What she wrote — the full passage

She pulled out a pen and paper and wrote everything down, asking appropriate questions at appropriate times, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being partially shouted at and definitely judged. When he was through, she held up a hand. “Three things.”

“Go,” he allowed her.

“The cat?” She couldn’t help but ask.

The driver answered her. “He’s practically a family member. Presence nonnegotiable. Next?”

“Okay, then.” *Weird-ass rich people. *Andi shrugged and looked back at the patient. “So, why is he here? Why not a hospital?”

“In the city?” Mr. Midwest was incredulous.

“Yeah. Why not? There’re good hospitals there.”

“Hospitals aren’t safe,” Mr. Midwest stated—like that was a known fact.

Andi bit her lips, hard, to not say anything about his bizarre opinions. “All right, then,” she went on. “Third is, who are you? Medically, I mean.”

“His name’s Austin; he used to be a paramedic,” Mr. No-Name said for the man.

“And in the Marines,” Austin added.

She stuck her hand out, so Austin would have to shake it. “I’m Andi.”

“Ah. An Andi, not Andy,” Austin said, with slightly different emphasis, giving Mr. No-Name a glare.

“It’s not my fault your assumptions were sexist,” Mr. No-Name said, a slight grin flickering at the corner of his mouth. He looked meaningfully at his watch again, and Austin disappeared down a hall. “So. Eight hours?” Mr. No-Name asked her.

From Austin’s report, this patient mostly sounded like a wait-and-see. He was injured and unconscious, but there was no real reason he hadn’t woken up yet—other than possible brain damage. Which, yeah, made this whole level of secrecy, perhaps understandable? If you were the head of a household worth a fortune and someone got injured on your watch, you might need to keep their issues under wraps. She glanced at the patient’s vitals on the monitor, the level of urine in the foley, and the slowly draining chest tube. She could keep almost anyone alive for eight hours—at the hospital. But what would happen here if things went poorly? This situation was bizarre, and even though they were paying her a ton, she still had her license to think of. She glanced up and found Mr. No-Name watching her shamelessly—so shamelessly, she flushed.

Austin reappeared, pushing a crash cart before she could stutter out any words. “You know what to do with this?”

“Of course.” The presence of a crash cart allayed only some of her fears. “But…I’m not a doctor.”

“If he needs a doctor, just call me, and I’ll get one. My number’s preprogrammed.” Mr. No-Name handed her a phone as Austin went on.

“And who should I ask for?” she asked, trying not to sound curious in the least.

Mr. No-Name let out a snort as if to say, *nice try. *“I’ll know it’s you.”

Austin interrupted. “There’s more oxygen tanks against the wall. Just keep him comfortable until we get back.”

Andi looked between them. None of this made sense—not the cat, not this job, not this house, and definitely not these two extremely handsome, yet extremely odd men. “Where are you going anyhow?”

Mr. No-Name shook his head at her question. “Out. But we’ll return by dawn, and I promise you’ll be on the first bus back to the city. Okay?”

Mr. No-Name’s gaze pressed her, as Austin loomed.

She inhaled—to tell them how insane all this was and back out—but then she reminded herself that the only thing that needed to make sense was the fact that one night here would equal a month of her normal paycheck. She glanced at the patient and did her best to ping out with her inherent nurse-radar, honed by months of taking too many shifts, taking in his color, and the numbers on the screen. He was the most normal thing here, hands down. “Yeah, okay,” she said, deciding. She pulled out the phone she’d been given and waved it at Mr. No-Name. “I’ll call if anything happens; otherwise, I’ll see you in eight.”

“Good,” Mr. No-Name said and smiled at her—fully—for the first time all night. The sensation of his pleased attention on her was almost as bad as whatever had happened to her on the road here. She wanted to run away, but she found she couldn’t. She was struck—pierced—like she was a deer in headlights. He was just too much.

Then the cat leapt off the bed and wound around Mr. No-Name’s legs. He glanced down, and the moment was over. The spotlight had moved on. She sagged, caught herself, and hoped he hadn’t seen it. It didn’t seem like he had as he knelt down to knuckle the cat’s head softly.

The cat meowed at him, repeatedly, as if it had strong opinions, and Mr. No-Name gave it a dour look. “No, she didn’t bring anything for you,” he told the cat, and then looked back to her. “If you hear any sounds in the house, just ignore them. It’s an old house; it creaks a lot.” Austin coughed from the door, and Mr. No-Name headed toward him. Her audience was over. The men left, and the cat followed them.

Andi relaxed, then became embarrassed by how she’d felt. What was she, some kind of schoolgirl? *You know better!* Whoever she’d been in the moment he’d looked at her—stupidly happy, foolishly hopeful, and just a teensy bit terrified—it wasn’t the real her.

The real Andi was a nurse who knew what to do—every time, all of the time.

She went to the bed, unlooped her stethoscope from her neck, and started to assess her patient.

“What’d Grim say?” Austin asked Damian on their way to the garage.

“That she’s too small to be of any use.” In reality, Grimalkin had asked if Andi had brought him any cheese, the bluer, the better—because the house was out. Luckily, Damian was the only one who could understand the hugely powerful multidimensional guardian he’d been assigned at birth, so no one else knew how easily a gift of cheese would distract him.

"For once, the cat and I agree. If my brother wakes up–"

“I know,” Damian said, shutting down further conversation. If Zach woke up while they were gone—a big *if*—then hopefully he and the nurse could have an intelligent conversation, after which she’d take off his restraints. He’d be confused about what had happened, but he’d be smart enough to realize she was an outsider.

He got into the armored SUV, waiting with some of the rest of his crew. It was just him and the guys tonight. Max was driving, Jamison had his eyes on his electronics, and he sat close to Austin who was busy wiping down the barrel of something black and shiny.

He sank back into his seat, thinking about the nurse.

*She smelled good*, his dragon commented*.* * *

*Shush,* he told his dragon—but it was right*.*

Oil, plastics, but more overwhelmingly, the aroma of iron, surrounded him. Humans had so much iron in their blood; it was a wonder to him that they weren’t magnetic. Living in human society, he had gotten used to the metallic scent, but for some reason, tonight it seemed more pungent than usual.

It was all because of her.

When she had gotten into the car, the gaseous stink of the bus she had been on and the medicinal chemical scents that were a hallmark of her occupation clung to her coat. Those were expected.

But underlying all that was her own subtle scent, undetectable to most humans, and yet abruptly mouthwatering all the same.

Apples and caramel, yes, that’s what it reminded him of—and saltwater.

How strange.

He swiped through his emails, opening the unread files Mills had sent over. Top of her class in community college and then nursing school. But she’d suffered student loans, a staggeringly high amount of debt owed to a hospital which looked like medical bills for a relative before it got wiped—presumably by that relative’s death—and a brother who apparently couldn’t resist taking rides in cop cars. Which made her perfect for his purposes: hungry enough to be looking for cash, smart enough to keep Zach alive, and hopefully, smart enough to not ask many more questions.* *There was always the Forgetting Fire if she got too curious. He reached the end of her background check and found she lived in a gentrifying part of town in an apartment above a Greek bakery. That explained her scent. Her apartment probably smelled entirely of baked goods.

Mystery solved, Damian put the phone back into his pocket. But his mind went right back to her. *Andi.* What an odd name for a girl. He had the strangest urge to say it out loud, irrationally, to see if the sound tasted as good as she smelled. And that interesting streak of blue that he’d glimpsed a flash of before she’d wound her dark hair up—something about the act of her hiding it made him want to unwind and expose it again, to possibly feel the wrap of it around his hand.

* *“Why’d you warn her about the house?” Austin asked Damian, distracting him from his thoughts.

“Because Grimalkin doesn’t like strangers.”

“He doesn’t like anyone,” Austin countered.

“He’s keeping an eye on Zach, isn’t he?” Max said from the driver’s seat, defending Damian’s guardian’s integrity. Damian knew his cat and his old weapons master got along—they had to; they were the only two things that’d come from the Realms with him, albeit at different times. The battle armor Max had on made the whiteness of his skin around it even more shocking, and Damian knew if he had his hat off, all his hair would be ghostly pale. He’d had an albino’s pale eyes, too, before he’d lost them in a fight with another bear-shifter. Mills had replaced them with something magical hidden by goggles, turning him into the perfect bearer of Damian’s Forgetting Fire, since its powers no longer seemed to work on him. And whatever kind of eyes he had now, he could snipe an Unearthly creature down at eight hundred yards.

“Grimalkin’s probably hoping that he’ll die,” Austin said darkly.

Max broke into a toothy grin. “Nah, if Grimalkin wanted either of you dead, you’d be dead already, puppy.”

Austin snorted at him. “Better to be a wolf who’s a fighter than a bear who’s a chimney sweep,” Austin muttered, before addressing Damian again. “Was she sensitive enough for the perimeter to bother her?”

“Definitely.”

Austin grunted. “How’d she do?”

“Admirably, considering she didn’t know she was being magically attacked.” There were several concentric security rings around his mansion, some magical, some not. He’d both seen and tasted her panic as they’d driven over one of them—the one Austin had been supposed to turn off. He’d seen other men throw themselves out of moving cars in fear and not know why to crawl crying back downhill. While she’d been scared, Andi hadn’t run. Another interesting point.

“Do you think she bought it?” Austin asked, pretending to put a driver’s hat on.

Damian knew he meant the subterfuge of him pretending to be a driver in his own employ. He’d wanted to meet the person taking care of Zach, to get a feel for her—he hadn’t expected for him to wind up being so intrigued.

“Doesn’t matter,” he answered. “Either she doesn’t figure it out, fine; or she does, and the fire will make her forget.”

“Why bother? No one would believe her. She’d just be another internet crackpot,” Jamison said while staring intently at the computer on his lap, as immersed in it as Austin was his weapons. He was very dark-skinned and lean in opposition to Max’s bright whiteness and Austin’s bulk, and between the hardware on his lap and the hardware of his arm that they’d replaced with tech, the man was practically half-computer.

“You mean, like you?” Austin said, goading the younger man.

“Don’t make me change your Netflix password,” Jamison snarked, then waved his hand for silence. “We’re approaching the source of the signal. Slow down, Max.”

Max grunted an acknowledgement. He was driving what Damian called “the tour bus.” It was a heavily armored SUV, fortified with metal shielding, bulletproof glass, blast-resistant undercarriage, and, more importantly, personally warded by the most powerful witch on this side of the Pacific. Damian knew where they were by scent—the saltwater, gas, and oil fumes could only be from the familiar miasma of the docks—and they were here because somewhere nearby there was an Unearthly creature they needed to kill.

