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him. You wouldn’t have seen him from the road.”
    “Beat him up? Without saying a word?” Dennis asked.
    JP nodded once after each question. “I’d say we’re looking at a change in tactics here.”
    “Metal detector . . .” Mick sighed. “They’re nosing for gold.”
    “Right,” JP said. “So I was going to ask you to go out there. Sniff around, see what you can pick up. I want you to be able to recognize their scents again. I’m going to do an aerial scan.”
    “Dammit.” Dennis thumped his cane on the ground. “I want to help, but I’m tied by this damn leg.”
    JP said, “Dennis, tough as you are, and fast as we heal, you know that shifting with half-healed bones is a bad idea. Wait until we need desperate measures. I’m just glad you’re back. If they’re after the LaFleur hoard, the non-shifter part of town can’t be involved. We have to settle it ourselves.”
    All three men paused, Dennis and Mick sniffing the air. JP could feel the two letting their animals rise part way, just enough for their stronger senses of hearing and smell to surface. He waited, his dragon quiescent, listening below the surface of human sound. But his mental awareness homed straight into the Volkovs’ house, and that golden voice. He shut the inner door. This was not time to indulge a sudden attraction. He waited until the bear and the tiger had subsided again.
    “Nothing bad on the air in the neighborhood,” Mick said. “Let me get Dennis back to his place, then I’ll do a ramble. You do a flyover.  If nothing’s wrong, we’ll talk in the morning.”

 
    Chapter Five
     
     
     
    When the three guys left, the house suddenly seemed empty. Jan turned her attention to Shelley, to catch a somber expression on her face. But the second their eyes met, her face smoothed out. “Want to lend a hand with the dishes?”
    “There is no need,” Baba Marisia said. “Misha insisted upon buying us this dishwasher. It is the work of a moment to load everything into it.”
    “I promise we’ll be even faster,” Shelley said.
    Jan sensed that this had been arranged between Mick and Shelley, and raised her hand. “I can’t cook, but I am the best dishwasher in L.A.”
    Baba Marisia relented, and Jan and Shelley pitched in. Jan bit back the nearly overwhelming desire to ask questions about JP. Her crush was totally impossible. But as they worked, she could not get his voice, his face, the elusive, masculine scent of him out of her mind. She stayed silent as the other two chattered. Soon the kitchen was clean and the dishwasher humming and sloshing. By then the old folks were looking tired. Shelley said, “We had a long drive. How about calling it a night?”
    After a round of thanks and good wishes for pleasant dreams, Shelley walked out with Jan. The air was soft, the heat slowly dying away. Tiny lights flickered here and there.
    “What is that?” Jan asked.
    Shelley’s grin was invisible in the dark, but Jan could hear it in her voice. “Fireflies.”
    “Fireflies! I thought   . . . wait,” Jan exclaimed. “I had to do a report in high school about fireflies. The ones west of the Rocky Mountains don’t flash.”
    “Well, they do here, I guess. Anyway, that’s what Mick said they were when we came last month. Shall I walk you back to the motel?”
    Jan snorted. “I can see it from here. And even if I couldn’t, it’s not like I’d get lost. Or mugged. Or is there a crime wave in Sanluce, and I need your karate skills to guard me?”
    “Based on two whole days of being here a month ago, I would say that you should be safe from muggers. I’ll give you a call before breakfast, okay? I promised Mick we’d eat in town, otherwise his grandmother would feel it her duty to cook three squares a day for all of us.”
    “I feel guilty enough already about her doing that fabulous dinner,” Jan said. “What is she, at least ninety?”
    “She insists that she loves doing it. But we’re a lot of people for