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  "No one," I said, still using Ivan's grumble as I backed up more, hoping the shadows would hide my face if her adrenaline-clouded memory did not. "The medics are on their way—can you hear? You'll be fine."

  The hand I'd untied reached out, fingers trembling as she tried to catch my jacket. "Don't leave me. Please."

  I chewed my lip, reality flickering around me as I struggled to breathe evenly. Another girl, another death, another plea: don't leave me. But in a basement, the last shelter we found as wards failed and boots kicked in a door upstairs. I turned away, pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes. Not real. Not real. Breathe.

  "They're almost here. You'll be fine. Just concentrate on breathing." A message for the both of us, really.

  The closer the sirens got, the faster my heart pounded. The more real the sensation of being hunted, being chased, being trapped became. Even guilt and shame as the strength left her arm and it flopped down, the blood staining her skin lost in the shadows, wasn't enough to unstick my feet. I should have comforted her.

  "I'm Indira. Indira Modi." Her lips parted, red with lipstick or blood. "If I die, tell my parents I'm sorry."

  "You'll be fine," I said. The dark witch's grimoire tripped me, and I crouched to pick it up without taking my eyes off her. A book like that couldn't end up in the open. Blue and red lights flashed near the mouth of the alley and I bolted.

  I barely made it into the darkness of an adjacent alley before screeching tires and slamming doors filled the night. I didn't look back or celebrate the close call, panic rising in a tide from my stomach. Had to keep moving. The Externals would set up a perimeter and search for the perpetrators in ever-widening circles, maybe start a city-wide witch hunt if the girl had important parents.

  The effort to remain at a purposeful walk probably took a few years off my life, but sprinting drew too much attention. Running from a crime scene meant immediate, absolute guilt. I shed my jacket, splattered with blood and demon magic, and shoved it into a dumpster once I'd made a few turns and gotten a little distance. I carried the book another several blocks before shoving it into a hidey hole I'd used for personal items when I had no home, and concealed it behind a rusty grate in a crumbling foundation.

  A dog barked nearby but I didn't dare look back. It could have been a stray looking for scraps. Or it could have been an External or Alliance detective in animal form, on the hunt and following my scent. I dropped any hint of magic I held and wished for rain to clear the last of the blood off my hands. I couldn't swallow a knot of panic and adrenaline, shoving my hands into my pockets to still their shaking as I hunched my shoulders against the wind.

  A few drops of rain plunked onto my forehead and the dark night closed in around me, rumbles of thunder competing with rumbling memories. I clenched my teeth. It was the Truce. The war ended. We moved on.

  A calming mantra Joanne taught me took the edge off as I started jogging, fleeing the cops and the memories alike, and I asked the saints for protection as the rain fell in sheets.

  No good deed went unpunished.

  Chapter 2

  By the time I made it to Moriah's favorite bar, shifters and a few daredevil humans packed the Pug. Bass reverberated from the live band, audible from the street and teeth-shaking once inside, and only the shrilling guitar competed with the falsetto of the lead singer. My thumb gouged my palm, though the nail was so gnawed down it didn't distract me from the jostling bodies, flashing lights, and shouting partiers as I'd hoped. Focus. Had to focus. A handful of witches blended in; I studiously avoided looking at any of them, not wanting to risk a conversation.

  I maneuvered around the crowd to see where Mo and her pack occupied the corner booths and high-top tables. She called out, wearing a birthday crown and already three sheets to the wind, but I pointed at the bathroom and she waved me on. I concentrated on the door to the ladies' room, trying to control my breathing. Memories crashed down on me with each punch of the bass, every elbow digging into my ribs. Strobe lights flashed like tracers. Cigarette smoke mimicked clouds of gas, creeping through a house.

  I locked the door behind me and braced my hands on the counter, ducking my head so I didn't have to see myself in the mirror. The mantra Joanne taught me in the fifth year of war promised stability as I whispered it over and over, fighting my racing heart and the headache beating behind my eyes. The coldness of witch magic might give me enough space from the memories to take a good breath, to calm down. To remember, or forget.

