Oh, Julie. I crossed the room and sat next to her. She gave no indication she heard me.

  Maddie’s bones protruded at odd angles, the flesh stretched over the distorted skeleton like half-melted rubber. Here and there patches of fur dappled her, melting back into human skin. The left side of her jaw bulged, the lips too short to hide the bone, and through the gap I could see her human teeth. Her right arm, almost completely human, seemed so thin, so fragile, little more than bone sheathed in skin.

  When I sat there and watched her, my heart squeezed itself into a hard painful rock. It wasn’t just Maddie. It was the haunted desperation in her mother and sister. It was the panic in Jennifer’s face. It was the masked fear in Andrea, who had come to see Maddie last night. I’d watched my best friend as she crossed her arms on her chest trying to convince herself that this wasn’t her future. She loved Raphael. She wanted children and a family, and both of Raphael’s brothers went loup at puberty and had to be killed. When Aunt B said they would need panacea, she meant it.

  It was the icy nagging dread inside me that said, This could be your child.

  Maddie, the cute funny girl, whom we all knew and took for granted. We had to save her. I had to save her. If there was one thing I could accomplish, it would be giving her life back to her.

  Julie straightened. Her eyes were red, the skin around them puffy. I wished I could do something.

  “She isn’t hurting.”

  “I know.” Julie sniffed.

  “I read to her. Her mom does too, and Doolittle’s nurses. She isn’t alone.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “I’m trying to understand why.” Her voice broke. “Why?” She turned and looked at me, tear-filled eyes bright and brimming with hurt. “She was my best friend. I only have one. Why did it have to be her?”

  The million-dollar question. “Would you rather it be Margo?”

  “No.” Julie shook her head. “No. She feels horrible, because she’s okay and Maddie isn’t. I hugged her and I told her that I was so glad that she made it.”

  “I’m proud of you.”

  “It’s not Margo’s fault that the medicine didn’t work. I just don’t want it to be Maddie. I want her to be okay. It’s like this is the cost.”

  “The cost of what?”

  “Of magic. Of being a shapeshifter. Like they’re strong and fast and somebody has to pay the price for that. But why her?”

  I wish I knew. I’d asked myself the exact same question when I found Voron dead, when I saw the ruin of Greg Feldman’s body, and when Julie lay in a hospital bed, so sedated her heart was barely beating. I wanted so much to spare Julie from that. It killed me that I couldn’t. I didn’t know why some people had tragedy after tragedy thrown at them, as if life were testing them, and others lived blissfully, untouched by grief.

  I told her the truth. “I don’t know. I think it’s because a child is the most precious thing we have. There is a price for everything, and it’s never something you can afford to give up. It’s always someone you love.”

  Julie stared at me. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. That’s the way it always is.”

  Julie drew back. “I don’t want it. If that’s the way it’s going to be, I don’t want to have any babies.”

  Life had finally scarred Julie deep enough. Now my kid had decided not to have children, not because she didn’t want to be a mother, but because she was too scared of the world into which she would be bringing her children. That was so screwed up. I wanted to stab something.

  Julie was looking at me, waiting for something.

  “Having children or not having them is your choice, Julie. Whether you do or don’t, Curran and I will love you anyway. You don’t ever have to worry that we’ll stop.”

  “Good, because I don’t want kids.”

  We fell silent.

  “You’re leaving,” she said.

  “Yes. Are you scared?”

  Julie shrugged. “You’re the alpha and you have to go.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And if anybody will get the medicine, it’s you. I understand.” Her voice was tiny. “Don’t die. Just don’t die, okay?”

  “I have no plans to die. I’m coming back with panacea and we’re getting Maddie out of the healing tank.”

  “I heard Jim talking,” Julie said quietly.

  Oh boy.

  “He said that it was a trap and you might not come back.”

  Thank you, Mr. Positive Peggy, we appreciate your vote of confidence. “Does the spy master know you’re spying on him?”

  “No. I’m very careful and he doesn’t look up very often.”

  Eventually I’d have to figure out what that meant. “It is a trap. The people who laid it think that we’re weak and stupid. I promise you that if they try to hurt us when we get there, they will deeply regret it. We’ll sail away with panacea, and they will still be figuring out why they’re sitting in a puddle of their own blood trying to hold on to their guts. You’ve seen me take on dangerous things before.”

  “You get hurt, Kate. A lot.”

  “But I survive and they don’t.” I hugged her with one arm. “Don’t worry. We’ve got this.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I just . . .”

  She clenched her hands together, staring straight ahead.

  “Yes?”

  “I have bad dreams.”

  So do I. “What do you dream about?”

  She turned to me, her eyes haunted. “Towers. I see them being built on the grass. They are terrible towers. I look at them and cry. And I see you, and you’re looking at me, and you’re calling me . . .”

  Oh no. Cold claws pricked my spine.

  Why would we have the same dream? It had to be magic. If my dream was the result of my magic or the result of Roland looking for me, it shouldn’t affect Julie. He couldn’t possibly know about Julie.

