CHAPTER ONE
I couldn’t sleep well, even on the best of nights. It went back to when I was a kid. I used to have horrible visions that monsters waited underneath my bed to gobble me up whole. It wasn’t because my parents were reading Grimms’ Fairy Tales to me, either. At the time, shifters were finally revealing themselves to the world and asking to be treated equally and fairly. There were so many suspicions and doubts and fears on both sides. It’s amazing that the world made it out the other side in one piece. Mostly, anyway.
In our back corner of the world in rural Minnesota, the impact was felt more profoundly than others for a couple of reasons. First, it was discovered that our rinky-dink town of Greyelf sat at the intersection of territories claimed by several varieties of shifter clans. It made for many a terse council meeting as dividing lines were drawn and the policies and procedures that facilitated everyone just getting along were documented and agreed upon. The second reason, though, had to do with a man named Markus Kasper.
Markus was a bear shifter who had the charisma and good looks that caused the media to draw comparisons between him and a young JFK. His articulate arguments and ability to negotiate like no one’s business brought him to the center of the worldwide human–shifter debate that year. Markus just happened to be a resident of Greyelf and the alpha of the Greyelf Grizzly Clan.
Markus and Greyelf made national news for an entire year as shifter clans and humans figured out how to work and live beside each other. The work done here was held up as the shining example for all. That was why my father, a hardened news reporter from Chicago, decided to uproot his family and move us to the wilds of Minnesota. He bought the local newspaper and set up shop thinking that, as long as Markus Kasper lived there, Greyelf would continue to be the pulse of the nation. He figured he’d eventually have to win some kind of prestigious newspaper award by being here.
For a ten-year-old kid, moving anywhere beyond the comfort of your school and neighborhood was scary enough. But then to be put smack-dab in the middle of a maelstrom of humans along with bear, wolf, panther, and coyote shifters was frightening. The world was too quiet out in the back country, so unlike the city. It took me months to adjust and for my mother and father to talk me back into sleeping in my own bed. But I never rested easy, although I slowly accepted the new, strange world that I lived in along with the rest of the world.
My uneasy pact with sleep was the reason that I sprang awake immediately when the old police scanner went off in the other room that served as my office next to my bedroom. My eyes were immediately drawn to the clock. It was just 2:00 a.m. Nothing good ever happened in Greyelf at 2:00 a.m.
As the last vestiges of sleep left my mind, I dropped my feet to the floor and immediately tucked them into slippers. The floors of my creaky house were cold even on the warmest of summer nights, and the weather was just slipping reluctantly from winter to spring. This year it seemed particularly intent on holding us in its icy grasp for as long as possible.
I pulled my sweatshirt off the bedpost and slipped it over my head even as I moved toward the doorway to the next room. I honestly couldn’t remember the last time the scanner had gone off at this time of night. I figured old Ricky Rooney had probably gotten picked up again for being drunk and disorderly. It was almost amusing at this point. Old Rooney lost his driver’s license sometime before I was born. That didn’t stop him from pedaling all over town on a bicycle, proving to be a bit of a menace on the roads at all hours of the day and night. I was waiting with bated breath for the day that I would be writing up his obituary. To that end, the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree. I was coming up on my three-year anniversary working for my father’s
I couldn’t sleep well, even on the best of nights. It went back to when I was a kid. I used to have horrible visions that monsters waited underneath my bed to gobble me up whole. It wasn’t because my parents were reading Grimms’ Fairy Tales to me, either. At the time, shifters were finally revealing themselves to the world and asking to be treated equally and fairly. There were so many suspicions and doubts and fears on both sides. It’s amazing that the world made it out the other side in one piece. Mostly, anyway.
In our back corner of the world in rural Minnesota, the impact was felt more profoundly than others for a couple of reasons. First, it was discovered that our rinky-dink town of Greyelf sat at the intersection of territories claimed by several varieties of shifter clans. It made for many a terse council meeting as dividing lines were drawn and the policies and procedures that facilitated everyone just getting along were documented and agreed upon. The second reason, though, had to do with a man named Markus Kasper.
Markus was a bear shifter who had the charisma and good looks that caused the media to draw comparisons between him and a young JFK. His articulate arguments and ability to negotiate like no one’s business brought him to the center of the worldwide human–shifter debate that year. Markus just happened to be a resident of Greyelf and the alpha of the Greyelf Grizzly Clan.
Markus and Greyelf made national news for an entire year as shifter clans and humans figured out how to work and live beside each other. The work done here was held up as the shining example for all. That was why my father, a hardened news reporter from Chicago, decided to uproot his family and move us to the wilds of Minnesota. He bought the local newspaper and set up shop thinking that, as long as Markus Kasper lived there, Greyelf would continue to be the pulse of the nation. He figured he’d eventually have to win some kind of prestigious newspaper award by being here.
For a ten-year-old kid, moving anywhere beyond the comfort of your school and neighborhood was scary enough. But then to be put smack-dab in the middle of a maelstrom of humans along with bear, wolf, panther, and coyote shifters was frightening. The world was too quiet out in the back country, so unlike the city. It took me months to adjust and for my mother and father to talk me back into sleeping in my own bed. But I never rested easy, although I slowly accepted the new, strange world that I lived in along with the rest of the world.
My uneasy pact with sleep was the reason that I sprang awake immediately when the old police scanner went off in the other room that served as my office next to my bedroom. My eyes were immediately drawn to the clock. It was just 2:00 a.m. Nothing good ever happened in Greyelf at 2:00 a.m.
As the last vestiges of sleep left my mind, I dropped my feet to the floor and immediately tucked them into slippers. The floors of my creaky house were cold even on the warmest of summer nights, and the weather was just slipping reluctantly from winter to spring. This year it seemed particularly intent on holding us in its icy grasp for as long as possible.
I pulled my sweatshirt off the bedpost and slipped it over my head even as I moved toward the doorway to the next room. I honestly couldn’t remember the last time the scanner had gone off at this time of night. I figured old Ricky Rooney had probably gotten picked up again for being drunk and disorderly. It was almost amusing at this point. Old Rooney lost his driver’s license sometime before I was born. That didn’t stop him from pedaling all over town on a bicycle, proving to be a bit of a menace on the roads at all hours of the day and night. I was waiting with bated breath for the day that I would be writing up his obituary. To that end, the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree. I was coming up on my three-year anniversary working for my father’s
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