Painted pink nails tapped the sample tile. "Now that I'm looking at it, could you maybe make the green a little less parakeet and a little more shamrock?"

Tali loved her job, but she didn't always love the people. At this time of year, even the nicer clients tested her patience. There was simply too much to do and not enough time to do it. There certainly wasn't enough time in her day to listen to a woman waver back and forth on which accent color she wanted in her future backsplash.

Tali set last week's samples on the desk beside the ones she'd created for Michelle's visit today. "So you prefer the color we originally discussed?" she asked.

"Is that what it was?"

"Yes."

Staring down at the side by side samples, Michelle frowned. "I remembered it being darker."

"Same as it was last week, Mrs. Wahey. Made the panel with you and put them right in this drawer. Never moved them."

The woman picked the gleaming ceramic up. "Well," she drawled. "You're the artist. What do you think?"

Tali kept her groan to herself, folded her hands in her lap and said, "Parakeet has a bit more pop, if that's what you're looking for."

"I love parakeet, but bright colors are bright. What if I get sick of it?"

Tali pulled tissue paper and a bag from one of the drawers. "Here's what we'll do.I'm going to give you these samples. Lay them around your kitchen counter, lean them against the walls. Look at them during different times of the day in different lighting and whatnot. See which one you love more. Give me a call by next . . . Tuesday, shall we say? And I'll get to work. You'll have a beautiful kitchen in time for Thanksgiving."

The decision worked. Tali wrapped the samples in a dainty bag while Michelle roamed the shop's pottery display.

"I'd love to live here," Michelle said, eyes fixed on her cellphone. "It's so beautiful."

Tali got a lot of wealthy New Yorkers in her shop, the kind who drove to Vermont to ski in the winter, the kind that, in a few years when their hair started graying and their hips didn't appreciate the slopes like they used to, shed their snowbird feathers and migrated south to the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. Someone like Michelle, however well-meaning her intentions were, would quickly come to loathe the limited dining options, poor cell reception, and lack of a true, vibrant social life. Tali loved the cozy quiet of the hills, with country fairs and February maple barns, but she did sometimes miss the whirlwind of activities back in populated areas. There was always something to do there. Here, there was always something to fix, rake, or shovel.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!"

Michelle flung herself around a shelf of bowls. Tali stood and started walking toward her, confused. The woman shrieked and pointed toward the back, where two wide glass sliders led to the deck. 

Tali turned in time to see a large, tawny mass bounding across the deck. Glass exploded across the back wall. Pottery smashed across the floor.

An enormous buck leaped into one of the glazing racks. The case wobbled. The deer froze, ears back, eyes wild. And then the painted bowls toppled on its bloody hide. It kicked away with a frantic bellow, smashed headlong into another case. This shelf crashed and pinned the hapless animal.

It shrieked louder than the women, legs splayed across the gleaming floor. Tali pushed Michelle toward the front door, then pulled her gun out from underneath the cash register, and stepped towards the animal.

The shop bell tinkled. Michelle yelled to her husband, "Oh my God! A deer just—"

The door slammed, leaving Tali alone with the dying buck. Bone splintered from its muscled hind leg. Its chest shuddered with great, heaving groans as it pushed its hooves feebly across the smooth floor. Both its antlers were cracked and hanging. The life in its brown eyes dimmed. With a deep breath Tali removed the safety from the gun, chambered a round and did the humane thing.

*

Two hours later, no one had come to retrieve the animal. She tried again, phoning the local sheriff directly this time. Russ usually took her calls; his wife was Dante's first grade teacher and occasional sitter. They loved the little boy. Russ never had kids; on the slow weekends, or whenever Dante's father didn't show for his visit, sometimes Russ would take Dante out in his cruiser for a drive.

Russ's voice was a gruff grunt. "How's the shop?"

"Destroyed. There's a lot of money lost in those smashed bits of pottery. This afternoon when I make the phone calls about delayed projects, there'll be a lot of angry clients. I'm hoping I wont have to deal with them while sitting next to a carcass. It's starting to smell, Russ. Ticks are crawling off of it."

"I know, I know," he said. "But it's dead?"

Tali nudged a blood-streaked flank with her boot. She'd lifted the case and brushed off what pottery she could. "Ready for the taxidermist. What I can't fathom is why it'd run up my deck and through the slider?"

Russ addressed someone in the background. His voice on return was clipped, fast. "Can deer see glass?"

"I would think," Tali said slowly, though she really couldn't say for certain.

"Ah, well, animal control might have a better guess."

"Until the town hires a replacement for Malik, you are animal control, Russ."

"Yeah, well, Frieda's cat is missing. You know how she gets. I'll send Teddy to swing by and load up the deer. Should take him about twenty minutes. If it ain't diseased, he can get you some good venison."