  The ritual. That was the most likely explanation. When I healed Julie, I’d mixed my blood with hers. Some of my magic had tainted her. Now we shared dreams. If we were lucky, this was just a by-product of my magic stretching itself while I dreamed. If we were unlucky, then Roland was trying to find me by broadcasting visions into my head, and Julie was picking up the signal.

  Damn it.

  It must’ve shown on my face, because Julie focused on me. “It means something, doesn’t it? What does it mean, Kate? I saw you. You were in my dream. Did you see me, too?”

  I didn’t want to have this conversation. Not here and not now. In fact, I didn’t want to have it at all.

  “Tell me, please! I have to know.”

  I wasn’t planning on going to my funeral, but one never plans to die. If something happened to me, Julie would be left without answers. She had to know something at least. In her place, I would want to know.

  “Kate, please . . .”

  “Hush, please.”

  The need to hide had been hammered into me since I could understand words. The number of people knowing my secret had gone up from one to five in the past year, and thinking about it shot me right off the beaten path into an irrational place where I contemplated killing those who knew. I couldn’t kill them—they were my friends and my chosen family—but breaking a lifetime of conditioning was a bitch.

  If I didn’t tell her and I died, she would make mistakes. Roland would find her and use her. She didn’t realize it yet, but she was a weapon. Like me. I had created her, and I had a responsibility to keep her safe and to keep others safe from her.

  “What I’m about to tell you can’t be repeated. Don’t write it in your diary, don’t tell your best friend, don’t react if you hear about it. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “There are people who would kill you if they knew about you. I’m very serious, Julie. This is a life-and-death conversation.”

  “I understand,” Julie said.

  “You’ve learned in school about the theory of the First Shift?”

  “Sure.” Julie nodded. “Thousands of years ago magic and technology existed in a balance. Then people began working the magic, making it stronger and stronger, until the imbalance became too great and the technology flooded the world in waves, which was the First Shift. The magic civilizations collapsed. Now the same thing is happening, but we get magic waves instead of technological ones. Some people think that it’s a cycle and it just keeps happening over and over.”

  Good. She knew the basics, so this would be easier. “You heard me talk about Voron.”

  “Your dad,” Julie said.

  “Voron wasn’t my biological father. My father, my real father, walked the planet thousands of years ago, when the magic flowed full force. Back then he was a king, a conqueror, and a wizard. He was very powerful and he had some radical ideas about how a society should be structured, so he and some of his siblings built a huge army and rampaged back and forth across what’s now known as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, and eastern Egypt. The world was a different place then geologically, and my dad, the wizard-king, had a large fertile area in which to build his kingdom. His magic kept him alive for hundreds of years, and he succeeded in creating an empire as advanced as our civilization. And wherever he went, he built towers.”

  Julie blinked. “But . . .”

  “Wait until I finish, please.” The words stuck in my throat and I had to strain to push them out. “When the First Shift came, the technology began to overwhelm magic. The magical cities crumbled. My father saw the writing on the wall and decided it was time for a long nap. He sealed himself away, how or where nobody knows, and fell asleep. A tiny trickle of magic still remained in the world, and it was enough to keep him alive. He slept until the Shift, our apocalypse, woke him up. He got up, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and immediately started to rebuild his empire. He can’t stop, Julie. It’s what gives his existence meaning. This time he started with the undead.”

  “The People,” Julie said, understanding in her eyes.

  “Exactly. My father chose to call himself Roland and started gathering individuals with the ability to navigate vampires. He organized them into the People.”

  The People were a cross between a corporation and a research institute. Professional and brutally efficient, they maintained large stables of vampires and had a chapter in every major city.

  “Nobody ever talks about Roland,” I told her. “Most people don’t know he exists. And almost nobody, not even the navigators, know that shortly after he awoke, Roland fell in love. Her name was Kalina and she also had powerful magic. She could make anyone love her. Kalina wanted a baby, so Roland decided to give her one. I was that baby.”

  Julie opened her mouth. I raised my hand. If she interrupted me, I might not get through this.

  “My father always had issues with his children. They turned out powerful and smart, and as soon as they wised up, they tried to nuke him. Roland changed his mind and decided I’d be better off not being born. My mother knew that to save me she had to run away. She needed a protector, and Roland’s warlord, Voron, seemed like a good choice. Voron was bound to Roland by a blood ritual, and my mother had to use every bit of her power to make Voron love her, so much so that she made Voron slightly insane.”

  “So she basically used him,” Julie said.

  “You got it. Together they ran away. My mother gave birth to me, but Roland was closing in on them. She knew that Voron was better suited to keeping the baby alive and Roland would never stop chasing her, so she stayed behind to buy Voron time. Roland caught up with her and killed her. Voron ran with me and then spent every moment of his life training me so one day I could kill my own father.”

  Julie turned pale.

  I waited for her to digest all of it.

  “Do you want to kill him?”

  That was a complicated question. “I will if I have to, but I won’t go out looking for him. I have Curran and you. All I want to do right now is keep both of you safe. But if Roland ever finds me, he will confront me, Julie, and I’m not sure I would survive. Remember the picture of a man I showed you? Hugh d’Ambray?”

  I’d given it to her a few weeks ago and told her that he was an enemy. At the time I wasn’t ready for long explanations.

