Then he left me there. Didn’t ask what I was doing in his neighborhood or why I’d let myself fall into the hands of a human authority while looking only moderately human. Instead, the male swiveled away from me—who turns their back on an angry sword-woman?—then continued on his trajectory alone.

  For half a second, I just stood there, shocked by the male’s rudeness. But then I scurried after him, jogging slowly enough to appear human while following the shifter up the steps to the mansion that bore Gunner’s address. I fully expected the male’s chivalrous instincts to prompt him to wait for me at the entrance of the building, but instead the door literally clanged shut in my face.

  Rubbing my bruised forehead with one hand, I reached out to turn the knob with the other. Only to find the barrier locked and unwilling to budge. Really? Nameless Dude was just going to retreat inside and shut me out behind him?

  Which is when my fox nature took over entirely. Not bothering with the bell, I pounded on the wooden door with both fists. “Let me in!” I demanded, temper firing hotter with every blow.

  “Just like a werewolf,” I growled under my breath, so intent upon fuming and noisemaking that I didn’t hear footsteps responding to my barrage of knocks. My hand was drawn back in preparation for further pounding when the door jerked open before me.

  And that’s how I came to punch an alpha werewolf in the nose.

  Chapter 13

  There was blood. And the scent of fur. And the wildest flash of rage in a broad-shouldered shifter’s eyes.

  Then I was being drawn inside, the door closing behind us, as Gunner grabbed a doily off a sideboard and held it up to his streaming nostrils. “You certainly know how to make an entrance,” he said grimly, walking away from me just as quickly as his brother—cousin?—had.

  Like the thinner werewolf I’d followed up the front steps, the one currently in front of me didn’t bother glancing back to see if I followed as he sped through a series of rooms full of ebony furniture and Turkish rugs. Instead, he bellowed loudly enough for humans to hear from the sidewalk, calling out names of pack mates who came sprinting toward us from nooks and crannies I didn’t have time to fully peruse as we rushed past.

  “Liam,” Gunner greeted my former savior as we reached a broad stairwell in the heart of the mansion. The alpha’s voice was muffled by the table runner he’d snatched to replace the doily as he stopped barking out names and moved on to demands. “What else do we know?”

  I wasn’t sure how the dark-haired shifter had found time to reach the second story in the few short seconds I’d spent pounding on the door out front. But now Liam descended the stairs in a measured manner while answering the shifter who clearly outranked him by at least a bit. “We don’t know much,” Gunner’s relative said, falling in beside his superior while subtly boxing me further away from the center of power. “And are you sure you want to talk in front of a ragamuffin off the streets?”

  Ragamuffin? Did the male think he was living in Victorian-era England? And did that mean my potential job hadn’t been okayed by the rest of the pack?

  Gunner glanced at me for a split second only, his eyes piercing as he dropped the table runner to the floor and accepted the handkerchief another pack mate was thrusting into his hand. “Tell me,” he ordered Liam without bothering to respond to the dig about my part in...whatever this was.

  And this time, information was finally forthcoming. “The body was found in an alley,” Liam offered, which snagged my attention in a way Gunner’s vague job offers had not. A body didn’t sound good. A body meant there was more going on than an overbearing alpha and my need to pay the bills.

  “Unscented like the last one?” my maybe-boss queried.

  Liam merely nodded by way of reply, leaving me to wonder if my understanding of the world was perhaps a smidge small-minded and naive. Because as best I could tell, everything in our world had a scent. After all, superior nostrils were half of my edge over human opponents in the Arena.

  But I didn’t have time to further ponder the issue, because Gunner was pushing through the back door and leading us all onto what appeared to be an industrial loading dock. “Address?” he queried as I took in the view.

  There were two moving vans backed up to the elevated concrete porch, as if these shifters had settled into my home town for the duration rather than merely passing through on their way to greener pastures. In addition, a fleet of cars and SUVs promised the pack would have no problem getting around while they were in residence. Must be nice having so many wheels at your beck and call.

