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  Phyllis lifted a brownie from the tray and nibbled it thoughtfully. “Which house contacted you, do you know? And will that impact your decision? It isn’t as if their motives are entirely awful in this case.”

  “House Lamonia,” I sighed. “All the vampire houses have people in every major city. But House Lamonia runs New York.”

  “They’re not the bloodthirsty ones?”

  I snorted. “All vampires are bloodthirsty, Phyllis. House Lamonia just pretty up their misdeeds better than most. House Grieves are the vampires you’re thinking of though.”

  Phyllis’s eyes slid to where Halcyon crouched, nosing through the coins in his horde. “And they’re the ones that killed Hal’s mother?”

  I swallowed another bite of brownie and squeezed my eyes shut tight. Alastair Grieves, one of the major players in their organization, had tracked down and killed Halcyon’s mother. Dragons were one of the few supernatural species that held any threat for vampires, and their blood was extremely valuable on the black market. She’d been eluding him for the better part of three years, keeping to her human form to better disguise herself. Hal had only survived the slaughter because she’d hidden him in an air vent. If the vamps of House Grieves knew he was alive, they’d probably lock him in a cage until he was big enough to be dismembered and sold bit by bit. Almost every part of a dragon’s body was worth something. I could have sold Halcyon off to someone for a goodly sum of money. But I’d also have to sell my soul to be able to rationalize it. Even thinking about it made my stomach pitch and my last bite of brownie creep up my throat.

  “Yeah,” I choked. “They’re the ones.”

  Phyllis considered the ruined skin of her hand before she spoke again. “Why tell me, Natalia? You know you don’t need my permission or forgiveness. If you want to take the job, take it.”

  My throat constricted harder and I had to choke in a few breaths before I could speak again. “I don’t even know if it’s legit or not. I might have taken this job a few years ago if I’d gotten wind of what she was doing then. That is, if the Trust would have let me. I don’t understand how they fit into this plot either.”

  Phyllis pursed her lips and considered the checkered tablecloth. It was singed from one of Halcyon’s temper tantrums, along with about a quarter of the living room carpet.

  “It’s elitism, pure and simple. From what I can glean, you folk don’t like things that aren’t human. Right?”

  A squirming sense of guilt wound its way through my gut before I could stop it. That prejudice was hard to unlearn, even though I hadn’t been steeping in the pro-human juices of the Trust’s organization for awhile now.

  “It’s not just simple dislike,” I hedged. “Some species of demi-humans are dangerous, and their populations have to be kept in check in order to keep people safe. Some varieties of sasquatch can be damned vicious.”

  “But would it be enough to compel your people to commit a genocide?”

  The word “no” sprang immediately to my tongue. There was no way that the Trust could endorse this, no matter how much people distrusted the demi-humans. But two years ago, I wouldn’t have believed they were capable of scapegoating me the way they had. I wouldn’t have believed I’d be put through a kangaroo court and saved from burning in Tartarus–quite literally, mind you–only by the efforts of my mentor, Roland Preston.

  I blew out a breath and scrubbed my face with my hands. It was too early in the morning to be juggling ethical quandaries like this.

  “I don’t know. Some of them might. But I can’t imagine that the whole organization is in on it. Maybe one of the Five has gone rogue. That’s not the point. The point is, if I take the job, I’m a gun for hire for a bunch of bloodsucking psychopaths. Wouldn’t it make me complicit in at least some of their crimes?”

  Phyllis raised a brow. “Are you asking a question, or thinking out loud?”

  A weary chuckle escaped me. “God, I don’t know. What would you do in my place?”

  Phyllis stared hard out of my dingy front window, thinking. The old woman had a history that was nearly as storied as mine. I was certain that she was thinking of her late girlfriend, Lisa, who’d been put into a persistent vegetative state by a police officer several years before the revelation of magic or vampires. There had been no one to wake Lisa and she’d passed on due to renal failure a few years later.

  “If there was anything under heaven or earth I could do to save her, I’d do it,” Phyllis whispered. “We do what we have to help our family. Damn the consequences.”

