I thought about Bran and wondered what made Agent Kent think that they ever had a chance at eliminating the werewolves.

“Whatever you might think of the legality, Dr. Torbett, I believe this is a matter of survival. Having Hauptman and his pack under our control would have been the best thing for everyone—even the wolves,” Kent said heavily.

“Under whose control?” asked Torbett genially. “And do you know what they were planning to do with the werewolves? I do. I have”—he smiled—“interesting documentation that is eventually going to see some public servants and an elected official in jail.”

“It sounds like Mr. Hauptman is trying to blackmail us,” said Agent Orton, his voice gravelly. “We can’t take his wife in because he’ll start a war?”

“Is it blackmail to tell a child that he’ll burn his hand if he puts it in a fire, Agent Orton?” asked Jenny. “This is, I think, the same thing.”

“Orton,” said Kent, sounding tired, “we are done here.”

“We have orders,” the older agent said.

“No,” Kent told him. “This isn’t the army. We were given instructions and gathered new information that made those instructions unwise.”

“Gentlemen,” said Jenny, “I trust we are finished here. If you have further questions, please feel free to call me rather than bothering the Hauptmans.”

That’s when Detective Willis came in, looking exhausted. “Sorry to be late. We’ve found three more dead women, and the press has found out about all of them.” He looked at Adam. “We’ve watched that video and read the letter Ms. Trevellyan sent with it. We are satisfied that this Juan Flores is our killer, whatever he is. I’m supposed to tell you that if you have any more information on him, we’d like it, including where he can be found. For my part, I just hope you have more of an idea of how to handle this thing before it kills again than we do.”

12

On the way to Honey’s, we decided to drive by the house to check on the cat and grab another change of clothing. Warren had left Medea with a mixing bowl filled with cat food and another with water because they’d spent an hour looking for her everywhere. He figured if he couldn’t find her, then neither, probably, could Guayota. There was a cat door in the house, so Medea could come and go as she pleased. If Guayota came and burned the place to the ground, hopefully she’d escape.

But I intended to stick her uncooperative rump in a cat carrier and take her with us. I wasn’t taking the chance of leaving her vulnerable.

I quit worrying about the cat when I saw the car parked in front of the house. A gray Acura RLX, a luxury sedan with horsepower, was sitting in Adam’s usual spot.

Adam slowed a little. “Do you know that car?”

I started to shake my head, then reconsidered. “No. But I bet it belongs to Beauclaire. I didn’t see what he drove, but I heard it, and the RLX fits what I heard.”

The SUV resumed its usual speed. “He’s early, and you left the walking stick at Honey’s house.”

“He can follow us to Honey’s—”

“I won’t take him to Honey’s house,” Adam said. “We’ve already exposed her enough by moving the pack there.”

“Fine. We can meet him at a place of his choice in an hour.”

Beauclaire was leaning against the front door, reading a book. A battered old copy of Three Men in a Boat; I’d had to read that in college. Twice. Now I couldn’t remember if I’d liked it or not. Beauclaire looked up when we drove in.

“Let me deal with him,” Adam said.

This wasn’t a John Wayne–esque “let the men deal with the situation, little lady.” There was a bit of sandpaper in Adam’s voice: he was still unhappy that the fae had invaded his house and made him sleep through it. He wanted to go establish dominance. Over Lugh’s son. Because that was a really smart idea.

While I’d been processing, Adam had already gotten out of the SUV. I shoved open my door and scrambled out, nearly tripping over the walking stick that fell on the ground as if it had been in the SUV and I’d kicked it when I hopped out. Which it hadn’t been, and I hadn’t done.

“Adam,” I said. “I’ve got the walking stick.”

He stopped halfway between the SUV and the house. He looked at me, and I trotted up to show him.

Beauclaire straightened, tucked the book in his suit-jacket pocket, where it didn’t bulge. Either he’d used glamour, or the suit was as expensive as it looked.

Adam put a hand on my back as I passed him in an unvoiced request, so I stopped next to him. Beauclaire came down the stairs to us, his movements so graceful I wondered how he had passed for years as human.

He paid almost no attention to Adam and me. His eyes were fixed on the walking stick. I couldn’t tell what he felt for it, and I expected to. I expected him to be … something more decipherable.

He stopped several feet away and for the first time looked at us. Looked at Adam.

