Strange Brew

VEGAS ODDS Karen Chance

The pounding began at 2:11 a.m. and continued until I hauled my weary ass out of bed. My hand fumbled awkwardly around the nightstand until it finally closed over my gun. I was fuzzy from lack of sleep, but I never left my weapon behind these days. Besides, I was going to need it to shoot whoever was banging on the damn door.

I threw on a robe and stomped downstairs, only to be almost smothered by the huge bouquet of hothouse extravagance that was waiting on the front stoop. "D-delivery?" someone said, about the time I realized that the forest of roses had legs.

"Do you know what time it is?!"

"Uh, a little after nine?" a man's voice said. I belatedly noticed the sunlight cascading over my nonwelcome mat. It was a gift from a sarcastic werewolf and read, MY bite actually IS worse than my bark. I'd never been sure if he meant his or mine.

Dammit; my clock must have stopped. And with my schedule these days, my body was so confused that it hadn't woken me up, either. "Hey," I croaked, like I wasn't still holding a gun on him.

I quickly lowered it, trying to remember how to smile. It didn't seem to help. The overabundant foliage was shaking enough to send a cascade of petals over my doorstep, and a glimpse in the hall boy mirror explained why. My long brown hair was a tangled mess, my eyes were so bloodshot that it was impossible to tell they were gray, and weeks of almost no sleep and constant menace had reduced my smile to something closer to a snarl.

But the delivery guy refused to be deterred by irate, possibly crazed homeowners. "Ms. Accalia de Croissets?" Surprisingly, he didn't mangle the pronunciation of my name.

"Lia," I corrected automatically, reaching to the hall boy for my purse and a tip. I wondered what the right percentage was after pulling a gun on someone. My purse slipped out of my sleep-clumsy grasp and I bent to pick it up—and thereby dodged the spell that tore through my foyer and into my living room.

I had a glimpse of drywall bits cascading over the carpet as the partition between rooms was obliterated; then my gun was up and I was firing. It shredded roses but did nothing to the mage posing as a delivery guy. He had shields, a fact I realized about the time one of my own bullets hit them and ricocheted off, grazing my cheek. So I turned the hall boy over on top of him and ran, cursing my stupidity.

My new job was training recruits to the War Mage Corps, the magical equivalent of the police. Most of my students started out painfully naive, yet even they wouldn't have answered the door woozy and only half-armed. I'll probably end up an axiom, I thought. "Give a demon an edge, and he'll slit your throat with it."

"It's amazing how many things a stake through the heart can kill." And "Don't do a Lia; keep your damn weapons with you!" Only mine were on the floor of my bathroom, where I'd dropped them last night before taking a shower.

I could hear the mage thrashing through the mess behind me as I hurled myself at the stairs. I was halfway up when a burst of energy crackled overhead, electrifying my body and making my hair stand on end. The steps in front of me disappeared in a roar of heat and noise.

A splinter the size of a knife stabbed me in the calf as I fell, one leg in the smoking hole, one slipping to the side to wedge itself between banisters. I didn't try to pull free—there wasn't time—just muttered a spell that sent the contents of a bookcase flying down at the mage. Pages fluttered like bird's wings as they soared past my head and slammed into my attacker. They didn't get through his shields, but a few of the larger ones staggered him, and the wildly flapping pages made it impossible for him to see. It bought me a few seconds to rip my bleeding leg free of the hole and hobble the rest of the way up.

The damn splinter had done something nasty to my knee, which was screaming in protest and gave out entirely by the time my foot touched the top step. I dropped to the floor and a spell shimmered and blurred the air overhead. It passed close enough to ruffle my hair on its way to destroy the now-empty bookcase.

Tiny splinters peppered my legs through the thin cotton of my pj's as I threw an impediment spell behind me and started fast-crawling down the corridor. I'd made it a couple of yards before I realized there were no sounds of pursuit. I glanced over my shoulder—because no way had a small diversion like that stopped a war mage—and therefore failed to see the floor in front of me vanish.

The deafening sound of the explosion whipped my head around in time for me to shrink back from the bullets spraying upward through the hole. They ricocheted everywhere in the small space, but I managed to raise my shields before any of them connected. I'd hoped to put that off a little—shields eat power like candy, and my reserves were already low. But my weapons wouldn't do me any good if I didn't live long enough to reach them.

My ears were ringing as I started edging around the gap, trying to balance on the two feet of burnt carpet that remained, when another spell took out even that. The blast was a direct hit, and despite my shields, it was like a punch to the face—stunning, dizzying, knocking my head backwards. I fell a story to land hard on my dining room table, along with a ton of plaster, a couple of ceiling joists and my brand-new chandelier.

The impact knocked the air out of me, which is the only reason I didn't scream. My knee had caught the edge of the table, and of course, it was that knee on that leg and oh my God. Something in the joint thwanged before the pain hit me broadside and the world went weirdly bright for a second.

My slide off the table was more of a fall, my injured leg softening under me. I tried to put some steel into it, to straighten up and find my balance, but the best I could do was a drunken stagger as the room spun around me. I teetered, turned shakily, and barely recoiled in time to avoid the folding door from the hall. It came spinning past my head to crash against the far wall in an explosion of slats.

Imminent death is an excellent cure for dizziness. I threw myself at the kitchen door, planning to make for the back steps and a judicious retreat. But I collided with a fireball spell instead. It bounced off my shields and burst against the kitchen table, flooding the air with the acrid smell of not-found-in-nature materials on fire.

I belatedly realized there was a second assassin in the laundry room. And yet another figure was silhouetted against the frosted glass of the back door, working to get past the wards. So I had at least three dark mages after me, and I still didn't have any weapons.

Well, shit.

The long-standing hostility in the supernatural community between the Silver Circle of light magic users—of which the Corps forms a part—and the Black Circle of dark mages had recently escalated into all-out war. As a result, new recruits to the Corps were being housed at HQ until they acquired enough skills to maybe not get themselves killed. But there wasn't room for everyone, and old hands like me were expected to fend for ourselves. Which I'm going to start doing any minute now, I thought, hitting linoleum as the back door blew in.

I looked up to see a werewolf in the doorway holding a couple of fast-food bags. "What the—!" he began, but suddenly the air was full of french fries and gunfire, and the newcomer dived for the floor. I scrambled to reach him, my brain screaming, Get in front of him, get in front of him, don't let them kill him! even as he was pulling me backwards into the dubious safe zone between the pantry and the fridge.

"Get down!" I yelled, but the latest spell missed us and hit the ceiling instead, dropping beams and plaster as well as a flood from a waterline. It didn't manage to put out the fire, but it did leave my bathtub teetering on the edge of the abyss.

"Is this a bad time?" Cyrus asked. My boyfriend had plaster in his dark hair and dusting his motorcycle jacket, but his Glock was in his hand and his brown eyes were calm. In fact, he looked more composed than me.

"I don't remember us having a date," I said, dropping my shields for an instant to send a spell at the laundry room door. It exploded inward, and I heard someone yelp. I grinned viciously.

"It's Valentine's Day."

"I hate holidays. Crap always happens to me on holidays." I peered out the window and saw what I'd expected: two shadows fell across the pebbly dirt that passed for a lawn in Vegas, although there was nothing to cast them. Mages under cloaking spells, just waiting for their buddies to flush me out into the open. So not happening, assholes.

Cyrus dragged me under the burning table to avoid a spell from mage number one. He'd taken up a position just outside the dining room door, giving him a good angle on the pantry. "What's going on?" he demanded.

"Delivery guy was an assassin."

"And you fell for that?" He emptied a clip into the mage's shields, forcing him to draw back slightly to conserve power.

"I thought the flowers were from you! I should have known better."

"Are you hinting that I'm unromantic?" He fished a backup 9 mm out of his jacket.

"The guys trying to kill me send more flowers than you do."

"I never really pictured you as the flowers-and-candy type."

The bathtub ended the discussion by taking that moment to kamikaze the kitchen table. The scorched Formica splintered, catching almost none of the tub's momentum before it slammed into my shields, popping them like an overstretched balloon. I had a momentary heart-clench of "Cyrus!" the taste of bile and gunpowder thick in my mouth. But he was okay. Somehow, we both were.

I realized that my shields had lasted for a split second after impact, enough time for him to get a grip on the slick bottom of the tub, keeping it from cracking our heads. That was lucky for more than one reason. A hail of bullets from above and a spell from the side were both deflected by our porcelain-and-steel umbrella.

We crouched near the floor, blind except for a two-inch gap at the bottom. It allowed me to see bullets pelting down like metal raindrops, a cloud of flour sifting into the air, and punctured cans oozing their contents everywhere. So much for the pantry.

I considered our options, and they weren't promising. Going out the back way was to walk into a death trap, but the guy in the dining room had us cut off from the front. I hadn't heard anything more from the mage in the laundry room, but even if he was out of commission—a big if—there was no exit that way.

"I'm open to suggestions," Cyrus said, a little strain creeping into his voice.

I realized why when I brushed against the side of the tub and almost burned myself. The spell had heated the metal like a huge soup pot. "Hold on," I said, resigning myself to trashing yet another portion of my new house. And cast a spell that dissolved the floorboards beneath us.

We landed hard on the concrete floor of my basement.

Cyrus threw off the tub and we rolled to either side barely in time to avoid the spell that crashed down, melting the kitchen tiles we'd brought with us into a gooey puddle. "I need to get to my weapons," I said as he pumped bullets back up the hole.

"And they would be where?"

"In the upstairs bathroom."

"Then why are we down here?!"

