"Oh, I got one, I got one.” My best friend Essie sways back on the log, corn whiskey sloshing in her mason jar. The fire spits orange sparks into the cold night air. “Would you rather fight a hungry bear shifter or a moon-mad wolf?”

“No such thing as a bear shifter.” I lean over the Dutch oven hanging on the tripod, stirring in time with the beat of the metronome I set on a tree stump. My arm is killing me.

“There was no such thing as a wolf shifter until the Great Alpha led us out of the closet back in the day.” Essie burps into her flannel sleeve.

“I wouldn’t fight either one. It’s a losing proposition. I’d run.”

Twenty more strokes until it’s Essie’s turn again. My biceps are gonna hurt like hell tomorrow. Dragon’s tongue boils down as thick as tar, and it somehow manages to smell like both ash and ass.

“You suck at this game, Nevaeh-cakes. You have to pick one.”

“No, I don’t. I’d feed the bear. Problem solved.”

“Quit looking for ways out of making a decision, dammit. Bear or wolf?” Essie raises her voice, and on the far side of the fire, our cousin Bert startles and kicks his hind leg, nailing Essie’s mate, Richard, in the muzzle.

Both growl and scrabble at each other for a minute before they pass back out, Bert’s pointy snout resting on Richard’s furry mound of a belly.

“Bear.”

“Wrong. A bear would tear you apart.” Essie swigs her moonshine. We’ve been at this since sundown, and it’s almost four in the morning. I don’t know how she’s still upright and intelligible.

“And a moon-mad wolf wouldn’t?” I drag the wooden spoon through the dank, black syrup. Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

“That’s beside the point.” Essie scrunches her nose. “How much longer ’til my turn?”

“Ten strokes.”

“And then how much longer?”

“Until sunrise.” This is not the first—or tenth—time I’ve told her.

“This is bullshit.”

“Probably.”

“The witch is Fucking with us.”

“I wouldn’t put it past her.” I’ve been apprenticed to Cassie since I was seven, and I love her like blood, but she will prank you and waste your time for shits and giggles, no doubt.

“We get the buttons, though, right?” Essie asks for the hundredth time. Shifters in general are crap at delayed gratification, and Essie’s particularly challenged. That’s why I plied her with liquor.

“Oh, yeah.”

Essie’s glowing gold eyes meet mine. We grin in gleeful solidarity. We’re so close.

We’ve been angling for the buttons for years. Essie’s tried to lift them a dozen times, but the witch is crafty. She’ll switch tins and spell the buttons to spill from your hands. Like I said, she’s got an asshole’s sense of humor.

Tonight’s the night, though. We deliver this batch of dragon’s tongue, and the blue Danish butter cookie tin is ours.

“Three, two, one—” I count.

“Spoon me.” Essie holds out her hand. I slap the ladle into her palm and shake out my arms. Stirring a pot all night teaches you about muscles you had no idea you had.

I stretch my neck and twist to crack my spine. Sitting on a log all night teaches you that your entire ass can be numb, and yet you still have to pee. I make a quick trip deeper into the woods and work out the kinks in my legs.

When I come back, I steal a sip of Essie’s whiskey to warm my chest. She stirs in silence. I set the glass on the frosted ground and shove my hands up my jacket sleeves to warm my fingers.

It’s a new moon, and the smattering of late November stars fade as we get closer to sunrise. Beyond the fire, black walnut trees loom high overhead, punctuating the stillness of the night with a jarring thump each time the wind knocks an overripe nut free from its moorings.

In the foothills, wolves bay, their howls skidding down across the smooth lake.

“Do you wish you were out with them?” I ask.

Ever since Essie first shifted last year, I feel guilty when she stays with me instead of running with the others.

“Nope,” she says without hesitation. “I do it all for the buttons.”

She grins, her pointy incisors gleaming in the firelight. It’s a lie. I know she does it for me.

“Do you think it’s strange that I want a tin of old buttons so bad?”

It’s an idle question. I don’t much care about being strange. I’m the witch’s apprentice, and the consensus among the scavengers is that I’m not nearly strange enough. I’ve got no natural talent for curses, mischief, or communing with the dead. If it were known I work for buttons, though, my reputation sure as shit wouldn’t improve. The others would think it’s worse than working for pay—all the indignity of labor and none of the cash.

“We, Nevaeh-cakes. Are we strange for wanting a bunch of old buttons so bad?”

That’s Essie. My girl. My ride or die, as the humans say.

The metronome slows down. I lean over and reset it.

“Just out of curiosity—why do we want ‘em?” Essie asks, switching the rough-hewn wooden spoon to her left hand to shake a cramp out of her right.

“You don’t know?” We’ve been after them forever.

Essie shrugs. “Don’t need a reason for a caper.”

That’s true enough.

“It’ll sound weird,” I say.

Essie snorts. “We waited for the night of the new moon, buried quartz at the four directions, poured a pint of liquor on the ground—such a waste, and I had to rub Old Angus’ back for that.”

We both shudder.

“Then we built a fire of cherry wood—and let’s not mention what I had to do for the cherry wood—and stirred this shit at the precisely prescribed tempo since the moment the last sun’s rays set. Nevaeh. Girlfriend. We’re past weird.”

She has a point.

“Cassie’s been collecting buttons since she was a pup. That’s how scavengers paid her when she was young. Some of the buttons were my mother’s.”

“Oh.” The sound is a soft commiseration. Her mother also went on a walk and didn’t come back. Happens a lot in the Bogs where we live. “We’ll get ‘em then. You know I’ll always have your back. Except against a bear shifter. That’s just stupid.”

I sniff. My nose is runny from the cold.

There’s a moment—just a split second—when Essie smiles, lop-sided and earnest, and I can picture her like she was when we were pups—before the piercings, before she cut her black hair short, before she shifted for the first time and her claws never fully retracted again.

I see the girl who wanted to be a ranked wolf when she grew up. The girl who believed that was possible.

We’re grown now.

We know that life in Sunset Pride Pack is a game, and it’s rigged, and while we mean our promises, we don’t often get to keep them in the long run.

The gold in Essie’s eyes dims. I’m bringing us down. No call for that. Morning is an hour away, and reality’s gonna take a crap on our day soon enough.

“Okay, I’ve got one.” I clear my throat. “If you had to get stuck half-shifted for the rest of your life, top half wolf or bottom half?”

“Easy. Top half. I’m not giving up human sex or wolf eatin’.”

“Is it really that good?”

“Which?”

“Either.”

“Yeah.” She smirks. “It’s good. Oh! I got one.”

Her eyes are back to shining.

“Preston Charge or Nick Jones?”

My heart goes thump, and without warning, warmth spreads through my chest like spilt tea on a tablecloth. My chilly toes in my boots, the icy tips of my ears—they’re on fire.