Magic Breaks

2

I STOOD IN a small concrete room and watched the undead blood lying in a placid puddle at my feet. The magic in it called to me, eager and encouraging, whispering a soft seductive song.

Sometimes the Universe smiled. Mostly she kicked me in the face, stomped on my ribs once I fell down, and laughed at my pain, but once in a while she smiled. It was Wednesday. I had gone through the entire stack of activity reports for the Conclave detailing all incidents and conflicts between us and the People that could possibly cause us trouble. No murders, no assaults, no heated exchanges of words. Nobody had stolen anybody’s property. Nobody had gotten drunk and hit on someone’s boyfriend. Hallelujah.

My work done, I locked myself in here, in a small rectangular room of stained sealed concrete. It used to be a storage room for Curran’s gym equipment, but he moved it out and gave the room to me. Nothing interrupted the light brown concrete except for the drain on the floor. Most days I didn’t need the drain.

My magic streamed out of me, like vapor from a boiling pot thrust outside into the cold. If it glowed, I’d look like I was on fire. Most of the time I kept the magic hidden inside me. Leaving it on display was extremely unwise for someone of my lineage.

I beckoned the blood with my magic. A faint tremor troubled the puddle of blood on the floor, as if something moved under the surface.

Voron, my adoptive father, always taught me that suppressing the power of my blood was the best strategy. Keep quiet. Keep hidden. Don’t practice magic that could give you away. That was no longer an option. I needed this magic. I had to be good at it. Nobody could teach me, so I taught myself. I practiced and practiced and practiced. Some of the blood came from Jim. He bought it for me on the black market. Some undead blood came from Rowena, a Master of the Dead who owed the local witches a favor. The witches knew who I was and backed me up. They saw the writing on the wall: when Roland came, I was the only thing standing between them and my father, so they made Rowena supply me with vampire blood. She had no clue what it was for. I had practiced every day the magic was up.

My progress was slow, so slow, I gritted my teeth when I thought about it. I was beginning to hate this room. It reminded me of a tomb. Maybe I should add some graffiti to spice it up. For a good time call the Consort. Beast Lord eats your food and turns into a lion in his sleep. Mahon has hemorrhoids. Boudas do it better. Warning: paranoid attack jaguar on the prowl . . .

A quiet knock echoed through the room. I jumped a little.

“Yes?”

“It’s me,” Barabas said.

I unlocked the door. “Come in.”

He sauntered in, moving with casual elegance. No matter what he wore, Barabas always managed to project an air of urbane, civilized polish that came with a sharp edge. Tall, lean, and pale, he had fire-bright red hair that stuck out from his head like a forest of aggressive spikes. If he ever frosted his hair blue, he’d look like a gas burner. And if someone looked at me the wrong way, he’d rip right through his civilized veneer and become a manic tornado of razor claws and dagger fangs. One messed with a weremongoose at one’s peril.

“If it’s bad, I don’t want to hear it.”

Barabas was one of the Pack’s lawyers, and he did his best to navigate me through the treacherous mire of shapeshifter politics and laws.

“It’s not bad.” Barabas sat on the floor, throwing one long lean leg over the other and grimaced. “Well, I take it back. It might be.”

“Will it freak you out if I finish this? I already poured blood on the floor.”

“No, no. Why let good undead blood go to waste?”

I pricked my forearm with a needle and let a single drop of blood fall into the puddle. Magic shot through the undead blood like lightning. The blood slid upward in a graceful crimson arch.

“Whoa,” Barabas murmured.

The blood touched my fingers and wound around them, gliding over my skin, elastic and pliant. A blood gauntlet sheathed my hand. It wasn’t pretty but it was functional. I pulled a knife from my belt and sliced across the gauntlet.

Barabas made a sympathetic sucking noise.

