"What do you know about what happened here?" she demanded.

  "That they were following an anonymous tip in our dropbox regarding a case we're working on: the trafficking of about twenty kids. We didn't know it had gone wrong until you guys contacted us about Brant."

  Brant had been able to tell the first officers on the scene to contact us and that Harlee was meant to be with him. But more than that had been beyond him. I shuddered to think if he hadn't got even that much out. Would the cops have thought to contact NCB?

  "It could be a coincidence," the detective said. "This area's known for its pretty crime; muggings, theft, destruction of property. That sort of thing."

  "This isn't a petty crime," I argued. "One agent in hospital with life-threatening injuries and another missing. The NCB considers this a major incident and will bring all its considerable weight to bear to find our agent with or without the local police force's help."

  "As far as I'm concerned," the detective said, her voice strained with hard-fought-for control, "there is nothing yet to confirm this is associated with your case, and therefore it is firmly a local police issue."

  I wanted to sigh. "Our agent is missing," I said.

  "No sign of a struggle in here. No evidence of a second person being attacked in the alley. For all we know, your agent went off somewhere before the assailants jumped her partner out there. Or maybe, she got scared when the attack started and ran away and is hiding; now too embarrassed to come out and face the music. I heard she's part of Banana House. Must have some strange quirks to end up there."

  I stared at her for a long, drawn-out moment. Really? She decided to go there?

  I pulled a card out of my pocket and held it out to her. "If you find anything that would help us locate our agent, I would appreciate a call, Detective. I trust the agreement NCB has with the local police earns us a courtesy call at the very least."

  "If I find something — which is not a given at this juncture — your agency will be informed in due course. Now excuse me, but we have real work to do here."

  She flicked her eyes at Rafe one last time as if she couldn't help a final glimpse of him before she gave us her back and started issuing orders.

  I shook my head, my fingers tingling with either anger and frustration or a warning that I shouldn't whack a police officer in the back of the head.

  I'd just turned away when one of the forensics guys shouted, "Found something!"

  I could tell the detective was not happy we hadn't left yet.

  "Let me see," she snapped.

  We weren't wearing the little booties, but a station had been set up at the door with gloves, booties and the odd thing they might have forgotten but needed. I slipped a pair of paper covers over my feet, forwent the gloves as I had my own brand in my pocket, and made my way carefully through the crime scene.

  "What are you doing?" the detective demanded.

  "Seeing what your guy found," I said innocently, making the forensic team member's side before she did.

  He couldn't hide the note from me without disturbing the evidence, but he did try to step in front of me to block my view of it. Loyalty to — or fear of — the detective had him picking a side in this little pissing contest we had running.

  I flashed him my badge, which legally gave me a right to be here, and gave him my best chief operative stare-down. It worked. He stepped back.

  The note was handwritten on a piece of thick cardstock. The type that you use for wedding invitations. I read the calligraphed words and wondered if the red ink was in fact blood. My fingers quit buzzing then and I sucked in a shocked breath of air. Harlee's blood, I thought.

  I fished a penlight out of my pocket and shined it on the note. The ink wasn't quite dry everywhere. Some places reflected the light differently than others. Whoever took her had written this at the scene with her blood. The message might have been pre-planned, but the method to deliver it was done on the fly.

  The cardstock, I was pretty sure, they'd brought with them.

  I stepped back when the detective reached my side.

  "You need to let us do our job," she told me. "You're interfering in a police investigation that has not yet been determined to intersect with yours. Leave now before I arrest you for obstruction of justice."

  Why she'd taken such a dislike to me, I didn't know. But this woman did not want me anywhere near this laundromat.

  "The ink is probably blood," I said, ignoring her threats. "It could even be Harlee's. If you contact Goldie's Brae, our tactical officer will be able to give you a DNA sample to confirm that. And the message is related to our case." I could have gone on; threatened her back; slapped her down with my legal right to be here.

