Ascanio blinked. Julie stomped on his foot as she passed him and he elbowed her in the ribs.

“Call me if anything,” Barabas told me.

“Sure.”

A moment later and both the lawyer and the doctor were gone. Raphael and I looked at each other.

“Go away,” I told him.

“For now,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

“I won’t let you through the door.”

“We’ll see about that.” Raphael turned to Ascanio. “Guard her.”

“Yes, Alpha.”

He walked out. Ascanio locked and barred the door behind him.

I pondered whether it was worth it to force myself upstairs to the bed or if I should just lie down on the nice comfortable wooden floor. My dignity won. I was a badass, God damn it. I could take twelve stairs. I’d kick their ass.

I dragged myself to the upstairs cot and collapsed facedown. I tried to take my shoes off, but the world slipped through my fingers before I had a chance to raise my head from my pillow.

“Andrea?” Ascanio whispered next to me.

I opened my eyes.

He was crouching by my cot. “I’m sorry to wake you up. My mother is outside the door. Can I let her in?”

“Of course you can let her in.”

“Thanks.”

He took off. I rubbed my eyes and sat up. The windup clock on the night table by the cot said seven p.m. Every cell in my body ached. Below, the bar clanged—Ascanio was opening the door. I forced myself upright, crossed the loft, and sat down on top of the stairs.

Ascanio swung the door open and stood aside. Martina came in. She had a rare look to her, a kind of regal beauty on the crossroads of severe and sensual, but not really leaning toward either. Her dark hair crowned her head in a braided updo coil. Her tan skin was flawless. Her features were large and boldly cut, and she held herself with great poise, so self-possessed with quiet confidence that people gravitated to her. Barabas called her Queen Martina. She wore jeans and an olive-colored blouse, but the nickname still fit.

Ascanio closed the door, locked it, and stood there awkwardly. I’d never seen him awkward before.

“How are you?” Martina reached over to touch his cheek, but stopped before the actual contact, as if she’d thought better of it.

“I’m good…Thank you.”

“I brought you your favorite,” she said, handing him a basket.

Ascanio took the towel off the basket and smiled. It was a shy little kid smile, so at odds with his teenage Don Juan persona, I almost did a double take.

“You should eat those,” she said.

Ascanio glanced at me.

“It’s okay,” Martina said. “Go on. I’ll visit with Andrea.”

Ascanio took the basket, leaned over, and kissed his mother on the cheek. Then he turned and went into the kitchen.

Martina climbed the stairs and sat next to me.

“What’s in the basket?” I asked.

“Cannoli,” she said. “He really likes them.”

And she had come all the way here, an hour from the Keep, just to bring them. Something wasn’t quite right.

“Did Raphael ever tell you our story?” she asked.

“No.” I knew that for some reason Ascanio hadn’t lived with the clan for a while, but that was about it.

She nodded. “I was young and living in the Midwest. I wasn’t bitten—I was born a bouda. My mother was a bouda also, my father was a werewolf. I had the best family, Andrea. I was so loved.”

“What happened?” I asked. Funny, I thought that all her self-assurance would create a distance, but she seemed so nice. Her voice just put me at ease.

“We had a flood,” she said. “One of those insane freak floods that sometimes hits states like Iowa. The river swelled and took down our town. We were sitting on the roof, and my mother saw our neighbors floating by in the car, their kids in the backseat. The car was sinking and everyone was screaming. The car went under. My mother was stronger than my father, so she went in after it. She didn’t come back. My dad dived in to get her out. He didn’t come back either. I sat there on the roof and cried and screamed and screamed and begged God to let them come back, but there was nothing but muddy river.”

I could picture her sitting on the roof, crying her eyes out. “That’s awful.”

“Thank you. My grandparents took me in, but it wasn’t the same. I left as soon as I could and traveled around, doing odd jobs here and there, bouncing at bars, waitressing in diners. I was kind of wild. If a guy had nice eyes and nice biceps, I was game.” She smiled, a little spark in her eyes. “Looking for love in all the wrong places. I had fun.”

“Did you find Mr. Right?”