"Because levitation isn't in my skill set!" I snapped, running to the tiny basement window set high in one wall. I fumbled with it while Cyrus barricaded the door with an old couch abandoned by the previous homeowner.

"It won't hold," he told me, reloading both guns.

"It won't have to." The rusty lock wouldn't budge, so I borrowed Cyrus's Glock and shot it off. It wasn't like everyone didn't already know where we were.

My shoulders popped out of the window, and I did a quick recon before following them. All I could see from this vantage point was a view of mountains and brush and clear desert sky in one direction, and the sun glinting off a mirror and a curve of chrome in the other. Cyrus's bike, parked in the driveway, just visible around the side of the house. No one was in sight, not that that meant much, but it did beat the alternative.

Then the hushed noise of running feet on gravel sounded for a breath, and unseen hands jerked me the rest of the way out the window. I changed my mind. I much preferred an enemy I could see.

Only I could, a little. There are no true invisibility spells, just ones that redirect the eye or provide camouflage. And neither work at point-blank range. As if to underline my thought, the air flickered around the shape of a fist for an instant, right before it socked me in the jaw.

I reached for a weapon even as my head snapped back, but I'd returned Cyrus's gun, and my clip was empty. So I balled my hand into a fist and managed to get a satisfying punch to what might have been a head or possibly a shoulder. It was hard to tell because, even this close, my attacker was only a vague, indistinct contour—a column of man-shaped water that reflected the scenery around it.

I got another crack to the jaw and a sharp jab to the solar plexus in return. My bum leg gave out, and I fell to my hands and knees, gasping and trying not to throw up. I saw a glimmer of what looked like boots, right before a vicious kick in my ribs sent me stumbling into the house. I hit with a bone-numbing crunch, unable to get my hands up in time to cushion the impact, and bounced off to sprawl on my back. Through the haze of pain and the sound of my own ragged breathing, I heard the scuff of approaching footsteps.

Somehow, I rolled to my knees, lashing out with my good leg as I did so. But I was dizzy and my aim was off, and it failed to connect with anything. And then a numbing spell hit me, reducing my motor skills to zero, and I fell back, hard.

I lay there, aching and jittering, trying to breathe through the pain, and for a moment, I think I grayed out. But it didn't last long, because I noticed when a mage suddenly flickered into view over me. He pointed a gun at my head and our eyes met.

"Jason?" I blinked familiar sandy blond hair, clear green eyes, and a pug, freckled nose into view. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Breaking the curve," he informed me with an incongruous ear-to-ear grin.

He dropped his shields in order to fire, only to have Cyrus's fist turn one cheekbone into mush and send him sailing back several yards. I scrambled drunkenly after him, only half-believing my eyes. "You know this guy?" Cyrus demanded as I knelt beside the limp form.

Jason's cheek had split, showing one pale molar through the red meat of his face, but it was undoubtedly him. He was out cold, but at least he had a pulse, possibly because Cyrus had had a bad angle. "He's one of my students."

Cyrus looked down at the gun still grasped in Jason's fingers. "How bad a teacher are you?" he asked incredulously.

"Not this bad!" I said grimly, as two more indistinct shapes ran for us from the front of the house. I hoped it was the two who had been in the backyard earlier, because otherwise the odds were just getting ridiculous. "Dammit!"

My pulse sped, pumping adrenaline through me as I tried and failed to get my shields back up. Cyrus turned and fired, emptying both his guns to slow them down. The sound of gunfire was deafening, and through the tingling, almost-silence afterwards, I watched his hands jerk the clip out of the Clock, grab another from a pocket, and shove it in. "My last," he told me tersely.

I nodded, having looted Jason for a couple of guns, one of which I handed to Cyrus. Jason wasn't wearing much of a potion collection, and what he did have was standard-issue crap that wouldn't help with industrial-strength shields. But he was carrying half a dozen knives, all of which I sent flying at the approaching figures.

Normally, I wouldn't have been able to control another mage's weapons. They are spelled to respond only to the caster to prevent exactly this sort of thing. But Jason had had problems with the spell to animate them and had asked for my help. We'd had fun layering on the charms, spelling his daggers to find and target enemies on their own and to slice through most shields. Yet the dark-haired girl who rippled into view a moment later batted them away with a gesture.

Amelie had always been good with counterspells, I thought numbly, and sent the garden hose coiling through the air toward her, wrapping her up and throwing her to the ground. "They're all my students," I told Cyrus. "Don't kill them!"

"No problem," he said sarcastically, firing the borrowed gun uselessly into the other mage's shields. It was Colin—a redhead with a talent for finding trouble. Only this time, he seemed to be more intent on causing it. "Think they'll do us the same favor?"

A knife sliced by my ear and embedded itself in the side of the house. "Doubt it," I said. "Run!"

We skirted the house, my head pounding with every beat of my heart, just as Amelie expanded her shields. They snapped the hose like a weak rubber band, and she jumped back to her feet. Colin launched the rest of his arsenal at us and I heard several knives bite into stucco, but most took the corner just fine. I concentrated and finally got a shield of sorts back up before we were impaled by anything, but it wouldn't hold. Especially not when stretched to cover two.

Colin and Amelie followed us into the backyard, silently ordering their weapons to continue the beating. My shields shuddered with every punch. I could measure how long they would last in seconds, and I really doubted I'd get them back up a third time. And when they were gone, so were my options.

Cyrus glanced at me. "Can't you do something?"

"I'm thinking!" It didn't help that Jason's spell was still stuttering along my nerves like a persistent toothache, pounding in my skull, drumming on my bones.

"You're the teacher," he said impatiently. "Surely you have a few surprises you haven't shared with them yet!"

"Yeah. But they're all deadly."

"And that's a problem because?"

"I don't want to kill my students!"

"Too bad they don't share that sentiment. And I'm not dying to keep your graduating class intact! Either deal with this, or I will."

"There has to be an explanation," I said desperately.

"Maybe, but we won't live long enough to hear it if we don't do something!"

He had a point. We'd cleared the backyard, avoiding the kitchen door, where flames and black smoke were now billowing skyward, and started up the living room side of the house. Only to find yet another of my students—a lanky African American named Kyle—waiting for us. He added his weapons to the melee, and my shields gave up the ghost. We were officially out of time.

Damn. My insurance agent was going to have a heart attack.

I used the last of my energy to cast a spell that took a chunk out of the living room wall. We stumbled through the opening, and Cyrus pushed the TV cabinet across the breach. We ran for the dining room, and I scrambled onto the table. A ceiling joist had partially come loose, with one end resting on the table while the other remained attached to the second floor. It was as wide as a balance beam and sloped upward at a fairly gentle angle. It wasn't stairs, but it would do. And if anyone was above, they wouldn't be watching a hole in the floor.

"Come on!" I said.

Cyrus pulled my stolen gun from my jeans, keeping a wary eye on the door to the living room. "You first."

I somehow hauled myself to the second floor—or what was left of it—with one leg constantly threatening to buckle under me. "Get up here!" I whispered as he picked up the dining table and wedged it into the door behind him.

"You'll need a distraction or you'll never bunch them up. I'll stay here." I started to argue, but weapons rattled against the other side of the table, shaking the heavy wood, and I decided we didn't have the time. I turned and limped as fast as possible for the bathroom.

It was a mess, with gaping holes in the walls, ceiling and floor. Luckily, my coat hadn't slipped through any of them. It was still lying where I'd dropped it, now water-spotted as well as stiff with dirt, over by the commode.

I edged cautiously around the shallow ridge of cracked tile that was all that remained of the floor. Adrenaline prickled on the surface of my skin, urging me to go faster, faster, while my heart hammered in my rib cage and my mouth was metallic with panic. It took every bit of training I had to proceed carefully, to stop my hands from trembling, to focus. Since my mother's death, there were a total of two people in the world I really gave a damn about. And one of them was currently facing a group of soon-to-be war mages with an empty gun.

I'd almost made it when a row of tile slithered out from under my feet, cascading down into the mess below. I made a wild grab for the toilet to keep from following and my coat slid toward the edge of the hole. I thought I'd lost it, but it hung on a pipe and I was able to snag it with my toe. I grabbed it just as a rainbow of spells exploded below.

A glance through the missing floor showed me only the wrecked kitchen until Cyrus burst in, his hair on fire from a spell that hadn't missed by much. He barricaded the door with the fridge then looked up when I hissed his name. "Go around—get behind them!" he mouthed, gesturing furiously.

His hands were bleeding for some reason, but he was alive. I nodded and dropped him a gun, then started back as fast as possible. I rooted around in my coat as I ran, grabbing things out of the potion belt I usually wore draped low on my hips. It was weighed down with vials, each in a little leather sheath like bullets in a bandolier. Ironically, I'd been lecturing on potions to this very class just last week.

I really hoped they hadn't been listening.

Most new war mages are all about the flash and glitter of a well-flung spell, with respect for deadly human weapons coming in a close second. They deride potions as old-fashioned and bulky, and half carry them only because they're required to do so. But they are a mainstay of a mage's arsenal precisely for times like this.

The ingredients are chosen not, as norms seem to believe, for their own magical properties, but because they are particularly good at catching and holding magical energy. A potion belt is a sort of extra battery pack for a mage: when we're almost exhausted, the spells we've painstakingly captured in these little vials become a priceless commodity. One that younger mages almost never use to its full potential.

Not that I was ancient at twenty-five, but my father had also been a war mage, and potions were a particular hobby of his. I'd been told a hundred times that a well-made potion might one day save my life. It looked like today was that day.