  “Yes.”

  “Hugh is Voron’s replacement. He’s Roland’s new warlord. Not many people know about the lost baby, but he does. He stumbled across me and now he’s very interested.”

  Now came the hard part. “When you were turning loup, I couldn’t heal you. Nobody could heal you. So I . . .” Robbed you of your free will. “. . . cleaned your blood with mine to burn off the Lyc-V. It was the only choice. Without it, I would’ve had to kill you.”

  Julie stared at me.

  “We’re bound now. Some of my magic is yours. My blood contaminated you. I dreamed tonight. I saw a plain, a sunset, and towers. And I saw you and called you.”

  “What does it mean?” Julie whispered. “Does that mean Roland is in our heads?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if we’re seeing the past or the future or if it’s my father messing with our minds from several states away. Whatever the hell it is, it isn’t good. You have to take precautions. Don’t leave your blood where it can be found. If you bleed, burn the bandages. If you bleed a lot, set the scene on fire or dump bleach on it. Hide your magic as much as you can. I’m not planning on dying. I will come back and I will help you sort this out. But if something happens to us, Jim knows. You can trust him.”

  A door swung open behind us. Doolittle stepped into the room.

  “Doolittle knows, too.” I told her. “There are some books in my room. I’ll make you a list of what you need to read . . .”

  Maddie stirred. A bulge rolled across her chest, like a tennis ball sliding just under her skin.

  “Involuntary movements,” Doolittle said. “Nothing to worry about.”

  I realized my hand was holding Slayer’s hilt and let go. If Maddie went loup and lunged out of that tank at Julie, I would cut her down with no hesitation. That thought made my insides churn.

  Julie’s eyes were huge on her face.

  “It will be okay,” I told her.

  “I don’t think it will,” Julie said. “Nothing is okay. Nothing will be okay.”

  She stood up.

  “Julie . . .”

  I watched her walk out. The door clanged shut. That didn’t go the way I’d wanted it to. I wanted a do-over, but in life you rarely get those.

  Doolittle was looking at me. “It’s good you told her.”

  It didn’t feel good. It felt downright crappy. “I need a favor.”

  “If it is within my power,” he said.

  “Curran and I have both written our wills. If I don’t come back, Meredith will take care of Julie. I’ve already spoken to her. But if I don’t come back, at some point, Julie may come to you for answers. I’d like you to have my blood. Studying it might help.” He’d already done some analysis on it once. He would be the best person to study it more.

  Doolittle rubbed his face, hesitated—as if deciding—and finally said, “This trip is a foolish endeavor.”

  “There is a chance we will succeed.”

  “A very small chance. We can’t trust these people. They don’t intend to honor their promises.”

  “I’ll force them to honor them, if I have to. I can’t sit by Maddie and watch her die a little bit every day. It’s not in me, Doc.”

  “It is not in me either,” he said. “I’m afraid we’re drawing it out. Delaying the inevitable only leads to more suffering. That’s why death must be quick and painless.”

  “You told me once that we don’t have a choice in what we are. We do have a choice in who we are. I’m the person who must get on that boat or I won’t be able to ever look Maddie’s mother in the eye. Will you please draw my blood?”

  Doolittle sighed. “Of course I will.”

  * * *

  “Kate?”

  Curran’s voice slipped through my dream. Mmmm . . . I smiled and opened my eyes, still half-asleep. Curran leaned over me. My handsome psycho. When I came back from speaking with Julie, I crawled into bed. I awoke a couple of hours later when he slid into bed next to me. He pulled me close, his body so warm against mine. We made love and I fell asleep on his chest.

  “Kate?” Curran repeated. “Baby?”

  I reached over and touched his cheek just to make sure he was really there. “You should stay in bed with me.”

  “I’d love to,” he said. “But I just spoke with Barabas.”

  “Mm-hm.” He really was ridiculously handsome in a gruff, kill-anything-that-moves way. Exactly how I liked it. “What did he say?”

  “Saiman is waiting for us in a conference room. He says he owes you a favor and Barabas called him to invite him to the Keep on your behalf.” Gold flared in Curran’s eyes. “Would you care to explain this, because I’m all ears?”

  Ten minutes later Curran and I marched down the hallway toward the conference room. When you live in a building with excellent acoustics populated by people with supernatural hearing, you learn to argue under your breath, which was precisely what we were doing.

  A month ago I’d gotten a late-night call from the Mercenary Guild informing me that Saiman had been kidnapped. An information broker and a magic expert, Saiman was a shrewd businessman who had his fingers in all sorts of pies, from illegal gladiatorial combat to a shady import/export business. He charged exorbitant prices for his services, but because I amused him, he had offered me a discount in the past. I had consulted him a few times, but he kept trying to entice me into his bed to prove a philosophical point. I’d put up with it until he had the stupidity to parade our connection in front of Curran. The Beast Lord and I had been in a rough spot in our relationship, and Curran didn’t take that exhibition well, which he expressed by turning a warehouse full of luxury cars Saiman had slipped past customs into crushed Coke cans. Since then, Saiman, who feared physical pain above all else, lived in mortal fear of Curran.