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  “You want me to kill someone,” I said flatly.

  Landon oversaw one of the most dangerous teams of mercenaries that the world had ever seen. It was only trumped in lethality by the Trust’s covert ops team, the Big Five, of which I’d once been a member. My team were so feared, we were known pretty much the world over by the nicknames we’d earned. There was me, Iron Heart. Ewan Saunders, Nature’s Fist; Sienna Vogel, the Queen of Hell; Cayman Bello, the Phantom; and Dominic Finch, the Tempest. The members had disbanded two years ago, after I went rogue, and as far as I knew were all going about their own various pursuits for the council now.

  Ashby smiled so wide that lines actually fanned out around his eyes. Quite a feat when your skin didn’t age or wrinkle. “Mr. Johnson said you were astute. Yes, Iron Heart. We would like to hire you to take down one of our enemies.”

  I reclined in the seat and studied Ashby with mounting dislike. “What’s in it for me?”

  Ashby’s smile shrank by a few molars. “I have already shown you what you stand to gain.”

  “No, you handed me a piece of paper with gibberish on it and no way to authenticate your claim. Do I look stupid? Or is it the accent that makes everyone think I’m a pendeja? For all I know this is a dirty limerick. Try again, Ashby. Pony up or I walk. What are you really after and what is it worth to you?”

  I was pretty sure I’d be turning down the offer anyway, but I’d give him five minutes out of courtesy to Landon. Ashby’s frown carved furrows into his pretty face and I caught my first glimpse of the monster flickering behind the mask. His eyes went flat and curiously cold, despite their warm color.

  “Are you calling me a liar, Miss Valdez?”

  “Nope. But my trust in you falls far short of the point I can throw you. Who is it that you want dead?”

  Ashby reached into his sport coat again and withdrew a photograph. He offered it to Landon, who handed it to me.

  “Mr. Johnson told me you might say that. So he wanted me to give you these. They’re pictures of the mark. He says that you’re probably the only one in North America who stands a chance of pulling it off.”

  I squinted at the glossy photograph. The woman was young, dark-haired, and skinny in the way that only teens seemed to be. She had a good deal of baby fat on her tanned face. Paired with the pigtails and the peter-pan dress she wore, she looked like the textbook definition of wholesome. She appeared to be disembarking from a Cessna Citation CJ4 and looked like a stiff breeze would knock her over.

  “You don’t need me on this,” I said flatly. “I wouldn’t even have to use magic. Any sniper with the appropriate gear could take her out.”

  It chafed to give him any advice on how to kill this girl, even if the vampire probably already knew that. This girl should be chugging a stale beer at a frat party, not running from assassins.

  “If it were that simple we would have sent our own people to deal with the threat. This woman is being protected by one of the Trust’s own agents. An old associate of yours I believe.”

  My heart tried to leap into my mouth. “Which one?”

  “If we knew we would have given you a name,” Ashby said coldly. “As it is, they’re very hard to pin down. Eleanor Dawson is a bioterrorist. She’s designing a plague that will spread like wildfire through all demi-human races. It has already affected the werewolves. Do you remember the mass deportation to Wolf Isle only three years ago? That was necessary due to a virus she designed. And the Trust would like it tweaked to take out all the rest of the demi-humans as well.”

  My eyebrows attempted to touch my hairline at that. “Bullshit,” I said. “The old guard may not like demi-humans, but they’d never approve an extermination campaign.” Secretly, I doubted myself as soon as the words were out of my mouth. With Cat and me gone, the Trust had been trending in an ugly direction, and I knew exactly what they were capable of.

  “Your people hate the wolves,” I said, trying a different direction. “Why would you want to help them out?”

  Ashby’s lips curled. “As repugnant as we find the idea of saving the mutts, we have decided it is for the greater good.”

  I snorted out a laugh. “You’d be happy to let the last werewolf strain die off permanently. But let me guess. There’s a decent chance this virus could mutate and attack vampirism next.”

