Chapter 1
“Wrench,” Travis said.
Panther shifter Warren “Wrench” Martin looked at him blankly for just a moment before he realized that the lynx shifter handyman was asking for the tool, not initiating a conversation. He dug into the toolbox between them and handed Travis the requested tool with a grunt.
He watched as Travis opened the problematic trap, and dumped the sludge out of it into a waiting five gallon bucket.
“Ahah!” Travis said triumphantly, fishing a scrap of cloth out of the drain above. “I don’t know what possesses people to put these things down drains, but I’ve found some odd stuff down here.”
The handyman reattached the trap. “Did you see how that worked? The most important thing is not to yank on it too hard. With a wrench and shifter strength, you can deform the pipe before you unscrew it if you aren’t careful.”
Wrench grunted an affirmative as Travis emerged from beneath the sink, wiping his hands.
“Let’s give it a test drive,” he said, and Wrench flipped the tap open.
Water poured cleanly down the drain without so much as a gurgle of protest.
Wrench wondered if the job always felt so rewarding; he had worked a long time in the shadowy persuasion business, and as well as it paid, it had never felt as victorious as any single repair he’d done with Travis.
“That did it!” Travis said with clear satisfaction.
As messy as it could be, this was clean work, and Wrench felt more fulfilled than he had in a lifetime of building a reputation for retribution and destruction.
“That’s our last job for the day,” Travis said putting the last of the tools back in their place. “You’ve got a few hours of daylight left if you want to hit the beach for a swim or something.”
Wrench raised a skeptical eyebrow at him. “I ain’t a swimmer,” he said, picking up the toolbox before Travis could. He had done little enough of this job as it was. “But I was thinking…”
He paused, hesitant to continue, and Travis closed up the under sink cabinet and then looked at him curiously. “Spit it out, man!”
“There’s a lot of broken roof tiles from the storm we’re just going to piss away.”
“Not much you can do with them,” Travis shrugged. “You can’t really repair them.”
“You could… break em more.” That wasn’t too bad, Wrench thought. He was good at breaking things.
“And then?” Travis prompted as they closed up the cottage behind them and started hiking up to the mechanical room where Travis kept his tools.
“They’d make a nice… art piece. Like those things with tiny tiles that make a picture.”
Travis blinked. “A mosaic?”
“Sure,” Wrench shrugged. “It’s just an idea.”
“Well, yeah,” Travis agreed thoughtfully. “You could just press it into wet thinset over stucco if the pieces were small enough. You got a picture in mind?”