Which gave me leeway to come up with a solid plan. “I’ll do things differently tonight,” I mused, speaking more to myself than to Tall Nose, who was starting to fade back into the spirit realm. “I’ll stash my sword somewhere safe—no, I don’t intend to let you watch and find out where. Then I’ll go back to full-on kami. See if stealing memories will give me other powers beyond humanity. Are you shivering?”

  “You didn’t feel the chill before we crossed over?”

  Sometimes I thought Tall Nose was more drama than he was worth. It was true that the moon was just past new, the time when spirits had the least power. Still—“You do realize there’s no temperature in the spirit realm?”

  “Not for you maybe.” He was perching on the back of the shopping cart now, legs dangling like those of a grotesque and over-sized human child. His voice was anything but childlike though as he warned. “There’s a new darkness in the air too.”

  “Yeah, night will do that.”

  Tall Nose spoke over me, ignoring my attempt at levity. “It’s hungry, seeking. You haven’t felt it?”

  I shook my head, although perhaps I had noticed a very subtle something while rushing back to my shopping cart through the spirit realm. A drag at my feet that slowed me even more than I’d expected. A weight on my shoulders pressing me down almost like gravity.

  Then I forgot about vague maybe-dangers as a teenaged boy rounded the corner on the other side of the street. His clothes were high quality, his coat more than sufficient to ward off chilly weather. But his shoulders were hunched, his gaze glued to the pavement.

  “Don’t distract me,” I told Tall Nose. “Looks like we’ve landed an easy mark.”

  Chapter 3

  Feigning humanity wasn’t the same as inhabiting a tangible body. There were fewer rewards in my current state but also fewer limitations, at least for me. So while the teenager’s attention was still on the ground, I manipulated the illusionary form I’d wrapped around myself, clothing my not-quite-skin in a classy yet threadbare outfit.

  People who wore expensive clothes, I’d noticed, were prone to judge others by their apparel. I wanted the young man to trust me and pity me as well.

  “Excuse me!” I called, voice wavering just a little. That was the key to drawing him in. That, plus the way I angled my body to outline perfectly perky breasts.

  “Nice move.” Tall Nose’s flute-like voice whispered into my ear even though I couldn’t see him any longer. He was almost entirely back in the spirit realm and I swatted at the air where his words had come from, hoping he’d take the hint and retreat the rest of the way. Meanwhile, I donned my most charming smile.

  But Tall Nose must have knocked me off my game because the teenager seemed ready to run in the opposite direction. Rather than coming closer, he just peered across the partially illuminated street at me. “Hello?”

  In response, I turned up the sugar quotient. “Is there any way you could do me a teeny, tiny favor?” Men, I’d found, responded well to a little-girl voice emerging from a grown woman’s body. Perhaps it made them think I’d be the one who was easily manipulated.

  Didn’t work on this teenager, unfortunately. Maybe he was too young or too innocent. Whatever the reason, he didn’t shoot my curves the extended second glance they usually attracted. Didn’t smirk that tiniest bit as if he knew something I didn’t.

  Still, he crossed the street. Ambled up with hands in his pockets. “Can I help you?”

  I wafted my body two small steps away from the shopping cart while inviting him to take my place. “The wheel’s stuck. Could you possibly push it just a little...?”

  I let my voice trail off, and that seemed more effective than outright provocativeness had been. Because the teenager nodded once as if accepting a challenge. Then he stepped up to the cart and gave it a heave.

  The cart didn’t actually have wheel issues. No wonder his hard push made it jet forward so fast it nearly yanked him off his feet. His attempts to regain his balance and control the cart distracted him enough so he didn’t notice when I reached out to touch the bare skin of his wrist.

  Memories flooded me like a shot of pure oxygen. For one split second, all I could focus on was the blood beginning to pump through my veins. The breath starting to heave my lungs in and out again. The solidity of a human body just barely beginning to reform around my kami interior.

