“Your eyes are doing a funky gold-glow thing,” he said, trying to distract me as he did a punch-kick-sweep-of-legs combo I hadn’t seen before.

I dodged, blocked, and leaped over the leg sweep. “My Beast likes this,” I said, hearing the lower, coarser grate of my voice, a Beast growl.

“Yeah? Screw your Beast.” He caught my hand and flipped me in some kind of throw I’d never seen before, and didn’t really see this time. I went flying. I landed on my back, hard. The breath whoofed out of me and I didn’t get back up. I lay flat, blinking up at the fluorescent lights swirling overhead. When Eli interposed his head between the ceiling and me, he was upside down and at an angle. I closed my eyes and waited for the ability to inhale. It was a long time coming, and when my lungs did finally expand, I thought I’d maybe broken something, it hurt so bad. It sounded horrible too.

Beast receded with a soft purr. She’d had fun and was now leaving me with the pain.

“What was that?” I said. Actually I whispered it, so I cleared my voice, took two slow sets of breaths, and tried again. “What was that?” It came out slightly better, but not by much.

“That was your tax dollars at work—MAC, better known as Modern Army Combatives.”

“That was cool. Teach me. You know. When I can stand again. Breathe again without pain.”

Eli lowered his hand and pulled me to my feet. He still had my hand when the gym door opened and Rick LaFleur stepped inside, his eyes glowing that green glow of his black panther. He gave a low growl, and before I could disengage my hand, he leaped. Landed on Eli.

The Ranger rolled with the impact, my hand jerking free. And suddenly the two men were yards apart, a spitting mad, neon green ball of fur and claws on Rick’s throat. The smell of blood filled the air, blood not quite human, not quite were.

Rick screamed, a coarse, barking shriek of pain, all cat. The grindylow leaped away and landed on the nearest weight bench, her fur standing out all over, as if static electricity had filled her coat. Her jump left the raw, scored, bloody mess of Rick’s throat visible.

He managed a wet-sounding breath, his hands reaching for his wound as his eyes blurred back to black. He was bleeding, but not the pumping of carotid blood, which would likely have been fatal because he couldn’t shift. This time, he’d live.

Shock washed through me, an adrenaline wave that rocked against my nerves and rolled away. The attacks had both taken maybe three seconds.

“You idiot,” I said to Rick, bending over Eli to see if the were-cat had punctured his flesh anywhere. “Did the idiot bite or claw you?” I asked the Ranger.

Eli rolled slowly to his feet, inspecting himself in the mirrors without taking his eyes from Rick. “No. I’m okay.”

The juvenile grindy chittered and mewled and spat strange sounds at Rick, and we didn’t have to speak Grindylowish to know she was giving her partner a tongue lashing. It was her ordained purpose in life to prevent him from spreading the were taint. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know,” Rick whispered to the grindy. I watched as the bleeding slowed to a stop and the flesh of his throat seemed to grow back together. “It’s close to the full moon, Pea. My cat got away, and I left my music in the room. It was stupid.” To me he said, “Sorry, Jane. My cat seems to think we’re mated. He didn’t like the way Eli was touching you.” To Eli, he said, “Sorry, man. Really sorry. It won’t happen again.” Rick turned and left the gym, and I stood there, still hearing the words, My cat seems to think we’re mated.

I took a breath and smelled the scent of big-cat and blood. Beast rose in me, fast. I opened my mouth and scented the air across my tongue with a soft screeee of sound. Because even bleeding and shamed, Rick was still the prettiest man I had ever seen. We had been at odds for so long, yet at least part of him still wanted me. I blew out the breath.

In the mirror, Eli shook his head. “You two have the strangest mating rituals I’ve ever seen.”

I ignored that. “I feel all better now,” I said. “Thanks for the dance.”

Eli snorted and led the way back outside and down the stairs. “Dance. Only woman I know who thinks combat is dancing.”

I kicked him in the butt and looked at him from the side. “If you dance with me, you take your life in your hands.”

“God, woman. I didn’t know you could flirt.”

“I can’t.”

“You might wanna rethink that.” Eli almost looked like he was blushing, which was ridiculous.

But ridiculous or not, I did rethink it and decided he was being stupid or making a joke I couldn’t follow. “I have a thought,” I said. “It’s convoluted, but hear me out. I think if we concentrate our research on the vamps who disappeared the witches we might find Misha. If she stumbled into the Naturaleza as part of her research, and the Naturaleza are the ones holding the witches, then she became a part of the food chain for them and she’d end up close by in a closet or the attic or—”

“Buried out back.”

