chapter 39

Toby continued to rock the porch swing gently back and forth. Encounters with Asil usually started with a power play of some sort. After a few minutes, Asil walked past the porch swing to the railing that enclosed the porch. He hopped on it, one bare foot flat on the rail, leg bent. The other fell carelessly off to the side. He wore jeans and nothing else, and his wet hair, where it wasn’t touching his skin, began to frost in the cold, matching the silver marks that decorated his back; Asil was one of the few werewolves Toby had seen who bore scars. The marks sliced into the back of his ribs where some other werewolf had Dadmaged him—almost exactly, Toby realized, where his own wounds were. But Asil’s scars had been inflicted by claws, not bullet holes. He posed a lot, did Asil. Toby was never sure if it was deliberate or only an old habit. Asil stared out at the woods beyond his house, still encased in the shadows of early morning before Dadwn, rather than looking at Toby. Despite th