  Then I focused on the memory I was sucking out of the teenager and discovered why my little-girl voice hadn’t been as effective as I’d expected.

  Shouting. Crying. A father tossing around slurs he never should have used on anyone, let alone on a son.

  The mother, placating but also implacable. “Honey, you know we still love you. Hate the sin, love the sinner. There are camps that will help you overcome this phase you’re going through. We’ll call the pastor in the morning. All you have to do is promise...”

  “Not to be who I am?”

  “Not in my house.” This was the father, hand raised as if he thought he could beat the gay out of someone he’d taken fishing and taught to ride a bike and given his own name to.

  “Then I’ll leave.”

  The son’s hand shook as he grabbed his coat. He feigned anger as he slammed the door behind him, but inside something was breaking as he walked blindly into the night with no destination in mind.

  The teenager’s pain was so profound I could feel it, even as almost-pure kami. It clenched what little bit of throat had begun solidifying out of the ether. It twisted my gut even more than lack of food had done.

  If I took this memory, I could re-materialize a solid body. The teenager’s recollection was powerful. It would likely keep me strong for days even if I didn’t find traditional sources of sustenance to fill my belly.

  But over the last month, I’d laid down personal rules for memory theft. Rules that never made sense when I was fully disembodied but, in this betwixt and between state, seemed almost important enough to pay attention to.

  Rule number one was: Don’t take anything too recent or too formative, which doubly applied to this teenager’s awful showdown with his parents. I’d learned that lesson the hard way, watching a successful lawyer disintegrate over the course of one long week after I stole the memory of his child’s first breath. The rumpled and confused man who’d ended up living on the street not far from me had eventually been ushered into a car by two family members, their soft words suggesting he’d be taken care of. But I never saw him walk up the steps of the courthouse again with his briefcase in hand.

  Regret tried to gnaw at me. But regret required a body and I didn’t have one at the present moment. Instead, I repeated the litany of memories that were missable, memories I’d told myself were kosher to take.

  Long boring days of repetition. A painful yet long-ago event in a string of similar indignities, the specifics better off forgotten. Or, if I had to, I was allowed to seize something very small yet sweet.

  My hand was still on the teenager’s wrist, only a millisecond having passed while he tried to control the shopping cart and I searched for something that might fit the bill better. There were many sweetnesses in his past. I could almost taste them, could feel how they’d fuel a human body through cold, hungry nights if I decided to stay in human form after stashing my sword somewhere secure.

  But the teenager would need those memories more than I would. He’d need them if he wanted to survive young adulthood without letting bitterness twist his character. He’d need them to grow into the man he seemed poised to become, the man who’d cross the street to help a distressed stranger.

  “You have needs too,” Tall Nose breathed into my ear. He was invisible beside me, but I could hear him as he whispered seduction. “We both have needs. Imagine how loyal I’d be if you gave me part of that tasty memory.”

  The tiny hints of sensation that had entered my body while I surfed the teenager’s showdown with his parents were already fading. And with the loss of sensation came a loss of moral compass.

  It would be so easy to take from this teenager. Perhaps Tall Nose was right…

  I whipped my hand away before I could finish that thought. I couldn’t trust myself not to steal something large, something important. So I’d take nothing. Not from this innocent who was facing the first major trauma of his formerly sheltered life.

  Instead, I’d help him. Because, while scanning his memories, I’d noted one adult in his life who seemed like a safe harbor, an adult I now lied to remind him of. “I think I’ve met you before. Isn’t Mrs. Sellings your theater teacher?”

  The teenager’s brow furrowed as he struggled to figure out how I could have known that. I stayed silent, waiting for him to fill in the blanks. “Were you at the play she took us to last month?” he ventured finally.

  Smiles were so easy in full-on kami form. So were lies. “I was. But, hey, I won’t keep you. I know you need to get going. Thanks for the help.”