No blood. I felt the pressure of the blade but it didn’t penetrate. I bent my fingers, trying to make a fist. I made it about two-thirds of the way. About a year ago my aunt Erra had come to Atlanta intending to wreck it. I killed her. It was the hardest thing I’d done in my life. She was wearing blood armor when she died. It fit her like spandex. She had run and twisted in it, and she had no problem swinging an axe fast enough to counter me. I tried the gauntlet again. The blood refused to bend. I was clearly doing something wrong. This wouldn’t work. If I couldn’t hold a sword, I might as well sign my own death warrant.

I concentrated on thinning the blood, turning it into segments that sat on top of each other like the plates of armadillo armor. “So what’s up?”

“Two things. First, Christopher wants to talk to you.”

Speaking with Christopher was like playing Russian roulette: sometimes you got brilliance so bright it hurt and sometimes you got complete nonsense. We had rescued him from Hugh d’Ambray. He must’ve been exceptionally smart at some point and he definitely had knowledge of advanced magic, but either Hugh or my father had broken his mind. Christopher’s hold on reality frequently slipped, and once in a while we had to drop everything and run out on the parapets to convince him that no, he could not fly. I could usually talk him down, but if he was really far gone it took Barabas to make him stop.

“He’s been agitated for the last two days,” Barabas said. “I have no idea if he’s even coherent.”

“Where is he now?”

“Hiding in the library.”

Not a good sign. The library was Christopher’s refuge. Books were precious to him. He treated them like treasure and hid among them when the world became too much for him. Something must’ve really gotten under his skin.

“Did he say what it was about?”

“Just that it was important. You don’t have to talk to him,” Barabas said.

“That’s okay. I’ll speak to him after the Conclave.” I tested the gauntlet. Like having a can wrapped around my fingers. Ugh. What was I doing wrong? What? “What was the second thing?”

“Jim has assembled the Praetorian Guard and is waiting for your inspection.”

Oh joy. Jim must’ve pulled together a cutthroat crew of shapeshifters ready to protect me at the Conclave. “As I recall, the Praetorian Guard killed the Roman emperors as often as it protected them. Should I be worried?”

“Are you planning on setting the Keep on fire while playing thrilling melodies on a fiddle?”

“No.”

Barabas flashed me a quick smile, showing sharp teeth. “Then probably not.”

“Anything else?”

Barabas looked at me carefully. “Clan Nimble inquires if the wedding date has been set.”

“Again?”

“Yes. They want to prepare and choose the appropriate present. You’re really throwing them off their game by refusing to set the date.”

I never pictured myself getting married. I never picked out my future gown or looked at a bridal magazine. That wasn’t my future. My future was surviving until I was strong enough to kill my father. But then Curran threw a wrench into those plans and asked me, and I said yes, because I loved him and I wanted to marry him. My future had made a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn. Now I had to think about the details. I wanted a small ceremony with as little ceremony in it as possible. Quiet, private, maybe a few friends.

As soon as the engagement was announced, the Pack Clans converged and shot the idea of a quiet ceremony out of the water and then kept firing at it until it stopped convulsing and died. They wanted the whole Pack to be there. They wanted presents and rituals and a giant feast. They wanted a Wedding, with a capital W. Clan Heavy and Clan Rat both owned bakeries, and the bakers almost came to blows over who would be doing the cake. Should it be a winter wedding or a spring wedding? Who would make my gown and what should it look like? Was it appropriate for me to wear white or should it be gray, the official color of the Pack? Argh.

Every moment Curran and I spent together was ours. Just ours. And so we kept putting off the wedding. We never conspired to do it. We both were just too busy to get married and when we did have a few free hours, we hoarded them to spend with each other and Julie.

“I have had it up to here with my wedding,” I said. “The other day Andrea tried to explain to me that apparently I am supposed to have a new thing, an old thing, a blue thing, and something stolen.”

“Borrowed, Kate,” Barabas murmured.

“Who the hell even makes up those rules?”

“It’s tradition,” he said.

“Even Julie talked to me about it the other day.”

“What did she say?” Barabas asked.

“She thinks I should wear black.”

Barabas sighed. “The clans will have a collective heart attack.”

The gauntlet still refused to bend. Screw it. I yanked my magic out. The blood armor turned dark brown and crumbled into powder. “I’m done with them hounding me about it. I’d rather be shot.”