  Her words slid into my stomach like a trickle of warm cider and buoyed me up out of the worst of the guilt I’d walled in on the way home.

  “Thanks, Phyllis. That’s what I needed to hear.”

  Phyllis gave me a warm smile. It was odd, since she was pasty and had far more teeth, but she reminded me a little of my own abuela. I was struck again by just how alone I was. Mom passed when I was young, dad was murdered during the backlash of the revelation. My sister ended up a human sacrifice for God knew what reason.

  Phyllis pressed her soft, weathered lips to my forehead. I squeezed my eyes shut tight, fighting the urge to cry. I wasn’t going to pieces in front of Phyllis.

  “Get some sleep dearie. Things will be clearer when you wake up.”

  Somehow I doubted that was true, but she was right. I needed to drag my sorry ass to bed and clock in at least six hours of shut-eye before I figured out what the hell to tell the vampires.

  “Thanks Phyllis. I’ll send over a check tomorrow night.”

  Phyllis waved my suggestion away like it was so only so much smoke. “I’ve told you, Natalia. It’s no bother. I’d watch this little hoarder for free.”

  She bent and gave Halcyon and wide, toothy grin and tickled the baby dragon beneath his chin. She flicked a dime into his bowl before she sauntered out my front door. She stood haloed in golden sunlight for a moment before she closed the door behind her, disappearing from sight. She looked like a freaking angel to me, in that moment.

  I had the best damn neighbor in the world. Halcyon trilled a mournful little sound as she went, apparently in agreement of my assessment. The apartment felt a little colder without her warmth to fill it.

  I missed her already.

  chapter

  4

  I KNEW AS SOON AS I sank into sleep that the Ambien with a whiskey chaser had been a mistake. My natural constitution as a witch made me hardier than the average bear, which was why it had been impossible to drink myself to death right after the shitshow with the Trust had gone down. Even mixing alcohol with drugs hadn’t resulted in the oblivion I’d sought.

  But tonight, it was going to keep me locked into sleep while this too-familiar night terror played out. I’d been in correspondence with someone from the Cult of Hypnos last year about the dreams that plagued me and I could sometimes use lucid dreaming techniques to wake myself when this particular ordeal decided to crop up. But not this time. I’d drugged myself into a stupor and now I was going to pay the price for it. And so, I was catapulted into the not-so-distant reaches of my memory to relive the worst night of my life in vivid technicolor.

  I raced down the hall, air scraping like sandpaper in my throat. The sound of my footsteps echoed eerily in the narrow space and bounced back to me like there were a dozen men on my tail. There was no one. Would be no one here with me, until the last strains of Aida faded from the vast hall in the Met. It was one of Dominic’s favorites, and I hadn’t been willing to drag him out with me if my suspicions turned out to be a nothing burger with a big old side of frustration.

  I was probably overreacting, I reasoned with myself. There could be a million reasons why Cat wasn’t answering her phone. Her flight back from Germany might have been delayed, and her phone was still on airplane mode. She could have left her phone cord at the hotel in Hamburg and hadn’t bothered to charge it with the tangle of cords at home. She might have collapsed into bed and was ignorin
g her very concerned older sister.

  If it was the latter, I was going to shake her. After the bombing of the embassy in Damascus a few months prior, I’d been pretty twitchy where her safety was concerned. She was supposed to call me every six hours unless we’d planned otherwise. But when I’d checked during intermission, I didn’t have any missed calls. Not even a voicemail, where my baby sister detailed exactly how overbearing I was being in tones of patent exasperation.

  She was probably fine, I assured myself again, pushing past two broad men traveling the opposite direction from me. But there was no harm in checking to be sure.

  I was panting by the time I reached Cat’s door. I’d pushed for her to rent a room on the ground floor. If she had to flee out a window from an attacker, she was less likely to break bones that way. But the third floor apartment had been the only suite available, and this building was one of the few in the neighborhood that would allow her pet cat, Waffles. It had become necessary for her to move out last year when Hal tried to eat the high-strung tomcat for stealing a roll of quarters from his horde. And it had all worked out in the end, because it saved Dominic and me from hearing Cat and her fiancé trying to covertly sneak in some hanky panky. Neither was as subtle as they thought.

