It had all been the fault of that wizard, whom Evan was now sure was someone working for the Shifter Search Specialists. When he’d first seen her in the store and realized she was tracking Jasper, he’d thought she was a dark wizard, working for the Dark Warriors. He’d come across several wizards working for the S.S.S., and Megan was far more talented than any of them. Besides, Jasper had been so difficult to track down that Evan was convinced there was no way a simple bounty hunter working for the S.S.S. could have managed to do so. This meant that she was almost certainly out here on behalf of the Dark Warriors.

  He’d confronted her boldly, thinking he could better subdue her using the element of surprise. He never would have done that if he’d had even the slightest suspicion that she was a bounty hunter. A Dark Warrior would have known better than to shoot off a goddamn magical fireworks show in the middle of a public store. But Megan, despite her obvious skills as a bounty hunter, was still only a bounty hunter. She’d panicked, and freaked out Jasper in the process. And now, Evan had to start all over. This might be the last dragon recovery job he was ever given. He’d convinced the leadership at the Dragon Recovery Bureau that he could handle this, but they were never going to trust him again after this fiasco.

  Evan kicked the wall one more time for good measure, and then walked toward the front door. He was about to step through it and close it behind him for good, when a flash of black caught his eye. Instantly alert, he froze in place and breathed in deeply, trying to see whether he could catch the scent of anyone else nearby. Surely, Jasper had not come back here. He knew better than that.

  No, it wasn’t Jasper. It wasn’t a dragon shifter, or even a male. It was a female, and Evan suddenly had a pretty good idea who that female might be. Another flash of black caught his eye, and then he saw her run out from behind a tree and make a mad dash across the yard. He’d been right. It was the same wizard he’d seen in the store. She’d come to see what Jasper had left behind, too, but she apparently hadn’t expected him to be here.

  “Hey!” he yelled at her. “Stop!”

  She ignored him, of course. What had he expected? With an angry roar, he took off toward her at a full-on sprint. She didn’t look back, and she was fast. But he was faster. She should know better than to try to outrun a dragon. He had almost caught up with her in less than fifteen seconds. In desperation, she screamed out “Magicae invisibilia!

  But her attempt at an invisibility spell came too late. She was too panicked and moving too quickly for it to take affect properly, and he could still see a dim outline of her form. With an angry roar, Evan lunged toward her and tackled her to the ground. She screamed, and struggled to get away, but she was no match for his dragon strength. The invisibility spell had completely fizzled out now, but he heard her trying to choke out another spell. With swift, strong movements, he pinned her right arm down to the ground and quickly pulled off her magic ring.

  “Hey!” she shouted out as he tossed it aside. “That’s mine!”

  “You can have it back in a few minutes, if you stop trying to take my head off.”

  She huffed at him, but stopped struggling. “Let me sit up.”

  He let go of her and sat back. She sat up herself, rubbing her right arm and eyeing him warily. “You hurt me.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to, but you didn’t stop. And I want to know what the hell an S.S.S. bounty hunter is doing chasing down the fiercest dragon fighter in the country. Possibly in the world.”

  The woman looked genuinely surprised. “The fiercest dragon fighter in the country? What are you talking about?”

  “Jasper Moffatt? He’s kind of famous for what he did during the Great Dark War.”

  She still looked confused. She inched away from him slowly, still eyeing him warily. “I didn’t even know his name was Jasper until you shouted it out in the store. I certainly didn’t know that he was some hotshot dragon fighter.”

  Evan sighed. “I should have known. Of course an S.S.S. bounty hunter wouldn’t know that. You’re just after any shifter you can get.”

  She glared at him. “Not any shifter. I only work with dragons. And how do you know I’m from the S.S.S.”

  “You’re too sloppy to be from anywhere else. No other organization would have sent out an agent who would set off magical fireworks in the middle of a crowded store.”

  She looked hurt. “That was an accident. I don’t usually mess up like that. That’s why I’m considered the best bounty hunter the S.S.S. has.”

