Kitty Steals the Show

Chapter 16

THE GROUP of us trooped back up the path in the other direction, to Ned’s town house. Before we left the park and the blackout area created by the disabled CCTV cameras, Ned adjusted his coat to hide his ravaged arm. To anyone watching, via camera or otherwise, we’d look like a group of acquaintances walking home after a night out. Actually, Marid, Ned, and Antony probably wouldn’t show up on the cameras at all. I stuck close to Ben.

Back at the town house, Emma came running into the hallway from the parlor.

“How did it go?” she asked.

Before I could answer, Ned closed and locked the door and shrugged off his coat so that she had an excellent view of the injured arm. Emma gasped, bringing her hand to her mouth. A very human gesture.

Recovering quickly, she pointed vaguely to the back of the house. “I’ll go get something for that.”

“That would be lovely,” Ned said, a weak smile shifting his beard. “You might find some bandages for Ms. Norville as well.”

“I think I’m just about healed,” I said, unwrapping Ben’s shirt from my forearm. The wad of torn fabric had become a crusty mess. I frowned at it, then frowned at my arm. Sure enough, a fresh scab colored an angry, healing pink ran down the skin. When I flexed the muscle, it hurt, but not as much as it had before. Go go super healing.

“I’ll just throw that away for you,” Emma said. I handed the bloody shirt to her, and she ran back down the hall and disappeared around a corner.

“What exactly does one do to fix something like that?” I said to Ned, nodding at his own injury. Then I remembered. “Wait a minute, you’re not going to ask me to help with the first aid, are you?”

“One would think you’d been in such situations before,” Ned said amiably.

“You mean have I had injured vampires beg a pint off me? Yeah.”

Ben looked at me. “Wait a minute, what?”

Ned narrowed his gaze. “I can fend for myself, never fear. Let’s retire to the library, shall we?”

Infuriatingly, Antony was chuckling. “She’s a bit jumpy,” he said to Ned, leaning in to whisper. As if I couldn’t hear him.

“You can hardly blame her.”

“I hate vampires. Did I mention that?” Ben whispered at me.

I patted his arm. “Several times.”

He frowned. “I’m going to find a new shirt. I go through more shirts on these trips…”

Before he left to go upstairs, he leaned in for a kiss, which I gave him. His lips were warm, comforting, and sent a flush to my toes. I wanted to curl up with him right now—best way to heal. Soon …

When Ned settled into a big armchair by the fireplace, he actually winced and sighed. So he was in pain. I hadn’t been able to tell. He arranged his arm so it didn’t have pressure on it, ripping away the last of the sleeve and baring most of his torso. He had the body of a middle-aged man—a healthy middle-aged man in good shape, but the sparse hair on his chest was gray, and the skin was loose. Ben returned wearing a clean white T-shirt at about the same time one of the human staff brought a tray with tea and finger food, some kind of breaded meat pies. I wanted to dump the whole plate of them into my mouth. It made me think Ned was used to entertaining tired, injured werewolves.

Emma returned, carrying a pint glass in both hands, stepping carefully because it was filled almost to the rim with dark, viscous blood. She knelt by the chair, hovering, concerned, and Ned took the glass from her without spilling a drop.

Giving the rest of us a glance, he said, “Pardon me,” then tipped the glass to his lips. He drained it in a single go, throat working as he swallowed, not needing to stop for a breath. He kept the glass upturned for what seemed a long time, letting the last of the blood drain into his mouth. The tangy, heady odor of the liquid permeated the room. My nose wrinkled, and my shoulders tensed.

I hadn’t noticed how pale Ned had turned until the infusion endowed him with a flush that started in his face and moved downward. Drops of blood began to seep from the wound at his shoulder. Where blood had poured from my wound, the liquid seemed to coalesce along Ned’s. Clotting along the skin and muscle, it built up, took on shape, faded in color, melded into the jagged skin at the edge of the wound. The healing seemed to happen both very slowly, and all at once, like watching plants grow on a time-lapse film.