  I didn't. I'd suspected The Involition had done this. I'd suspected Harlee had been taken on Ama's command. But to have proof made everything real. And the fear of what I would face, what could happen to me if I went after Harlee, suddenly became a visceral certainty and I'm ashamed to say, I was scared.

  I felt Rafe's body heat before I saw him step up beside me. He even had those little booties over his dress shoes so he looked the part of an FBI agent at a crime scene. He didn't touch me, but his nearness somehow bolstered me. It shouldn't have, but it did, and I wasn't going to question it.

  I needed the bolstering.

  The detective glanced down at the note then. It had been hidden well, but not so well that forensics would miss it. Ama wanted it found, but not until I got here. Maybe even magia had obscured it until the right moment.

  It wasn't addressed to me but it was pretty damn clear who they wanted to read it. And although the word Involition had not been included in the message, the card had been decorated with leafy vines and snakes with piercing eyes along the bottom. The exact match to what Rafe and Gio wore as tattoos or, I was beginning to think, as brands.

  The top was decorated with shooting stars and different-sized moons, which I'd seen in the tattoos that covered the werewolf's bulging arms. That meant the design along both sides of the note represented the witches.

  Pentagrams hanging like dreamcatchers from gnarled, dead-looking tree branches. Not creepy at all.

  I watched the detective as she read the note aloud.

  "'You are cordially invited to attend an exchange of treasures. What one values most is priceless only to them; failure to attend will accrue punishment. Choose wisely.'"

  She looked up at me. "This connects to your case?"

  "Thank you for your assistance, Detective," I said, not answering that. "But we'll be leaving now."

  She tried to stop us of course, but legally, she couldn't and she knew it. Yelling and threatening didn't get her anywhere, and she wasn't ready to escalate to restraining us physically.

  We left while she glared at us from the laundromat's door. Her anger had nothing on mine.

  Ama had Harlee and she'd just told me my co-worker meant zip to her, whereas I was priceless to The Involition. And, more concerningly, if I didn't exchange myself for my friend, Harlee would be tortured, and the longer I took to meet Ama's demands, the worse the torture would get.

  I was fuming, but I was also frantically scheming.

  Priceless only to them.

  If she wanted me that much, I had leverage. Leverage, fury and a hell of a lot of dread.

  Cat

  The Involition wasn't in New York, or London, or Paris. According to Rafe, it was everywhere. Logically, I knew this couldn't be the case. In reality, The Involition lived in a pocket realm, created by magia.

  Access to it in my city was worryingly through the front door of the Beehive; the Executive Wing of the Parliament Buildings.

  Right across the street from Bowen House.

  The irony was not lost on me.

  This used to be my stomping grounds before I was shunted off to Goldie's Brae in a cloud of mystery and broken promises. I'd walked these streets daily, glanced at the cenotaph on my lunch breaks, and seen the politicians come and go in their crown cars.

  Now I approached the most iconic building in the CBD with trepidation, trying my best not to look at Bowen House in case The Involition decided to follow my gaze.

  Were they watching? I had to assume they were. Rafe acted as if they were. He'd tried to talk me out of this one final time and then when it was clear my mind had been made up, he'd capitulated.

  A grumpy Rafe was not a good Rafe. Still stunning, but moody made him uncommunicative and right now, we could have done with a plan of attack. I had no idea what would face me, but I did know by the time we were done, my life — my world — would have irrevocably changed.

  But I had to save Harlee. I had to protect the NCB. And then I had to find a way to help Rafe and all those cursed by Ama, and in the process not go mad from too much power or the curse or simply being that close to a psychopath who wielded a shit-tonne of magic.

  Easy.

  "Come on," I said to my silent and brooding partner. "Let's do this."

  I walked across the street.

  As we approached the front entrance of the Beehive, where I could see the security just inside the doors, Rafe took my hand, muttered a few words in his language, and then we were there and it was too late to change my mind as he led me into the gaping maw that was The Involition.