“I understand. However, if you want them off your back, I have to give them something.”

I growled in his general direction. Sadly, growling worked much better when you were a werelion.

“Could you narrow it down to the season?” Barabas asked.

“Spring,” I said. Why not. We could always put it off later.

Barabas sighed. “I will let them know.”

• • •

CONTRARY TO POPULAR opinion, most shapeshifters weren’t hardened killers hungry for blood. They were normal people—teachers, masons, human resources specialists—who just happened to practice strict mental discipline and turn furry once in a while. Some of them learned enough control to maintain a warrior form, a meld of human and animal frighteningly efficient at killing. Of those, even fewer became full-time soldiers of the Pack. The best of the best among the soldiers became renders. Renders were weapons of mass destruction and they loved their job.

To get more than five combat-grade operatives in one room was rare. Unless we were about to battle an army, which so far had happened only once, one or two soldiers were sufficient. I was looking at twelve of them. Ten combat operatives, two renders, plus Barabas and Jim. Six feet two inches tall, one hundred ninety pounds of steel-hard muscle, Jim wore black accented with the kind of stare that made people run for cover. His skin was dark, his black hair was cut short, and he was built like he could go through solid walls. You knew that if he punched you, something inside you would break. Being a werejaguar on top of all that was just a bonus.

“What, no Rambo?”

Jim scowled at me. Usually when he scowled at people, they made a small squeaky noise and tried to look small and nonthreatening. Fortunately, I managed to scrape together enough valor and not faint.

“You keep doing that, your face will get stuck that way.”

“Will you take this seriously?” he growled.

“Okay.” I surveyed the crew of vicious killers. “Let me guess: an elite unit of commandos from some evil empire invaded Bernard’s Restaurant and fortified it. Now it’s trying to secede from Atlanta and the city asked us to take it back?”

Nobody laughed. I must be getting rusty.

Jim scowled harder. Wow. I didn’t think that was possible. Showed what I knew.

“Don’t you think this is overkill?” I asked.

“No.”

Ask a stupid question . . . “Jim, there is enough manpower here to destroy a small country.”

He waited.

“Don’t you think it will communicate that we’re scared of the People?”

“It will communicate that if they even think about starting some shit, we’ll rip them into bite-sized pieces.”

I looked at the red-haired render in the front. His name was Myles Kingsbury and he was built to break bones: broad shoulders, hard chest, lean waist, and a calm look in his eyes. Myles was my age and the few times we spoke, he struck me as competent and sensible.

“Mr. Kingsbury, what do you think?”

The render opened his mouth and said in a deep voice, “I think it communicates that we won’t hesitate to take the initiative to be decisively aggressive.”

I closed my eyes for a second and exhaled. “Jim, if I were Curran, would you saddle me with this many bodyguards?”

“No.”

Well, at least I could still count on the no-bullshit answer from him. “So you agree that being heavily guarded is making me appear weak?”

“Yes. However, it makes the Pack appear strong. I’m not inclined to gamble with your safety. And”—he held up his hand—“I’d make Curran have a guard as well, if that stubborn bastard wouldn’t overrule me.”

I looked at Barabas. “Do I have the power to overrule him?”

“Yep,” Barabas said.

Jim gave Barabas his hard stare.

Barabas shrugged. “Do you want me to lie?”

Jim turned to me. “If I could have a moment of your time, Consort?”

Oh, it’s “Consort” now, huh. “Sure, Chief of Security. I’d be delighted.”

Normally walking a few feet was sufficient to get out of earshot, but everyone in the Keep enjoyed the awesome benefits of enhanced hearing. Jim and I marched fifty yards down the hallway.

“We’re at less than half of our normal strength,” Jim said. “Curran is away from the Keep. Whether accurate or not, you are viewed as much less of a threat than he is. If I were planning something, I’d hit us now and I’d hit us where it hurt.”

I kept my voice low. “This spy-on-the-Council thing is really getting under your skin.”

He inhaled slowly and looked at me. “Are you trying to say I’ve lost my perspective?”

