Steal the Moon Read Free

off the dance floor in her mini skirt and tank top. She looked super cute and young. On the surface, she looked like the girl you went to college with and wished you still saw on a regular basis because she was so much fun. She didn’t look like a badass werewolf private detective.
    “Oh, my god, Zoey Wharton!” She practically squealed my name. She jumped up and down and pulled me into the girliest hug ever. I glanced back and saw Zack was comfortable the Legally Blonde reject wasn’t a threat. Even in the werewolf world, a female like Jane is considered soft and sweet right up to the point when she takes your head off. Her blonde Barbie look is one of her greatest assets.
    “Jane, it’s been so long,” I said with a sorority sister sincerity. It hadn’t been that long. I’d been talking to her almost daily on my cell.
    Jane seated herself and we chatted lightly, as though we were catching up. When I was satisfied that Zack was paying attention to Lisa and nothing else, I looked at Jane and asked the question I’d been asking every single day for the last six months.
    “So where is Neil?”
     

Chapter Two

     
    I missed Neil Roberts every second we were apart. He was my best friend and official gay husband. He’d been my bodyguard and my playmate. Everything that had gone on in the last six months didn’t quite seem real because I had yet to share it with him. I might have been able to handle the separation if I knew he was off somewhere having a good time and enjoying his life, but he was in trouble.
    Neil had been Daniel’s servant for several years. He was a crucial member of the crew I worked with. Before Daniel had come clean about his status as the Council’s Nex Apparatus —a really pretentious way of saying he was their assassin—we made our money the old-fashioned way. We stole things. We specialized in arcane objects no human thief would touch.
    Neil was the muscle. Sarah was our witch. Daniel handled everything we needed a broody vampire for, and I held us all together and took care of anything that required a deft touch. Over the years, we’d become close.
    That all changed six months ago when Daniel had forced his will on his servant.
    Danny had been riding a high from feeding off some supercharged sexual energy and discovered his new power over his preferred animal, the wolf. Neil was angry because his lover had been the one chosen for sacrificial lamb duty. Back then I sided with Neil, causing a rift between myself and Danny that led to my untimely death and Daniel’s refusal to even hear Neil’s name spoken.
    I didn’t blame Neil. Maybe he should have hung around and fought it out with Danny, but I understood the impulse to run. I also understood how stubbornness could put a person into a corner it was hard to get out of. I wanted to reach out to my friend to let him know I was still here for him. I just needed to find his ass first.
    “He’s been really hard to track.” All the bimbo act had been erased from Jane’s demeanor. “I started in Vegas where Sarah saw him last.”
    Sarah nodded and shared a look with Felix. “I wasn’t very helpful, I’m afraid. He hugged me. He told me to ask you to forgive him. Then he changed and he ran off.”
    The minute Felix had picked up Neil, he’d come out from under Daniel’s influence and been able to act on his own again. He fled Las Vegas that night with nothing but the fur on his back. I made sure to put money in his bank account, but as far as I could tell, he hadn’t touched it. He was alone with no money, no cell phone, and no friends.
    “I suspect he spent most of the winter in wolf form. I have reports of a white wolf wandering the Sangre de Cristo mountains in Colorado. Most of the wolves in the area are gray or brown, so he stands out,” Jane explained. “I tracked him for a while in my wolf form, and I spent a couple of days running with him, but I couldn’t get him to change into his human form.”
    I took a long breath.