The tension hung in the air. I had to say something to break it. “This is nothing. You should see the fit he threw when I told him I wasn’t coming to visit for Christmas.”

Barabas laughed.

The mercs looked at him, then back at me.

“Family,” Curran said, putting his arm around me. “Can’t live with them, can’t kill them. You ready to go home, baby?”

“Sure,” I said.

Outside I stopped. “I did it again.”

“I know,” he said.

“I’m trying.”

“I know.”

I had to try harder. “He really wants Saiman for some reason.”

“Did he mention the tiger?”

“He thinks we stole it. You still feeling okay?”

“Yes.”

I glanced at him. “Why did you eat the tiger?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. It was a compulsion. I saw him and I had to make him not be.”

“You worry me,” I told him.

He pointed back at the Guild with his thumb. “Pot, kettle.”

Some pair we made. There was nothing left to do but go home. I could use a quiet afternoon and a big early dinner before we figured out our next move.

• • •

“CAN I TALK to you?” Julie asked me as we pulled into the driveway in front of our home.

“Yes.” I knew that tone of voice. Something bad always followed that tone of voice. Something like “I crashed the car” or “I accidentally set the school on fire.” I couldn’t take more bad news today.

Curran and Derek went inside. I leaned on the trunk of the car. “What is it?”

She stepped close to me and whispered. “Adora is staying in George and Eduardo’s spare bedroom.”

“What?”

Julie went to the Jeep she or Derek usually took to Cutting Edge, pulled her backpack out, and ran back to me, digging in it.

“He sent some people after her a few hours after you left. I had to move her. The hospital wouldn’t let her stay. Here, they took pictures for insurance purposes and I got the extras.”

She thrust a stack of Polaroids at me. The first one showed a wall covered with blood. A big spurt of bright red blood, then the characteristic wave pattern as the victim stumbled along the wall. Arterial spray. Another Polaroid, more blood. I flipped through them. Blood on the floor, blood on the walls, headless body, another body crumpled up, a third corpse sagging in the corner, more blood, bloody sheets, and finally Adora, kneeling in the blood and sitting back on her heels, her sword in front of her, a big angelic smile on her face.

Why me?

“She said Roland’s people tried to bring her back and she told them she didn’t want to go.”

Well, at least she made a choice instead of blindly obeying. “So you took her to George’s house?”

“I didn’t know where else to put her. If I put her into one of the other houses, Curran would smell her. George has people working on her roof, so there are new smells all the time.”

“My old apartment?”

She opened her mouth. “Oh. I didn’t think of that.”

“Did you at least tell George who she was?”

“Yes. George was okay with it. She told Adora that if there was any trouble, she would sit on her.”

Coming from an enormous Kodiak, that was no small threat.

“She also wrote down all the sahanu information you wanted.” Julie dug in her bag. “It has some blood spatter on it but you can still read some of it . . . Kate?”

I hugged her. “We’ll deal with it tomorrow. Tonight we all need to rest. And we need to take time to remember Jezebel, because there might not be much time tomorrow.”

“Okay,” she said.

We went inside.

My aunt tore through me like a hurricane. “You left me behind.”

“Yes, I did.”

“You will not do that again.”

“Yes, I will, if I find it necessary. Bringing you to the Pack would’ve resulted in us being torn to pieces.”

Erra squinted at me. “What happened?”

“For two years a shapeshifter woman took care of Julie and acted as my bodyguard. I trusted her with my life and the life of my adopted child. Tonight he made her try to murder my best friend’s baby. She failed but she injured the Beast Lord’s mate.”

Erra peered at Julie. “You told me this one was dead.”

“I didn’t want you to kill her,” I said.

Erra peered at Julie. “You gave her our blood?”

“It’s a long story.”

“You like horses, child, don’t you?”

Julie looked at me.

“Go ahead and answer,” I told her.

“Yes.”

“And wolves. You have an affinity for wolves and wolflike dogs. They make sense to you.”

“Yes.”

“What color is my niece’s magic?”

“It’s difficult to describe.”

Erra glanced at me. “You have a child of the Koorgahn. And a throwback to a pure-blood, too. Look at that hair.”

Koorgahn? She probably meant kurgan. The only kurgans I knew about were the burial mounds peppering the old Russian steppes, Asia, and southern Siberia. The kurgans served as burial mounds for the ancient race of Scythians, and the earliest ones dated sometime around the ninth century BC . . . They were blond. The ancient Greeks described them as red-haired or fair-haired with blue or gray eyes, and the mummies the archaeologists pulled out of the ancient grave sites matched that phenotype.

“Who are you, child?” Erra asked.

“I’m her Herald,” Julie said.

“At least you have a Herald. You’ve done something right. I need to speak to my niece alone. We’ll talk more later.”

Julie looked at me. I nodded and she went deeper into the house.

“My father has been talking to her,” I said.

“Of course he has. He always wanted one, but they were a proud people. He couldn’t buy a child of royal blood and he couldn’t broker the marriage of one of his offspring to theirs. First, they knew his reputation, and second, they were afraid to lose the Sight. It was believed that a mixing of two powerful bloodlines could produce a child unable to see magic, and they wouldn’t expose one of their own to that risk. When it was clear that magic would vanish from the world, her people killed themselves by the hundreds because they were going magic-blind.”