  “That’s not saying much.”

  She hopped to her feet, her eyes blazing with anger. Evan was surprised to see how gorgeous she was. This was the first time he’d really looked at her, and he had to admit that, despite how angry she had made him by running Jasper off, she was quite a sight to behold. Her wavy dark brown hair rebelled against the bun she had tried to pull it into, and her skin was a perfect olive color where it wasn’t flushed red with anger. Her eyes, which were the same shade of dark brown as her hair, also flashed with anger.

  “I don’t have to listen to this,” she yelled, and lunged toward her magic ring.

  “Oh, yes you do,” Evan said. He grabbed the ring and held it tightly in his hand. For a moment, he saw a flash of fear go across her face, but anger soon replaced it once again.

  “Who are you working for?” she demanded, but she couldn’t completely hide the bit of nervousness in her voice. Evan realized for the first time that she probably felt at least mildly terrified of him. She had to know that he was a dragon, and, although most dragons weren’t the types to kill or hurt people for no reason, they were capable of causing a great deal of harm when they wanted to. He felt a little guilty, and decided to put her mind at ease. Yes, he was angry with her, but that didn’t mean he wanted to stoop to the level of making her fear for her life.

  “I’m working for the city of Torch Lake,” he said, standing to his feet now as well. “Have you heard of it?”

  She furrowed her brow. “Torch Lake? No, I’ve never heard of it.”

  Evan raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Really? I would have thought anyone bounty hunting for dragons would have known about us.”

  “Why?” her tone was belligerent now.

  “Because out of all the shifter and wizard towns in existence right now, we are probably the one that is most actively looking for dragons. We’ve been trying to get them to move to our city to keep it safe. Unlike you, we have a good reason for chasing down these dragons.”

  That seemed to make her angry. “You have no idea what my reasons are, so don’t presume to judge whether or not they’re good.”

  Evan laughed. “Come on. I don’t need to presume anything. You bounty hunters are all after money.”

  “So what, if that’s the case? We all have to earn a living somehow.”

  “By tracking down dragons for a bunch of crooks? Seems like you could find a more honorable profession. At least you bounty hunters are all horrible at what you’re doing. I’m not really worried about the S.S.S. becoming a serious threat.”

  She looked uneasy. “It’s not a bunch of crooks. And I am not horrible at what I’m doing.”

  Evan laughed. “Well, you did manage to track down Jasper, which can’t have been an easy job. But considering how badly you botched your attempt to sneak up on him, I’m going to assume you were just lucky.”

  “I wasn’t just lucky. You botched it up. If you hadn’t attacked me in the middle of the store I wouldn’t have had to have defended myself.”

  “I didn’t attack you. Although I thought about it, because I thought you were a Dark Warrior at first. If I’d known you were only working for the S.S.S. I probably would have just ignored you.”

  “Dark Warriors?” she looked confused, once again.

  “Wow, you really are out of the loop.”

  The anger returned to her face. “I don’t have to put up with this. Give me my ring!”

  She lunged at him, but he quickly moved to hold the ring out of reach.

  “Calm down,” Evan said. “If you are going to insist on hunting down dragons, you really should know about the Dark Warriors, for your own safety’s sake.”

  She glared at him, not saying anything. Evan could tell that she wanted to know what he was talking about, but didn’t want to admit to her curiosity. He almost had to laugh at the conflicted look on her face.

  “Tell you what. I’ll tell you…sorry I didn’t catch your name?”

  She looked at him warily, and for a moment Evan thought she wasn’t going to give up her name. But finally she shrugged.

  “Megan. My name’s Megan.”

  “Hi, Megan. I’m Evan. Tell you what. I’ll tell you about the Dark Warriors, if you tell me everything you know about the S.S.S.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Is this a joke? Why are you so interested in S.S.S?”

  “Why does it matter?”

