I stood up and backed away. “Yeah. Lemme get this straight. You got an invite to vamp HQ for the gather?”

Rick laughed shortly. “He didn’t tell you?”

“No, he didn’t tell me.”

Rick reached out a hand and pushed a stray wisp of hair behind my ear. His fingers were warm, werecat warm. I struggled not to lean in to his touch. “You gonna invite me in?” he murmured.

“Hey, Uncle Ricky Bo. You gonna kiss Aunt Jane?”

I tried not to laugh at the look on his face as he dropped his hand away from me. “Angelina?” he asked, his tone saying, What are you doing here?

“Uh-huh.” Angie tugged on my jeans until I dropped my hand, which she took. “We staying with Aunt Jane while my daddy looks for my mama. You gonna kiss her? ’Cause I wanna watch. You never did kiss her last time I was here.”

I snorted. Rick opened his mouth and closed it in a good imitation of a beached fish. “Uhhh.”

“No, Angie Baby,” I said. “Uncle Ricky Bo is taking me to lunch.”

A terrible thunder of running feet sounded at the top of the stairs. “Jane!” Evan shouted. “The wards!” He went silent when he saw us standing at the front door. Out of breath, he leaned over the railing, staring. “Son of a witch on a switch,” he whispered, the words explosive. “Angie?”

“Sure as heck wasn’t me,” I said. “I can’t touch your wards.”

“Me neither,” Rick said. “Come on, gorgeous. Let’s go eat.”

“But I wanna see you kiss her,” Angie said.

I picked up my sunglasses and keys where I’d dropped them on the way in this morning and closed the door on Angie’s curiosity and her father’s perplexity. Rick stopped me with an arm across my path, an arm that snaked around my neck and drew close. “I’ve missed you,” he growled.

Trying to keep the goofy grin off my face, I pushed him away enough to drape an arm around his waist. He nuzzled my neck as I pulled him down the street. “Feed me or lose me.”

As soon as we were out of sight of the house, Rick yanked me into an alcove, danced me back until my spine touched the wall of a house, and trapped me, one arm blocking the way out, the other around my neck holding me still. Lowering his face, he touched my lips with his, tentatively at first, as if giving me a chance to pull back. I didn’t. I pulled him closer, feeling the gun at his side, the blade at his spine, and the welcome of his body that pressed against my belly.

I sighed into his mouth as he kissed me, deep and long. I might have made a little moan as his tongue touched mine and I arched my back to raise my body harder against his. Rick lifted me, the motion effortless as his were-strength kicked in. The smell of his cat intensified. His heart rate increased, and his pheromones shifted again, subtly, into adrenaline and something metallic and bitter. I realized he was in pain.

I shifted my head to the side, his lips trailing across my jaw and down to my neck. “Rick. Stop,” I whispered.

His mouth opened. The scent of cat intensified. And his teeth clamped down on the muscle and tendon beside my jugular. A hold that a mating, male big-cat might use to grasp his mate. Heat spiraled through me. Beast purred, the sound coming from my mouth. Mate, she thought at me. Mine.

I shoved her down and gasped a breath. If he broke the skin . . . “Rick. Stop.” He froze, his teeth clamped down, just to the point of pain. “Stop,” I said softer. “Your cat is trying to come through. Your teeth? The were-taint?” His teeth-grip relaxed, but stayed in place, as if he was confused. As if his cat still held sway. I let a hint of amusement into my tone. “And I am not having sex in an alleyway.”

Rick released my neck and swore under his breath, something crude about saints and testicles. I shuddered with laughter and easing heat. Beast padded away from me, chuffing in disgust. “This sucks,” he whispered back, his voice a low growl. “But you have a point about alleys. I have a nice comfortable bed in a hotel. Room service, whirlpool tub.”

“You are evil,” I said, tempted, feeling my body respond to the images and memories of being with him.

“I could be,” he said, nuzzling my neck again. He stopped, his breath hot on my skin, still damp and bruised from his bite. He sniffed, stiffened, and leaned his body back from me. “I . . . I bit you.” He sounded surprised, and maybe horrified. He hadn’t realized he had been biting me. Not good, but not totally unexpected. Rick had not been able to shift into his cat, held in human form by the magic woven into the tattoos on his shoulder, magic that might be attached to me somehow; the golden eyes, still visible among the scars, sometimes got hot when he was with me. Or maybe the magic had nothing to do with me. No one knew.

