“You haven’t told her about what’s really going on in Gate City?” My question was pretty irrelevant given current circumstances...but I couldn’t help asking given the circles Charlie moved in.

  “About werewolves and fox shifters and strange magic imbuing the neighborhood? Nope.” My friend popped her P then reached across the console to tap the cell phone. “Please call your sister before she rings to tell me how disappointed she is again.”

  This time, Charlie’s words were just as pointed as they’d been earlier, but the sweet scent of forgiveness filled the vehicle. So I took my friend’s acceptance of my apology at face value and I contacted one of the people I’d missed the most while stuck on Reed land.

  “Charlie?” Mai’s voice was clipped in what I called Scary Sister mode. She’d used that tone on me when I climbed trees in fox form and refused to come down for dinner, when I impersonated her to call us both in sick at school so she’d take me to the circus, when I let her talk for long periods then interrupted her with “Huh? What was that? I had my ears turned off.”

  No wonder Charlie had begged me to pick up the phone.

  “It’s me,” I corrected. “Kira.”

  “Kira!” Scary Sister fled, replaced just as quickly by Worried Sister. “Breaking a phone is no excuse for not calling for weeks, young lady. Why didn’t you use the new phone Gunner express mailed?”

  “It must have got lost in transit.” I cradled Charlie’s cell a little closer to my head, wishing I could breathe in Mai’s scent or at least see her face. Because Scary Sister or Worried Sister, the important part was sister.

  Okay, and, yes, sister wasn’t the only family member I’d missed. “Hey, could I talk to Grub?”

  My favorite nephew must have been listening in the background because he caroled: “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here, Keeeeera!” so loud even Charlie chuckled.

  “You sure are,” I answered. “Are you being nice to Chipmunk?”

  Silence. I tried again. “Chippy? Your sister?”

  “Oh! Rorora.” Grub mangled my niece Aurora’s given name adorably, but a pang shot through me anyway. I’d thought for sure Grub would help cement the infant’s nickname, but it appeared he hadn’t. “I’m nice to her always,” he rambled, “even though all she does is eat and poop. I’d rather play with you, Auntie Kira. When are you coming home?”

  A rustle as the phone exchanged hands. A muffled “Go ask your father for a cookie.” Then it was Noticing Sister who murmured in my ear. “Nicknames don’t always stick, Kira. Remember how many you went through before settling on Grub?”

  “Yeah, of course.” I’d tried out all kinds of silly monikers before glomming onto the current one for my nephew. But I’d also been there to see Grub grow out of one baby stage and into another. Not so with my niece.

  “Aurora’s just like you,” Mai continued. “Always doing crazy things that make no sense but that turn out to have their own sort of internal logic. She’s going to be a handful when she’s older. I can tell.”

  And, just like that, something clicked into place in my memory of Ava. Something that suggested where she might be and what might be going on.

  But Charlie’s car was crossing over the border into Gate City territory and a very familiar pickup was waiting on the other side. “Gotta go,” I told my sister. Then I jumped out of the car and into Thom’s arms.

  “YOU LOOK LIKE YOU HAVEN’T slept for a week,” I said an hour later as we neared Gate City. I was once again riding shotgun, this time in Thom’s vehicle instead of Charlie’s. In the interim, I’d debriefed him about the past few weeks and he’d caught me up on Gate City goings-on.

  What we hadn’t done was touch beyond that initial bear hug and, now, intertwining our fingers atop the gear shift. My twenty-four hour deadline mandated that I stick to business until we found Ava. And Thom, I got the distinct impression, was ashamed not to have fulfilled his own promise to find the missing child before this.

  Sure enough, his scent was ragged as he answered. “I’ll sleep when Ava’s home.”

  Then we were pulling up in front of the Full Moon Saloon, Thom’s designated spot empty even though the rest of the street was packed. It was Saturday, I realized, days of the week having run together while I was cooling my heels in the blue sitting room. Despite being barely lunchtime, the bar thrummed with life.