"Gee thanks." Tali sighed into the phone. She didn't want venison; she just wanted it gone.

"Hey, you know, I'd be careful," Russ continued. "I'm thinking a coyote got Frieda's cat. Been in the area. Answered a call Saturday about one being aggressive with hikers on the southend trail."

An hour later, Teddy still hadn't shown up. Tali made sure her sign had been flipped to 'closed', dropped the blinds over the windows and looked back at the body. It had to weigh what, a hundred fifty, two hundred pounds? She dusted off one of the old canvases for the floor, changed into a disposable outfit and rolled the deer onto the mat with more effort than she'd care to admit. After that, she took the dog out and had lunch upstairs.

Still no Teddy. She glanced at the clock, wiped the sweat from her brow. She had to get Dante soon. Couldn't let him come home to blood all over the shop. So she dragged it out onto the deck, down the stairs and across the damp lawn. With a look off towards the inn, she hauled it to the far side, to spare Molly's guests the gruesome sight. She covered the pelt with the bloody cloth and planned on letting it sit there until Teddy came by in his pickup.

Just as she leaned back against the shed, panting, she realized the sound of her breath was all she could hear. Apart from the occasional drip of a waterlogged branch, the forest had gone still, so still. She straightened against the shed, searching the rich autumnal colors for the shape of a coyote.

She heard it as she was backing away. She'd made it into the lawn just as the crunch-crunch-crunch and bobbing tawny shoulders popped into view around the trees. The coyote made a beeline for the kill, didn't give her a second look. It ripped and pawed at the canvas until its jaws sank into the buck's neck.

Tali had made it to the deck by then. She backed into her shop with wide eyes and almost straight into Teddy.

"Sorry I'm late," Teddy said, ducking his head. Teddy was a good boy, still young enough to leave this town if he wanted to, or rule it, which seemed more likely as Russ put on years. He dispatched the coyote (nuisance animal, he'd said, couldn't let it live if it's the one harassing hikers and eating cats). He helped her nail some plywood up over the second half of the slider, which the buck had destroyed, and promised he'd have someone by in the morning to put up a new door.

When Teddy drove off with two dead animals in the bed of his truck, Tali could finally begin the cleanup. She got a friend to take Dante for the afternoon and made plans for him to be dropped off at Molly's. They'd spend the night there. Even though the slider was covered with plywood, and the other half of it was still solid glass, the home felt somehow exposed. Her tiny, ceramic castle had a breech, and it troubled her more than she liked.

Molly had a warm dinner and an air mattress to setup in the living room, as long as Tali promised to get out before the patrons had breakfast. In return, Tali brought her 50 pounds of birdseed from the hardware store where she'd also bought cleaning supplies. She got Dante settled for the night and headed back across the street to clean what she could and set new projects into motion. She couldn't afford to close another day in peak season. She couldn't afford the damage the buck had brought.

Jake accompanied Tali back to the shop. It wasn't that the woman was terrified of the short walk across the gravel lot, but after the deer and the coyote she was a bit unsettled, and having the lab trotting along beside her did wonders to calm her nerves.

Jake was curled up in his bed beneath the front window while Tali vacuumed, and dusted, and came up with a plan for restarting the projects. The dog didn't lift his head until she'd brought out snacks around midnight. It was then, as she perched on the edge of her desk, drinking coffee and tapping her pencil on a tentative schedule, that Jake scrambled to his feet and gave a low, gruff, "woof."

Tali watched the lab a few moments as he stood at attention. He woofed again, this time lunging past rows of pottery toward the covered back slider.

"Hey, Jake! Come on back now," she said, setting the schedule down. She leaned back across the desk and pulled out her gun. The dog started barking, started to claw at the plywood. Before he could wake the neighborhood or ruin the temporary fix she grabbed him by the collar, yanked him back a few feet and made the growling dog sit. Truth be told, with the dog tap-dancing in place behind her, whining and growling and eager to lunge again, she didn't want to look out the other half of the slider, really didn't even want to turn the light on.

She took a deep breath, gun at her side, and moved over to the light switch. She warned Jake to stay still and flipped the switch.

The dog launched himself against the glass with a heavy thud, barking in a savage fury. Tali ran to the glass slider, using her body to force the dog off the glass. Heart thumping, breath shallow, she scanned the quiet, barren deck in the soft light.

And then she saw it. Glimpsed it, really, the flash of canine eyes and a grizzled snout, leering at her from beyond the deck rail.

No, she realized, over the rail.

The distance from top of her deck railing to the ground was just under seven feet. And what she saw in that brief moment was a massive wolf's head resting its chin on the top of one stained post. But there was something grotesque about its short snout, something that didn't sit right with her soul, something inhuman. And it had hands, big, hairy hands with yellowed nails that curled around the lower rails as it watched Jake lunge and Tali gasp in fright.