  And, apparently, a driver. Because Liam angled ahead of his relative at last, opening the driver’s side door of the closest SUV. “I’ll take you there.”

  The move appeared properly obsequious. However, for the first time, Gunner slowed the pack’s forward momentum as his hand closed upon the reedier male’s forearm. “No,” the alpha said quietly...but not quietly enough to keep any of the nearby shifter ears from picking up on the mild rebuke. “Ransom would be lost without his personal secretary. He expects you home tonight. Stick to the plan.”

  THE WORDS WEREN’T COMMANDING, nor were they overtly revealing. Yet I read volumes of information streaming between the two males as they locked identical sienna eyes. Both shifters were looking out for their relative. Both understood that Ransom possessed some weakness requiring a trusted advisor present at all times.

  Or that’s the way Gunner saw the matter. Liam, it seemed, had a different approach to dealing with a potentially problematic leader of their shared pack.

  “This is where the action is,” the slender shifter started. “This is more important than whatever business I’d be taking care of back home.”

  Liam’s words weren’t overtly insubordinate, but they were enough to evoke a growl of rage from his superior. And within seconds, the lower-ranking werewolf was rattling off directions with eyes averted then obediently slipping behind the wheel of a much smaller vehicle off to one side. Apparently Gunner’s worries about Ransom trumped whatever crime scene the former was going to investigate. Equally apparent—Gunner’s merest hint of displeasure was law within this pack.

  I was similarly shunted out of the flow of werewolves as Gunner tossed out orders to his remaining crew members. Doors slammed as half the assemblage piled into vehicles. Meanwhile, half of the shifters present spread out, trotting down the block or back into the building to form a well-oiled security patrol.

  Then Liam’s car was rolling away down the alley, his headlights cutting through the gloom even as other engines sprang to life on my every side. Like his departing relative, Gunner was behind the wheel of his own SUV rather than depending upon a driver. Still, the male definitely played the stereotypical alpha role as he honked his horn so loudly I instinctively jumped backwards out of the way.

  Tonight was not the night for a job interview, I decided. I’d return tomorrow and beg forgiveness for the nose bleed while stating my case. In the meantime, I could brainstorm other opportunities of gainful employment. This testosterone haze of a werewolf pack couldn’t be the only way to keep Kira in math books and lunch meat.

  Only, Gunner hadn’t forgotten about my presence. When his horn honk didn’t elicit the desired reaction, the tinted window between us rolled down to expose a tense and craggy face.

  “Get in,” the alpha ordered, blood-encrusted nostrils flaring. He jerked his chin sideways, and for the first time I noticed that, although the back seat was cramped with three cheek-to-jowl shifters, no one had elected to ride shotgun beside their boss.

  If the feeling of handcuffs around my wrists had horrified my fox instincts, entering a small space with an angry werewolf seemed akin to committing suicide. But I’d run out of good ideas and was willing to jump at the bad. So, opening the door quickly before Gunner could change his mind, I hastened to obey.

  Chapter 14

  We rode to the crime scene in eerie silence, sword squeezed between my knees and the rest of my body pressed up against the door. I hated being so timid, but hungry eyes lingered on the back of my neck. And every time I opened my mouth to speak, the musk of alpha werewolf coated my tongue like moss. No wonder I clamped my lips together over incipient words every time I considered breaking the ice.

  Meanwhile, my star-ball-turned-sword throbbed against my pant legs, sucking heat out of the air and forming ice crystals atop everything it touched. Twice, Gunner turned the heater up a notch, and each time he eyed me with probing consideration. In response, I used the most fox-like offensive imaginable. Despite flicking glances in the predatory alpha’s direction, I made sure to be looking out the window every time he returned the favor.

  Finally, though, the vehicle ground to a halt just off the edge of the highway, the buffeting wind of a passing tractor trailer shaking our SUV like a leaf. This wasn’t a legal place to park. But if a highway patroller dropped by, I could imagine Gunner smiling his way out of probing questions as easily as Liam had recently gotten me off the hook.

