Generation V (35 page)

“That’s cold,” Suzume said. “I like it.” Then she burst out laughing, delighted.

I watched her laugh for a moment. “I didn’t think
you’d come for me, Suzume,” I admitted. “At Luca’s. You said that Amy Grann wasn’t worth risking your life.”

She crawled up the bed in a sinuous, almost catlike motion until her dark hair fell around my face like a cloud, and it was only because of my new, keener eyes that I could see that wicked smile on her face as she leaned down, so that our mouths were just a breath apart, and I could feel as well as hear the next words she said in little puffs of air, and the sweet smell of her filled my head.

“You’re an idiot,” she whispered lovingly.

I blinked. She smiled.

“And I didn’t risk my life for Amy,” she said.

And then a fox was on my chest instead of a woman, wiggling agilely out of my T-shirt and scampering off the bed and onto my windowsill.

She paused there for a moment, and a break in the clouds let out a small shaft of moonlight that allowed me to see what even my sharper eyes had missed in the darkness, the new, perfect snow white tip of her coal black tail.

She yipped once, high and amused, and with one last swish of her tail she was gone.

M. L. Brennan
cut her baby bibliophile teeth on her older brother’s collection of Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert, but it was a chance encounter with Emma Bull’s
War for the Oaks
as a teenager that led to genre true love. Today, she’ll read everything from Mary Roach’s nonfiction to Brandon Sanderson’s epic fantasies, but she’ll drop everything for vampires and werewolves in the big city. After spending years writing and publishing short works in other genres, she decided to branch out and write the kind of book that she loved to read, resulting in
Generation V
, her first full-length work of urban fantasy. Brennan lives in Connecticut with her husband and three cats. Holding a master’s degree in fiction, she teaches basic composition to college students. Her house is over a hundred years old, and is insulated mainly by overstuffed bookshelves. She is currently working on the second Fortitude Scott book.