The hall was an obstacle course of tumbled boards and burnt-edged holes, but I somehow made it back and threw myself at the fallen ceiling beam. I hit with a bone-shattering thump, half-sliding, half-falling into the room—only to have three pairs of eyes swivel toward me. But Cyrus sent a barrage of bullets over the top of the fridge that divided their attention for an instant, buying me time to throw a tiny glass cylinder.

It burst against their shields, starting a firestorm along the edges, popping them one after the other. They hit the floor to avoid the bullets Cyrus was letting fly, making them perfect targets for a second potion—one designed to induce unconsciousness. It shattered against the wall directly in front of them, spreading a soothing purple smoke across their huddled bodies. I nearly fell over in relief when they folded like card tables in a hurricane.

I sagged back against the floor, exhausted and shaking. I couldn't even begin to guess what the hell had just happened. They'd been fine two days ago. What could have gone so wrong in forty-eight hours?

"Hey." I looked up to see Cyrus staring at me over the fridge. "Is that all of them?"

"Probably." If anyone else had been around, they'd missed a perfect opportunity to take me out while I was doing my acrobatic routine in the bathroom.

"Let's make sure," he said dryly, and his head disappeared.

I didn't bother trying to move the fridge, just picked my way back through the remains of the living room—total loss—out the missing chunk of wall and around the house. My leg was killing me, and I stopped to rip open my pj's and check it out. The wound had bled profusely, but the splinter missed any major arteries. Some pieces of it were still in the wound, but I opted against trying to pull them out before a doctor could look at it. Instead, I went to find Jason.

He was still out cold, lying where he'd fallen by the side of the house. I stripped his coat off and hog-tied him with his own belt because I was all out of knockout potions. I gagged him so he couldn't spell anything if he woke up, and hobbled around to the missing kitchen door.

Cyrus had gotten the fire out, although the blackened walls, singed cabinets, and ruined floor were going to require gutting anyway. He stood by the laundry room, but he didn't so much as twitch as I came up behind him. He turned his head slightly toward me when I put a hand on his shoulder, but he didn't move out of the doorway. "What is it?"

He hesitated, blinking a couple of times. At some point, he'd gotten doused. His lashes were clumped into dark spikes and his T-shirt was wet down the back. Physically, he looked better than me, but the skin under the stubble-darkened throat was pale.

"Cyrus?"

He swallowed. "It wasn't your fault," he told me, upping the sick feeling in my stomach by at least a factor often.

"Move." I started pushing at him, but budging a full-grown werewolf who doesn't want to go is nothing more than a good workout. "Cyrus! I mean it, let me by!"

He finally stepped aside to reveal a far less chaotic scene than the kitchen. The sun was streaming through the small laundry room window, and dust motes were slowly turning in the air. Maybe it was the poststress endorphins running through me, but all the colors seemed extra sharp: the yellow on the walls that the paint store guy had called butter cream, the blue-and-white Laura Ashley curtains at the window, and the bright white appliances that were still in one piece. It looked cheerful and almost normal.

Except for the young blond man sprawled against the far wall, his blue eyes wide and gaping, his hands outstretched against the blood-spattered paint.

The lack of sleep, the pain, and the destruction of my house had crippled my brain, because it took me a full three seconds to process what I was seeing. It was Adam, one of the youngest recruits, whose ability with magic far exceeded his seventeen years. He'd just started training, and wasn't set to take the trials for another year.

My hand had dropped to my belt, but it fell away as understanding finally hit. Adam was still on his feet, but only because a section of the laundry room door had embedded itself in the wall through his abdomen, holding him in place like a bug on a pin. The sickeningly sweet smell in the air was blood, which had poured down his body in wide streams to puddle on the floor beneath him.

I felt the muscles in my legs liquefying, my fingers knotting in Cyrus's sleeve to keep from falling. Past the rushing in my ears, I could hear him saying, "Things happen in battle, Lia. You know that."

Things, I thought blankly. Like a random, meaningless death. Like a spell that sent a door flying off its hinges, practically bisecting a young man.

My spell.

My new supervisor had wavy silver hair, a skeletally thin frame that he hid inside old-fashioned three-piece suits, and a pinched, displeased mouth. He was doing something strange with the last. It took me a minute to realize that he was trying to smile and it wasn't working.

God, I must really look bad if Hargrove was trying to be nice to me.

I was currently in the new Vegas HQ, where the Corps had set up camp after the old headquarters was obliterated in the war. It was a thirteen-thousand-square-foot warehouse on a couple of acres in the vicinity of Nellis Air Force base. The upper level was mainly taken up by administrative offices, training areas, and housing for new recruits. The newly created subterranean sections hid the harder-to-explain stuff, like the interspecies medical facilities, the weapons storage, and the labs.

I'd spent the day there, getting patched up by the doctors and grilled by a series of progressively more senior detectives. It was now 11 p.m., and I was in yet another meeting, this time with my very unhappy boss. "Mage de Croissets!"

I jumped slightly. "Yes, sir."

"Kindly pay attention. I have a seven a.m. meeting tomorrow. I would like to get home before midnight!"

"Yes, sir."

So much for the fatherly bit. I wondered why he'd trotted it out at all. Richard Hargrove was old school, brought out of retirement because of the war, to fill an important desk job and free someone in fighting form for more active duty. He'd made it clear that he didn't like my gender, my service record, or the fact that my mother had been a Were. I'd tried to lie low and stay out of his way, but it hadn't seemed to help.

Of course, it's a little hard to build a relationship with your new boss when you're best known for killing your old one.

He pushed a photograph across the desk at me. "Martina Colafranceschi—that's her birth name. She's going by Ophelia Roberts at the moment."

The woman in the photo was not what I'd have called pretty, but there was something undeniably arresting about her. She was tall, judging by the height of the man standing next to her, with olive skin and short hair gone half-silver. She was well past her prime, but there were traces of beauty in the face—high cheekbones, almond eyes, full lips.

"You're sure she's the one?" It came out remarkably calmly, considering what I'd just learned. I was still in shock, and grateful for it. Because I had an inkling of what I was going to feel when the numbness wore off, and it scared me.

"The trace was ninety percent positive," the man at my elbow said. He was slightly built, almost scrawny, with thinning brown hair and shirtsleeves rolled up around his stringy forearms. They showed off the perpetually pallid skin of someone who does his work inside—in this case, underground.

Benedict Simons was the head technician in the Corps' version of a forensic lab. The magical community long ago gave up on the idea that magic is some mystical, indefinable quantity. There's still a lot we don't understand, but there are some hard-and-fast rules—like the fact that everyone's energy signature is slightly different. No two people cast the same spell in quite the same way. It amounts to a magical fingerprint that allows the caster to be identified in certain circumstances, such as being able to test four people who were still under her spell.

"Ben performed the trace himself—there's no mistake," Hargrove said brusquely.

"And her motive?" I pushed the photo back at him. "I don't know this woman; I've never even heard of her. Why would she go to so much trouble to have me killed?"

"Colafranceschi was one of the founding Assassins."

I frowned. "If she was an assassin, why didn't she just do the job herself?"

"Not an assassin," he said impatiently. "One of the Assassins. They were a group of hit men—and women—who styled themselves after a sect of eleventh-century Islamic extremists. The modern-day Assassins were wiped out twelve years ago. The mage who led the investigation and the final raid was Guillame de Croissets."

I blinked. "My father."

"Exactly."

"Okay." I rubbed my eyes and tried to ignore the throbbing headache that had been building all day. "I see why this woman might target his daughter. But why in such a convoluted way?"

"Because Colafranceschi specializes in weaving illusions. Perhaps she liked the irony of destroying you using one of our own spells."

And that hurt worse than anything—the idea that Adam had died attempting to impress me. He and the other students had attacked me while under a carefully crafted illusion. It was officially known as the Trials, although the local slang term was "Vegas Odds," because you had about as much chance of beating it as you did of hitting a million-dollar jackpot. Of course, that was kind of the point—this was one game you weren't supposed to win.

Students were led to believe that the Trials would give them a chance to demonstrate the skills they'd acquired by the end of basic training. In fact, it was a test of character. The specifics of the test varied from person to person, because each instructor designed and supervised their own. But they all had one thing in common: a no-holds-barred fight where your friends all died around you and you were left with the decision to either finish the allotted task and die, or save yourself and fail.

If you chose the latter, no matter how good your performance otherwise, you washed out. And if you chose the former, you found out how you faced death by actually doing it. The test was brutal but necessary. If a dark mage covertly entered the program, he or she wouldn't learn anything new in basic training. But the apprenticeship phase was much more advanced, and no one liked the idea of someone picking up the latest magical breakthroughs only to turn them on us.

Adam had been a year or more away from the Trials, but someone had spelled him and the other four to believe that they were undergoing it now and that their mission was to assassinate me. Of course, had they really been in the Trials, they would have been closely supervised, with someone in the illusion along with them to guide it and chart their progress. Nothing they experienced would have actually taken place—not my death, not their own. As it was, the Trials had wreaked the usual havoc, but this time, everything had been very real indeed.

"If the Assassins are reforming, it could explain the unusually high number of losses we've sustained in recent months," Hargrove was saying. "More than two dozen mages have been killed in suspicious circumstances, to the point that we started an investigation into a possible leak in the department. But it found nothing—possibly because there was nothing to find."

"The Assassins usually worked for profit alone," Simons added. "But in our case… it is conceivable that they bear enough of a grudge to forgo that in favor of revenge."

