“Yeah. I did.”

“Good. We need help for this one.”

I stood in the doorway, hands on jamb and door, my arms outstretched blocking the way, staring at them through the dark. Thinking of my partners, Traitors . . .

CHAPTER 16

It’s Called Method Acting

“What good are you to this SAR?” I demanded. A SAR was a search and rescue, what trained people did when a hiker or a kid was lost in the mountains and emergency crews had to go in and find them. We were going into unknown territory to search for and rescue our people. I didn’t have to say it. Rick had known me long enough to understand.

Eli said softly, “This is likely to become a close-combat situation. What we have is a reconnaissance mission and an NAR. Nonconventional assisted recovery and exfil. Let’s get the terminology right, people.”

Exfil. Which was short for exfiltration. Got it.

“And Janie is right,” Eli said, mockery in his tone. “You aren’t particularly stable these days, Ricky-Bo. Maybe you should sit this one out.”

I shot a look at my partner. He was being deliberately provocative, which made no sense. Unless he was testing Rick’s ability to deal with the stress of a mission. Part of mission readiness. Yeah. That.

Rick’s eyes began to glow, not the gorgeous black of his human days, but the green of his black wereleopard. “I don’t have control of my leopard yet, but I have other were gifts. I can get inside without being seen and look around.”

“We have cameras for that,” Eli said. “Cameras don’t cheat or lie.”

“Ouch,” Derek said. “Dude, that one went for the heart. Or the stones.” He grabbed my wrist and twisted it, breaking my hold, pushing his way inside. His body was stronger since he had started drinking vamp blood. His scent had changed too. And tonight he smelled of Leo. The MOC himself had fed his part-time Enforcer. It occurred to me then that I had fed on vamps fairly often in the last months, for healing, and hadn’t gotten noticeably stronger. Just healed. What was with that?

I quickly blocked the entrance again and felt Beast rising in my eyes but couldn’t see her glowing in Rick’s, not with his cat staring out. “PsyLED wants in on this operation? Why?”

“Jane,” he said, the single word tender and soft as a breath, voice laced with what might have been pain. Or a really good con.

“Don’t.”

He looked away and back and ran one hand through his beautiful hair. Now that he had found his cat, his hair seemed to gleam in the night. “Okay. PsyLED has intel that will be helpful. Has resources that will be helpful. I’m offering them all. To you.”

“I don’t need your help. I don’t want your help. I don’t need or want you in my life.”

“Okay. You don’t need anything. Maybe your partners do. And I need something. Just one thing. To explain what happened with Paka when I walked away from you.”

My heart clenched with remembered pain. But no new pain. No desire. No nothing. I said, “I already knew about your unfinished tattoos. Paka spelled your werecat and bound you with some kind of weird cat magic. You had no choice except to follow her off the dance floor. She spent the next months biting and clawing you on the full moon to bring about the shift into your wereleopard, all the time eating pieces of your soul and your magic. Torturing you. And then when you turned, she did something else, something magical to that tattooed spell, to keep you in werecat form.”

“Who told—” He stopped. “Nell.” It was a growled, angry syllable. Nell worked for him. Nell and I were friends of a sort.

“Yeah.” I narrowed my eyes at him, wondering if he was being mean to the little gardener. “The same Nell who fixed the damage Paka left spelled into your tat, your werecat-problem. You owe her.” I enunciated the last three words in case he was still as stupid about women as I remembered.

Rick frowned at me as if thinking that one over.

I smiled, or thought I did. My lower face didn’t seem to be working properly. “And she’s my friend, so you will not be mad at her.”

Friend. That was interesting. With the exception of Molly Everhart, I’d been a total loner until I came to New Orleans. Now I had friends and family everywhere. “We talk every now and then,” I added. “Mostly when she needs info she can’t get through PsyLED databases.”

Nell seemed to think I needed to be told how Rick was doing. Everyone seemed to think I needed to be told about him. I got that. Our parting was public and humiliating. It hurt.

Rick put my comments together and one side of his mouth went up in a broken smile. “I’m sorry, Jane. I can’t fix what I was or what I did. But I can use my gifts to help you rescue your people.”

Behind me, Alex said, “We might need him, Janie.”

I wanted to snarl. Instead, I said, “Follow orders. Do what you’re told. Stay out of my way.” I gave him my back in a catty insult and went to my room. Shut the door and leaned against it, eyes closed in the dark. I wasn’t grieving for losing him. I wasn’t angry, not even at the public betrayal. I was more, just, empty. There was some tiny dark hole in my soul home, a place where Rick LaFleur had taken root, and that small dark place was still empty. Empty where those roots had been ripped away. I had healed around it, but the soil there hadn’t regrown. Bruiser . . . he was rooted down inside me someplace else, had filled a different empty place. Bigger, stronger. Better. But Rick’s empty place was still a void.

Time doesn’t heal all emotional wounds. Often they scar over, leaving abnormal psychic tissue, faulty emotional patterns, sometimes with an absence of sensation at all. That was how I felt about Rick. Scarred and empty.

My soul home wasn’t a green growing place, but a dark empty cavern where roots might grow. Roots, but nothing green. Nothing living. I wasn’t sure what that might mean.

I took a deep breath and paused, taking in the scent of . . . werewolf. I flipped on the lights.

Brute was lying on my new bed. “You know better than to get on my bed,” I growled. “This your way of telling me I haven’t bought your fancy bed yet?”

Brute snapped at me, a doggie grin that said he had one-upped me. A glint of steel appeared between the white wolf’s ears and Pea, or maybe Bean, pulled herself up to the crest of his head, her little nose wrinkled and sniffing. The neon green grindylow chittered in irritation, showing teeth.

I grunted. “I take it this isn’t a coincidence. You’re here to help hunt down the missing vamps.” Brute just stared at me, though I knew he understood every word. I sighed and snapped my fingers, pointed at the floor. “Get off my new bed. Those sheets were clean.” When neither moved, I raised my voice. “Now.”

Brute rose to a crouch and stepped to the floor, Pea-or-Bean holding on with her steel claws. I opened the door. “There’s a wereleopard in here,” I said to the grindylow. “Don’t bloody up my newly clean floors. If y’all decide to kill each other, take it outside.” Brute trotted past and into the living space. I closed my door, stripped off the wolf-ie sheets, made the bed up with fresh ones, and took out both sets of my remaining Enforcer garb. I had gold and scarlet. I opted for the scarlet because it had been worn and would squeak less. Simple decisions. Easy to make. Not like letting Ricky-Bo LaFleur into my house. That one had been hard. I laid out the clothes and weapons and when I was calmer, I went back out into the living area.

The crew was bigger than I was used to. We had Eli, Edmund, Gee, Derek, Rick, Brute, a grindy, and now Bruiser. My honeybunch had arrived while I was hiding in my room. The guys were all sitting around the table drinking coffee. Gee had his wings out, which was new. The brilliant sapphire plumage with the band of scarlet at the shoulder was folded at his back, with the tips of flight feathers bent and splayed on the floor. Eli saw me first; he got up and poured hot tea into my soup mug and set it before my place. Chairs scooted back and away, leaving me a spot. I stood behind the chair, not sitting, not yet. Eli added Cool Whip from a tub on the table. Stirred. He’d been waiting for me with comfort food. I caught his eyes and gave him a head-tilt thank-you. He gave me one back. This was family.