  Ashby’s jaw tightened and I could just make out the sound of his teeth grinding together. I’d struck a nerve. Good.

  “As far as we know, the virus does not affect the non-living. However, if the Trust managed to complete their supernatural genocide, it would only be a matter of time before they decided to rid the world of vampires as well.”

  That part made sense. My work for the Trust mostly consisted of taking out demi-humans and supernaturals who refused to play by the rules of the magical forum; but more often than not some asshole vampire would get away with murder because of his political connections. It’s one of the reasons I started working with Landon, so I could take out the real creeps without involving the Trust. The vampire houses were too powerful to defeat in open war, but I had no doubt the Trust would take any opportunity to limit their reach and power.

  I tapped the girl’s face with one fingernail. “How old is she?”

  Landon tensed beside me and the chill rolling off Ashby was arctic.

  “We are prepared to offer you five million to finish her,” Ashby said. Five million dollars. They must really want this girl dead. Something felt off, but I kept my composure until I had all the details.

  “How old, Fangs? That’s the number that matters to me.”

  “Eighteen. So she’s not technically a child any longer. You can keep your sense of moral superiority firmly intact, Iron Heart.”

  I studied the picture again. It was hard to believe someone so young could engineer something that caused so much suffering. And I still had no idea of Ashby was telling me the truth or not.

  But if a syllable of what he was saying was true, did I have much of a choice? I needed to find a cure for Cat before Findlay could find a way to end me once and for all. And when she was awake, there was no telling what sort of shape she’d be in. It was probably too much to hope for that she’d be completely intact after what she’d gone through. Cat would need rehabilitation, and that cost money.

  The back of my throat tasted like bile as I considered it. I watched a trickle of humanity board a nearby plane and didn’t answer him until the last person had disappeared.

  I needed to be sober before I made this decision. And I needed to talk to someone who wasn’t as close to the situation. I had to get home and that meant giving Ashby an answer.

  “I want an English translation of the introduction faxed to Queen’s Library at Ridgewood by tomorrow before I even consider it. If you’re bullshitting me I will stake your ass to a wall, Ashby.”

  He grimaced but nodded. He withdrew a card and held it between two pale fingers, an offering. I took it. It was made of heavy black stock and bore the name Algerone O. Lamonia on the front in scrawling gold font. It was probably real gold leaf, considering what bourgeois assholes the vampires could be. All of them were loaded after years of playing the stock market. I’d kill to have the sort of money the vampires threw away on their office supplies.

  I shoved everything he’d offered me into my bag and shouldered past him to get to the door. It felt like ants crawling over my skin anywhere I brushed against him.

  I waited until I was half out of the door before I craned my neck to get a good look at both of them. Landon was frowning at my back. Ashby was watching my departure with a keen sort of interest that made me distinctly uncomfortable.

  “And Ashby?”

  “Yes, Iron Heart?”

  “If I do take this job, I want ten million.”

  I didn’t wait to hear his reply. I slammed the door in his face and took off as fast as my legs and the crowd would allow, not pausing for breath until I stepped out into the cool ni
ght air in the parking lot. I didn’t breath easier until I’d jammed my keys into the ignition of the Gremlin and felt the familiar rumble of the beast beneath me.

  Finally, I was going home.

  chapter

  3

  THE SKY WAS TURNING GRAY in the predawn by the time I pulled up to the narrow two-story home that I’d inherited from my mother. It was squished between two more modern homes with light green vinyl siding and bars on their windows. I hadn’t bothered to install any. Any burglar trying to breach the wards that had been etched into my threshold and window panes was going to be in for a shock roughly equivalent to being tased three times over. Word had gotten around and no one of a merely mortal persuasion had found it worth their while to test my defenses in years.

  The only person who had carte blanche to enter my home had been given a stone that would allow her to pass through unscathed. And I doubted anyone but Phyllis even knew what it was, so my defenses were pretty damn impregnable for the time being.

