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  Xia thought about Olo and the other syndicate trainers. About their cruelty, not just the beatings and the dark, dank room where they locked her or the other trainees sometimes, but all the petty things they did to make the trainees miserable so they’d be meaner. About the way they’d let her be hurt tonight. She’d thought of them as her family, but they weren’t, were they? She’d had a dad of her own once, with silvery gray eyes the color of this human’s, and a mom. She couldn’t remember her mom clearly, but she’d had one. Mom had a sweet voice and a lovely tail and maybe golden eyes like her own…

  The memory faded as quickly as it came, leaving her even more lost than before. But she knew one thing. “No family here, Mr. Mik, Mr. Gan.” She still wouldn’t look at the big Furagi, but his voice had sounded like purring and he was friends with kind, sweet-smelling Mik, so maybe he was all right. “And no place is safe. You’re a grown-up. You should know that.”

  The dark man pulled her closer, lifted her off her feet. It didn’t feel like he was afraid she’d escape. Could he actually be hugging her?

  Adults touching you never ended well. She hurt inside, to prove it.

  She tried to squirm away. The dark man set her down on the ground, quickly but gently. “I see you don’t care to be held too close,” he said, sounding like he was talking to a grown-up. “I was a mite forward, seeing as we’ve just met, and I apologize for that. I thought that maybe you might need some help, seeing that you’re bleeding.”

  “I can walk.” Never let them know you’re hurt. Then they’ll try to hurt you worse.

  But it sounded pleasant to be carried by this man. His eyes looked so familiar, even though she’d never seen him before. She’d remember a dark-skinned human with clear gray eyes. A lot of humans lived on Lysander, and they came in all kinds of coloring, but that combination was unusual. Unusual but at the moment comfortable.

  Even the Furagi wasn’t so scary now that she’d relaxed a little. He was big and had a lot of tattoos, but his tattoos were different from Olo’s and his mean buddies’. Except for the bars on his cheeks, his tattoos were pretty, birds and waves and something that looked like flowers, even though he was definitely a boy Furagi. Well, a man, but close to a boy, still young, with a softness in his violet eyes now when he looked at her or the human Mik, though he’d been angry enough to boil water when he first came upon her. He had a pleasant smell too, like milk and sunshine.

  All her training told her she should bolt, hurting the two men if necessary.

  Instead, she drew a little closer to the dark human called Mik, held up the less bloody of her hands. “You can’t carry me,” she said as proudly as she could. “I’m a grown-up. But you can hold my hand if you’d like.”

  The dark man crouched down so he could look her in the eyes. “I’d like that, Miss…what’s your name?”

  “Xia.”

  “Xia,” he repeated.

  She sighed inwardly. No one ever got it right. It had been so long since she’d heard her name pronounced with the correct lilt and the accent on the second syllable, that she had to repeat it to herself to remember the syllables weren’t supposed to run together, messy as blood and water. But Mik did pretty well for a human.

  “Well then, Miss Xia,” he said, enclosing her paw in his big, dark hand. “Where should we take you?”

  She didn’t hesitate. “Take me with you,” she said. “I’ll be fun and stuff. I promise. I’ll be—” what was the word grown-ups liked to throw around about her and the other trainee kids? “—useful. If you need…”

  “Hush,” Gan said gently. His voice really did sound like a purr. “Let’s worry about what you need first. I bet that would be a medico, a good meal or six, and a bath, not necessarily in that order.”

  She hadn’t eaten for more than two days so she ought to be hungry, but the tainted blood had driven her appetite away. And if they wanted her to see a medico, well, the fact she didn’t have the energy to argue meant they might be on to something. She hurt in some funny places and she was still bleeding between her legs, from the inside. But first things first. “Bath. I want to be clean.”

  “Spoken like a true felinoid. Come on, Miss Xia, let’s get you cleaned up.” Mik scratched behind her left ear, just the right amount of pressure.