  She shrugged again. “Well, I’ll tell you what I know, but it isn’t much. And you seem awfully suspicious.”

  “I’m suspicious because I think that the S.S.S. is feeding information about dragons back to the Dark Warriors.”

  “So what are these ‘Dark Warriors’ you keep talking about?”

  Evan sighed. “They are pretty much the bane of my existence. They’re an underground group of evil shifters and dark wizards who formed after the end of the Great Dark War. Although, they’re not so underground anymore. They’ve been growing bolder lately.”

  A frown spread across Megan’s face. “I thought dark magic was defeated in the War.”

  “It was. But there were a lot of very unhappy shifters and wizards after the war. A lot of people lost everything—family, friends, clans, homes. They blamed these losses not on the dark wizards, but rather on the forces of good. They decided that unless you’re practicing dark magic, you’re too weak to ever be safe.”

  Megan looked a little pale. “So there are still wizards practicing dark magic, even now?”

  “Yup. And they are willing to pay good money to get information on where dragons might be hiding. That nice little salary the S.S.S. pays you? Odds are good it’s paid by the Dark Warriors.”

  “There’s no way! The S.S.S. isn’t a criminal organization!”

  “It’s a business, Megan. Its owners are interested in making as much money as they possibly can. For as long as the S.S.S. has been around, they’ve had a reputation for taking on requests to search for shifters no matter how questionable the motives behind the search. They don’t care about morals or about holding back dark magic. They care about the almighty dollar.”

  Megan crossed her arms. “You dragons are all so suspicious, you know that? You’re supposed to be these mighty, mythical beasts, and yet you jump at the slightest mention of dark magic.”

  Evan felt anger rising from his core as Megan spoke. She might be beautiful, but she was acting like a fool. “We’re wary of dark magic for a reason. It’s powerful, and it’s damaged a lot of lives. I don’t blame the dragons who are hiding out away from the wizard and shifter world. I used to be one of them.”

  “Why does that not surprise me?”

  Evan’s anger flared, but he kept up his calm exterior. “I came back to the shifter world because I realized the only way to keep our world safe for future generations is to face the darkness head-on. If you want to bury your head in the sand and act like there’s no risk, that’s your business. But make no mistake: if you’re going to work with the S.S.S., and you’re going to chase down dragons, you’re going eventually going to find yourself in the crossfire between good and evil.”

  She rolled her eyes. “If you say so.”

  Evan wanted to roll his eyes right back at her. He was wasting his time talking to this girl. There was no point in trying to make her feel badly for setting off the fireworks in the store and running Jasper off. She was only interested in the money behind dragon hunting. To her, losing a dragon only mattered because of the financial loss, not because of the risk of darkness growing stronger. Evan found himself wanting to get as far away from Megan as he could, but he figured he should at least ask her about the S.S.S. again. The longer he talked to her, the more he doubted she had any useful information, but he had to at least try.

  “So, I told you about the Dark Warriors. Now it’s your turn to tell me about the S.S.S.”

  “I don’t know what you want to know. Like I said, I don’t know much. They tell me what kind of shifter they want me to track down—lately it’s all been dragons—and if I get them information on that shifter’s whereabouts, they pay me.”

  “They don’t tell you who’s asking for this information, or paying for it?”

  Megan looked uncomfortable. “What does it matter?”

  Evan let out an exasperated sigh. “You’re clueless, Megan. It matters because odds are good that dark wizards are behind these requests for dragons. Reputable shifters and wizards don’t use the S.S.S. to do their dirty work. But you’re so wrapped up in your own desire for money that you don’t care that you’re helping evil people.”

  Evan fished in his pocket and pulled out Megan’s ring, which he had put there so she couldn’t lunge after it again. He tossed it at her now, so quickly and with so much force that she was barely able to catch it.

  “Here’s your ring. Try not to set off any more fireworks.”