"And picking off our operatives would ensure that we were stretched too thin by the war to come after them," Hargrove added. "Now, I want to know everything that happened today—every detail—and don't tell me it's already in the reports."

I didn't bother arguing. It was too late and we were all too tired. Besides, if there was anything in what had happened that might help catch Colafranceschi, I wanted it as much as they did.

I sat there for another hour, recounting yet again a detailed description of the attack. It was starting to sound like a catalog of personal failures: caught half-asleep with inadequate weapons—check; let them get past the front door and thereby through the wards—check; unable to capture them without leaving one dead on the ground—check. It was hard to see how I could have screwed things up any worse.

Hargrove obviously agreed. By the time I finished, his mouth was even tighter than before and his shrewd blue eyes were slits. "Fortunately, there is a way to redeem your error," he told me sourly. "Colafranceschi has been located. She has a loft downtown in a converted office building." He gave me the address, and I had to admit, it was impressive work for the time they'd had.

"How did you get this so quickly?"

"We turned young Markham loose a few hours ago. He led us right to her."

"What?" I was certain I'd heard wrong. "You sent Jason back to that creature?"

"He remains under her spell," Hargrove said impatiently. "They all do."

"So you decided to use him as bait?!"

He flushed puce. "Better that than young Adam's fate," he hissed.

And that was enough to send me over the brink into anger so intense that I couldn't speak, couldn't even splutter, because all the fury—at Hargrove for being such a cold-hearted bastard, at the Assassins for existing, at the fucking universe for not letting me pause for one second before muttering that spell—was choking me, cutting off my breath.

"Illusions that deep are notoriously difficult for another mage to dissolve without damage to the mind in thrall," Simons said, glancing back and forth between the two of us. He looked a little spooked. "We… we tried, of course, but without her cooperation, I'm afraid there isn't much hope. Lifting the spell would likely shred their minds along with the illusion."

"That doesn't justify sending him back! Jason failed her. Do you really think she's going to keep him alive?"

"No," he said quietly. "But if the spell is not lifted soon, they'll all die. They will continue to attempt to carry out her last command to the exclusion of everything else. They won't eat unless fed intravenously, or sleep unless sedated or do anything except to search for you."

"Then we'll make them believe I'm dead," I said a little unsteadily. "We could fake—"

"Yes, but then they would be like robots on standby, waiting for the next order. Which would never come. A zombie, in effect, for life."

I had a sudden visual, and it was horrible. I strongly suspected that they'd prefer Jason's fate—whatever it was—to a future as drooling vegetables or comatose druggies. For that matter, so would I.

"If you want to help your students," Hargrove said, "I suggest you use the opportunity to remove this creature from my territory."

"We could call upon our own assassins, of course," Simons offered. "But you have one great advantage over them—your Were blood leaves you impervious to illusions. Her greatest weapon will be useless against you."

"Unless you would prefer someone else to clean up your mess," Hargrove said silkily.

"No, sir," I snapped. Hargrove was a dick, but he was a dick with a point. Adam's death was my fault, and if I didn't get this bitch soon, the others faced something even worse. I was suddenly, fiercely glad that this assignment was mine.

"Then you're dismissed."

I pushed through the front entrance a few minutes later, practically blinded by tears and guilt and rage, and nearly leapt out of my skin when I came right up against the solid wall of Cyrus's body. His hands shot out to grip my sides, and I flinched. He pushed my shirt up, revealing the purpling bruise that covered half my left side, and sucked a hot breath between his teeth. "Christ."

"The docs checked me out; it looks worse than it is. What are you doing here?"

"Availing myself of some free medical. Like I told the guys at the house—if the Corps can mess me up, it can damn well fix me up."

"You're hurt?" I didn't give him time to reply, just turned his arms over and pushed up his sleeves. The red gashes he'd sustained from fending off a knife attack while I ran for weapons had already faded, with only a few white scars and irregular patches of skin remaining. But some of the deepest lines were still puckered, with a faint ridge of flesh running down his right forearm. Another bisected his left palm, like the seam on a glove.

"I'm sorry." I hugged myself, staring at the signs of what friendship with me had cost him. It made me remember the way I'd felt when I'd seen him dive for the kitchen floor, unsure whether he'd been hit, like my insides were tumbling out onto the linoleum. The scars would probably fade completely in another day, Were metabolism being what it was. But if he'd been a little slower…

Cyrus stared at me for a moment, then tugged me into a loose hug. I closed my eyes and went, arms still wrapped around myself. His mouth brushed my ear. "I've had worse from a hunt," he said. And then, even more softly, "You scared the shit out of me." And then we were hugging so tight that his leather jacket creaked.

"Where are you staying?" he asked after a moment.

I blinked. Because, yeah, going home wasn't an option. Even if the house had been habitable, I couldn't go back there with a dark witch on my tail.

"I hadn't really gotten that far yet."

"Then it's settled. You're coming with me."

Cyrus's bike, a black-and-silver Harley-Davidson, was propped against one side of the building. It was where I usually kept mine, too, since no one had gotten around to marking out parking places yet. Cyrus threw a leg over, I climbed on back, and we took off, ignoring the scowls of the guards at the front gate. I laid my cheek against his back and enjoyed the feeling of freedom, the cool night air unbelievable heady after a day spent inside suffocating hallways and concrete-gray offices.

"You want pizza?" he yelled back a few minutes later.

"Only if I get to pick the toppings."

"Deal."

We made a pit stop at a late-night diner that still had a crowd, then headed to the motel that Cyrus currently called home. His room was clean, if not particularly large, and there was a noisy but functioning air conditioner. He shrugged out of his jacket, leaving him in a black T-shirt and jeans, and carefully checked his guns before putting them within arm's reach on the nightstand. He finally allowed himself to relax, kicking off his boots and stretching out on the bedspread.

I borrowed a shirt and took a much-needed shower. I'd restocked my potions supplies and ammunition at HQ, but the only clothes in my locker had been a rangy old pair of socks. Luckily, a T-shirt is a T-shirt, and Cyrus's looked fine on me. Plus the long tail almost covered the bloodstains on my jeans.

We didn't have a table, so we'd put the pizza in the middle of the bed after laying down some towels to catch the grease. I hadn't eaten all day, and suddenly I was starving. The pie was soggy in the middle and half cold and tasted wonderful. I did damage to my half, then rolled onto my back and stared at the watermarked ceiling tiles. Classy.

I let my body start to relax, and it was a mistake. I'd been running on adrenaline and the instinct drilled into me during training that let me push through pain and exhaustion and fear by walling off my emotions until it was safe to deal with them. That detachment had started to crack when Hargrove told me the recruits had been targeted because they were mine. That, essentially, I'd killed Adam twice, because if someone else had been his trainer, he wouldn't have been there in the first place. And now it felt like the two halves of my rib cage were being slowly squeezed together by some invisible vise.

The gentleness of hands on my face was no comfort; it rattled me, made my body burn and my stomach clench. Cyrus leaned down and kissed me, so slowly and thoroughly that I felt like I was sinking into the mattress. His teeth were smooth, the edges catching sharp against the thin skin behind my ear, his hands big and rough, sliding down my sides. It threatened to break something in me, just the warmth of him. I squeezed my eyes shut, biting my bottom lip hard to keep the insane, embarrassing sounds I could feel building behind my teeth where they belonged.

"Stop blaming yourself," he said softly.

"There's nothing wrong with blaming myself when it's my fault," I snapped, rolling away from him. I didn't want to feel better; I didn't deserve to feel better. Not yet.

He lay back, hands behind his head. "Are you going to tell me what happened?"

I almost said no, but bit it back. I'd desperately wanted company—his company—but it would have been better to find a bolt-hole somewhere else. I'd never been sure if it was a Were thing or a macho thing or just something he did to drive me crazy, but Cyrus had a protective streak a mile wide. And like most Weres, he seriously underestimated magic.

I'd tried to explain that, yeah, Weres were faster, stronger, and had senses far more acute than any humans—even magical ones. But none of that made a damn bit of difference when facing a well-trained magic user. Cyrus's hardheadedness on that subject was going to get him killed someday. I'd just prefer it wasn't this one.

But Weres could smell a lie, so I had to give him something. I settled on a version of the truth, leaving out the part about the Assassins and the vengeful witch. I didn't want him deciding to go after Colafranchesi himself.

"You're saying that someone in the Corps wants you dead?" he demanded when I finished.

"I'm not universally popular, but I don't think it's gotten that far yet."

"But who else would know about the spell?"

Someone who had made a lifelong study of illusions, I didn't say. "I'm sure the investigators are working on that."

Cyrus didn't look satisfied. "If this test is so important, how come I've never heard of it?"

"It isn't a popular topic of conversation," I said dryly. "No one is allowed to give the recruits any hints, and most people who've passed are happy to forget the experience."

Cyrus cocked an eyebrow at me. "How did you do?"

"I didn't," I said, trying to keep an edge out of my voice. "My Were blood made me difficult to influence. If Dad hadn't been with the Corps, that probably would have ended my career right there. But he called in some favors." I guess no one had really thought that Guillame de Croisset's daughter was likely to be a dark mage plant. Or if they did, they weren't about to say it to his face.

For the first time, I wondered if it might have been better if they had.

Everyone always assumed that Dad was pulling strings for me, that I would never have found a mentor or made it through training or gotten my first promotion on my own. In fact, he'd done it only the one time, and only because he considered it partly his fault that I was facing that particular hurdle. Dad had taught me to be tough, self-reliant, and competent. Only the Corps had never given me the chance.

