Curran stopped. I landed next to him. “What’s up?”

“Remember this?”

I looked over Unicorn Lane. In front of me an old apartment building sagged to the street, its weight too much for its magic-weakened steel bones. To the right, frost turned a twisted heap of concrete debris and wire into a labyrinth of white lattice. Looked familiar . . . Ah.

“What is it?” Ascanio asked.

I pointed at the half-crumbled apartment building, where a dark gap offered a way inside. “This is where we first met.”

I had been investigating the death of my guardian and discovered that the Pack was involved. At the time I was doing my best to lie low, which made me an unknown, so Curran invited me for a face-to-face meeting in that apartment building. He’d wanted to see if I’d brave Unicorn Lane at night. I did.

It seemed so long ago now.

Curran put his arm around me. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty?”

“I had to say something to make you come out of the dark.”

“There?” Ascanio asked. “You met in that dark hole?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Why would anyone want to meet in Unicorn Lane? Something bad could’ve happened. Why not a nice restaurant? Women like restaurants.”

I cracked up. Curran flashed a grin and we climbed off the concrete into the alley.

Curran had parked his Pack Jeep on the corner of the alley and Fourteenth Street. Three thugs, two men and a woman, were trying to pop the lock open. Oy. Thanks, Atlanta.

The would-be carjackers saw us. The man in a blue jacket swung around and leveled a gun in our general direction. Big barrel, small brain. Hey, here are some guys walking out of Unicorn Lane at night. They’re in good shape and look like they could kick my ass. I think I’m going to try to take their car at gunpoint. Sheer brilliance. Yep, this will totally work.

Without breaking his stride, Curran moved slightly in front of me. I had no doubt that if the thug fired, His Furriness would block it rather than letting the bullet hit me. He’d pulled this maneuver before a couple of times. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I really didn’t want him getting shot on my account.

“Give me the keys!” Blue Jacket said, his voice raspy.

Curran’s eyes went gold. His voice dropped into a rough growl. “If you’re going to shoot, make sure to empty the clip, because after you’re done, I’ll shove that gun up your ass sideways.”

Blue Jacket blinked.

“Can you even do that?” I asked.

“Let’s find out.” Curran stared at the thug. “Well? Shoot, so we can start this experiment.”

Blue Jacket stuck the gun into his pocket and fled. His buddies dashed after him down the street.

Curran shook his head, got the keys out, and opened the hatch. We packed the crate with the bunnycat inside, Curran slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine, and we were off, heading through the city toward the northeast, where the shapeshifter Pack made its lair in the Keep.

The car heater kicked in. My teeth stopped chattering.

“I’m so hungry,” Ascanio said. “What’s for dinner in the Keep?”

“We are going to the Keep,” Curran said. “You’re going to your mother’s house.”

Ascanio bristled. “Why?”

“Because you haven’t been there in the past three days and she would like to see your face. And because she would like to discuss your latest report card.”

Damn it. Him and Julie both. My fifteen-year-old ward had failed algebra in a spectacular fashion. First, she tried to convince me that the teacher lost her homework, all four different assignments of it. Then she ranted for a while about how school was hard and we were placing unreasonable demands on her, and then, for a big finish, she informed us that she would rather drop out and be homeless. Curran and I slow-clapped for a whole minute.

“What did you fail this time?”

“I failed nothing. I’m passing all my classes.”

“He has a forty in algebra,” Curran said.

Algebra again.

I turned around in my seat so I could see Ascanio. “How the hell did you get a forty?”

“I don’t know.”

“He isn’t turning his homework in. He spends half of his time with Raphael and the rest with you at Cutting Edge.”

“School is overrated,” Ascanio said. “I don’t like it and I have no interest in it. I just want to work for the Pack.”

“Let me burst that bubble for you,” Curran said. “The Pack requires educated people. If you want to climb up the food chain, you need to know what you’re doing. Most alphas have advanced college degrees. In fact, most people you know have degrees.”

“Like who?” Ascanio asked.

“Raphael has an MBA. Barabas has a Juris Doctor. Andrea has completed the Order’s Academy. Doolittle completed medical school. Mahon has a doctorate in medieval history.”

That explained some things. Mahon ran Clan Heavy and I always thought his reasoning was on the medieval side. Oooh, I should tell him that sometime. He would like that. Just not while he was in his bear form. I could run really well for a human, but I had a feeling an enraged Kodiak would be faster.

“Aunt B didn’t have a degree,” Ascanio volunteered.

“Yes, she did,” Curran said. “She went to Agnes Scott and majored in psychology.”

Ascanio stared out the window.

“What’s the plan?” Curran asked. “You’re sixteen; you have to have a plan. Or are you going to let your mother pay your bills for the rest of your life?”

“No.” Ascanio bit off the word.

“Then I suggest you rethink algebra,” Curran said.

• • •

WE DROPPED ASCANIO off, delivered the bunnycat, got paid, and Curran drove toward the Keep. I snuggled up in my seat. All was well that ended well. I didn’t die; I’d earned my money, I was finally warm, and now, after a long day at work, I’d get to go home and take a nice shower.

“You watch him a lot,” Curran said. “Like you’re expecting he’ll break. He’s a sturdy kid. He can hold his own and I know you know that, so what’s the deal?”

That was a loaded question. “I had a dream last night. I was trapped on the castle tower. The roof was on fire. There were flames all around me and they burned off my feet.” In real life, the castle had been consumed by magical flame, but it had never gotten to that particular tower. It was too high. “In the courtyard Hibla was killing Aunt B.”