  I was aching and sore when I climbed out of the Gremlin. The suspension on my car was a joke and there were hundreds of potholes between JFK and my home. I fished my backpack from the floorboards and stalked up to my front door, determined to take a nap that would make Rip Van Winkle green with envy. A million years of sleep would not be enough to ease the fatigue that had settled deep into my bones, but damn it, I’d try.

  To any onlooker, I probably looked a little crazy brandishing my toothbrush at the door. Only Horst and I could feel the shiver of magic that traveled up my arm as I unraveled the wards that kept my front door shut. I pushed the front door open and stepped into my front room. It looked like Phyllis had gotten about halfway through cleaning it, even though I’d told her to stick to the much cleaner kitchen and back bedroom during her stay. Guilt twisted my stomach into knots. Phyllis had done so much for me already. She didn’t need to be cleaning up after my mess as well.

  I set my bag down by the door, then grabbed a new pistol for my back holster. I felt too vulnerable without a firearm on me, especially after the incident at the airport. I shoved the toothbrush into my pocket, bristles down. I brought the wristwatch to my mouth and whispered to Horst. Judging by the conspicuous lack of snoring vibrating the ring in my ear, I suspected he was awake.

  “Want to come out, Horst?”

  “No,” he grumbled. “Not while that winged beast is loose. He’s tried to eat me four times now.”

  I chuckled. “It was a love bite.”

  “You practically offered me to him like a virgin sacrifice!” he seethed.

  “And then you went bogart and scattered his pocket change to the four corners of the house. Everybody lost.”

  Horst was a biersal, one of the many castes of house spirits that tended to mortal dwellings. He’d come attached to the two-story yellow brick house that my mother had purchased from an elderly German woman after my father’s death. As my mother had always kept the house conspicuously clean, we’d had no idea that he was even there for years. Once she’d passed, and the house fell into my possession, he made his disapproval of my slovenly ways very clear by slinging every bit of the mess onto my bed one night as I slept.

  We’d come to an uneasy arrangement over the years. He kept his complaints to a minimum and cleaned the home of my elderly and ailing neighbor Mrs. Jones instead of the home he was actually bound to, and I kept him well-supplied in potato chips and imported beer. Money had been tight of late, so he’d been putting up with dollar-store Cheetos and the cheapest swill I could find at the corner store near my home in Queens.

  A brassy cry rang through my apartment in greeting and Halcyon fluttered down from the ceiling fan to land on the small, round coffee table in the middle of the room. It was what my mom had affectionately called “a shin-buster.” But after she passed, I didn’t have the heart to throw it out. Despite the fatigue, I couldn’t help but smile at the baby dragon. He was just too damned cute. Not that he put up with being called that. He was too small still to shift into a human shape, but he made it quite clear that he was to be treated with respect and deference, rather than as the small pet he so resembled.

  “Hey there, Hal,” I croaked. “You’re looking particularly menacing this morning.”

  Halcyon folded his body into the Halloween-themed bowl that contained his horde with a contented sound as soon as I’d acknowledged him. His copper scales blended in with the top layer of pennies, making him hard to see in the dim light.

  At last count, he had about twenty-seven dollars in change, any of the pop tabs or bottle caps that I’d left in the apartment, and at least three keys that he’d stolen from Phyllis when he thought she wasn’t looking. In point of fact, she’d left them out for the little monster to find and collect. She was a giving person like that.

  As if I’d summoned her with my thoughts alone, Phyllis came shuffling into view.

  Phyllis Jones was a white-haired, stooped-over octogenarian with a penchant for knitting her own sweaters, baking home-cooked meals, and taking in strays. So far she’d taken in four cats, three shelter dogs, and a very broken ex-witch. Every time I caught a glimpse of her soft, lined face I had the urge to phone Sienna Vogel. I deserved a good long stay in a hell dimension for what I’d done to my kindly neighbor.