  She surprised herself by purring. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d purred when anyone else was around. Only in the dark place, so she wouldn’t be so alone and scared. This was a real purr, though, not a self-comfort purr, but the good kind that started from a place of warmth deep inside.

  Maybe this was what it was like to be happy.

  “Okay, Dad,” she said.

  This time the dark-skinned human didn’t correct her.

  Before they left the alley, the big Furagi pulled the human in and gave him a lover-type kiss, and that felt right too. She couldn’t remember her family, except for gray eyes and a nagging realization she’d forgotten things she should remember, but families were supposed to love each other. She couldn’t think of any that actually did. But these two were obviously not from Lysander. Maybe off Lysander, things were different. More like they were in off-world holos, where things were clean and pretty and grown-ups had jobs like starship pilot or teacher or medico, not fence or assassin or prostitute.

  Maybe these men could help find a place where no one would hurt her—a place where she wouldn’t have to hurt anyone.

  A place where she could forget how blood tasted.

  Chapter One

  En Route to Cibari, Present Day

  Xia woke alone in the dark and smelled the human she’d been sent to kill.

  Her tail and whiskers twitched. The pupils of her golden eyes changed from narrow slits to black holes that almost overtook the color. She squinted to focus, seeing the gray shape of her prey.

  He was a bad man. They’d told her that, so it was fine to hunt him.

  She just hoped she wouldn’t have to pretend to like him this time, let him touch her. Hurt her. That had been awful. It had helped, though, in a weird way. When she’d had a chance to kill that man, it felt like she was taking back something he’d stolen from her.

  Thank the stars this man was letting down his guard without letting down his pants or even trying to touch her.

  He was still a bad man. They’d told her that, and it had been true all the other times. But this one was polite at least, so she wouldn’t play with him. She’d let him die quickly and cleanly. They kept telling her that was the best way—more efficient, they said—but it was hard to remember when someone had hurt her or other little kids.

  Xia pounced, claws out, and went right for the throat. Blood poured over her, more blood than there should have been. Enough blood to drown her.

  But she liked it.

  She licked her lips, drinking it in, wondering if the man’s meat would taste good. She was half-starved, hungry enough to take a bite and find out. She opened her mouth, sank in her sharp teeth and ripped…

  And realized she was biting into Mik, the man she called Dad.

  This time, Xia really woke up, safe and alone and gagging on something that wasn’t there, in the brightly lit cabin on the Malcolm. Until recently, she’d shared this cabin with her human friend Rita.

  Good thing Rita moved in with Drax, Xia thought dimly as she started to claw the pillow and scream. Rita would want to comfort her because Rita was a good person. Rita would think she understood these nightmares, but she wouldn’t.

  Xia had almost died in a fight with the assassin Nitari Belesku not too long ago. Belesku was still under contract to kill Xia and the rest of the crew, which would give any sane person, or even a slightly crazy one like Xia, bad dreams. They had another assassin after them as well, a San’balese woman whose name they’d never learned. That one was also trying to wipe out the Malcolm’s crew, who were the witnesses to her betrayal of her own pl
anet and to her attempt to kill Rita’s lover, Drax.

  All logical reasons to sleep restlessly, but not the reason for Xia’s bad dreams.

  Rita and the other humans on the crew didn’t…mustn’t…understand the real reason.

  The real nightmare was that trying to kill another sentient had felt so natural. The moves she’d been taught as a child were all in her muscle memory, just waiting to come out and play. She’d bitten Belesku, licked Belesku’s blood from her claws, and it had tasted good. Tasted like prey, only infinitely better than the little rodents and lizards she’d catch when they were dirtside.

  She’d thought that, thanks to the good efforts of Mik and his husband, Gan, she’d escaped her childhood. Learned to be civilized, despite not having parents of her own species to teach her about food versus not food, prey versus sentients.

  But her marled-up past had caught up with her and she didn’t know how much longer she could fight it.

  Xia had insisted on taking the newly refurbished smaller cabin once Drax moved onto the Malcolm, letting Rita and Drax take the cabin she and Rita had once shared. Nothing noble or self-sacrificing. In a new-to-her, smaller space, Xia didn’t feel so alone.

