more dangerous than a ghoul.”