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“What?”

“Shit.” I tugged one arm free and pulled him along behind me with the other. “They’re gonna grab Harper.”

He didn’t waste tune arguing, just fell in step as I put on a burst of speed. I held off shifting form, not wanting to draw attention too soon. We rounded the last corner just in time to see the brunette disappearing toward the alley with Scott’s evil twin.

“What the—” Scott double-timed it past me, and I let him. Jogging the last few steps into the alleyway, I reached for the Power beneath my feet, and shifted.

The surge of magic caught Fake Scott’s attention. He snarled, grabbed Harper’s arms, and slammed her into a brick wall with sickening strength. So much for snatching her. She cried out as her head smacked into the wall, body crumpling to the ground. And that set the real Scott right off.

His double scrambled backward as several hundred pounds of angry Hound confronted him with a muzzle full of wicked sharp teeth. Nemesis and Nike stretched their heads ‘toward our adversary, but I tried to calm them down. Scott had things under control. The least I could do was check on his. . . friend.

I knelt next to her inert form and cursed. She was so still and pale, she
had
to be dead. I reached out to feel for a pulse, but just then her body twitched.

I scrabbled back several steps when the twitching turned to outright convulsions. Magic flared. The woman’s neck, bent at an impossible angle, popped back into place and the bruises along the right side of her body faded one by one. Her eyes flashed open. Jade-green eyes bearing the narrow slits of ‘a cat’s pupils. Her back arched when she saw me, and she hissed.

I glanced from her to Scott, then back again. Holy shit. Just wait till Scott’s mother found out. His little friend Harper, the one he’d slept with, was a Cat. Ninety-nine lives and all.

“Whoa, settle down, girl. I didn’t kill you.
He
did.”

She turned her gaze onto the Hound battling it out with his double. Magic stirred and I jumped back just in time. Her mortal form wavered, then fell away completely, replaced with red-black fur, nasty claws, and a slender, powerfully built body bred to be a killing machine. I could totally see why Scott’s mortal ancestors had worshipped them as gods.

Harper’s feline nostrils flared as she sniffed the air and then launched herself toward the Sidhe bastard who’d killed her, soaring over Scott’s body and knocking his double to the ground. Scott backed off as the Cat raked claws along the Sidhe’s torso and abdomen, drawing both blood and screams. The mortal authorities would not be far behind.

She toyed with the Sidhe, no longer such easy prey. But the Sidhe wasn’t either, as Scott and I had learned when spiriting Con away from her school. He got in a solid blow to her head, sending her skittering while he jumped to his feet. She shook her head, snarling and spitting and bunching her body for another leap.

A flash of metal and a soft click from a dozen feet away caught my attention. Fuck. No time to warn Scott. I leapt into the air, beating both wings to gain the momentum I needed, slamming into his body and knocking us both to the concrete. Bullets whizzed past where our bodies had just been, but they made very little noise. Someone was using silencers. Not to mention magical immortal-killing ammo, I was sure.

“Harper,’ stop!” Scott rolled toward the Cat, cuffing her on the head to distract her from the Sidhe who’d in fact been the one toying with her. Toying with us all, keeping our attention long enough for his partners to begin picking us off with more mundane means. And we’d nearly let them.

Sirens wailed in the distance. The Sidhe cursed and took off down the alley, not sparing us a second glance. The soft ping of bullets disappeared as well. Even so, I kept my body low as I worked my way over to Scott and the Cat. She followed my lead when I shifted form, looking none the worse for wear in her business clothes and heels. As if I hadn’t felt bad enough in the loose jeans and ridiculous T-shirt.

“Scott, we have
got
to go. I can’t afford to be taken in for questioning until we figure out which feds are involved in this mess.”

Harper stiffened, now-mortal brown eyes narrowing. “What do you mean, feds are involved? And what the hell are you doing with the city’s missing Chief Magical Investigator, anyway?”

No big surprise she recognized me after all. Kinda hard not to the way I Furied out back there. Scott touched her shoulder. “Way too long of a story, Harp. You trust me, right?”

Her sharp but pretty features softened. “Of course I do, Mutt.”

I fought back a sneer. Mutt? Was that some twisted term of endearment or something?

“Then we need to get somewhere safe pronto.”