  Thom opened the front door before I could reach it. “After you.” Inside, dozens of heads turned to consider us. The space smelled furrier than usual, as if every werewolf had chosen to sit out here rather than in their customary seclusion within the Moon Room.

  Which made perfect sense if a star ball was bouncing around in there. A star ball that wouldn’t be a fan of werewolves.

  I smiled back at the few who greeted me but I didn’t stop to chat. Instead, I pushed through the moon-marked door into the shifter-only section, hoping Ava’s magic would take to me better than to a member of Thom’s pack.

  I saw it the moment I entered. An untethered star ball floating midway between floor and ceiling. The key, I hoped, to bringing Ava home.

  As if it felt the intensity of my interest, the glowing ball skittered away from me. Nearly skittered through the door into the main part of the bar before Thom’s quick reflexes blocked that avenue of escape.

  “It does this with everybody,” he rumbled, closing the door firmly behind him. His tone likened the star ball to a feral cat scared of human companionship.

  Which perhaps wasn’t a bad analogy. I held out an empty hand...which spurred the magical sphere to zip away and hover in the corner where walls met ceiling. Out of anyone’s reach. That wasn’t going to work.

  On a whim, I tugged my own caged star ball out from beneath my shirt and held it out at arm’s length. “I’m like you,” I promised. “Look.”

  For a moment nothing happened. Then the rogue light pulsed brighter. The star ball drifted downward. Air kissed my palm as magic landed as gently as a butterfly coming to rest.

  I didn’t grab it. Instead, I spoke through the strange sensation of someone else’s star ball engulfing my fingers. “Ava is my friend,” I murmured. “She needs you so she can escape a bad situation. So she can be a hero.”

  I doubted the star ball understood my words, so I filled my mind with images. Ava decked out in a cape and spandex, a big S emblazoned on her chest. If what I thought was true, she needed to believe in her own abilities while she waited for us to come rescue her.

  She also needed to understand that what she was doing was the wrong path forward. Otherwise, chances were we’d find her and she’d send us packing. So I envisioned Dixie Lee sobbing. Imagined the adult human alone and sad, yearning for her daughter. Imagined....

  Ava’s star ball flared, scalding my fingers for one split second. Then the red orb caging my own magic popped open, releasing the other half of myself.

  I laughed, delighted. I was a kitsune again. Could be a fox if I wanted, could bear a sword as easily as snapping my fingers. Even after returning to Reed territory, I’d no longer be completely under the alpha’s thumb.

  Now, though, I had to focus. So I tamped down bubbles of joy and considered the way my star ball and Ava’s star ball twisted around each other to form one glow instead of two.

  They seemed to be communicating. Never mind that I’d always thought of my star ball as merely a facet of myself rather than a being with its own personality and volition. Now, as two orbs of magic twirled around each other then separated again, they seemed to have minds of their own.

  Together, they sipped at my fingertips and pulled me toward the back door the way Grub might tug me toward the ice-cream freezer in a gas station. Which was all good and well, but the worst that had happened when I indulged my nephew was a bellyache. If I opened this door, Ava’s star ball might disappear for good.

  Or it might carry my message to the child. Might travel slowly and let me and Thom follow. Might be the key I’d hoped for to unlock her cage.

  “Be ready to run.” I didn’t dare glance back over my shoulder but I smelled the moment Thom twisted into fur form. That was clever. A wolf on the streets of Gate City might turn heads, but he’d sprint faster lupine than either of us could two-legged.

  I turned the knob and opened the door, revealing blue sky and a sun so brilliant it hinted at springtime. For one split second, Ava’s star ball hovered there, uncertain.

  “Go to her,” I nudged. “She needs you. But...slowly please.”

  Ava’s star ball shot away so fast neither Thom nor I could tell where it had gone.

  Chapter 38

  “We still have the backup plan,” Thom reminded me as he drew his clothes back on just out of sight before joining me in the open doorway.