“Maybe a little.”

He bent closer to me. His voice shook slightly, not with fear but with controlled concentrated anger. “Three months. Sixteen of my best people. Over a thousand hours of surveillance. I have nothing to show for it. Nothing. We have a mole and I have no idea who it is.”

Curran was so much better at this shit than I was. “Do you remember the hydra?”

Jim grimaced.

It happened years ago, in my first year in the Guild. We’d had a hell of a winter, and while I was trying to figure out how to stay warm in my old house, a coven of amateur witches near Franklin was throwing odd things into a giant pot. I didn’t know what the hell they had been hoping to cook up, but what came out of the pot became known as the Franklin Hydra. It wasn’t a classic dragon with many heads. It was something tentacled, with spikes and mouths with shark teeth in places mouths shouldn’t be. It ate the witches and slipped into the frozen depths of Lake Emory. Under the ice, it turned the lake into sludge and ate anything that came close. The town asked for assistance and allocated some funds. Two weeks later twenty mercs and a National Guard unit walked out onto the ice. It broke under us. Four people survived.

I shouldn’t have been one of those four. I fell through the ice into the sludge up to my chest and kept sinking while spiked tentacles slithered around me. I knew I was done, and then some merc I didn’t know slid across the ice to me and tossed a belt my way. It fell out of my reach.

If I thrashed, the tentacles would tighten and pull me under. So I inched forward, one painful centimeter every few seconds.

“Do you remember what you said to me?” I asked.

He shrugged.

“You said, ‘Don’t tense up. No sudden movements. Take it nice and slow.’”

He looked at me without any expression. Bull’s-eye. Score one for me.

“Bernard’s is neutral territory where no weapons are permitted, including vampires.” And my sword, about which I wasn’t happy. “The People will come to this meeting unarmed. Our people are always armed, because they can turn at a moment’s notice. Bringing this many combat-trained shapeshifters could be perceived as a threat. With the alphas from the other Clans, we will outnumber the People two to one.”

I nodded at the posse of biological weapons arranged for my inspection. “This is a sudden move. You’re escalating things. The People will feel pressure to retaliate. It will make diplomatic relations a lot harder.”

Jim chewed it over. “Fair enough. However . . .”

I was beginning to really hate that word.

“I have intelligence that indicates that the People bought one of the buildings next to Bernard’s and set up a command center inside. Tonight it will hold several journeymen and at least six vampires. You know what six vampires can do.”

Six vampires could depopulate Atlanta in a week. Six vampires piloted by navigators would do it in three days. A vampire telepathically guided by the navigator was a precision instrument with the destruction potential of a small nuclear bomb.

“It’s a precaution,” I said. “Ghastek isn’t about to jeopardize his rise to the top.”

The most skilled navigators were known as Masters of the Dead. There were seven of them in Atlanta, and two of them, Ghastek and Mulradin Grant, were currently scheming and plotting, trying to gain control of the chapter. My money was on Ghastek. We had cooperated before out of necessity. He was smart, calculating, and ruthless, but he was also reasonable. It was his turn to attend the Conclave.

“Maybe a war with the Pack is exactly what he wants,” Jim said. “I don’t want to take chances. Hold on.” He peered at the far end of the hallway.

A man with pure-white hair turned the corner and sped toward us. Stick-thin, he moved at a near run, holding a stack of books to his chest. His jeans sagged on him, and his turtleneck, which would’ve been tight on most people, had a lot of spare fabric. Christopher occasionally forgot to eat. Sooner or later Barabas caught it and made him consume three meals a day, but Christopher never seemed to put any meat on his bones.

Jim turned and watched him close in. No love lost there. Jim viewed Christopher as a puzzle box. It could open to reveal a treasure or a bomb, and Jim didn’t like not knowing which it was.

“Remember all those bodyguarding jobs we used to run?” Jim asked.

“I remember. Are you trying to tell me I’m being a difficult body to guard?”

“Something like that.”

