The chip you put in a wounded wolf last night beeps in a stranger's shoulder. Hunting season opens in fourteen days.
You are the only vet in a Montana ranch town. Last night you chipped a wounded gray wolf. This morning your scanner beeps over a quiet stranger's shoulder. Hunting season opens in fourteen days.
8 a.m., late October, at the animal clinic in Tamarack Fork, Montana. Your coffee is cold, iodine is dark under your nails, and you have not slept.
At midnight you stitched a shot gray wolf and put a pet ID chip in his left shoulder. By five his pen was empty and the gate stood open.
Wyatt Gannon, who builds fences for half the county, carries in a stray dog. Your scanner passes over his left shoulder and shows the wolf's number.
Then Dwight Dunleavy, your biggest client, walks in asking where the wolf went. His flyer is on your counter: hunting season opens in fourteen days.
You run the animal clinic in a small Montana ranch town. The ranchers pay your bills, so you stay out of wolf fights. At nineteen, in your father's barn, you held a mare's head while she was put down.
A fence builder for half the ranches in the county: tall, lean, sun-browned, gray eyes with an amber rim, dark hair with one gray streak, a canvas work coat. Today he is pale under his tan and holds his left arm too still.
President of the Sage County Stockmen: broad, a white mustache, a sheepskin coat, a silver bolo tie, clean soft hands for a rancher. His ranch is your biggest client.
Someone in town polishes her reading glasses before bad news. Keep reading.
Someone from the state photographs everything twice. Keep reading.
Someone up on the river smells a stranger's hand before she shakes it. Keep reading.
Iodine, wet dog, a ticking furnace, frost on the front window, and the steel table where the wolf lay last night.
A pet chip reads on any scanner a hand's width away. Only surgery takes it out, and that leaves a scar.
The state wolf season opens in fourteen days only if three livestock kills are confirmed by then. Two are on file. A vet or the state officer signs each report.
Dwight's stockmen will pay two thousand dollars for the wolf you treated, and the whole town knows your lights were on at midnight.
Four hundred years undead. One sleeping draught. Now his heart beats, and he has fifty days.
Every monster in the kingdom bows to you. Your guild wants to know why. So do you.
Only the man in cell four can hear you, and the police say he pushed you off Pier Nine.
At dawn the whole city's magic is in your hands, and the strongest warlock in Boston wants his share back by the new moon.
