Magic Breaks

6

BEFORE THE SHIFT, Centennial Park occupied twenty-one acres inside Atlanta, a cheery space filled with engraved bricks, lawns, and beautiful fountains. After the magic hit and the buildings around the park took a dive, it stood abandoned for a few years. Eventually, Atlanta’s witch covens banded together and purchased it from the city along with the nearby ruins. Shortly after they took over, the vegetation within the park rioted. Trees grew, sending thick roots through the neighborhood and spreading massive canopies, as if they had been growing here for hundreds of years. The park tripled in size. Now a dense wall of greenery bordered it, an impenetrable barrier of oaks, evergreen shrubs, blackberry that somehow resisted the frost, and thorns. In the defense department, the witches would make Sleeping Beauty’s evil witch weep with jealousy.

I rode Cuddles next to that green barrier now, heading down Centennial Drive toward the Casino. The shapeshifters flanked me. I kept an eye on the greenery. The witches professed to be friendly to me. Evdokia, one of the three witches of the Oracle, even claimed we were distantly related. But their help was always conditional and right now I didn’t trust anyone.

The bushes ahead of us rustled.

I halted Cuddles and reached for Slayer.

A brown bunny hopped out onto the sidewalk and looked at me.

“Snack,” Desandra said.

The bunny pondered me with tiny eyes and turned toward the shrubs. Right.

“It’s a bunny only part of the time,” I said. “Sometimes it’s a duck. Also, it can be a kitten.”

Robert raised his eyebrows at me.

“We’re being invited to visit the Witch Oracle.” I dismounted and followed the bunny.

“Not again,” Derek growled.

“Why, what’s so bad about the witches?” Ascanio asked.

Derek’s eyebrows crept together. “You’ll see.”

The bunny hopped into the shrubs. The greenery split and pulled to the side, revealing a narrow path.

“Do we have a choice?” Robert said.

“Not really.”

I stepped onto the path. We were short on time, but pissing off witches ranked right between sticking your hand into a hornet’s nest and telling Curran I’d made broccoli for dinner. By now, they had to know that Hugh was in town. If they wanted to see me, it had to be something important.

We passed through the thick barrier of green and emerged into a pine forest. Snow sheathed the ground in a dense blanket. Tall pine trunks towered on both sides of us, as if a Spanish armada were sailing under the snow and only its masts were visible. Past the pines a glade stretched, silver with moonlight. Behind it the translucent walls of a greenhouse rose into the night, sheltering rows of herbs. Centennial Park served as the hub for most of the Atlanta covens and they liked to have herbs in ready supply.

The bunny hopped between the trees. We followed it. Snow crunched under my feet. We really didn’t have time for this. Unfortunately, I needed the Oracle. If Hugh and Roland intended to assault Atlanta, I would need their help and their magic. And I couldn’t afford to ignore their advice. If I refused to see them and they had a magic self-guided missile that could take Hugh out, I would be kicking myself for years.

Derek wrinkled his nose. “Here it is.”

I pulled a strip of gauze out of my pocket and passed it to him.

“What is that smell?” Desandra wrinkled her nose.

Derek ripped the gauze in half and handed her a piece.

The trees fell back and we came to a hill sitting in the middle of a large clearing. Perfectly spherical and smooth, it protruded from the snow, like the cupola of a submerged cathedral. I remembered it as being dark gray with flecks of gold and swirls of green, but the moonlight turned it glossy indigo.

The bunny stopped.

The ground under our feet rumbled. Derek sneezed. Desandra clamped the gauze to her nose. The hill shuddered and slid upward, the snow sliding off its top.

Robert jumped back ten feet. Ascanio just stared, wide-eyed.

A giant head broke free of the snow, its neck a brown mass of wrinkled folds. Hey, pretty girl. Long time, no see. The colossal tortoise stared at me with dinner-plate-sized irises and opened its gargantuan mouth.

Right. The full treatment. Just once, would it kill them to meet me in a gazebo someplace or in a fried chicken joint?

Derek and Desandra doubled over in a fit of sneezing.

The bunny’s fur crawled, boiled, and stretched into the shape of a small black cat. The cat leaped into the tortoise’s mouth.

“Wow,” Ascanio said. “That’s brutal.”

I filed the new item of teenage slang away for future reference.

Desandra pointed at the open mouth, her other hand pinching her nose closed. “In dere?”

“Mm-hm,” I said.

