Silver Fox (Silver Shifters 2)

Her gaze flew to meet his, her eyes wide and steady. Was that . . . relief?

“Yes,” she whispered.

“I see,” Joey said gently. “I guess Vic wasn’t as careful as he thought he was. He did say he kept away from windows.”

“Vic?” Doris asked, surprised.

But she didn’t look shocked.

Instead, she took a deep breath of . . . relief?

“He did.” Doris gripped her knees. Joey kept himself from reaching for her—letting her decide if she trusted him to come close again. “That is, he might have,” she added in a wondering tone. “But that isn’t where Lon saw it happen. And I, for that matter.”

She got up and walked to the wall, then bent and tapped it. There, between two toy cupboards, was a knothole in one of the planks. “Come see.”

Joey scooted over and sat next to her, shoulder to shoulder. He looked. The knothole had been hollowed out. The hole, even with the dim att

ic light shining through, wouldn’t be visible from below—it was barely the size of a dime.

Doris said, “My grandfather made it when he was in high school, and every generation since tells the kids about it. Syl and I used to spy on hikers through it. We called it the ‘spyhole’. Not that you can see much in summer, when all the trees are in leaf. But in winter, except for the pines, now that snow isn’t coming down, you can see all the way up the toward what we always called the millionaire house, up there on the hill.”

That was Cang’s hideout.

Joey peered through the knothole, and saw the exact section of the slope he and Xi Yong had thought safe from view. He could even make out the remnants of the tracks he and Xi Yong had made.

Doris went on, “When I was young, the house on the hill was owned by an old movie director. He was always having parties when we were little. Actually, I suppose those parties were probably sixties ‘happenings.’ They had live bands and psychedelic light shows made by Klieg lights. We could hear the music all the way down here. But when he died, the place went empty. It sold a year or so ago, and whoever is up there now really hates trespassers, so we never hike that way anymore.”

Joey sat back and faced her, trying to make his openness clear on his face.

“So . . . Vic is a . . . werewolf?” Doris asked.

“We call ourselves shifters,” Joey said. Now it was him gripping his knees.

“We?” she repeated.

He brought his chin down in a nod.

“You’re a shifter-wolf?”

“Actually, I’m a nine-tail fox,” he said, and decided it was time to go for broke. “Would you like to see?”

EIGHTEEN

DORIS

I’m not crazy, I’m not crazy, I’m not crazy had run through her mind every since she’d seen what she’d thought she’d seen.

And she wasn’t.

And Joey knew it.

He wasn’t telling her that she was a two fries short of a Happy Meal. Instead, he said, “Would you like to see?”

“Yes.” The word came out in a rush of breath.

And then her safe little box with its string of carefully planned days exploded, sending shards all over the universe.

Between one heartbeat and the next Joey shimmered the way the lake does when the sun first strikes it. The silver in his blond hair brightened and spread in a flash, and gone were his white shirt and worn jeans as his form altered to the graceful, proud form of a fox.