Back from French — translated blind, in full

Called by the Dragon — flex passage

She pulled out a pen and paper and wrote everything down, asking the right questions at the right moments, but she couldn't shake the feeling that she was being half-scolded and fully judged. When he finished, she raised her hand.

"Three things."

"Go ahead," he said.

"The cat?" she asked, unable to help herself.

It was the chauffeur who answered.

"He's practically a member of the family. His presence is non-negotiable. Next?"

"Okay."

*Rich people are absolutely insane.* Andi shrugged and turned back to the patient.

"So why is he here? Why not a hospital?"

"In the city?"

Mr. Midwest was incredulous.

"Yeah, why not? There are good hospitals down there."

"Hospitals aren't safe," Mr.

Midwest said—as if it were an established fact.

Andi bit her lips hard to keep from commenting on his crackpot opinions.

"Fine," she said.

"Third—who are you? Medically, I mean."

"His name is Austin; he was an EMT," M.

Sans-Nom answered for him.

"And a Marine," Austin added.

She held out her hand, forcing him to shake it.

"I'm Andi."

"Ah. An Andi, not an Andy," Austin said, putting slight emphasis on the *i* as he shot M.

Sans-Nom a dirty look.

"It's not my fault your assumptions were sexist," M.

Sans-Nom said, a faint smile at the corner of his mouth. He gave his watch another meaningful look, and Austin disappeared down a hallway.

"Good. Eight hours?" M.

Sans-Nom asked.

Based on Austin's report, this patient mostly needed monitoring. He was injured and unconscious, but there was no real reason he shouldn't have woken up by now—aside from possible brain damage. Which maybe made all the secrecy a little more understandable, sure. If you were the head of a family rich enough to bury this kind of thing, you might need to keep this sort of problem under wraps. She glanced at the patient's vitals on the monitor, his urine output, and the chest drain slowly emptying. She could keep just about anyone alive for eight hours—at the hospital. But what would happen here if things went south? The situation was bizarre, and even if they were paying her a fortune, she still had to think about her license. She looked up and caught M. Sans-Nom staring at her without the slightest self-consciousness—with so little of it that she blushed.

Austin reappeared, pushing a crash cart, before she could stammer out a single word.

"You know how to use this?"

"Obviously."

The presence of a crash cart only eased some of her concerns.

"But… I'm not a doctor."

"If he needs a doctor, call me and I'll have one brought in. My number's already saved."

Mr. Sans-Nom handed her a phone while Austin continued.

"And who do I ask for?" she asked, trying hard not to sound even the least bit curious.

M. Sans-Nom let out a snicker, as if to say, *nice try.* "I'll know it's you."

Austin stepped in.

"There are extra oxygen tanks against the wall. Just make sure he's okay until we get back."

Andi looked from one to the other. None of this made any sense—not the cat, not this job, not this house, and certainly not these two men who were as attractive as they were strange.

"Where are you going, anyway?"

Mr. Sans-Nom shook his head.

"Out. But we'll be back before dawn, and I promise you'll be on the first bus back to town. All right?"

Mr. Sans-Nom's gaze weighed on her while Austin looked down at her from his full height.

She drew a breath—to tell them how insane all of this was and bail—but she reminded herself that the only thing that needed to make sense was that one night here equaled a month of her regular salary. She glanced at the patient and did her best to trust her nursing instincts—months and months of endless shifts had a way of sharpening your eye—assessing his complexion and the numbers on the screen. It was the most normal thing here, by far.

"Yeah, okay," she said, making up her mind.

She pulled out the phone they'd given her and waved it at Mr. Sans-Nom.

"I'll call if something happens; otherwise, see you in eight hours."

"Good," M.

Sans-Nom said, and he smiled at her—truly smiled—for the first time that evening. Feeling his satisfied attention fixed on her was almost as intense as what had happened on the road on the way here. She wanted to run, but she couldn't. She was rooted to the spot—pierced through—like a rabbit caught in the headlights. It was too much. He was simply too much.

Then the cat leaped off the bed and wound itself around Mr. Sans-Nom's legs. He looked down, and the moment broke. The attention had shifted. Her shoulders dropped, she caught herself, and hoped he hadn't noticed. Apparently not, because he knelt down and gently rubbed the cat's head with the back of his fingers.

The cat meowed at him several times, as if it had very strong opinions, and Mr. Sans-Nom gave it a withering look.

"No, she didn't bring anything for you," he told the cat, then turned to her.

"If you hear noises in the house, ignore them. It's an old house; it creaks a lot."

Austin coughed from the doorway, and Mr. Sans-Nom headed toward him. The interview was over. The men left, and the cat followed them.

Andi relaxed, then felt ashamed of what she'd felt. What the hell was that? Did she think she was in high school? *You know perfectly well it wasn't!* The person she'd been for an instant under his gaze—stupidly happy, naively hopeful, and just a little bit terrified—wasn't her.

The real Andi was a nurse who knew what to do—every moment, in every situation.

She walked over to the bed, unhooked her stethoscope from around her neck, and began assessing her patient.

"What did Grim say?" Austin asked Damian as they headed toward the garage.

"That she was too small to be useful."

In reality, Grimalkin had asked whether Andi had brought him cheese—the bluer, the better—because there wasn't any left in the house. Fortunately, Damian was the only one who could understand the multidimensional guardian of phenomenal power who had been entrusted to him at birth, so no one else knew how easily a simple gift of cheese was enough to distract him.

"For once, the cat and I agree. If my brother wakes up…"

"I know," Damian said, shutting down any further discussion.

If Zach woke up while they were gone—big *if*—then with any luck, he and the nurse could have a rational conversation, after which she'd remove his restraints. He wouldn't understand anything that had happened, but he'd be smart enough to figure out she was a stranger.

He climbed into the armored SUV, where the rest of his team was already waiting. Tonight it was just him and the guys. Max was driving, Jamison had his eyes glued to his screens, and he sat down next to Austin, who was busy wiping down the barrel of a black, gleaming weapon.

He settled into his seat. His thoughts drifted back to the nurse.

*She smelled good*, his dragon commented.

*Shut up*, he told his dragon—but it was right.

Oil, plastic, but above all the smell of iron surrounded him. Humans had so much iron in their blood it was a wonder they weren't magnetic. After years of living in human society, he'd grown used to that metallic scent, but for some reason tonight it seemed stronger than usual.

And that was entirely because of her.

When she'd gotten into the car, her coat had reeked of exhaust fumes from the bus she'd taken and the chemical, medicinal smells characteristic of her profession. That was expected.

But beneath all of it lay her own subtle scent, undetectable to most humans, and yet strangely irresistible.

Apples and caramel—yes, that was what it reminded him of—and salt water.

Strange.

He scrolled through his emails, opening the unread files Mills had sent him. Top of her class in college, then again in nursing school. But she was carrying student loans and a mountain of debt to a hospital—probably medical bills for a relative, written off when they died—along with a brother who apparently got hauled in by the cops on a regular basis. Which made her perfect for his needs: in enough of a mess to go looking for money, smart enough to keep Zach alive, and, with any luck, clever enough not to ask too many more questions. There was always the Fire of Forgetting if she got too curious. He reached the end of her background check and discovered she lived in a gentrifying neighborhood, in an apartment above a Greek bakery. That explained her scent. Her apartment must have been steeped in the smell of pastries.

Mystery solved, Damian slipped the phone back into his pocket. But his thoughts circled right back to her. *Andi.* What a strange name for a girl. He had a weird urge to say it out loud, irrationally, just to see if her name on his tongue tasted the same as her scent. And that interesting blue streak he'd barely glimpsed before she'd pinned up her dark hair—there was something about the way she hid it that made him want to undo it, expose it again, maybe wind it around his fingers.

"Why'd you warn her about the house?" Austin asked Damian, pulling him from his thoughts.

"Because Grimalkin doesn't like strangers."

"He doesn't like anyone," Austin shot back.

"He's watching over Zach, isn't he?" Max said from the driver's seat, coming to Damian's guardian's defense.

Damian knew his cat and his former weapons master got along well—they had to; they were the only two things that had come from the Realms with him, though at different times. The battle armor Max wore made the almost shocking whiteness of his skin stand out by contrast. And Damian knew that if he removed his hat, every strand of his hair would be a ghostly pale. He'd had the pale eyes of an albino too, before he'd lost them in a fight with another bear shifter. Mills had replaced them with something magical hidden behind glasses, making him the ideal bearer of Damian's Fire of Forgetting, since its powers no longer seemed to work on him. And whatever eyes he had now, he could drop a Supernatural creature at eight hundred meters.

"Grimalkin's probably hoping he dies," Austin said darkly.

Max flashed a wide grin.

"Nah, if Grimalkin wanted one of you two dead, you'd already be dead, puppy."

Austin snorted.

"Better a wolf who fights than a chimney-sweeping bear," Austin muttered, then turned back to Damian.

"She was receptive enough for the perimeter to get to her?"

"Without a doubt."

Austin grunted.

"How'd she handle it?"

"Admirably, considering she had no idea she was the target of a magical attack."

There were several concentric security rings around his manor, some magical, some not. He had both seen and tasted her panic when they'd passed through one—the one Austin was supposed to have deactivated. He'd watched other men throw themselves from moving cars in blind terror, not knowing why, then crawl back up the slope on all fours, sobbing. Andi had been afraid, but she hadn't run. Another interesting point.

"Think she bought it?" Austin asked, miming the gesture of putting on a chauffeur's cap.

Damian knew he was talking about the ruse of posing as a driver in his own employ. He'd wanted to meet the person who'd be taking care of Zach, get a read on her—he hadn't expected to find himself this intrigued.

"Doesn't matter," he replied.

"If she didn't figure it out, great. If she did, the fire will make her forget."

"Why bother? Nobody would believe her. She'd just be one more crazy person ranting on the internet," Jamison said without looking up from the laptop on his knees, as absorbed in it as Austin was in his weapons.

He had very dark skin and was lean, the polar opposite of Max's striking paleness and Austin's massive build; and between the gear on his lap and his arm replaced by cybernetics, the man was practically half computer.

"You mean, like you?" Austin threw at the younger man.

"Don't make me change your Netflix password," Jamison fired back, then signaled for quiet.