He closed his eyes and relaxed against the back of the chair. Flexing his hand, new muscles tensed and released. The arm was almost back to normal, only a fine web of pink scars revealing the injury.

“That never gets old,” Marid said. “It’s marvelous.”

“Hell of a cure-all,” Ben said. He offered me a meat-thing. “Hors d’oeuvre?”

I scowled at him. I couldn’t decide if I was starving, or if I’d lost my appetite completely.

A banging sounded from the door to the courtyard. The noise was slow, loud, steady, like someone was trying to break in.

“That will be Caleb,” Ned said. “Emma, will you let him in?”

She frowned. “He’d be happier if you met him.”

“He’ll see me soon enough. This isn’t the time for status and posturing. He can put up with an underling showing him in.” He opened his eyes and looked at her. “You’re not an underling, you’re a protégé. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t understand that.”

She pressed her lips and returned to the hallway.

I expected an argument and didn’t want to miss anything. The door squeaked open, footsteps pounded, and Caleb marched into the parlor, stopping in the doorway to glare at us.

Ben and I both stood, an instinctive response to the anger Caleb radiated. His expression held challenge; we didn’t know if it was meant for us.

“You okay?” I said, testing.

Caleb looked away, and I relaxed. So did Ben.

“We need to talk,” Britain’s alpha said to Ned.

“Yes,” the vampire answered. “Sit down. Have some tea.”

I preemptively poured another cup from the still-warm pot. Sighing, Caleb found a chair that seemed strategically located in the middle of the room. He had a good look at us all from there.

As I brought him his tea, he pulled a flask from an inner coat pocket. Before taking the cup, he poured a measure of what smelled like whiskey into the tea, put the flask away, took the cup from me.

What an amazing idea. Why hadn’t anyone told me about that?

“I want to try that,” I said, returning to my seat next to Ben, who shushed me.

The china teacup looked fragile in the werewolf’s hands.

“It was awfully convenient,” Caleb said. “Them knowing exactly where we were meeting and likely what we were meeting about.”

Ned shrugged his coat back on, making him appear more whole and in charge. “You’re implying something.”

“They knew,” he said. “Somebody told them.”

The anxiety that we’d struggled to hold at bay returned. We glanced around the room, studying each other—did we have a spy?

“Do you have an idea who?” I said to Caleb.

“I’ve got a few,” he answered.

My own thoughts tumbled over possibilities, mostly asking myself the question, how well did I trust these people, really?

I trusted Ben. He’d sat back to listen, an intent focus in his gaze that had more to do with his lawyer side than his werewolf side.

“Not many of us even knew about the meeting,” Ned said.

I shook my head. “That’s not true. A lot of us did. There’s you, Marid, Antony, me, Ben, Caleb, Caleb’s wolves—”

“And your girl, Emma,” Antony said, looking at the young woman still standing in the doorway after letting the alpha in.

A number of accusing gazes turned to her, and the temperature in the room seemed to drop with the chill of it. Even Ned’s gaze narrowed, studious. She straightened, her brow furrowing, eyes shining.

“Now hold on a minute,” I said, as if I could do anything to deflect their attention. “Why her?”

“She said they approached her,” Antony said. “This evening, at the conference.”

“Would she have told you about it if she was actually working for them?”

Detached, objective Ben said, “She’d have had to say something because you saw her. If she didn’t you would have.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Ben, you were there, you saw her—did she look like she was being subverted?”

“No, she didn’t. I’m just being the lawyer.”

I turned to Ned. “I don’t think it was her. You’re looking at the outsider for a suspect. It’s what everyone does.”

“It wasn’t me, I swear to you, Ned.” Emma was shaking her head.

“It could have been me,” I said. There, that distracted them. They all turned their gazes on me, and the attention felt like a physical blow. “I wouldn’t have had to tell them—they’d have just needed to follow me. I go everywhere, talk to everyone. Geez, I’ve been tracked, stalked, and pestered this whole conference. They could have had someone standing next to me and I wouldn’t have known.”