  The door rattled under my fist as I rained blows down onto it.

  “Cat! Cat, open the damned door. I’m serious.”

  I didn’t care how jet-lagged she was, I’d take whatever hex she threw at me. I had to be sure she was safe. The Trust hadn’t taken me seriously when I’d put forward my theory. Both of us had been targeted by vampire insurgents during the same week months prior. I didn’t think it was a coincidence. Apparently, Vogel hadn’t agreed with me. She’d gone over my head and assured the Trust that there was nothing to be concerned about. The bitch.

  My anxiety ratcheted up another notch when there was no answer. Even straining my ears, I couldn’t pick out the sound of feet padding across the hardwood or the mixed string of English and Spanish swear words as she came to greet the crazy lady at her front door.

  Only silence bounced back to greet me.

  I seized the doorknob with shaking fingers and magic licked in a scalding wave up my arm. My stomach lurched up into my throat. Our home in Queens had a threshold that was strong enough to build wards on. A communal home like an apartment building would afford weak wards at best. And even if she’d somehow constructed something so potent, the flavor of the magic shouldn’t smack of blood or pain. That sort of thing was outlawed by the Trust, and my goody-two-shoes sister would never stoop to using black magic.

  I stepped back from the door, though the aftertaste didn’t fade. Terror streaked through me. I didn’t know what lay on the other side of the door, and a primal part of my hindbrain screamed that I didn’t want to know.

  With more calm than I felt, I reached into the bomber jacket that Dominic had given me for my birthday a year previously. My very practical boyfriend had taken the stylish jacket and made it bulletproof for me. And then, to make the gift even more useful, he’d taken it to a mage he knew in Tibet and had it altered so that its innards could reach into a very small pocket dimension. It was only about the size of a gym locker, but definitely large enough to stow a weapon and several cartridges of ammo when I couldn’t go out with one in public. Like, say, to an opera.

  My fingers closed around the grip of my Beretta. I took careful aim at the locking mechanism and fired. Cat would forgive me for that later if I was right about this. The door swung open and I pushed my way inside, balking in the entryway as I processed the tableau before me.

  A dark pall hung over the room, pierced only by the light emanating from a ring of candles, interspaced around a rune-carved circle. Blood slopped over the sides of the carving, sinking into the thick creme carpet, staining it crimson. And inside the circle, spread out on top of a ringed pentacle, was my sister’s naked body.

  “Oh God. Cat,” I gasped, bending double. The Thai food I’d eaten earlier in the evening threatened to make a reappearance. I staggered forward without thought, and my foot connected with the handle of a stone dagger, sending it skittering across the room until it came to a stop against the raised metal divider that separated the front room from the kitchen.

  I dropped to my knees beside Cat’s prone form. Blood slid sickeningly along my knees, creeping along my aura like the barest brush of death. The discomfort was minimal when put in the context of the dark magic that pressed down on us both.

  Cat looked very small, curled on her side, the dark spill of her hair matted blood. Her wrists had been gashed, and a cursory glance at the rest of her showed something similar had been done to her ankles. There was too much of it. Surely Cat had to be…

  I pulled her into my lap, fingers fumbling against her throat, mind screaming a denial when I found nothing. I waited long, anxious seconds before something pulsed weakly against my seeking fingers. The breath went out of me in a gust and tears spilled over. She was alive. Barely. Thank God. But not for long if she didn’t get help.

  I had my hand stuffed halfway into my pocket when the door banged open again and a shape pushed its way through. I brought the Beretta to bear, aiming for the center of mass. Between the darkness and the all-consuming panic, I didn’t register that the small man in the door was a familiar face for several long moments.

  Findlay stood stock still in his ruined doorway with a bag of groceries in hand. A box of pre-made garlic bread peeked out of the lip of the brown paper sack, as did a box of uncooked spaghetti.