  Despite our precarious parking space, the werewolf behind the steering wheel seemed in no hurry to open his door, and the shifters behind us knew better than to disembark before their boss. “It won’t be pretty,” Gunner informed me when we’d been sitting there long enough that my sword was beginning to create a rime of ice on plastic surfaces nine inches away. I swiped at the dashboard as unobtrusively as I could with one finger, smudging frost into water. Then I reddened as my seat mate raised his brows at the dampness coating my hand.

  Before Gunner could remark upon the inconsistency, though, a mutter emerged from the peanut gallery behind our backs. “He has to warn girls first,” one noted.

  “Of course he does. Otherwise, they’d run screaming as soon as he unzipped his fly.”

  I blinked, opened my mouth...and tasted amusement replacing the former aggression in the air. Gunner’s underlings were making dirty jokes about their boss now...and he wasn’t tearing them to bloody pieces with his bare hands? Perhaps I didn’t understand werewolves as well as I’d thought I did.

  And despite everything, I found myself playing along. “I can handle ugly,” I answered, blinking aside enticing mental images with an effort. No matter what his pack mates were insinuating, Gunner’s warning had referred not to portions of his own anatomy but to the rotting body of a corpse. “If,” I added, remembering my priorities, “it’s part of the job.”

  “So you want it now?” Gunner’s scent twisted, lightened, teased my nostrils with the humor of yet another double entendre.

  “I need it,” I countered, then reddened as the murmurs from the back seat grew even more lewd. I might have been playing along earlier, but I hadn’t meant my final sentence in that way. At least not consciously....

  Rather than trying to pry my foot out of my mouth, I pushed open my door without regard for passing vehicles...or for whatever laws of shifter hierarchy were keeping everyone else penned up inside. And for half a second I allowed myself to bask in the flow of cold air across hot cheeks, to imagine what it might feel like to be part of a pack that teased each other with such blissful simplicity while still guarding each others’ backs.

  Unfortunately, I wasn’t a werewolf. And an innocent sister depended upon my protection both today and always. So I inhaled deeply and took in the more far-flung aromas flowing toward me beneath car-exhaust fumes. Tinges of blood and even less savory bodily fluids slapped me in the face within seconds, reminding me why I was here.

  Whatever Liam had been saying about “unscented” apparently didn’t apply to decomposing corpses. Shrugging, I headed down the steep slope toward the stench of death.

  THE BODY WAS STUFFED beneath an overpass, subtly illuminated by the vehicle lights Gunner’s pack had left on when they left their SUVs and cars. And at first glance, it looked like a homeless person had merely succumbed to the elements. Our noses, however, told us a different story entirely.

  “See the baking-soda bomb?” Gunner pointed up to the bridge above our heads, where a splintered black trash bag fluttered in the breeze. Every now and then, a few white particles drifted off its otherwise pristine surface, joining the scent-leaching compound that blew around our feet like desert sand. This was a shifter-specific cover-up, a sullying of evidence that only a being with super-powered nostrils would dream of. No wonder the local pack leader’s representative considered the crime his personal duty to investigate.

  “Smart move on the killer’s part to counteract his scent,” I agreed, trying to make a good impression as I picked my way through drifts of white powder on my way to the corpse’s side. Because even though crime-scene investigation didn’t top my list of potential professions, I was willing to showcase relevant cleverness if that’s what it took to keep Kira enrolled in her fancy private school. “Let me guess. The bag was attached to a string that could be pulled from a vehicle’s window after he covered up the rest of his trail?”

  “Yep,” Gunner agreed, joining me as I padded closer to the victim. Even with eddies of baking soda filling the air, I could smell my companion’s personal aroma now. Pine needles and ozone and dew-dampened granite, as if the male by my side embodied the type of forest I wished I could set Kira loose to frolic amidst.