  I shook my head, staring at the crumpled paper towels on the floor by my muddy boots. Magic could buy me calm but the price would be too high. Slippery slope, using magic as a coping mechanism. That was how I ended up spell-drunk and alone in an alley, unable to tell what day it was, only a few years earlier. The climb out of that hell was not something I had the strength to repeat.

  It might have been an hour before splotches no longer obscured my vision, before my hands stopped shaking so violently I couldn't grip the chipped laminate counter, or maybe just a few minutes. I splashed water on my face before scrubbing the blood from my hands and arms, where flecks of red would draw unwanted attention. My reflection shook her head, couldn't stop shaking it, as I thought of the blood and the dark witches and a jacket I'd tossed away but couldn't afford to replace. Saints blast it.

  I got rid of all the blood I could see, but wouldn't be really clean until running a cleansing spell on myself and everything I wore. That done well could take hours, and I couldn't occupy the only women's bathroom in a packed bar for more than a couple minutes. Already someone pounded on the door and shouted to hurry up. I dried my face and hands, pulling my hair back to keep it out of my face in case I ended up having to fight or flee. I wouldn't go quietly if the cops came after me, and the last thing I needed was a miscast spell because I couldn't see.

  I leaned close to the mirror to stare at my own eyes, despite the woman shouting to hurry my ass up, and pulled my eyelids down to check for hints of red. The irises remained blue, thank all the saints, and the only ring was the black one I got from my father's family. Just blue eyes, no hint of red. I swallowed hard, blinking rapidly as I turned away. Using their smutty magic shouldn't have been enough to cause demon madness, but there was no telling how that shit worked.

  Of course, no one would be able to tell what my eyes looked like in the dim bar as I unlocked the door and the disgruntled shifter doing a pee dance almost ran right through me. Panic receded, though returning to the chaos of the dance floor challenged my control until I slid into the booth next to Moriah. At least half her pack added to the scrum in front of the stage. She handed me a trio of shot glasses, full of shimmery blue liquid, and shouted in my ear. "You have to catch up."

  "Happy birthday," I said, toasting her with a shot in each hand, and downed them both so I might eventually forget the look on that poor girl's face as the knife slid into her stomach. Alcohol could be just as numbing as magic, if you drank enough of it.

  "Tell me something, Lil," she said, leaning close so her shrewd brown eyes could really see mine. The hunting look, we called it. Maybe she could tell if red tainted my eyes.

  "What?" I gulped the third shot and shuddered. Downing that much alcohol on an empty stomach wasn't the first bad choice I'd made that day, and it wouldn't be the last.

  Mo tossed her blonde braid over her shoulder, glancing around to see who might overhear before she went on. "Tell me why you smell like blood that isn't yours."

  My heart sank. Even in human form, shifters had better than average senses of smell, and of course the bathroom soap was unscented to accommodate sensitive sniffers. I rubbed my mouth, looking across the bar instead of at her. Just in case. "How noticeable is it?"

  "Not very. Only reason I noticed is because I know what you should smell like. Everyone else will probably assume you're on the rag."

  Ugh. The unfortunate, no-privacy reality of hanging out with wolves. You couldn't use PMS as an excuse for anything. I made a face, leaning to pillage a b
asket of cheese-covered something across the table. "Ran into a mess on the way here and tried to clean it up. Nothing to worry about."

  She nodded, waving to someone on the dance floor before elbowing me. "But tell me before it gets to the worry-about level, got it? It doesn't do you any good to be a friend of my pack unless we know when you're in trouble."

  "Oh, you'll know." Half the city would know, most likely, when I burned down the other half to cover my escape. I tried to laugh, not wanting her to see whatever remained of the memories from standing in the alley, blood oozing between my fingers, holding death back from someone I barely knew. Mo had seen me at my worst, through the ugliness of detox and recovery, so no wonder she wanted to intervene. It wasn't pretty when a war witch hit rock bottom and kept right on going. I pulled a small bag out of my pocket. "Anyway. Happy birthday. It's not much, but it should be useful."