“I will not apologize for coming into your home and making her retrieve my father’s walking stick,” he said. “It was necessary.”

“If,” said Adam, “if you had come to my house and knocked on the door, Mercy would still have done everything she could do to find Coyote and get the walking stick back for you. You have, as Lugh’s son, a just claim on the artifact. If you had done that, matters would have been even between us.”

“No,” said Beauclaire. “I would have owed you something for the service you had given me. I will not owe a human for anything.” Substitute “slimy toad dung” for “human,” and he might have said it the same way.

“Neither my mate nor I is, strictly speaking, human,” said Adam. “But you made your choices. And so the consequences will follow in due time.”

Beauclaire bowed without looking down or losing Adam’s gaze. His bow was almost Japanese in all the things it said and didn’t say. I accept that there will be trouble between us, though I will not seek it more than I already have. I disturbed your peace deliberately, and the consequences are upon my head. It was a long conversation for such a simple gesture.

I held out the walking stick. “Here. Coyote said he taught it a few things.”

Beauclaire looked at me. “I don’t know Coyote,” he said. “Maybe I will have to remedy that.”

Adam’s lips curled up in satisfaction. “I would pay money,” he said.

Beauclaire, who still hadn’t reached for the walking stick, narrowed his eyes at my mate.

“Oh?”

“You never get quite what you expect from Coyote,” I told him. “He was amazingly helpful this time, so I expect that something horrible will happen to us in the near future.” I wished I hadn’t said that as soon as the words left my mouth. I already knew that something horrible was coming. I wiggled the walking stick. “Would you take this already?”

“Of your free will,” he said.

I rolled my eyes as I repeated the phrase. “Of my own free will, I give you this walking stick”—and I kept going, though that was the end of the usual phrase I’d spoken every time I’d tried to give the walking stick back to a fae—“fashioned by Lugh, woken by the oakman, and changed by blood, changed by death, changed by spirit. Change comes to all things until the greatest change, which is death. This I entrust to your care.”

I tried to pretend that I’d intended to say all that from the very beginning, tried to ignore the way the walking stick was warmer than it should be in my hands and felt almost eager, as if it wanted to go to Lugh’s son. Adam knew I was acting, I could tell because the pressure of his hand on my back changed. Other than a sharp look, Beauclaire didn’t seem to have heard anything he wasn’t expecting.

I wished I knew whether it had been the walking stick or Coyote who had put those words in my mouth. It might even have been Stefan, for all I knew, but he should be asleep, and it hadn’t sounded like something he’d have said.

Beauclaire took the walking stick, closed his eyes, and frowned at it. “This is a fake.”

“No,” I said. Coyote could have passed a fake walking stick to me, though that wasn’t quite in his character. But a fake walking stick would have stayed safely at Honey’s, tucked inside the locked tack room in the barn, where I’d left it.

Anger built in his face, and he tossed the walking stick back at me. He didn’t mean to hurt me because he didn’t throw it like a weapon. I could probably have caught it—but Adam caught it instead.

“Are you implying that we are lying to you?” Adam asked gently. He twirled the walking stick like a baton.

I put a hand on his and stilled the stick. “Thank you,” I told him when he let me stop him. “The walking stick has been just a little too happy to hurt people lately.”

He sucked in a breath as I took it out of his hands, then he opened and closed them a couple of times. He glanced up at the sky. “A few more days until the full moon,” he told me.

Werewolves were edgy around moon time. Edgier, anyway. I couldn’t help but wonder if the walking stick hadn’t helped his anger along just a bit.

“Mr. Beauclaire,” I said. “This is the walking stick that Coyote gave me after he showed it how to hide itself better. I left it this morning in a safe, locked in a place miles away from here. It fell out of my SUV just now.”

I handed it to him again, but I thought that it wasn’t as happy to go to him as it had been before. It felt rejected. Sulky.

“Behave,” I told it. Adam looked at me.

Beauclaire turned it around in his hands, felt over the silver knob, then ran his hands over the stick itself. He half closed his eyes and did it again. He gave them another of his indecipherable looks. “I told you that I would not apologize, but that was before I rejected the prize I sent you to get. This is my father’s walking stick, though it has changed from the last time I held it a thousand years ago, more or less. I did not expect that it would. His small magics tend to be more stable than the larger ones, which have, up to this point, showed themselves to be more adaptable.”