I'd tried overcompensating for a while, taking the hardest assignments, working the longest hours, but nothing erased the stain of my mother's blood. Somewhere along the line, I'd decided that undercompensating was a lot easier. It didn't get me any more promotions, but nothing was likely to do that. Nor did it make me any more popular among my peers, who had transitioned smoothly from resenting me for showing them up to resenting me for slacking off. But at least it left me with more free time.

"They just let you skip it?" Cyrus asked, breaking into my thoughts.

"Not exactly. My trainer sent me on a three-week hike through a Louisiana swamp instead." My only companions had been a bad map to the finish line, an occasional alligator, and a horde of mosquitoes the size of my thumb. But the trainees I talked to afterwards thought I'd gotten the better deal.

"I still don't get why anyone would target you," Cyrus said, circling back around to the main point. "Why not order a hit on the head of the Circle? Or at least the head of the local branch?"

An unpleasant rolling sensation bloomed in my gut. It might have been the pizza, but I didn't think so. Because I'd just had a flash of Adam, sprawled helplessly against the wall; only this time, he was wearing Cyrus's face.

"Why not me?" I countered, swilling the last of the now-lukewarm beer.

"Out of all the possibilities? Don't you think it's a little—?"

"I've been in the news lately," I reminded him.

After Hargrove's predecessor turned dark and tried to take out the Were Council, I'd been forced to shoot him. Unfortunately, Gil and I were known to have had problems—to the point that he'd been agitating for my dismissal before he ended up dead by my hand. I'd been cleared of wrongdoing by the Circle's investigation, but that hadn't stopped the media speculation. For the first time, I was glad of it.

"I'm still going to have the clan post a guard," Cyrus said stubbornly. "It may not be necessary, but I'll feel—"

"A guard on who?"

His eyes narrowed. We were so close, I could see the tiny lines that framed them, graven by years of laughter and squinting against the sun. Only he wasn't laughing now. "On you."

I just stared at him. I hadn't even anticipated that, and I should have. I'd ostensibly joined Arnou, Cyrus's clan, a few months ago, after playing a part in saving the life of the leader's daughter. Not that a half-Were who had steadfastly refused the change could ever really be a part of any clan. But after my mother's family tried to force me to change, I'd needed protection and Sebastian had provided it. It was the Were way to return a favor in kind, and by adopting me into Arnou, he'd ensured that no other clan could touch me.

But having them stick up for me now would be a disaster. If the Assassins even suspected that Arnou was helping me, they'd become the next target. Way to repay them for taking me in.

"I don't need protection, Cyrus," I told him forcefully. "And I don't think the clan would appreciate you dragging them into this."

He frowned. "What is that supposed to mean?"

A surge of frustration zinged along my nerves, making my muscles bunch and jump even lying completely still. "Exactly what I said! I don't expect trouble, but if anything happens, I'll deal with it. Alone."

"You don't seem to understand what belonging to a clan means," he said slowly. "You don't go it alone—ever."

"You know damn well I'm no more part of Arnou than I was of Lobizon," I said angrily. And suddenly, I didn't want to be there, didn't want to wait until morning, wanted to beat the living shit out of something now.

I started to get up, but Cyrus rolled on top of me, pinning me in place. And for the first time, he looked angry. "Oh, forgive me. Because I was under the impression that Sebastian threw three representatives of Lobizon out of court just last week, for daring to threaten the life of our newest clan member!"

I stared up at him, my heart feeling like someone was squeezing it in a fist. "He shouldn't have done that. I'm not—"

"Not what?"

"Not worth it!" I threw him off and started for the door, only to find that he'd gotten there first.

He grabbed my arm and I hesitated, not sure if I planned to push him away or hit him, and he drew me in before I could decide. I could smell the vaguely spicy scent of him, feel the warmth of his body, and in a flash, something sparked between us. We were kissing, almost biting, as we shoved against each other. A series of sensations slammed into me: a warm hand at the back of my neck, a broad chest pushing me against the door, a hot mouth on mine, a rough tongue stroking in.

We stumbled toward the bed, fighting for dominance, until we hit the side of the mattress. We stood there, vibrating, bodies hard against each other, for a long moment. Then Cyrus seemed to come to himself, to remember who he was with—the little half human who might break if you looked at her wrong—and his touch softened. His hand ghosted over my face, followed my hairline, and drifted down my temple to trace the line of my jaw. Then strong hands were pushing up my shirt, sliding tenderly up my rib cage, thumbing a nipple, making me shiver.

But not with desire.

He was being too damn gentle, and I didn't deserve that, didn't want it, not now. I shoved him down onto the bed, sending the pizza box flying, and crawled between his thighs. He stared up at me, startled and hungry, and something in my chest tightened. I wanted to—god, I didn't even know.

I yanked his T-shirt up until it caught on his arms and face, covering everything above the rough-bearded skin of his Adam's apple. Grasping the material firmly, I twisted it a couple of times, preventing him from easily freeing his raised arms. "That's my favorite shirt," he complained, but his voice was rough and his chest was rising and falling rapidly.

I didn't answer, and the makeshift blindfold stayed in place. He started to say something else, but I kissed him again, this time through the thin cotton, and he groaned and opened his mouth. "Leave it," I murmured.

He stayed tense for a moment longer before letting his body relax, trusting me. It was a bit of a balancing act to hold on to the shirt with one hand and unbutton his jeans with the other, but I managed it. They were heavy, so in case he wrecked the bike he didn't get too much asphalt embedded in his flesh, and difficult to budge so I didn't bother pulling them off. Just pushed them down and took him in.

He inhaled sharply, and the muscles of his thighs flexed hard beneath me. I shut my eyes, concentrating on the feel of his pulse beating against my tongue. He'd hardened before I reached the tip and started letting out soft desperate-sounding noises from behind the makeshift gag. They were sweet and damn near addictive, but not nearly frantic enough. They did nothing to ease the furious thing inside me.

He was holding back, like always. The guy could tear a house down with his bare hands, but he never showed me any sign of it. He was always so cautious when we were together, so conscious of the difference between us, so afraid he might hurt me that he never left a single bruise.

It felt like judgment, just another way I was inadequate. Not Were enough for him, not human enough for the Corps. Angry tears sprang to my eyes, and I wiped them away, livid. I wanted to teach him to lose control, to want something so badly, he forgot to be careful, to want me. But that wasn't going to happen.

I scrambled up on numb, shaky legs, Adam's face wavering in front of me. Yet another way I'd failed, and suddenly I could barely breathe. I felt almost hysterical, like I was going to shatter into pieces if something didn't break soon.

"Lia…" Cyrus had felt the bed move when I rose, but I pulled up the bottom of the T-shirt and pressed my mouth to his, smothering any questions he might ask. For a moment, the world contracted to his body under my hands, the rough-slick feel of his tongue in my mouth. I finished him off with my hand, my face pressed into the skin just below his jaw, until he came with a noise that sounded like pain.

"I'm sorry," I told him, reaching into my bag.

"For what?" he panted, sprawled bonelessly on the bed.

I dropped a quick kiss on his mouth, which was surprisingly soft, even edged with late-evening beard bristle. "For this," I said, and with a swift uppercut, knocked him out.

I'd have much preferred to use a potion, but Weres are really resistant. Of course, they are to socks to the jaw, too, meaning that I had maybe a minute before Cyrus came around. My hands shook slightly as I fitted magical restraints around his wrists, binding them to the frame of the bed. It wouldn't hold him for long, but I needed only moments to get away.

He was going to be pissed when he woke up, but better that than dead.

The Corps had assassins who were given special training for assignments like these. But as Simons had noted, none would be impervious to a powerful illusion. Unlike Jason, they would probably recognize it and try to disperse it, but in the meantime, they would be vulnerable. And while illusions wouldn't bother or probably even register on Cyrus and his wolves, other magic certainly would.

I was the only one who had a chance of surviving both. So this was my fight. If Cyrus brought in the wolves, someone would bleed and maybe die because I'd waited for help I wasn't supposed to need. And I really thought enough innocent people had died because of me today.

I touched the door and felt a tingle at the back of my neck. It told me that the outer edges of my body's energy field had brushed up against something they didn't like. I hadn't tripped the ward yet, but it was already ruffled and it wouldn't take much more. I withdrew my hand and it calmed down, but I was left with the impression that the heavy old door was glowering at me.

Served me right for trying the front entrance. I looked around, but the building that housed Colafranceschi's loft was well-warded, with every other entrance just as impenetrable. But the place had four stories and a lot of windows, and wards like that were expensive. I was betting that the ones guarding the upper floors weren't so high-end.

The building next door was almost as tall and was close enough to make doing a Spider-Man impression at least feasible. And as a bonus, it was open to the public, containing a very loud bar on the first floor. I decided I needed a drink.

It was not a slick tourist trap. My sleeve stuck to the sticky bar top, there was a tear in the pleather cover of my stool, and the place looked like its last cleaning had been about the time Dean Martin signed the faded photo behind the bar. But Jim Beam would probably kill any germs on the glasses, so I ordered a double.

Simons was a little overconfident about my ability to shrug off illusions. Mother's blood helped, but I was half human, too, and therefore not entirely immune. Powerful illusions could still play games with me, assuming I was clearheaded enough. Luckily, alcohol seriously messes up concentration, sense perception, and memory, all of which are needed for a good illusion to work.

It's impossible for any mage to fake the thousands of bits of sensory info needed to make even a simple false impression seem real. The trick to getting someone to mistake a fantasy for reality was to plant a few powerful suggestions, then let the person's own imagination take over. It worked surprisingly well, unless said imagination was too preoccupied with its own pink elephants to notice yours.