  She grinned. "I'd say you shouldn't have, but it's my birthday, by Hati, and I like presents," and she shook a delicate chain out of the pouch and onto her palm. She sniffed it carefully before touching it to a gift I'd given her years ago, an unremarkable watch with a linked band. She held the chain up, studying it in the pulsing strobe lights. "It's pretty, but I know it's not just a necklace."

  I touched the watch band and sparks skittered across the table. "That detects active magic," I said, and it was bad news for me, since the sparks meant some of the demon shit still clung to me. "Stuff that's trying to do something to you. This," and I ran my fingers over the chain until it glowed a soft yellow and warmed to the touch. "Is something I've been working on to show passive magic—stuff that can ride along undetected until a specific time or event. I think I got the bugs worked out."

  She paused with the chain halfway over her head, eyebrow arched. "You think, or you know?"

  I laughed. "I know. I'm sure."

  "I'm serious, Lil," she said, half a laugh and half warning. "I don't need some experimental charm of yours catching fire around my neck. Again."

  I held up my hands in surrender. "I promise." But I choked down a giggle I could mostly attribute to the liquor, sitting like a warm rock in my stomach. "Really, it's good. I tested it. Just don't tell anyone what it does."

  "Why not?" Mo draped it around her neck, frowning down into her cleavage as she fussed with where the charm would lie. "Seems like a really useful thing to have—Soren would pay good money for something like this."

  "I know." It came out grimmer than I meant, by the look on her face, and to cover it I reached for a pitcher of margaritas a waitress dropped off. "As far as I know, none of the cops have something like that. Which is how it should stay."

  "Or...?"

  "Or we wouldn't be able to use passive glamours anymore," I said, rubbing my shoulder as it tingled, an old wound that ached when powerful magic approached. Far in the west, maybe the Slough, a coven raised a shitstorm of power. I tapped the table in front of Mo, trying to ignore the anticipation of that much magic—like the lead-up to a sneeze that never arrived but continued to intensify. "And not being able to use disguises would be bad news for us."

  "Well, only those of us who hide our faces," she said, then took the sting out of it by winking. "But I get it, for someone who runs around smelling like someone else's blood."

  "Totally not my fault," I muttered, and elbowed her for good measure. "I did a good deed. That's all."

  Mo laughed as some of her wolves returned, carrying trays of shot glasses, and everyone stood to take a few, shouting toasts to the birthday girl. The wolves included me, more from obligation than because they liked me, and wolves took obligations very seriously. Long ago I tried to make up for a betrayal by other witches, and though I couldn't save their brother, Mo and her pack still felt they owed me blood debt. It was an uncomfortable burden to bear, particularly since there were some days I wondered if Mo truly considered me a friend, or if I was just another task she had to track and occasionally check up on.

  I gulped a shot, reached for another. Maybe it didn't really matter. I'd saved her life a couple of times, helped her sister, stood vigil over her dead brother, and in return she pulled me out of an abyss after the Truce. It was a fair trade, as far as I was concerned. Witches did not like to leave debts unresolved, though the wolves maintained blood debts for years, sometimes decades.

  The magic continued building, far away, and I focused on my watch, the numbers swimming under some of that shiny blue liquid. Closing in on the witching hour. One of Mo's wolves used me for a kickstand, giggling about a ridiculously good-looking feline shifter near the door who she wasn't supposed to like but no one said interspecies dating wasn't allowed. I started to look over my shoulder, needing a distraction from the building pressure and hoping the lion would do the trick, but she grabbed my face, shrieking, "He'll see you!" and collapsed into a chair, midway between laughing and howling.

  I handed her a few more shots, said something trite about nothing ventured, nothing gained. My encouragement was enough, or maybe it was the liquid courage, because the girl announced she fully intended to make out with a cat and marched herself over to a startled young lion shifter with gold eyes and smooth olive skin. I banished the earlier panic, watching her both uninhibited and awkward attempts to flirt, and tried to forget about everything else in the world except Mo's party. Even if the coven met on the other side of the city, it wasn't my business. Even if they raised an obscene amount of magic on an inauspicious night in the middle of a storm. I wasn't the War Witch. Not anymore.