  “You’re right.” And when I’d imbued Ava’s star ball with the image of her as a superhero, I’d really thought the backup plan had a good chance of working. After all, what I’d realized when talking to Mai was that Ava reminded me of myself at that age. Impulsive with her own sort of internal logic that got her both into and out of trouble. Once able to shift, surely she’d be able to wriggle out of captivity and make her way to a place visible enough for the pack to find her....

  But the cold air reminded me that Ava hadn’t spent her entire childhood learning how to manage her star ball. She hadn’t been nurtured by an older sister who treated her abilities as assets. Instead, she’d been raised by Dixie Lee, who adored her daughter but considered kitsune heritage an ignorable curse.

  Still, our backup plan was the only thing going at the present moment. So I wasn’t surprised when the hum of conversation picked up on the bar side of the wall. When Thom turned to me with eyebrows raised in question.

  “Go,” I answered. I began closing the door as he left my side, intending to shift and join the hunt. But a minivan was pulling into the parking lot. A minivan I’d last seen in front of Charlie’s house, one that suggested my unvoiced suspicions were about to prove accurate.

  Because I’d had a lot of time to think while cooling my heels in Reed territory. I’d had time to consider the seeming push and pull of Kaito’s willingness to speak with me. The way he came toward my voice when hiding in the rock maze then fled when he realized Thom was present. The way he’d contacted me so quickly after I’d left that note in the West Virginia post office, quickly enough that he might have seen virtual sparks fly as Thom and I intertwined our fingers on the way to and from my car.

  Ava’s kidnapping hadn’t clicked into place until I’d seen the star ball on Charlie’s cell phone. Then, the memory of Ito’s words had come rushing back:

  “My brother seeks a mistress.”

  That had been Kaito’s motivation all along, to become part of a kitsune’s honor guard. I’d been the original focus of his attention, but he must have realized my affections were promised elsewhere.

  So he’d pivoted to fixate on someone else instead. A child who could be easily manipulated. A child with fox blood if not a star ball...at the time.

  Now, I waited until Ito was close enough to hear normal speech, then I tossed out the question I’d wanted to ask ever since crazy possibilities had started invading my dreams.

  “How about it, Ito? Are you finally willing to admit that your brother isn’t dead?”

  ITO’S STRIDE HICCUPPED, his face paling. But he continued drawing closer and closer until our toes touched.

  Even through two sets of shoes and socks, I could feel the contact. A shock spun through me, much like the shock when I’d first touched the Gate City artifact. Electric and painful and powerful all at once.

  Ito must have felt it also because his body quaked as he admitted. “It’s true. He’s not.”

  “What happened?”

  For a moment, Ito just looked at me. His body leaned in closer as if he craved physical contact, but I glared and he spoke instead.

  “You have to understand, Kira-san, that Kaito is my brother. I keep his confidences.”

  “You do his dirty work for him, you mean.”

  “Yes, I gathered you together for the funeral,” Ito admitted. “I knew Kaito needed a mistress and you’d already sworn to be kind.”

  I didn’t need explanations. I needed information about Ava. “But Kaito didn’t take me. He took a child. Where is she?”

  Ito shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Shit.” I tried to wrench myself away, but our shoes seemed to be superglued together.

  Meanwhile, Ito reached toward me in a gesture that aborted a hair’s breadth from my shoulder. “I can explain,” he murmured. “About how I knew Kaito was alive at least.”

  This wasn’t what I wanted clarified, but I nodded anyway. My head was spinning, trying to figure out how to use Ito’s bond to his brother to reclaim Ava. While I thought, the man in front of me spoke.

  “When we were children, Kaito broke his leg and spent many hours in bed thinking,” Ito started. “Afterwards, he would joke that the pin embedded in his flesh was his greatest asset. All he had to do was track down a similar pin, then he’d be able to get away with anything. Rob a bank then light a huge fire and toss the spare pin in it. Afterwards, everyone would assume he was dead.”

  “Rob a bank...or steal Ava.” Okay, so keeping my voice nonconfrontational wasn’t working. I wanted to punch Ito, but something told me that if we touched the gesture would feed him more than injure him. So I kept my hands to myself as I demanded, “How could you let him molest a child?”