She nodded, pushing to her feet briskly and motioning for us to follow. I debated taking off in the other direction but knew that was just wishful thinking. What was that saying about safety in numbers?

Harper led us around the back end of the marketplace at a quick clip, careful to avoid the worst of the crowds and even more careful to avoid the uniformed officers bursting onto the scene. She took us to a nondescript parking garage, where we piled into an even more nondescript four-door sedan, and then she started driving in random patterns meant to lose any would-be tails. She didn’t do a half-bad job, actually.

“Okay, Scott, spill it,” Harper demanded.

He glanced over his shoulder to where I lounged in the backseat. I just nodded.

“All right. You noticed my doppelganger back there?”

I saw her lips twist in the rearview mirror. “Kind of hard to miss, considering he kissed me almost as good as you and then busted my head open on a brick wall.”

Scott winced. “Yeah, sorry about that. Did you get any impressions back there?”

“Other than the one from my head hitting the bricks?” She pondered, making a sudden right that cut off the car behind her, earning as many glares and rude gestures as my earlier jaunt across the street. “Well, when I saw you in Hound form, I realized he must have been a shifter of some sort. Course, I knew something was up the minute he grabbed me. No offense, sugar, but you’re neither that fast nor that strong.”

I snickered. She shot me a considering glance in the mirror. “So, just what kind of shifter was he? Most of us can only assume one or two forms. Besides Furies, of course.”

The challenging note in her voice had me bristling. “We Furies only assume other shapes when pursuing investigations, or to protect our asses when psycho federal agents are trying to kill us for no good reason.”

She rolled her eyes. “If they were trying to kill you, I’m sure they had a perfectly good reason. To them.”

“Hush.” Scott gave us each a
Grow up
glare. “Mind letting me finish?” When neither of us responded, he went on. “That guy back there wasn’t a shifter, not in the strictest sense of the word. He was Sidhe.”

The car jerked to a stop as Harper slammed on the brakes and turned on Scott. “Have you gone Out of your ever-loving mind? The Sidhe are extinct.”

I bit back a smirk, though I couldn’t quite keep it out of my voice. “And you didn’t notice the difference when Mr. Double back there jammed his tongue down your throat?”

Brown eyes flashed with fire. Good thing she was seat-belted in. “I already said he kissed
just
about as good as.. .“ Her eyes widened. “He mesmerized me.”

“Yeah. One of them got me yesterday~ For about thirty seconds. Then he tried to convince me to kill Scott, which was ludicrous. If I decide to do that, it’ll be all on my own.”

Scott grinned. “Nice to know you care, Riss.” He turned back to Harper. “Suffice it to say we have reliable proof that the Sidhe aren’t quite as extinct as we were led to believe. A secret branch of the mundane government has been holding the surviving members of the species since the War ended.

What’s worse, they’ve been breeding them in captivity, and they’ve succeeded in either brainwashing or bribing some of the Sidhe to work for them. And now they’re trying to kill us.”

Harper slid back into traffic, teeth nibbling at her lower lip. “Why would they want to do that?”

“Because I didn’t fall for the little ruse they

arranged the other day. Came across a body in the normal course of my duties, supposedly that of another Fury, except it wasn’t. It was a Sidhe in full-blown glamourie, shifted into the form of my sister Fury. My best friend, who disappeared several years ago.”

Her face took on a pitying cast, one I tried to ignore. “Why would they go to all that trouble? I mean, why risk someone finding out the truth? Why not just dispose of the Sidhe’s body somewhere no one would ever find it?”

“Good question. Best I can figure is the fact that I’ve never given up on finding Vanessa. Add to that the fact that her ex-boyfriend Dre Carrington’s investigators turned up a fresh lead recently—I’m betting they tried this as a last-ditch effort to get us both off the case. Still, dumping the Sidhe’s body in my own jurisdiction was probably not the brightest thing they could have done. Another Fury might not have been as quick to notice the difference. And if her body had been dressed up for her funeral, I would never have noticed either.”

“Huh. So, what do you two need from me exactly?”

Scott’s shoulders relaxed. “Information. You’ve got the best network of arcane contacts in the state, not to mention the mundane contacts you can access through the FBI. We have reliable information that the Sidhe are being held in Western Massachusetts, but we’d like to narrow our search area down.”