Christopher reached us. His blue eyes were opened wide. Some days they were like a clear summer sky, not a thought in sight, but right now they were focused with a single-mindedness bordering on obsession. Some idea had grabbed hold of him and driven him off a cliff. He probably didn’t even know he was carrying books.

“Mistress!”

I had given up on telling him to call me Kate. He always ignored it. “Yes?”

“You can’t go!”

Jim’s eyebrows came together.

“Go where, Christopher?” I asked.

“To that place.” Words came tumbling out of him. “I’ve been trying to be in my right mind.”

“Aha.” When in doubt, stick to simple words.

“I know what I used to be, but I cannot be that anymore. I try. I try so hard. But my mind is unraveled and the threads, they’re too tangled. There are pieces of me floating. I’m shattered. He broke me.”

“Who broke you?” Jim asked.

Christopher looked at him. His voice was a mere whisper. “The Builder.”

My father. The Builder of Towers. Anger spiked inside me. I wished I could reach across time and space and punch Roland in the face.

Christopher turned to me. “If I had known what it was like to be shattered, I would’ve rather died.”

Oy. “Don’t say that,” I said.

“It’s the truth.”

“Christopher, you matter to me. Shattered or not. You are my friend.”

Christopher opened his arms. The books fell to the floor. He clutched at me, long fingers gripping my shoulders. “Don’t go. Don’t go to that terrible place, or he will shatter you and then you’ll be alone. You will be like me. Don’t go, Mistress.”

Jim moved, but I shook my head.

“What terrible place?” I asked, keeping my voice soothing.

He shook his head and whispered, “Don’t go . . . Don’t leave.”

“I won’t,” I promised him. “I won’t go, but you have to tell me the name of the place.”

“You don’t understand.” Christopher looked at me, and in his blue eyes I saw pure panic. “You don’t understand. I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth, but not there. I cannot go there again.”

I wouldn’t go there either, if I knew where “there” was. “It’s okay. Just tell me . . .”

He shook his head. “No. No. It’s not.”

“It will be okay.”

He reached out, touched the strand of my hair that had slipped out of my braid, and yanked it, ripping some hair out.

Ow.

Jim lunged at Christopher, knocking him back. The thin man fell on the floor. I rammed Jim with my shoulder. “No!”

Christopher scrambled to his feet, wild-eyed, a few strands of my hair in his hand. “Don’t trust the wolf!”

He turned and fled down the hallway.

“What the hell?” Jim growled. “I’m going to have him sedated.”

“He knows something,” I told him. “I don’t know if he had a vision or someone told him something, but it freaked him out and he can’t explain it. Let’s see what he does with the hair. I might be able to figure it out from there.”

Hair, like body fluids, retained the magic of its owner once removed from the body. A year ago I would’ve killed Christopher to retrieve the hair, because studying it would reveal all my secrets. But my secrets were about to burst into the open anyway. Hugh knew the truth, Roland probably knew as well, and sooner or later everyone would know. I had come to terms with it.

“If someone told him something, it has to be either someone in the Pack or divination magic,” I thought out loud.

Even now the Keep held at least two hundred shapeshifters, and strangers weren’t welcome. Christopher never left the Keep and the grounds.

Jim growled. “I’ll put a guard on him. Someone discreet. If he’s getting his information from some apparition that manifests in his bedroom at night, I don’t want him sharing your hair with it.”

I looked at him. “What wolf do you think Christopher was talking about?”

“Beats me.”

There were more than six hundred of them and I didn’t have many fans among them.

“And you say I’m paranoid.” Jim pointed in the direction of Christopher’s escape. “What about him?”

“He’s shattered. What’s your excuse?”

“I have to work with your ass. You’ve driven me crazy.”

I sighed. I could overrule Jim and go to the Conclave on my terms. But Jim and I had to work together. I could tell by the line of his jaw that he would die on this bridge if he had to. Going along with him cost me nothing, except a small chunk of pride, and pride was one of the things I didn’t mind sacrificing.

“What if we compromise?” I asked.

Jim looked at me for a long second. “They’re going to need sweaters in hell.”

