“I gave her the rest of the apple pie,” Julie said. “I hope you don’t mind. She’s a bear and they like sweets. It made her feel better.”

“I don’t mind,” I said.

“You’re going to find him, right?”

“I’m going to try.”

“I’ll help you,” Julie said. “Tell me if you need anything.”

“I will.”

She gathered up her owl and her blanket and stood up. “I like Eduardo and George. They’re always nice to me.” She hesitated. “I don’t want her to feel what it’s like.”

My heart tried to flip over in my chest. It hurt. “I know.”

Julie nodded and went to the third floor.

I would find Eduardo. I would find him because he was my friend, because George had suffered enough and deserved a chance to be happy, and because I knew what it was like to have someone you love ripped away from you.

Chapter 3

IT WAS MORNING, the tech was up, and I was in our sunlit kitchen, making a small tower of pancakes. Julie’s school didn’t start until nine, because traveling through the dark in post-Shift Atlanta was too dangerous for kids, and we made our own hours. In our line of work, we weren’t guaranteed a lunch and we weren’t always home in time for dinner, so breakfast was our family meal. Shapeshifters had faster metabolisms than normal humans and they consumed a shocking amount of food. Curran was no exception. I had a pound of bacon baking in the oven—cooking it on the stove resulted in burned bacon, a cloud of smoke, and everything around me covered in bacon grease. Two pounds of sausage simmered in another pan, and I was on my tenth pancake.

The sun shone through the windows, drawing long rectangles on the tiled floor, sliding over the light stone of the countertops, and playing on the wood of the cabinets, setting their dark finish aglow with red highlights. The air smelled of cooking bacon. I had opened the window and a gentle breeze floated through the room, too cold but I didn’t care.

After breakfast Julie would go to school and we would go to the Mercenary Guild. It was the best place to start looking for Eduardo. According to George, Eduardo’s family wasn’t in the picture. His parents lived somewhere in Oklahoma, but Eduardo didn’t keep in touch. He had no siblings. He was friendly with everyone, but George was his best friend. He spent all of his time with her.

Julie stomped into the kitchen and landed in a chair, tossing her blond hair out of her face. A long smear of dirt crossed her face. More dirt stained her jeans. When I found her on the street years ago, she was starved, almost waifish. She was fifteen now. Good food and constant training were paying off: her arms showed definition, her shoulders had widened, and she held herself with the kind of ready assurance that came from knowing an attack could come at any moment and being confident you can repel it.

“I want a new horse.”

I raised an eyebrow at her.

Curran shouldered his way into the kitchen from the back porch. Blond, broad-shouldered, and muscular, he moved like a predator even in his human form. It didn’t matter if he wore fur, beat-up jeans, and a simple gray sweatshirt like right now, or nothing at all; his body always possessed a coiled, barely contained strength. A month ago he had gone to our first job together in his other shape and the client had locked himself in the car and refused to come out. Curran turned human, but the client still fired us. Apparently human Curran was still too scary, probably because no matter what kind of clothes he wore, they did nothing to tone down his face. When you looked into Curran’s clear gray eyes, you knew that he could explode with violence at a moment’s notice and he would be brutal and efficient about it. Except when he looked at me, like now. He stepped close to me and brushed a kiss on my lips. Mmm.

“That’s nice,” Julie said. “I still want a new horse.”

“Request denied,” Curran told her.

I flipped my pancake. This ought to be interesting.

“What? Why?”

“Because ‘want’ is not a need.” Curran leaned against the kitchen island. “I saw you in the pasture. You don’t want a new horse. You require a new horse. Lay your case out.”

“I hate Brutus,” Julie said.

I glanced through the window at the pasture, where an enormous black Friesian stalked in circles along the fence. Brutus used to belong to Hugh d’Ambray, my father’s Warlord. Killing Hugh was my life’s ambition. I’d tried twice now and each time he had dodged death with magic. That’s okay. The third time would be the charm.