“I found many Misters Right-for-Now. None of them lasted very long. I didn’t know it back then, because I was young and stupid, but the kind of great love I was looking for couldn’t happen for me back then. I didn’t even know what kind of person I wanted to be, let alone what I needed from a guy. But I wanted that love I lost, so I had this bright idea: I would get pregnant and have a baby. A baby would love me no matter what, because I’d be her mommy. We would be a little family together. It would be just like it was before.”

“It’s never like it was before.”

“I know that now, but back then I was selfish and damaged, and very young. About that time I met Ascanio’s father. John was gorgeous. Beautiful man. And a bouda like me. A little on the passive side, but he was kind and very proper. Seducing him was so much fun and once I did, he just did whatever I said. I was okay with being in charge. We were together for two months when I got pregnant. I was so happy. I told him and he cried.”

“He cried? Like in joy?”

“More like in horror.”

“Oh no.”

Martina nodded. “Yes, that should have been a clue. Apparently John grew up in this religious cult worshipping some made-up god, and he had been sent out in the world for a year-long pilgrimage. He came to terms about ‘sinning’ with me—probably because I was very good at sinning and he liked it—but a child threw him for a loop. We couldn’t have a child in sin, and he refused to marry me unless we went back and had his prophet do it. The catch was I’d have to sleep with said prophet to have my body purified.”

“No,” I said. “Screw that.”

“That was my reaction. It’s my body and I wouldn’t be abused in this manner. It also let me know real quick that John wasn’t good husband/father material. I told him he was free to hit the road. Me and my baby would be just fine. But John had a change of heart and stuck around. I should’ve twisted his head off right then, but silly me, I thought he had come about because he loved me. I went into labor. The hospital had never had a shapeshifter give birth before and mine was a long and terrible thing. Then I got to hold Ascanio and it was all worth it. He was so beautiful. I was reading this French book at the time about a sculptor and he had this ridiculously good-looking apprentice, whose name was Ascanio. I knew exactly what to name my baby. The hospital sedated me after that to let me rest. When I woke up, my beautiful baby was gone. John took him.”

“He what?”

“He took him back to his cult. He left me a note, the slime. It said that he couldn’t let his son be raised in sin, and since Ascanio was an innocent, he’d be taking him away, but I couldn’t come, because I was tainted by our sin.”

“I would have killed him. I would’ve murdered him right there.”

“I tried,” Martina said. “I looked for him for years. I was bitter and broken by then, and that’s when Aunt B came across me. She was on a trip of some sort. I was, well, the proper term is fucked up. I hadn’t shifted into my animal shape for years. Didn’t seem like there was any point to it. It only brought me misery. She went after me. ‘Come be with your own kind. You don’t have to do anything. Just come, live with us for a bit, and if you don’t like it, you’re free to go.’ Eventually I went with her. It didn’t matter one way or another. So I came here and slowly, little by little, I thawed out. Then the call came. The cult’s prophet decided my boy was too much competition and was mucking up his harem plans, so he called us to come and get him. We did.”

“And John?”

“He’d died a while back. A good thing too, because I would’ve killed him. So you see it’s difficult for us both,” Martina said. “Ascanio never had a mother and I never had a son. We try the best we can and when we find something that can make one of us happy, we both sigh a little in relief. I make him cannoli and he buys me scented soap with his Cutting Edge money. I have two drawers full of it.” A small happy smile lit up her face. “If you ever run out, you let me know. I’ve got enough to keep the whole Pack clean for a week.”

I really liked her. I hadn’t known I would, but I did. Still, things had to be said. “You didn’t come here to tell me this story, did you?”

“No. I came here to talk about the clan and Aunt B.”

“I don’t mean to be rude,” I said. “But there is nothing you can say to make me play ball with Aunt B. I won’t go over there and I won’t beg and scrape to be admitted into the clan, so I can be one of her girls and run her errands. That won’t be happening. And I think it’s cowardly of her to send you in for this talk. Enforcers didn’t work, neither will you, so I wonder what her next move is going to be. How many will she send?”

“She didn’t send me,” Martina said. “My son did.”

“Oh.”

“Do you know what I do for the clan?” she asked.

“No.”

“I’m a licensed therapist,” she said. “I specialize in the areas of family therapy, anger and stress management, adolescent adjustment, and loss and grief counseling. I’m one of ten Pack counselors.”

“I’m not in the Pack,” I told her.