January 30th, 1929

“Jail! What were you thinking?” Nicoletta fought with the steering wheel on the old jalopy—one of the Model Ts that had been built just over a decade ago—while she argued with her brother. “Or were you thinking at all?”

Vano slouched lower on the wooden bench that made up the front seat. Outside, the brown-green foliage of Louisiana at the end of winter raced by. “Someone mus’ have tipped off the police. They never bother me before.” His accent was stronger than hers, though he’d dropped some of the Cajun inflections he lured tourists with. Probably in an attempt to placate her.

“You were caught using magical items without a permit.” That was only half the real problem. The rest of the problem came in the form of a blousey shirt with ties at the throat, the red sash he’d tied around his waist, and the knee-high boots over baggy trousers. He was a stereotype of their people, and their people had never even dressed like that.

“It was a normal deck o’ tarot cards,” Vano said scornfully. “We both know I don’ have any artifacts o’ that sort. It just be skill and the presentation. People like thinkin’ they talkin’ to an actual Gypsy. Besides, the law dropped the charges.”

“After taking you to the cooler!” Nicoletta glared at him again. He glanced back, and she looked into eyes much like her own: amber and copper and green so bright they could have been gems. Cougar eyes, their father called them. She wasn’t sure her father had ever seen a cougar, but it sounded pretty. Vano’s eyes stood out in his olive-toned skin. He had earrings running up both ears, but at least he hadn’t grown out his hair—short on the sides and back, a riot of black curls on top—to further look the part.

With his traditional Romani appearance and the clothes he was wearing, he could have stepped right out of a carnival. “You shame Gran,” Nicoletta snapped.

“Truly?” Vano barked back. “Because so far she seem to appreciate the money I send to them! Beside, who you think taught me to read Tarot?”

The country road bounced the truck, trees clawing up from the ditch on one side, the occasional cross street on the other. Nicoletta pushed the pedal to the floor and brought the truck up to its top speed of 35mph. It rattled, drowning out anything else her younger brother might say. 

What she needed—

She caught the car out of the corner of her eye. Shiny and new, bowling out of a side street. It smashed into her door. The world exploded; pain and shattering wood. The truck skidded toward the edge of the road. Vano screamed, “No—!” and then they were tilting, falling, rolling down the berm and the world twisting, coming in stops and starts, never making sense.

The car followed them over, crashing on top of them as they reached the bottom.

The truck rolled onto its side and settled. The car lurched above and its tires spun, engine pitch rising. Nicoletta and Vano had landed in a heap together. Distantly, she could hear a haunting, keening noise. It wasn’t until she rolled, fighting through shards of wood, kicking away the last of the floorboard to free her other leg, that she realized it was her brother.

She leaned over him. Her arm gave out and she nearly pitched forward. Vano lay on his side, eyes wide open. A long sliver of wood stuck obscenely from his abdomen. His linen shirt slowly turned red.

“No,” Nicoletta whispered. She touched the spike. He screamed. She yanked her hand back. “Don’t move.” Her words fumbled through lips she couldn’t feel. “Stay here. I’m going to get help.”

The truck, little more than a wooden frame around the engine, was in pieces. It wasn’t hard to get out of it, even on its side and with the other car propped above. By the time she had freed herself someone stood at the road fifteen feet up, calling out.

“Halloo down there! Are you all right? Do you need help?”

She stared at the stranger for a minute, uncomprehending. Then, “Yes. Yes! My brother—”

“I’ll be right there!” The man vanished, then reappeared with a large black bag. Carefully, he made his way down the berm while Nicoletta’s world spun.

“Child,” he said, “your arm.”

She looked down. It bent at funny angles, smeared with red, pinkish white bone sticking out. She didn’t understand what she was looking at. “My brother—” she repeated.

“I’ll look at him, but then we must see to—”

“My brother.” All she could think of was the wood spearing from his abdomen. She tried to point but couldn’t.

“Yes, yes.” The man—doctor, she thought, from the bag he carried—picked his way through the carnage to the top of the truck and peered through the ruin of it. His jaw firmed. Frustration, determination, a gleam in his eye.

Nicoletta faced the car that had hit them, moving like she was underwater. The wheels were still turning. A back one spun uselessly in muddy slime. Another had broken off, but the axle whirled. The two front tires were in the air, and she had the vague thought that at any moment the car was going to strike down at the remnants of her truck. She moved to the door as if she might be able to take control and stop it. Opened the door. Found the car empty except for a metal post jammed between the seat and the gas pedal. 

She couldn’t understand that. Looked again. Searched for meaning in her rattled mind. She knew something was wrong, but—

“Here, now,” the doctor said, drawing her away. “Help is on the way for your brother. I’ve made him comfortable. Now I need you to take a deep breath.” He carefully placed a mask over her face. She tried to lift her arm to bat him away, but her arm wouldn’t move. Instead, sharp pain lanced through it, burying the other pains she somehow hadn’t been feeling. As she gasped, agony shot down her side, too. Another deep breath, though, and the pain eased. The world eased. Her confusion eased. Everything eased, and then went dark.

---

Six weeks later

Her missing left arm sparked painfully, somehow still sensitive despite the fact that it ended just above the elbow, as she shifted from human to wolf. She’d learned to ignore that pain, just as she’d learned to ignore the indignity of having a dog collar latched around her neck and a leash attached. At least once shifted, her long, curly hair no longer tangled in it.

She was tall for a woman, and curvy where the current look was thin, but in wolfskin she was small: four feet high at the shoulder, and only 120 pounds. 

“Where does the weight go?” they’d asked her, while she was still strapped to a hospital bed. 

She’d smiled, showing teeth. “Tucked under my sheets, I suppose.” As if she knew how magic worked.

Now she was offered a strip of cloth with the scent of something strange on it, something that almost reminded her of the way the air smelled after her fellow werewolves shifted. 

“Find it,” her handler said, as if she had an animal brain just because of how she looked. Then the door to the wagon—her temporary cage, pulled by an automobile—opened and she was free. The leash really couldn’t stop her if she wanted to run away. 

That they had Vano hostage, however, did. 

She sniffed the ground, then sniffed the air, sorting out all the odors carried on the breeze in a town of this size, looking for the one she’d been set to. She couldn’t talk, but wouldn’t have told the man on the other end of the leash that there was no strange scent here even if she could. Instead, she started off at a walk slow enough that he could keep up.

She knew they were looking for someone, and obviously that someone was in the area. She’d just have to pick up the trail.