I touched his shoulder and felt the heat from the tats. Yeah. The magic—whatever it was—in them was activated. “Cat mating behavior,” I said calmly, sliding my hand down his arm to his wrist. “You didn’t break the skin.”

“But I could have.” He dropped his head to my shoulder, his mouth moving on my flesh as he added, “I’m sorry.”

“No harm, no foul,” I said, keeping my tone light. “But I was serious about feeding me. I’m starving.”

I felt his lips move into a smile and he pressed them to my neck. Heat blossomed all over again, but sweeter and more tender. I batted tears away. I had missed this. “So am I,” he whispered back, his meaning something totally different.

I chuckled and he eased back from me. “Fried everything?” I asked.

“And lots of it. But I’m warning you. Fried food is no substitute for sex in an alley.”

“I don’t wanna know how you know that,” I said. “Ewww.”

• • •

We ended up at ACME Oyster House on Bourbon Street, sitting at a table in back of the well-lit restaurant, surrounded by both locals and tourists, where Rick ordered and we ate servings of Boo-fries (which were covered with roast beef and gravy), char-grilled oysters, fried crawfish tails, and softshell crab po’boys. The entire meal was a heart attack on platters and so good I wanted to cry when I got too full to eat more. We finished off lunch with beer, which, considering our metabolisms, meant it was all for the taste and not for a buzz. And Rick paid with a “company” credit card.

“Sooo,” I hedged. “Was this a date or business?”

“Yeah.” And he gave me that smile. Oh, good merciful heaven. I remembered that smile, the one he used to give me when we woke up together. “Question,” he said. “If I found that sex was safe—”

“In a heartbeat.”

“Good to know.” He smiled and licked a minuscule speck of hot sauce off his lips, which was what I wanted to do. Dang it. “There’re differing opinions in the were community about sex and infection. Most say it isn’t possible to transmit during sex, that the grindys don’t kill for misbehavin’. The same people also say that it isn’t worth taking a chance, so they mate only within the community.”

Community. A were community? Yeah. That. A community that I wasn’t part of. But I kept my reaction and the odd surge of disappointment to myself. Casually, I asked the question “Were community? In the U.S.?”

“No. The werewolves are too reclusive. The community is online, worldwide. I have contacts in Africa, which helps. Not Kemnebi,” he said, before I asked about his onetime mentor and full-time enemy. “I’ve met this African werelion online, Asad. In human form he’s this huge black guy, and some kind of war chief for his human tribe, the Fulani. He’s been . . . He thinks he can find a way to help me.”

Help him shift into his werecat, which would end the pain of his body always trying to free his cat. End the insanity-agony of the three days of the full moon when he was trapped on the verge of the shift, his mind held together only by a music spell woven by Big Evan. “That would be wonderful,” I said. Deep inside Beast thought, Could run with mate. Could hunt with mate.

“So. What are you working on?” Rick asked.

“We’re gonna talk about work?”

“That’s something won’t end with us in bed, you maybe infected, and us maybe killed by my own personal killing machine.” He was talking about Pea, the neon green, kitten-sized grindylow that had been assigned to Rick to keep him from spreading the were-taint. “Spill it, babe.”

“Not much.” I filled him in on the missing girls, the tail car, and the presence of Jack Shoffru in town, and—mostly—on Molly going missing. Long before I was finished, Rick had his phone out and was pulling info on the names from a database I didn’t recognize. It had a U.S. Government seal with vibrant black and gold lettering and graphics that I didn’t have time to read before he clicked his password in. I figured it was a PsyLED thing and Rick would share if he got something good. Turned out I was right.

“We have nothing on Molly or Evan. Nothing new on witches missing—” He stopped and looked at me from the corner of one eye. “Other than cold cases, which you know all about. George told me about some blood-servants getting sick, and new fangheads going true-dead for no known reason. Said you’d update me.”

Bruiser was talking to Rick? When did that start? “I’ll e-mail over what I can,” I said. “I don’t have much yet.”

Rick shrugged, indicating that would work for him. “Shoffru is a different matter entirely. He’s a person of interest by law enforcement agencies all over. DEA for cocaine and brown tar heroin. DOJ, IASOC, and Interpol for human trafficking and racketeering. FBI just because they couldn’t be left out. And you think he’ll be at the meeting tonight?”

I twirled my empty beer bottle, taking in the hard planes and shadows of his face. I loved it when he talked cop. I just wish he had something to use to find Molly. “Yeah. He’ll be there. Which is probably why Leo invited you and let me ask Jodi to attend. He wants ol’ Jack to know he has cop friends locally and in high places.”