That part of the dream was born from my memories, so vivid they hurt. When we had gone to the Black Sea to get the panacea, we found Hugh d’Ambray, my father’s warlord and preceptor of the Order of Iron Dogs. Hibla was his second-in-command. When the castle caught fire, I ended up trapped on top of the tower. I saw our people try to get out of the castle, chased by Hugh’s Iron Dogs, and Aunt B had sacrificed herself. She knew the Iron Dogs would kill her before they would move on. They had a mage with them. I could see it in my mind, the silver chains whipping from the mage and pinning Aunt B in place, the hail of arrows that pierced her body, and finally Hibla, walking to her, sword in hand.

“I was trying to help her,” I said. “In my dream. I was trying to help her, but I had no feet.”

Curran reached over. His warm fingers closed over my hand. He squeezed my fingers gently.

“I remember the way Aunt B snarled just before Hibla took her head off. I can replay that snarl in my head over and over. I was a hundred and fifty feet above them. I couldn’t have heard it.”

“Is that the first time you had the dream?”

“No. I should’ve done . . . more.”

“I love you,” he said. “But even if I didn’t, I would still tell you the same thing. There was nothing you could’ve done. Does it help?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“Did you talk to anybody besides me?”

“No.”

“You should talk to someone. The Pack has twelve therapists on our payroll.”

Right. “I’m fine,” I told him. “I just don’t want any of them to die.”

“Any of whom?”

“Clan Bouda.”

He squeezed my fingers again. “Baby, you can’t wrap them in bubble wrap. They’d rip through it and go for your throat. They’re their own people. Ascanio has two alphas and two betas, and a mother, who is, by the way, a licensed Pack therapist. Talk to Martina. It will help. Talking about it always helps.”

“I’ll think about it.”

He kissed my fingers. “If Derek came to you with this, what would you say?”

“I’d tell him to talk to someone and that the Pack has twelve licensed therapists on the payroll.”

I knew exactly what would help. I needed to kill Hibla. After the castle, when we had boarded our ship, half-dead and barely standing, I was too tired to see anything. But Derek had watched the pier and he saw Hibla run up it, her sword bare. She had survived and she watched us leave. Killing her wouldn’t bring Aunt B back, but it needed to be done. I wanted to send a message. If you killed someone I cared about, I would find you and make you pay for it. It didn’t matter where you ran or how well you hid, I would punish you and I would make it so brutal that nobody else would dare to hurt anyone close to me again. I made Jim look for Hibla, but so far we had nothing. For all I knew, she had stayed back in Europe and I would never see her again.

“You don’t have to go alone,” he said. “If you decide to go and you need me, I’ll come with you. I’ll go in with you or I’ll wait by the door until you’re done.”

“Thank you,” I told him, and meant it.

We fell quiet.

“I have to leave in the morning,” Curran said.

He said “I,” not “we.” “Why?”

“Do you remember Gene Monroe?”

I nodded. Gene Monroe’s family owned the Silver Mountain Mine, near Nantahala Gorge. It was one of the primary sources of silver for the southeast. Gene claimed that his family traced its roots all the way to the Melungeons, Spanish Moors who had settled in the area centuries ago trying to escape the persecution of the Spanish Inquisition. Given that some members of his family turned into Iberian wolves, his claim had some credit. Gene was isolationist by nature and difficult to deal with. He ran a small shapeshifter group and although his neighbors had joined the Pack a long time ago, Gene had held out.

“Is he giving us trouble?”

“Not exactly. Apparently once a year the men of their pack gather together and go off into the mountains on a hog hunt. Family and close friends only.”

“You’re been invited?” I guessed.

“Yep.”

“Do they know you hate hunts?”

“I might have neglected to mention it.” Curran turned the wheel to the right, avoiding a pothole the size of a tire filled with luminescent purple goo of unknown origin. “He wants the panacea.”

I hadn’t quite appreciated the extent of Curran’s diplomatic scheming until I watched him work with panacea. The first thing he did upon arriving home from that trip was to pass a law that no shapeshifter at risk of loupism would be denied panacea within the Pack’s territory. As a result, shapeshifter families from all over the country began settling on the border of the Pack’s territory, forming a buffer between us and the outside world. Some waited for formal admission to the Pack. Some simply wanted a short trip across the border if their child began showing signs of loupism. If trouble came, they would fight for the Pack, because we were their only hope. Meanwhile Curran used panacea as both a club and a carrot, plotting, bribing, and dealing to stabilize the Pack and strengthen our defenses. A war was coming and we were doing all we could to prepare.

Thinking about the panacea and the war made me think of my father. I stomped on that thought before it ruined my evening. “So Gene wants the panacea. What do you want?”

“I want him to be choosier about the buyers for his silver. He’s been trading with the Midwest.”

“Roland?” My father’s name rolled off my tongue. So much for not thinking about the bastard.

“His agents.”

Silver was poison to shapeshifters. If my father started buying it in large quantities, he was coming our way and he wouldn’t be bearing gifts. He viewed shapeshifters as a threat. Me, he hated. He’d tried to kill me in the womb, but my mother ran away and sacrificed herself so I could live. My stepfather hid me and over the years honed me into a weapon against my father. I was raised for one purpose: to murder Roland. Unfortunately, my father was a living legend and killing him would be difficult. I’d need a few armored divisions and nuclear support.

Curran grimaced. “Gene won’t like me dictating his business. But I know for a fact that two of his grandchildren went loup at birth, so he will want to deal. That’s what the invitation is about.”

He had to go. Anything that weakened Roland was good for us. Still, I felt uneasy. Ever since the overseas trip, I’d been acutely aware that we’d been living on borrowed time. We didn’t know if Hugh d’Ambray was dead or alive. Personally, dead worked for me, but either way my days of hiding in plain sight were over. Roland would come to investigate who nuked his warlord, sooner rather than later. Every day without him was a gift.

“How long will you be gone?” I asked.

“A day to get there, two days for the hunt, and a day back. I’ll be back by Friday.”