“What are you thinking?” he asked.

My heart squeezed itself into a tight, painful ball. This was us. This is how we used to do it when we were solving a thorny problem together: we would sit down some place with food and bat theories back and forth until we decided what to do next. Dear gods, it hurt. Oh wow.

I made my mouth move. “Something with wings and claws. Any beast with sufficient magical power can be bound. Could be a griffin. A manticore. A zilant…”

“Not a griffin. They have a distinctive stink.”

That’s right. I was sitting across from one of the best trackers in the entire Pack. “What did it smell like?”

He shook his head. “Not anything I’ve come across.”

Derek remembered thousands of scents. Worse and worse.

“What’s the deal with fire?” he asked.

“That’s a personal matter. It doesn’t concern you.”

“I’ll decide what concerns me.”

I burst out laughing. He looked just like Conlan when he’d said that, too.

“Did I say something funny?”

I waved my hand at him. “No.”

The other shapeshifter reappeared, hovering in the doorway. I turned and looked at him.

The other shapeshifter raised his hand and gave me a small wave. “Hello. I’m Zahar.”

“A stoat?” I guessed.

Zahar shook his head.

“What is it?” Derek asked.

“He’s brought in a second crew. Females.”

The bouda females were larger and stronger than the males.

“Looks like our charming chat is coming to an end,” I said. “You’re clearly needed elsewhere. Let’s not do this again.”

Derek reached into a hidden pocket, pulled out a twenty-dollar bill, and put it on the table.

Zahar’s eyes widened.

“The sandwich bill,” I told him. “One last question. Why is Ferara chasing you anyway?”

Derek rose smoothly and came around the table. “He has a score he wants to settle.”

“What kind of score? Why?”

He took a step toward me, leaned forward, and smiled at me. It was a sharp wolf smile, and the impact of that smile resonated through me. For a second, I forgot I could move.

“That’s a personal matter. It doesn’t concern you,” he murmured close to my ear, turned, and walked out.

That bastard.

12

Regeneration made me hungry. I had to regrow several pounds of skin, as creepy as it sounded, and my stomach was screaming for calories. If I didn’t give it some, it would shut me down.

I ate the rest of the ham with the bread I made last night. The clock told me I had slept till noon, almost six hours. It cost me a good chunk of time, but it couldn’t be helped. My body ached now, the familiar post-healing pain that felt a little like waves of shallow muscle spasms rolling through me. They would stop once I got moving.

The herb mix was an emergency measure. It was expensive and took a long time to produce. I’d had one bag, and that was it.

He who consumes the heart of the beast will be given a brief glimpse of the true future. No wonder Moloch had dispatched a high priest to handle it. Now that his attack dog was dead, Moloch would send another heavy hitter, if one wasn’t in Atlanta already. If I were him, I’d send more than one. I couldn’t let myself be caught again. I didn’t have another herb bag handy.

The examination of my doors didn’t yield any clues as to how Derek had gotten inside. None of the locks showed any sign of tampering. If he had tried to break through my wards, the impact would’ve woken me up. He must’ve done it during tech, but how remained a mystery. That was an unpleasant development. From now on I would have to engage the siege bar on the door every time I locked it from the inside.

While the food settled, I needed to make some calls. The phone worked, which was a minor miracle, or as my grandfather would explain, the direct result of all my magic having been drained below any reasonable threshold by the process of regeneration. I was so tired and sleepy, I needed little toothpicks to hold my eyes open. Too bad I wasn’t a cartoon cat.

I called to the Methodist hospital first.

“My name is Aurelia Ryder. I’m calling about Douglas.”

“Please hold.”

I held. Please be alive. Please be alive…

A different female voice came on the line. “This is Carol Wood. I’m the ICU nurse. The medmage team worked on him during the wave. He is hanging in there.”

Hanging in there wasn’t “making progress” or “feeling better.” A slick nauseating worry squirmed through me.

“Can I see him?”

“Yes, but he is heavily sedated.”

“Thank you.”

The Order was next. Stella answered on the second ring. “Atlanta Chapter of the Order of Merciful Aid.”

“I see you survived.”

“That’s still in doubt.”

“Did anything from Biohazard come for me? Paperwork, a file?”

“Big ass envelope?”

“Yep, that’s it. I’ll come and get it.”

“I’ll be here.”

I bet she would. “See you in a few.”

If a magical artifact with that amount of power had gone on the market, people would know about it. I called to Nader Youseff, who acted as New Shinar’s buying agent when we wanted to purchase something magic-related. I explained what I wanted, and he told me to sit tight.

Next, I took out the list of Jasper’s known associates and compared it to the list of the relic hunters the bishop’s people had passed to me through Stella. No matches.

Someone had sent Jasper hunting for Marten and me. That someone had deep pockets.

I called to PAD, used my badge and Luther’s name, and got contact info for the four people on Jasper’s list. Four calls later, I learned that of the Jasper-connected associates, two were dead, one was incarcerated, and the fourth had moved out of state, abandoning his spouse and three children. I got a five-minute rant from his wife detailing the shortcomings of the relevant parts of his anatomy and his moral character.

A dead end.

The phone rang. I picked up.

“They’d fixed the line and put traps around it,” Conlan said quietly. “I cut it again last night and threw the traps into the Gap.”