  “Molest?” For the first time, Ito appeared confused. Then realization dawned. “You think that Ava is feeling the same”—he cleared his throat—“sexual confusion you’re suffering from?”

  The low hum of another car engine approached, but I ignored it. If a Gate City werewolf was showing up late to the hunt, Thom could guide him into place via the pack bond. I had a more pressing issue to deal with right now.

  Because it was possible Ito had a clue about Ava’s location, perhaps one he wasn’t even aware of harboring. Keeping him talking seemed like the wisest course of action. “What else am I supposed to think?” I asked.

  Ito’s fingers brushed the air inches from my cheek, as if he wanted to soothe me the same way I soothed Pumpkin. When I flinched backwards, he turned to words instead of touch.

  “Kaito is using a simple spell meant to please a mistress,” he offered. “It helps the focus of his attention unlock her deepest desire so he can give her what she wants. Entirely harmless. No long-term ill effects.”

  For the first time in weeks, the muscles in my neck relaxed a little. A child wouldn’t crave sex the way I did every time Thom’s scent wafted into my nostrils. A child would want something age-appropriate and entirely different.

  Like a star ball so she could become a hero. A star ball that had materialized on the same night my most recent moon craze struck.

  That should have been a heartening thought...only, Ito had found a way to wriggle in a little closer. His shoulders cupped as if he wanted to embrace me but was holding himself just shy of touching. Each of his exhales flared hot against my skin.

  Is that how Kaito would react now that I’d sent Ava the star ball? I’d meant the child to use it to free herself, but the magic might instead turn Ava as irresistible to her jailer as I appeared to be to his brother.

  “I think I just made a terrible mistake,” I muttered as a car door slammed in the parking lot.

  Then a hand ripped me away from Ito. A hand with short, slender fingers that matched up with a recognizable voice.

  “You sure did,” Jessie said.

  Chapter 39

  Charlie’s sister turned her attention to Ito as quickly as fire had licked through the house Kaito used to stage his own death. “I can’t believe you’re cheating on me with Kira.”

  “I’m not cheating.” Despite his words, Ito was already edging around his wife, trying to get back into my personal space. If this was how his brother felt, it was no wonder he’d snatched Ava. The girl’s lack of a star ball might have protected her during the last few weeks, but now that she’d come into her full potential....

  I spun away from the marital conflict erupting behind me, paying attention with only half an ear as Jessie lambasted Ito for sneaking off with the kids. Apparently, it was a bad idea to pretend you were going to the park when your wife knew you hated dirt....

  The kids. That was why Ito was here after all. I’d asked Charlie to summon him so I could ensure his children weren’t in any danger.

  Despite the strumming urgency inside me, I made a quick stop at Ito’s vehicle. Sniffing the heads of two sleeping children, I determined they didn’t smell fox-like at all.

  No, Ava was the one that untethered star ball would be arrowing toward. Ava was the kitsune who’d been primed by Kaito and ignited by me.

  And I knew of only one source of magic stronger than both of us. Leaving Ito to fight his own battles, I strode back into the Moon Room. Shoving aside the wardrobe, I ripped up the trapdoor that hid the fox-skull artifact.

  The artifact which I suspected had been instrumental in materializing Ava’s star ball. Likely with a healthy nudge from Kaito’s moon ritual and maybe even a little help from Ava herself.

  After all, the girl had stumbled upon me visiting the skull. She’d felt its power. What teen itching for a path to heroism could resist sharing a secret with someone offering her exactly what she craved?

  “You know something.” The angry female voice this time around wasn’t Jessie’s. Instead, it appeared Dixie Lee had been clued in that the hunt for her daughter was once again underway. Or so I assumed when she stomped through the bar-side door with all the finesse of a charging mother bear. I half expected her to tackle me, but instead, she stopped by my side, peering down with me into the dark beneath the floor.

  So much for secrecy. I pursed my lips and hopped into the pit rather than answering. Used my star ball—it felt unbelievably good to have magic once again at my fingertips—to illuminate the stone walls and locate the artifact.