Harper pursed her lips. “And why should I risk getting involved in this, Mutt? I mean, sucks for the Sidhe and all, but they gave as good as they got before they were wiped out. Shit, they killed good friends of mine in the last couple of skirmishes. Friendly fire, my ass.”

He touched her hand on the steering wheel. “Because they have my sister, Harp.”

Oh, hell, Mutt. I thought Andre Carrington had Amaya.” It stung that Harper had known the truth Scott hadn’t trusted me with. A lot.

“We thought the same thing, until Riss pointed out the now-obvious. The woman Dre has is
not
my sister.”

“Let me guess. Sidhe?”

Scott’s voice sounded weary. “Yeah.”

Harper’s hands clenched. “All right. Fine. I should be able to make some inquiries without raising any eyebrows at the Bureau. I’ll stick to my arcane contacts for now, to make it easier. I assume you don’t want the fact that Sidhe are involved to become common-knowledge?”

I rolled my eyes. “That’d be just what we need. Every mortal-hating arcane with a grudge declaring war against all mundanes and tearing the commonwealth apart to find the nut jobs responsible. Yeah, if you could keep that little tidbit out, I’d appreciate it.”

Her eyes glinted with humor. “I’ll do my best. So we’re looking for compounds big enough to hold an unknown quantity of arcane captives. And it has to be pretty secluded. I assume you’ll take care of narrowing, down the field once I give you a list?” At my nod, she asked, “Is it just the Sidhe and your sister being held captive?”

My fingers tightened on the PDA. “No. They have my sister Fury, too. At least, I hope they do.”

“Oh, right. She’d ‘have to be alive for the Sidhe to have copied her.”

“At some point recently, yeah. And I’m sure you’re aware of the unusual number of arcanes who have disappeared recently. Including atleast two Cats that I’m aware of.”

“I knew about the two missing Cats thanks to the family grapevine, though I’ll admit I’ve been working on a major magical counterfeiting case for the Bureau so hadn’t really paid much attention to anything else.” She fluffed her deep-brown hair. “However, now that you mention it, I will take great pleasure in tracking the bastards down. Nobody holds a Cat against their will.”

I grinned. Maybe Harper wasn’t so bad’ after all.

I STARED DOWN AT THE LIST OF POSSIBLE
locations Harper e-mailed the next morning and snarled. “If this is the best Harper can do, I’d hate to see her worst. Eight different places spread out all across the state? This will
take forever
to narrow down!”

Scott finished unfurling a map of Massachusetts on the kitchen table, ignoring my tirade as he placed .a utensil at each corner of the map. He began sticking pins in the eight spots Harper had e-mailed to us minutes earlier.

“Hmm. That’s not
too
bad. Most of them are within a few hundred miles of each other, and the locator works within a five-mile radius.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and seethed. “That’s still a lot of ground to cover. Especially for just .the two of us.”

“It
won’t
be the two of us. No way I’m busting into a secret installation with just you and me.”

“I figured we’d find the place, do a little recon, and send for backup.”

He patted me on the head. “Yeah right, Riss. I know you. The second you saw a prisoner, Rage would hit and you’d try to kill every guard in sight, raising an immediate alarm and getting our asses caught.”

My lips twitched. Okay, so maybe he had a point. “Who we taking, then?”

His fingers tapped the map idly. “Well, we can have Kiara and Sean take Over guarding your family, which gives us Mac and Elle for sure.”

I nodded slowly, doing my best to pretend the bizarre scene with Sean had never taken place. I figured what Scott didn’t know—and I didn’t acknowledge—couldn’t hurt him. “Yeah. Those two seem competent enough.”

Scott bit back a grin. “Whoa. You calling Elle competent? That’s a miracle.”

“Don’t push your luck, Murphy.”

“Yes, ma’am. Okay. I’m sure Harper would love to get in on the action, especially considering they used up one of her ninety-nine lives and some of her people could well be captives. With Amaya involved in this, our trouble with the family will be
limiting
the number of volunteers we get. I’d rather not risk too many family members on this, just in case . .

His voice trailed away, and I shivered. In case we fucked up and died, or were taken prisoner ourselves.

To be experimented on like animals with no free will of our own. That more than anything pissed me off.