  Most of the time.

  It wasn’t working right now.

  Rita had always been good about letting Xia hug her or crawl into her bunk to chat before sleeping. Xia had always made a game of it, flirting outrageously and pretending to suffer unrequited lust in such over-the-top terms it was obvious she was joking.

  She’d never wanted to admit the truth to Rita, who had a sort of innocence from growing up in a happy family on a decent planet like New Canada—physical contact and companionship helped her handle the darkness, as long as she was with someone she could absolutely trust. For her first two years on the Malcolm, Xia had slept on a mattress on the floor of Mik and Gan’s cabin, and they’d let her into their bed when the dark overwhelmed her. They were good guys. They never complained she was getting in the way of their passion. She figured that out on her own when she got a little older, gritted her fangs and insisted on moving into her own space. Then she left the light on for years, until Rita joined the crew and Xia realized right off that she could trust the human woman with everything, including her nightmares.

  Too bad she couldn’t trust random lovers the same way, or it would be a lot easier to take care of the darkness. But she didn’t like sharing a bed with someone she didn’t know. Sex was one thing. Sleep was far too vulnerable.

  Even with the light on, like it had been since she moved into her own little cabin, Xia could feel the darkness creeping in. Not the friendly, warm darkness of an evening spent having sexytimes in good company, or the exciting blackness between planets when you were traveling someplace new, or the playful darkness you crept through to pull off a prank, but the slimy, creepy darkness of her nightmares.

  She knew that darkness. It lived in her bones. She might not be able to remember how it got there, exactly—she figured she was better off not knowing the details—but it had to be a holdover from her time on Lysander.

  Along with knowing how to do serious damage to someone who’d gotten rich by murdering people for pay.

  No way she was getting back to sleep, even with the lights on. The cold black was so thick the cabin lights couldn’t cut it.

  Maybe company would, and she knew who’d be awake and alone. Buck was pretty dark in his own right, but they could always find a little light for each other.

  Besides, he always had booze. Booze might not help in the long run, but it made her feel warm and bubbly while it was dancing in her veins, and she’d take that cheap comfort for now.

  Chapter Two

  “Let me get this straight.” Cal Janssen was doing his best to keep his voice calm and professional, but he knew he was failing miserably. “You want me to find a young felinoid woman who’s been missing for eighteen Standard years. All the verified holos of her are at least that old, and she’s a small child in them. You think she’s part of a bunch of space gypsies who are supposedly en route to Cibari, which isn’t someplace anyone with half a brain would choose to go. She may or may not remember her birth name. She may or may not want to come back to her home planet and family.”

  “That sums it up.” The ambassadorial attaché from Mrrwr had dark hair, piercing blue eyes and a narrow, pointy-chinned face. He reminded Cal of Siamese cats, including the supercilious attitude. Most felinoids were so friendly and bouncy they could be hard to handle in a business setting, but this guy gave new meaning to the word reserved. Still, there was a bit of a twinkle in his eyes as he asked Cal, “You’re Cal Janssen, reputedly the best private lawman in the galaxy, indisputably the most expensive. Aren’t you up for a little challenge?”

  “A challenge, yes. But not an impossibility, especially not one that will end up causing my clients even more pain.” Cal sighed. He didn’t like being this honest with clients. It hurt them and did his reputation no good. At least this man wasn’t related to the missing, undoubtedly dead, girl. He was just negotiating on behalf of her family on Mrrwr. “I understand a female felinoid who looked like she might be an adult Xia Merrin surfaced during the diplomatic brouhaha on San’bal last month. I believe that woman’s name was even Xia.” He knew he was butchering the missing girl’s name, saying it the way a human would, rather than with the proper felinoid glottal clipping on the first name and the rolling Ms and Rs on the second. At least he’d managed to get the accent on the proper syllable on the first name. He suspected humans rarely pulled that off.

