You can’t make that promise. I took a deep breath, tried to think with my brain instead of my heart.

“Okay,” I said, hoping I wasn’t making a decision I would regret. “Okay. But don’t bother checking his condo. I can guarantee that J.B.’s been sleeping at the office since all this started.”

“That may have protected him, then,” Nathaniel said. “Does not the Agency have wards to keep out vampires?”

“Yes,” I said. “But if he was out on a soul pickup, or if he decided to fight the vamps against orders…”

“Or if the vampires brought in a witch to break the wards,” Beezle said.

“A witch,” I said, looking at Nathaniel. “A witch could have put all the patients in the hospital under that sleeping spell.”

“Another player?” Chloe said. “How big is this game?”

“It’s not a game.”

“It is to Therion,” Chloe said. “And probably to Lucifer, too.”

She was right, but it really went against the grain for me to admit anyone was right but me.

“I’ll be back within a day,” Jude promised, and he transformed into a wolf, his clothing falling to the floor.

I walked him to the front door, opened it, and followed him downstairs to do the same for the external doors. We emerged into the cold on the front porch.

It had snowed again in the last couple of days. The streets were unplowed, the sidewalks unshoveled. Jude nudged the palm of my hand with his nose.

I looked down at him steadily. “You come back in one piece, you understand?”

Jude barked once. He took off running. A moment later all that was left of him was fresh paw prints in the snow. I stayed there for a minute, shivering in the cold. Then I went back upstairs, now wondering whether I would lose two friends to this folly.

Beezle and Chloe had demolished pretty much every morsel on the table, and my plate was missing.

I put yours in the kitchen, Samiel signed. It seemed safer. I’ll get it.

He rose, clearing the empty plates away. Nathaniel helped Samiel carry the empty dishes, and I realized that Nathaniel really had changed. The old Nathaniel would never have done “the work of a servant.”

Had he been changing all along, or was this another side effect of the spell? Or—and this was much more disturbing—was he just trying to be what he thought I wanted?

Samiel returned with my plate, the food covered by another dish so it would stay warm. Chloe looked expectantly at me as I uncovered the meal.

“Forget it,” I said.

She looked slightly disappointed, but not surprised.

Beezle had already retired to his favorite pillow on the couch. He sprawled on his back in a sunbeam, his belly at least two times its normal size. His eyes were closed.

“You look like you swallowed a basketball,” I said.

Beezle belched in response.

There was nothing to do except wait. And wonder.

So that was what we did. Chloe convinced me to play UNO with her, and Beezle and Samiel joined in. Nathaniel watched us like he was observing alien life on another planet.

Chloe and Beezle were both loud, demonstrative players. More than once the play of a certain card was punctuated by a noisy “Ha!” or “Beat that!”

I tried to keep my mind on the game, to not mentally follow Jude through the streets of Chicago. I tried not to think about what the Agents might have suffered already in Therion’s tender care.

Most of all, I tried not to think about J.B. standing on a street corner telling me he loved me.

After a while, Chloe and Beezle needed more food to fuel their antics, and Samiel produced another feast. We turned on the news for a bit but they had nothing new to say, and the sight of Therion’s face made me want to smash things, so we shut it off.

Beezle popped JAWS into the DVD player in concession to my extreme anxiety. For some reason that movie always makes me feel better, like comfort food for my brain. There’s probably something wrong with me at the proton level if a movie about a town being terrorized by a great white shark is comforting.

We had just gotten to the point where Quint was telling the story of the U.S.S. Indianapolis when I heard the howl of a wolf.

“Jude,” I said, and bolted for the door. Samiel beat me there, clattering down the steps to let Jude in. I stood at the top of the stairs, my heart in my mouth.

Jude sprinted inside. J.B. was not with him.

“Oh, god,” I said, covering my face. Therion had him.

Nathaniel put his arm around me and drew me inside. Jude had already changed back into a man.

“It’s not what you think,” Jude said as soon as he saw me. “Therion doesn’t have him. Titania does.”

9

“TITANIA?” I SAID. “WHY?”

“It took me a little time to put the pieces together; otherwise I would have been back sooner,” Jude said, pulling on his clothes as he spoke. “But I managed to eavesdrop on that little shit Sokolov.”

“How did you get inside the Agency?” I asked. “J.B. told me three days ago that the place was on lockdown. Shouldn’t the wards have kept you out?”

“The wards recognized me as a friend. I was cleared when the cubs were there, remember?” Jude said. “And I know how to keep to the shadows. Those security guards in the lobby never even saw me run past.”

“So what did Sokolov say?”

“He was complaining that Titania had overreached her authority by taking J.B. from the Agency, even if he was a king of a faerie court. And the person he was talking to asked why it was so damned important for Titania to take J.B. when there was a crisis going on. Sokolov said it was to punish you.”