I had been examined by the best experts my grandmother could find. They concluded that the changes were permanent. If I had children, they would look like the new me. The Eye could no longer change me back. It had become a part of me and lost that power.

The old me had been erased forever. Derek would never recognize me. He would never know why my heart was trying to jump out of my chest.

My heart. Right. I had to find calm. If he focused, he could hear my heartbeat.

We’d been looking at each other in silence for five minutes. One of us had to say something.

“It’s you,” I said. Brilliant opening.

“It’s me,” he said.

“You found my house.” I kept my voice casual and calm. No loud noises. No quick movements.

He nodded. He seemed comfortable, wrapped in a kind of casual arrogance that came from killing a lot of scary shit. His presence filled the room. He was impossible to ignore.

“I tried to talk to you before, but you left in a hurry.” His voice still sounded the same, a kind of gravely rasp, the result of permanent damage to the vocal cords not even Lyc-V managed to fully heal. It made him sound like a wolf in the flesh.

“I’m a busy woman.”

“That’s why I decided to visit you at home.”

“Very prudent of you.”

“I like to plan ahead.”

His shoulders were broader than I remembered. His body bigger, harder. His clothes weren’t skintight, but I could see definition on the arm he rested on his knee and a hard contour of muscle on his thigh. With magic down, my arsenal had shrunk, while he still had the benefit of superior speed, strength, and regeneration. The old Derek would never attack a human woman without provocation. This new Derek was an unknown commodity. If he decided to fight me, my odds were crap.

But shapeshifters were still human, and their regeneration wasn’t instant. I knew where to strike and how to cut to incapacitate a shapeshifter. The real question was, could I bring myself to cut Derek’s throat if he forced me?

I had to avoid this fight at all cost.

“So you tracked me down and let yourself into my home. How can I help you?” I asked.

“Do you need a medic?”

My mind tried to make a ninety-degree turn with him and failed. “What?”

“Last night someone set the old VA hospital on fire. It’s still burning. Metal melted. Concrete walls cracked from thermal shock. Your scent is all over the street leading to it, and your yard reeks of charred human flesh. So I’ll ask again, do you need a medic? I know a good one.”

“No.”

We stared at each other.

“Stop wasting our time and tell me what you want,” I said.

“I’d like you to tell me about Pastor Haywood’s murder.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I have a personal interest in the matter.”

“And that personal interest caused you to break into my house and intimidate me while I sit naked in my bathtub? Do you think Pastor Haywood would approve?”

He hit me with his alpha stare. “I broke into your house because you hold crucial information and I thought you might be dying. If I were you, I’d focus on answering my questions.”

His gaze pressed on me like a physical weight. I wanted to either explode out of the bath, slicing at him, or jump out and run for my life.

So that’s how it is? Okay, buddy. I’ll play.

I stared back at him with disdain, the way I looked at those who threatened the New Kingdom when I wanted them to back away with tail between their legs. I am Shinar reborn, shapeshifter. I do not submit.

Silence filled the chamber, cold and oppressive. Why did I keep goading him? If he was anybody else, I would’ve maneuvered the conversation where I wanted it to go by now. Instead I turned it into a standoff.

He hadn’t looked for me. He hadn’t called. He hadn’t written. Gods, I was so angry at him. I hadn’t realized how much until this moment. It burned my common sense to ashes.

Emotion boiled in Derek’s eyes. I couldn’t place it. Frustration, rage? A bit of both? Not, that wasn’t quite it. Whatever it was, it was clearly driving him nuts. He looked at me like I was everything that was wrong in his life.

A faint sound came from the other room. A man walked in and halted in the arched entrance to the bedroom. In his early twenties, tan, with a mane of soft reddish-brown hair he had tied back from his freckled face. He wore a similar grey outfit, and when he moved, he walked with the fluid grace of a shapeshifter. Not a wolf. Something else. Something smaller.

Derek kept looking at me. “Yes?”

“The hyenas found Jerome. He is leading them on a merry chase.”

A slight trace of a Slavic accent.

The shapeshifter hesitated. “Perhaps I could help you communicate…”

“No,” Derek and I said at the same time.

“Okaaay. I’ll just go away then.”

The shapeshifter retreated.

“I’m not leaving until I get some answers,” Derek said.

“Then you’ll die of old age at my house.”

“I thought you were severely burned, but maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps you hit your head instead and can’t see this situation clearly.”

“Enlighten me. What is it I’m failing to see?”

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m hungry. I’m going to get up and find something to eat, so you can get out in privacy. Use this opportunity to think about…”

I stood up. The last shreds of my discarded skin fell into the bath.

Derek stared at me, caught mid-word.

I tossed my hair out of my face, flinging water and loose petals back into the tub, stepped out, and walked past him to my closet to get dressed.

When I came out of the bedroom, Derek was sitting in my sanctuary at my kitchen table spreading a thin layer of honey mustard on a slice of bread with a wicked-looking knife. Another slice with an inch-thick slab of smoked ham waited on his plate. He put the top slice on top of the ham.

He’d made himself a sandwich. Maybe I’d get lucky, and the son of a bitch would choke on it.

“You don’t have any iced tea,” he said.

I would strangle him. “That’s just one of the things I don’t have.”

Derek sliced the sandwich in half. “Oh?”