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  “These people are under my protection,” Saffron snarled.

  “And mine as well,” Lord Buckhead said, glaring down at Namura.

  “And mine,” Calaphase said.

  “That’s fine in the Edgeworld,” Namura responded, “but they still must follow the law.”

  “What the hell is going on?” I asked.

  All of their eyes turned on me. When Saffron’s eyes met mine, Namura abruptly cursed, and something white and gleaming dropped out of his hand. Calaphase and Darkrose flinched as a cross fell to the ground and bounced before Saffron’s feet, white hot.

  Saffron winced, but she stood her ground, still glaring at me. Finally, she bent down, picked up the cross, grimacing in pain, and then stood, holding it in the palm of her hand as white magical fire rose off of it, fueled by feedback between her power and her hostility.

  Her eyes locked with mine, red and glowing. “I forgive you,” she said. But the cross was still burning. She meant me harm. She still meant me harm—her flash of rage at Canoe hadn’t evaporated; it had crystallized into a grudge. And, worse, she saw me as the guilty party.

  Eventually I realized she expected me to respond. I was flabbergasted: I could barely believe she was letting our spat at Canoe get in the way of dealing with the very real problem of Namura arresting the weres. Calaphase was right: she wasn’t acting like a vampire queen.

  “Apology accepted,” I replied, you spoiled brat.

  Her expression flickered—she caught that I wasn’t going to take the blame. Her face fell, her eyes softened. She drew in a breath, let it out slowly, and the flame in her hand went out. She flicked the cross to Namura, who cursed and dropped it, holding his hand like he’d been burnt.

  “This isn’t over,” she said, not looking at Namura. “The Consulate will be in touch.”

  “Of course,” he said, pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket. “Of course it will.”

  He picked up the still-hot cross and looked around at all of us, worried and afraid. His eyes fell on Philip, who was sitting next to Calaphase, talking in a low voice.

  “A daywalker ruling the vampires? Vampires working with werekin? An entire werekin compound? And skindancers out in the open? I’m disappointed, Agent Davidson,” he said. “To let this kind of power build up—”

  “It was in all my reports,” Philip said, standing. “You just didn’t listen.”

  “Frost!” a voice shouted, and I saw an officer putting Gettyson in a squad car. Gettyson threw him off and glared at me. Apparently running an “unlicensed werekin housing facility” merited more than a slap on the wrist. “I told you this would happen!”

  I started to say a dozen things, but stopped as I realized it didn’t matter. At the end of the day, I was walking away—and Gettyson was being arrested.

  As one officer, then two, then three wrestled futilely with him, Gettyson just glared at me with pure contempt burning out of his wide-pupiled eyes. I swallowed. No matter how this came out, regardless of who was to blame, I had made a true enemy.

  “I was wrong earlier,” Gettyson snarled. “Now we knows where your loyalties lie.”

  Not In My Backyard

  The DEI held us at the werehouse as long as they possibly could, asking questions, telling us to wait, and asking us questions again. Apparently, having a magical fire and homicide on the site of a DEI operation had created a jurisdictional mess. Finally Namura relented when I tracked him down gabbing on his cell phone and told him to arrest us or let us go.

  Now the werehouse was far behind us, and Cinnamon was beside me in the seat of the loaner—but rather than overjoyed at our reunion, she just looked sick. Her skin was covered with fine downy fur, her eyes were closed, and she kept swallowing. “Mom, hurry, please, hurry.”

  “Can you hold it?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” she said, very quietly. “God, I feels sick.”

  “Are you going to hur—going to throw up?” She didn’t answer, and, feeling like a cad, I said, “Just let me know if you need me to stop. I don’t own this one. We can’t mess it up.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, anguished. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to ruin it.”

  “It’s all right,” I said, patting her leg. “You’re more important than a car.”

  “But … ” she said, and then shut up, swallowing again. I kept my eyes on the road, but out of the corner of my eye I could swear she was getting furrier every time I looked. “God, feels like Six Flags. Dumbasses put me on a rollercoaster, thought it was funny. Up and down, up and down, Mindbender, fuck! I was puking the whole night.” She swallowed again. “Now I gots it again, except I’m the rollercoaster. I changes, I changes back, I changes, I changes back … ”

  “Well, don’t worry,” I said, pulling the car to a stop. “We’re here.”

  My flat was on the second floor of a home in Candler Park, itself tucked behind a larger home that the owner, Donna Olsen, had subdivided into apartments after her husband died. Now she lived beneath me, in a small little ground floor flat that was “all she needed.”

  Given the hours I normally kept, this was not a problem; but her lights were on, and the last thing we needed was an hour and a half of Mrs. Olsen pinning us down on the stairs with Cinnamon one sneeze away from turning furry.

  I pulled up into the narrow concrete drive and squeezed out. It was barely wide enough to open the door—on either side, which I’d never noticed before. The Accord was a notch bigger than the Prius, and before the Prius, I’d parked my Vespa beneath the stairs. But I got Cinnamon out and up the stairs before Mrs. Olsen could come out and trap us into conversation.

  In the center of the room was the biggest dog cage I could find at PetSmart. I opened it and started looking for something to use as bedding; Cinnamon immediately began pulling off her clothes—raggedy old top, Capri shorts, the kind of castoffs she wore before I took her in, but I knew her: even if they were rags she cared enough about them not to tear them to pieces. In moments she was down to her undies, her tiger-stripe tattoos—and her silver collar.

  “We should get Darkrose to take this off,” Cinnamon growled, tugging at the collar—then she looked sharply over at my neck. “Where’s yours?”

  “Long story,” I said, returning with a blanket and stuffing it onto the floor of the cage.

  “The bitch found out about you and Calaphase,” Cinnamon said, staring at me, changing by the moment, striped with fur now rather than tattoos, tail slashing the air, eyes glowing yellow, pupils tightening to ovals. “Someone should teach her a lesson.”

  “Cinnamon!” I said sharply. “In the cage!”

  She hesitated, but only a second. Then she pulled off her underwear, fell onto her hands and knees and prowled forward. There were pops and shudders as her body changed, but unlike our old friend Wulf, who had been born a human and whose changes were protracted and painful, Cinnamon had been born a werekin. So by the time she passed into the cage she was fully changed, a hulking tiger who glared at me sidelong with one angular eye.

  I closed the door of the cage and swallowed. That huge eye reminded me of my own cats, except for the pupil: not sharply slitted like a cat’s, but oval, almost human. Then fear reminded me that a tiger’s eyes aren’t slitted: that slight oval cant wasn’t a sign of ‘humanity,’ but instead that she was fully changed. Something else reminded me that a tiger’s eyes only became oval when constricted in bright light—her eyes had just become six times more sensitive.

  I snapped off the overhead, leaving me in the gloom with the predator.

  When I felt I could control my face, I looked at her. Cinnamon was in tiger form, true, but somehow … recognizably Cinnamon. She shifted in the cage, snarling. Even hunched up, she was far too big for it, and its sides bowed and bent as she tried to get comfortable—but she didn’t try to break out. Finally, she curled up on the blanket and began chewing at it.

  “I’m sorry this is so small,” I said, reaching towards her. She struck at the wire wit
h an odd, fluttering snarl and I jerked my hand back; but when she left the paw on the wire, flexing it, I reached in and stroked the back of her paw—then swallowed. Her claws had to be over four inches long. Jesus. They felt hard and cruel under my fingers; but the monster paw seemed to relax under my touch. “It was the largest they had, and you’re … bigger than I remembered.”

  Cinnamon blinked at me slowly, then yawned and withdrew her paw.

  Trembling, I stood and stepped back from the cage. “Get some sleep if you can,” I said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do to get ready for school on Friday.”

  Cinnamon just stared at me, and after a minute I turned and walked away.

  What the hell had I gotten myself into?

  I made busy work for myself around the apartment—turning on lights in other rooms, putting Cinnamon’s rags in the washer, taking off my own worn clothes, putting my vestcoat in the hamper for the drycleaners. When I unlaced the corset, I saw the hole Philip had poked at. It went clean through the front, though I had no wound in my belly.

  Half of me felt lucky to be alive; the other half just felt pissed. I had no idea how the expensive handmade garment could be repaired, and I didn’t have the coin to drop on a new one, not between Cinnamon’s tuition and the payments on the blue bomb. The Valentine Foundation welshing was really messing me up. I should never have bought that car before seeing the first cent of my winnings. Now, everything was harder.

  I dumped the corset in the hamper and went to the kitchen. I laid down canned food for the cats, wondering where they were; probably somewhere in the apartment, tucked up into frozen little balls, more scared of Cinnamon than I was.

  I had no idea what to feed her in this state. Perhaps I should run to the store and get … what? Raw meat? Hell. I threw away the pet food can reflexively and glared into my separated bins. There weren’t enough recyclables to warrant the drive. Stupid City of Atlanta, all they picked up was trash. At least that was full; taking it out gave me some semblance of normalcy.

  I stomped down the stairs towards the trash can and stopped halfway down. “Hello, Mrs. Olsen,” I said, feeling rather than hearing her presence beside me.

  “Hello, Dakota,” Mrs. Olsen said. Her long hair only looked grey against the soft folds of her long purple sweater. She had cultivated a spinsterly appearance after her husband had been killed in Iraq, but she had a son not much older than Cinnamon on his first tour over there. She smiled, her cherubic face dimpling as she lifted a wastebasket filled with papers, aluminum cans, and an old phone book. I strongly suspected she’d left it by her own back door and waited to take it out so she’d have an excuse to talk to me. “You know you can call me Donna.”

  I watched her dump enough recyclables to finish off my own separated loads and shook my head. “All right, Donna,” I said, marching down the stairs. “I’ve just always felt odd calling you anything other than Mrs. Olsen. I guess it was the way I was raised..”

  “Now, Dakota,” Donna preened, as I dumped off my own trash. “You’ve been here too many years for last names—and to think you’ll be gone soon. I will miss you.”

  “I did want to talk to you about that. Did you get my message—”

  “I’ve got the nicest young couple ready to move into your flat,” she said, leaning forward and letting her voice drop to a whisper. “Lesbians, if you can believe that.”

  “Imagine that,” I said, smiling.

  “I’m really glad to help them,” she said, gesturing with the garbage basket. “They even offered to paint my flat rather than pay a security deposit.”

  “But I’m willing to bet you’ll just let them skip it,” I said. Donna had done the same for me, a few years ago, when I’d been hard up and needed to find a place after splitting with Saffron. “Did you get my message? Can they push their move date back—”

  A piercing screech erupted from the top of the stairs, followed by a loud crash. Donna’s head jerked up suddenly at the horrible yowling alarm that wailed out of my flat and the weird, freakish chirping that followed. “Oh my God, I think something’s killing your cats … ”

  And before I could stop her, she dropped the wastebasket and bolted up the stairs.

  “No, wait,” I said, following her. I reached for her sweater, but my fingers closed on the air as Donna really put on speed, bursting the door open and turning on the light. She froze in there, then jerked back so I almost ran over her.

  Cinnamon remained in her bowed-out cage, but awake, alert, snarling, as two of my cats yowled back at her. Little black-and-white Xanadu stood not three feet away, spotted back arched so high it looked like someone was pulling up on her belly with an invisible coat hanger; big old raccoonish Rafael was crouched down by the kitchen door, curled up as tight as he could get, with food bowls and recycling hampers tumbled every which way around him. Cinnamon snarled again, then saw me and, eyes wide, struck the cage with her paw in a sudden plea, emitting the freakish chirp we’d heard below—like a monster bird crying for its mother.

  I relaxed a little. The cats had just padded in to get their food, then everyone freaked. No one had hurt anyone; it was just another period of adjustment. Something else to get used to.

  But not, apparently, just for us.

  “Oh my God,” Donna cried. “You have a tiger—”

  “She’s not a tiger—” I said, but Donna kept babbling.

  “—brought it into my house,” Donna said. “A pet tiger!”

  At the word pet Cinnamon’s head jerked up and she growled, making Donna press back against me. I raised my hand. “Down, Cinnamon,” I said sharply. “You’re not helping.”

  “Cinnamon … ” Donna said, turning to me, eyes wide in horror.

  “She is a tiger, but she’s not a pet,” I said. “This is my daughter, and

  she’s a—”

  “A were-tiger,” Donna said, shrinking back against the wall. “I’ve heard of such things, but … werewolves are bad enough, but were-tigers … ”

  “There’s nothing to fear,” I said, turning off the overhead. “You’ve met Cinnamon.”

  “Yes, yes, yes, I have,” Donna said, fear becoming anger. “And you had her standing not three feet from me showing her off like she was a normal human being.”

  “She is a normal human being,” I said, realizing as I said it how ridiculous it sounded with Animal Planet near bursting out of a cage before us. “With a condition. She gets furry—”

  “This may be all very funny to you,” Donna said, straightening up, adjusting her sweater, but still plastered against the wall as far from Cinnamon as she could manage. “But it’s not funny to me! Not funny at all! Lycanthropy is a disease. It’s contagious! I want you out of here—”

  “But we’re not ready. In fact, we need to extend our lease,” I said, rubbing my brow. I knew where this was going. “I told you in voicemail, our closing date was pushed back.”

  “I don’t care what happened to you,” Donna said. “You bring this thing here into my home, this thing that could infect me, and expect me to shelter you? I want you out!”

  I exhaled sharply. “Fine,” I said. “We’ll be out Monday, like we agreed.”

  “No,” Donna said, drawing herself up. “I want you out now, now, now!”

  “Donna,” I said. “We have a lease—”

  “I don’t care!” she said, voice growing more shrill. “I won’t have this diseased thing in a home that I own for one more instant! You get her out of here or I call the police!”

  “Donna—”

  “Get out! Get out! Get out!” she screamed. “I’ll not have a monster under my roof!”

  A Frosty Family Dinner

  “Mom,” Cinnamon said softly in the passenger seat. “Why did you fold?”

  The last few days had been a blur. Finding a hotel. Smuggling Cinnamon inside. Turning the tiger back into the schoolgirl; losing the schoolgirl within the school walls, if only for the day. And dealing with the awful, awful mess left by the werehous
e fire.

  And then it was a sunny Saturday and we were back in the blue bomb, shooting up I-85 towards Stratton, South Carolina. I got a tingle when we passed through the Perimeter—the more tattoos I had, the more aware I was of the giant magic circle buried beneath Atlanta’s encircling highways—but no dragons swooped out of the sky to scoop us up, dang it, and soon, we were driving beneath happy puffy clouds dotting a bright blue sky over a rolling forested Interstate.

  Unfortunately, these happy clouds did not extend to the interior of the car.

  “I means,” Cinnamon said, “it was our place. She had no right—”

  “No, no she didn’t,” I said, “but you were changed, and snarling, and I was afraid she’d call the cops and they’d haul you off, cage and all, to the Atlanta City Jail. Or the Zoo.”

  “Mom!” Cinnamon said, half outraged, half giggling. Then her giggle faded. “The Academy sucks. They’re putting me in the stupid class.”

  “What?” I asked. “Why would they do that? They know you’re behind. They should have held you back a grade, not stuffed you in a remedial class.”

  “Not remedial,” she said, and I was impressed that she didn’t ask what that meant. “Tutoring, for math. Three days a week, after school.”

  “Okay,” I said, pulling off at the Commerce exit. “Okay. That’s not so bad.”

  “Why are we stopping?” Cinnamon said. “Isn’t Stratton eighty-four more miles?”

  “Hey, she can subtract. Sure you need tutoring?” I said, and she swatted at me. “But Commerce is our stop. It’s as far south as Dad will go, and as far north as I will go—”

  “Your demilitarized zone,” Cinnamon said, with a sudden smile.