  Then he turned and stormed away, angry at himself for even wasting time talking to a bounty hunter. He should have known she would insist that there was nothing bad going on. All the bounty hunters were like that. They only followed around the money, and their only saving grace was that they were so bad at what they did that they rarely interfered with any serious searches for dragons. Of course, the one time one of them did interfere, it had to be when Evan had almost tracked down Jasper Moffatt. That had been unlucky.

  Although, as Evan continued walking away in a fit of rage, he had to admit that Megan troubled him somewhat. He couldn’t quite write her off as a normal, talentless bounty hunter. She’d messed things up with Jasper, but the fact remained that she had actually found Jasper. How had she managed that? It had been hard even for Evan to do that, and he had the resources of Torch Lake at his disposal. Was it possible that she was better at her job than he’d given her credit for?

  The further he walked, the more this thought nagged at him. And the more he wondered whether she might actually be able to help him find Jasper again. He tried to push the thought away, but it kept coming back. Finally, he couldn’t hold it back any longer, and he gave in to the curiosity.

  “I won’t talk to her,” he announced out loud to himself, as he turned around to sneak back toward where he’d left Megan. “I’ll just stalk her for a while and see what she does.”

  He told himself that he was probably wasting his time. She probably didn’t have any better ideas on how to find Jasper again than he did. Still, stalking Megan was his only idea right now, so he might as well go with it.

  And, even if she didn’t make any good moves toward finding Jasper, at least he’d get the chance to look at her a bit more. As annoying as she could be, he had to admit that she was pretty damn beautiful. Things could have been worse.

  Evan winced at that thought. If there’s one thing he’d learned over the years, it was that thinking that things could have been worse seemed to always be followed by things becoming worse. He did his best to push away the feeling of foreboding that filled him as he started back toward Jasper’s house. As long as he paid attention and kept his wits about him, he should be fine.

  He hoped, anyway.

  Chapter Three

  Megan had snuck into dozens of houses during her time as a bounty hunter, but she never got used to the uncomfortable feeling of being an intruder. Even now, when she knew that this house was abandoned, she felt like a criminal as she walked through what had been Jasper’s house.

  He had surprisingly more stuff in here than most of the dragon shifters that she’d hunted down. He seemed to have been quite settled here, and she felt a pang of guilt at the fact that he’d been so hurriedly forced out by her actions. She swallowed back the guilt, and kept searching through the piles of clothing, books, and other household items that he had thrown about as he left. She reminded herself that if it hadn’t been her tracking him down, it would have been someone else. Dragons always had to be on the lookout. Megan didn’t envy them that one bit.

  Megan didn’t expect to find much here, but she had to be thorough in her search. Much of her success as a bounty hunter had come from her willingness to painstakingly search for the details that others quickly skimmed over. She’d found clues to the location of more than one dragon by looking through information that other bounty hunters had already declared “useless.” Now, she methodically went through Jasper’s house, but her heart wasn’t in it.

  Evan had shaken her to her core. She didn’t want to believe that what he’d told her was true. And yet, why would he lie? Megan shuddered at the thought of the Dark Warriors. After the war, she, like most wizards and shifters, had an unsettling fear of dark magic. Yes, dark magic had been defeated in the war. But not before causing considerable damage. Entire clans had been wiped out, and thousands more had been killed in battle. Just knowing that something like that could happen changed a person. Megan’s clan had been spared the brunt of the War, but that didn’t stop Megan from deciding to leave clan life behind. She didn’t want to submit to a High Council anymore. Not after seeing her own High Council, and many other High Councils, make mistake after mistake during the war. The High Councils hadn’t had any idea how to deal with the War or the threat of Dark Magic, and yet they had insisted that their clan members obey them without question. It bothered Megan that the fate of so many lives could be placed in the hands of a few governing officials, and she was convinced that it had been sheer luck that had kept her clan from being destroyed. Her High Council had made a series of mistakes that left her clan vulnerable to the dark wizards, but, thankfully, the War had ended right before it had reached them in the far northeast of Maine.

 

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