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Specifically, matching landscape plans with architectural styles. Neither was a college-level course. I couldn’t enroll in college until I finished my GED. I was on track to do that, but in the meantime I indulged my HGTV -discovered love of architecture and design by taking the lecture and project classes offered through continuing ed.
    In addition to the old Victorian, Maggie was also restoring the carriage house cum cottage on the back -of-the-house grounds for me. She wanted me to decorate my own space, and I would, but Victorian and other ornate styles weren’t my thing—
    not like they were Maggie’s. Now, give me Frank Lloyd Wright, Art Deco, Art Moderne, or midcentury modern, and I ’m drooling. Lost in lines and curves and colors.
    I was two blocks from the condo, thinking about the Craftsman -style cabinet I was designing for class, when I heard muffled footsteps behind me. Stony? Didn’t smell like him, no menace in the air. The hinky honeymooners? No pheromones or fresh blood stench.
    I stood still, and an essence wafted around me. Faint in the fingers of the fog, but there. It wasn’t a fragrance. It was almost a touch. A ghostly touch, yet not a ghost. It could be only an overpowering memory. Or it might be what—or rather who—sprang to mind.
    Shape-shifter. Specifically, Triton. My friend from the time of our childhoods until the day I insisted he leave town to escape the vampires.
    Shifters had been hunted to extinction, logic argued.
    No, the werecreatures—the true lycanthropes—were dead. Those not slaughtered outright had died from contracting a virus engineered to kill them. The virus hadn’t harmed humans, and it hadn’t harmed other shifters. Magical shifters lived on.
    Two things were sure. I hadn’t felt that kind of magical energy scrape my skin in centuries, and I didn’t know what I’d do if it were real. Correction, if Triton were real and right there behind me.
    I walked faster. Not at vampire speed, just faster. The soft plopping sound of steps got closer. Probably a runner. A guy on the Flagler College track or tennis team. So why didn’t he pass me? The footfalls seemed to keep pace with mine. Now that I listened harder, they sounded odd for a human. Sounded more like an animal, and smelled like—
    I spun around, and a cat the size of an end table pounced on the hem of my gown.
    “Rrryyyow!”
    The sound was high-pitched, part scream, part supersized meow that vibrated in my skull. If I were mortal, I ’d be in cardiac arrest. As it was, I clutched my shawl and blinked at the feline who was definitely not Triton. It batted at my hem once more, then sat on its considerable haunches and stared up at me. I stared back. The collarless cat wasn’t fat and wasn’t really quite the size of an end table, just a giant domestic cat with a tail that looked longer than my arm. Short-haired, tawny reddish gold, with lighter fur on its belly and the insides of its legs, it reminded me of a Florida panther I’d seen back in my old life.
    I swallowed. Kitty didn’t seem right, so I said, “Hi, Cat.”
    Cat stood, stretched, and pranced around to walk in front of me. When I didn’t immediately follow, it shot an impatient glance over its shoulder and curled its tail as if crooking a finger.
    First the mind reading, now a magical cat wanted to walk me home? My night couldn’t get much weirder. Cat padded down the street, past the cathedral and shadowed shops. Smack at the entrance to Maggie’s building—not the main bank entrance, but the all-but-hidden one for tenants—Cat stopped, sat, and gave me an expectant glare.
    “Oh, nonono,” I told it. “Magical or not, I can’t bring a stray cat to Maggie. In the first place, I don’t know if she likes cats. Plus, we don’t have food. Or a litter box.”
    Cat’s response sounded suspiciously like a snort. As if I’d offended it by suggesting it would deign to use a box when it ruled the great outdoors.
    I drew my key from the