  The blue, cable-knit sweater she wore today couldn’t entirely obscure the ruin that was her right arm. The skin resembled so much candle wax and it was nearly impossible for her to hold a pair of knitting needles. The doctor estimated she wouldn’t recover much use from the hand before she passed on. I was determined to find a way to restore Phyllis back to her full health as well. And as soon as I had Cat back, I would march Phyllis right down to Fallen Oaks and pay off whomever I had to in order to make it right. But it would take at least five sessions or more with an extremely expensive healer to get mobility back and it was something I couldn’t afford right now.

  Ten million might cover it, a traitorous voice whispered in my mind. Ten million would solve most of your problems.

  And it would come at the price of my integrity, no doubt. When I worked for the Trust, I thought I was doing more good for the world than harm. When I inevitably learned that wasn’t the case, I sought out Landon and carved out as much justice as I could, taking contracts that ended the lives of bloodsuckers in all seven vampire houses.

  If I took House Lamonia’s offer I would be acting outside the law, but I wouldn’t be able to justify my vigilante antics this time under some delusional moral code. This time, I’d be doing it for Cat, plain and simple. Either for a permanent cure, or enough cash to afford a lifetime of treatment.

  Phyllis offered me a smile and a plate of brownies, God bless her. She’d shoved the piles of bills on my kitchen table into a box and cleared a space for people to eat. Not that I entertained much, but it was a nice thought. A glass of milk waited for me beside the tower of treats she’d baked.

  “I wondered if you wouldn’t get in today,” Phyllis said, sinking into the chair nearest her. “Did you find what you were looking for in France?”

  “Switzerland actually,” I mumbled.

  My shoulders sagged and I collapsed into the chair across from her, seizing a brownie from the plate. I shoved it in my mouth before I could go off on a tirade about Findlay. The public knew that mages existed and most of them were extremely nosy when it came to our politics. I supposed it held the same sort of fascination as watching the English Royal family. It was something completely foreign and a bit glamorous, so people pried where they shouldn’t. When the vampires, demi-humans, and magical council had revealed themselves shortly after the last war, the world had promptly lost its shit. There had been plenty of hate crimes. But in the years since the revelation, things had calmed down. Too late for it to have made any difference to my father, but still. Legislation kept the worst of the violence in check.

  “Did you find it?” Phyllis asked, drawing me from my musings.

  “No.” The brownie
suddenly tasted like glue in my mouth and it was a challenge to swallow past the lump in my throat. Thousands of dollars and nearly a week wasted chasing a lead that had turned to ash. I couldn’t get into it, though. The Trust valued its PR too much. If I bandied about Findlay’s bad behavior I’d receive a visit from someone tougher and willing to make my life more of a hell than it already was.

  Phyllis laid her ruined hand over mine and patted it gently. “Next time, dear. You’ll find a cure soon, I know it.”

  Her unswerving faith in me made it worse. I chugged the glass of milk and then buried my face in my hands. I needed to pop an Ambien and sleep until the sun set. I didn’t imagine that House Lamonia would be sending the fax any sooner than that. But the fact remained I needed to make this decision. There were a few other people the vampires could call upon to take their contract if I waited too long to respond. Money didn’t buy unending patience, and I was sure they’d move on within a few days if I didn’t give them an answer.

  “May I ask you a question before you go home, Phyllis?”

  Phyllis’s carefully arranged beehive hairdo bobbed a little when she nodded. “Of course dear. You know I don’t always grasp the fundamentals but I’ll try to give you an answer if I’ve got one.”

  I drew in a shuddering breath. “I’ve been offered a cure by one of the vampire houses. But they want me to do a job for them in exchange for the answers.”

  Phyllis stilled in her seat. She was no fool and had a better than average grasp of what that statement meant, having been my neighbor for years.

  “They want you to kill someone.”

  I flinched. Phyllis certainly had a way of cutting right to the ugly heart of the matter.

  “Yes. An eighteen-year-old girl. According to them, she bioengineered the disease that ran rampant in the werewolf population a few years ago. She’s fiddling with the strain to make it communicable to other species now. The vamps want to stop her before that happens.”