  He nodded, already pulling out his phone as he strode purposefully away from me. He’d likely remembered the same scene I’d snooped on—Mrs. Sellings drawing aside a student as everyone else filed out of her classroom. The teen I’d almost stolen from tonight had been the last one out so he’d overheard a fragment of a conversation meant to be private.

  “Are you safe at home?” A head shake. The teacher’s hand settled on the other student’s shoulder. “Then we’ll figure something out.”

  Mrs. Sellings’ phone number had been on her syllabus. She was young, earnest. “Text me if you have any questions,” she’d told everyone on their first day of class.

  In another week, this teenager would be so beaten down by life that he wouldn’t even consider texting, let alone breaking the unspoken social rule of calling a teacher in the middle of the night. But, right now, he still had those warm memories suggesting his safety was worth a little rule-breaking.

  “Mrs. Sellings?” he said into his phone just before he disappeared out of sight around the corner.

  I didn’t remember until the sidewalk was once again empty that my sword was still sitting at the bottom of the shopping cart, right out in the open. I continued to lack a human form or any other way of moving my weapon under cover.

  Even Tall Nose had disappeared, disgusted by my un-kami-like behavior. The hungry darkness was now all I noticed as I waited alone for the end of the night.

  Chapter 4

  Tru’s mate showed up before the trash trucks started running. It was hours after the teenager left, hours since the last person had passed down the opposite sidewalk resolutely ignoring my attempts to hail her.

  Running low on energy had prompted me to lose visibility in the human realm, coming as close as a kami ever gets to sleeping. Which explains how a werewolf so large he was impossible to miss managed to swipe my sword out of the shopping cart before I even realized he was present.

  I felt the firmness of his grip as soon as he touched the hilt however. Felt the absence of those strong fingers as he stuffed the sword and its umbrella sheathe inside a cardboard poster tube then used a plastic cap to seal the odd choice of container up.

  “I know you’re there,” Drake observed, poking one-fingered at what would have been my nose level had I been in my most recent human body. “Boink,” he added, his dimple indenting in a way that almost made my recent dilly-dallying up on the rooftop understandable.

  Almost, but not quite. Yes, this shifter turned physical attractiveness into an art form. But I certainly wasn’t going to fall for the same trick now that I was disembodied and lacked human arousal hormones. So instead of materializing and responding verbally, I fought back in a more efficient way.

  Because he’d taken my sword. He’d stuffed it inside a tube that I suspected was meant to keep me from accessing it. Even though he was wrong about my abilities on that count, he was now in possession of an object very important to me. I had every right to seize one of his memories in a counterattack.

  I touched his neck with fingers he couldn’t see then rifled through his brain like it was one of those old-fashioned card catalogs. And what I found there surprised me so much I left the memory behind, released my hold, and used up energy so I could converse.

  Visible and audible now, I observed. “You’re not Tru’s mate.”

  Rather than leaping away from my sudden appearance, he pretended to sweep a hat off his head by way of greeting. “Nope. Jack De Luca at your service.”

  “Drake’s twin?”

  “The more handsome twin, of course.”

  Despite his words, there was no rivalry evident within his memories. Instead, I noted a deep loyalty to his brother. That plus some distressing news.

  Turned out Jack, his brother, and Tru had decided I was the culprit in a recent murder. Which meant they’d been chasing me yesterday for a reason other than my actions a month ago. And Jack wasn’t here now for conversation either. He’d come to stop further depredations in a kind, gentle manner that was based on yet another very misplaced impression.

  I winged my eyebrows upward. “You think I’m your mate.”

  “I was hoping to save that bombshell for our third date. But, sure, poke around in my brain. Ruin all my surprises.”

  The dimple deepened. He started walking down the street and I followed, not entirely because of the sword inside its poster tube resting on his shoulder.

  “Where are we going?” I demanded.

  “I thought you and I could talk things out. Make a deal.”

