He stopped, stepping too close to me. His voice was quiet. “I watch everyone around me, waiting for a knife in my back. I can’t help it. The paranoia is so deeply ingrained now, it’s a part of who I am. It isn’t about what they would do, it’s about what they could do. I have friends, but I never forget that friendship is conditional.”

“Curran wouldn’t stab you in the back.”

“He would if the circumstances were right.”

“Jim, do you really live always expecting people to turn on you?”

He nodded. “It’s like going through life holding my breath.”

“That’s terrible.” I reached over and stroked his cheek with my fingertips. “People are not like that. Some people are like that, but most people are honest and kind. Our friends. Curran, Derek, Kate, Doolittle, they are loyal to us.”

He caught my hand and kissed it. “I love this about you.”

My heart was beating too fast. “Jim . . .”

“I watch everyone, but when I watch you, all I feel is . . . that I want to be with you. You will never lie to me. And if I need help, you will be there. With you, I breathe.”

I put my arms around him. I just wanted to make it better for him, to somehow shield him from that. His arms closed around me, his hard body pressing next to mine.

“Everyone has that someone who is most important to them,” he said, his voice so low only a shapeshifter could’ve heard it. “That one person who trumps the rules. You are that to me. I would do anything for you.”

The world stopped. I just stood there, shell-shocked. He did just say all that to me, right? I didn’t imagine it?

“You never answered,” he said quietly.

“Never answered what?”

“If you would be the cat alpha with me.”

He was asking me . . . “I didn’t know it was a question.”

He pulled away and met my gaze. “It is.”

“Yes,” I said in a small voice.

Jim smiled.

We walked up to the door. Jim tried the handle. It turned in his hand. He swung the door open. We sniffed the air in unison. Steven was home. No other human smells troubled the house. What in the world did he do with his daughter? Maybe she didn’t live with him?

Jim walked through the door. I followed him on soft feet, tracking the scent. The inside of the house was almost completely empty. No knickknacks. No furniture for the knickknacks to rest on. No pictures on the walls. The house was stripped bare. Only the curtains remained, blocking out the bright light of summer.

I smelled blood and alcohol. Never a good combination.

We turned left into a vast room and stopped.

Steven Graham, completely nude, sat cross-legged in a circle of salt in the corner of the room. His right foot stuck out. It looked wrong, deformed, and it took me a moment to figure out that it was missing all of its toes except for the big one. A small plate sat in front of him, next to a box of matches. On the plate, soaked in some sort of clear liquid, lay a bloody nub of flesh.

I squinted. A severed hairy toe. Ew.

He’d been cutting pieces off himself for his sacrifice. Ew. Ew. Ew.

The salt was probably a ward, a defensive spell. I tried to reach for it with my magic. Yes, a ward and a strong one.

“John Abbot?” I asked.

“I used to be John Abbot Junior,” Steven said. “I changed my name to Steven Graham a long time ago.”

Oh. Now this made sense. John Abbot was his father.

“What’s the deal with the strip club?” Jim said.

“My old man was a lawyer,” Steven said. “I worked for his firm. Most people would’ve made me a partner, but no, my old man made me into a junior associate. When Chad Toole got indicted, he was low on money, so he turned the strip club over to my dad. In its heyday owning that place was like printing money. Magic wiped out the Internet. All online porn was gone. Video was gone. Live girls were the only option. I wanted that club. I’ve always wanted one. I like women. Owning a strip club like Dirty Martini is like a fucking paradise. All that pussy and it’s all yours. No strings, no guilt, just go for it and indulge.”

Okay, there was something more disgusting than chopped-off toes.

“The old bastard wouldn’t give it to me. Said he wasn’t in the titty-bar business. I fucking hated my father. All my life he’s been screwing me over. He treated me like slave labor. I worked for him and that damn law firm for almost nothing, then he’d complain I was billing too many hours.

“Then, money went missing from an escrow account. Turns out my father, the famous John Abbot, had been stealing money from his clients. Suddenly he needed someone to take the rap for him. Suddenly it was all ‘son’ and ‘my boy’ and ‘will you go to prison for me.’ I told him I’d take the blame for his stealing, but he had to sign the club over to me. I got it in writing. I confessed to taking the money, got disbarred, and served two years in prison.”

Steven leaned forward. “I was soft. Weak. You have no idea what that place did to me. What it was like. It was hell. I sat in that damn cage for two years, beaten, raped, abused, and I kept thinking: When I get out, I’ll have my club. It kept me going. I’d live like a king once I was out. All the booze, women, and money I wanted waiting for me.”

Steven gave a harsh laugh. “I come out of prison and find out my father remodeled the place and sold it off one chunk at a time. See, there was a loophole in the paperwork he signed. He couldn’t sell the place completely, because I owned a chunk of it, but he could divide it into parts and sell those as long as I got one. One office. The fucker. I gave him two years of my life. I ruined my career for him and he screwed me over again.”