  From one second to the next, the security station was just there, and then it was not; replaced with an ornate desk and a man sitting behind it, dressed in clothes that would have done a Renaissance theatre act proud.

  The walls were made of stone, pitted and ancient looking, the floors were covered in expensive but old-looking carpets, and the rafters were higher than they should have been and shouldn't have existed at all if this was the real Beehive.

  The sensation of stepping from one place to an entirely different place threw me off my game. I hadn't felt magic, but to have achieved this kind of thing must have taken a hell of a lot of it. And part of me thought I should have felt the magia being spent. I didn't like the idea that I was blind to it. I didn't like being here at all. It made me jittery.

  "Jagole," the man behind the desk said. "Welcome home."

  Rafe bowed, forcing me to do the same as he still held firmly to my hand. My fingers were buzzing, but Rafe's hold soothed them slightly. I still knew my precognition was having a field day and trying to warn me to run as fast as I could, but I wasn't as affected by the tingle as I normally would have been.

  It was something. But not enough to make me feel comfortable in this strange environment.

  The man seemed to accept Rafe's obsequiousness with apparent entitlement. I studied his skin — where I could see it behind the frills and folds of rich fabric — and identified a new tattoo; one I hadn't seen before on anyone else.

  It matched, however, the third decoration on the invitation at the laundromat, so in that regard it was familiar. Pentagrams like dreamcatchers, hanging from gnarled and dead-looking tree branches. They stretched up the side of his neck; the dreamcatcher-pentagrams spinning as if blown around by a breeze.

  A witch then. Rafe had said the male witches weren't as strong as the female ones, but this witch would have been trained and I was not.

  I stared hard at him. His eyes finally swept off Rafe and came to land on me. He licked his lips. His gaze became heated. Through half-lidded eyes, he took in every single inch he could see of me.

  "Very nice," he purred. "A little skinny around the hips, but we can fatten her up for breeding."

  "Excuse me?!" I snapped. "I am not a horse."

  "Sorgina, the survival of our race is paramount. You will soon learn your place in it and come to accept your duties."

  And I thought Rafe as a banpiro had been treated poorly. Did no one have a say in who they slept with here?

  "Yeah, I don't think so, buddy," I drawled. "Come within a foot of me, and I'll chop off your pathetic excuse for a dick."

  I could feel Rafe suppressing his laughter, but the witch was not amused at all. His eyes shone a violet hue much like Rafe's, and I knew he was about to wield his magia. The vampire did that too when he was about to do something otherworldly.

  Rafe hadn't had time to teach me much. Just what he could in the course of our investigation. And only that since he had revealed what he was and what I was to The Involition. He'd planned to train me away from their clutches, but Harlee's capture had changed that.

  Will the words true, he'd said. Okay then.

  I met the eyes of the glaring witch and thought, face slap. I'm not sure why. I have never slapped a person across the face in my entire life. I could have just gone for my gun. I was still armed which was certainly something to think about later; I would have thought the magia that created this place would have disarmed me. Could I just shoot my way through this hellhole to Harlee?

  The witch's head snapped to one side, quietening those thoughts; a red mark appeared on his cheek in the shape of a palm. Sound followed a fraction of a second later. The loud clap of skin on skin; the indrawn breath of the man as he registered the shock and pain of the moment.

  Rafe's hand in mine squeezed tightly. Almost enough to grind my bones. I didn't think he was doing it because he'd been caught off guard; his control was better than that. I got the message I'd just done something very wrong.

  Maybe showing them I could wield magia hadn't been a good idea after all. But it'd been self-defence! Surely that counted.

  A loud gong sounded and then suddenly we were surrounded by six female witches. All of them had pentagram dreamcatchers swinging on dead branches covering their pale skin. All of them had dark hair like me and blue eyes like me, but theirs were threaded with violet.

