Page 4 of Tempting Fate

I frown at the screen. “Not sure. Can’t put my finger on it.”

“That’s not a good sign.”

“Something about the email seems familiar, maybe? I don’t know the sender, though. I checked.”

“And what if you go to London and there’s nothing there?”

“I spend a few weeks in the city. The most they’re going to do is try to embarrass me, right?”

I’ve fallen for a few tricks before. The only other suspicion is that it’s something more dangerous, that in my quest to find magic, I have actually stumbled upon something real, and now I’m about to pay the price.

Except I can’t quite work out what might have triggered this. Recently, at least. Cate and I saw a kelpie a few years ago. I’m fairly sure. Ghosts are commonplace—everyone’s got a story about them.

“They want to find werewolves, Cate,” I whisper, and I can’t help the way my lips twitch at her heavy sigh.

“And what if the werewolves find you first?”

“I’ll be careful.”

She arches red eyebrows like she doesn’t believe me, which is entirely fair. That being said, the worst injury I ever received on a hunt like this was from an angry goose, so it’s not as though I often go wandering into danger.

“Sleep on it, Em,” she pleads. “We’ll go through it again in the morning, okay? Do more research. See if there’s any way this could actually be real.”

“Yeah, good plan. Get some sleep. Sorry for bothering you.”

She snorts. “You always bother me.”

I laugh when she shoves me away and go back to my makeshift bed on the sofa. I don’t fall asleep right away. I read through the email again before I click on the video. It appears to have been shot on someone’s phone because the picture is fairly clear, even when the person holding it moves. They swing the camera around in an arc, then pause, letting out a heavy breath before they zoom in further down the street.

It’s somewhere in London. Early in the morning, maybe, because the street is entirely empty and the houses on either side are dark.

A man comes into view. He doesn’t notice the person shooting at all; he certainly doesn’t look their way. No. He slips between two houses and after a brief second of hesitation, the cameraperson follows.

They’re quiet and careful, lagging some way behind him, and then they duck behind a low garden wall as the man crosses the road and walks into a park. He glances around once before he drags his shirt over his head. I can’t make out his features all that well from this distance, but he’s well-built, and I glance away briefly when he strips off entirely.

Then I look back. My heart hammers. I know what’s coming. I watched this three times before I even considered going to Cate.

It’s difficult to see at a distance, but I wince all the same. The transformation looks painful. The man’s body twists, limbs lengthening, bones cracking, but it’s all over in a heartbeat, maybe two, and then a wolf stands where the man used to be. He shakes out his fur once, ears twitching, before he bounds into the shadows of the park.

The video ends there. I don’t know who recorded it. I don’t know if they remained for a while after, the way I would have, or if they left.

Magic. The thing I’ve always sought. The thing I have to believe is out there because I need the world to be a little brighter, full of more mystery than what I’ve so far experienced in my thirty-odd years of life.

And fifty thousand pounds won’t hurt, either. That would be enough to really make something of my life. Get myself a real long-term housing situation, stop having to take shitty zero-hour jobs…

I start typing my reply before I can think it through any longer. Cate knows I want to take the job. She’ll understand when I talk to her in the morning.

I’d be delighted…