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Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410 (630) 961-3900 sourcebooks.com Contents Front Cover Title Page Copyright Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50 Chapter 51 Chapter 52 Chapter 53 Chapter 54 Chapter 55 Chapter 56 Chapter 57 Chapter 58 Author’s Note Excerpt from Bears Behaving Badly Chapter 1 About the Author Back Cover For Elinor Chapter 1 She was just getting the hang of the ambulance when she hit the wolf. The thing was bulky and difficult to control (the ambulance, not the wolf), and whenever she got it back from its semiannual mechanically induced coma, it took her a few minutes to get the hang of driving it again. She stood on the brakes (oh shit oh shit oh shit) and braced for the double-thump of the tires running over the animal, which didn’t come. Lila Kai collapsed back into her seat, her heart pounding so hard she could taste metal. She pulled over to the side of the street. A street, not a country road on the way from nowhere to somewhere. This was Lilydale, not Hastings. And even Hastings didn’t have wolves in their streets. Just deer. So what the hell? She put the ambulance in Park, kept the engine running, and hopped down. She checked the headlights—nothing. The side of the road—nothing. She even took a tentative couple of steps into the brown brush lining the ditch (don’t think about the zillions of horror movies that start like this) —nothing. No wolf, limping or otherwise. Or…coyote, maybe? Which made sense, now that she thought about it. Because whatever it was, it hadn’t been just huge, it had been fast, too. It had come out of nowhere and to nowhere it returned, all in the space of half a second. Maybe she just clipped it. Is that a metaphor for something? Life? Death? Taxes? Transitions? Romance? Mmmm…probably not the latter. There was just no way to twist clipping a random wolf into an allegory about her nonexistent dating life. The fact that she’d given even half a second of thought to that was proof that she needed to lay off the Cosmos (the drink and the magazine). She went back to her decommissioned ambulance, rebuckled her seat belt, put it in Drive, checked her rearview, ignored the urge to ponder more metaphors-that-weren’t, then pulled out, and headed back toward her rental house. The adrenaline rush had been unwelcome as always, but— “God damn it!” Two kids had darted out from nowhere (what the hell is up with this street?) and were flagging her down, waving their little arms around so fast they looked like little bony windmills in a gale. This time, at least, she didn’t have to stand on the brakes, and once she had stopped, she rolled down her window. “What’s going on, li’l weirdos?” Both children were gesturing frantically. “C’mere, you have to help, she’s hurt!” And more than a few horror movies start like this, too. Again with park, unbuckling, opening door, climbing out. The boy and girl who had jumped in front of her looked like they were about eight, dressed in the de rigeur kid gear of jeans and sweatshirts and battered sneakers. They had the corn-fed reddish-blond looks of many Minnesotans. “Who’s hurt?” “I dunno, she just is, we found her, come on. Bring your ambulance gear!” “It’s not an ambulance.” “’Course it’s an ambulance!” “No, I mean it’s decommissioned, so it’s not really an amb—” Tiring of her explanation, the girl seized Lila’s hand and started hauling her up the street. Lila looked behind her, half expecting to see the wolf creeping up on them and felt a little let down to see the way was clear. Which was insane. Strange enough to see such a creature under any circumstances, never mind smack in the middle of town. But she wanted to see it again; how was that for nuts? I probably need a nap. The girl hauled on her hand again and hooked left “Jeez, kid. Do you work out?” and then led her down a short alley, to where a small huddled form was curled into a blanket. “See?” the girl asked, clamping down hard on Lila’s fingers in her excitement. “Yeah, see?” the boy, presumably her brother, added. “She’s right there!” “Isn’t this a school night?” But she bent over the small figure, blinked as her brain tried to process the image, gently touched it on the shoulder, then pinched her own leg (Nope. Not dreaming.) and looked up at the kids. “All right, first, that’s not a kid, it’s a bear cub for some reason. Second, I’m not a vet. Most important, I’m not an EMT, either.” Instead of answering, the girl whacked the boy on the arm and hissed something that sounded like, “Unstable!” “My high school guidance counselor would agree.” Lila bent back over the curled up mass of black, fluffy, whimpering fur that cowered
