“I also don’t have any patience for people stealing my food.”

Derek picked up half of the sandwich, bit into it, and chewed.

Food held a special significance to the shapeshifters. When a shapeshifter offered to feed someone, he communicated willingness to protect and take care of them. A shapeshifter who couldn’t protect his meat was weak. Derek broke into my house and ate my ham, and now he was rubbing my face in it.

Just you wait. You’ll regret it.

I sat across from him. “Is it good?”

He licked his lips. “Delicious.”

I’d negotiated peace agreements with people I hated. I would not give him the satisfaction of slapping the rest of the sandwich out of his hand. No matter how satisfying that would feel.

I pulled a pad of paper toward me, wrote $20 on it, and passed it to him.

“What’s this?”

“The bill for the sandwich.”

“A twenty-dollar ham sandwich?”

“You chose to eat here. You should’ve asked about prices in advance.” I pointed at the doorway. “The door is that way. This restaurant is closed. Take the rest of your meal to go.”

He finished the first half of the sandwich and leaned back with a kind of languid grace, a wolf in repose. “Let’s be adults about this.”

“That would be a refreshing change.”

“Several years ago, I was in a bad place in my life. I came to Pastor Haywood for guidance. He helped me.”

When did that happen? What bad place? I opened my mouth to ask and clamped it shut. He was a stranger, and I had to treat him like one.

“I told him that if he ever needed help, I would return the favor. He called me on the night before he died. He told me that he was worried and asked for my help. He sounded scared. I left an hour after that phone call, but unfortunately, I was across the country. I didn’t make it in time.”

Oh damn.

“I’m here to find out who killed him.” Moonglow flashed in his eyes and died. “We’re on the same side.”

“I doubt that.”

“Tell me why you’re investigating this murder and what you found, and I will tell you why Pastor Haywood was scared that night.”

Every crumb of information could mean the difference between Kate dying and living. Was there any harm in sharing with him? I searched for the downside and didn’t see one. After all, I didn’t have to tell him everything.

“Deal. You go first.”

“No.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “You don’t trust me?”

“I don’t. You’re a liar.” He picked up the rest of the sandwich and took a nice big bite.

“How am I a liar?”

“You pretend to be a knight of the Order.”

I took the badge out of my pocket and put it on the table. “Feel free to clear it with Nick Feldman.”

“Your badge is real. Your knighthood isn’t. I’ve got two words for you. Jaiden Higgs.”

“Is that supposed to mean something?”

“Seven years ago Knight-Defender Jaiden Higgs suffered a psychotic break. He thought he was possessed, and demons were talking to him. He took three people hostage and barricaded himself in an elementary school on Jefferson Street. Jaiden was sent to Atlanta after he had some issues, and Nick Feldman took him under his wing.”

I could guess where this story was going, and the end wouldn’t be happy.

“Nick did everything he could to get Jaiden out, and when that didn’t work, he called Pastor Haywood. The pastor went into that elementary school and came out sixteen hours later with Jaiden and the hostages unharmed.”

“Was Jaiden possessed?”

“Nobody knows. He hung himself a month later in the psychiatric ward.”

Yes, just another sunshine and rainbows fable of post-Shift Atlanta.

Derek pointed the remainder of his sandwich at me. “Nick Feldman owed Pastor Haywood. He held him in the highest regard. Right now, Feldman should be tearing this city apart looking for his killer. Even if he received a direct order from the Preceptor himself, he wouldn’t let this go. Instead he gave it to you, a knight nobody knows who’s been in the city for five minutes.”

Two could play this game. “You seem to know a lot about me. Here is what I know about you. You’re an alpha. You have your own pack. You aren’t a member of the Atlanta Pack, nor are you affiliated with them in any way. If the Beast Lord finds out a foreign shapeshifter is running around in his territory, the entire Pack will hunt you down. You seem to already have some kind of beef with Ascanio Ferara, whose boudas your people are right now trying to evade. Why hasn’t he turned you in? Do the two of you have some sort of history?”

Derek raised his eyebrows half a millimeter.

“Maybe we should stick to the facts of the murder,” I suggested.

“Yes. That would be best.”

“Tell me about the artifact,” I said.

If Derek was surprised, he didn’t show it. “It’s a box of some strange material, two feet long, one foot wide, and about one foot deep. It has a cross engraved into its lid.”

“What kind of cross? A Christian cross?”

Derek shook his head. “Pastor didn’t think so. He said it emanated magic. Trying to probe it was like holding your hand to a spraying fire hydrant. The magic felt old. He said pre-Hellenistic. It disturbed him.”

“In what way?”

Derek frowned. “He said it was like looking at a radiant diamond. It had complexity and facets on a level he hadn’t encountered before.”

Sounded like an object from the old ages. Never good. “Did he say who hired him to authenticate it?”

“No. Your turn.”

“Someone hired Pastor Haywood to authenticate a magical artifact. The next night the pastor was murdered. The killer broke through the skylight, ripped out his heart, and left the same way. Last night Professor Walton, an expert in early Christian history, was also murdered. The killer came through the third-floor window, ripped out her heart, and left through the same window.”

He focused on me with single-minded intensity. It was slightly unnerving. “It’s a creature.”

“I believe so. It’s highly likely the artifact is bound to a guardian. That guardian can track anyone who touches the artifact and will continue killing until it’s able to regain its treasure.”