“Well,” Caleb said. He drained the last of his tea and set it aside. “I’ve got one of their injured wolves trussed up in the van outside if you’d like to have a go at him. He’s probably not awake yet, but it shouldn’t be too much longer. He ought to be able to tell you.”

Ned raised a brow. “And why didn’t you say this earlier?”

Caleb’s smile showed teeth. “Wanted to see you lot squirm.”

Marid laughed.

Caleb stood and moved to the door. “Ben, Kitty. Care to help?”

Not really, but wolves were the muscle. Even he had that habit. I glanced at Ben, who raised an eyebrow—an uncommitted look. He was leaving the decision to me.

“Let’s go,” I muttered, leveraging myself from the chair yet again.

“I’ll get the door,” Emma said and started to leave with us.

“Maybe you’d better stay here with your Master, love,” Caleb said. His tone was flat, his gaze a wall revealing nothing. No sympathy, no accusation, nothing for her to react against. Frowning, she stepped back.

She hadn’t told anyone, she wasn’t a spy, I was sure of it. But the way they all looked at her, pinning her to the wall with their glares—they all thought it possible. Was I just being naïve?

The trio of us went outside, where one of Caleb’s wolves opened the back door of a dark SUV.

A naked man, a white guy in his twenties, lay on the bare, carpetless floor of the vehicle. He was one of the werewolves Ned had disabled with a snap of his neck. Now, he seemed to be sleeping. Healing, I gathered, though I didn’t want to know how long it took—or how much pain it involved—to heal from a broken spine. I’d cracked my pelvis in a fall a little while back and that was bad enough. It had taken a full night to heal. The man’s hands and feet were tied with plastic zip ties, as if they expected him to wake up and fight.

I couldn’t smell a touch of blood, either on the man or in the back of the car. They really had known how to clean up. I couldn’t help but be impressed. Back in Colorado, in the years when the pack had a lot of infighting—before I took over—there’d been bodies. Usually, they got dumped down one of the countless caves and abandoned mine shafts scattered in the foothills outside of Denver. Occasionally, there’d be a body in the city needing to disappear. I didn’t know if my pack could clean up a fight of this scale. We hadn’t had any fatal fights for a long time. I worked hard to keep it that way.

“Right, let’s get him inside,” Caleb said.

“What are you going to do with him?” I asked.

“Crack him like a nut,” Caleb said.

I looked at Ben again. Like I kept waiting for a different response from him.

The henchwolf cut the zip tie at the prisoner’s hands, and Caleb grabbed one of the arms. He called to Ben, who took hold of the other. They each hauled an arm over their shoulders, lifting him off the ground. I didn’t have much to do but watch. Maybe call a warning if the guy started waking up.

We returned to the parlor, where Caleb and Ben dumped their burden in the middle of the floor. The man groaned. Alive and awake. My hackles rose, a tightening down my back.

Emma had retreated to another chair near the fireplace, between Ned and Marid. She looked small and young, slouching in on herself. I wondered what they’d been saying to her, if they’d been conducting their own early interrogation. Antony stood farther off; he looked like he’d been pacing.

Caleb gripped the man’s hair and yanked back, showing his face to the room. “Wake up, you.”

I couldn’t decide if I wanted this to be successful or not. If this guy did know what had set our enemies on us, was I ready to hear the answer? It didn’t matter if I was ready or not.

Ben moved close to me, our arms brushing. “Torturing him isn’t going to work. He’ll know we have to kill him one way or the other.”

Justice, Wolf growled. This man would have killed us—me, Ben, whoever else he could have, all on the orders of some vampire like Mercedes Cook. This was justice.

Didn’t mean it was going to be pretty.

“I don’t know if I can watch this,” I said to Ben.

“Will you lose face with these guys if you don’t?”