  I must have inhaled a little too deeply though. Because I snorted up a blend of dust and death so intense that I started sneezing wildly enough to draw tears from my eyes. Perhaps the universe was trying to tell me something....

  “Alright?” Gunner asked, his hand landing lightly on my forearm. Earlier, the male had seized me so violently I couldn’t get away, ripping at my sweatshirt like a boy tearing away wrapping paper on Christmas morning. But now, strength flowed from his skin into my own, the mere touch burning with so much heat it made me shiver in protest.

  And even though instinct begged me to lean into the werewolf’s tantalizing body, eyes on the back of my neck promised that nearby shifters were judging both of our actions. So I took a step away from the alpha’s warmth instead. Swiped tears off my cheeks almost angrily.

  Then I skipped over any explanation for my weakness as I peered more carefully at the waiting corpse. I was here to do a job. Might as well get it over with.

  Chapter 15

  The recently departed looked even more like one of the city’s lost souls up close and personal. His coat was a blue so faded it had turned gray while hair streamed down his shoulders and off his chin. The man himself could have been twenty or fifty. Whatever his age, he wouldn’t see another year—not now that he was quite solidly dead.

  “The other body you mentioned was the same?” I asked, squashing my instinctive urge to move further away from the corpse just as I’d previously tamped down the strange attraction to the male at my side. But even though my living mother had imbued in me a healthy hesitancy about touching dead bodies, her ghost was more interested in deciphering the puzzle before our eyes.

  “Three people gathering can create wisdom,” Mama whispered.

  And at the same moment, Gunner replied: “Same baking soda, different setting. We’re looking for a serial killer now.”

  As he spoke, he nudged the corpse with one boot tip, toppling the body over from its side onto its back. And in response, I lost all squeamishness as my eyes took in the discordant feature shining out of the corpse’s porcelain skin.

  To the unmagical eye, the lost soul was likely no paler than the average dead body. After all, crime shows had informed me that when the heart ceases to beat, blood pools at the lowest point and turns the body a dusty gray.

  But this corpse was paler than it should have been. Was, to the shifter eye, not just devoid of blood but lacking in magic as well.

  “Like the moon and the soft-shelled turtle,” Mama murmured as I dropped to my knees and pried back the scarf knotted around the dead male’s throat.

  Sure enough, lines of glowing magic slid down the corpse’s neck and beneath his clothing. The rivulets were pulsing, tantalizing....and I unbuttoned the tattered coat nearly as roughly as Gunner had gone after my sweatshirt earlier in the day.

  I wasn’t expecting the resulting view though. Wasn’t expecting the circle of symbols that emerged, branded upon the dead man’s chest.

  Or, not branded, but rather frozen. “Don’t try to bite your own navel,” my mother ordered. But whatever she was obliquely warning me against, I had to understand what was going on.

  Reaching forward, my fingers brushed against the pattern with the lightness of a feather. And, as if the magic had been waiting for me to make contact, the glowing lines coalesced into a miniature replica of a star ball before shooting comet-like into the dark. Seconds later, the dead man’s chest was left as pristine as age-spotted and dirt-encrusted skin could be.

  Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one who had noted the transition from magically branded to simply dead and grungy. “What was that?” Gunner demanded, hand latching down upon my unprotected nape. There was no seduction in his touch now, only hard, demanding anger. “And why did the pattern exactly match the necklace you were wearing this afternoon?”

  “YOU’RE SEEING THINGS,” I countered, too shaken to realize until the words left my mouth that confusion would have been a more appropriate response to his astute remark. But I hadn’t expected the magical brand to be visible to the uninitiated. Meanwhile, most of my mind was intent upon figuring out how Mama’s possessions could have been used to kill a man.

  Because the similarity between the burnt circle and my amulet was no coincidence. In my moment of instinctive terror earlier in the day, I’d modeled the pattern of my supposed bullet-protection after one of the few objects my mother left behind her. It was easier to recreate a known pattern than to dream up something new on the fly....