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This time her smile lit up her entire face. “That’s what I’m counting on.”

ONCE BACK ON THE BOSTON STREETS, I
tracked down a pay phone and called a reporter acquaintance of mine to check on Trinity. I was relieved to hear that she’d been rushed to the ER but was in stable condition. The reporter tried to grill me on my whereabouts, but I thanked him and hung up.

After taking a deep breath, I blended into the crowds scurrying along, trying to decide on my first course of action. Someone—likely a group of xenophobic mortals— was up to no good and had become desperate enough to kill both mundane and arcane in order to keep their secret from being uncovered.

Hell, they’d somehow managed to get me suspended in record time for doing my damned duty. And since the Elders couldn’t give me official help until I had more to go on than a hunch,, that left only one option.

I was on my own.

Still, I couldn’t maintain red alert twenty-four/seven. I’d have to sleep sometime. Arcanes might have ridiculously long life spans, but we still had many of the same physical needs as mortals. Which meant I’d also need money to eat and somewhere safe to crash. Couldn’t exactly use my own credit cards, now could I? I needed to recruit someone, preferably someone arcane, to serve as backup. And I could think of only one supernatural being still alive I trusted enough to watch my back. My ex, Scott Murphy. The thought of crawling to him and asking for his help didn’t exactly thrill me, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

I thought back to the last morning we’d woken up in bed next to each other. We’d gotten frisky for a few minutes until he decided to rain on my parade. Him, deliciously naked, sitting back and casually mentioning that his father was stepping down from the Shadowhounds—the family’s mercenary business

—early to become the chief of security for none other than Vanessa’s ex, Dre Carrington.

Scott’s concern had given way to what
had
to be feigned puzzlement. “Did you hear me, baby?”

My laughter hadn’t contained the slightest hint of humor. I’d heard it, but I just couldn’t fucking believe it. I’d sworn to bring Carrington down at
any
cost. Even if it meant turning my back on the one and only man who’d ever convinced me he was worth trusting enough to fall head over heels in love with him. I leapt out of bed.

Scott had scrambled after me, nearly sliding off the slick sheets and busting his ass on the hardwood floor. “Riss, wait, you just didn’t understand me. It’s not like tha—”

The venom in my eyes—the Rage in my voice—had stopped him cold. “Not like what, Murphy? Not like your money-hungry family is betraying the Sisterhood—betraying
me—by
going into business with the rat responsible for killing one of our sisters?” I couldn’t help the break in my voice, or the tears pricking my eyes, so I ran from the room without waiting for him to dress. Furies can haul ass with the best of them. I’d made it to the front stoop of Murphy Central before a haphazardly dressed Scott caught up with me.

He’d tried to explain. Told me he couldn’t tell me everything but that his dad really needed him.

In that moment, I knew. Knew that, for my Warhound, family would
always
come way above me.

He’d never even told me he loved me.. . No way I could live like that, knowing that I would come in last place for yet one more person I loved. For my mother, the Sisterhood came first. For my father, the bottle.

For my brother, his wife and daughter. And now Scott—and him I loved more than life itself. Staying with him would eventually destroy my poor, withering heart more surely than death ever could.

So I unleashed the anger raging beneath the heartache and cut him off before he could hurt me anymore than he already had. Said things to him that only the Rage could have given voice to. When I was done, we went our separate ways, and hadn’t seen each other since. Except in memory...

With a muttered curse, I reminded myself I was here to eat a little crow. Or Hound, as it were. I wound my way toward Boston’s magical Underbelly, the part of town where the less savory members of the arcane community tended to congregate, along with the smattering of rough-and-tough mortals deadly enough to get down with them. Scott Murphy was the mongrel son of two such people— his parents were an arcane bitch and the big, bad human mercenary who loved her.

That wasn’t an insult. Scott’s mom was a literal bitch, member of the Egyptian-based Cabal made up of shape-shifting Warhounds. And, seeing as how arcane genes tend to be dominant in a major way, Scott took after his mother more than his father, inheriting her shape-shifting and martial abilities.