I stopped on the last step and grabbed Ranger Boy by the neck, digging in my fingers. “She is not dead.” I shook him. “You hear me?”

“I hear you.” He swept his arm up and around, knocking my grip loose. “Do that again and I’ll hurt you for real.”

“You got the drop on me once. Don’t think it’ll happen again.”

“You gonna put on your big-girl panties and fight with the boys, now?” He looked over his shoulder as if he expected me to blush or something.

“Who says I wear panties?”

I was certain that he flushed red this time. Laughing, I left him shaking his head and went on inside to find the Kid. We had work to do.

Charly looked even paler when I checked on her, and Beast pressed down on my brain, holding me still, looking the child over, scenting her illness. Sick kit. Smells like death soon to come. Protect from predators. Needs milk and mother’s body heat. Warmth of den and litter mates.

Yeah. But her mom is missing, I thought back.

Find mother. Soon.

Which was really good advice. But until then, I pulled my file of official papers and called Charly’s medical doctor. It took a bit of work and one out-and-out lie before he would talk to me. On the advice of the Kid, I claimed that I was Misha’s sister. Which worked. When the oncologist did call me back, he didn’t bother with pleasantries. “How is Charly?”

Relieved, I described Charly’s condition, and he said Misha and I should bring Charly to the Natchez Regional Medical Center for tests, that he’d pave the way with the Emergency Department doctor. I checked my watch, agreed, and hung up, shouting for the Kid to get me directions to the hospital, and Eli to drive.

The rest of the day was spent with me pretending to be Charly’s mom; signing papers in her name; taking care of Charly, who needed tests; consultation between emergency doctors, medical doctors, and her oncologist; and a transfusion of blood and some meds to make her own body create blood cells faster than normal. Bobby stayed with Charly every single moment, as dedicated to her as he might have been to a baby sister, and as long as he held her hand, Charly was calm and relaxed and willing to be stuck with multiple needles. Far as I was concerned, Bobby was a saint. And I was a liar, but in a good cause. I wondered if that was any less of a sin.

It was night when we drove out of the hospital parking lot, and we were all exhausted. One might have thought that we had wasted the day as far as our primary goals—finding Misha and killing Naturaleza vamps—but the Kid made a lot of progress on three fronts in the ED. The most surprising one was when he located Charly’s bio dad. Misha had good taste, I had to admit, finding a man who was rich, now a senator, and vaguely Kennedy-esque in looks. I took the info but held off on contacting the man for now. I intended to find Misha. She could do her own meet-and-greet later if she wanted.

The Kid got the rest of his new info when a World of Warcraft buddy met him in the waiting room. He was a local who knew everything about Natchez’s vamps and witches, and, best of all, Bodat was for hire. The Kid and Bodat—which had to be a nickname, though he didn’t offer more—sat in the back of the SUV on the way home to Esmee’s, comparing notes and updating our database with lots of local facts. Bodat smelled like teenage boy and garlic and onions, with a strong underscent of sausage—pizza, the go-to meal of teenagers everywhere. He and the Kid were taking the data and creating a plan of action, which made Eli smile, that twitch of lips that meant he thought his baby brother was cute and clueless. Probably true.

Bodat did offer one bit of information that I knew had to fit in somewhere, somehow. “Yo, Indian chick,” he said to me. “You do know that Esther McTavish was tight with Silandre. Right?”

“Tight how?” I asked.

“Like, they were singing partners back in the day, that opera stuff. And even then, they were doing it like rabbits. Lesbo rabbits,” he added, elbowing the Kid, who laughed with him.

“Children present here,” I said, rolling my eyes, as Bodat snickered and whispered something to the Kid, who dissolved in laughter. Teenage boys and their humor. Not.

“Can you find out if they hung out with Narkis and Zoltar?”

“Give us an hour,” Bodat said. Did I have a good team or what?

When we got back to Esmee’s, I left the guys talking about our next move and carried Charly up the stairs to her room, Bobby on my heels. The little girl was exhausted and never woke up when I tucked her in. Bobby and I sat on the edge of her bed, staring at her in the dim light. I saw clumps of Charly’s hair on my shoulder and gathered them up, clenching them in my hand. She was so fragile. Yet her doctors thought that she was well enough not to admit her as an inpatient.

Sick kit. May die, Beast murmured inside me, sorrow lacing her internal voice.

“She’s going to get well,” Bobby said firmly, and I looked at him hard, wondering if he’d heard my internal monologue, and decided not. He was staring at Charly, his fists clenched at his sides, fear engraved on his face like grooves on a tombstone.