"We're approaching the signal source. Slow down, Max."

Max grunted to show he understood. He was driving what Damian called "the tour bus." It was a heavily armored SUV, reinforced with metal plating, bulletproof glass, a blast-resistant undercarriage, and—most importantly—with wards laid by the most powerful witch on this side of the Pacific. Damian knew where they were from the smell alone—the salt water, the lingering reek of gas and oil could only be the familiar stink of the docks—and they were here because somewhere nearby was a Supernatural creature they needed to kill.

What she wrote — the full passage

DRAGONS DON’T DATE

Kara Lockharte and Cassie Alexander

"Before you get angry, Damian, I just want to say that I think this is a good thing," Grimalkin told him, trotting along just ahead of him down the mansion's halls. Damian Blackwood's magically powerful cat and guardian since his childhood had been sitting outside his training gym, waiting for him to emerge, and was now escorting him back to his rooms. The little Siamese talked over his shoulder, whisking his smoke-colored tail back and forth. "So promise me you'll give this a chance?"

Damian had just spent the last four hours fighting simulated Unearthly monster attacks and somehow that felt safer than whatever Grim wanted now. “Give *what* a chance?” he asked, yanking his shirt off to blot sweat from his face and hair as he reached the door to his chambers.

Which was, oddly, already open.

“Grim let me in,” Zach announced from inside.

Ah, Damian thought—as Grimalkin conveniently disappeared. He finished pushing the door wide and found his werewolf best friend leaning against his bar, wearing a sharply tailored black suit, filling two glasses quickly with high-end whiskey. His hair was slicked back then knocked artfully loose again, and Damian could scent a very faint hint of cologne—Zach looked like he'd just been profiled by Forbes magazine, whereas Damian looked like he'd just gotten back from a cage fight.

Zach glanced up, took in his current half-dressed state, and laughed. “This is exactly why I need you.”

“For?” Damian prompted, nearing.

“A really large favor,” Zach said, in a tone of voice that let Damian know he wasn’t going to like it very much, Grimalkin’s hopes aside.

Damian groaned, taking the offered drink from Zach's hand, and took to one of the wide leather-backed chairs he had in his spacious living area. "Dragon-large, or human-large?"

Zach took that as the opening that it was, following to sit down across from him. “Human-sized. Although it’s funny that you mention the dragon thing, because it is dragon adjacent.”

Damian watched Zach, picking up on familiar cues, and his eyes narrowed. “Is one drink going to be enough for this?” he asked, tilting his glass in Zach’s direction.

“Probably not. Drink up,” Zach admitted. Damian did as he was told, and eyed his friend over the glass’s rim as he went on. “You know your Blackwood Industries has its finger in a lot of pies, right?” the wolf went on.

He nodded. He had delegated almost all of his business’s operations over to Zach years ago, so that he wouldn’t have to bolt from board meetings early to fight Unearthly creatures as a dragon.

“Well, the latest entry into the ‘profitable pie’ competition is a dating app. And as one of the most eligible bachelors in the world, I thought you could start a profile on it. To help kick things off.” Zach gave him a wolfish grin.

If Damian had still been taking a sip he would’ve just sprayed Zach with 1954 Glen Grant. And this was why Grim had let Zach into his rooms, despite the issues his cat normally had with werewolves—his cat had recently become obsessed with him finding a mate. “I’m not eligible because I’m half-dragon, Zach. You know what we do, and how we live.” Here in his castle-like mansion, in magic-derived comfort—until the alarms rang and they went out to fight monsters intruding from other worlds. He frowned at his friend and shook his head. “I literally cannot afford to be in meaningful relationships.”

“And I’m not asking you to be in one. I’m just saying that if you were on our app, you could bring in a lot of interested women. If we took a picture of this,” he said, waving his hand in Damian’s direction, “we’d already be profitable. And where women go, men go, it’s science.”

“So you want me to lie, is that what you’re saying?”

Zach took a large swig of his drink, coughed and then held up his thumb and forefinger, pinching air. “No. Just to bend the truth. A little.”

Damian frowned. “It’s so distasteful.”

“I’m just asking for a week, Damian. One week. You kill some monsters on the clock, you flirt with some women in your free time, we get our publicity stunt, and it’s a done deal.” Zach’s eyebrows rose in hope. “Come on, D. Help me? Grimalkin loves the idea.”

“Need I remind you that Grimalkin’s a cat?”

“Fine—our shareholders love the idea, too.”

“I bet they do. They’re not the ones whoring themselves out.”

“Hey now,” Zach said, leaning closer. “If you ever start whoring yourself out, then as the manager of all your businesses, I get a twenty percent cut.”

Damian snorted. “Fuck you.”

“Is that a yes?” Zach asked, taking another big gulp of whiskey. “I think that’s a yes.”

Damian sighed. He knew he actually did ask a lot of the man—and Zach hadn't actually signed on to run a billion-dollar company, although he'd grown into the corner office over time. "Fine. You get one week. Starting this very moment." Damian pulled his phone out of a pocket. "What's it called?"

“You’re gonna love this,” Zach said, with a gleam in his eye. “We’re calling it *Dating Dragon.” *

Damian made an obligatory profile, using actual photos of himself. He had straight black hair, eyes that were a light enough brown that they looked gold, and an expression in most of them that looked either brooding, or demanding, depending on how generous the viewer cared to be. That part was easy enough—he was at a bit of a loss as to how to fill in the blanks on the questions.

What reality show would they make about you? *One no one would believe in if they saw it, alas. Also, the crew would always be in danger of being eaten.*

* *Where was your most interesting vacation? *On a pink sand beach beneath the second moon, listening to the frills sing to one another as the tide rolled in. *

Best day ever? *The time I punched a jorgian’s heart out. Not metaphorically. I hit one so hard my arm went through its armor and its heart flew out the other side.*

Favorite holiday? *Mast Day*

What’s the one thing you couldn’t live without?

*Me,* his dragon growled inside him before he could contemplate an answer.

*Oh, I could live without you just fine,* he told it, before erasing everything he’d put in.

It took an hour of canvassing the rest of his friends in his mansion—all of whom were supernatural in some way themselves, and so had similar problems (and each of them greatly amused that he was doing this)—until he'd come up with answers that were vaguely palatable to normal humans. Then, cursing Zach's name, he pushed "save."

For two days—two long, no attacks by Unearthly monsters to distract him days—he used Zach’s app. Women messaged him in droves and he did his best to be polite to all of them, answering all of their “hey, how’re you?” style questions as kindly as he could, while dodging anything that felt too cruel—he neither sent nor accepted photos—and he made no promises in their chats. They told him about their lives, their work, their kids—he did break down and have Mills, his witch secretary, find out some of the women’s financial situations and sent them money on the sly. But there was no way he would ever continue any of these relationships outside the app, or past even this first week. He never thought less of anyone for approaching him, as improbable as a true connection was—it was just that using the app was like holding a mirror up to his own loneliness. It was easy to see himself in their profiles, in their longing to be known and seen. A deeply hidden part of him knew exactly what that felt like.

But he knew he could never tell anyone who he was and what he did. And even if he could admit to being a dragon-shifter who protected the earth from Unearthly monsters…what human would ever possibly believe it?

By the third day he logged back on, frustrated by the entire thing, wanting nothing more than to crush his phone into a little ball and go find Zach to throw it at.

Grimalkin hopped onto his desk to look down at the screen. “So have you found a mate yet?”

“No, Grim, I have not.” He turned his phone off. The mental image of his werewolf friend and cat collaborating to set him up with someone on the internet was almost too much to bear.

Grim tilted his head up at Damian. “Are you even trying?”

Rather than answer, Damian just gave a pained groan.

“Maybe,” Grimalkin began, swatting at the phone, using his magic to turn it on, and hop through its screens, “you should just have fun with it.”

“How can I?” Damian asked. “Zach wants me to perform like a dancing monkey inside this metal box.” The longer he used the app the lonelier he felt.

“No,” Grimalkin said, pointing down with a furry paw. “Zach wants ‘DBlackwoodIII’ to perform. But no one else says you need to be him all the time.”

“You mean lie?”

“Like you’re not lying now?” Grimalkin said, peering at him with his crossed blue eyes. “You’re not telling any of the women on there anything true about you, Damian.”

Damian knew his guardian was right, and grunted. “All right. Let’s see how many women we can scare off with next-to-absolute honesty,” he said, taking his phone back from the cat to log off and open up a fresh account.

Username: ADifficultMan

Height: over 6 feet

Size: overly muscled

Favorite Holiday? *I don’t really give a shit. *

* *Not surprisingly, his new profile was nowhere near as popular as his official one, especially because he didn’t use any pictures. He scrolled through the women who were available online because it amused him to do so, and now that he wasn’t “Damian Blackwood” he felt much more like himself.

One of the women who he “matched” with also had no photos on her profile. Which, Zach had informed him yesterday, probably meant that she, too, was a man. That there were people out there wasting time and playing games with other people’s feelings on these things baffled him. Why would anyone do this to themselves if they didn’t have to?

She—if she was a she—claimed to be PoolGirl96. He rolled his eyes and messaged her. *Hey. So are you lying on here, too? *

* *To his surprise, she messaged back. *Excuse me?*

* I am reliably informed that most women on here who don’t have photos are actually men. *

* My username actually says I’m a girl.*

* …a likely story.*

* *He assumed that would be the end of it, but then it wasn’t: *Anyone ever tell you you’re weird?*

* You don’t even know.* He snorted.

* *There was a long pause, in which he pondered future responses—and future ways Zach was going to repay him for this—before his phone buzzed again.

*Was it going to take you that long to send me a dick pic or something?*

* What?* he typed in, blinking. *No. Why?* he asked, and then read up. *I’m not that kind of weird.*

* Just an average annoying kind of weird then?*

* *One of his eyebrows rose. *You’re the one who reinitiated conversation.*

* Hmm. I notice you also do not have photos—and that your username is not a lie. *

* I decided recently to be more truthful. *

* Well it’s rare that men are self-aware enough to acknowledge that they’re difficult. They usually just expect the people in their lives to bend. *

* Thank you. I think. *

* You’re welcome. So now, truth-telling stranger, just how is it that you’re lying here? Like you first asked me?*

* I’m here under duress. *

* Should I call 911 for you? Are you trapped in a basement by a serial killer and getting a date on this app is the only way out? *

* *Damian caught himself smiling at the screen. *Yes. It’s very dark. If I don’t get a woman’s number by midnight they’re going to chop off my hand. *

* Oh, that’s too bad. However would you type?*

* *He paused. He knew he shouldn’t type what he wanted to type next, because it was too strong, and possibly too strange, and who the hell knew who PoolGirl92 really was besides? But it felt right.

