The last person to have Nickelova’s heart was Meredith. She’d told him she’d put it somewhere safe, but was that before or after she’d aligned herself with Alex? Or was she always helping Alex?

Intuition was the lifeblood of good detective work. You could have all the facts, all the witnesses, but to know the truth took a sixth sense, the ability to ask all the right questions and to fit all the pieces together. Silas’s intuition was humming. There was something off about this Meredith thing.

It wasn’t only that he loved her, and he did love her. He’d never told her as much, but he supposed his heart had leapt out of his chest and ran to her the moment she’d showed up at his stakeout and revealed her Crescent Star tattoo. How could she be helping Alex of her own free will after knowing the man killed her father? No. The more he thought about it, the more certain he was that she was infected with sulfralite and under Alex’s control.

He jiggled her key in her lock and let himself into her small home. The stench of melted fabric burned in his throat. Damn. The couch was scorched like a campfire marshmallow. Had Soleil meant to kill him? Would she have stopped if Meredith hadn’t shot her? Maybe. But only because he relinquished Nickelova’s heart.

A scrape came from the bedroom, wood on wood like someone was opening a window.

He froze. Silently drawing his gun, he crept forward, his gaze sweeping into the kitchen. A pot steamed on the stove, smelling of garlic and onions. The burner was off. She was here.

Quickly but silently, he raced for the bedroom. The room was empty. A few pictures lay on the bed. Pictures of Meredith with her father and a woman who must be her mother—he’d never met her. What the fuck was this? A trip down memory lane?

The window was open. He caught a flash of red hair and pale skin in the back yard. With superhuman speed, he holstered his weapon and dove for the window. His foot slipped, his traction suddenly gone, but he pulled himself through the opening fast enough to catch sight of her sprinting toward town.

“Meredith!” He barreled after her.

The suburban neighborhood grew denser as they neared the heart of town. Meredith’s red head merged with a crowd of early evening shoppers, darting in and out of the quaint bistros and bookstores. He nudged through the crowd, zeroing in on her. She saw him. Damn it; she was taunting him on purpose. She glanced over her shoulder, caught his eye, and ducked into a bustling coffee shop.

He followed her inside, toward the back. For a second, he lost sight of her in the crowd.

“Hey! There’s a line,” a middle-aged woman yelled from outside the bathroom. He turned his head to see someone slip inside the ladies’ room.

Silas flashed his badge. The woman raised her hands in the air and backed against the wall. The door was locked. He kicked hard and fast. The wood splintered, the door swinging open on its hinges. Inside, there were two stalls, two sinks and no one in front of either. The toilet flushed, and a blond woman in a blue suit exited one of the stalls and rushed past him into the café. Silas checked the other stall. No sign of Meredith.

A light breeze blew through the restroom, and he glanced up at a small, open window. Too small for a human to fit through, but not too small for a fox. He slapped the wall and rushed for the exit.

“Hey! You’re going to have to pay for that door,” a man behind the counter yelled. Silas ignored him. As fast as he could move, he rounded the building, found the window from the outside, and searched the area. Nothing. Not a single footprint, fox or human. He sniffed the air. Nothing.

Defeated, he returned to her house, alone.

* * *

“I don’t know what to tell you, Silas. Nickelova is here, safely behind my enchantment,” Grateful said. “If Meredith has the heart or she gave it to Alex, she hasn’t tried to use it.”

“Weird.” Silas lifted the lid to the pot on Meredith’s stove with one latex-gloved hand. “She was here at her house. I lost her in the crowd when she ran.”

“What do you mean you lost her? You’re a goddamned werewolf. You are your own search-and-rescue dog. How could you lose her?”

Silas’s brows knit. “She had a stew boiling on the stove. It had onions and garlic in it, not to mention this place smells like a chemical fire. It masked her scent.”

“I thought you said you chased her into the street?”

He thought back. “I couldn’t smell her. I lost her in a coffee shop. It’s possible the smell of the coffee interfered with her scent.”

“I don’t like this. There’s something…”

“Off about this whole thing?”

“You feel it too?”

“Like an itch I can’t scratch.”

“Well, you better get a longer coat hanger to scratch that itch, because the lunar eclipse is only days away. If what Julius says is true, Alex will be finishing preparations and trying his best to fly under the radar. If we don’t find him soon, there will be literal hell to pay.”

“I’ve called in a team to collect evidence. I’m going to take a few pictures before I go.”

“Let me know when you leave. I’ll meet you at your house. We need a plan.”

He ended the call, then switched to camera mode to take a few pictures of the pot. The sofa was next, then the bedroom, and the open window. He lifted a picture off the bed, holding it up to the light. Meredith’s graduation from college. She stood between her mother and her father in her cap and gown. He remembered Meredith’s father; his bright red hair was something you didn’t soon forget. Grayson. He was a high-ranking member of Crescent Star. He’d never met Meredith’s mother, who stood on her other side. What was her name again? He didn’t remember. In the picture, he couldn’t help but think she looked like a gypsy with her black hair, dark eyes, and olive skin. He could see where Meredith got her brown eyes and red hair, a rare combination, but not surprising seeing her parents.

Should he call Meredith’s mother? It was possible she’d go to her to hide. He chided himself for not insisting he meet her. He’d have to check with the Lycanthropic Society secretary for her name and address. He returned the picture to its place on the bed and left for home, right as the crime-scene team arrived.

* * *

“Be careful.”

Silas jumped at the whisper, turning from his car to find Grateful standing behind him in his driveway. “When did you get here?”

“Just now. Hey, didn’t you give Meredith a free pass through the enchantment around your house?”

Silas frowned. “Fuck.”

“Yeah. So I say again, be careful.”

He crept up to the front door. He could hear Maggie run to the door, her nails clicking on the hardwood. If Meredith had been there recently, he couldn’t tell. What traces of her scent he could pick up could have been from before. He entered the house with one hand on his gun.

“Looks okay,” he said.

Grateful nodded in agreement but didn’t lower her sword as she entered his living room. Silas scratched Maggie’s head, sniffing the air. “What the hell?” He turned the corner into his kitchen, shaking his head.

“What do you smell?”

“She was here.”

Grateful raised her sword higher.

“She’s not here now. Hours ago. Maybe yesterday. Her scent has faded. But she fed Maggie. She left the kibble out.”

“Why would she come here to feed your dog?”

“I have no idea.” He moved deeper into the room. “The door to my bedroom is closed. I know I left it open.”

“What if it’s a trap? There could be a bomb under the house for all we know, just waiting to be tripped by opening the door.”

“Wouldn’t Nightshade alert you if there was?”

“Nightshade detects supernatural threats, not physical ones.”

“I don’t think there’s a bomb. Why would she feed Maggie and then blow her up?”

“Why would she call an ambulance for Soleil and then inject her with something to kill her?”

“Touché.”

Grateful crowded up behind him with her sword, her pregnant belly bumping into his back. She murmured something and a wave of purple wrapped around both of them. “Protection spell. Stay close to me.”

“What about Maggie?”

She called the dog and Silas lifted the mutt into his arms. “She’s covered.”

“Okay, I’m going in.” He turned the knob and slowly opened the door. What he saw inside made his chest feel heavy. A wave of exhaustion overcame him. The horizon had flipped upside down. Nothing made sense anymore.

“It’s not a bomb,” he said.

Grateful peered around him toward the bed. “Holy crow! That is the one thing I did not expect to see here.”

There, on top of his comforter, was Nickelova’s heart.