I closed my eyes, remembering the woman who had offered me a way out the back when she believed I was in danger. The woman who had been willing to defend a stranger. I pushed down the need to hit something, to save a woman who couldn’t now be saved.

Hate pack hunters, Beast thought.

Yeah, I thought back. I hate helplessness more. Hiding the need for vengeance, I asked, “And the lemon-smelling woman?”

“She was still under from anesthesia when she disappeared from the recovery department. They think she was carted out in a laundry basket right in front of the sheriff’s deputy on watch.”

“Des Citrons got her back.”

“Looks like it. Let’s go. We have more ceremony tonight.”

I wiped my face and gathered up my weapons harnesses. “I’d rather be chasing down and cutting up Clan Des Citrons. Ceremony is boring,” I said.

“Not when you’re around.”

I grunted a final time and led the way to the elevator.

* * *

• • •

Back in the Council Chambers, I studied the hole in the ceiling and the small brick-walled tunnel beyond it. The space was maybe thirty by thirty inches and black as pitch. Eli craned his body around and sent a tight beam of light into the hole. Mr. Prepared always had a flashlight on him. The tunnel went straight up for about fifteen feet and then angled hard to the left. Right at the angle there was a smear of black. I sniffed and thought I caught the faintest scent of old fire and fresh lemons. “Soot?” I asked.

Eli said, “Boost me up to your shoulders.” I bent my knees, hands on the floor. He stepped on my shoulders, the hard rubber of his boots cutting into my muscles. I didn’t complain, and stood to give him height, watching as he fingered the brick at the lower edge. It was broken and shattered evenly all around. “Hammers. I’d guess there used to be a fireplace in this corner and it was removed during some renovation.”

“There was,” Leo said calmly from behind us. “In 1917.”

“Where does it go at the angle?” Eli asked, stretching to the left, his light shooting a thin beam of illumination up the shaft.

His voice carefully unemotional, Leo said, “Down to the small library on this level and up to the fireplace in my office.”

I bent my knees again and Eli leaped to the floor. I brushed off my jacket and stretched. “Let’s check out your office,” I said grimly.

Derek said, “I’ll check out the library.”

* * *

• • •

Leo’s office had been trashed. Upholstered furniture had been ripped open, the hanging draperies that hid the lack of a window in the inner room had been yanked down and lay in piles in the corners, and objets d’art had been shattered against a wall. Said wall was full of fist-sized holes.

“Nothing of value was taken,” Leo said softly.

“And you know that how?” I asked, standing at the end of the small hallway, where the space opened out into the office proper.

“Because the wall she punched through is new. The hidden storage place is empty.” Leo pursed his lips and walked closer to the destruction. He scraped a finger along one hole and then held it up to the light. There was a smear of soot and blood on his hand along with the dust from busted wallboard. Leo sniffed. “Lemons.” He looked back at me. “The storage area was removed after the police conducted the investigation into the death of Safia, the black wereleopard who bit Rick LaFleur. Within it were papers related to the families and histories of many of the Mithrans in my domain, including Dominique’s.”

“And?” I asked.

Leo shrugged slightly and sighed. “And there were once two objets de magie hidden here. The amulets were removed and now reside with Sabina in her lair.”

I texted Alex to check on the vamp cemetery, where the outclan priestess slept by day, and got back a nearly instantaneous response of, Nada. Cameras show silent as the grave. LOL. Then he texted, Our house is fine.

Next I texted Derek about the library. He texted back, Pair shoes in front of fireplace. She came in here. No sign returning this way.

“Leo, would you be so kind as to open the secret tunnel from your office?” I asked.

“Secret?” he asked. “Hardly.” Leo walked to the wall beside the desk and tapped the lever that opened the access to the formerly secret tunnel. Everyone knew it was there now, including the several law enforcement agencies from that investigation into the death of the woman who had bitten Rick. The small doorway opened and the scent of lemons whooshed out.

My cell dinged with a text from Alex. On the screen were the words, Got it. Dominique didn’t disable cameras in Leo’s office. Took nothing so far as I could see. Took escape tunnel and out through outer wall. Into dark SUV. Got plate. Running/tracking through traffic and security cameras. NOTE—anomaly was with her. Got a partial visual. Cleaning it up.

What was she looking for? “Alex is on it. I’ll take off and—”

“You will return to the Council Chambers,” Leo said in his command voice, a kingly, brook-no-refusal tone. “We have unfinished business.”

I wanted to disagree, but . . . “Yeah. Okay.” What the heck. Alex could run this search through his tablet from the chambers. It would be a long night.

Back in the chambers, I ignored things for a while and let Leo’s politics and the fallout run through my mind, combining tonight’s actions with the coming Sangre Duello. He had cemented things with NOLA’s previous four clans and restored a NOLA fifth clan, and he’d given himself loyal Masters of the Cities of Atlanta and Knoxville, to add to the loyalists in Sedona, Seattle, and other vamp-cities. And he wasn’t done yet.

“Jane Yellowrock.”

Pulled from my reverie, I narrowed my eyes at Leo, but otherwise I didn’t move. The business had progressed to smaller, less consequential things and I thought Leo had forgotten about us. Looked like I was wrong. Snake. In. The. Grass.

“No ‘Yes, my lord and master?’” he asked.

“No.”

Leo laughed. He raised his hands and his magic coiled into the room, less painful than before, but still hot and biting. “Jane Yellowrock, Enforcer to the Master of the City of New Orleans, approach and kneel.”

Beast peered out of my eyes, and I could see their yellow glow reflected in Leo’s. Leo would be mate.

Leo would be and do a lot of things if I let him. I stood and walked the few steps to the dais. I wasn’t real excited about kneeling to anyone, but I was taller than Leo, even with him on the step, so it wasn’t as bad as it might have been.

Beast took over and dropped me, but I caught myself as she started to roll me over. Beast shows belly to alpha.

No. No freaking way. I held myself upright on my knees.

Turning to the clan masters of the executive council, Leo said, “Jane Yellowrock cannot be bound. Jane Yellowrock is loyal by choice. Jane Yellowrock will know that the Master of the City is loyal as well.” With his little jade-handled blade, he cut his thumb again and turned back to me.

I stared at the welling blood. Crap on a cracker with toe jam. He expected me to suck his thumb. Which for some bizarre reason made me think of Leo sucking on a pink pacifier, which brought a grin to my face. Suddenly I was laughing.

And Beast ripped through the Gray Between. The half-shift was instantaneous. Violent. I would have screamed with the pain, but I had no breath. My back arched, then bowed, snapping both ways. My body threw itself to the floor, ramming my head on the stone. I saw stars. But no way was I lying on the floor at Leo’s feet. I put both hands out and shoved myself to my knees. My hands were half-Beast/half-human, knobby knuckled, furred on the back, with retractile claws, already extended. Swallowing down stomach acids and a taste so sour it made my cat nose quiver, I stood. I was taller, shoulders broader and bony. Waist thinner, hips rangier. My clothes still fit, though the shoulders were stretched out and the slacks were hanging on my hip bones.

Leo, eyes piercing, extended his hand and offered me his thumb. It was his right thumb, healed since one of the Mings had tasted him.

Alpha offers blood, Beast thought. Is not mating gift. Is not meat. Alpha offers blood. Blood is food but not meat food. Vampires are strange predators.