  Drinking with shifters beat standing in a circle, chanting. Outside in the cold and rain, with the reek of bitter herbs in the air, the taste of one of Rosa's foul brews on my teeth. Waiting for everyone to catch up to magic I did without thinking. Constantly having to explain and help and teach.

  Much better to be with the shifters. They at least believed in celebrating the here and now, regardless of what lay ahead. The witches were too busy mourning the past to enjoy the present.

  I tossed back a drink as the room spun. The coven would cast their spell at midnight, and the consequences belonged to them. They weren't mine anymore; their mistakes weren't mine either. I had enough of my own bad choices to account for. I couldn't keep making up for theirs, too.

  The laughter grew more raucous and the jokes more raunchy as the drinks flowed. I concentrated on the wolves as the magic sweltered and seethed out of range, like a flash of light in my peripheral vision. The arrival of Mo's little sister, Mimi, was almost enough to distract me from surges of uncertainty any time another witch circled too close to our table. None talked to me, thank the saints, probably because I didn't wear a ring to identify myself as a witch and avoided eye contact. If they were smart, they wouldn't bother a witch who didn't want to be bothered. And if they recognized me... well. They had other reasons to avoid me.

  Mimi, bright-eyed as always and wearing ankle-breaking high heels, slung herself into my lap and put me in an affectionate headlock. "Aunt Leelee!"

  Surviving Mimi's drunken attention gave me an excuse to ignore the chill racing down my spine as the door opened across the bar, and stayed open as a group of men shoved through. I started untangling myself from Mimi, thinking to avoid whatever trouble arrived that late at night, but by then the group cut through the dance floor and I saw Mick, Mo's younger brother and alpha.

  The wolves all bowed their heads or nodded as their pack leader approached, shoving over to make room so he could sit at the main booth, the other men dispersing through the bar. Mick winked at his sister, about to tease her, but caught sight of me first, his expression changing.

  During the war, Mo was the strongest leader after Martin's death, and we all knew it. But the wolves weren't ready for feminism then. They still weren't. And Mick knew what I thought about that, knew as well that I'd helped his brother when he couldn't. He managed to be friendly most of the time, but there was always an undercurrent that I reminded him of a shameful failure, of misbegotten gains. Mo would never tell her brother h
e didn't deserve to be alpha, but something made me think Mick waited for me to say it instead.

  Mick recovered quickly and managed to insult Mo about her age while nodding to me. I hid behind Mimi, although that only lasted until the band played her favorite song and she launched off my lap to the dance floor. Mo goaded her brother into catching up, and more trays of alcohol and every type of fried or cheese-covered bar food arrived in minutes. Mick's pack was close to Soren, leader of the Alliance, so Others curried favor with the Stone Hills pack, thinking it would get them in with the Peacemaker.

  I mulled over how things sorted themselves out, and sought answers in the bottom of a shot glass. Even the alcohol couldn't dull the rolling thunderheads of magic from the west. Too much, on the verge of uncontrolled and uncontrollable, and Anne Marie usually too proud to recognize it. I reached for my phone. Maybe if I interrupted them, the power would disperse before the entire city burned. I didn't have the courage or the focus to ward the entire bar.

  I listed into Mo as I dialed Tracy's number, saying, "There's going to be trouble tonight," as I tried to find the right words to warn Tracy before Anne Marie got them all killed.

  She looked a lot more sober. Mo got her hunting look again, "Trouble?" but before I could explain, the door to the bar boomed open.

  Mimi crowed, "Leif!" and flung her arms around a tall man's neck as he edged through the crowd.

  The entire bar hiccupped and looked, and Leif, Chief Investigator for the Alliance as well as its second-in-command, patted Mimi on the back and shooed her back to the dance floor as he scanned the bar. My heart jumped to my throat. The grim wolf did not look like he wanted to be in a bar; his demeanor screamed official business. The human cops weren't suicidal enough to try storming the Pug, but maybe they tracked me from the alley and sent Leif to bring me out. My hands knotted into fists under the table. He was the last person I wanted to hurt, but I would. I drew a deep breath and ignored Moriah jostling me as she demanded, "What trouble?"