“Yeah, probably.” And I wanted to be here when he talked. I’d stay. I thought of saying something about how this was going to mess up Ned’s very nice, very expensive carpet. Likely, Ned didn’t much care.

Still propping his head up, Caleb slapped his captive across his face a couple of times. Not hard, just noisy and startling.

He flinched suddenly, batting at Caleb with his freed hands, but when he tried to scramble back, to put himself in a position to fight, his still-bound feet tripped him and he crashed to the floor, flopping.

Caleb let him struggle a moment before grabbing an arm and twisting it back. The werewolf cried out in frustration and bared his teeth.

“Settle down, there,” Caleb hissed in his ear. “There’s nothing you can do, so you might as well let it all go.”

The man gave a wordless moan and kept thrashing, or trying to, anyway.

“Ned,” Caleb said. “It’s your turn, I think.”

Oh—on the other hand, this wasn’t going to be messy after all.

Ned rose from his chair, adjusted his coat, brushed imaginary dust off its hem, and arranged himself as if about to step on stage. He commanded attention; no one would ever guess that he’d been injured. I expected him to launch into a soliloquy.

Instead, he knelt before the captive, seeming to regard him with scientific curiosity as the man flailed in a panic. Finally, Ned took hold of the man’s chin. Making a deep-throated noise of denial, the werewolf squeezed his eyes shut, straining to turn away. Ned merely closed his hands around either side of the man’s face, put thumbs over his eyelids, and pried them open.

“Hush,” Ned breathed. “There, now. Don’t fret. It’ll all be over soon.”

The werewolf froze. Slowly, his muscles relaxed—tension actually seemed to seep out of his body. His jaw hung open and his eyelids drooped as he met Ned’s gaze, and fell into it.

“That was a splendid little offensive you and your friends mounted in the park just now.”

“No,” the man said, chuckling sadly. His accented voice—he might have been German—was haunted, dreamy. “It was a mess. Rushed.”

“Oh?” Ned feigned curiosity.

“We were just supposed to be watching … sur-surveillance.” He sighed, tried to shake his head, but Ned wouldn’t let him break his gaze.

“Watching who?”

“The American bitch.”

I never knew whether to take that term figuratively or literally.

“I think I need to get that on a T-shirt,” I whispered to Ben, who quirked a smile.

“Who else were you tracking?” Ned asked.

“Mexican delegation. The Indonesian doctor. The wolf soldier.” I tensed, my instinctive, protective reaction at the mention of Tyler. The prisoner continued. “It’s no secret where they’re staying. But when the bitch went out with you all … we called it in.”

“Called it in to whom?” Ned asked.

“Jan.”

“He’s holding your leash?” The werewolf nodded, and Ned went on. “You were ordered to watch Kitty Norville, then. You didn’t get your information from anywhere.”

“Her. Her mate. We tracked them.”

“Why target them?”

“Not them. They’re in the middle of it … but not important. Follow them, secure the target.”

Ned raised a brow and seemed genuinely intrigued. “Oh? Who, then?”

The werewolf smiled, a conspiratorial edge showing even through the trance. “Edward Alleyn, Master of London.”

“Am I to take it, then, that Jan saw the opportunity to remove a foe from the field and sent everyone he could muster to attack?”

“Too good a chance to miss,” he said. “You’re the obstacle. Without you, the rest would fall.”

“Well.” Still holding his gaze, the vampire absently stroked the man’s face. “How do you feel about that now?”

The werewolf’s body tensed, straining against the grip that held him. Anguished lips pulled back from teeth, and he snarled. But the gaze held, and the werewolf didn’t struggle. The vampire shifted his grip, twisted, and snapped. Neck broken twice in a night. Had to suck.

But I had a feeling he wasn’t going to wake up from this one.

Caleb dropped the limp form to the carpet and brushed his hands. “First London, then the world, is that it?”

“And it wasn’t Emma who told, right?” I said.

“No,” Ned said, looking at the young woman. “But you understand, we had to ask.”

She’d collected herself, sitting straight and calm, not letting the least emotion flit across her face. She tipped her chin up in acknowledgment, that was all. A gesture she’d learned from Alette. Ned must have recognized it, too; he turned to hide a smile.

“I didn’t think you’d really done it,” Antony said, spreading his arms. “It was just a possibility.”

“This cannot stand,” Ned said. “Any neutrality they’ve enjoyed, they’ve lost.”

“So the war begins,” Marid said. “At last.”

Ned shook his head. “They’ll go to ground when their minions don’t return. Move to new lairs. It’ll take time to find them, and it’s getting too close to dawn to search.”

“Dawn’s a perfect time to go after vampires,” Ben said. “Get ’em when they’re woozy.”

All the vampires gave him a look, even Emma.

“It’s a perfect time for you to go after vampires,” Ned said. “But I intend to twist Jan’s head off myself.”

“I can track them,” Caleb said.

“How?” Ned said roughly, skeptical.

Caleb curled a smile for him. “They’ve got their wolves standing guard. Like they always do. I may not know where the vampires are, but I can find their wolves.”

Antony stepped forward. “Then we’ll attack—”

“No,” I said. I started pacing, trying to catch a thought before it fled. “If we know which of the werewolf guards have moved, we’ll know who was in on the attack—which of the Masters are allied with Jan and by extension Mercedes—”

“And therefore Roman,” Ben said.

“So we can attack,” Antony reiterated, frowning.

“That’s not the point,” I said. “An attack is going to end up like the one we just had, lots of fighting with no real result. We can’t take the vampires on their home ground so there’s no point fighting their wolves. We don’t want them fighting us, we just want—”

“We want them to leave,” Caleb said. “Kitty’s right. My folk and I killed eight werewolves tonight. You lot can have your war, but it’s us that keep dying, and I’m sick of it. Go after your vampires, but I won’t let you go through more wolves to do it.”

“That’s just it—we can talk to the wolves. Oh, we can do this,” I said. My thoughts had caught up with my subconscious. Wolf and I both knew what to do here. We just had to prove to them that we were the stronger alpha, smarter even than their Masters. And they’d listen to us, right?

Ha.

“Caleb,” I said. “We have to find them. I need to talk with them—all of them.”

“You think they’ll just stand still to listen to you? Are you daft?” Ned glared, but I stood my ground. I was right. I was sure I was right.

“Don’t underestimate her ability to talk,” Ben said, his expression wry. He was enjoying this, the bastard. “It’s her superpower.”

“I don’t believe you,” Ned said. “I don’t believe you can manage this.”

“Caleb,” I said. “Will you help?”

His smile turned toothy. “I’m in. I want to see this. How about it, Ned? Give us your blessing, won’t you?”

“Do I have a choice? As soon as the sun rises you’ll do what you want, am I right?”

“You’ll just have to trust us,” the werewolf said. “Isn’t that what this is all about? Look at us—working together.”

“We should get going,” I said, my eyes bright, my nerves jumpy. Cormac—we had to call Cormac and let him know what was happening. Maybe he’d have some advice, however unlikely that seemed. He was used to shooting, not talking.

Caleb nodded, and we headed for the door.

“Before you go,” Ned said. “You mind if we take care of this one for you?” He pointed at their prisoner.

Caleb scowled at the inert body. “Be my guest.”

Apparently, advocating for the benefit of werewolves in general was one thing. But this one had attacked him and his people. Sympathy was forfeit. I couldn’t say that was the wrong attitude.

“Marid, have you eaten tonight? Would you like a bit?” Ned said, nudging the unconscious werewolf with a booted toe. “Antony?”

“I think you’re still in need of a boost, wouldn’t you say?” Antony answered.

“I daresay there’s enough for all of us to share.”

Antony actually rubbed his hands together.

“That’s it,” I muttered. “I’m out of here.”

“I’m sure we could all share,” Ned said. “The four of us will only take his blood, after all.”

He was only being polite. I glanced at Ben, whose face had gone scrunched up, bemused. It was what happened when your stomach turned and your mouth watered at the same time.

“I don’t … eat people,” I said.

“Not at all?” Antony said. “Ever?”

I paused, wincing. Bringing up the issue ignited the memory of a taste on the back of my tongue, flesh and blood, the iron warmth of it squishing between sharp teeth, gulping down my throat. It wasn’t even my memory, it was Wolf’s. I hardly remembered it, except that the sensory detail had never gone away. “Just that one time.”

Ned gave me an inquiring look. “You? Really?”

“The other one was just a nibble…” I really did have to stop and think about how many people I’d taken a chunk out of. I put a hand on my forehead. The night had gotten very long indeed.

“I’m not sure I know about the other one,” Ben said, looking at me with … curiosity? Admiration?

“It was that guy in Montana,” I said.

“Ah.”

“Ms. Norville, you are constantly intriguing,” Marid said, leaning on his cane. Even Caleb regarded me appraisingly.

“I really think it’s time for us to go. You guys have fun.” I grabbed Ben’s hand and pulled him from the parlor.

Emma put a hand on my arm in the doorway. “Thanks. For sticking up for me.”

I shook my head. “They were just grasping at straws. I don’t think they were serious.”

“Ned would have killed me himself if he thought I’d turned spy.” She gave a nervous hiccup of a laugh. “I didn’t want to be a vampire. I thought I’d rather be dead. I can’t tell you how many times I almost opened the curtains at dawn to kill myself. But now, it’s almost funny. I don’t want to die.”

“Good,” I said. I touched her hand, surprised as I always was at how cold she was—she had no heat, no blood of her own.

“It should be night in D.C. by now,” she said. “Do you think I should call Alette? Tell her what’s happening?”

“I think that’s a good idea,” I said. “Let me know what she says.”

She stayed behind to take part in Ned’s leftovers. I didn’t want to see it.

Back in the hallway, Caleb waited for us. When footsteps sounded in the back foyer, we all jumped, then stalked forward. I had a sickening vision—that Jan and Mercedes had anticipated us, sent their own attack first—

We met Cormac coming in through the back door, smelling of the city’s chill nighttime air. He studied us with curiosity. His shoulders tensed—all the surprise he showed.

“There’s been a fight,” he said.

Was it that obvious? Caleb must have changed his clothes on the way over—he was clean. Ben had on a new clean shirt, but rusted streaks of dried blood still marred his face. Most of the blood was mine. My shirt and jeans were torn, soiled with mud and grass stains. I was cradling my injured arm, which sported an impressive red welt where the wound had been. Cormac would know it had happened recently.

“You two okay?” His voice was calm, and he eyed Caleb with suspicion.

“Yeah,” I said, and Ben nodded. “I just got a little cut up.”

“I should have been there—”

“No,” Ben and I said at once.

“It’s good that you weren’t,” Ben said, finishing the thought for both of us. “It was all werewolves, and you don’t have any guns—it was a mess.”

Cormac considered, then nodded. “Right. Want to tell me what’s happening then?”

“You trust him?” Caleb said. “He’s not one of us.”

“We trust him,” I said, my gaze on Cormac.

“You can’t bring him in on this,” the alpha said.

“If there’s trouble, you’re not leaving me out,” Cormac said.

I wanted to tell Cormac no. To protect him. He would say he was doing the same. We were a pack, right? I looked at Ben, who didn’t seem inclined to argue. But he and Cormac had been a team for a long time. Including him no doubt seemed natural.

“All right, then,” I said. “Introductions: Cormac, this is Caleb, alpha werewolf of the British Isles. Caleb, this is Cormac. He’s—” Words failed me, as they usually did when I tried to describe him.

“He’s family,” Ben said.

They regarded each other, gazes suspicious, yet curious. They both obviously had questions that they weren’t going to ask. That was fine. I just had to be sure I kept myself in between them.