“Fuck dis! I’m stayin’ here.”

“I’m a rat,” Robert said. “I’m not going into a reptile’s mouth.”

Oh boy. Fine time to develop phobias. “It’s fine,” I told them. “They’ll probably cut you off from the conversation anyway.”

“I’m coming,” Ascanio declared.

Derek nodded, holding the rag over his nose, and came to stand with me.

I stepped into the tortoise’s mouth.

• • •

THE THICK SPONGY tongue gave a little under my feet. I went forward, past the roof of the mouth, into the throat, draped with garlands of frozen algae and icicles. Ahead dark ice slicked the floor of the throat tunnel. Last time I came through here, I had taken a bath in what I strongly suspected was tortoise spit. I stepped onto the ice. It held. Score one for me.

“This is awesome,” Ascanio volunteered behind me.

Someone was having entirely too much fun.

The throat tunnel ended and I walked out onto an iced-over pond in the middle of a colossal dome. The walls, dark at eye level, curved up, lightening until they grew transparent at the top. The night sky, studded with stars, spilled moonlight onto clusters of blue icicles suspended from the ceiling. The icicles glowed with soft blue light, illuminating the outlines of rectangular crypts within the walls, each marked by a glowing gold glyph.

In front of me on a rectangular platform waited three women. The first had seen seventy. Life had whittled her down, turning her body skeletal and her face sharp and predatory. She perched in a large black chair like a bird of prey. Maria, the Crone. Next to her a young woman sat in a comfortable chair. Slender, with pale blond hair down to her shoulders, she looked young, barely out of her teens, and delicate. Her power was anything but. Sienna, the Maiden. I had saved her life during the last flare. To the right, in a rocking chair, sat Evdokia, the Mother. Plump, with a heavy braid of reddish-brown hair, she rocked back and forth knitting a sweater out of gray wool. It looked almost done.

The black cat ran to her and rubbed against her feet.

Behind them a large mural showed their goddess, a tall, regal woman standing behind a cauldron that sat at the intersection of three roads. The woman’s three arms held a knife, a torch, and a chalice. A black cat, a toad, a broom, and a key completed the picture. She had many names: the Queen of the Night, the Mother of All Witches, Hekate. Her power was vast and terrible and I was disinclined to disrespect her.

Evdokia pointed to Derek and Ascanio. “You! Wait there.”

A wall of ice surged around the two shapeshifters, locking them into an icy ring.

Sienna turned to me. “Your father is coming.”

• • •

THE UNIVERSE JUST kept dumping buckets of icy water on my head. “When?”

“Soon,” Evdokia said, her needles clicking.

“He’s coming to claim the city,” Sienna said. “We have foreseen it.”

Maria raised her bony hand and pointed at Sienna. “Show her.”

Sienna stood up. The mural behind her faded, dissolving into a view of a city street. To the left typical old buildings bordered the street, one of dark brick with boarded-up windows, the other covered in beige stucco and in better condition. To the right a big, sand-colored building of Roman brick and granite took up most of the block. Its lower half, a typical rectangular structure, stood about four tall floors high. On top of it a hundred-fifty-foot tower stretched to the sky. I could see all the way down the street, past the streetlights, to the distant steeple of some church.

The sky above the city churned with storm clouds, furious and dark. Wind blew trash down the street in powerful short gusts. The air vibrated with tension and magic, as if charged and just waiting for a strike of lightning. The hair on the back of my neck rose. Something dangerous rode in that storm. Something powerful and frightening.

A man rounded the corner. He wore a white robe. The wind blew his long blond hair over his face.

“Uther Stone,” Maria said.

“The name sounds familiar,” I said.

“The Gypsy massacre,” Evdokia told me, looking up from her knitting. “You’re looking at Sioux City.”

Ah. Now I remembered. Uther Stone was a really powerful zapper, an elemental mage who dealt in electricity. He came to prominence defending the city from a monstrous giant buffalo. They elected him mayor and he started making laws about what kind of people weren’t welcome in Sioux City. Then a group of Romani disappeared. Their bodies were found in a communal grave and Uther Stone had to answer some questions, except he never got the chance.

In the vision, other people trailed Stone, some in modern clothes, some wearing robes. Eight total. Stone threw open the door of the building and dashed inside. His posse followed.

The viewing angle of the vision slid up, showing the building in greater detail. A carving of a muscular bearded man flanked on both sides by six smaller figures decorated the space above the doors. Above it words spelled out in capital letters, JUSTICE AND PEACE HATH MET TOGETHER. TRUTH HATH SPRUNG OUT OF THE EARTH.

