Author's Note: Ann Towey from Nuke-Con has created a web page where you can order signed copies of my books. I owe her an enormous debt of gratitude for making this happen--I've been looking for an efficient way of doing this since April, without success, and now she's gone and made it happen in record time. Here's her message:

As I will be the Nuke-Con party handling this, please provide me a day or two of grace to get them in the mail. I will try my hardest to get them in the mail on Monday following the convention, but it may be Tuesday.

Powell drank some water from an old tin canteen and went on with his story. “I left the castle in 1921, I think. I wandered around Europe for awhile but I’d been honest when I said I wanted to come back to Canada. Eventually I got enough courage together to try it.

“It wasn’t easy crossing the ocean. I kept my wolf in check as best I might but I could hardly afford to buy a silver cage. Instead I bought a trunk, a big steamer trunk large enough that I could climb inside. I had a silver chain, not very thick but it didn’t matter. When I would feel the change coming on I would climb into my trunk. I would wrap the chain around the outside in such a way that it could be easily removed by a human hand. My wolf would try to get out, of course, but it was impossible—without hands the wolf couldn’t pull the chain free. Stuck inside that confined space the wolf couldn’t get enough leverage to kick the trunk to pieces, either. Every time I worried the wolf would get past it. I sweated the thought of the wolf getting loose among the ship’s crew. I might hurt someone—I might even spread my curse.

“I made landfall at Boston and worked my way north, across the border. I know the southern part of the country is pretty-well developed now, but there wasn’t much of anything west of Ontario back then. I found a cabin in the Barren Lands and tried that for a while. When the land developers moved in I moved out. It became a pattern. I would live somewhere a while, maybe six months, maybe a whole year, but as soon as the loggers came through I would have to hurry on, sometimes with no warning. I roamed through the west until the west became British Columbia and the western coast, which was spreading back east, and then I roamed upcountry until I got here. I may have to leave this place eventually, but I think it’ll be a while.”

He stopped talking, then. The sudden silence was so strange that she sat up and looked right at him. “You’ve spent all this time alone? All those years in the woods with nobody?”

He shrugged. “There’s Dzo. He and I met up in the seventies. He was living above a bar in Medicine Hat. It was kind of weird, actually. He saw me and pointed at me and said, “hey, you’re a shapeshifter, right?” I looked around expecting to be seized by the patrons of the bar. If they knew what I was surely they would lock me up, or worse, I figured. I paid my tab and fled. My car was parked out back—I still had three hours to get back to my cabin before I changed. He came up and stood in front of my car and wouldn’t let me leave. He had his mask on and a bag over his shoulder and he said he was coming with me. I tried to explain I was just passing through but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. We’ve been working together ever since.”

“At least you had someone, then. You must have missed your family pretty terribly,” she said.

“Eh, families aren’t what they’re cracked up to be,” he said, dismissively. There was a story there he wasn’t interested in telling.

Chey had her own ideas, though. “Mine was pretty great, once,” she said. She could feel the wolf inside of her, baring its teeth. She fought it back, kept her face clean of emotion. “Then things went to shit.” Some ember of humanity in her heart flared up as soon as she’d said that. Powell’s sheer life span meant he’d suffered a lot longer than she had. “I’m sorry. I know you’ve had it bad, too.”

He shrugged. They said little more to each other until they were back at the cabin. When he jumped down from the truck he took a look at his watch. “The moon’s down until about quarter to ten tonight. I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t mind a bath and a bed.” Her eyes must have flashed because he grinned. “One at a time, of course. We have a big galvanized tub I bathe in, usually. Fill it up with water off the fire and it actually gets medium hot. I don’t have much in fancy soaps and notions, but what’s mine is yours.”

She nodded gratefully. It would feel good to get clean again.

“Listen,” he said. “I know you probably don’t want to think about this right now. But this life doesn’t have to be so terrible. It’s been a long, long time since I had a place I could call my own for more than a season or two. I figure it’ll be five years before we have to move on from here. If you’re going to be sticking around—” Her eyes definitely flashed at that, but he pressed on. “If you’re going to be here a while, maybe we can start thinking about how to improve this place. Dig a well for sweet water, maybe even rig up a windmill to get some electricity. Don’t say anything now. Just think about it. Your life doesn’t have to be completely miserable.”

Her face froze. She tried to smile but felt like her skin was stretching painfully over her teeth. Instead she just turned away and walked toward the cabin. He headed for his smokehouse.

When he’d mentioned electricity it had made her think of her cell phone. She pulled it out of her pocket to check to see if it still had any charge. She nearly dropped it when the screen lit up with the message: