"Ash's birthday is next week," Wyatt said suddenly.
"Is it?" I was never good at remembering things like that, and our random birthday celebrations usually involved cheap cake and cheaper liquor, followed by maudlin comments about being happy to have made it to another birthday.
"Yeah. She'd have been twenty-eight."
It was a good age, since few Triad Hunters ever lived past twenty-two—kind of ironic, since that's how old I was when I died my first death. My new body was twenty-seven, and I had no idea when her (my?) birthday was.
"What's that face for?" Wyatt asked.
"Huh?" Had I been pulling a face?
"You looked confused for a second."
"Just wondering which birthday is technically mine now. When Evy Stone was born, or when Chalice Frost was born."
"What about May twentieth? The day you came back to me?"
I gave him a smile. "I can go with that."
His face went blank. "Stop."
"Stop what?"
"Stop the car."
I was in the middle of traffic and not very good at parallel parking, so I went up to the next block and found a small lot. He was already out the door before I shut off the engine, so I had to scramble to catch up. Back down the block. He was practically jogging. The foot traffic was pretty thin for a Sunday afternoon, but I still had to dodge a few bodies and angry glares.
"What is it?" I asked when I finally caught up with him.
He'd stopped across the street from our old building. His nostril twitched and his eyes were dilated. "I smell them. It's faint, but it's here."
"Right here?"
"Over there." He pointed at my old building.
I wasn't even going to ask if he was kidding, because I knew he wasn't. I steered him through traffic so he didn't get splattered by both his inability to find the crosswalk and his inattention to anything except the scent of those pups. He led us inside the dank, cement stairway that reeked of urine and sweat and old things—disgusting and familiar. I'd trod these steps a thousand times before in my old life, and a few times in my new one.
Wyatt pushed through the fire door at the top of the stairs, and we exited into a cement block corridor. Industrial doors marked the apartments, and we walked down to my old unit. He tilted his head, listening. "Their scent is here, but it's not fresh. I don't hear anyone inside."
"How would they know to come here? It's not like we ever introduced ourselves."
"It's possible one of them followed Jaron or Token here."
True. A few months ago, a goblin-human hybrid named Token had tracked the dying sprite Jaron to our apartment, and a little tussle had ensued. We learned later that Token was only one of many hybrid experiments being used by Walter Thackery. "Too bad they didn't leave a note taped to the door," I said.
"Maybe they left one inside."
"Something tells me the super changed the locks."
He smiled, then held his hand out, palm up, fingers pointed toward the lock. The air hummed with magical energy as Wyatt harnessed his Gift. Metal grated. The mechanism from the inside of the lock appeared on his palm, summoned right to him. He could only summon solid objects, and his control had been off a little since his change, but he was getting the hang of it again.
I turned the knob and the door opened. "You do realize this is officially breaking and entering?"
"It's not the first time."
"Good point."
So we broke into my old apartment. Which turned out to be okay, because it didn't look like anyone was living there except some squatters. It was empty of furniture and the appliances were missing from the kitchenette. The cement floor was scrubbed and bare. The only signs of our squatters were the pile of blankets in the far corner of the living room, and the black garbage bag overflowing with what looked like takeout containers. The place smelled closed up and stale, but not overwhelmingly gross, even with the old food containers.
I checked the window, which looked out onto a rusty fire escape. It was unlatched and open just wide enough to slide something thin through, like a pocket knife. "This must be how they get in and out," I said.
He'd crouched next to the blankets and held one close to his nose. "It's the pups." His eyes had gone perfectly silver.
"They're living here?"
"Yes. Or crashing on occasion. The scent is old, so they haven't been here in at least a day or two."
Stopping by once out of morbid curiosity for their new Pack-mate made some sense, if I looked at it sideways. But living here? It was like—"Do you think they want to be caught?"
"It's possible." He dropped the blanket and stood. "They've lost their family, and they don't know where to go. They may be putting themselves in my path so that we can meet."
"Or so they can follow Amalie's orders to kill you."
He nodded. "Also possible."
"So what do you want to do? Hang out and hope they come back?"
"No," he said without hesitation. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. After a few beats, he opened them again. The silver had receded to a thin line around the iris. "No, they may not return today or at all."
"We could always come back later and bug the place."
"We could."
He didn't sound very on-board with that idea. He grabbed the bag of trash and started rifling through it, sending up stronger odors of old food and rot. I took a step back, curious, but trusting him. He produced a few squeeze packs of mustard. Ripped one open. Spent a good solid minute using that mustard to write his cell phone number on the wall above the blanket pile, very careful to not smear any of the characters.
I guess when you traveled without pen and paper, you left notes any way you could.
"Think they'll know who it's from?" I asked when he didn't sign his name.
"They'll smell me here."
Living around Therians for the last few months kept that from sounding as strange as it ought to. "We should go then."
He followed me out with no small amount of regret. He wanted to find those three Lupa boys before they hurt someone else, but he also wanted to find them for himself. They were blood now, whether they liked it or not. And Wyatt never turned his back on family. He'd lost his real family to violence eleven years ago, and now he clung to the few personal relationships he managed to create. He'd never forgive himself if they were killed by one of our many enemies.
Or by one of our few allies.
We didn't return to the Watchtower until around seven pm, having spent the rest of the afternoon wandering aimlessly around the city. We did manage a decent sit-down dinner at a tiny Italian bistro that had seven tables, a short bar, and a funky smell that was either old cheese or dirty socks. But the food was decent, not a single person besides our waiter bothered us, and it almost felt like a real date.
Almost.
Wyatt was distant the entire meal, and I knew it was because of the Lupa pups. And I didn't even mind it, because I'd texted Gina Kismet while he was in the bathroom. She was at the Watchtower preparing phase one of Operation: Trust Me. Phase two was my job, and I got to it as soon as we arrived by separating myself from Wyatt with the excuse that I wanted to check on Milo's head. He bought it and headed off to Operations.
Kismet met me inside the empty storefront that we'd chosen earlier in the week. It was down the corridor near the gym area, across the hall, tucked back in the corner near the under-construction department store which would one day become an obstacle course training center—if the Watchtower was around long enough for it to be finished. Our location had once been a bank branch center, so it had a fantastic little safety deposit box area in the back, complete with steel walls and a prison-bar door that we'd fashioned an exterior lock for.