The view kept rising, higher and higher, to the top of the tower until we saw the flat roof and a small entrance, barred by a green metal door. The door thrust open and Stone emerged, the wind pulling at his robe. His people followed, forming a circle. A woman with purple hair pulled a jug of red liquid from her backpack and began throwing handfuls of it back and forth, her lips moving in a chant.

“A local coven,” Evdokia said. “All he could muster. They’re about to feed their magic into him.”

The thunderhead above the building turned black. The sky boiled. The magic clamped the city into an invisible fist and squeezed. The pressure ground on my chest. Suddenly it was hard to breathe. Inside me my magic reared in response. If it had been an animal, it would’ve snarled. This was a challenge.

The purple-haired woman emptied the jug on Stone’s feet. Stone thrust his arms out, gripping a staff in his right fist. The people surrounding him snapped rigid, their bodies unnaturally still.

The thunderhead split. Magic crackled. A spear, glowing as if made of molten gold, struck at Stone. He jerked his staff up, blocking it, and I almost moved with him. He wouldn’t be enough.

The tip of the spearhead touched the staff’s shaft. Power thundered through the air, shaking the city. Breath caught in my throat. My heart hammered in my chest, too fast. So much power . . .

The wood disintegrated.

For a second Stone stood still, the outline of his body glowing with violent red, and then he fell apart, a man made of ash. The spear buried itself in the roof. Its tip shone with brilliant light and a blast wave rolled through the city in a huge circle, sweeping the ash that used to be the coven off the roof.

I braced myself, expecting the impact, but the magic fell short of me. The spear turned dull.

A man landed on the roof, coalescing out of thin air. He was wrapped in a simple gray cloak, worn, with a ragged hem and a deep hood that hid his face. If I had seen him on the street, I wouldn’t have given him a second glance.

“I want to see his face.” I needed to see him. I wanted to see my father.

“I can’t,” Sienna’s voice whispered. “He won’t let me.”

The man grasped the spear and pulled it out. He looked over the city, turned, and slowly, unhurriedly made his way to the door.

The vision faded. I gulped the air. Sienna sank back onto her seat. Sweat beaded on her face.

“The magic pulse, what was that?” I asked.

“The claiming,” Maria said. “He has made the land his.”

“Each land has a people,” Sienna said. “Those who settle on it, those who are born and die on it, their bloodlines bonded to it for generations. Their bodies are buried within the soil, nourishing it. Their magic becomes rooted in it and grows from the land like a forest.”

“Think of it like farming,” Evdokia said. “Before a farmer can use the land, he must clear the trees, remove their roots, dig out the boulders, and pull out the weeds. Very hard to do if the forest is old and strong and the trees have been growing for thousands of years.”

Maria stirred. “But here, we’ve done the farmer’s job for him. We killed the Native people of this land. There is no forest anymore. There are just saplings, families of settlers and immigrants, the oldest from the seventeenth century, but most even younger. Their bond to the land is weak. What you do to others always comes back to you and the balance is always restored. We committed genocide. We destroyed a people and now we have to pay the price for the terrible crimes we perpetrated. The land lies fallow without defenses. All your father has to do is claim it.”

So this was why he came here. I always wondered why he had left the Middle East and traveled to North America. Now I knew. He came here because there was no Native power to oppose him. The land was fallow and was ripe for the taking. “What happens when he claims something?”

“He reaps a harvest,” Evdokia said. “The magic of the land nourishes him and makes him stronger.”

“And protects him,” Maria put in. “He’s much harder to fight on his territory. The longer he keeps it, the stronger is his bond, the more difficult it is to remove him.” She turned to me, her piercing gaze stabbing at me. “He is coming. What are you planning to do about it?”

“If he comes, I’ll try to kill him.” What else was there?

Maria spun in her chair to face Evdokia and jabbed at me with a bony finger. “She’s a moron! I told you! I told you, but no, you said—”

“Will you stop badgering her for a moment?” Evdokia snapped. She leaned forward, looking at me. “If you fight your father directly, you will die. You’re not old enough, strong enough, or educated enough.”

“Thank you for the vote of confidence.”

Evdokia grimaced. “If all of the covens, and all of the pagans, and all of the magic users of Atlanta got together and channeled their power, we could probably block your father, but we can’t exactly get everyone together in time. We don’t know how to put all of our power together. We don’t know when the claiming happens. We don’t know where.”

