TWO WEEKS PASSED before I went back to the restaurant where Micah, Nathaniel, and Jason had flirted with the waiter and, all right, so had I. This time I was at a table not a booth, and all by my lonesome. Though honestly I’d eaten more lunches alone in my adult life than with anyone else. The workers at Animators Inc. had staggered schedules so no one had lunch at the same time. Sometimes I brought a book; sometimes it was just good to get out of the office. Today I had actually brought the latest copy of The Animator, our trade publication. There were a couple of articles I’d been wanting to read, so I’d order food, read, and hopefully learn something.

My waitress was petite, blond, and female when I ordered drinks, but when the drinks came my waiter was tall, black-haired, and male. It was the waiter from the time before. He put down my Coke, smiled, and said, “I traded tables with Cathy; I hope you don’t mind.”

I shook my head, smiled back. “I don’t mind.”

His gave me that even brighter smile that I remembered from last time. I did what I’d learned last time; I smiled back. It would take two more trips back and forth from the table for me to realize that he thought I was flirting with intent. It was when he stayed at my table talking after my food had arrived that I realized I’d made some kind of tactical error. It was one thing to flirt in the safety of my group, with Nathaniel and Jason to take some of the heat and Micah to look on, but a totally different experience with just me and the waiter. Crap.

His name was Ahsan. He was a college student. He was a theater major with a minor in literature. He was graduating this year and going on to start his master’s program. His goal was to teach at a college, unless his own acting career took off. I learned all this because I couldn’t figure out how to stop the conversation. I had flirted first, so it was my fault, and if something is my fault, I try to fix it. But Ahsan was like that scene in Fantasia with Mickey Mouse and the brooms carrying water buckets. I’d flirted and gotten the game started, but I had no idea how to stop it. I mean, I could have been blunt—my usual—but I had started it, and so was there a way to gracefully retreat? By now I was pretty certain that he thought I’d come back by myself so I could flirt more freely with him. Eek. I was remembering why I didn’t flirt for fun—because I didn’t know how. I could flirt with intent of dating or sex, but I sucked at casual flirting. Shit.

I would have tried to play the age difference card, but he was Nathaniel’s age exactly, so I couldn’t claim that an eight-year age difference weirded me out. I was debating on exactly what I could do to let him down gently, or whether I was irritated enough to let him down hard, when I felt energy. Not just regular human psychic energy, but shapeshifter energy. It was someone powerful enough that it raised the hair on my arms and crawled down my back, to see if it could find my own beasts. Those shadows inside me moved almost like a hand caressing deep within my body. God, he was powerful. Either he was a bad guy letting me know he was here, or he’d picked up my own beasts and thought I was a real shapeshifter. Some of their societies encouraged them to mark territory. One of the ways to do that without a fight was simply let the power out. It was a safe way of saying, Don’t fuck with me. Or, it was a bad guy, and a threat. I wouldn’t know until too late, so I treated it as bad guy: better paranoid than dead.

I smiled sweetly up at Ahsan and said, “I’m sorry, Ahsan, it’s been great talking to you, but I’ve got to get back to work. I need the check.”

“Can I have your number?”

“How about you give me your number, when you give me the check?”

He wasted more smiles on me, but hurried back through the busy restaurant to get the check and scribble his number on something. But at least the nice waiter wouldn’t be standing at my table when the bad guy walked up. There was the remote possibility that it was a sort of preliminary flirting attempt. Some of the really powerful lycanthropes were always searching for a mate to match their power. It helped you control your animal group and keep other shapeshifters from trying to mess with you. But this felt like too much for flirting. The only reason to do the power that was making the air thick and hot and hard to breathe was to mark his metaphysical territory and tell me that he was bigger and badder than I was. Fine with me. I took my gun out from under my arm, as discreetly as I could, and put my hand under the table, gun and all.

I didn’t try to draw my own version of shapeshifter power. One, I wasn’t as powerful as what was coming toward me. I knew that just from that roil of power. Two, sometimes when I drew my power out it got out of hand; just because I didn’t change shape didn’t mean the beasts inside me didn’t want out. They did. They’d damn near torn me apart from inside before I got a handle on the control. But it wasn’t just the pain; there was always the chance that one day I’d shift for real, and a crowded restaurant wasn’t the place for it. Also, if it was some misguided macho flirting attempt, then I would let him know he’d misread what I was, and maybe he’d go away.

There was so much power that I couldn’t tell what direction he was moving in from. It was like being in the middle of some kind of heat storm. Fuck this; I had a power colder than this, and I’d used it before to keep my own beasts from rising, because lycanthropy is a thing of life, so hot-blooded it’s almost more alive than the rest of us. I drew my necromancy, which was always with me. It was like opening a fist that I always had to keep so tightly closed. It was a colder power, closer to vampire than wereanimal. It swept outward through the tables; a few sensitives shivered, but it wouldn’t hurt them. It wouldn’t do anything to them, because nothing dead walked during the day aboveground, at least not in this town. I used my power like cold water on the heat of his power, because sex I knew; he tasted male. It worked even better than I’d hoped, like water on fire, so that the “blaze” he’d thrown out around him like a distraction went out, and only the core burn was still bright. I saw him walking through the tables toward me, and his body was edged with a wavering shine of power like some kind of ghostly heat. It was an interesting effect, as if my necromancy pushed his power back. I hadn’t visualized it working quite like that, but I filed it away as useful.

I looked at him, and he looked back. We looked at each other across the few yards of space. The moment our eyes met, I knew this wasn’t about romance, even shapeshifter romance. He was tall, a shade over six feet, unless he was wearing boots with heels, then he was just under. His hair was pale and shaved close to his head. It was oddly military, but he didn’t seem like a soldier, or not one that the government trained. He stood there in his black suit jacket, black button-up shirt, and black jeans. Even his belt buckle was black, probably because silver things attract bullets in a firefight. He started walking toward me again, his big hands out to his sides showing him unarmed, but I wasn’t fooled; the suit jacket didn’t fit quite right on his left hip, which made him right-handed, and the gun big enough to ruin the line of the jacket.

He moved carefully toward my table, hands still out at his sides, palms forward so I could see he held nothing. But I knew better; he was a shapeshifter, which meant that bare-handed he was stronger, faster, and more deadly than any human in here. They didn’t need claws and teeth to break your neck, just speed and strength, and that he would have.

“That’s close enough,” I said, before he got quite to the table; if I could have figured out a way to keep him farther back without yelling and drawing attention to us, I would have done it.

He stopped obediently, but his power slapped out at mine, and my nostrils flared with the scent of him. He’d had to call more of his beast to chase back my colder power. I smelled the thick, heavy, heat-washed scent of lion. The lion inside me raised her head and looked up at me, if something that lived inside your body could look up at you. It was the way my mind visualized it so I could “see” the beasts and not lose what was left of my sanity.

“Good kitty,” I said, and I wasn’t talking to the pale gold image in my head. That image sniffed the air and gave a low purr. She liked what she smelled, which meant he was as powerful as I feared. The lions, especially the lions, demand a partner that’s strong. It probably had something to do with the fact that real lion males will kill all the cubs when they take over a new pride; when your babies are at stake, you want a male that can defend them.

The man’s thin lips gave an even thinner smile, but he nodded, as if somehow knowing he was a cat had won me a point. He sniffed the air and gave me a more serious look. He smelled my lioness, and it seemed to surprise him. He hadn’t known that I held lion inside me: good. It meant he didn’t know everything about me: even better.

His eyes actually slid to the side, and I fought not to look where he was looking. I gave only the edge of my vision in that direction. He was too close to me for me to risk taking my gaze off of him completely. He probably wasn’t going to jump me here, but I wasn’t sure, so I only saw Ahsan working his way toward me out of the corner of my eye. The shapeshifter turned and watched him completely, not looking at me at all. Was it an insult, or a show of trust?

Ahsan paused before he got to the table, shivering a little. He felt some of the psychic energy wafting around us. He got a point for that. Psychic nulls don’t survive well around me. I didn’t want to date him, but I didn’t want to get him killed, either. He glanced at the man still standing near my table, but not “at” my table. It was suddenly not just a dangerous situation, but socially awkward. Perfect.

Ahsan looked from one to the other of us, his smile faltering. “Is this another . . . friend?” He hesitated way too long before settling on that last word.

“He’s not a friend,” I said.

“Coworker,” the shapeshifter said, voice absolutely ordinary, even pleasant. “I just saw Anita getting ready to leave and thought I might get her table. There isn’t another empty one.”

Ahsan relaxed. I didn’t, because the stranger had managed to calm the waiter and subtly threaten everyone in the restaurant. I fought to let my breath out slow and even, and kept the gun aimed on the main body mass of the stranger. Though with his height, and the table height, he’d better hope I didn’t have to pull the trigger, because the main mass I would hit was low, as in below the waist. To hit higher I’d have to be willing to show the gun to the restaurant, and I was hoping not to have to do that. He was right; the restaurant was packed full of innocent bystanders. Packed full of human bodies that the silver-plated bullets would kill just as surely as the shapeshifter; fuck. Not to mention that the amount of power he’d displayed meant he could probably put out just claws on his human hands without having to shift completely, which would have given me time to shoot him. But claws are like switchblades—fast. He could slice up the humans faster than I could kill him. The situation was just chock-full of bad choices.

The lioness inside me began to pace slowly upward, as if she really could. I knew it was a comforting illusion my mind created, but she walked up a path, and that meant she was coming closer to the surface of me. I did not need to try to shift in the restaurant. It would make me unable to concentrate on the bad guy. I worked at calming my pulse, slowing my breathing. I could control this.

Ahsan wasted another brilliant smile on me, and I fought to smile back as he handed me the faux-leather holder that contained the check. I had one of those moments that no one ever seems to have in movies. How did I pay the check with one hand while keeping the gun aimed in the right direction with the other hand, and actually keep my attention on someone only a few feet away who could probably move in a blur so fast it couldn’t be followed with the human eye?

I opened the holder with my left hand, keeping my right and the gun under the table. If I hadn’t thought it would make Ahsan call the cops, or talk to a manager who would call the cops, I might have flashed the gun to see if that cooled the flirting, but I wasn’t ready to escalate—yet. There was an extra piece of paper folded in with the check. Normally, I’d have unfolded it and looked, but I was trying to keep my attention on the shapeshifter. I took the paper and asked Ahsan, “Your number?”

He nodded, and smiled more happily.

I knew my smile wasn’t up to his, and I thought, What would Nathaniel do? I did my best to put that look into my eyes, but the smile that went with it was not Nathaniel’s, it was all mine, a little bit of come-hither and a little bit of threat, as if to say, When you take a bite I might bite back. It had been Jason who first explained my smile to me, but it was an honest smile, my life being the way it is. It didn’t dissuade Ahsan one little bit. His smile went from bright to serious, and his eyes got that look that a man gets sometimes when he sees something he really likes. Great, now I’d been too intriguing. I should not have to flirt with someone while I’m trying to threaten someone else with a gun; it was too hard to do both.

I glanced at the shapeshifter, and he was smiling wider, as if he understood my discomfort, or maybe I just amused him. But there was wariness in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I’d done something that made him more nervous. If I could only figure out what, maybe I could do it again. Once I’d been able to use my petite, female packaging to fool the bad guys, but my reputation among the preternatural set had forced most bad guys to ignore the package and treat me like what I was: a predator that specialized in other predators.

I did the only thing I could think of: I slipped Ahsan’s number into my jacket pocket, and fished out the credit card I’d tucked in the same pocket. I put it in the little faux-leather holder and handed it back to him. I smiled one more time, turned back to my “coworker,” and said, “I didn’t think you worked today.”

Ahsan took the hint and left us alone.

He started walking slowly closer, hands still out. I didn’t tell him to stop, because I realized that the only way to make certain where my bullets landed was to have him so close I couldn’t miss. I was gambling that my own faux-shapeshifter speed would let me shoot him before he killed me. Maybe he wasn’t here to kill me, but whatever he was here for it was nothing good. I would have bet serious money on that.

He got to the edge of the table, hands spread a little more, and said, “May I sit down, because I’d rather not have you shoot me where you’re pointing right now.” He smiled happily as he said it, but the smile never touched his eyes. I knew that smile, those cold eyes. I’d worked with too many men who had it, and seen it in the mirror too often.

“Sure,” I said, “sit there.” I nodded toward the chair that would put him beside me, rather than across.

He started to tuck the chair closer to the table, and I said, “No, keep far enough away from the table so I can see that your gun stays in its holster.”

He gave a little nod, and angled his chair more toward me, one ankle on his knee, so that it was that very guy stance that some did, as if they wanted to frame their groin for inspection. I wasn’t interested, but the lioness was, because she was one of the few beasts inside me that didn’t have an equivalent on the outside. It meant she was way more interested in other lions than was comfortable for me. There was one werelion who was applying pretty hard for the job, but I kept avoiding him. I had enough men in my life.

I had slowed the lioness with my breathing and my pulse, but the image that she put in my head was not very human. She wanted me to drop to my knees and rub across him. She wanted more of his scent on us, more of his skin on us. With a gun in my hand, it was easier to push the thoughts down. I let her know that we were in danger, and that did seem to calm all my beasts. They understood danger, and through me, they knew what a gun could do.

The man kept his hands on his knees, and I moved so that the gun was angled more solidly at his chest. There’d be no collateral damage at this distance, because fast as he might be, he wasn’t faster than a speeding bullet from less than three feet.

“Just so we’re clear,” I said, “if you try to move fast, I will simply pull the trigger, because I know once you move for real it’s my only hope at this range.”

He nodded, still smiling, so that from a distance it would look like we were being friendly. “You moved me in close so you wouldn’t accidentally hit the nice humans. I smell you, Anita; I know I’m not the only kitty-cat at the table. It’s a weakness to care too much about your pets.”

I frowned. “Do you mean humans?”

He nodded, still smiling.

“I carry a badge; it’s sort of my job to care about them.”

“First, let’s be very clear. If anything happens to me, then your people die.”

“What people? You mean the people in the restaurant?”

“No, but knowing you care does make it easier.” He nodded a little behind me. “It’s a visual.”

“If I even feel you move too much, I will just pull this trigger.” The lioness in me snarled at the air, and the edge of it trickled out between my lips. It made the threat better, but it was not a good sign for my control. One problem at a time, Anita, one problem at a time. Talking to myself wasn’t a good sign, either, but sometimes using my own name reminded me that I wasn’t the beast, but the person.

“I believe you,” he said, voice dropping lower. “I will sit very, very still, kitten.”

I would have protested the nickname, but I had called him kitty first. I turned and found Ahsan almost at our table. He smiled, thinking I was looking for him, and in a way I was, because there was a second bad guy behind him. He had a blond skater’s cut, complete with a wedge of bangs that covered his right eye completely. He wore an oversized tank top and baggy shorts, which could hide a lot of weapons. How did I know he was a bad guy? Maybe it was the gun in his hand that he hid under the oversized shirt. The shirt was so big it hung off one shoulder and showed off that his upper body hit the gym a lot.

If I’d had concentration left for it, I’d have tried to taste whether he was shapeshifter or human. If he was shifter he was trying to hide his energy, or the energy coming off his friend drowned him out. Either way, he was following behind Ahsan, and he had his gun out. He was wearing exercise gloves like for biking or weight lifting, the ones that covered all the front of the hand. Leather gloves in this heat—seriously paranoid, or seriously had his prints in the crime-stopper databases. Either way, I got to watch him follow the waiter to “our” table. The threat was no longer subtle.

“Nick,” the man at the table called out, in a happy voice, “thought I’d have to eat lunch alone.”

The second man grinned at us both, and it reminded me of Jason’s grin. It even filled his blue eyes with laughter. He was damn near six feet and not built like Jason at all, but there was something about him that reminded me; maybe it was a meaner edge of that urge Jason always had to fight off, to keep pushing a situation. That was not a good personality trait in someone with a gun.

Ahsan made room for Nick to take the seat nearest the waiter, so that he and the first guy were sitting across from each other, and so Nick’s gun was still very close to Ahsan. I still hadn’t figured out how to sign the check one-handed, I couldn’t keep the gun pointed at both of them anyway. I’d gone from having some tactical advantage to none. Shit.

Ahsan had pity on me and held the pieces of paper while I signed, and I even managed to give him a generous tip. I mean, if I was going to get him shot it was the least I could do. His fingers brushed my hand, and I realized he thought I’d given him an excuse to touch me. Normally, it would have bugged me, but I had bigger problems than his fingers tracing over my hand. I even let him take my hand and give it a little squeeze. God knows what he might have said, but he glanced at my two “coworkers” and just wasted one more really good smile on me. I tried to return it, but wasn’t sure I managed. His smile didn’t fade, though; maybe he assumed that I didn’t want to show too much around my “coworkers”?

“He’s cute,” Nick said, in a voice that matched the hair and the clothes, but his hand, under the table, was pointing at me. I didn’t have to see the gun to know it was there, and that he’d hit me somewhere between stomach and chest.

“He’s okay,” I said.

“Oh, come on, don’t play coy. He’s hot.”

“Enough, Nick, this is business.”

“Just because it’s business doesn’t mean it can’t be fun.”

“Nick would enjoy killing your waiter, Anita.”

“Yes, I would,” Nick said, and smiled when he said it, all the way up to his baby blues.

“Sociopath much?” I asked, smiling sweetly, my gun still pointed at the other man, because I wasn’t sure what Nick would do if he saw my arm move in his direction.

“All the damn time,” he said, cheerfully.

“What do you want?” I said, trying to keep an eye on both of them for movement and knowing the moment they flanked me I was not going to win. I could take one of them, but not both, not like this. My pulse tried to speed up, and that made the lioness that had been behaving herself so nicely begin to walk up that metaphysical path. If I lost too much control of my body, she’d ride my pulse and breathing as near the surface of me as she could get. The beasts found my inability to shapeshift very frustrating, and that could lead to some very painful moments for me while they tried to claw their way out. I hadn’t had any of them do that in a while, but the bad guy would have to be a werelion. Worst choice possible; I might have thought the bad guys did that on purpose, but the first one had been genuinely surprised to smell lion on the air. It was just a bad coincidence.

I heard Nick take in a deep breath. I didn’t have to see the movement to know he was sniffing the air.

“Don’t move toward her,” the first man said; “we’re all going to be very calm, and that way we walk out of here without hurting any of the nice people.”

“She smells like lion,” Nick said, “but it’s different, somehow.”

“Shut the fuck up, Nicky.” The first guy was angry, and that made his power flare again, which made my lion trot faster. I tried to call my necromancy stronger, to calm all this hot-bloodedness, but Nick chose that moment to let me know that he was powerful, too.

Nick’s power smashed into me like a blow. It stole my breath, so that the blood in my head was suddenly loud and roaring. The lioness snarled, because it wasn’t just me it had hit.

“We’re working, Nicky, not dating,” the first man said, and there was an edge of growl to his voice that you might have mistaken for just a low bass voice, but I knew better. My lioness knew better.

My breath came back in a small gasp. “What the hell was that for?”

“You put your power all over her,” Nicky said, and he sounded sullen. He had enough power to be in the running for top lion, but there were other things to consider besides brute power. Sullen is not my favorite thing.

“You know why I did that,” first man said.

The lioness began to pace more slowly up that hidden path. I felt caution in her, and that wasn’t her usual thought process. Something about the second lion’s energy had made her think more deeply than normal. I would have loved to ask why, or what, but she was truly animal and they didn’t think like that. Something had made her hesitant, almost afraid. But what?

“Yeah, it was part of the plan,” Nicky said, “supposed to show her how powerful you are so she’d cooperate. Did you feel what she could do with her powers over the dead?” Nicky shivered, and I hoped his finger didn’t spasm on the trigger. “It was like water on fire, but it was power. So much power, Jacob, so much power.” Again, he did that shiver, but this time he did move his arm under the table so the gun was pointed at the floor. I appreciated the caution, and it made me think better of Nicky’s wisdom score.

Jacob’s power lashed out, not at me, but at his friend. I got the curl of it like a hot wave washing against my legs. It made me startle, and it was my turn to move the gun to the floor. “I don’t mind shooting you, but I’d like it to be on purpose, not because you’ve made me twitch.”

“Then keep it pointed at the floor,” Nicky said. His power smashed out at his friend, and again I caught that glancing blow. They were both very powerful; it was just a matter of flavor, not strength.

“Stop this, Nick,” Jacob said.

“Do you know how long it’s been?” Nick asked.

“Shut up,” Jacob said, and then he turned to me. “We knew about the wolves and the leopards, and we heard you cut quite a swath up in Vegas through the weretigers. You’ve got Jason Schuyler for your wolf to call, and Nathaniel Graison for your leopard, and even a leopard king in Micah Callahan, and we hear you brought some tigers back from Vegas and have bonded with them. You stole one of Chicago’s master vampire’s werelions to come down and take over your local pride. He’s your Rex, your lion king. You’re supposed to be all mated up.”

I didn’t like him listing my boyfriends, not one little bit, but he was wrong on one thing. Haven, the local Rex, was not my mate. I had slept with him, but he didn’t share well enough. He’d proven that when he slept over one night and started a fight with Micah, Nathaniel, and me the next morning. Haven had been surprised that I’d joined in on the other men’s side. He’d said, “The women don’t interfere.” I told him he had the wrong girl, and to get out. He’d actually apologized, which for him was a lot, but he was still not on my favorites list. “You got a point?” I asked the current problem werelion.

“Your Rex is lying about you and him. Your lioness doesn’t belong to him.”

“I don’t belong to anyone.”

“Liar, you belong to a lot of people, but you don’t belong to Haven. He’s put out the word that no more werelions need apply for your bed, because you’re his.”

“My dance card is full, so if his lies keep the others away, fine with me.”

“But it isn’t fine with your lion,” he said. He shook his head. “We didn’t know you were an unmated werelion. We wouldn’t have taken the job if we had.”

“Why not, and what job?” I asked.

“We’re being unprofessional, and I apologize for that, but you’ve caught us off guard.”

“Why are you here, Jacob?” I asked; maybe if I used his name it would speed things along.

“I’m going to reach into my jacket for a cell phone. I have pictures on it to show you. You aren’t going to like them. You’re going to get angry with us, but remember we were hired to do this, it’s nothing personal.” He looked past us. “Your waiter is coming back.”

“He’s probably going to take your orders,” I said.

“Would it really bother you if I killed him?” Nicky asked.

I finally realized that this problem, whatever it really was, wasn’t going to be settled by guns at the table. I stopped worrying about keeping an eye on both of them and just looked at Nicky. I gave him the full weight of my unfriendly gaze.

He blinked the one big blue eye I could see. “Nice look. It really has me quaking in my boots,” he said.

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” I said.

“Tease,” he said, low.

Ahsan was back at the table. He wasted smiles on me and I was torn between wanting him away from the table and warning him. “Can I take drink orders?”

“No,” Jacob said, “we got called back to work, so no time for lunch. Just give us a few minutes to fill Anita in on the problem, and you’ll get your table back.”

He nodded, put his tablet away, and flashed me another brilliant smile. I tried to give one back, but knew my eyes didn’t hold it. I couldn’t pretend that well. He left us alone, and he would tell the rest of the wait-staff to avoid the table.

“Show me the pictures,” I said.

Jacob spread his suit jacket carefully with two fingers and reached in just as gingerly with his other hand to lift out a cell phone. It was another one with a large screen like Bennington had had for his wife’s pictures.

“If you do anything violent, we will hurt some of these nice people,” Jacob said.

“I’ll rip the hot waiter’s throat open, just for you,” Nicky said, almost a whisper, and smiled while he said it.

“I’m more practical, Anita. I’ll hurt whoever is close,” Jacob said.

I nodded. “The foreplay is getting tiresome, just show me.” But I didn’t like the buildup; it promised that whatever they were going to show me would be bad. My pulse was speeding up, but the lioness was not hurrying toward the surface of me. She was afraid; afraid of these men, these lions. She was attracted to male werelions, never afraid. What was wrong with these two that she could sense?

Jacob made the screen light up, pressed something on it, and said, “When you want to see the next picture, just slide this with your finger.”

The first picture was of Micah, Nathaniel, and me on the sidewalk holding hands; laughing. The next picture showed Jason leaning in from just behind us, me leaning back listening. We were all smiling. The next picture was a bad angle, and too far away, but it showed us at the booth in this restaurant the day we all came in together. I watched the pictures of that lunch slide across the screen.

“Is there a point to this?” I asked.

“Keep going,” Jacob said.

I went back to the screen and found pictures of Micah driving, going into office buildings, going into the television station for an interview. The next images were of Nathaniel going into Guilty Pleasures at night for work, going down the alley where the dancers’ entrance was, then daylight and going in to practice the new dance routine on the stage without customers. Jason was in some of those shots. Jason going into the club at night and driving his new car around town. Jason parking at the Circus of the Damned parking lot, and pictures following him all the way to the door.

I swallowed past the pulse that was trying to come out my throat, and gave a cold, blank face to them. “So you’ve been following my boyfriends, what of it?”

“You’re almost to the end of the pictures,” he said.

I kept sliding my finger and moving the pictures. I saw Micah walking down the sidewalk, toward an office building. I knew he had meetings all day. But this time there was a picture, then a picture of the camera used to take it; same street, same everything, but a second camera taking an image of the other camera. Then the next image was of a rifle, a very nice sniper rifle. The next image was back on Micah, and the last shot was of the camera and the rifle side by side.

“Is that it?” I asked, and my voice was squeezed down tight.

“The other two are still asleep. They worked last night, but when they get up we’ll have men on them, too.”

“You obviously know our schedules. Now what do you want?” I put the phone down and let him slide it across the table to himself.

“First, if we don’t check in with our sniper, he shoots Micah when he comes out from the meeting.”

I nodded. “So I can’t shoot you here.”

“No,” he said.

I nodded, small little nods over and over. I wasn’t thinking very clearly, but I had enough sense to put my gun back in its holster. It went in smoothly from all that practice, even while the rest of me was frozen. I couldn’t think. It was like a great roaring silence in my head, but it wasn’t quiet. It was filled with a sound like wind, or storm.

“Good,” Jacob said, “come with us, quietly, and no one has to get hurt.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“We want you to raise the dead for us.”

“You know you can just make an appointment for that.”

“You’ve already turned the job down,” he said.

That made me look at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Come outside with us, let us pat you down for weapons, and we’ll take you to our employer. Then it will all be explained.”

“I would do it before your Nimir-Raj comes out from his meetings,” Nicky said. “You want us to call our friend the sniper before he comes outside again.”

I stared at him, did the long blink as if I were having trouble focusing. I guess I was; I felt damn near light-headed. I never fainted, but part of my brain was thinking about it. Crap. I had to do better than this, had to be stronger than this.

I nodded again and got up, but I had to touch the table to steady myself.

“You’re not going to faint, are you?” Nicky said.

“No,” I said. I took in a lot of air, let it out slow, did it a second time. “I don’t faint.” I started walking, and really wished I were in jogging shoes rather than high heels, but you never plan to be kidnapped, so you’re never dressed for it.

I caught my heel on a chair leg, and Nicky grabbed my arm. All touch makes metaphysical powers more. My lioness snarled inside me, her power lashing out, and a slap like claws, saying, Get back!

Nicky staggered a little, but didn’t let go of my arm. He squeezed hard enough for it to hurt, and growled out, “That hurt!”

“It was supposed to,” I said.

“Let her go, Nicky.” Jacob was up with us, using his taller body to try to block the view.

Nicky growled at him, still holding my arm.

The lioness and I were in agreement, as we lashed out at them both. The visual was of claws slicing at them. They both reacted as if the pretend claws had weight to them. Jacob touched Nicky’s wrist. “Let her go, now, before we cause a scene.”

“She started it.”

“Bullshit,” I said.

Jacob made the other one let me go. They stepped back, gave me some room. But both their beasts were watching me. It was that feeling that you might get on the grasslands surrounded by all that gold, wavy grass, and you stop because you feel something watching you. I knew I had not just the men’s attention, but also that part of them that turned furry once a month was staring holes in me.

I heard, felt, smelled my lion’s thought. Make them fight among themselves, save the cubs. It wasn’t words, but it was emotion that translated into words, because I was human and I needed them. But the idea was good; we had enough power to make them fight among themselves—maybe that could save Micah, and Jason, and Nathaniel? But not yet; I wanted them to call off the first sniper from Micah. I needed to cooperate long enough for them to do that. I told my lioness, Patience, and she hunkered down in the long grass and began to wait. She was a stealth predator; they understand patience.

I was out the doors, slipping my sunglasses on against the bright summer sun. I stopped at the top of the steps.

“Keep going,” Nicky said.

“Shouldn’t one of you lead, since I don’t know which car is yours?”

They exchanged a glance, as if they hadn’t thought of it. I had shaken them, or the lioness had. I hoped that would help us. Nicky led the way and Jacob dropped beside me. I’d honestly expected it to be the other way around, but it didn’t matter to me.

“I’m cooperating; how about calling your sniper now?”

“When we’ve searched you for weapons, and we’re in the car.”

I let out a breath, nodded, and kept walking. I wanted to scream at them to call off their sniper, but they were recovering from the metaphysical surprise my lion had thrown them. They were gathering their plan around them again, sinking into it. I debated on whether I wanted them back in control. For now, I gained nothing by poking at them, so I followed skater boy to a big SUV. They had parked at the edge of the lot, so that thick trees and bushes were against the far side, so when they took me around to the passenger side, no one could see them frisk me.

“Lean on the truck,” Jacob said.

I put my hands on the side of the very clean SUV. There was a rental sticker in the window. I was thinking again, noticing things again. I could do this. We’d all get out alive, and that thought, that hope, was what they were counting on. Hope is a wonderful thing, but it can be used by very bad people to get you to cooperate until it’s too late. You think you’ll find a way out until it’s too late to save yourself, too late to save others, too late for anything that matters. Serial killers do that a lot, put a weapon on you in a public area, and then make you get into their car, promising not to hurt you. They lie. The general rule is that if someone puts a weapon on you in a busy area where you can yell for help, yell. Because once they get you alone, what they plan to do to you is a lot worse than getting shot, or stabbed, or a quick death. You never let the bad guys run the show, ever. I knew that. I really knew that, but I leaned against the truck and prepared to let them take my weapons. I knew I’d do what they wanted until they made that first call to the sniper on Micah. I had no other options—yet. And that bastard hope made me think I’d have another chance later to do more, even while the other part of me snickered cynically in my brain. I was acting like a civilian, and though I’d never worn a uniform of any kind, civilian was not what I was.

Jacob started patting me down, starting at my wrists under the suit jacket. He paused. “I can rip the jacket, or you can put your arms back and I can slip it off; your choice.”

I put my arms back, and he slipped the jacket down, surprisingly gently. The jacket revealed the knife sheaths on both forearms with their slender silver-coated daggers. It also showed the shoulder holster against the rich blue of the tank top, and the Smith and Wesson at the small of my back.

“This is what you wear for every day?” Jacob asked.

“Not usually, but I’m expecting a call about a vampire execution out of state.”

“When and from whom?” he asked.

Whom? What kind of bad guy uses whom? But I didn’t say it out loud; I wanted this to go fast so he’d make that phone call. “I don’t know for sure, and the marshal in charge of the case.”

“That’s a custom shoulder rig,” Nicky said.

“My shoulders are narrow enough I have to have custom to fit anyway, so I put on some extras.”

“They aren’t narrow; you’re just small,” he said.

“Fine, take the weapons, and make the damn call.”

“Some girls just can’t take a compliment,” Nicky said, leaning in close enough to put his face against my hair, as his hands found the gun at the small of my back, and pulled it from its holster. He rubbed his cheek against my hair like he was scent-marking me. I think he meant it to be irritating, or maybe even threatening; some women would have taken it that way, but the moment enough of his body touched mine with no cloth, no gloves in between, the power flared between us like a hot wind.

I expected him to pull back, but he didn’t, he sort of collapsed around me, hugging me to him with my own gun in his hand. Everywhere we touched the power grew, as if we’d burn if we touched too long. But fire wasn’t the right analogy, because it didn’t hurt. It felt good.

“Stop it,” I said, and made sure there was anger in the words.

He rubbed his face against mine harder, his lips pressing along my cheek. “It feels good; I can smell that you think so, too.”

“Get the fuck off me!” But anger wasn’t the right thing, either, because my beasts all reacted to anger. I had a moment of those other shadow beasts moving in the dark of me, but the lioness shoved them back. I watched her pull her lips away from those sharp teeth and draw the air into her mouth, scenting over her Jacobson’s Organ, so she could literally taste his power on the air.

He had his arms pinning mine, but only above the elbows, so that I could draw one of the knives and start to turn it into his arm. I wasn’t thinking about anything but getting him off me. Another hand grabbed mine, knife and all, and more power flared from that hand, too, so that the three of us were suddenly bathed in the power as if we’d all three fallen into a warm bath all at once. Our heads were below the water and we were drowning in the power. My necromancy folded away. It was just gone. It had given me a little more control of the lion in me; now I was bare to the power, to the pull of them.

I heard Jacob say, “Jesus,” and then his power smashed into all of it and it was like a fist smashing a house of cards. It scattered the power, stripped the energy, and shut down both of them. He tried to shut down my beast, but he couldn’t. She snarled at him inside my head, and the sound trickled out my mouth.

He pulled both my blades from their sheaths and threw them on the ground, so he could tear Nicky away from me. Nicky went into a crouch, hands at his sides. He had both my guns in his hands, but he threw them to the ground in the bushes beside the knives so they faced each other bare-handed.

I thought about going for a weapon, but they’d missed the big knife that sat under my hair and down my spine; if they didn’t touch me again I wouldn’t be unarmed. And I was still too busy trying to control the animal in me to mess with their fight. The lioness’s emotions/thoughts were loud in my head. She thought they were strong, and liked it, and wanted to make them fight over us and save our family. I tried to explain to the beast that we needed them alive until they called the sniper, but it was too complex for my lion. I leaned against the truck and concentrated on controlling my breathing, quieting my pulse, and having her hunker back down into the grass. It wasn’t time to make our rush; we’d miss our prey. It was too soon; save your energy for the last big run. That she understood. Conservation of energy is a very real concept for a predator. We needed to wait for our timing to be just right.

“We are not going to fight over her, Nicky. Remember who you are. Remember what you are.”

Nicky blinked the one eye that wasn’t hidden in his skater-cut bangs; it had gone to lion amber. He growled at his friend.

“Nicky, we’re on a job.”

Nicky closed his eyes, fists at his side. He hugged himself tight. “Your eyes have changed, Jacob. Your fucking eyes shifted.”

The words made me look at the other man’s face and see him blinking pale yellow eyes. His own eyes had been a pale enough gray that it hadn’t been as obvious as Nicky’s eyes going from blue to amber. They both almost shifted. Lycanthropes as powerful as they were didn’t lose control in a public parking lot; they just didn’t.

Jacob turned those lion eyes toward me, his human face holding them like they belonged, or maybe I’d just spent too much time looking at Micah’s leopard eyes to think it was weird. “You’re in heat.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know what you mean by that.”

“Yeah, you do,” he said, voice getting quieter, more controlled. He bent to pick up the guns and said, “Take off the arm sheaths so we can put the blades in them. If you do what the client wants, you get it all back at the end of the night.”

I honestly didn’t know what it meant for a werelion to be in heat, but I didn’t debate with him, just started unbuckling the wrist sheaths. “Call your sniper off. It’s not my fault that we’ve been delayed.”

He nodded, shoving one of the guns into his waistband and handing the other to Nicky, who took it and tucked it out of sight under the baggy tank top. Jacob got his cell phone out and called. “Stand down for now. She’s cooperating.” Silence. “Yes, keep on him, but just observe.” He looked at me; his eyes had gone back to human gray. “I know you don’t have complete control when you’re in heat, but if you do that again in an enclosed space like a car, we won’t make our deadlines. That means that the next call that I need to make to the snipers on your men might not get made in time. Do you understand that?”

“You’re saying that you both might forget your job and we’d just fuck our way through the deadlines while my boyfriends died.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying, so it’s in everyone’s best interest if you keep a lid on it.”

“I will do my best,” I said, and meant it. I handed him one of the knife sheaths. We were both careful not to touch bare skin to bare skin as he took it from me.

“Look at me,” Nicky said.

“Don’t push at this,” Jacob said.

“Lions are weird about weaknesses; I just want her to see. Maybe if her beast knows, she won’t want me anymore and the power won’t turn into a fight between us.”

Jacob nodded. “Good idea.”

“What’s a good idea?” I asked.

Nicky lifted that long fall of blond bangs away from the right side of his face. His right eye was missing. Burn scars traced over the empty socket, caressed the edge of his cheek, and covered where his right eyebrow should have been. I looked because he seemed to want me to. I didn’t look away because I was sharing my bed with a vampire that made Nicky’s scar look like child’s play, though the whole eye destroyed was worse. Asher had all the parts he was supposed to have; just some of them were nestled in burn scars.

