“Come on,” Jeffrey said, urging me on with a smile. “It’ll be an adventure.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I replied, scowling.
But the pilot knew what he was doing, and the little plane did get off the ground. The engine rumbled so loud we couldn’t talk—or even think much—which left me staring out the windows at the scenery. We quickly left civilized territory, the city falling away, development growing more sparse, until all I saw were open meadows, forests cut through by hills, then mountains. Forty-five minutes later, we landed on a narrow airstrip nestled in a mountain valley. I closed my eyes during the landing and tried not to think about being trapped in a little metal box, hurtling toward the ground.
The plane pulled to a stop, the pilot opened the doors, and we all piled out. The clean mountain air hit me, and all was forgiven.
Another plane, a bit larger than ours, was parked at the end of the narrow airstrip. The pilot explained that it belonged to the production company and had been used to fly in equipment and supplies. The production crew had a pilot with it—there was our escape route. We wouldn’t be completely cut off.
The descriptions I’d been given, variations of “a beautiful mountain retreat,” didn’t do the place justice. I’d seen mountain lodges that didn’t have much thought put into them, squat buildings that looked like they’d been dropped into the landscape by a crane with no consideration of surroundings. This place nestled at the edge of the valley like it had grown there. I had to search for it, where it sat against a hillside—part of the hill, almost. A meadow swept down from it, a clean expanse of rippling green grass dotted with patches of wildflowers. I bet elk and deer grazed here in the mornings. A wide stream ran through the meadow to a lake, and on the other side of the lake—ringing the whole meadow, in fact, up to either side of the lodge—was a forest of tall pines. And beyond the forest, on the horizon, were the mountains. A spur of the Rockies jutted out here, bluish-gray peaks capped with snow even at the end of summer. They were sharp, grouped together like teeth. Clouds were gathering above them. The sun was setting, casting the whole valley in a rich blue twilight. I hoped I got a room with that view.
A few aspens butted up against the lodge itself, which was tasteful log architecture rather than the obnoxious version of it. The whole thing had a warm, rustic atmosphere. My muscles started relaxing.
We spent a few moments just looking around, admiring. I closed my eyes and drew a deep breath of air: trees, stone, a hint of snow, cold water, sun-touched grass, animals in a collage of trails and scents. Untouched wild. So much prey here, my Wolf thought. So many creatures, vegetation, smells all jumbled together, I couldn’t make them all out right away. Also, predators: bears, maybe even mountain lions. Their smells were dangerous.
The pilot unloaded our luggage. I turned to thank him, but he had already climbed back into the cockpit and revved the engines. Taxi ride over. We collected our bags and found a path that led to the lodge.
I took out my cell phone just to check, and sure enough: no signal. I couldn’t say I was surprised. Middle of nowhere and all that.
We climbed the steps to the lodge’s front porch and went inside.
Stopping inside the front door, with the other three crowding around me, I had my first look at the place: the entire first floor was open, with a large, modern kitchen on one side and a living room area on the other. Here, a big stone fireplace dominated the far wall, and a collection of sofas and cushy armchairs gathered in front of it. A couple of cameras and cameramen were set up in opposite corners, staring at us. So, they’d already started collecting footage. One of the cameramen was Ron Valenti, from the meeting with Joey Provost. He’d shed the Armani in favor of jeans and a flannel shirt—very rustic, in a bought-it-out-of-a-high-end-catalog way. He looked at us but didn’t acknowledge us. Focused on getting that perfect shot.
People were sitting on the sofas, looking up at us with interest. One of them was Joey Provost.
He stood and came toward me, hand outstretched for shaking. Another attack, Wolf growled. We were never going to appreciate aggressive human friendliness, were we? I gritted my teeth, smiled, and shook his hand.
“Hi! Welcome, all of you!” He shook each of our hands in turn. His smile was ferociously pleasant.
“Thanks,” I said, glancing around, taking it in. I smelled old soot and the smoke of many fires from the immense fireplace; dinnertime cooking smells from the kitchen, red wine in glasses, and people. Different kinds of people—not entirely human people. My nose was working overtime, trying to take it all in.
“Why don’t we come in and make some introductions?” That smile never dimmed, and I sensed an edge of anxiety to it. I didn’t envy Provost his job here; he wasn’t just going to be producing a TV show, he was going to be playing mediator and camp counselor.
Provost gestured to a large, aggressively muscled black man with a hooded glare sitting on a chair, a little ways from the others.
“Jerome Macy,” Provost said.
“Yeah, we’ve met,” I said while the others nodded greetings.
The pro wrestler nodded at me. I nodded back, and we didn?
??t meet gazes—wolf body language that said, Hey, we’re cool, nothing wrong here. He was another werewolf and understood how weird this all was. I might spend the next couple of weeks being more comfortable around him than anyone else.
“Finally, we get some eye candy,” said a guy I didn’t know, scoping out Tina, Ariel, and me with a definite leer. I had to admit, we did sort of look like Charlie’s Angels standing together.
He smelled weird. Definitely not human, but a flavor of not-human I hadn’t encountered before—and I was racking up quite the scent catalog. Not a vampire, not a werewolf, were-tiger, or were-jaguar. I’d even met a were–African wild dog, but this wasn’t any of those. He had a human and something-else smell, like all lycanthropes had. But the something else was kind of… fishy. Salty. Wild without the fur. Weird.
“Lee Ponatac,” he said in response to my inquiring glare. He had dark hair, and his features were square, young, his eyes brown and shining. He had the scruffy appearance of someone who spent a lot of time outside and didn’t care much about polish. It was a nice look, and he pulled it off well. My inquiring glare didn’t go away, and he just kept his charismatic smile. “Were-seal. Children of Sedna, we call them back home,” he said finally.
My eyes widened. “Really?”
Provost said, “Lee is a state legislator in Alaska. He may be the first publicly acknowledged lycanthrope elected to office in the country. I’m a little surprised we discovered him before you did.”
“Yeah. But hey, happy to meet you now. Were-seal? Really? And you don’t think this gig will come back to haunt you if you ever decide to run for president?”
He smirked. “I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.”
I didn’t think there’d ever come a time when I couldn’t be surprised, and he seemed pleased at my astonishment. Oh, this was going to be a fun couple of weeks.