“I got your message, Faythe. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you—”

Again his words were cut off by what sounded like gunfire and helicopter blades—the same sounds we’d heard on Painter’s message to my father.

“—you don’t want to see me. But I’m looking forward to seeing you.”

More explosions, and blades beating the air. “—take care of something tomorrow, but then I’m all yours. Won’t be long now.”

Another series of bangs, and this time the beating sound—obviously some kind of aircraft—faded off into the

distance over the line. Whatever those sounds were, Andrew was much closer to the action than Painter had been.

“—can’t wait to show off my new look. I think you’re real y going to like it. How could you not, right?”

The message ended with a short buzz of static, a muted click, then silence. Then a soft female voice came on the line, asking if I’d like to save the message. I pressed the yes key and flipped the phone closed, my hands still shaking.

My breath came in quick, panicked bursts, and I leaned against the wall to keep from falling. The fingers of my left hand traced the rough lines of mortar behind me. I focused on the harsh, gritty feel, using it to assure myself that I was awake. That I wasn’t in the middle of some terrible nightmare. That I hadn’t dreamed the horrible voice mail.

And I hadn’t.

Somehow, though he’d been human when I left him, tucked safe and sound among his textbooks, tennis courts, and completely nonlethal lattes, Andrew was now a tomcat. An honest-to-goodness, motherfucking, scratch-fevered stray.

And he was headed my way.

Chapter Seventeen

No. I shook my head in denial, though no one was there to see it.

That’s not possible. Yet it was true, nonetheless.

They don’t even know about me, do they? You never told them. The words from my last conversation with Andrew played though my head, and they made so much more sense in retrospect. He wasn’t talking about our relationship. He was talking about his new species. He seemed to think I knew what he’d become, and had been keeping it from my family. But I hadn’t known. How the hell could I have known?

Chill bumps popped up all over my arms and legs, in spite of the hot Texas night. This couldn’t be happening. Andrew was human when I left campus. Absolutely, positively one hundred percent human. No fur. No claws. No canines.

So when had that changed? And who changed it? I rubbed both my arms at once, trying to offset the chil spreading over me from the inside out.

Andrew’s family was from Tennessee, which belonged to the Midwest Pride, and he went to school in Texas, which was in our territory. So unless he’d been to one of the free zones lately, he was pretty unlikely to have ever met a stray.

That left only one other possibility. As badly as I hated to admit it, he could have been scratched by a Pride cat. But the chances were slim.

Creating a stray carried an automatic death sentence, and very few Pride cats were wil ing to take that kind of risk. Very, very few.

And it’s not like strays could be created by accident. An infectious scratch or bite could only be delivered in cat form, so casual physical contact with humans—such as a rough round of sex or even a fistfight—couldn’t possibly result in the creation of a stray.

So where could Andrew have come into contact with a werecat in cat form? Any werecat?

I refused to believe that my ex-boyfriend had been targeted by chance; that was like saying Lincoln was just in the wrong theater at the wrong time. Someone had intentionally dragged Andrew into werecat business, and whoever the bastard was, his fate would be sealed once we got one good whiff of Andrew. The infector’s base scent would be forever threaded through that of his victim—however lightly—just as Marc’s scent carried a permanent reminder of the stray who’d killed his mother and infected him.

It was a bitch of a double whammy, and the reason more than a few strays never came to terms with their new identity. But in this case, the scent trail would help us catch the slimy prick who’d put an end to Andrew’s human existence. At which point we’d end his own. An eye for an eye.

Tell Marc I’ll see him, too. I think he and I have a lot to talk about.

Shit. The very thought of that conversation introduced me to al new levels of stress. And humiliation. And…

An ache began behind my eyes and quickly grew into a searing, throbbing pain and pressure. My right hand clenched my phone, and my left flew up to feel my eyes, which seemed unchanged. For several moments I was blind, dependent on the rustle of leaves in the wind to assure me I still stood in my own yard. Panic set in and I almost screamed, terrified by the claustrophobic sensation of the sudden, nearly complete darkness.

But then the pain subsided, and my vision improved dramatically.

Light flowed back into existence rapidly, but gently. I eyed the trees beyond the guesthouse, and saw each leaf in eerily crisp focus, from the thin green veins to the spiked, serrated edges. Cracks in the tree bark seemed surreal in their rough, ragged detail. Every blade of grass at my feet stood out in vivid contrast to those around it, each rendered in a different shade of green as the available light struck them at slightly different angles.

I glanced up, expecting to see the moon breaking free from its cloud cover. But it hadn’t. If anything, the clouds had thickened, as forecast by the local weatherman, who’d predicted an unseasonably strong storm overnight. Yet I could see almost as if the sun were up, though my vision was tinted in shades of blue and green.