Nicky blinked the one big blue eye at me, then let the hair fall back into place, and just like that it was hidden. “Most women, especially women, look disgusted or scared. You don’t look either.”

I shrugged. “If you know everyone in my bed then you know scars aren’t a deal breaker for me.”

“You mean the vampire with the holy water scars,” he said.

I nodded.

He seemed to think about that for a few seconds, then nodded. “Guess you’ve seen worse.”

“It’s not about worse, Nicky; it’s about the fact that the scar is just another part of you. Not bad, not good, just you.” I held my left arm out so the flat of the arm showed. I pointed to the mound of scar tissue at the bend. “Vampire.” I touched the claw marks next. “Shapeshifted witch.” I traced the knife wound that made the cross-shaped burn scar a little crooked now. “Knife and burn were both human servants of different master vampires.” I touched the flat, slick scar on the upper part of the arm. “Bad guy’s girlfriend shot me.” If I hadn’t been afraid I’d flash the knife sheath under my tank top, I’d have showed him my collarbone scar. “I’ve got a few others, but we’d have to be better friends for me to show you those.”

He studied my face. “Most werelion females don’t want a one-eyed mate.”

“It’s an old scar,” I said. “I’m assuming you’ve compensated by now.”

He nodded. “But I’ve got a blind side in both forms; it’s a problem in a fight.”

“I fight my own battles most of the time.”

He grinned. “Which is why you don’t have a mate yet, and why your lioness is in heat. If you’d picked a mate, it wouldn’t have happened.”

I would talk to our local lions about leaving that part out, but in their defense I wouldn’t have believed them. I’d have just thought it was Haven trying to get back in my pants after the fight we had. No, I couldn’t blame this on them.

“It’s not just heat,” Jacob said, “it’s fucking powerful heat. No female has ever made me lose it like that.”

“So neither of you has mates, either,” I said.

“She’s right, it’s not just her being picky that made this happen.”

“It’s said a man of a certain age and property is in want of a wife,” I said.

“Did you just quote Pride and Prejudice?” Jacob asked.

“I guess I did, embarrassing, sorry.”

“I wouldn’t have known what book, or who you quoted,” Nicky said, not like he was happy with it.

“But I get what you mean with the quote,” Jacob said; “my hair is starting to gray and I’ve never taken a real mate. I’ve never committed to a territory and my pride is all males, except for one, and she’s not into guys, so it’s not a problem.”

“We travel too much for women and kids,” Nicky said.

Jacob nodded. “That’s what I keep telling myself. Now get in the car, Anita. We’ve still got a job to do. Remember what I said about controlling your side of the problem. Nothing we could do would be worth the lives of your lovers.”

“Agreed,” I said.

He handed me my jacket. I slipped it back over the empty shoulder rig, but still had the big knife down my spine. He held the passenger door for me, and I didn’t protest the gallantry, though under the circumstances it seemed weirder than normal. Nicky got in behind me and leaned against the back of my seat. “I wish you weren’t the job, Anita.”

“Me, too,” I said, and meant it, though probably not for the same reason he did.

Jacob got in behind the wheel and said, “Buckle up; it’ll slow you down by a few seconds if you decide to do something stupid.”

I buckled up. “So we go on with your plan?”

“Yes,” he said, “nothing’s changed.”

“So you’ll still kill the people I love if I don’t raise the dead for your client?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Yes,” Nicky said from behind me.

“Then we’re clear,” I said.

Jacob started the engine. “Yeah, we’re clear. You’ll kill us if you can, and if you’re sure it won’t get your people killed. We’ll kill you if you force us to.”

“Great,” I said, “we all know the rules then.”

“Why aren’t you afraid?” Nicky whispered from behind me.

“Being afraid won’t help.”

“People are brave, but you can always smell the fear, taste their heart speed up. But you aren’t. You really aren’t any of that.”

“If I get afraid, or pissed, then my pulse rises, and my heart races, and my blood pressure goes up and it’s harder to control the beasts. Jacob was clear; I can’t afford to lose control in the car with you guys.”

“So because you have to be in control, you will be, just like that,” he said.

“Just like that,” I said, and watched where Jacob drove so if I lived through the night I could take the police back to their client and arrest his, or her, ass.

“If I’d known what you were we might not have taken the job,” Jacob said.

“Nice thought, but it doesn’t really help us out, does it?”

“No, we took the client’s money, we have to deliver.”

“Then it doesn’t matter to me if you feel guilty or not, Jacob. In fact, I think it’s worse that you’re going to maybe kill the people I love, the people that make up my pride, and maybe kill me, and you’ll regret it, but you’ll do it anyway. That’s not honor, Jacob, that’s your conscience letting you know that you’re doing the wrong thing.”

“It’s not my conscience, Anita, it’s my libido, my beast, and it doesn’t have a conscience.”

He was right on that, but I also knew that wereanimals aren’t just animals. There is a person in there and there is a conscience. The beast usually didn’t care about it, and could make you do terrible things that you had trouble living with afterward, but this time Jacob and Nicky’s beasts were on the same side as their conscience. It made me hopeful, and I cursed it, because hope will keep you alive, yes, but it will also get you killed in ways worse than anything you can imagine. Hope is a bad friend when men with guns have you. But my lioness and their lions lusted after each other, sort of. Lust I trusted. Hope will lie to you, but lust is what it is; it never lies. Hope would keep me hoping, but lust might be a weapon I could use to divide them. Divide and conquer has been a strategy for thousands of years; there’s a reason for that.