My skin tingled when I crossed the border separating relatively normal Chinatown from the anything-but-normal Underbelly. The scents of a dozen different arcane races, all tinged with various flavors of magic, hit my nostrils. A mortal would have compared the smells to mundane spices: the sweetness of cinnamon and sugar warring with the spicy tang of cayenne and cumin. My nose itched with the urge to sneeze, but I fought it back. I reassumed Fury guise, knowing that only one form would gain true respect from
all
members of the Gens Arcana.

There was a very simple reason Furies wore our flashy. red uniforms, beyond the fact that the magically treated leather was stain-resistant and provided a rudimentary form of armor. They made us look badass. And when one was responsible for policing a vast array of magical badasses, looking the part was more than half the battle. Plus, let’s face it, most Furies have a vain streak wider than the Mississippi.

Even if we’d never admit it.

Drab brick buildings of short stature lined the Belly’s outskirts, giving way to taller, cleaner-looking glass-and-steel structures the farther I walked. The streets morphed from pockmarked asphalt to unnaturally smooth, magic-worked cobblestones. The illusion of days gone by without their bumpy inconvenience. Businesses took up the bottom floors of the largest buildings, ranging from the seedier establishments on the border to more respectable boutiques and shops farther in. After a brisk, ten-minute walk, I finally reached my destination.

Neither overly glitzy nor disreputable, Hounds of Anubis took up most of the ground floor of a block-long structure crouched at the intersection of the Belly’s two largest thoroughfares. Though the building itself was a sturdy-looking brownstone, the shop’s storefront was much more gilt than gold. I stared up at the store’s crudely carved insignia, tracing the row of fake gold Egyptian letters surrounding an ugly, dog-headed man wearing an ornate headdress. Anubis, patron god of the Cabal. A pretty badass dude himself, and not someone I wanted to meet again anytime soon.

Nemesis and Nike curved their way from lower arms to upper, radiating calm as well as chastisement.

I was stalling. They knew it. I knew it. Hell, the entire surrounding two-block radius no doubt knew it.

Scott’s and my breakup had been very public, conducted on the steps I now scuffed my boot soles along.

“Fuck,” I muttered, glaring at the crimson-scaled traitors on my arms. “Yeah, yeah. Let’s get this over with.”

The store wasn’t simply a front for the Murphy mercenary enterprise known as the Shadowhounds.

Liana Murphy, former heiress to the Banoub dynasty, operated her own lucrative business selling magical odds and ends along with priceless arcane art and antiques. She may have given up her once-glamorous world of power and privilege to settle down with a “lesser” human and her brood of mutts, but that hadn’t made her any less driven to succeed. An ear-piercing chime sounded when I opened the door and crossed the threshold, the tone alerting the store’s occupants that a dangerous arcane had entered the building. My lips curved slightly, and the compliment calmed me in a way nothing else could have. I turned my stalk into a strut, radiating as much confidence and danger as I could. Like always called to like in the Belly.

A pleasant, slightly gravelly voice rang out when I approached the front counter. “Can I help you?” A shaggy-haired brunette turned, then bared razor-sharp canines when she recognized me. “What the hell do
you
want?”

“Down, girl.” I made the phrase a carefree drawl, trying to ignore the pain from someone who had once been a friend now treating me like an interloper.

Kiara Murphy, Scott’s older and very protective sister, slapped both hands down on the counter, spiky tufts of hair bristling. I had once considered her and his oldest sister, Amaya, close friends. “You said all that needed to be said when you chased Scott off like he was some no-good mutt. Just like our mother’s oh-so-fine family. Now get the hell out.”

I crossed arms over chest like I didn’t have a care in the world. She’d be over the counter and at my throat if I showed the slightest shred of weakness. “That’s not the way it went down, and you know it.

Where’s Scott?”

“He’s nowhere
you
need be—”

“Kiara!” My voice cracked with every ounce of Rage I’d been suppressing for the past hour. “This is Fury business. Don’t make me ask again.”

She closed her eyes, hands balling into fists at each side as warring instincts boiled inside, the urge to protect her brother battling with the deeply ingrained belief that Furies must be obeyed at all costs. Not every arcane felt that urge as strongly as others, but Warhounds were fiercely honorable as well as deeply loyal.

Amber-yellow eyes opened, and she nodded. “Fine, then. Show yourself to the back room. But mark me well, Marissa. This had better damned well
be
Fury business, or you’ll regret lying to me.”

