, Don't Try to Make Fetch Happen. It's Never Going to Happen.

The sinkhole on Carpenter Street had gotten fatter. A steady diet of passing cars and poor weather fed it. Made the crosswalk at the Carpenter and Grays Ferry Ave intersection impossible to navigate without dipping into oncoming traffic or slipping on a patch of black ice.

Isla and I watched the brick face of Cabroni's mother's home from the shadows of the construction site. Progress on the fancy new apartments had evidently slowed to a crawl. We camped on a half-built stoop; wooden beams erected but not yet clothed in insulation or dry wall or paint. Scaffolding served as our roof. In daylight – I can only imagine – we'd stick out like weeds from sidewalk cracks. But the night was overcast. Moonlight poked and prodded at the thick blanket of clouds it could not penetrate. With no lighting fixtures installed on the complex the velvety comfort of dark protected us.

Though our perch did little to shield us from the cold.

"What're we waiting for?" said Isla, stubbing out her third half-finished cigarette.

A hot atmosphere of smoke and breath ringed her. She pulled the collar of that leopard print coat in a choke around her slender neck.

"As I've said about two hundred, sixty-seven and a half times now," I murmured, fixing my eyes back to the house and away from her thrumming pulse. "We need to make sure the big bad wolf isn't home."

Isla groaned.

"Neither you or that house has so much as blinked in hours."

"We've barely been here thirty minutes."

"Cool, so can we go knock already?"

Hate to admit it, but she was at least right in that nothing obvious had changed with the house since we got here. It stood, crooked and proud and sandwiched between two nearly identical rowhomes, in an eerie silence. A soft glow filtered through the blinds of the front windows on the ground floor and a flickering porchlight did its best to remain vigilant. Beyond that, zippy. No sound. No movement. No sign of life. Least none I could perceive from this distance.

Isla shivered. She – well, firstly, refused to sit on the porch steps beside me – decided to bob up and down on the balls of her feet. Least she had the sense to swap out those glam heels for, slightly, more sensible tennis shoes (smattered with cat hair thanks to our check in with her furball). Though the thin fabric could not have possibly protected her from the cold. The amount of willpower it took to restrain myself from sweeping her into my arms made my muscles ache.

She lit up another cigarette.

Hmp. This chain smoking was growing bothersome.

"And what's your plan?" I said. "March on up to the front door, knock, and say what exactly if Lily answers? Or Cabroni's ailing mother? What script have you been rehearsing for this moment, Madame?"

Isla's cigarette fell from trembling fingers. I stomped it out quickly, before the wood could smolder.

"Careful!"

She didn't seem to hear me. Color drained from her cheeks. Her heartbeat accelerated, blood galloping down the tracks of her veins. That dark gaze of hers grew wide and glassy and unfocused. The small dots of her pupils zipping from one downcast point to the next and the next, never quite looking up or landing on any one thing long enough to focus.

"I don't know," she said, voice low. "Shit! I don't know."

"You don't have a plan?"

Isla's mouth opened, but nothing more than a squeak emerged. She half shrugged and half gestured to the house.

I ground my teeth. Damn this vexing dame. "All this time you didn't—not even an idea? A draft? Who doesn't at least draft a plan for what you'll do when you find the person you've hired the PI to find?"

She frowned. "Oh, I'm sorry, should I be writing my every thought down like you do?"

I threw my hands up. The sudden movement seemed to startle Isla and she flinched, stepping back. "Maybe we should call it a night then."

"No! No, I'm running out of time," she turned and squinted at the house, swaying on her feet. "Fuck it, I'm going for it."

My ribs curved tightly around my lungs.

"Don't you dare."

"If you don't like it, just sit here and watch me go then."

And she skipped right off the porch.

"What the fangs is so important about tonight? No. You're not prepared – Isla! Come back here!"

I watched her scurry across the street. Stilled. Seated. Just fanging watching. I needed to follow her. My desire to follow her was surging and desperate. Yet my limbs were unable muster to strength or will to move. Like a heavy blanket had been draped over me. I'm faster than her. Much faster. I could've caught her before she ever set foot on the sidewalk. Stop her. Protect her. Just get up, old boy, you damned idiot. Move. Move. Move.

And I didn't.

Instead, I just sat and watched and ground my teeth like a fool as she trotted up the porch. She knocked on the door once. Twice. What was wrong with me? I couldn't take my eyes off her. Not even to blink as Isla tested the doorknob and sweet hell it was open. The door fanging opened and that devil of a woman melted inside.

The moment she slipped into the shadowy maw of the house and out of sight every vein and muscle and blood vessel in me snapped. All that coiled momentum in my body lurched me forward. I threw myself over the porch, surprised at my limbs' delayed decision to obey my own thoughts.

I dashed across the street, narrowly avoiding being hit by a car as I did. The horn blared over the noise of club music and stench of marijuana wafting off it.

Didn't matter to me if the driver was human. Or if they noticed the unnatural speed at which I ran before they drove off. Isla was in that house alone. The house of the werewolf that tried to murder us. I didn't follow her. Why didn't I follow her?

My body slammed into the door. It hurt.

I reached for knob. It was likely still unlocked. But it slipped from my grasp. Butter under my fingers. Tried again. My palm had no luck making purchase on the gold-plated metal. It resisted my fingers. Oil on water. Even just looking at the thing caused my vision to cross and swirl. A headache bloomed. The door blurred. The knob a ghostly whisper under my nails that no matter how hard I dug in I just couldn't grip.

