Kaci started to say something, but stopped when Michael’s voice reached us from the hallway.

“No. Holly, do not drive out here.” He paused, but I couldn’t hear how she replied over the raised voices now coming from the office. “Yes, another family emergency. I’m sorry, but I have to stay overnight. Owen…fell off the back of the tractor.” Another pause. “Yes, he’ll be fine, but there’s nothing you can do for him.”

Michael crossed in front of the wide doorway, carrying a red taper in a crystal holder, then reappeared almost instantly. He put his thumb over the receiver of his cell and met my gaze while Holly listed her objections in his ear. “Faythe, can I use your room? I need a little privacy.”

Before I could answer, my mother spoke up. “Manx is using Faythe’s shower. Take the master suite.”

My brother shot her a grateful look, then disappeared down the hall.

“Poor Michael.” Kaci frowned after him. “I don’t know how he keeps her from figuring stuff out.”

Michael was the only werecat I knew who’d married a human. Since there weren’t enough tabbies to go around, most toms settled for endlessly playing the field with human women. But my oldest brother wanted something more—someone to love for more than a few months at a time—and Holly had seemed the perfect choice. She loved Michael, and thanks to her job—she was an actual runway model—she spent almost as much time on the road as she did at home. Which was good, because when Michael wasn’t practicing law, he was at the ranch.

But when she was home, Holly wanted to be with her husband, and he’d been largely unavailable for most of the past few months, helping us deal with one disaster after another.

“Beats me. But she’s more likely to think he’s cheating on her than that he turns into a giant black cat in his spare time.” I took another sip from my glass, and as my parents’ door closed, my father’s voice carried to me from the open office door across the hall.

“What we’ve done is show both them and ourselves that we can fight them—if only by nontraditional means.”

“Yeah, that’d be great—” Taylor started, and in his pause, I heard the distinctive clink of glass on glass “—if we had more than half a box of ammunition and one gun.”

At least they’re taking us seriously now, I thought, then turned my attention back to Kaci.

“…think she’s going to die?” she was saying when I brought her back into focus. “That girl bird?”

“No.” I shook my head decisively as she bit into her brownie. “I bet the bullets went in one side and out the other. And considering how fast thunderbirds Shift, she probably heals even more quickly than we can.”

Which was a problem I hadn’t considered before. It would suck to come face-to-face with a healthy and once-again flying and newly pissed off Neve in a few hours.

“…couldn’t carry Lucas very far, or very high…” Di Carlo said from across the hall.

“Yeah, but Luke weighs nearly three hundred pounds,” my uncle replied. “That’s a good fifty pounds over the largest man here, and closer to seventy more than most of us.”

Yeah, and if they hadn’t been distracted by the gun, the birds would have double-teamed him, like they did with Charlie…

“…did he get the gun, anyway?” Kaci asked, and I was getting dizzy from trying to keep up with two conversations at once. “I thought Shifters don’t use guns.”

“It’s the one Manx shot Jace with.” But I didn’t truly realize what I’d said until my mother scowled at me from across the counter, frozen in the act of wiping down the countertop.

Kaci’s hazel eyes widened in horror. “Manx shot Jace?”

I cursed myself silently for not giving her my full attention. That was probably one of those things a thirteen-year-old didn’t need to hear. At least, not without the full story. “It was an accident. She was aiming at…the bad guy behind me, but Jace thought she was aiming at me. So he jumped in front of me and got shot.”

Though it hardly seemed possible, her eyes went even wider and glazed over with what could only have been total adoration. “Jace took a bullet for you?”

“Um, yeah.” Actually, he’d taken a bullet for Luiz, but I wasn’t going to downplay his heroics—he’d been willing to take the bullet for me. And he still was. Jace would have done anything for me, and everyone in the house knew it.

But so would Marc.

I’d been staring at her brownie when I got lost in my own thoughts, and Kaci mistook my emotional turmoil for hunger. “Here.” She pushed the saucer and half her snack toward me. “It’s the last one. Take it.”

I forced a grin. “Thanks.” But as I chewed, Marc’s voice floated my way from the office.

“…she’s not going to go for that.”

“It’s not up to her,” my father replied, and I dropped the remainder of the brownie on the little plate.

“Just a minute…” I mumbled, then slid off my stool and raced across the dark hall and into the candlelit office. They’re talking about Manx or Kaci, I thought as I stepped past Jace and into the room. But that wasn’t true. I could tell from the way they all stared at me, their eyes identically shadowed in the gloom.

“What’s not up to me?” I demanded, in as respectful a tone as I could manage.