  “But the odds it’s the same person are about as good as those of getting out of a black hole. In most cases, a missing child who isn’t found within a few days isn’t coming home, and Xia Merrin has been missing for eighteen years. If she is still alive, it’s because she was assimilated into another family, another life, shortly after her kidnapping. Whether her new family was good or bad, she may have no memories of her earlier life.”

  “Four is not as young for one of us as it is for your species, but it is still a kitten. She would have forgotten a great deal,” the attaché conceded. “But she needs to know who she is.”

  “Who is she?” This was getting weirder and weirder. Racial pride was one thing, and felinoids had it in buckets. But Cal sensed the cat-man meant something more than that.

  The attaché smiled in a way that Cal could only describe as benevolently evil. He was startled to realize the expression was sexy as hell. He disliked the attaché, and he tended to prefer women (he’d made the occasional exception, but as a rule he bent toward the female side when choosing partners), but that knowing, naughty grin still got under his skin and made him inclined to drop his guard. Another simultaneously annoying and endearing thing about felinoids: they’d won the galactic hotness lottery and used it to their advantage.

  “You’ll find out who she is if you accept the job. Right now, that’s classified.” The attaché said that word with great glee, as if he got a subtle erotic thrill out of the secret. Being a felinoid, he probably did. “The point is more what she is. She is one of my people. That means she’s a predator by nature.”

  “Predator?” Cats, the domestic animals that had traveled from Earth with the first human settlers, were predators, but small, tame ones content to eat synthfood from a bowl. And he’d always thought felinoids weren’t that closely related to those animals, despite the resemblance.

  The attaché smiled again, but this time it wasn’t truly a smile, more of a way of showing his fangs. He flexed his fingers, and suddenly his hands sported lethal-looking claws. Cal found himself wondering why he’d ever thought of felinoids as cute and harmless.

  “Predator. We aren’t among the largest of the sentient species, but we have exceptional natural weaponry. And while we’re known for our friendliness, it’s not wise to push us. If this woman is the missing Xia Merrin, odds are she wasn’t raised to recogni
ze proper prey and curb her more violent instincts. She is now an adult, at her full strength and speed, and with both a prey drive and a mating drive that can cause an unprepared young person to make regrettable choices.”

  “I didn’t think your species believed in regrets.”

  “Most of the time we learn from bad decisions and make sure we don’t get caught next time. But you can’t learn if you’re dead, or if you’re awaiting execution on Improved Texas. The woman who surfaced on San’bal blinded a professional assassin in one eye and came close to gutting her.”

  “You’re saying she’s a dangerous criminal? My rates just went up. A lot.”

  “The family will pay what it must. Accumulating money is dull unless you use it, and what better use could there be than bringing a missing loved one home?” He shrugged, a lazily elegant movement that Cal couldn’t help admiring. “As for the young woman who made news on San’bal, whether or not she is Xia Merrin, she isn’t a criminal.” A smaller version of the shrug. “Well, technically, she is, but only because so many species don’t have our senses of style or humor. In the case of the assassin, the girl was defending herself and her friends, which is not a crime.

  “But she’s dangerous. She has the instincts and reflexes of a predator, without the skills we teach our kittens so they can control those instincts. She’s a spacer, living a rough-and-ready life in a galaxy where people are quick to exploit pretty females. Sooner or later, someone will push her too far and she will kill. She’s like a child in some ways, but the law will see an adult who killed, and most planets can’t see anything funny about murder. Which, I suppose, is good.” He didn’t sound convinced about that part. “Will you help us bring her home before that happens?”

  Cal had intended to say no as soon as he heard the ridiculous parameters of the job. Screw that, he’d wanted to walk out of the damn posh office, with its cushions on the floor instead of furniture a human could sit in comfortably, and leave the annoying diplomat staring at his retreating ass. The money was potentially great, enough to cast its usual hypnotic lure, but it wasn’t worth the pain of failure, of having to tell a family that their newly raised hopes were futile and their little girl was long dead.