*For you—I would find a way. * * *

*****

“Oh my gosh Andi, just let me hook you up with someone,” Andi’s roommate said, watching her type into her phone on the far end of their couch in their small apartment.

“I can find someone on my own, Sammy. I have all this awesomeness,” she said, gesturing at herself, “and all this technology,” she waved her phone next, “and I am entirely capable of figuring my own shit out.”

Sammy’s face scrunched up as if in thought. “Are you though?” she asked, her voice high.

“Shut up,” Andi told her, with a laugh. She was a few minutes out from needing to catch her bus to work her nightshift at the hospital, she was already wearing scrubs, and her new friend on this dating app—*Dragon Dating! How absurd!—*was saying he’d figure out a way to type to her one-handed. Which could be some sort of weird masturbation metaphor, come to think on it.

*That’s like sweet-creepy. Or creepy-sweet. I haven’t decided.*

* Let me know when you do,* he told her, still fearless and completely brash. ADifficultMan had balls, she’d give him that. * *

*Well this has been fun and all, but I’ve gotta get to work.*

* Where do you work?*

* Wouldn’t you like to know?* she sent, and then turned the app off.

Work was crazy in that way that only made sense to explain to other nurses—even Sammy, who loved her, would sometimes start to back away slowly if she was too intense when she got home about what'd happened overnight. So she kept her problems to herself, went into her rooms, and kicked off her Danskos.

She was tempted to log onto the app, just to see what—*if?—*MrDifficult had said anything else to her. But she acknowledged that that was crazy. Because what if he had? And it’d gone on to be creepy and disappointing?

Or, possibly worse yet, what if he hadn’t? And he’d just ditched her like so many other people in her life? Not that three minutes of semi-witty conversation meant he was going to be a lifetime friend.

She groaned at herself. Her overactive imagination was precisely why she shouldn’t use dating apps.

Ever.

*Bleargh.*

Andi stripped out of her scrubs, put on pajamas, and crawled into bed. It was easier not knowing for right now, she thought, and made herself go to sleep with her phone too far away to grab.

Just as she was about to drift off she heard Sammy screeching, “Andi!” from the hall.

Andi leapt out of bed and raced into the hallway, certain her best friend was dying.

“Andi-there’s-a-spider-in-my-sink-you-have-to-come-and-get-it-right-now!”

She pulled up short at the doorway to Sammy’s bathroom, where her red-haired roommate was precariously standing on the edge of her tub and pointing to the sink like it was a bad dog. “What the hell, Sammy,” Andi said, peering into the sink. The spider was only the size of a dime.

“If I wash it down it’s just going to crawl back out again,” Sammy whined.

“It’s a good thing I love you, you wuss,” Andi said. She used one hand to chase it into her other palm. “Go get the door?”

Sammy leapt off the tub and bolted. Andi heard all three of their latches on their apartment unlock, then Sammy sprinted back to retake a perch atop their couch in the living room. Andi resisted laughing, barely, and deposited the spider on the stoop outside, watching it scurry off before dusting her hands on her thighs and returning indoors. “What would you do if I hadn’t been home?” she asked her roommate.

"Shoved a protective towel under the door," Sammy said, with a pout, stepping down. "Or, fumigated the entire place like that one time—"

“Yeah, yeah, I remember.” Andi grinned and shook her head. Their apartment had smelled like chemicals afterwards for weeks. “Okay,” she warned, heading back down to her bedroom. “After this I’m on ambien, full disclosure.”

And somehow back in her room she avoided the temptation of picking her phone up yet again.

Barely.

Andi woke up in the afternoon better rested and somehow the thought of logging onto a dating app didn’t fill her with an existential dread. When she did, she found two messages already waiting there for her.

*I don’t actually want to know where you work, by the way. I do acknowledge that that was too much. *

*It’s just sometimes hard to make conversation.*

* *She took a long moment, deciding if she would respond. He was definitely…strange. But, on the plus side, he hadn’t sent her a dick pic? Or insinuated anything of the sort, unlike 99.99% of the guys on most apps.

He also hadn’t asked her for a photo yet, which was good, because in her experience, being an Asian girl on a dating site was tantamount to ringing the dinner-bell for weirdos.

*Fair, Mr. Difficult,* she typed and sent*. How’s the basement treating you?*

* *Thirty minutes later, when she was eating cereal in bed with a book balanced on one knee, she saw her phone flash with a response. *I got a number just in time.*

* Did you now? *

* Yes. SOCCERLVR1985 saved my life. But now they’re dating a serial killer, I fear. *

* Poor them! *Andi sent, and laughed.

*So how was work? *he asked her.

She squinted at the screen, not sure how much was safe to share. Hooray for being a woman on the internet. She set her cereal bowl down on her nightstand to type more easily. *Particularly worky. How was yours?*

* Ehhh. Not very much of it currently, unfortunately.*

* So you’re a freelancer?*

* You could say that. *

* Ah well, at least that gives you time to chat on dating apps all day.*

* Are you kidding? This is my version of hell,* he messaged, then regrouped. *Present company excluded, of course.*

* *Andi laughed again. *Gee. Thanks.*

* Seriously, though, how do people do this?*

* *She blinked at her screen. *It beats bars, if you’re lazy? Also if you’re too old for bars. *Her thumbs hesitated, but then she typed out.* How old are you?*

* Older than you, *he responded quickly.

*How do you know?*

* I can tell.*

* With your old-man radar? *she teased.

*Something like that, yes. *

* So you’re an older out of work freelancer who hates technology. You sound like a real catch. *

* You’d be surprised.*

* *Always so cocky! Andi rolled her eyes at herself, because hadn’t she been interested in enough assholes in her life? But then he went on before she could make a witty retort.

*Actually, PoolGirl92, I am the opposite of a catch. My pride requires that I tell you that I don’t have any problems finding women under real-life circumstances. But as you’ve intuited, my name doesn’t lie, and my life doesn’t lend itself to the kind of stability that most people crave. *

* *Andi tilted her head while reading her screen. The anonymity of it all made her braver than she might otherwise be. *I have to say that this whole self-awareness thing is really a turn on…unless you’re just playing me. *

* *She could tell that he was typing for a very long time on the other side, considering and deleting his words, before responding with: *I never play. *

* You do realize that’s exactly what a player would say, right?*

* Hmm. So in order to earn your trust I need to prove a negative. That’s a difficult task.*

* Possibly impossible, *she granted and added, *And honestly, yeah, if this is where you check out to go chat more available women, then so be it.*

* *There was another long pause, where even though she’d basically brushed him off and absolved him, she had a strange feeling he was still staring at his phone.

*I enjoy challenges, PoolGirl. Not flippant games, mind you—but true challenges intrigue me. After all, challenging is just another word for difficult.*

He went on: *But it’s my turn to need to go though. I’ll chat with you tomorrow.*

* *Andi stared at her phone, rereading his messages. She had the oddest sensation that despite the gulf between them—and neither of them knowing anything real about the other—that there was something *there. *

*****

Back from German — translated blind, in full

German Reader Test

DRAGONS DON'T DATE

Kara Lockharte and Cassie Alexander

"Before you get angry, Damian, I just want to say that I think this is a good thing," Grimalkin told him, trotting a few paces ahead through the corridors of the estate. Damian Blackwood's magically powerful tomcat and guardian since childhood had been sitting outside his training room waiting for him to emerge, and was now escorting him back to his chambers. The small Siamese cat spoke to him over his shoulder, swishing his smoky tail back and forth. "So promise me you'll give it a chance?"

Damian had just spent the last four hours fending off simulated attacks from Unearthly monsters, and somehow that felt safer than whatever Grim wanted now. "What exactly am I supposed to be signing up for?" he asked, pulling off his shirt to wipe the sweat from his face and hair as he reached the door to his chambers.

Which was, strangely, already open.

"Grim let me in," Zach announced from inside.

Ah, Damian thought, as Grimalkin conveniently made himself scarce. He pushed the door all the way open and found his best werewolf friend leaning against his bar, wearing a sharply cut black suit and quickly filling two glasses with fine whiskey. His hair had been slicked back and then artfully tousled again, and Damian caught a very faint hint of cologne—Zach looked like Forbes had just published a portrait of him, while Damian looked like he'd come straight from a cage fight.

Zach looked up, took in his current half-naked state, and laughed. "This is exactly why I need you."

"For what?" Damian pressed, stepping closer.

"For a really big favor," Zach said in a tone that told Damian he wasn't going to like it one bit, Grimalkin's hopes notwithstanding.

Damian groaned, took the glass Zach handed him, and dropped into one of the wide leather armchairs in his spacious living area. "Dragon-sized or human-sized?"

Zach took the opening for what it was and sat down across from him. "Human-sized. Although it's funny you mention the dragon thing, because it actually does have to do with dragons."

Damian watched Zach, registering the familiar signs, and his eyes narrowed. "Will one drink cover it?" he asked, tilting his glass in Zach's direction.

"Probably not. Drink up," Zach admitted. Damian did as he was told, studying his friend over the rim of the glass. "You know Blackwood Industries has its fingers in a hell of a lot of pies, right?" the wolf continued.

He nodded. He'd delegated almost all business operations to Zach years ago so he wouldn't have to duck out of board meetings early to fight Unearthly creatures as a dragon.

"Well, the latest play to grab ourselves another slice of the profitable pie is a dating app. And as one of the world's most eligible bachelors, I figured you could set up a profile on it. Get the ball rolling." Zach flashed him a wolfish grin.

If Damian had taken another sip, he would've just sprayed Zach with 1954 Glen Grant. And this was why Grim had let Zach into his chambers, despite the trouble his cat usually had with werewolves—his cat had been obsessed lately with him finding a mate. "I'm not considered an eligible bachelor because I'm a half-dragon, Zach. You know what we do and how we live." Here in his castle-like estate, in magically created comfort—until the alarms blared and they went out to fight monsters breaking through from other worlds. He frowned at his friend and shook his head. "I literally can't afford serious relationships."

"And I'm not asking you to have one. I'm just saying you could attract a lot of interested women on our app. If we got a photo of that," he said, gesturing at Damian, "we'd already be profitable. And where women go, men follow—it's a law of nature."