I tossed back the whiskey about the time a shaft of angry, bloodred light stabbed into the bar. A glance toward the street showed me a couple of large guys in biker gear headed in the door and, when they moved toward a table, an equally tall woman behind them. A woman with familiar almond-shaped eyes and close-cropped silver hair.

My choking fit won me a condescending look from the bartender and a disinterested glance from the woman. Then she did a double take, her eyes widened, and she threw out a hand. A wave of disorientation hit me—so sharp, it was almost a physical pain; then the guys who had come in ahead of her drew a couple of SIG 552s out from under their table and started blasting everything in sight.

I hit the dirty floor, wondering how the hell they'd smuggled two commando subcarbines in without my seeing them, while the mirror over the bar detonated in a storm of gunfire that rained glass over everything. It took me a second to notice that the people at the other tables not only hadn't ducked for cover, but were staring at me like I'd lost my mind. I shook my head, blinked a couple of times, and looked up to find the bartender scowling at me.

"I'm cutting you off," he said while the scene in front of me shattered and re-formed—like the mirror that wasn't broken and the guns that didn't exist, except for the one in my hand.

Shit!

I scrambled to my feet and ran into the street, but she was gone. A map charm showed me seven people within a block radius, and only one of them was alone and heading away at a fast clip. I took off in pursuit, hoping I'd guessed correctly, and in less than a minute caught a glimpse of her trying to spell open the lock on a shop's door.

Why she didn't head home, where she had not only powerful wards but presumably a host of newly minted Assassins as well, I didn't know. Maybe she assumed I'd have backup, although considering how powerful that off-the-cuff illusion had been, I was really glad I didn't. Someone that good might be able to convince my allies that I was the enemy, at least long enough for me to get dead.

That kind of power warranted caution, so I hit her with a locator spell in case I lost her again. She felt it, of course, and went dark and furious, giving up on the door in favor of throwing something back at me. A disorienting sphere exploded onto the concrete as I leapt behind a mailbox, but my shields were up and absorbed the shock before it could send me into a dead faint.

I looked up in time to see her image wink out of existence. I kept my eyes on the spot where she'd disappeared, since cloaking spells don't tend to cover movement very well. I'd probably be able to pick her out as soon as she made a break for it, unless she did so very slowly.

My leg was throbbing again, but I scuttled across the street pretty fast anyway, not knowing what other nasty surprises she might be carrying. My shields weren't even close to 100 percent at the moment, and there were things that would get past them. I headed for a Dumpster near her last position, wanting to be as close as possible when I fired. She was an assassin, not a war mage, so her shields likely wouldn't hold up for long.

Assuming I could find her.

And assuming she didn't take me out first.

Another spell hit the ground when I was almost there, this time a disruptor with the punch of about twenty human grenades. It picked me up and threw me into the side of the nearest building. If I hadn't been shielded, I'd have broken every bone in my body when I landed. As it was, I bounced off bricks, slammed into concrete, and rolled back to my feet in time to see a vague ripple streak into a side street. Dammit!

I followed, gun up, and activated the tattoo on my left arm. It was a small horned owl that Father had given me when I joined the Corps. I didn't use it unless absolutely necessary, because, while it fed partially off the world's natural energy like a talisman, it also drained my own reserves somewhat. But in this case, I thought it might be worth the power loss.

Immediately, my vision grew ultrasharp and clear, better than I could see in daylight. And like the predator on my arm, I was also more prone to notice any flicker of movement now. Not that there appeared to be any.

Everything was suddenly deathly quiet, as though I was wearing sound-muffling headphones from the shooting range. An icy shimmer of fear flashed up my spine, and for a moment I thought seriously about casting a cloaking spell on myself. I was supposed to be the hunter, not the prey, but for some reason it didn't feel that way. But I had only so much energy to go around, and those spells use a lot. I decided against it.

I'd always prided myself on my sixth sense. Like an itch at the back of my brain, it fills my head with wary alertness. I was usually almost glad when the moment finally came and things went bad.

I wasn't feeling so much that way right now.

To my surprise, I made it to the corner without incident. For about the hundredth time, I wished I'd inherited at least some of my mother's ultrasharp senses, but no such luck. And to human ears, nothing moved along the whole street, nothing breathed.

Then a door opened and a couple came out, the man obviously inebriated, the woman amused. The corner of my eye caught a shadow running down the side of the buildings, using the couple's laughter as a distraction, and I took off after it. As soon as I did, the streetlights began flickering overhead and a chorus of mad growls echoed down the street. The couple glanced at me as I ran past, but they didn't turn to see what might be chasing me.

Another illusion, then.

I picked up speed, and so did the harsh panting on my heels. I told myself that the sounds were imaginary, but my nerves weren't buying it. I put my head down and ran faster, ignoring my leg, which had stopped throbbing and started screaming.

My focus narrowed to the thin tug of the spell, ignoring outside distractions, until a stream of bullets smashed into my shields. For a moment, I didn't know if they were real or not, until one took out a streetlight overhead. I lunged into an alley for cover, the faint smell of electrical smoke drifting down around me. Nothing else entered, yet the snarls were still right behind me. That settled it—they weren't real, just illusions designed to herd me into a trap. A trap that the four mages running down the street had just sprung.

There was no point in subtlety—they knew where I was. And the longer we played around, the more time Colafranceschi would have to get away. And that wasn't in the game plan.

The mages had guns up, not shields, making it clear that they didn't intend to talk before blowing me away. My own shields wouldn't hold for long against four opponents, not as drained as they already were. So I threw a vial onto the concrete that sent a dense white cloud boiling up around us and dropped my defenses, too.

My tattoo allowed me to see through the smoke, but it looked like my attackers didn't have that advantage. One slammed full speed into the metal side of a trash can, and another pulled up right before he hit a wall, tripping over the first guy in the process. But the third and fourth mages were a little savvier, and one of them must have had a tattoo to increase hearing, because he stepped around the corner and fired straight at me.

The bullets went over my head because I had gone into a crouch as soon as the fog hid me. I fired at point-blank range, my bullets biting deep into his chest even as I turned, shoved the barrel underneath his buddy's chin, and pulled the trigger. He jerked violently and went down. I went with him to avoid the splatter of bullets from one of their friends, who had recovered enough to zero in on the direction of my shots.

I shoved the mage to the side once we hit concrete and rolled across the alley, crawling through the trash from the mangled can toward the entrance. Mage number two passed me in the process, firing as he moved in. I could have taken him, but I didn't know where his friend was. I opted to go for the street instead, exiting the alley carefully, looking for mage number one. And found him pressed flat against the brick wall outside, waiting for me.

He grabbed me before I could shoot, and this one knew how to use his body, wrapping his legs around mine and twisting my gun arm nearly to the breaking point. Not to mention that he wasn't above hair-pulling, which considering his crew cut gave him a really unfair advantage. He somehow got behind me, his hand closing over my wrists as he snarled a spell into my ear. And the world went white behind my eyes.

I fought blindly, tuning out the pain of my overtaxed muscles and slamming him back against the wall behind us. The force of the blow made him grunt, but he didn't let go, or call off the swarm of enchanted knives that were buzzing about, scraping bricks as they tried to zero in on me. He didn't have to kill me, I realized, as the searing pain of a blade tore through my shoulder. All he had to do was keep me immobilized long enough for his weapons to hunt me down.

I sent my own arsenal into the air, hoping it would hold them off for a few seconds, and heard the clash of steel on steel as I twisted my gun enough to fire. It only hit him in the arm, but he yelled and jerked back, bashing his own head against the brick. His hold loosened and I tore out of his grasp, spinning to fire into his still-open mouth.

My feet were clumsy as I staggered away, gritting my teeth on a scream, blood welling up between my fingers as they clutched my shredded shoulder. I hadn't heard anything from mage number two, which probably meant he was sneaking up on me, but he wasn't my problem—the witch was. I felt around with my senses, and surprisingly, the tug of the locator spell was very nearby; she must have wanted to watch her boys take me apart. I got a fix on her position and started to run.

I didn't get far. I'd taken maybe half a dozen steps when my feet became clumsy, like I was trying to walk through molasses. It's just another damn illusion, I told my body, but it didn't seem to be listening. There was a low-level buzz of energy vibrating through the air, plucking at my awareness, and suddenly a giant face appeared in the air above me, peering down like the Great and Powerful Oz.

"Impressive," Colafranceschi said as I struggled against my legs' stubborn belief that they were dragging hundred-pound weights. "How much are you being paid?"

Not nearly enough, I thought, forcing myself to concentrate on the fire escape two buildings down. My eyes told me that there was no one there, but the spell said differently. "Why do you want to know?"

"Because whatever it is, I'll double it," she offered. "I could use someone like you. Good help is hard to find, as you must have noticed."

"Doesn't sound like you're mourning your men too much," I noted, trying to concentrate on the conversation while also listening for approaching footsteps and keeping a read on the locator charm.

"Four against one are good odds; they should have killed you," the projection said, shrugging a misty shoulder.

"Not much of an epitaph," I gritted out, barely keeping the strain out of my voice as blood gushed down my arm. I ignored it because I couldn't afford the magic loss it would take to staunch it. I'd passed the first building, but going forward was getting harder with every step. What had felt like molasses was starting to resemble half-set glue. "But I guess your business isn't so much about compassion, huh?"

"In my business, you don't meet too many people who deserve it," she said wryly.