  I had never seen so many people at once who had the same features as me and if I hadn't needed convincing that I had magical blood, I had the evidence needed right in front of me.

  They all looked Basque like I looked Basque. Although my heritage was lost to me and I was pretty sure they could trace their roots back to Adam and Eve or something.

  "Witchling," one woman said. She looked much the same as the others and as I couldn't conveniently sense magic, I had no way to tell if she were the more powerful of them or not. "You have attacked another without cause. There are consequences."

  "There was cause," I said. "He was about to hex me or whatever you lot call it."

  The woman sneered. "But he didn't and all we have to show is the spell you cast. You broke the rules."

  Rafe said nothing. I thought he'd at least try to defend me. I tried another tack.

  "I'm not part of your Involition. I'm a visitor. Your rules are not my rules. And he started it."

  Okay, that sounded juvenile even to my ears. But it was true nonetheless. I shrugged.

  "You are in The Involition's House. You play by her rules now."

  Something tickled the back of my mind on those words, but the thought was foggy; ill-formed.

  "Listen," I said, growing impatient. "I got an invitation to come and visit. You have something of mine and I have something you want. We can dance around this rule-breaking malarkey for as long as you desire, but the longer you take to get me to Ama, the less inclined I am to believe you'll honour what was promised in my invitation. Are we gonna do this or what?"

  I'd meant the exchange, of course. I thought I'd been pretty clear about it. But what I got was a wallop of something solid that did not exist and then my body was catapulted through the air, across the reception area, and only stopped moving when it hit a stone pillar.

  I slid to the flagstone floor, unable to breathe and wracked with pain. I had to have broken something.

  "Punishment meted," the same witch's voice said. "You may proceed to your meeting with Ama."

  Son of a bitch! I couldn't breathe let alone walk.

  "Help her up, banpiro."

  Rafe appeared at my side, his back to the witches, his face in shadow. He looked worried. He looked a little scared. I didn't like seeing that look on him. Raphael Nonpareil was a proud, competent man. King of a Dead Realm. Master of Nobody.

  My eyes met his and I tried to convey my reassurance. But as I was slumped on the ground, unable to breathe properly and nursing cracked ribs or vertebrae, it didn't work.

  I groaned when he helped me to stand. I didn't mean to. I'd intended to remain silent but the pain was too much. I felt something soothing me, then. Magia, I thought. Rafe's. He did what he could in the time he was allowed to touch me and then he was jerked from my side and thrown to the floor.

  Rafe is a big man. Well over six feet tall. He's muscular and has a presence. In this room, he was physically the largest of us all. But the witch who pulled him away from me and cast him aside had done so with such little effort I was momentarily stunned.

  And then I was very, very frightened.

  What the ever-loving hell had I got myself into here? I'd made a mistake; there was no denying. But what choice had I had? Harlee was in their tender care and the threat had been obvious. Delay in coming here and she would be tortured. My potential safety meant nothing when faced with her certain agony and fear.

  I'd had to come, but maybe I hadn't truly realised what I would have to survive to save her.

  I was beginning to think we were all doomed.

  A witch walked past Rafe on the ground and casually kicked him in the side. His face betrayed no emotion. He was better at hiding his pain than I was. But he'd probably had a lot of practice.

  "Come, witchling," the witch who had done all the talking so far said. "Ama is waiting. Mustn't be late. It's a punishable offence."

  I think she expected me to start running toward my fate, but what with the cracked rib, the dislocated vertebra and the inability to suck in a full breath of air, I hobbled. Even for sweet, dimwitted Harlee, I couldn't go any faster.

  Oh, this was bad. This was about as bad as it could get.

  The procession kept pace with me. I didn't think it was out of some belated sense of guilt over damaging my body. It was probably more from a need to see me punished further. There was something terribly wrong with these people, I realised. Rafe had warned me. I'd seen a little of it in Ilya. But Gio and even Rafe himself had never shown me the depth of wrongness to them.