"Are you saying I should lie?"

Zach took a big swig of his drink, coughed, then held up his thumb and forefinger with a tiny sliver of air between them. "No. I just want you to bend the truth a little. A tiny bit."

Damian frowned. "That's so tacky."

"I'm only asking for one week, Damian. One week. You kill a few monsters at work, you flirt with a few women in your spare time, we get our PR stunt, and that's it." Zach's eyebrows lifted hopefully. "Come on, D. Help me out? Grimalkin thinks it's a great idea."

"Do I need to remind you that Grimalkin is a cat?"

"Fine—our shareholders love the idea too."

"I'm sure they do. They're not the ones prostituting themselves."

"Hey, hey," Zach said, leaning closer. "If you ever start prostituting yourself, then as CEO of all your companies, I get twenty percent."

Damian snorted. "Fuck you."

"Is that a yes?" Zach asked, taking another large sip of whiskey. "I think that's a yes."

Damian sighed. He knew he was asking a lot of the man—and Zach hadn't exactly signed up to run a billion-dollar company, even if he'd grown into the corner office over time. "Fine. You get one week. Starting now." Damian pulled his cell phone from a pocket. "What's the thing called?"

"You're going to love this," Zach said with a glint in his eye. "We're calling it *Dating Dragon*."

Damian dutifully set up a profile and used real photos of himself. He had straight black hair, eyes so light brown they looked golden, and in most pictures an expression that came across as either brooding or demanding, depending on how generous the viewer wanted to be. That part was easy enough—the questions left him pretty much at a loss for what to put down.

What reality show would they make about you? *One no one would believe even if they saw it, unfortunately. Also, the crew would constantly be in danger of getting eaten.*

Where was your most interesting vacation? *On a pink sand beach beneath the second moon, listening to the frills sing to each other as the tide rolled in.*

Best day ever? *That time I punched a jorgian's heart clean out of its body. Not metaphorically. I hit one so hard my arm went through its armor and the heart flew out the other side.*

Favorite holiday? *Mast Day*

What's the one thing you couldn't live without?

*Me*, his dragon growled inside him before he could even consider an answer.

*Oh, I'd get along just fine without you*, he told it, then deleted everything he'd typed.

It took him an hour to poll the rest of his friends in the estate. They were all supernatural in some way themselves and therefore had similar problems—and were all thoroughly entertained by the fact that he was doing this—until he'd cobbled together answers that were reasonably acceptable for normal humans. Then, cursing Zach's name, he hit "Save."

For two days—two long days with no Unearthly monster attacks to distract him—he used Zach's app. Women messaged him in droves, and he did his best to be polite to all of them, answered their "Hey, how's it going?" questions as warmly as he could, and steered clear of anything that felt too cruel—he neither sent photos nor accepted any—and in none of these chats did he make any promises. They told him about their lives, their jobs, their kids—he actually caved and had Mills, his witch secretary, look into the financial situations of a few women and secretly sent them money. But there was no way to ever take any of these connections beyond the app, let alone past this first week. He didn't look down on anyone just because she'd messaged him, unlikely as a real connection might be—it was just that the app felt like it was holding up a mirror to his own loneliness. It was easy to recognize himself in their profiles, in their longing to be seen and understood. A deeply buried part of him knew exactly how that felt.

But he knew he could never tell anyone who he was and what he did. And even if he could admit to being a dragon shifter who protected Earth from Unearthly monsters… what human would ever believe it?

On the third day, he logged back in, frustrated with the whole thing, wanting nothing more than to crush his cell phone into a tiny lump and go find Zach so he could throw it at his head.

Grimalkin jumped onto his desk and peered down at the screen. "So, have you found a mate yet?"

"No, Grim, I haven't." He turned off his phone. The idea of his werewolf friend and his cat conspiring to set him up with someone on the internet was almost too much to bear.

Grim tipped his head back and looked up at Damian. "Are you even trying?"

Instead of answering, Damian just let out a pained groan.

"Maybe," Grimalkin began, batting at the phone, switching it on with his magic, and flicking through the screens, "you should just have fun with it."

"How am I supposed to do that?" Damian asked. "Zach wants me dancing around inside this metal box like a trained monkey." The longer he used the app, the lonelier he felt.

"No," Grimalkin said, pointing one furry paw downward. "Zach wants 'DBlackwoodIII' to perform. But nobody else says you have to be him all the time."

"You mean lie?"

"As if you're not lying right now?" Grimalkin said, studying him with those crossed blue eyes. "You're not telling a single woman in there anything true about yourself, Damian."

Damian knew his guardian was right, and he grumbled. "Fine. Let's see how many women we can scare off with near-total honesty," he said, taking the phone back from the cat so he could log out and create a new account.

Username: ADifficultMan

Height: over six feet

Build: excessively muscular

Favorite holiday? *Honestly don't give a shit.*

Unsurprisingly, his new profile was nowhere near as popular as his official one, mostly because he didn't use any photos. He scrolled through the women currently online because it amused him, and now that he was no longer "Damian Blackwood," he felt much more like himself.

One of the women he'd "matched" with also had no photos on her profile. Which, as Zach had explained to him yesterday, probably meant she was actually a man too. The fact that there were people out there wasting their time and playing with other people's feelings on platforms like this baffled him. Why would anyone put themselves through that if they didn't have to?

She—if she was a she—claimed to be PoolGirl96. He rolled his eyes and messaged her. *Hey. Are you lying on here too?*

To his surprise, she wrote back. *Excuse me?*

*I've been reliably informed that most women on here without photos are actually men.*

*My username literally says I'm a girl.*

*…not exactly convincing.*

He assumed that was the end of it, but then it wasn't: *Has anyone ever told you you're weird?*

*You have no idea.* He snorted.

A long pause followed, during which he thought about future replies—and future ways Zach would make him pay for this—before his phone buzzed again.

*Did it take you that long to send me a dick pic or something?*

*What?* he typed, blinking. *No. Why?* he asked, then scrolled up. *I'm not that kind of weird.*

*So just the regular annoying kind of weird?*

One of his eyebrows rose. *You're the one who came back.*

*Hmm. I notice you don't have any photos either—and that your username isn't a lie.*

*I recently decided to be more honest.*

*Well, it's rare for men to have enough self-awareness to admit they're difficult. Usually they just expect everyone to revolve around them.*

*Thanks. I think.*

*You're welcome. So, truth-loving stranger, in what way are you lying on here, then? The way you asked me at the start?*

*I'm here under duress.*

*Should I call 911 for you? Did a serial killer lock you in a basement, and a date on this app is your only way out?*

Damian caught himself smiling at the screen. *Yes. It's very dark. If I don't have a woman's number by midnight, they're chopping off my hand.*

*Oh, that's a shame. How would you type then?*

He paused. He knew he shouldn't type what he wanted to type next. It was too direct, maybe too strange—and who the hell knew who PoolGirl96 really was? But it felt right.

*For you—I'd find a way.*

*****

"Come on, Andi, just let me set you up with someone," Andi's roommate said, watching her type something into her phone from the other end of the sofa in their small apartment.

"I can find someone myself, Sammy. I've got all this greatness," she said, gesturing at herself, "and all this technology," then waved her phone, "and I'm perfectly capable of handling my own shit."

Sammy scrunched up her face like she was thinking it over. "Are you, though?" she asked in a high-pitched voice.

"Shut up," Andi said, laughing. She only had a few minutes before she had to catch her bus to the night shift at the hospital, was already wearing her scrubs, and her new acquaintance on this dating app—*Dragon Dating! How ridiculous!*—was currently claiming he'd find a way to text her one-handed. Which—when you thought about it—could be some weird masturbation metaphor.

*That's kind of sweet-creepy. Or creepy-sweet. Haven't decided yet.*

*Let me know when you do,* he wrote back, still fearless and completely shameless. ADifficultMan had nerve, she had to give him that.

*Well, this has been fun and all, but I gotta go to work.*

*Where do you work?*

*Wouldn't you like to know?* she wrote, then closed the app.

Work was insane in a way that really only made sense to other nurses—even Sammy, much as she loved her, would sometimes start slowly backing away when Andi came home and got too intense describing what had happened during the night. So she kept her problems to herself, went to her room, and slipped off her Danskos.

She wanted nothing more than to log into the app, just to see what—*if?*—MrDifficult had written back. But she admitted to herself that was crazy. Because what if he had written something? And it had turned creepy and disappointing?

Or, maybe even worse, what if he hadn't? What if he'd just left her hanging, like so many other people in her life had? Not that three minutes of semi-witty banter made him a friend for life.

She groaned at herself. This was exactly why she shouldn't be using dating apps—her overactive imagination.

Ever.

*Ugh.*

Andi peeled off her scrubs, pulled on pajamas, and crawled into bed. For now it was easier not to know, she thought, putting her phone out of reach and forcing herself to go to sleep.

Just as she was drifting off, she heard Sammy shriek from the hallway: "Andi!"

Andi shot out of bed and raced into the hall, convinced her best friend was dying.

"Andi-there's-a-spider-in-my-sink-you-have-to-come-get-it-out-right-now!"

She skidded to a stop in the doorway of Sammy's bathroom, where her red-haired roommate was perched precariously on the edge of the bathtub, pointing at the sink like it was a vicious dog. "What the hell, Sammy," Andi said, peering into the basin. The spider was barely the size of a dime.

"If I wash it down, it'll just crawl back up," Sammy whined.

"Good thing I love you, you baby," Andi said. With one hand, she shooed the spider into her other palm. "Can you open the door?"

Sammy leaped off the tub and bolted. Andi heard all three locks on their apartment door click open, then Sammy sprinted back to perch on top of the couch in the living room. Andi barely held in her laugh, set the spider down outside on the threshold, watched it scurry away, wiped her hands on her thighs, and went back inside. "What would you do if I hadn't been here?" she asked her roommate.

"Shoved a protective towel under the door," Sammy said, pouting as she climbed down. "Or fumigated the whole place, like that one time—"

"Yeah, yeah, I remember." Andi grinned and shook her head. Their apartment had reeked of chemicals for weeks after that. "Okay," she warned, heading back to her bedroom. "After that, I'm taking Ambien, just so you know."

And somehow, back in her room, she resisted the temptation to reach for her phone again.

Barely.

Andi woke up that afternoon more rested, and somehow the thought of logging into a dating app no longer filled her with existential dread. When she did, two messages were already waiting for her.

*I don't actually want to know where you work, by the way. I realize that was too much.*

*It's just hard to get a conversation going sometimes.*

She took a long moment to consider whether she should reply. He was definitely… weird. But then again, he hadn't sent her a dick pic. Or suggested anything along those lines, unlike 99.99 percent of the guys on most apps.

He also hadn't asked her for a photo yet, which was good, because in her experience, being an Asian girl on a dating site was like putting out a beacon for every creep in existence.

*Fair, Mr. Difficult,* she typed and hit send. *How's the basement treating you?*

Thirty minutes later, eating cereal in bed with a book balanced on one knee, she saw her phone light up with a reply. *I got a number just in time.*

*Oh, did you now?*

*Yeah. SOCCERLVR1985 saved my life. But now she's dating a serial killer, I'm afraid.*

*Poor thing!* Andi sent, laughing.

*So, how was work?* he asked her.

She narrowed her eyes at the screen, unsure how much she could safely tell him. Hooray for being a woman on the internet. She set her cereal bowl on the nightstand so she could type more easily. *Especially busy. How was yours?*

*Uhhh. Not much of it lately, unfortunately.*

*So you're freelance?*

*You could say that.*

*Well, at least it gives you time to chat on dating apps all day.*

*Are you kidding? This is my version of hell,* he wrote, then caught himself. *Present company excluded, of course.*

Andi laughed again. *Gee, thanks.*

*Seriously, how do people do this?*

She blinked at her screen. *Beats bars when you're lazy? Also when you're too old for bars.* Her thumbs hesitated, but then she typed. *How old are you?*

*Older than you,* he answered promptly.

*How would you know that?*

*I can tell.*

*With your grandpa radar?* she teased.

*Something like that, yeah.*

*So you're an older freelancer with no work who hates technology. You sound like a real catch.*

*You'd be surprised.*

Always so full of himself! Andi rolled her eyes at herself, because hadn't she fallen for enough assholes in her life? But then he followed up before she could come up with a snappy retort.

*Honestly, PoolGirl92, I'm the opposite of a good catch. My pride insists I tell you that in real life I have no trouble at all finding women. But as you've rightly picked up on, my name doesn't lie, and my life isn't suited to the kind of stability most people long for.*

Andi tilted her head as she read her screen. All the anonymity was making her bolder than she normally would've been. *I have to say, the fact that you know yourself that well is actually kind of hot… unless you're just playing me.*

She noticed he spent a long time composing his reply, weighing words and deleting them, before he answered: *I never play games.*

*You realize that's exactly what a player would say, right?*

*Hmm. So to earn your trust, I'd have to prove the absence of something. A difficult task.*

*Maybe impossible,* she conceded, adding: *And honestly, yeah, if this is the moment you bail to go chat with less complicated women, then so be it.*

Another long pause followed, during which she—despite having basically brushed him off and absolved him of any obligation—had the strange feeling he was still staring at his phone.

*I like challenges, PoolGirl. Not frivolous games, mind you—but real challenges fascinate me. After all, challenging is just another word for difficult.*

He continued: *But I have to go now too. We'll talk tomorrow.*

What she wrote — the full passage

She pulled out a pen and paper and wrote everything down, asking appropriate questions at appropriate times, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being partially shouted at and definitely judged. When he was through, she held up a hand. “Three things.”

“Go,” he allowed her.

“The cat?” She couldn’t help but ask.

The driver answered her. “He’s practically a family member. Presence nonnegotiable. Next?”

“Okay, then.” *Weird-ass rich people. *Andi shrugged and looked back at the patient. “So, why is he here? Why not a hospital?”

“In the city?” Mr. Midwest was incredulous.

“Yeah. Why not? There’re good hospitals there.”

“Hospitals aren’t safe,” Mr. Midwest stated—like that was a known fact.

Andi bit her lips, hard, to not say anything about his bizarre opinions. “All right, then,” she went on. “Third is, who are you? Medically, I mean.”

“His name’s Austin; he used to be a paramedic,” Mr. No-Name said for the man.

“And in the Marines,” Austin added.

She stuck her hand out, so Austin would have to shake it. “I’m Andi.”

“Ah. An Andi, not Andy,” Austin said, with slightly different emphasis, giving Mr. No-Name a glare.

“It’s not my fault your assumptions were sexist,” Mr. No-Name said, a slight grin flickering at the corner of his mouth. He looked meaningfully at his watch again, and Austin disappeared down a hall. “So. Eight hours?” Mr. No-Name asked her.

From Austin’s report, this patient mostly sounded like a wait-and-see. He was injured and unconscious, but there was no real reason he hadn’t woken up yet—other than possible brain damage. Which, yeah, made this whole level of secrecy, perhaps understandable? If you were the head of a household worth a fortune and someone got injured on your watch, you might need to keep their issues under wraps. She glanced at the patient’s vitals on the monitor, the level of urine in the foley, and the slowly draining chest tube. She could keep almost anyone alive for eight hours—at the hospital. But what would happen here if things went poorly? This situation was bizarre, and even though they were paying her a ton, she still had her license to think of. She glanced up and found Mr. No-Name watching her shamelessly—so shamelessly, she flushed.

Austin reappeared, pushing a crash cart before she could stutter out any words. “You know what to do with this?”

“Of course.” The presence of a crash cart allayed only some of her fears. “But…I’m not a doctor.”

“If he needs a doctor, just call me, and I’ll get one. My number’s preprogrammed.” Mr. No-Name handed her a phone as Austin went on.

“And who should I ask for?” she asked, trying not to sound curious in the least.

Mr. No-Name let out a snort as if to say, *nice try. *“I’ll know it’s you.”

Austin interrupted. “There’s more oxygen tanks against the wall. Just keep him comfortable until we get back.”

Andi looked between them. None of this made sense—not the cat, not this job, not this house, and definitely not these two extremely handsome, yet extremely odd men. “Where are you going anyhow?”

Mr. No-Name shook his head at her question. “Out. But we’ll return by dawn, and I promise you’ll be on the first bus back to the city. Okay?”

Mr. No-Name’s gaze pressed her, as Austin loomed.

She inhaled—to tell them how insane all this was and back out—but then she reminded herself that the only thing that needed to make sense was the fact that one night here would equal a month of her normal paycheck. She glanced at the patient and did her best to ping out with her inherent nurse-radar, honed by months of taking too many shifts, taking in his color, and the numbers on the screen. He was the most normal thing here, hands down. “Yeah, okay,” she said, deciding. She pulled out the phone she’d been given and waved it at Mr. No-Name. “I’ll call if anything happens; otherwise, I’ll see you in eight.”

“Good,” Mr. No-Name said and smiled at her—fully—for the first time all night. The sensation of his pleased attention on her was almost as bad as whatever had happened to her on the road here. She wanted to run away, but she found she couldn’t. She was struck—pierced—like she was a deer in headlights. He was just too much.

Then the cat leapt off the bed and wound around Mr. No-Name’s legs. He glanced down, and the moment was over. The spotlight had moved on. She sagged, caught herself, and hoped he hadn’t seen it. It didn’t seem like he had as he knelt down to knuckle the cat’s head softly.

The cat meowed at him, repeatedly, as if it had strong opinions, and Mr. No-Name gave it a dour look. “No, she didn’t bring anything for you,” he told the cat, and then looked back to her. “If you hear any sounds in the house, just ignore them. It’s an old house; it creaks a lot.” Austin coughed from the door, and Mr. No-Name headed toward him. Her audience was over. The men left, and the cat followed them.

Andi relaxed, then became embarrassed by how she’d felt. What was she, some kind of schoolgirl? *You know better!* Whoever she’d been in the moment he’d looked at her—stupidly happy, foolishly hopeful, and just a teensy bit terrified—it wasn’t the real her.

The real Andi was a nurse who knew what to do—every time, all of the time.

She went to the bed, unlooped her stethoscope from her neck, and started to assess her patient.

“What’d Grim say?” Austin asked Damian on their way to the garage.

“That she’s too small to be of any use.” In reality, Grimalkin had asked if Andi had brought him any cheese, the bluer, the better—because the house was out. Luckily, Damian was the only one who could understand the hugely powerful multidimensional guardian he’d been assigned at birth, so no one else knew how easily a gift of cheese would distract him.

"For once, the cat and I agree. If my brother wakes up–"

“I know,” Damian said, shutting down further conversation. If Zach woke up while they were gone—a big *if*—then hopefully he and the nurse could have an intelligent conversation, after which she’d take off his restraints. He’d be confused about what had happened, but he’d be smart enough to realize she was an outsider.

He got into the armored SUV, waiting with some of the rest of his crew. It was just him and the guys tonight. Max was driving, Jamison had his eyes on his electronics, and he sat close to Austin who was busy wiping down the barrel of something black and shiny.

He sank back into his seat, thinking about the nurse.

*She smelled good*, his dragon commented*.* * *

*Shush,* he told his dragon—but it was right*.*

Oil, plastics, but more overwhelmingly, the aroma of iron, surrounded him. Humans had so much iron in their blood; it was a wonder to him that they weren’t magnetic. Living in human society, he had gotten used to the metallic scent, but for some reason, tonight it seemed more pungent than usual.

It was all because of her.

When she had gotten into the car, the gaseous stink of the bus she had been on and the medicinal chemical scents that were a hallmark of her occupation clung to her coat. Those were expected.

But underlying all that was her own subtle scent, undetectable to most humans, and yet abruptly mouthwatering all the same.

Apples and caramel, yes, that’s what it reminded him of—and saltwater.

How strange.

He swiped through his emails, opening the unread files Mills had sent over. Top of her class in community college and then nursing school. But she’d suffered student loans, a staggeringly high amount of debt owed to a hospital which looked like medical bills for a relative before it got wiped—presumably by that relative’s death—and a brother who apparently couldn’t resist taking rides in cop cars. Which made her perfect for his purposes: hungry enough to be looking for cash, smart enough to keep Zach alive, and hopefully, smart enough to not ask many more questions.* *There was always the Forgetting Fire if she got too curious. He reached the end of her background check and found she lived in a gentrifying part of town in an apartment above a Greek bakery. That explained her scent. Her apartment probably smelled entirely of baked goods.

Mystery solved, Damian put the phone back into his pocket. But his mind went right back to her. *Andi.* What an odd name for a girl. He had the strangest urge to say it out loud, irrationally, to see if the sound tasted as good as she smelled. And that interesting streak of blue that he’d glimpsed a flash of before she’d wound her dark hair up—something about the act of her hiding it made him want to unwind and expose it again, to possibly feel the wrap of it around his hand.

* *“Why’d you warn her about the house?” Austin asked Damian, distracting him from his thoughts.

“Because Grimalkin doesn’t like strangers.”

“He doesn’t like anyone,” Austin countered.

“He’s keeping an eye on Zach, isn’t he?” Max said from the driver’s seat, defending Damian’s guardian’s integrity. Damian knew his cat and his old weapons master got along—they had to; they were the only two things that’d come from the Realms with him, albeit at different times. The battle armor Max had on made the whiteness of his skin around it even more shocking, and Damian knew if he had his hat off, all his hair would be ghostly pale. He’d had an albino’s pale eyes, too, before he’d lost them in a fight with another bear-shifter. Mills had replaced them with something magical hidden by goggles, turning him into the perfect bearer of Damian’s Forgetting Fire, since its powers no longer seemed to work on him. And whatever kind of eyes he had now, he could snipe an Unearthly creature down at eight hundred yards.

“Grimalkin’s probably hoping that he’ll die,” Austin said darkly.

Max broke into a toothy grin. “Nah, if Grimalkin wanted either of you dead, you’d be dead already, puppy.”

Austin snorted at him. “Better to be a wolf who’s a fighter than a bear who’s a chimney sweep,” Austin muttered, before addressing Damian again. “Was she sensitive enough for the perimeter to bother her?”

“Definitely.”

Austin grunted. “How’d she do?”

“Admirably, considering she didn’t know she was being magically attacked.” There were several concentric security rings around his mansion, some magical, some not. He’d both seen and tasted her panic as they’d driven over one of them—the one Austin had been supposed to turn off. He’d seen other men throw themselves out of moving cars in fear and not know why to crawl crying back downhill. While she’d been scared, Andi hadn’t run. Another interesting point.

“Do you think she bought it?” Austin asked, pretending to put a driver’s hat on.

Damian knew he meant the subterfuge of him pretending to be a driver in his own employ. He’d wanted to meet the person taking care of Zach, to get a feel for her—he hadn’t expected for him to wind up being so intrigued.

“Doesn’t matter,” he answered. “Either she doesn’t figure it out, fine; or she does, and the fire will make her forget.”

“Why bother? No one would believe her. She’d just be another internet crackpot,” Jamison said while staring intently at the computer on his lap, as immersed in it as Austin was his weapons. He was very dark-skinned and lean in opposition to Max’s bright whiteness and Austin’s bulk, and between the hardware on his lap and the hardware of his arm that they’d replaced with tech, the man was practically half-computer.

“You mean, like you?” Austin said, goading the younger man.

“Don’t make me change your Netflix password,” Jamison snarked, then waved his hand for silence. “We’re approaching the source of the signal. Slow down, Max.”

Max grunted an acknowledgement. He was driving what Damian called “the tour bus.” It was a heavily armored SUV, fortified with metal shielding, bulletproof glass, blast-resistant undercarriage, and, more importantly, personally warded by the most powerful witch on this side of the Pacific. Damian knew where they were by scent—the saltwater, gas, and oil fumes could only be from the familiar miasma of the docks—and they were here because somewhere nearby there was an Unearthly creature they needed to kill.

Back from Spanish — translated blind, in full

She pulled out a pen and paper and wrote it all down, asking the relevant questions at the relevant moments, but she couldn't shake the feeling that she was being half-yelled at and definitely judged. When she finished, she held up a hand. "Three things."

"Go ahead," he granted.

"The cat?" She couldn't help asking.

The driver answered her. "He's practically a member of the family. His presence is non-negotiable. Next?"

"Okay, fine." *Rich people are so weird.* Andi shrugged and looked back at the patient. "So why is he here? Why not in a hospital?"

"In the city?" Mr. Midwest asked, incredulous.

"Yeah, why not? There are good hospitals down there."

"Hospitals aren't safe," Mr. Midwest declared, as though it were established fact.

Andi bit her lips hard to keep from saying anything about his crackpot opinions. "All right, then," she went on. "Third thing: who are you? Medically speaking, I mean."

"His name is Austin; he used to be a paramedic," Mr. No-Name answered for him.

"And a Marine," Austin added.

She stuck out her hand so Austin had no choice but to shake it. "I'm Andi."

"Ah. Andi, not Andy," Austin said, with a slightly different emphasis, shooting Mr. No-Name a dirty look.

"It's not my fault your assumptions were sexist," Mr. No-Name said, a faint smile playing at the corner of his mouth. He looked pointedly at his watch again, and Austin disappeared down a hallway. "So, eight hours?" he asked her.

Based on Austin's report, the patient seemed, more than anything, like a wait-and-see case. He was injured and unconscious, but there was no real reason he still hadn't woken up except possible brain damage. Which, yes, did make this whole level of secrecy maybe understandable. If you were the head of a family with an enormous fortune and someone got hurt under your watch, maybe you needed to keep it quiet. She glanced at the patient's vitals on the monitor, the urine level in the Foley bag, and the chest tube slowly draining. She could keep almost anyone alive for eight hours… in a hospital. But what would happen here if things went wrong? The situation was bizarre, and even though they were paying her a fortune, she still had to think about her license. She looked up and found Mr. No-Name watching her without the slightest attempt to hide it, so blatantly that she blushed.

Austin reappeared pushing a crash cart before she could stammer out a word. "You know how to use this?"

"Of course." The crash cart eased only some of her fears. "But… I'm not a doctor."

"If he needs a doctor, just call me and I'll get one. My number's already saved." Mr. No-Name handed her a phone as Austin kept talking.

"And who should I ask for?" she asked, trying not to sound the least bit curious.

Mr. No-Name let out a snort, as if to say, *nice try.* "I'll know it's you."

Austin cut in. "There are more oxygen tanks against the wall. Just keep him comfortable until we get back."

Andi looked from one to the other. None of this made sense—not the cat, not this job, not this house, and definitely not these two extremely handsome and extremely strange men. "Where are you going, by the way?"

Mr. No-Name shook his head at her question. "Out. But we'll be back before dawn, and I promise you'll be on the first bus back to the city. All right?"

Mr. No-Name's gaze pressed down on her while Austin loomed over her.

She inhaled, ready to tell them how insane all of this was and back out, but then she reminded herself that the only thing that needed to make sense was the fact that a single night here equaled an entire month of her normal pay. She looked at the patient and did her best to check him over with her innate nurse's radar, sharpened by months of taking too many shifts, noting his color and the numbers on the screen. He was, by far, the most normal thing there. "Yeah, all right," she said at last, making up her mind. She pulled out the phone they'd given her and waved it at Mr. No-Name. "I'll call if anything happens; if not, see you in eight hours."

"Good," Mr. No-Name said, and he smiled at her for the first time all night, a full smile. Feeling his pleased attention on her was almost as bad as what had happened on the road on the way there. She wanted to run, but found she couldn't. She stayed rooted in place, skewered, like a deer in headlights. It was simply too much.

Then the cat jumped off the bed and wound itself around Mr. No-Name's legs. He looked down, and the moment vanished. The spotlight had shifted. She sagged, pulled herself together, and hoped he hadn't noticed. It didn't seem like he had, because he knelt down to rub the cat's head gently with his knuckles.

The cat meowed at him several times, as if it had strong opinions, and Mr. No-Name gave it a stern look. "No, she didn't bring you anything," he told the cat, then looked back at her. "If you hear any noise in the house, just ignore it. It's an old house; it creaks a lot." Austin coughed from the doorway, and Mr. No-Name headed toward him. Her audience was over. The men left, and the cat followed them.

Andi relaxed, then felt embarrassed about the way she'd been feeling. What was she, a schoolgirl or something? *You know better than that!* Whoever she'd been in the moment he looked at her—stupidly happy, foolishly hopeful, and just a little bit terrified—that wasn't the real her.

The real Andi was a nurse who knew what to do, always, at every moment.

She walked to the bed, unhooked the stethoscope from around her neck, and began assessing her patient.

"What did Grim say?" Austin asked Damian on the way to the garage.

"That she's too small to be of any use." In reality, Grimalkin had asked whether Andi had brought him cheese—the bluer the better—because the house had run out. Fortunately, Damian was the only one who could understand the immensely powerful multidimensional guardian assigned to him at birth, so no one else knew how easy it was to distract him with a gift of cheese.

"For once, the cat and I agree. If my brother wakes up…"

"I know," Damian said, cutting the conversation short. If Zach woke up while they were out—a big *if*—with any luck he and the nurse could have an intelligent conversation, after which she'd remove his restraints. He'd be confused about what had happened, but he'd be smart enough to figure out she was an outsider.

He climbed into the armored SUV, where part of the rest of his team was waiting. Tonight it was just him and the guys. Max was driving, Jamison had his eyes glued to his electronics, and he sat down near Austin, who was busy cleaning the barrel of something black and gleaming.

He leaned back in his seat, thinking about the nurse.

*She smelled good*, his dragon commented.

*Shut up*, he told his dragon, but it was right.

Oil, plastics, and above all the tang of iron surrounded him. Humans had so much iron in their blood that it seemed like a miracle they weren't magnetic. Living in human society, he'd gotten used to the metallic smell, but for some reason tonight it hit sharper than usual.

It was all her fault.

When she'd gotten into the car, the gassy reek of the bus she'd ridden in on and the medicinal chemical odors of her profession had been clinging to her coat. That was to be expected.

But beneath all of that was her own subtle scent, imperceptible to most humans and yet suddenly just as delicious.

Apples and caramel—yes, that was what it reminded him of—and salt water.

How strange.

He scrolled through his emails and opened the unread files Mills had sent him. She'd been top of her class at community college and then again in nursing school. But she was saddled with student loans, an exorbitant amount of debt to a hospital that appeared to match a relative's medical bills before they were paid off—presumably by that relative's death—and a brother who apparently couldn't resist ending up taking rides in patrol cars. Which made her perfect for his purposes: needy enough to go looking for money, smart enough to keep Zach alive, and hopefully smart enough not to ask too many more questions. There was always the Forgetting Fire if she got too curious. He reached the end of her background check and discovered she lived in a gentrifying neighborhood, in an apartment above a Greek bakery. That explained her scent. Her apartment probably smelled entirely of baked goods.