  The sack dropped from his arms a second later and landed with a wet splash against his carpet. His hands shook and his dark, watery eyes fixed on mine with an expression of fury.

  “You…you monster!” he shouted. “How could you?”

  “Findlay, call 911. Cat is–”

  But that was as far as I got before Findlay’s magic swept through the room, a scalding wave of power that nearly drove back the press of dark magic. An orange blur came streaking out of the darkness and then Waffles the cat leaped at me, claws extended. My arm swept up before I could think about it, and batted the hissing cat out of the air. Its body twisted and it came down, landing on my head. Its claws sank into the back of my neck, clawing deep. Sharp, needle-like teeth tore at my scalp and I screamed. I let go of Cat and she landed with a wet sound on the ruined carpet, head lolling to one side.

  The tomcat did not give up easily, and my entire face stung by the time I was able to pry it loose. I flung it away with a sound of disgust and only had time to register the shape barreling toward me before it impacted me hard, driving my head into the carpet. Findlay’s hands clapped over my ears with such force that I saw stars. It was like he’d driven a spike through both eardrums simultaneously. The grip on my Beretta, already slack from the shock of the feline assault, loosened entirely and Findlay, who’d been straddling me, sent it flying across the room with a kick that broke the finger in my trigger guard.

  “You killed her!” he snarled. “You bitch. You killed her! You killed her!”

  He punctuated every shout by slamming my head into the ground. A black slide of liquid obscured my vision. He must have burst a blood vessel in my eye. The other was growing dimmer as well, as spots danced across my vision, blotting out what little light was in the room.

  Maybe it was a trick of the light or my very battered brain, but I could have sworn I saw amber eyes peering out of the darkness at me before I passed out.

  Waffles? But no…the cat wouldn’t be on the ceiling, would he?

  And that was as far as I could reason before Findlay’s fist impacted my jaw, catapulting me into unconsciousness.

  ***

  I gasped awake, netted in my bedsheets, arms trapped at my sides, and legs tangled into a knot that a pretzel would envy. In my addled state, I couldn’t remember how to extricate myself properly and panic rose to choke me before I could get a handle on myself. I’d had a thing about confined spaces since being
locked in a coffin surrounded on all sides by IEDs during a bloody coup d’état in the Middle East carried out by a group of insurgents from House Grieves. It was enough to make a girl a little panicky. If I was going to drink, I should do it out on the couch, where I wasn’t liable to wind myself into a cocoon with my nighttime spin cycle. It would take effort to trap myself inside the too-small, hideously orange sofa.

  I somehow managed to extricate my arms and then it was just a matter of undoing the Gordian knot of bedsheets around my legs. It shouldn’t have taken as much time as it did, but given that my head felt like it had been hit with a sledgehammer, I was proud that I was moving at all.

  No matter how many times the vision came, it was still as sharp and fresh as a knife to the gut. Normal dreams were snippets of recollection, worry, and whatever insanity the mind decided to throw in. Not complete and total recall of an event that had happened two years ago. I’d gone for almost a week without having this dream, and I was ninety percent sure this horror was being inflicted by Findlay, who had friends within the Trust. I knew of half-dozen witches who could dream cast, and they weren’t cheap. My talents lay in combating physical threats. Visions and illusions had always been my weak point. Trust Findlay to exploit that.

  My headache was so blinding I was half-convinced that Findlay’s dreamcaster had succeeded in sending me straight to hell. I was going to send my phone through the nearest window if it didn’t stop pinging right next to my ear.

  “Coffee,” I grumbled to no one in particular. “I need some coffee before I deal with this bullshit.”

  Sleep had been an absolute bust. Every time I had to relive that horrible evening again, I woke up more exhausted than I’d gone to sleep. I wasn’t sure if it was the trauma of reliving it again, or if the spell was designed to throw off my circadian rhythm, but either way, it was having the desired effect.

  I staggered out of bed and shuffled into my kitchen, being careful not to upset the leaning tower of dishes that Phyllis had done. I really needed to start paying her for all the work she put in. And that thought dragged me back to the dilemma that I’d been trying to avoid.