  “Why would I make a deal with you? All I need is memories, and I can take those whenever and wherever I wish.”

  My assertion wasn’t precisely true. I needed my sword also and Jack seemed to be at least partially aware of that fact or he wouldn’t have tucked the weapon away inside a poster tube.

  Still, he responded now as if what I’d said was the entire truth. “You haven’t taken any of my memories though. I’d notice, right? If you took one?”

  As he spoke, he reached out as if to guide me away from a puddle in the sidewalk. I hadn’t noticed the water because I wasn’t really walking and the semblance of a body I’d created to allow me to communicate wouldn’t have any problem passing straight through physical obstacles.

  Jack had to understand that. He’d watched me disappear midair while falling off the rooftop. He’d watched me re-materialize out of nothing a few moments earlier. And yet, he got his fancy leather shoes wet to save me from the horrors of the puddle now.

  Perhaps that’s why I told him the truth. “You wouldn’t notice if I took certain kinds of memories. I can...”

  “Wait.” His single word was quiet yet forceful. For the first time, his body language resembled his twin’s.

  Dangerous. Intent. Had all the jokes been a facade after all?

  Then I saw what had caught his attention. A female wolf barely visible as a shadow among other shadows, slinking across the intersection half a block in front of us. Something about the posture of her tail and ears suggested she wasn’t loping along for pleasure. No, she was steering clear of the streetlights because she was being chased.

  “How about a starter deal?” Jack murmured, drawing my attention back to him. He still looked dangerous, but the dimple had reasserted itself. “You take one of those memories I won’t miss and use it to lead whoever’s following that wolf off her trail. I’ll catch up with her and figure out what kind of help she needs. We’ll meet back here after we’re both finished and I’ll give you a second memory. No guilt on your shoulders for taking either one of them. Total free pass.”

  Guilt. Was that what I felt when inside a human body? Was that why I’d made such a complex set of rules to guide my memory thefts?

  I certainly didn’t feel any sort of remorse for past actions now. And yet...I found myself nodding. I reached up to touch Jack’s stubbled cheek, shivering at the pleasant roughness, and the memory I stole was one he had several of.

  A child’s pain. Crying in the darkness after his brother broke an arm trying to be what their father wanted, trying to keep Jack’s sensitive nature a secret. The memory was one of dozens of similar episodes. One Jack would be better off never looking back on again.

  “Huh.” He shook his head as if he had felt my intrusion even though no one else had ever noticed in the moment. He might have intended to say something more, but a distant click of claws on pavement broke through the stillness.

  More wolves were approaching from the direction the female wolf had come from. These weren’t trying to be quiet. Instead, they were eschewing caution in favor of speed.

  The entire drama was none of my business. The stolen memory filled me to bursting with bubbly energy. I could do whatever I wanted with it.

  But when I built a physical body to ground me there in the human world, I didn’t solidify the form I felt most comfortable with. Instead, I found myself creating lupine muscle and bone in exactly the shape of the fleeing wolf’s body. I found myself sprinting to the corner to get there before her pursuers could notice the swap I’d instigated.

  Only then did I peer back over my shoulder. Not at Jack, but instead at the six massive beasts coming into view behind me.

  One howled and hairs rose up the length of my spine.

  Chapter 5

  Despite my newfound body’s fear reaction, the sprint away from my pursuers was pure exhilaration. Muscles stretched and each step pushed me forward as if I was bouncing off a trampoline. Meanwhile my usual new-body problem—an empty belly—was nothing to be concerned about in wolf form. When the time came to eat, there would be food.

  For now, the chase was everything. I knew this part of the city with the intimacy of the unhoused, and I took advantage of that knowledge to keep the other wolves on my trail while never letting them advance any closer. There were streets bound to be busy even before sunrise where I could dash through a gap in traffic and force pursuers to wait before following. There were yards I could cut through and brilliantly lit areas that required us all to hop from shadow to shadow to stay in the dark.