And for a moment, that stopped me, freezing my feet as her spell hadn't, a rage flooding my veins. "Did Adam deserve it?" I spat. "Did Jason?"

"Who?" she asked, just as somebody dived at me out of the night.

I'd reloaded, but I didn't bother firing. I tossed a vial instead, one that shattered against the mage's shields in a cloud of blue flames, evaporating them like smoke before engulfing the man himself. He fell to the ground, writhing as they ate into him, and was dead before he could scream.

That particular potion was one of Dad's more spectacular inventions. And while it wouldn't have been so effective against a war mage's shields, this guy hadn't been one. It was gruesome enough to snap Colafranceschi's concentration and allow me to cover the last few yards before she could get off the fire escape. I threw her to the ground and straddled her, gun under her chin before she could blink.

"One chance. Where's Jason? And if he's dead, so are you." I forced the barrel into her skin hard enough to bruise.

"I don't know who you're talking about!" she said, eyes huge. "I don't know a Jason."

And that infuriated me even more, that she hadn't even known the names of the men she'd used, of the lives she'd destroyed in pursuit of her revenge. I grabbed her up and dragged her back to the spot where the mage's body had already been reduced to cinders. "You sent him to kill me less than twenty-four hours ago. Ring any bells?"

"No!" She was crying and her nose was running and she looked like she was about to pass out. Some superassassin.

I deliberately stepped into the middle of what had been the mage's body. It collapsed with an inaudible sound, causing black particles to billow up around us. "How about now?"

"I swear I don't know what you're talking about!" she shrieked, then choked on part of her former colleague. "Please, let me pay you—anything you want. I have a big payday tomorrow—"

"Who were you planning to kill?" I demanded, wondering who was next in line.

She looked confused again. "No one. One of my marks—one of the men I'm blackmailing—has until then to pay me. And when he does, I could give you—"

"A blackmailer and an assassin. You do stay busy, don't you?" I took another vial out of my belt and held it in front of her eyes. "Tell me where Jason is, or you're going to die the same way as your friend here."

Her eyes fixed with horror on the tiny tube. It wasn't more of Dad's special dose—I was all out—but she didn't have to know that. "I don't know what you're talking about," she whispered, licking trembling lips, her eyes never leaving the vial. "I swear I don't know anyone by that name."

And something in her face made me pause. Because I'd been around enough fear to recognize it when I saw it. And terrified people seldom made good liars.

"There's a phone in my right coat pocket," I said abruptly.

Her eyes switched to me. "What?"

"A phone. Get it out. And be careful. If you make any sudden movements or any movements at all that I don't like, that's it. The same goes for trying an illusion."

She nodded and opened my coat slowly, carefully extracting my cell phone. She held it out to me, but I shook my head. "Hit speed dial one."

It took her three tries to get it right, because her hands were shaking. By the time she managed it, I was starting to feel a little light-headed myself from the blood loss. But then Dad's voice was on the phone.

"Who the hell is this?"

"Your loving daughter."

"Do you know what time it is?"

"Yeah. Do you know what Martina Colafranceschi looks like?"

That made him pause for half a second. "Yes. Why?"

"Later. Just tell me."

Dad hadn't been a war mage for over sixty years without being able to respond quickly in a crisis, which the strain in my voice told him this was. "Short, dark, busty—"

"Short?" I repeated, eyeing the tall, slim woman in front of me.

"Maybe five foot two. She was Ferretti's mistress for years, and he had a type: petite and extremely dangerous."

I noticed the inflection, but didn't need the warning. "I'll be sure to keep that in mind if I ever meet her," I said evenly. "Bye, Dad."

The woman cut the connection on my signal. "Who are you?" I demanded.

"O-Ophelia Roberts."

"And you're a blackmailer."

"Yes."

"And those men?"

"My bodyguards. One of the challenges of blackmailing powerful people is staying alive long enough to collect."

"Yeah. I guess so." I was putting the clues together, and not liking the picture they made. She'd run when she saw me not because she recognized me, but because I was a war mage reaching for a weapon. And she hadn't gone back home, because she wasn't a cool-headed assassin, but a panicked blackmailer. Which meant she wasn't the one I was after.

"Are you telling me this was all a mistake?" she asked shakily, openly crying now. "I thought you'd been sent by one of my clients who had decided not to pay!"

I looked numbly down at the ashes dusting away over the concrete, now being splattered with my blood. "I think I was."

It was almost 5 a.m. by the time I made it back to HQ. The halls were as silent as they ever got, empty except for an occasional early riser and piles of unpacked crates. The medical facilities were still staffed, but I didn't stop by. I'd done an emergency patch-up job on the way here. My shoulder felt like it might need surgery, but at least the bleeding had stopped. Anything else could wait.

Like everything else, the labs were still in the process of getting organized, with half-finished electrical wiring poking out of the walls and stacks of files and paper everywhere. A ward wove itself around my fingertips, its dainty tendrils like threads of fine silk as I opened the door to Simons's office. I pushed past it, setting off the alarm and bringing him running from the back.

"Oh, it's you," he said, his face relaxing. "Did you get her?"

"You waited here all night to ask me that?" I let my finger trail through the dust on a packing crate. "Such devotion to duty."

"We've all been working extra hours lately," he said, tensing up again slightly.

"That's what I like to see—someone looking on the bright side. Our guys are getting ambushed left and right, but hey, at least there's overtime."

"That's not what I—"

"It's a good thing we've stepped up recruitment. Assuming most of them pass the Trials, we'll have replacements soon. Speaking of which, how did you do?"

"What?"

"The Trials. How did you do?"

Simons looked a little squirrely suddenly. "I–I did fine. Obviously. Or I wouldn't be here. What does this have to do with—?"

"I bet you did. Just as I would have if I'd taken them. Because the spell doesn't work on us half Weres, does it?"

"I'm no such—"

"Then you won't mind taking a blood test, will you?" I asked innocently. "There are doctors right down the hall and lab facilities onsite. We can have the results in minutes."

He closed his eyes. "She talked."

"Oh, yeah. Roberts told me all about how she used her ability with illusions to help you fool the docs who did your physicals. They put you down as one hundred percent human, allowing you to infiltrate the Corps. You're the one who's been sending reports to your dark mage allies about our every move."

"They aren't my allies," he said, opening his eyes to glare at me. "They pay through the nose for everything I give them."

"So you're in it for profit?"

"What else?" he asked viciously. "Not all of us had famous fathers to pull strings in our behalf! If I'd applied to the Corps as I was, how far do you think I'd have gotten?"

"But you did get in," I pointed out. "You've been here over a decade. You're head of a department! Why turn now?"

"Don't be naïve," he sneered. "I've been feeding the dark information for years! It's only recently that the price has skyrocketed. Thanks to the war, I've made enough to retire on—pleasantly—in the last six months."

I smiled. "Glad to hear it. If only I had a little nest egg like that, I might think twice about turning you in."

"Is that what this is about? Ophelia puts the squeeze on me, and now you think you'll try it?" He looked almost indignant, like how dare I do something so dishonorable. Under other circumstances, it would have been funny.

"Why not? You know my reputation. I'm not a fan of hard work, and war is turning out to be very hard indeed."

The sneer on his face became a little more pronounced, but his shoulders relaxed slightly. "Aren't you afraid? The last person who blackmailed me—"

"Ended up dead, yes. But only because I killed her for you. Which I don't get, by the way. You're a war mage. Why not just do it yourself?"

He looked irritated. "I'm a lab tech! I went through basic training a decade ago and wasn't much good at it then. I didn't know if my skills would be enough. She warded her apartment and acquired protection."

"So? It was nothing your dark mage buddies couldn't have handled."

"I told you—they aren't my 'buddies. And you can't trust people like that. Some of them might have decided to kill her and take over where she left off."

"So you sent me instead."

"I needed someone with the ability to shrug off illusions and the necessary combat skills. It was a short list."

"You sent my own students to attack me, knowing they'd fail, that I might have to kill one or more of them—" I cut myself off before my voice got away from me. I'd always had more trouble controlling it than my face.

"To give you a motive to go after her, yes. I have no idea what happened to the real Colafranceschi, but if she's still alive, she's probably hiding under an alias. All I did was substitute a photo of Roberts in her file and fake the tests to make it seem that she had originated the Trial spell instead of me."

"So I'd kill her for you."

"Yes." He looked perplexed. "Why talk to her first? It's one thing I didn't expect—"

"Because she had Jason—or so I assumed. I've been racking up a lot of black marks lately and figured getting him back would erase most of them. Out of curiosity, where is he?"

Simons ignored the question. "I should have thought of that, shouldn't I?" he asked fretfully. "But I've been run ragged with the demands of the war and trying to do intelligence gathering on the side and then that bitch showing up with her ridiculous demands… I couldn't be expected to think of everything."

"Guess not. So where is he?"

Simons shot me a suspicious look. "Why do you care?"

"I told you: I'm curious."

Something in my face must have finally slipped, because his eyes widened. "You're not here to shake me down, are you?"

Fuck it. I hadn't really thought this was going to work. I drew my gun and pointed it at him. "Where?"

And then had to duck to avoid the curse he threw in my direction. It hit the metal shelving behind me like a hammer blow, knocking it over and sending a bunch of still-full packing containers tumbling down on top of me. One of them crashed into my skull and another hit my wounded shoulder, opening it up again and spraying the floor in front of me with red droplets.

I scrambled to my feet, slid on my own blood and went down again, before finally getting enough traction to follow him into the next office. There was no one in sight. Dammit! He'd already disappeared through the door to the hallway.

