Werewolves. Esme Albie was going to hang out with real honest-to-goodness werewolves.
The shimmer in the air was almost imperceptible—but Esme knew what it heralded. One step through the shard, and everything that was wrong with her world could come crashing down. or be redeemed. Her heart pounded, a feral drum against her ribs. This was forbidden, an express violation of the edict hurled through the shard days after it had opened. But the proposal of koala college, the exorbitant signing bonus she'd invested rescuing their farm, and the burning need to bridge two worlds, sustained her. She thought briefly of her sister, Erin, and the secret they shared – the Albie family's unique talent for venturing into therianthia and returning alive. The risks were enormous, but not attempting it at all was worse.
Esme Albie had seen werewolves from a distance before. She'd even had passing conversation with one. She was one of the privileged few people in the world who could make that claim. But today she was taking it to the next level: she was going to get close and personal and interact with werewolves on a very friendly and intimate basis. It was a folkloristics professor's dream come true.
What did they wear? What did they eat? What kind of jobs did they have? Did they even have jobs?
She was pretty sure that they did, from when she and her sister Erin had slipped through the shard before. It seemed like they had normal human lives. They looked so normal, walking around in shirts and jeans and normal shoes, driving cars just like humans did in the humans' world. That is, they looked normal until you saw them seem to ripple and melt, fur suddenly sprouting all over them, their bones rearranging and lengthening. Then they fell onto all fours and you were looking at a giant wolf where there had been a man less than a minute before.
As she and Erin were strolling down Main Street, heading towards her car, she was so lost in her daydream that she did not even notice freya archie approaching her until it was too late. Freya was a tall, beautiful bleached blonde with big white chiclet teeth, who'd spent her high school years taunting Esme and her twin sister Erin about their weight. Freya was accompanied by her fiancé scotts, who'd been Erin's fiancée until very recently.
Scotts was big and blandly handsome in a ken doll kind of way, and he'd been a high school football star. Poor insecure Erin, so unsure of her weight and her looks, had been bowled over when he proposed to her – and Esme had bitten her tongue. Thoughts such as – he's a leech, he's using you for our family money, you deserve better than him. Then the big one had hit, and devastated their family business, and scotts had dumped Erin like she had bubonic plague.
"Ah, ah, if it isn't the blobbsy twins." Freya's pouting little mouth curled into a sneer. Esme felt Erin tense, and a bolt of anger pierced her. Nothing made Esme angrier than to see her sister's feelings hurt, and she was sorely tempted to strike out and shout insults at freya, but she'd discovered early that what made freya angriest was when her insults didn't hit their target.
And she had some news that would wipe the smile off freya's smug face.
"Look who had her bitch flakes this morning," she said to Erin, and she saw a small smile tug at her sister's mouth. She moved to walk past freya and scotts, and freya was quick to move in front of her.
"Not that she needs them, because she does all right on her own," Esme continued.
"Watch who you're calling a bitch," freya said, anger sparking in her huge blue eyes. She glanced at scotts. "You won't let them get away with that, will you?"
Esme let out a scornful laugh. "What's tall, dumb and stupid going to do – hit me?"
"Maybe." Scotts glared at her, and casually threw a protective arm around freya's narrow shoulders. Freya shot him a look of pure hero worship, then turned back to Esme and Erin with a bright, vindictive smile.
Erin's fists were clenched. "Touch my sister and see what happens," she said, her voice shaking with rage and hurt.
"Oh, let him," Esme sneered. "I would love to see him return to jail. He's already on probation for that dui."
What dui? He doesn't have a dui," freya said curtly, firing a quick look at scotts, who blushed. Everyone in elk vale adored Esme and Erin, so they received all the gossip. No one liked freya, but they were forced to be politely superficial to her face because her daddy was one of the richest men in town.
You didn't! How could you embarrass my family like that?" Freya wished to know, furiously. As always, it was all about her.
Scotts didn't respond. He simply glared at the floor like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
Freya cut Esme with a burning glance. "I see you were just coming out of my daddy's bank. Did the teller like it when you begged and crawled to keep your home?"
Erin gasped, but Esme merely smiled serenely. "No, she was thrilled when I paid all of our overdue mortgage payments, and caught us up entirely. Sorry your dad's not going to be getting his grubby hands on our place after all," she added. "Hope that won't damage his business prospects."
Shock and outrage passed over freya's beautiful face.
Fortunately, Esme had been able to bring her family up to the present month, but the minute she got back to the other side of the shard, she'd have a great, high-paying new job, and she'd be pouring every cent of that income into keeping her family farm in business.
This was going to throw a major monkey wrench into the archie family's plans, of course. Freya's father, harry archie, was co-owner of archie lumber. As long as Esme could remember, he'd been attempting to acquire her parents' property, so that his logging company could start cutting into the beautiful old-growth redwoods on their land. He'd been bragging all over town how he was going to bulldoze their fields and send all of their milk cows to the slaughterhouse.
The great earthquake, and the opening of the shard, had been a tremendous setback to his business. His sawmill had been destroyed, and the federal government had condemned most of his land because the shard ran right through it.
Yet rumor had it that there were investors ready to reconstruct his sawmill if only he could get his hand on the albie family's land.
Freya struggled for a comeback, but couldn't come up with any. "Well, we'll just see about that," she said finally, marching off down the street. Scotts trailed after her with a resentful look on his face. Now he was going to have to sit and suffer through one of freya's famous tirades. Esme wished she could stick around to hear it.