A couple of Ned’s house staff worked at night, natch. The driver, Andy, and one of the housekeepers, Sara. She was in the kitchen; I begged some extra tea and snacks from her, and she seemed happy to provide.

The four of us retreated with our spoils to one of the smaller rooms in the back of the house. It was cozy, with chairs pulled up around a fireplace where a heater had been installed. We could imagine we were alone. The vampires would retreat to a set of basement rooms when dawn came.

“Tell me what happened,” Cormac said.

We explained our evening, talking over each other in a couple of places with our own take on events. The shadow conference of vampires had turned violent, one faction rising up to try to take out Ned. Cormac sat back, listening, hand on his chin.

“My first thought?” Cormac said. “Get out. You’re outnumbered. They got the jump on you once, they’re not going to just stop. You want to stay safe, get out, get home.”

“He’s got a point,” Caleb said. “You’re not so bad after all.”

“You don’t think they’ll just follow us?” Ben said. “Send another posse after us?”

“There’s that. But you’d be on your home turf.”

“Or we could stop them now,” I said. “The plan isn’t to fight. We want to sow a little dissention in the ranks.”

“You’re going to try talking them out of this war of yours, aren’t you?” Cormac said. He held a cup of tea, the vintage china looking out of place in his calloused grip. He wrinkled his nose at the liquid, but drank anyway. Maybe Amelia would help him develop a taste for the stuff.

“It’s not my war,” I muttered. “But yeah.”

“I think she’s got a chance at it,” Caleb said.

“In my experience, werewolves don’t stand still long enough to listen to much talk,” he said, setting the cup down.

“You didn’t see her earlier this week, at the convocation,” Ben said. “I think they were all so surprised they didn’t know which way to jump.”

“Yeah,” the hunter said. “That sounds about right.” Caleb made a gesture as if to say, you see?

“What do you want me to do?” Cormac said.

Stay in the car? “Keep watch? You know the kind of defenses panicking vampires are likely to have. We don’t want any surprises.”

“Just what do you know about panicking vampires?” Caleb asked.

“They’re like anything else,” Cormac said. “You corner them, they get stupid.”

“When this is all done, would you mind letting me buy you a pint and wring some stories out of you?”

Cormac just smiled.

Caleb rose from his seat and said, “First thing to do is check in with the scouts. That’ll give us some idea of who’s on the move and where we should go next. If you’ll excuse me.” He drew his phone from a pocket and scrolled through its numbers as he left the room.

Cormac gazed after him. “Alpha of the British Isles, you said? That’s impressive.”

“Yep. Don’t look at him like you’re staring through gun sights,” I said, and he chuckled.

“By the way, where’ve you been?” Ben asked. “Dinner with the Parkers couldn’t have lasted until four in the morning.”

“No. They have an early bedtime with the kids and all, so we went out looking for ghosts.”

I had to ask. “Like, real ghosts?”

“Amelia wanted to check up on some spots she knew from before. The Tower, along the river, Whitechapel.”

“Jack the Ripper?”

“Among other things, yeah.”

“Huh.” He wasn’t going to keep talking unless I prompted, and I was dying to know. “And … how did the dinner go?” Ben and I leaned in to hear the answer.

“It was … awkward,” he said. “Not bad. But you know, trying to make small talk channeling someone’s dead relative…” He made an annoyed movement like he had an itch on his back. “I keep asking how I got myself into this. Stuff like this, what I’ve been doing? Nice dinner at home with the family? Never would have thought of it.” His expression was confused, wondering. Like he really had just woken up from a nap and found himself in another country. “Anyway, his wife got out the photo album and Amelia ID’d faces in old pictures. Broke a little ice that way. The kids are cute. For kids, you know.”

And that was almost as astonishing as Amelia hunting for ghosts in Whitechapel.

Phone in hand, Caleb returned, smiling, a gleam in his eye like a wolf who’s spotted prey. “We’ve got our first stop.”