It would be on some tower. That was what my father did. He built towers. They were the nexus of his power and now I knew why. The taller the tower, the more he could claim with one pulse.

“You are our best chance,” Evdokia said. “There are things we can teach you, but this will take time. You have to buy us this time. You have to prevent the claiming.”

“How?”

“We don’t know,” Sienna said.

“We supported you,” Maria said. “We helped you and supplied you with undead blood. We didn’t do all this so you can go and sacrifice yourself like a dimwit.”

I always knew the witches didn’t help me out of the goodness of their hearts. They wanted a return on their investment. “He killed my mother.”

“Obnyat e pluhkuht,” Evdokia sighed.

To hug and cry. That was what exasperated Russians said when there was nothing left to do.

“Your mother gave her life so you could live,” Evdokia said. “Your dying dramatically isn’t going to help anyone. It won’t honor her memory and it won’t protect any of us. There are people in this city who depend on you. Do whatever you have to do, but you must prevent the claiming.”

I spread my arms. “What do you want me to do? Should I go up to Roland and ask him nicely to please not claim the city as a favor to me?”

“If that’s what it takes, yes!” Maria snapped.

This was a ridiculous conversation. “You do realize he’ll try to kill me the moment he sees me?”

“That’s not certain,” Sienna said. “For almost six months now I’ve done nothing but look into your future. I’ve seen you die in dozens of ways and I have seen you survive. But I have never seen him die.”

Awesome. Just awesome. “Thanks. This is really helpful. Is there anything else?”

Evdokia bit a thread off her knitting and tossed the sweater at me. I caught it.

“Pure wool,” she said. “Will keep you warm even when wet. Put it on and don’t take this off for the next twenty-four hours.”

I shrugged off my jacket, pulled off my sweater, and slipped into the woolen one. “You know something I don’t?”

Evdokia sighed. “Honey, we can fill this place with what we know and you don’t.”

Ask a stupid question. “If I can find a way to resolve this Hugh d’Ambray dilemma, I may need witnesses for my negotiations with the People. Will the covens act as my witnesses?”

“Yes,” Sienna said. “We’ll send representatives to the Keep.”

I turned around and headed out. Behind me the ice cracked, releasing Ascanio and Derek.

Outside Robert and Desandra waited.

“How did it go?” Robert asked.

“Roland is coming to claim the city. They want me to stop this from happening.”

“How?” Desandra asked.

“They don’t know. They have no instructions. Their helpful suggestion is to ‘just do it.’” I growled and headed out of the forest. So far this had been one hell of a day.

• • •

I CROUCHED IN the shadow of an apartment building. Desandra, Derek, and Ascanio leaned next to me, while Robert took a running start and ran up a seemingly sheer wall. We’d left Cuddles tied to an oak in Centennial Park. Nobody in their right mind would steal an animal belonging to the witches. If vampires sighted her, they would let her alone.

We were on the edge of the Slave Pens, a housing development next to the Casino reserved for Casino employees and journeymen, who’d given it its name. The original plan called for going down Centennial Drive but the vampires were too thick. We had to turn around, loop north and west, and approach the Casino from the Slave Pens. It cost us a precious half hour and if I thought about it longer than a second, it made me grind my teeth.

From my vantage point I could see Undead Alley, a four-lane street that now lay deserted. Past it, a vast paved lot stretched out, large enough to accommodate hundreds of cars. In its center, the Casino rose, glowing like a mirage born from cold air and asphalt desert. The huge dome of the main cupola shone with the pale bluish glow of feylanterns, surrounded by slim minarets and tall textured walls of white stone. On a good day, the sight would take your breath away, and then you noticed vampires crawling on it like fleas on a white cat.

The main entrance to the parking lot that surrounded the Casino lay to the west. We were at the southwest corner.

A pair of vampires trotted along the edge of the parking lot. I held my breath. They passed out of sight. They were the third pair I’d seen in the last five minutes. The People were on high alert. I could feel eight vampires patrolling the parking lot and three more stationed at random points, one to the north and the other two to the west and south of us.

Robert slid down and landed next to me without making a sound.

“Where is the observation post?” I whispered.

