MINUTES DRIPPED BY, COLD AND SLOW. FIVE. SIX. Eight.

A loud knock echoed through the door. "Kate?" Andrea's voice called.

"Yeah?"

"I have paramedics with me. Let me in."

I unbarred the door and swung it open. Four paramedics sprinted into the room. Andrea followed them. She was short and blue-eyed, and for some reason the tips of her short blond hair were frosted with neon blue. The barrel of a rifle protruded over the shoulder of her jacket. Knowing her, she probably had two SIG-Sauers under that jacket, a combat knife, and enough bullets to take on the Golden Horde.

Normally Andrea's face wore a nice easygoing expression that made random strangers want to pour their hearts out to her. One look at her now, and they would cross to the other side of the street. Tension locked her face into a rigid, strained mask, and she moved like a soldier in enemy territory, expecting a bullet between the shoulder blades at any moment and ready to fire back in a split second.

Behind her two cops in PAD uniforms waited at the door, giving me their best versions of a cop scowl. Strangely, I felt no urge to quiver in terror.

Andrea stepped closer and kept her voice low. "I leave you alone for eight weeks and you get into a pissing match with the PAD."

"That's just how I roll," I told her.

Emily screamed.

"Excuse me." I went over to where the paramedics had lifted her onto the stretcher. She reached out and gripped my hand.

"It will be okay," I told her. "You're going to the hospital. They'll take care of you."

Emily didn't say anything. She just clutched my hand and didn't let go until they loaded her into the ambulance. A stretcher with Ghastek followed into the second vehicle, and then the dark-haired woman came out, wrapped in a blanket, led by two paramedics. The ambulance doors closed and the two emergency vehicles took off wailing like banshees.

When I came back into the office, it was empty, except for Andrea and a puddle of blood on the floor. "Where are the cops?" She shrugged. "They cleared out."

We looked at each other. She'd saved my bacon. That didn't change the fact that she'd disappeared for two months. And now something was wrong.

"What the hell?" Andrea glared at me. "How in the world did you end up with three navigators in your office with the PAD outside? They were ready to storm your office. Are you nuts?"

"What the hell back at you. Where have you been? Did you forget how to use the phone?"

Andrea crossed her arms. "I wrote you a letter!"

"You wrote me a note that made my hair stand on end."

The phone rang. Now what? I marched to my desk and picked it up. "Yes?"

Curran's voice filled the phone. "Are you okay?"

It was completely absurd, but hearing him instantly made me feel better. "Yeah."

"Do you need help?"

His voice was perfectly even. The Beast Lord was a hair away from charging to my aid.

"No, I'm good." For some reason my insides clumped into a painful knot. I could've been shot and I would have never seen him again. That was a new and unwelcome feeling. Great. Now I had anxiety. Maybe if I slapped myself real hard, I'd snap out of it.

I forced the words out. They sounded strained. "Who snitched?"

"We have people monitoring police radio frequencies. They gave Jim a heads-up in case our security had to storm the PAD offices and bust you out of there. I found out when I saw Jim walking down the hallway snickering to himself."

I made a mental note to punch Jim in the arm the next time I saw him. "Thought it was funny, did he?"

"I didn't think it was funny."

I bet. "People were about to die and I could save them. There was a girl ... Anyway, I'm not hurt. I'll be home for dinner."

"As you wish," he said.

My heart made a little jump. I love you, too.

The tension in his voice eased. "You sure you don't need your Prince Charming to come and save you?" The knot in my stomach evaporated. My Prince Charming, huh. "Sure, do you have one handy?"

"Oh, I think I could scrounge one up somewhere. As often as I have to rescue you ..."

"I'm going to kick you in the head when I get home. Repeatedly."

"You could try. You probably need the exercise since you sit on your butt in the office all day."

"You know what, don't talk to me."

"Whatever you want, baby."

Now he was just jerking my chain. I growled at the phone.

"Hey, before you hang up--I sent Jackson and Martina down to track Julie. We should know something tonight."

"Thanks."

I hung up. Rescue me. Bastard. I wouldn't just kick him, I would kick him so hard he'd feel it.

"Nothing changed, I see." Andrea grinned. The smile looked a bit brittle around the edges. "Still enjoying your honeymoon? It's all rainbows, and sugar hearts, and chocolate kisses?"

I crossed my arms. "Where is my dog?"

"In my truck, eating the upholstery."

We both looked at the blood. If we let Grendel in, he'd try to lick it.

I went to the back room and got rags, peroxide, and a bucket. Andrea set her rifle aside and pulled up her sleeves.

We knelt and began to mop up the stain.

"God, that's a shitload of blood." Andrea grimaced. "Do you think the girl will survive?"

"I don't know. She took several shots from an M240B. Her leg is all tore up to hell." I squeezed the blood from the rag into the bucket.

"How did it happen?" she asked.

I wanted to grab her and shake her until she told me where she had been these past months. But at least she was here and she was talking. I would get the story out of her sooner or later.

"Ghastek called. Said they had a loose vamp and it was heading my way. I went out there and chained it up. I had it wrapped around the tree, then Ghastek got close enough to grab it. His guys and the PAD's First Response showed up with the big gun. They had some words, and then Ghastek fainted." Andrea paused, her hands on a bloody rag. "What do you mean, fainted?"

"Took a pe. Kissed the pavement. Swooned like a Southern belle after her first kiss. Had a dreadful case of the vapors."

"That's weird."

"His eyes rolled up and he went down, like someone knocked him out." I dumped some clean water on the floorboards. "Then the vamp's eyes ignited red and the PAD opened fire. Ghastek had three people with him. The man was cut down in the first second or two and the bloodsucker went for him."

"And then?"

"And then I got the four of us in here and barred the door, and the rest you know."

Andrea sighed. "It's not good to deny the PAD access. They don't like that."

"Tell me something I don't know." Like where she'd been these past two months. Maybe she'd joined a nunnery. Or the French Foreign Legion.

"You could've called the Casino. They would've unleashed a horde of lawyers." Andrea poured peroxide onto the wet wood.

I straightened. "The First Response Unit is all trigger-happy jocks. They were still swimming on the high of taking out a bloodsucker. I listened to them pound bullets into the pavement for nearly five minutes. It was overkill. The only way their day could have gotten better would be if they could kill another vampire. Or perhaps several. If I called the Casino, no matter what I said, the People would send a vamp out. That's their default response. The PAD would shoot it, and the People would retaliate. It would spiral out of control, and I wanted everybody calm so I could keep Emily breathing."

"Did Ghastek say why they had a loose vamp running around?"

I grimaced. "Something about a pregnant girl fainting."

Andrea wrinkled her nose in a telltale shapeshifter sneer. "I smell bullshit."

She was right. Two navigators, both fainted while piloting the same vampire? Ghastek fainting? That just didn't happen.

I got a dry rag and wiped up the peroxide. The stain didn't look too bad now. Still, once blood stained something, it stayed there forever, even if you could no longer see it. My office was christened in Emily's blood. Yay.

I dumped the rag into the bucket and looked at Andrea. "My day didn't go well."

"I see that." "The PAD probably wants to shut me down, the People will find some way to blame me for the slaughter of the vampire and expect restitution, and Curran found out that I risked my life to save a Master of the Dead, which means I'll have a lot of explaining to do at dinner, because Curran believes I'm made of glass. If I had been shot and the Pack found out that the Beast Lord's mate and sugar woogums had been injured as a result of the People's fuckup, they would have collective apoplexy and storm the Casino."

"Aha," Andrea said. "I'm going to ignore that you just referred to yourself as `sugar woogums.' Is there a point to this story?"

"The point is, I have no patience left. You will tell me where you went when you vanished. Now."

Andrea raised her chin, as if daring me to take a swing. "Or?"

Or what exactly? "Or I will punch you right in the face."

Andrea froze. For a second I thought she would bolt for the door. She sighed instead. "Can I at least get some coffee first?"

WE SAT IN THE KITCHEN AT THE OLD, SCARRED TABLE, and I poured two-hour-old burned coffee into our mugs.

Andrea looked into her cup. "I was on the north side of the gap when your aunt appeared for her final showdown. I was still pissed off about ... things and it messed with my head. So I picked out a nice spot for myself on a pile of debris right on the lip of the gap and set up my rifle. It seemed like a good idea at the time. When your aunt made her grand entrance, I tried to shoot her in the eye. Except she moved and I missed. And then she started blasting fire all over. That's where the lack of clear head bit me in the ass--I had no exit strategy. She barbecued me like a rack of ribs. By the time they peeled me from that debris, I had third-degree burns over forty percent of my body. The pain was too much. I passed out. Apparently I changed into my other self in the hospital bed."

Shit. Lyc-V, the shapeshifter virus, stole pieces of the host's DNA and dragged them over to its next victim. Most of the time animal DNA transferred over from animals to human hosts, resulting in a wereanimal: a human who took on beast shape. Once in a while the process happened in reverse, and some unfortunate animal ended up as an animal-were. Most of them were pathetic creatures, confused, mentally shortchanged, and unable to comprehend the rules of human society. Laws meant nothing to them, and that made them unpredictable and dangerous. Regular shapeshifters murdered them on sight.

However, every rule had an exception, and Andrea's father, a hyenawere, had been one. Andrea remembered very little of her father. She once said he had the mental capacity of a five-year-old. That didn't prevent him from mating with Andrea's mother, who was a werehyena, or bouda, as they preferred to be called. His blood made Andrea beastkin, and she went to great lengths to hide it. She joined the Order as a human, subjected herself to torturous methods to pass all the necessary tests, graduated from the Academy, and excelled at being a knight. She was on the fast track climbing the Order's chain of command when a case went sour and got her transferred to Atlanta.

The head of Atlanta's Order chapter, Knight-protector Ted Moynohan, knew that something was wrong with Andrea, but he couldn't prove it, so he kept her on support duty. Ted didn't play nice with shapeshifters. In fact, he didn't even consider them human. That was one of the reasons I left. Despite it all, Andrea remained fanatically loyal to the Order. For her, the Order meant honor and duty and a sense of serving a higher cause. Shifting in the hospital bed had blown her closet door wide open.

Andrea kept her gaze firmly in her cup. Her face had a strained blank look, her jaw set, as if she were dragging a heavy boulder up a mountain and she was determined to make it to the top.

"The thing with your aunt didn't go well. Ted had called in reinforcements from everywhere. Twelve knights died, among them two masters-at-arms, one piner, and a master-at-craft. Seven others were severely injured. The Order conducted a hearing. Since my cover had been blown anyway, I thought it would be a good time to make a case that someone like me could be of use to the Order."

Now things made sense. This was her crusade. I should've seen it coming. We'd talked just before I quit the Order, and Andrea had argued against my quitting. She wanted me to stay and fight with her to change the Order for the better from within. I told her that even if I tried to change the Order, I couldn't. I wasn't a knight. My opinion carried no weight. But Andrea was a knight, a decorated veteran. She saw it as her chance to make her mark.

Andrea took a small sip of her coffee and coughed. "Damn, Kate, I know you're pissed but did you have to put motor oil into my drink?"

"That was the lousiest joke I've ever heard you make. Stop stalling. What happened?"

She glanced up and I almost did a double take. Her eyes were hollow and bitter.

"I had one of the best Order advocates in the South. He thought there was a chance we could make a difference. There are others like me in the Order. The not-quite-pure human. I wanted to make their lives better. He advised me to separate myself from the shapeshifters, so I wrote you that letter. I was going to bring Grendel back too, but we had to leave in a hurry, so I just took him with me and went to Wolf Trap."

Wolf Trap, Virginia. The Order's national headquarters. Everyone knowing Andrea was a beastkin. It must've been pure hell.

Andrea rubbed the rim of her cup, as if trying to remove some dirt only she could see. If she rubbed it any harder, she'd make a hole in it.

"We spent a month preparing twenty-four-seven, gathering documents, pulling all of my records. My advocate spoke for three hours at the hearing and made a very passionate, logical argument in my favor. We had charts, we had statistics, we had my service decorations on display. We had everything." A cold feeling sprouted in the pit of my stomach, telling me exactly how this would end. "And?"

Andrea squared her shoulders and opened her mouth.

Nothing came out. She clamped it shut.

I waited.

Her face paled. She sat rigid, the mouth of her line tense. A faint reddish glow tinted her eyes--the hint of hyena sneaking through under pressure.

Andrea unclenched her teeth. Her voice came out completely flat, sifted through the sieve of her will until every last hint of emotion had been scrubbed from it.

"They awarded me Master-at-Arms and retired me due to being mentally unfit for duty. The official diagnosis is posttraumatic stress disorder. The decision is final and I can't dispute it. I can't even accuse them of discrimination, because my final orders don't address the fact that I'm beastkin. They simply refused to acknowledge it, as if it weren't an issue."

Those fuckers. They didn't just throw her out like a piece of garbage, they sent a message with her. If you're not human, it doesn't matter how good you are. We don't want your ass.

"So." Andrea took a deep breath and pushed the words out. "I failed."

For Andrea the Order was more than simply a job. It was her life. She'd spent her childhood in a pack of shapeshifters who reviled her because her father was an animal and her mother was too weak to protect her. Every bone in Andrea's body had been broken before she was ten years old. Andrea rejected all things shapeshifter. She locked that part of herself deep inside and dedicated her existence to becoming completely human, to stepping between the weak and the strong, and she was damn good at it. Now the Order had made her into a pariah. It was a monumental betrayal.

"Everything is gone." Andrea forced a smile. Her face looked like it would shatter any second. "My job, my identity. If the cops had looked closer at my ID, they'd see it said RETIRED on it. People I thought were my friends won't talk to me, like I'm a leper. When I came back to Atlanta, I called down to the Chapter looking for Shane. He'd taken over the armory when I left. A couple of those weapons are my personal property. I want them back."

Shane was a typical knight: no family to tie him down, top physical condition, competent, by the book. He and I didn't get along, because he never could quite figure out where I fit into the Order's hierarchy. But he and Andrea had hit it off. They were colleagues. Buddies even.

"How is he?" I asked.

Outrage sparked in Andrea's eyes. "He wouldn't talk to me. I know he was there, because Maxine took the call and you know how her voice gets all distant when she is talking in someone's head at the same time? It was like that. She must've asked him if he wanted to talk to me and then she took a message. Shane hasn't called me back either."

"Shane is an asshole. I was riding back from a job once--it was raining so hard I could barely see--and he was jogging with his rucksack on. I asked him why. He told me that it was his day off and he was trying to take twenty seconds off his time so he could score an even three hundred on the PE scale. He has no brain of his own--he opens his mouth and the Order's Code comes out."

In a real fight the extra twenty seconds wouldn't help him. I could kill him in one. Shane lacked the predatory instinct that turned a well-trained man into a killer. He treated each fight as a tournament match, where someone was totaling his points. And despite his obvious zeal, the Order recognized it, too. All knights started out as knight-defenders. The Order gave you ten years to distinguish yourself, and if you failed, at the end of your dime you became a master-defender, a rank-and-file knight. Shane clearly aimed higher than that, but he was nine years into his tenure with the Order, and Ted showed no signs of promoting him.

Andrea crossed her arms. "Shane is not the point. I don't give a damn about Shane. He's just the straw that broke the camel's back. Anyway. After the hearing me and Grendel holed up in my place for a couple of weeks licking my wounds, but I can't hide in my hole forever. And talking to the fur-face only gets you so far. Also, he eats things that are bad for him, like rugs and bathroom fixtures. He chewed a hole in my kitchen floor. In a completely flat surface."

"It doesn't surprise me."

Just her and the freakishly large smelly poodle hiding in her apartment together. No friends, no visitors, nothing, just sitting there in her own misery, too proud to unload it on anybody else. It was something I would've done. Except now when I went home, someone was there waiting for me and he would turn the city inside out if I was more than a couple of hours late. But Andrea had nobody. Not even Raphael--she very carefully didn't mention his name.

"I've got a dog-training book," Andrea said. "It says Grendel needs mental stimulation, so I tried to train him, but I think he might be retarded. I figured you would want to see your dog eventually, so here we are. He's probably eaten my dashboard by now."

If she was lucky. If not, he would've also puked on the floor and then peed on it for a good measure. I leaned back. "So what now?"

Andrea shrugged her shoulders in a jerky, forced movement. Her voice was still a matter-of-fact monotone. "I don't know. The Order offered me a pension. I told them to shove it up their asses. Don't get me wrong, I've earned it, but I don't want it."

I wouldn't have taken it either. "I've got some money put away, so I don't have to look for work right this second. Maybe I'll take up fishing. I suppose eventually I'll have to find something, probably in law enforcement. Just not now. They'll do background checks and I don't want to deal with it."

"Would you like to work here with me?"

Andrea stared at me.

"We have no clients and the pay is shit."

She kept staring. I couldn't even tell if she heard me.

"Even if business were booming, I still couldn't afford to pay you what you're worth." No reaction. "But if you don't mind sitting in the office drinking motor oil coffee and bullshitting with me ..."

Andrea put her hands over her face.

Ah crap. What do I do now? Do I say something, do I not say anything?

I kept talking, keeping my voice as light as I could manage. "I have an extra desk. If the PAD comes to shut us down, I might need sniper support, and I can't shoot a cow from ten feet. We can turn our desks over and lob grenades at them when they storm the door ..."

Andrea's shoulders shook slightly.

She was crying. Fuck me. I sat there, not sure what to do with myself.

Andrea kept trembling, eerily quiet.

I got off my ass and came back with a handkerchief. Andrea took the hanky and pressed it to her face.

Pity would only make it worse. She wanted to keep her pride--it was all she had left and I had to help her preserve it. I pretended to drink my coffee and stare at my mug. Andrea pretended not to be crying, while trying to mop up her tears.

For a few minutes we sat like this, awkward and grimly determined to act like nothing was happening. If I glared at this mug a moment longer, it would burst into flames from the sheer tension.

Andrea blew her nose. Her voice came out slightly hoarse. "Do you even have anything to shoot the PAD with?"

"I have an armory upstairs. The Pack gave me some guns and ammo. It's in boxes to the left."

Andrea paused. "In cardboard boxes?"

"Yeah."

Andrea groaned. "Hey, guns aren't my thing. If they had brought me swords, that would be different. That's where you come--"

Andrea got up and hugged me. It was a split-second hug, and then she was off, going upstairs, handkerchief in hand.

This best friend thing was seriously kicking my ass.

Upstairs something clanged.

Okay. I had to get on with the program. I took her keys from the table and went to get Grendel out of her truck before he demolished it.