Because me trying to be the voice of reason froze hell over. “Har har. You said they had vampires for backup. Let’s split our people in two. One group comes with us, the other waits as a backup. Put someone solid in charge of it, whoever you want, and have them wait nearby. Within running distance.”

Jim pondered that. “I pick both crews.”

I spread my arms. “Fine.”

“I can live with that. I’ll prepare a couple of exit strategies for you in case shit hits the fan. If I’m wrong, we lose nothing. If I’m right . . .”

“I hope you’re wrong.”

“I hope I’m wrong, too,” he said.

“Good. Then we’re done here.” I walked away from him, conquered the hallway, and started up the stairs. That was enough excitement for the day. If nobody did anything crazy, I could hide in our rooms and read . . .

Hannah, one of my and Curran’s guards, ran down the stairs.

Please don’t be for me, please don’t be for me . . .

“Consort!”

Damn it. “Yes.”

“There is a knight of the Order here to see you.”

What now? The Order of Merciful Aid served as a semiofficial law enforcement agency. Competent and efficient, but rigid in their thinking, they helped private citizens deal with their magic hazmat problems. Unfortunately, once you asked them for help they did it their way and not everyone liked it. I used to work for the Order. They decided shapeshifters weren’t people, I decided they were, and we went our separate ways. Ted Moynohan, the knight in charge, was still pissy about it.

“He has Ascanio and Julie with him. He says no charges will be filed.”

Why me?

• • •

I WALKED INTO the conference room ready to do battle. Ascanio sat in one chair, looking suitably guilty and regretful, and if I hadn’t worked with him for the last few months, I would even believe it. Julie sat across from him, slender, blond, and defiant. She had mostly passed through her Goth phase, but black was still her favorite color and I was treated to a lovely ensemble of black jeans, charcoal turtleneck, and piercing stare.

A huge man took up the only other occupied chair. Massive, slabbed with muscle and covered in elaborate tattoos, he had the bold handsome features, dark skin, and dark eyes of a Pacific Islander.

“Mauro!” Of all the knights of the Order I liked him the most.

“Hello, Consort,” Mauro boomed. He got to his feet, spread his arms, and curtsied.

Ascanio clamped his hand over his mouth.

“I see you still think you’re funny.”

“Damn right.” His face split in a happy grin.

I turned to Hannah. “Could you bring us some hot tea?”

“Sure.”

Mauro nodded at my ward and Ascanio. “I brought these two miscreants to you.”

“What happened?”

“I was on an unrelated call in the Shiver Oaks, when a woman ran out from the house across the street and asked me if I could help her with some burglars her dog cornered.”

I turned to Ascanio and Julie. The look on my face must’ve been scary, because they flinched in unison. Ha! Still got it.

“Burglary?” I asked quietly. The Pack took a dim view of any criminal activity. We had enough trouble as it was.

Ascanio sighed, clearly resigned to his fate. “She wanted to see the bunnycat kittens. It was the breeder’s house. We found the ad in the newspaper. The woman wouldn’t let us in unless we showed her money, so we scaled the fence when she went out. I could’ve dealt with the Rottweiler. I just didn’t want to hurt him.”

Of course, Julie would want to see bunnycat kittens. Hell, I wanted to see the bunnycat kittens. And of course, he took her. The problem was, they got caught.

“We weren’t going to steal them,” Julie said. “We just petted them.”

“Is she pressing charges?” I asked Mauro.

“I convinced her it wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“Thank you.”

“Any time,” he said.

I looked at the kids. “Scram! I’ll talk to you later.”

They scurried out, nearly knocking Hannah and her platter of tea off her feet. She bared her teeth at them.

“Thank you.” I took the platter. Hannah stepped out and closed the door. I served tea to Mauro. “How’s it going?”

Mauro took his cup and blew on it. “Thank you.” He swallowed a little. “God, that’s good. I was about frozen solid. Damn weather. Things are . . . going. Selena still thinks I work too much.”

“How is your wife?”

“She’s good, thank you.” He hesitated. “I’m thinking of transferring.”