“There.” He pointed to the east at the crumbling remains of the Centennial Drive overpass jutting against the night sky. At some point three overpasses had crossed there, one above the other, but now the top two had collapsed onto the lowest one. Frost had slicked the concrete and parts of the overpass, and enameled in silvery moonlight, they almost glowed. The whole thing didn’t look particularly stable.

“There are two entrances,” Robert breathed into my ear. “One in the east and one in the south. The southern entrance is there.” He pointed to a pile of rubble across the street on our left. A vampire sat on top of it.

“How far is the east one?”

“On Marietta.”

A mile away, half of it in plain view of the Casino. If we doubled back to draw a wider circle around it, we’d have to go around the wreckage of Phillips Arena, which would cost us another half an hour or more. Getting this far unnoticed was a miracle. Trying to circle the Casino with that many patrols out would be impossible.

I turned to the vamp perched on the rubble. Even if we managed to take it by surprise, this close to the Casino it would do us no good. When a vampire died suddenly, its navigator usually went catatonic or panicked, because his mind, still connected to the undead, became convinced that it was the navigator who had died. Experienced Masters of the Dead honed their reflexes enough to disengage in time and some navigators survived the sudden death, but most ended up as vegetables. The moment we killed that vampire, one of the navigators inside the Casino would either scream in panic or start drooling, and the Casino would vomit enough vampires to turn us into jerky.

“We need a diversion,” Robert murmured.

If we backtracked, we could possibly set something on fire, but it wouldn’t guarantee that the vampires would move from their posts. More likely they would send a recon team. We were stuck.

Think. Think, think, think . . .

Desandra ducked her head. “Where are we going after this?”

“Centennial,” I whispered. “If we make it, we’ll need to pick up my donkey.”

“See you there.”

“Don’t!” I reached for her. My fingers missed her by a hair. She darted out and sprinted across the street. Damn it.

Desandra cleared half of the road. The vamp spun around to face her. She swung her mace and brained it. The vamp fell on the pavement, jerking, half of his skull caved in. Desandra kicked it. “Eat shit and die!”

She was officially insane and she had decided to do Jennifer a favor and kick the bucket.

Four lean shadows shot out across the parking lot, heading for her, two from the north and the two by the overpass. Desandra spun and sprinted away, running east, long legs moving fast, feet pounding the pavement.

I dropped to the ground, by the wall. Robert flattened himself next to me. Behind us Ascanio and Derek froze, trying to blend in with the rocks.

Four vampires tore past us, eyes glowing, talons scraping the pavement.

We had mere seconds before reinforcements arrived.

In the distance Desandra’s throaty laugh echoed from the ruins. Apparently she was having fun.

I jumped to my feet and sprinted like my life depended on it. Robert and the kids shot by me like three bullets out of a gun. The apartment building flashed by. Sidewalk . . . street . . . I just had to get behind the pile of rubble. Circles swam in front of my eyes.

The door of the nearest minaret opened and vampires spilled onto the wall, scrambling over it like pallid lizards.

I dove behind the rubble, slid on icy dirt, and nearly collided with Robert leaning against a huge chunk of concrete. A dark hole gaped under it. Robert jabbed at the hole with his hand. I leaped into it, fell about twelve feet, and landed on hard ground in a shaft about six feet wide. The impact punched my feet.

In my head I could feel six undead moving toward us, their minds spreading wider apart as they fanned through the parking lot in our direction.

Ascanio jumped into the hole. I shied back against the wall and his feet missed me by half a second. Derek was next.

One of the vampires headed straight for us.

Robert leaped into the hole and yanked a metal lever in the wall. Above us, a metal platform moved, carrying the concrete boulder with it. The platform slid into place, plunging us into complete darkness.

We stood completely still.

The vampire mind was right on top of us.

My body screamed for air, starved of oxygen after the run. I opened my mouth and concentrated on breathing slow and quiet. Inhale. Exhale. Quiet.

A faint scrape came from above, claws sliding on concrete. The undead was sitting right on the boulder.

My lungs were on fire.

Go away.

A minute dragged by. Another.

“Team Two Leader to Mother,” a muffled female voice said above. “Home envelope sealed, no pulse, no bogey, repeat no bogey, advise?”

Go home, I willed. Go home.

“Roger. Team Two, sweep complete, bingo to Mother.”

The vampiric mind turned and fled, heading toward the Casino.

Everything went quiet. I remembered how to breathe properly.

“Go forward,” Robert whispered to me. I put my hands out around me. My fingers found stone walls on either side. The opening between them was barely wide enough to pass through. Dark, cramped, and scary. My favorite.