Screw the knob. I pushed. Rammed my shoulder into the thing.

And bounced off the wood.

Fangs. I was unwelcomed here. Uninvited. The house knew. Knew and fought me on it.

"Isla!"

I slapped the door. Clawed at it. Hissed like some rapid animal. My nails scratched the aging wood but did nothing more than rattle the hinges and tear away flecks of old paint. Even with all my strength. My growls and snarls became groans and whimpers as the dang house kept refusing my entrance. It stood defiant against my intrusion.

"Isla! Can you hear me! Fang it!"

I pressed my ear against the door – and even that was difficult. As if we were magnets, polarized and never meant to join, the house shunned my skin.

Yet, beneath my own ragged breaths, I could still make out faint noise inside. Voices. Feminine. One Isla's, for certain, my ears tuned to her, even though I couldn't distinguish the words. Heartbeats. Two of them. Both frantic and heavy. Isla's called to me. Beckoned. Come. Come here.

I couldn't.

The facsimile of a pulse in my chest accelerated to match to rabbit pace of hers just inside. It ached. The need to follow that call so fierce and strong I spat, fangs long and sharp, against the door and tore the metal knob right off the wood. A loud crack and tear echoed down the street. Followed by the clunk of the knob smacking against the porch. I fell to my knees and peered through the new hole I tore into the door.

The house inside was lowly lit. Nothing moved. No sign of life was present in the little living room, besides a single lamp lit.

Above me, the clouds retreated with a weary sigh, surrendering to the moonlight's oppressive glow. It loomed above and assaulted the street with its sickly light.

Something deep within the house whimpered. Yelled. Snarled. Growled. Howled.

"Isla! Isla let me in!" My fangs stabbed my gums. "Please, tell someone to let me in!"

More growls. Roars. Barks and snarls. The smell of musk and fur and saliva. Howling. The mournful wail of the werewolf wrapped around my bones and squeezed. A few lights in the neighboring homes flicked on. The wolf's moon call had not been subtle.

And he wasn't supposed to have been home. All the saints in hell, Isla, how'd I let you talk me into this you intolerable, beautiful, broad!

A woman screamed. The irony tang of blood polluted the night. Rotten and cloying.

I flung myself off the porch and up to the second story window, uncaring that the neighbors may see a man levitating outside an elderly woman's house. The blinds were closed. I couldn't spy inside. Not a single flicker or shadow of movement. I pried at the panes and only succeeded at breaking my finger. It snapped back together in an instant.

I heard movement. Heavy. Running footsteps. Barreling. Claws and snarls and padded feet. Something sounded like it crashed into a wall. Wood cracked. Furniture shattered. The echoes of fragile things breaking rang in my ears.

Yells. Isla's yells, louder and clearer than before. Shouting something in rapid Spanish.

Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no.

Grasping the gutter, I flung myself over the ledge of the roof and rolled onto my back against the flat tar. Somersaulted till I stood on my own soles again. Following the sound of a muffled chase below me I sprinted the short distance across the rooftop and leapt off the edge.

In the same instant – as I hung midair– the massive form of the beast smashed through a second story window.

Glass nipped at my side.

And then the wolf and I smashed together.

The beast yelped. It raked its claws down my chest. I hissed and kicked my heel into its snapping jaws. Dog caught my ankle. Crunched down to the bone. Fanging hell! Together we fell. A tangle of fur and limbs and many fangs.

Pavement pulverized my elbow on impact. It took the brunt of the fall. I groaned as the shards of my bones tore through the flesh of my arm. But that was the worst of it. The rest of my scrapes already healing over by the time I rolled off the mutt and hopped back to my feet, stumbling only once over my ankle cracking and resetting itself. Though my arm dangled, hanging useless and limp from my socket.

For only a moment.

The reassembling of my torn skin and shattered forearm hurt just as much as the tearing did. My elbow reformed in an audible pop.

Meanwhile, the beast was unharmed. It rolled onto the pavement. More graceful, somehow, than I. Shook itself off as it stretched and stood to its full height.

The werewolf was massive. Standing on its hindlegs it towered over me by several feet, its bulk blotting out the bright moon. Dirty, matted, and shaggy coarse brown fur coated rippling muscles. All four appendages ended in claws the size and sharpness of hunting knives.

Amber eyes glowed. The wolf's snout curled in an ugly expression, caught between a growl and a sneer. Strings of flesh and muscle from my ankle dissolved to ash between its overlapping rows of yellowed teeth, though the dribble of blood matting the fur of its chin remained. No trace of humanity could be found in its gaze.

"Evening, Cabroni," I rasped, backing up slowly, yet baring my fangs. "Say, how'd you like to go for a run, eh?"

I snatched a long dead twig off the back pavement, wound up, and whipped the thing clear over three of the neighbor's roofs before losing sight of it.

Cabroni's wolf eyes followed the trajectory of the stick for a few long seconds. His paws remained planted. In the distance, we both heard it skitter to a halt on a rooftop several houses away. The beast did not look up, keeping that rancid gaze pinned to my throat. It blew out a hot, putrid breath and howled at me.

"Greg!" Isla shouted.

I looked up.

From the broken window, Isla peered down. Her arms wrapped around the shoulders of a shivering, small, black-haired woman. The gal wore a pink sweater. Her bangs curled upward at an awkward angle. She gripped the sleeve of Isla's coat tight. Several nails were missing from her pink manicure.

Even at this distance and competing with the werewolf's rancid odor, Lily Perez reeked of decay.