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simultaneously horrifying and hilarious.
    Simon was less amused. “Of course not. They roamed the forests, plains and mountains. There are all sorts of small mountain cats spread throughout the world. Certainly, over many thousands of years, my ancestors bred with smaller cats until they looked no different than the typical house cat.” If he’d been in cat form, I suspected that the hair on his neck would be standing on end and his tail would be puffed up to make him look as large as possible. I appeared to have blundered onto a sensitive subject.
    “We’re sure you’re a big tough beast. Oh yes you are. A big tough beast,” Sera said, looking in the rearview mirror. Simon hissed a little, but it was half-hearted. Sera teased everyone. It was part of her charm, such as it was.
    “So, now you know. And get used to it, fast, because there’s another shifter waiting for us in Truckee. And trust me, he won’t take well to being called an abomination or a freak of nature.”
    “Are shifters that common?” I asked. Simon’s elegant shrug seemed to indicate they were common enough. “Then how did we manage to attend four years of university in a magically-drenched location without learning about them at the time?”
    Now that story time was apparently over, Sera returned the music to top volume. “For that, I offer the same explanation I have for every stupid-ass thing we did at college,” she said, voice raised to be heard over Joe Strummer’s guitar.
    “What’s that?”
    “We were drunk.” Hard to argue with that basic truth. “Plus, shifters don’t tend to advertise their existence, even to elementals. Apparently, we don’t have a great track record of not behaving like assholes.”
    “So, another shifter? You think it’s going to take four people this time around?”
    “It’s going to take a complete department, but we all know the local police aren’t up to something like this. So, we’re doing their job for them. And it’s six people, not four.”
    Six people. This morning I hadn’t seen a single living soul other than my mail carrier and the owner of the local market in over a month. Now, I was part of a team, some of whom were occasionally furry. I calculated my odds of escape when we hit Redding. They didn’t look good.
    Sera caught my panicked expression. “Don’t you listen to me? I told you I was getting the band back together.” Though the sun was starting to dip low over the horizon, she dropped a pair of sunglasses over her eyes and grinned at me, even as she drove me toward a seemingly inevitable nervous breakdown.

Chapter 3
    It was well past midnight when we finally arrived in Truckee . It was a weeknight, and the old California mining town appeared to be sound asleep and wholly indifferent to our arrival. Sera turned onto highway 89 and drove several miles south of town before getting off the highway and heading toward the river. We passed one dark house after another before she finally pulled into a long driveway, just wide enough for a single car. The dirt road gave way to gravel, and we slowly drew to a stop. I stumbled from the car, muscles tight and complaining after the long drive.
    Yawning and blinking to clear my sleep-muddled mind, I caught my first sight of my temporary home. A large, sturdy A-frame house stood nestled among the trees on an impressive parcel of land. It was constructed of dark wood and plainly built, but after nine hours of driving, it looked like a palace to me. There didn’t appear to be any neighbors within hollering distance, and I could pick out the unmistakable power coming from the Truckee River just behind the house. My opinion of my lodgings improved considerably.
    “Just point me in the direction of my bedroom and do not disturb me for the next ten hours, please,” I said. I lugged my bag up the steps, yawning the whole way. I was a morning person and hadn’t been awake past nine-thirty p.m. in many years. I wasn’t convinced that I