I squeezed into the narrow hallway and blundered forward. The walls narrowed even further. My shoulders scraped the rock. You’ve got to be kidding me. When I got out of here, I’d kill Hugh for this. Slowly. With something dull.

The hallway needed to end. The walls were closing in on me.

What if the ceiling collapsed? I didn’t even know what the hell was above me. I’d just end up buried here, under tons of dirt and rubble.

Any time now with the ending.

Now would be good.

How long did this place go on?

Suddenly the walls parted. I froze. With my luck, taking a step would land me into a pit of rabid vipers or molten lava. No wait, lava would be good. At least I’d be able to see something.

“Reach forward,” Robert murmured behind me.

I groped blindly and touched something metal. A ladder. Okay. Now we’re in business. I grabbed onto it and climbed upward in total darkness. Robert was right. I wouldn’t have found this place in a million years.

My head connected with something hard. Ow.

The ceiling above me moved, letting in a pale glow. A hand with long clawed fingers grabbed my wrist and yanked me up. A horrifying face swung into view, illuminated by the faint blue light of a feylantern: pale, with patchy fur and a pink nose at the end of a tear-shaped muzzle. Long stiff whiskers fanned from a mouth studded with finger-long incisors. Dark, disturbingly human eyes stared at me.

My mind cycled through a chain of thoughts in a space of half a second. Kill. Wait. Wererat in a warrior form = friend. Stop.

I stopped the throwing knife a quarter of an inch before stabbing it into the wererat’s windpipe. It’s good that I had fast reflexes.

“Conssshort,” the nightmarish creature said. “What are you doing here?”

I made my mouth move. “Looking for you.”

The wererat smiled. My body flinched and tried to run away out of sheer self-preservation, and if I hadn’t been hanging suspended over a dark hole, it would’ve succeeded.

“You found me!” the wererat announced. “I alwayshh wanted to meet you. I am sshhho ffflatterred.”

Robert’s head poked out of the hole. “Jardin, put the Consort down before you dislocate her shoulder.”

“Alpha!” Jardin deposited me to the side. “Itshh shhuch an honor.”

Robert pulled himself up into the room. Derek and Ascanio followed. I looked around. We were in a narrow, rectangular space about as wide as an average van. Three walls looked like concrete; the fourth was covered by a dark curtain.

“Any activity?” Robert asked.

“Not in the lasssht ten minutesh. Before that, very exshiting. I shaw Wolf Beta run by. There were vampiresh chassing her. She was yelling, ‘Bill me, bloodshuckers!’”

Yep, that’s the wolf beta, alright.

“I think I’m in love,” Ascanio said.

Derek smacked the back of the bouda’s head. Ascanio snapped his teeth at him.

“Stop it,” I growled under my breath.

Jardin tossed a rag over the lantern. Darkness drowned the room. The curtain whispered as he moved it aside, revealing a long narrow space, filled with moonlight. Jardin hunched over, bending his six-and-a-half-foot body, and slipped through the opening. Robert followed and I did, too. My eyes acclimated to darkness and I saw Robert and Jardin leaning against the wall by a narrow gap in the concrete. The space was barely large enough for the five of us.

I crouched next to them and glanced through the gap. A hundred yards to the left the Casino glowed. Vampires scoured the walls, crawling on the textured parapets. We were inside the overpass.

“How did you even find this place?”

“By accident,” Robert said so quietly, I barely heard it. “Before the overpasses collapsed, they crossed in this spot. This is a reinforced section, designed to hold the weight of all three in case a collapse occurred. When the top overpasses crashed, the magic began eating them from the inside, and eventually the three sections of the road fused, forming this hole.”

“To what to I owe zhe pleashure?” Jardin asked.

“We’re at war,” Robert told him. “Someone in the Pack killed Mulradin.”

The wererat blinked. “Oh. I ssshaw him leave the Casino tonight.”

“How long ago?” Derek asked.

“Five houuursh.”

Mulradin must’ve bailed right after Ghastek left for the Conclave. What could’ve been so urgent?

“You said you saw him in the Warren before as well,” Robert said. “Where?”

“Corrrner of Marsharet and Joneshhboro.”

Robert’s eyebrows crept up. “The Fox Den?”

“Yessh.”

“Did you see with whom?” Robert asked.

Jardin shook his head. “But I sshaw him there twice.” He raised two long fingers.