I headed for one of several doors in the rear of the room, unable to resist throwing a “Good girl” over my shoulder.

Her low growl had me grinning until I reached the centermost door. My fingers curled around the doorknob, tingling at the buzz of magic. When the security system recognized me as Fury, the tingle faded and the door responded to my touch. I drew in a deep breath, opened the solid length of steel, and stepped into my ex-lover’s domain.

Everything in the Murphys’ Command Central looked exactly the same as it had two years earlier.

Battered but comfortable chairs circled a beat-up poker table in one corner of the room, with a fully stocked wet bar in the opposite corner. Warhounds could drink just about any other arcane under the table. Except maybe Satyrs and, of course, Furies. The walls were made of dark wood paneling, faded by years of smoke from both cigars and the humongous fireplace crouched in the center of the wall directly opposite the door behind me. Boston winters grew cold indeed, especially for a race bred mainly in the hot desert sun of Egypt. I wrinkled my nose when the musky cigar odor hit. God, I hated that smell.

Three men and one woman sat around the table, cards in hand and cigars beside them. Morgan, Scott’s dad, was glaringly absent, no doubt holding the hand of my Public Enemy Number One. That thought had a scowl darkening my face and my fingers clenching. Great. The perfect mood to be in for a good ol’ ass-kissing.

Scott’s well-muscled back caught my attention immediately. Thick red hair flowed just past his shoulders in gentle waves. I widened my eyes. He used to keep his hair buzzed as short as possible, refusing to offer enemies any advantage in a fight. His deeply bronzed skin and hellaciously sexy body remained the same from what I could see. Secretly I’d hoped to see him gain a hundred pounds in my absence, but it looked like I was SOL.

The woman seated across from him glanced my way, boredom giving way to interest when she recognized me. Her dark black hair and slanted golden eyes gave her away as one of Scott’s innumerable cousins, and I placed her name a half second later. Elliana Banoub, so secure in her. lofty position in the Cabal that she socialized with the ostracized Murphys with no fear of repercussions. Unlike Kiara and Amaya, she’d disliked me from the moment we’d met, and the feeling was entirely mutual.

I didn’t recognize the long, lean redhead to her left, although something about the shape of his eyes seemed strangely familiar, but the guy facing him was Scott’s youngest brother, Sean. Seemed bizarre to think he was old enough to join in the family business. Then again, he’d been nineteen the last time I saw him, with a penchant for trailing after me like a little lost puppy. When his glance met mine, he gave me the first welcoming smile I’d seen since strolling into the building.

Elliana murmured something, cattiness (ha) darkening her yellow eyes to pure amber. My fingers itched with the urge to scratch them out. Scott’s back stiffened. He threw his cards down, pushed his chair back, and spun. As always, his exotic mix of Egyptian and Irish—the shoulder-length red hair paired with his mother’s intense golden eyes and coppery-brown skin—took my breath away. The Cabal’s great height meeting his father’s brawny muscles. Long, elegant fingers seeming so at odds with the calluses covering them, the latter gained from hours of weaponry practice with his relatives. Once, I’d known no greater pleasure than feeling those rough but gentle hands roam all over my body. Now, they only seemed to mock me as they clenched and be eyed me with cold disdain.

This was going to be even harder than dealing with Ekaterina.

“Well, well, well,” Elliana drawled from behind him. “Look what the Cat dragged in.”

I straightened, recognizing the insult for what it was. Warhounds absolutely despised their longtime enemies, the Bastai. Otherwise known as Cats. “And if it isn’t the Cabal’s number one ice princess, slumming it up yet again,” I shot back. “Just what
does
your fiancé think of that, Ellie baby?”

The ruff of baby-fine fur along her neck rose. She started around the table, but the unfamiliar man barked one sharp word, and she grew still. Interesting. Once upon a time, she’d never have taken orders from any of the arcanes around her, especially not when someone insulted her as badly as I just had. I knew good and well her fiancé had rejected her over a year ago, once it’d come out that she’d had an affair with an associate of Scott’s. My eyes went back to the unfamiliar redhead. Aha, guess
that
little rumor was true after all.