That was news. Atlanta was considered one of the more important Order chapters in the South. Not only that, but knights didn’t like changing duty stations. Once they were assigned to a chapter, they developed street contacts and professional relationships. Most of them would do just about anything to avoid starting over. “Transferring where?”

“Somewhere. Charleston. Orlando.”

Odd. I added more tea to his cup. I’ve learned that if you just stay quiet, people will say more to fill the silence.

“Thank you.” Mauro sighed. “This post used to be the place you went because it would be good for your career. You know, high-speed post. Where things were happening.”

“Things are still happening.”

“Not the right kind of things.” Mauro set the cup down. “Did you know Ted Moynohan was one of the original Ninety-Eight?”

Twenty-three years ago the original Ninety-Eight, drawn from different law enforcement agencies, formed the core of the Order of Merciful Aid. They were dramatically knighted in a single ceremony in front of the Washington Monument. The Order had wanted to make a statement.

“That makes Ted a knight-founder,” I said.

Mauro nodded. “We’ve had three hundred fifty percent turnover in personnel in the past three years. Typical for a chapter is about twenty percent.”

That made sense. Knights died, but they died occasionally. They were really well trained and difficult to kill. “Atlanta also had a hard three years.”

“People up the chain of command noticed. A three-knight investigative team came down from Wolf Trap. There was a hearing. A question was raised about some of the turnover. You came up.”

“Me?” I was never a knight, more like an off-the-books employee.

“You were seen as an asset, and then you became a Consort, and the question was asked why that bridge wasn’t mended. Andrea came up. They spent a long time on that one.”

Damn right they did. I was never a knight, but Andrea was a decorated veteran and a master-at-arms, which was nothing to sneeze at, and they tossed her out like garbage when they found out she was a shapeshifter.

“The Order can’t afford to bleed masters-at-arms,” Mauro said. “It never sat right with me the way that was handled. It shouldn’t have ever come to that. There was no need to put her back against the wall the way Ted did. I respect her and her skills.”

Hard not to respect someone who can shoot you in the eye from a mile away. “She knows you had her back.”

“How is she doing?”

“She’s running Clan Bouda with Raphael. She has her hands full.” And Aunt B’s big shoes to fill, which wasn’t a job I’d wish on anybody.

“Good to know.” The big knight shifted in his chair. “After they got through with Andrea, they went straight to Shane Andersen and the Lighthouse Keepers.”

There was no way for Ted to come out smelling like roses on that one. One of his knights had proven to be a terrorist. If Ted knew, he was as guilty as Shane. If he didn’t, he was incompetent. “So what happened?”

“That’s the bad part. Nothing. They conducted their hearings and went back to HQ. Then came the time to rebuild the chapter with new personnel. We got completely new people in. The only ones left of the old crew, besides Ted, are me, Richter, and Maxine.”

Mauro was a good knight and Maxine, the Order’s telepathic secretary, was the backbone of the Atlanta chapter, but Richter was psychotic and a liability.

“That’s it?” I asked.

“Mm-hm. The rest are . . . new.”

“Don’t like the new people?”

Mauro grimaced. “We are being staffed with people who are on their second or third chapter. Their command made no effort to keep them, because they didn’t distinguish themselves. Most of them made some mistakes. Some made a lot of mistakes.”

The light dawned. Since Ted was a knight-founder, well connected and probably vigorously defended, the Order’s High Command couldn’t force him out without some glaring evidence of his incompetence, so they staffed him with rejects. Either he would see the writing on the wall and retire or his new people would screw up so badly, it would give them grounds to remove him. Mauro didn’t want to be part of the screwup squad.

“Mauro, you’re a good knight. Any chapter would fight to get you.”

“Yeah. I like the city. It’s home. But yeah. Time to go.” He rose. “Thank you for the tea.”

“Thank you for saving the kids from trouble.”

“Any time.” He grinned. “Any time.”

I walked him out. It was almost five. I would lay into Julie and Ascanio after the Conclave. For now I had to get dressed, get my sword, and go make polite noises at the Masters of the Dead.