“The Fox Den is a hit-’n’-split,” Robert said to me.

A hit-’n’-split was a lovely post-Shift euphemism. It wasn’t exactly a whorehouse and it wasn’t exactly a hotel. Most of the hit-’n’-splits were run out of converted apartment buildings. If you wanted to have sex with something that grew fur, scales, or feathers and you wanted to do it privately, you went to a hit-’n’-split, worked your kinks out of your system, and left with your humanity mostly intact. Nobody would be the wiser.

I’d run across a couple of hit-’n’-splits in my time with the Guild and the Order. Most operated under the radar. A prospective client somehow got hold of a phone number, called the management, stated their preferences, and paid the quoted price. In return he would receive a key in the mail. At designated times he’d show up at the apartments, use the key, get his freak on, then leave. It was an “at your own risk” kind of venture. No security, no front desk, no witnesses. The management charged both parties a flat fee, but there was no pimp and no madam. Everyone operated independently. If Mulradin frequented a hit-’n’-split, he had a fetish and he wanted to keep it hidden.

“Red brick building,” Jardin said. “Second one from the easht.”

“We need to get back to Centennial Park first,” I told him. I wouldn’t leave Desandra stranded. Not after what she did. As far as I was concerned, she’d earned whatever support she wanted from me.

“You can ushe the other tunnel, but you can’t leave now. The sshift change is in ten minutessh and they will do a shweep right past the entranshe.”

“How long?” I asked.

“Sssshoould be clear in forty minutessh.”

“We wait, then.” I curled against the concrete.

Ascanio landed next to me. “Are you still mad at me for coming with?”

“Yes.”

“It will be okay,” he told me.

Derek sat down across from us.

“Did you know about Ascanio’s master plan?” I asked.

“No,” Derek said. “But I saw him walk off into the woods while everyone was talking.”

“I don’t know Desandra,” Ascanio said. “I don’t know Robert either.”

“I do know Desandra,” Derek said. “Ascanio’s annoying, but extra backup is always nice.”

Robert chuckled quietly. “You two were planning to fight me?”

“Not planning,” Ascanio said. “Just ready. In case.”

Teenage bodyguards. I closed my eyes. It would be a long night and I needed every drop of sleep I could get. I let myself drift, as Robert’s and Jardin’s soft voices receded into drowsiness.

“Thank you, Jardin. This will help us tremendously.”

“Happy to hhhear it, Alpha.”

“Once we are gone, I need you to return to Rat House.”

“I have ennough food for two weekssh,” Jardin said. “I could be ussheful.”

“No,” Robert said. “You’re too valuable to us and this post is too dangerous. Your life isn’t worth the risk . . .”

Sleep cushioned me, like a blanket wrapped around my body.

• • •

THE SEA WAS smooth, like the surface of a coin. I was lying in the sand next to Curran. My cheek rested on his chest, his skin heated by the sun. My hand was on his stomach, the ridges of hard muscle hot under my fingertips. His right arm was around me and he was playing with a strand of my hair. Lazy waves splashed against our feet, warm and soothing.

“We have to get up, baby,” he said.

“No.”

“We have to get up. Tide is coming in.”

“Let it come,” I murmured. “I just want to have more time. There’s never enough time . . .”

“Kate . . .”

I hugged him to me.

“Kate.”

Something touched me. I moved. My eyes snapped open. I was sitting on top of Jardin, holding my sword to his throat.

It was a dream. It wasn’t real. Curran was still gone. I wanted to howl like an animal.

It wasn’t real.

Losing him hurt like a punch to the gut. I was awake and back to my nightmare.

“Ssshecond time,” Jardin smiled.

“Sorry.” I got off of Jardin.

“Pay up,” Derek said to Jardin.

The wererat rolled to his feet and dropped a dollar into Ascanio’s palm.

“Did the two of you bet him I’d do this?”

Derek’s eyebrows rose. “We can neither confirm nor deny that a bet took place.”

“But we have seen you wake up when you’re stressed out.” Ascanio winked.

“I can’t wait to get back to the Keep,” I growled.

“So the two of them would start bickering again?” Robert asked.

“Exactly.” This united Derek and Ascanio team was getting on my nerves.

Robert rolled to his feet. “Thank you again, Jardin.”

“I could ssshtay,” the wererat offered.

“No.” Robert said. “You’re going home. Your job is done. Now it’s time for us to do ours.”

He was right. Time to get it done and get out of here.