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Kat dabbed the paintbrush into the corner and squinted her nose at the beige color. “You could have gone with something more interesting, you know. If I owned my apartment, I’d paint it purple and blue or something.”

Julio made a face. “I don’t think I’m really the purple type.”

Laughing, Kat rocked up on her toes to smooth the brush over the last bare spot. “Red? Red’s manly, isn’t it?”

He stepped back and considered the wall with a tilt of his head. “Green might not be so bad. Something dark.”

Meddling was bad, but sometimes Kat couldn’t resist. “You could ask Sera. She’s good at decorating.

Before she moved in, all I had on my walls were posters I hung up with thumbtacks.”

“Probably not the greatest idea ever.” He grinned and laid his paint roller aside. “Your roommate avoids me like the proverbial plague. I figure she’s got her reasons.”

“Well, yeah.” Kat waved the paintbrush at him. “You’re all hot and growly, and she’s on the wagon.

Sera wants to be independent, and you’re the top-shelf liquor of dominant shapeshifters.”

“Uh-huh. That, or she doesn’t want her father to murder me in my sleep.”

A valid concern. Sera’s father had been a trauma surgeon and a mercenary before settling down to run New Orleans’ supernatural clinic. But of all the years Kat had known Franklin, her clearest memory was his hands coaxing hers away from Andrew’s torn body as she sobbed and Andrew bled and bled-She pushed away memory with rigid self-control and turned back to the wall. Andrew was whole.

Andrew was hers, finally, and some day she’d stop having the nightmares where he bled to death and she never got to say goodbye. “Franklin is a scary man,” she managed. Too little, too late, but the best she could do.

Julio remained silent for a moment before snatching away her paintbrush. “Enough work. Time for fun.

What do you want to do? And don’t say play cards, because you cheat, and don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

“I don’t cheat,” Kat retorted, grateful for the chance to laugh. “You just suck. How can a precog be that bad at poker?”

He huffed. “As if I’d be so self-serving with my visions. I’m here for the good of mankind, you know.”

It was a joke, but it was Julio, and she knew that somewhere underneath the smiles and the teasing, he was just like Andrew. A hero, the kind who’d laugh about it and claim it wasn’t true, but who’d quietly do the things that needed doing. Whatever it took to keep the people around him safe.

Julio probably wouldn’t be any more comfortable with the praise of the truth than Andrew was, so Kat let him have the joke. “Yeah, yeah. You’re God’s gift to something, all right. How long have we got until Andrew’s done with shapeshifter politics for the day, anyway?”

“Hours. He promised he’d pick up some of the stuff I’ve been handling.”

“Huh.” She’d avoided Andrew—and, by extension, Julio—so adeptly for the last year that she barely knew the scope of what the two of them did every day. “If I buy you a beer or three, will you tell me exactly what a council member does?” And how I can start helping?

He didn’t consider it for long. “Hell, yeah. I’ll drive.”

It didn’t take long to clean up the brushes and paint supplies, but Kat made good use of the time, pestering him with questions about the day-to-day running of the wolves’ territory. She was still going as they stepped out onto the sidewalk, wiggling her way toward finding some place she could fit. “What about the changed wolves? I know Alec used to look after them, but is there a formal support system now?”

“Not quite.” His keys jingled as he dug them out of his jeans pocket. “There have been plenty of inquiries, though. People putting out feelers about Andrew, seeing if he’d be up to the task.”

She’d suffered through Derek’s transformation with him, unwilling to abandon the cousin who’d been unwilling to abandon her. Andrew hadn’t been able to accept her help, but Miguel had, and she’d watched him struggle with the same problems. She’d struggled with him, with an understanding only empathy could provide.

Excitement sparked inside her for the first time, the sort of excitement she’d never felt with her endless job searches. “I could help with that,” she offered hesitantly. “I mean, help Andrew. I know I’m not a wolf, but I can feel the things they feel. I can know who needs help, and when.”

“I guess you could, huh?” He locked the outside door behind them. “Talk to him about it.”

“I need to talk to you, too. And Alec.” She waited until Julio turned, so she could meet his eyes. “I want to be a part of it. Not Andrew’s girlfriend or Alec’s secretary. I want to help people who went through what Derek and Andrew and Miguel did.”

“Good luck with—” A pained grunt swallowed the words as he stumbled and pressed his fingers to his forehead with a grimace. “Damn it.”

“Julio?” Instinct drove her a step closer to him. Training prompted her to go for her phone, urged on by the sudden flash of Julio’s fear. Get the phone, call for help. Better to feel stupid if nothing was wrong than to-“Run. ” He blindly shoved the keys at her. “Get the car and go.”

His fear vanished, swallowed whole, and the abrupt silence was so unnerving she fumbled with the keys. Something tingled over her skin, like getting in the way of one of Jackson’s spells, and Kat shuddered as her phone slipped from her fingers.

Silence. Stillness. The calm before the storm, and she made it three steps before magic snapped through the air, painful enough to drive her to her knees. Physical discomfort faded under a wave of suffocating claustrophobia, and Kat screamed as she threw herself against the harsh cage that had snapped shut around her mind.

With Alec stuck in New York most of the time, Jackson had to work twice as hard to keep up with the clients at their small investigative firm. Alec’s name was still on the window, but it was a one-man show these days.

Andrew fidgeted in the office chair and looked at the piece of paper Jackson held out. “What’s that?”

“It’s a cashier’s check.” He waved it harder, then sighed and laid it on the desk. “Alec had me get a couple for Patrick and Anna, and they deserve it for the work they did in tracking down that cult. I already sent McNamara his, but I thought you could just give this one to Anna.”

“Okay.” Andrew picked it up and blinked at the amount printed on it. “The Conclave pays well for that stuff, huh?”

“Didn’t come from the Conclave.” He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “They wouldn’t pony it up because Anna’s still persona non grata up there. They consider her a defector, at best, and we all know how they feel about rogue threats. Alec paid up.”

“It’s hard to think of her that way.” It didn’t matter that she hadn’t done anything. The Conclave had trained her to be an assassin, and she’d quit on them. She wasn’t a person to them, not anymore—she was a time bomb with legs. A sobering reality, and a reminder that things in their world weren’t always what they seemed.

“The Conclave’s ineffective,” Mackenzie pointed out from her perch on Alec’s abandoned desk. “Do you know how long it takes for them to work through their so-called justice system? It’s been a year and a half since the mess went down with the cougar Seer, and they’re still holding the wolf who worked for him. Alec told me some of the people in their holding cells have been there a damn decade.”

“A big reason Alec and Carmen had to get up there,” Jackson drawled. “Even if it left me holding the bag here.”