I started after him, but there was a violent hammering in my chest and the room started spinning. And then I was grabbed from behind and dragged out the door. The hallway wasn't so quiet anymore. Half a dozen mages blocked the way to the stairs, and three more loitered near the one elevator that had so far been installed. Simons headed for it anyway, but drew up at the sound of his boss's voice.

"Ben! You bloody fool!"

Simons whirled, taking me with him, in time to see Hargrove walking down the corridor toward us. He looked as pulled together as always, not a hair out of place, not a wrinkle on his snappy charcoal suit. He even had a little yellow pocket hankie standing to attention over his left breast.

Simons jerked us back against the wall, holding me in front of him like a shield, making my brain slosh up against the back of my skull. I bit back a groan—I really hadn't needed that. "Tell them to get out of the way or I'll kill her," he said, looking wildly at the mages surrounding us.

For some reason, Hargrove was looking at me instead of his onetime colleague. "You never took the Trials, did you, Accalia?" he asked thoughtfully.

"I'm not joking!" Simons screamed, shoving a gun into my ribs.

Hargrove ignored him. "I always wondered. How would you have chosen?"

If I'd had a hand free, I swear I'd have flipped him off. I knew what he was asking, and for a moment I tried to think of appropriate last words, but they kept tripping over the edges of my tongue, falling away into oblivion. "Oh, fuck it!" I finally said. "Just kill him already!"

I slammed an elbow back into Simons's gut and tried to wrench myself free, but he held on. There was a series of explosions and something slammed into my side, quickly followed by searing pain. The room spun wildly and he dropped me, sliding down the wall to a seated position, leaving a wide smear of red on the unpainted concrete. I staggered a few feet, but my leg gave way and I fell, my head bouncing off the floor when I hit.

And then nothing.

I woke up in a hospital bed under cold fluorescent lights. The division's leading physician was bending over me, his usual scowl firmly in place. It deepened when he noticed that my eyes were open. "Trust you to wake up early," he muttered. I had just enough time to think, Oh, I guess I'm alive, before every nerve ending in my side exploded. I screamed and thrashed, sending him staggering back into the wall. And wow, was that a mistake.

Sedgewick has a reputation for being brusque, unsympathetic, impatient, and mean. But that's for patients who haven't almost knocked him out. I not only had to endure having my bandage changed more perfunctorily than normal, but was treated to a tongue lashing as well. No extra charge.

He finally finished torturing me and left, only to be replaced by an unsmiling Hargrove. I wasn't alive, I decided. I'd died and gone to Hell.

Hargrove settled himself primly on a hard metal seat. "His bedside manner compares unfavorably with Torquemada's, doesn't it?" he asked.

I blinked at him. Obviously, I was hallucinating. Because it sounded like Hargrove had made a funny.

When I just stared at him, he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I have a meeting in fifteen minutes, so I'll make this quick. You're to receive a commendation for your actions yesterday. It will go in your file whenever I get caught up enough to write it."

"Yesterday?" The edges of my vision were doing this weird butterfly thing. I blinked, but it didn't help much.

"You've been out of it for more than twenty-four hours."

I absorbed that for a moment. "Why aren't I dead?"

"Because you were shot literally yards from our main medical facilities and you're half Were," he said tersely.

"So I take it Simons is—?"

"Dead, yes. And before you can ask, Jason is fine. Simons instructed him to lead us to the Roberts woman and then to elude capture and double back to his apartment. We found him there last night."

"He's okay." I couldn't quite believe it. Hargrove had wanted to send in a team to deal with his traitorous subordinate, but I'd insisted on going myself. I was the only war mage with a reputation bad enough that Simons might believe I could be bought off, giving me a chance to talk to him before he panicked. I'd been almost certain that he wouldn't have risked keeping Jason alive, but I'd had to know. I guess he'd been telling the truth about his busy schedule lately.

"All four recruits have made full recoveries, at least physically," Hargrove informed me. "I believe they are somewhat concerned about what effect attempting to murder their instructor will have on their grades. I trust you will exploit that fear to the fullest."

"I'm still an instructor?"

He cocked an eyebrow at me. "Why wouldn't you be?"

"I—Adam—"

"Was murdered, yes, but not by you."

"It doesn't feel that way," I said softly.

"Nonetheless, that was the case. Rather than becoming maudlin, you should perhaps try to focus on the fact that you saved four lives, as well as helped us to identify the mole who has been leaking our battle plans. We knew it had to be someone in a key position, but we were looking at combat personnel, not laboratory technicians. But as one of our forensic specialists, Simons was often privy to sensitive information."

"Yeah. I was hoping it wasn't you. Killing two bosses in less than a year might have looked bad."

Hargrove didn't dignify that with a response. One of his assistants ran into the room, looking frantic, and he sighed. "Get some sleep," he ordered, and left.

I'd planned on staying awake and maybe prying a few more specifics out of the orderlies, but my body had a different idea. I woke up what felt like only a few minutes later, but it must have been longer because a florist shop had exploded in my room. There had to be thirty bouquets, most of them roses. The place was so stuffed that it took me a moment to notice Cyrus, asleep on the chair.

He was curled up in a dark bundle under a blanket, a tuft of hair sticking out the top, and I couldn't stop the smile that spread over my face. I hated finding things like that charming, but when it was Cyrus I couldn't seem to help it. I tugged slightly at the blanket and it slipped enough for me to see his face. My grin faded.

He looked like shit. There was several days' worth of scraggly brown beard on his cheeks, dark circles under the fan of his eyelashes and he was pale underneath his tan. He was snoring, a low, almost soothing rumble, like distant thunder.

I spied a half-eaten box of chocolates beside him with my name on the card, and my stomach rumbled. Halfway through the caramels, he woke up and sat there for a minute, blinking at me. "I could have them bring breakfast, if you're up for it," he finally said.

I shrugged. "This is good."

"It's not very nutritious."

"It has nuts." I gave him the hairy eyeball. "You finally bring me candy and you eat all the creams."

"You hate creams."

"Only those nasty coconut—" I had to break off because his mouth was on mine and he was kissing me, hard and thorough, like he never ever wanted to stop.

"How could you do that?" he demanded sometime later, voice low and urgent. His hands encircled my upper arms, but he used only the lightest pressure, like he was afraid I would break. This time it didn't make me angry, because for once I thought he might be right.

"The doc said I'll be fine. It's not as bad as it looks."

Cyrus wasn't buying it this time. "You have a concussion, a knife wound in your shoulder, and a bullet in your ribs! If you hadn't twisted at the last minute, he'd have shot you through the heart!"

I sighed. I should have known Sedgewick would talk. Bastard. "But he didn't. I'm fine—or I will be."

"Until the next time you tie me up and go after a group of crazed mercenaries on your own!"

"It was one woman, and she wasn't—"

"You didn't know that!" Cyrus said with his best you infuriate me glare. "When I woke up in those damn restraints and realized you might be off getting killed and I couldn't do shit about it—"

"It's my job." But while that was true, it wasn't the point, and we both knew it. "And you're… I couldn't risk you," I added awkwardly.

"Run that by me again?"

"You have to understand…" I trailed off, watching emotions chase themselves across his face: worry, fear, and then something a lot more desperate. It was obvious that he didn't understand. "You're not dispensable," I finally said. "You're one of only two indispensable people in my life. You have to know that."

"Then make sure I'm in your life," he said, sounding strangled. "No more lies, no more leaving me behind."

"If you agree to stop treating me with kid gloves."

"When do I do that?"

"All the time! You act like you think I'm breakable!"

"Give me one example!"

"Every time we…" I glanced at the thin partition posing as a door and decided not to risk it. "You know."

He looked blank for a minute, and then incredulous. "This is not about our sex life!"

"Not so loud!" I hissed. "And yes, it is. Because if you're almost too afraid to touch me, what reason do I have to believe you wouldn't take a bullet for me?"

"Because I'm not stupid?"

"I'm being serious."

"So am I!"

"You mean you wouldn't jump in front of a bullet for me?"

"With your shields? I'd be more likely to jump behind you!"

"Then why aren't you… more intense… when we're together?"

He groaned. "Because I was trying to give you what you wanted!"

"Why would you think—?"

"What part of your life isn't intense, Lia?" he demanded. "You're kicked around, beaten up, stabbed, shot, and almost spelled to death on a regular basis! I thought you might want something a little different from me." His hands left my arms to explore my shoulders, my neck, my cheek. "I thought you might have had enough of the bad kind of intense—" A hand dropped to my breast and I sucked in a breath, " — that you might want this kind for a change. The good kind."

I pressed my face against his sleep-warm neck. "Okay, then," I whispered. Suddenly, this was feeling pretty damn intense, too.

Cyrus pulled my mouth to his, and his hands came up to clutch my face and for a moment, everything lurched—my stomach, the room, the world. And then I was kissing him back greedily. His fingers tightened on the back of my neck, drawing me close, and his mouth tasted like chocolate and dark promise and every holiday I'd never enjoyed until now.

"All right. That's enough!" I looked up to see three grinning orderlies and a glowering Sedgewick. "I said five minutes, not five hours," he snapped.

"She was asleep most of the time," Cyrus protested.

"As she should be. She needs to recover."

"He's not bothering me," I said.

"I could tell. Out!"

Cyrus grinned down at me. "Read the card," he mouthed, and left.

I waited until the room was clear, then pulled the heart-shaped box over and slipped the card out from under the bright red bow. It had one line: Next time, you get tied up.

I grinned and ate my chocolate. I was looking forward to it.