Mystery solved, Damian slipped the phone back into his pocket. But his mind drifted right back to her. *Andi.* What an odd name for a girl. He had the strangest impulse to say it out loud, irrationally, just to see if the sound tasted as good as she smelled. And that interesting blue streak he'd caught a glimpse of before she'd pinned her dark hair up—there was something about the way she hid it that made him want to pull it free and lay it bare again, maybe until he felt it coiling around his hand.

"Why did you warn her about the house?" Austin asked Damian, snapping him out of his thoughts.

"Because Grimalkin doesn't like strangers."

"He doesn't like anyone," Austin shot back.

"He's watching over Zach, isn't he?" Max said from the driver's seat, defending the integrity of Damian's guardian. Damian knew his cat and his old weapons master got along well—they had to: they were the only two things that had come from the Realms with him, though at different times. The combat armor Max wore made the whiteness of his exposed skin all the more striking, and Damian knew that if he took off his hat, every strand of his hair would be a ghostly white. He'd had the pale eyes of an albino, too, before losing them in a fight with another bear shifter. Mills had replaced them with something magical hidden behind glasses, making him the perfect bearer of Damian's Forgetting Fire, since its powers seemed to have no effect on him anymore. And whatever kind of eyes he had now, he could drop a supernatural creature at eight hundred meters.

"Grimalkin's probably hoping he dies," Austin said darkly.

Max flashed a toothy grin. "No—if Grimalkin wanted any of you dead, you already would be, pup."

Austin snorted. "Better a fighting wolf than a chimney-sweeping bear," he muttered, then turned back to Damian. "Was she sensitive enough for the perimeter to bother her?"

"Definitely."

Austin grunted. "How'd she handle it?"

"Admirably, considering she didn't know magic was attacking her." There were several concentric security rings around his mansion, some magical and some not. He'd watched—and tasted—her panic when they crossed one of them, the one Austin should have deactivated. He'd seen other men throw themselves out of moving cars, terrified and not knowing why, then crawl downhill in tears. Though Andi had been afraid, she hadn't run. Another interesting detail.

"Think she bought it?" Austin asked, miming putting on a chauffeur's cap.

Damian knew he meant the ruse of posing as a driver in his own employ. He'd wanted to meet the person who'd be looking after Zach, get a read on her. He hadn't expected to end up this intrigued.

"Doesn't matter," he replied. "Either she doesn't figure it out—perfect. Or she does, and the fire will make her forget."

"Why bother? Nobody would believe her. She'd just be another internet crackpot," Jamison said without looking up from the laptop balanced on his knees, as absorbed in it as Austin was in his weapons. He was very dark-skinned and lean, a contrast to Max's luminous whiteness and Austin's bulk, and between the gear on his lap and the tech grafted to his arm, the man was practically half computer.

"So—like you?" Austin said, needling the younger man.

"Don't make me change your Netflix password," Jamison fired back, then held up a hand for silence. "We're closing in on the signal origin. Slow down, Max."

Max grunted in confirmation. He was driving what Damian called "the field trip bus." It was a heavily armored SUV, reinforced with metal plating, bulletproof glass, blast-resistant undercarriage, and—most importantly—personally warded by the most powerful witch on this side of the Pacific. Damian knew where they were by the smell: salt water and the fumes of gasoline and oil could only be coming from the familiar miasma of the docks. And they were there because somewhere nearby was a supernatural creature they needed to kill.

What she wrote — the full passage

She pulled out a pen and paper and wrote everything down, asking appropriate questions at appropriate times, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being partially shouted at and definitely judged. When he was through, she held up a hand. “Three things.”

“Go,” he allowed her.

“The cat?” She couldn’t help but ask.

The driver answered her. “He’s practically a family member. Presence nonnegotiable. Next?”

“Okay, then.” *Weird-ass rich people. *Andi shrugged and looked back at the patient. “So, why is he here? Why not a hospital?”

“In the city?” Mr. Midwest was incredulous.

“Yeah. Why not? There’re good hospitals there.”

“Hospitals aren’t safe,” Mr. Midwest stated—like that was a known fact.

Andi bit her lips, hard, to not say anything about his bizarre opinions. “All right, then,” she went on. “Third is, who are you? Medically, I mean.”

“His name’s Austin; he used to be a paramedic,” Mr. No-Name said for the man.

“And in the Marines,” Austin added.

She stuck her hand out, so Austin would have to shake it. “I’m Andi.”

“Ah. An Andi, not Andy,” Austin said, with slightly different emphasis, giving Mr. No-Name a glare.

“It’s not my fault your assumptions were sexist,” Mr. No-Name said, a slight grin flickering at the corner of his mouth. He looked meaningfully at his watch again, and Austin disappeared down a hall. “So. Eight hours?” Mr. No-Name asked her.

From Austin’s report, this patient mostly sounded like a wait-and-see. He was injured and unconscious, but there was no real reason he hadn’t woken up yet—other than possible brain damage. Which, yeah, made this whole level of secrecy, perhaps understandable? If you were the head of a household worth a fortune and someone got injured on your watch, you might need to keep their issues under wraps. She glanced at the patient’s vitals on the monitor, the level of urine in the foley, and the slowly draining chest tube. She could keep almost anyone alive for eight hours—at the hospital. But what would happen here if things went poorly? This situation was bizarre, and even though they were paying her a ton, she still had her license to think of. She glanced up and found Mr. No-Name watching her shamelessly—so shamelessly, she flushed.

Austin reappeared, pushing a crash cart before she could stutter out any words. “You know what to do with this?”

“Of course.” The presence of a crash cart allayed only some of her fears. “But…I’m not a doctor.”

“If he needs a doctor, just call me, and I’ll get one. My number’s preprogrammed.” Mr. No-Name handed her a phone as Austin went on.

“And who should I ask for?” she asked, trying not to sound curious in the least.

Mr. No-Name let out a snort as if to say, *nice try. *“I’ll know it’s you.”

Austin interrupted. “There’s more oxygen tanks against the wall. Just keep him comfortable until we get back.”

Andi looked between them. None of this made sense—not the cat, not this job, not this house, and definitely not these two extremely handsome, yet extremely odd men. “Where are you going anyhow?”

Mr. No-Name shook his head at her question. “Out. But we’ll return by dawn, and I promise you’ll be on the first bus back to the city. Okay?”

Mr. No-Name’s gaze pressed her, as Austin loomed.

She inhaled—to tell them how insane all this was and back out—but then she reminded herself that the only thing that needed to make sense was the fact that one night here would equal a month of her normal paycheck. She glanced at the patient and did her best to ping out with her inherent nurse-radar, honed by months of taking too many shifts, taking in his color, and the numbers on the screen. He was the most normal thing here, hands down. “Yeah, okay,” she said, deciding. She pulled out the phone she’d been given and waved it at Mr. No-Name. “I’ll call if anything happens; otherwise, I’ll see you in eight.”

“Good,” Mr. No-Name said and smiled at her—fully—for the first time all night. The sensation of his pleased attention on her was almost as bad as whatever had happened to her on the road here. She wanted to run away, but she found she couldn’t. She was struck—pierced—like she was a deer in headlights. He was just too much.

Then the cat leapt off the bed and wound around Mr. No-Name’s legs. He glanced down, and the moment was over. The spotlight had moved on. She sagged, caught herself, and hoped he hadn’t seen it. It didn’t seem like he had as he knelt down to knuckle the cat’s head softly.

The cat meowed at him, repeatedly, as if it had strong opinions, and Mr. No-Name gave it a dour look. “No, she didn’t bring anything for you,” he told the cat, and then looked back to her. “If you hear any sounds in the house, just ignore them. It’s an old house; it creaks a lot.” Austin coughed from the door, and Mr. No-Name headed toward him. Her audience was over. The men left, and the cat followed them.

Andi relaxed, then became embarrassed by how she’d felt. What was she, some kind of schoolgirl? *You know better!* Whoever she’d been in the moment he’d looked at her—stupidly happy, foolishly hopeful, and just a teensy bit terrified—it wasn’t the real her.

The real Andi was a nurse who knew what to do—every time, all of the time.

She went to the bed, unlooped her stethoscope from her neck, and started to assess her patient.

“What’d Grim say?” Austin asked Damian on their way to the garage.

“That she’s too small to be of any use.” In reality, Grimalkin had asked if Andi had brought him any cheese, the bluer, the better—because the house was out. Luckily, Damian was the only one who could understand the hugely powerful multidimensional guardian he’d been assigned at birth, so no one else knew how easily a gift of cheese would distract him.

"For once, the cat and I agree. If my brother wakes up–"

“I know,” Damian said, shutting down further conversation. If Zach woke up while they were gone—a big *if*—then hopefully he and the nurse could have an intelligent conversation, after which she’d take off his restraints. He’d be confused about what had happened, but he’d be smart enough to realize she was an outsider.

He got into the armored SUV, waiting with some of the rest of his crew. It was just him and the guys tonight. Max was driving, Jamison had his eyes on his electronics, and he sat close to Austin who was busy wiping down the barrel of something black and shiny.

He sank back into his seat, thinking about the nurse.

*She smelled good*, his dragon commented*.* * *

*Shush,* he told his dragon—but it was right*.*

Oil, plastics, but more overwhelmingly, the aroma of iron, surrounded him. Humans had so much iron in their blood; it was a wonder to him that they weren’t magnetic. Living in human society, he had gotten used to the metallic scent, but for some reason, tonight it seemed more pungent than usual.

It was all because of her.

When she had gotten into the car, the gaseous stink of the bus she had been on and the medicinal chemical scents that were a hallmark of her occupation clung to her coat. Those were expected.

But underlying all that was her own subtle scent, undetectable to most humans, and yet abruptly mouthwatering all the same.

Apples and caramel, yes, that’s what it reminded him of—and saltwater.

How strange.

He swiped through his emails, opening the unread files Mills had sent over. Top of her class in community college and then nursing school. But she’d suffered student loans, a staggeringly high amount of debt owed to a hospital which looked like medical bills for a relative before it got wiped—presumably by that relative’s death—and a brother who apparently couldn’t resist taking rides in cop cars. Which made her perfect for his purposes: hungry enough to be looking for cash, smart enough to keep Zach alive, and hopefully, smart enough to not ask many more questions.* *There was always the Forgetting Fire if she got too curious. He reached the end of her background check and found she lived in a gentrifying part of town in an apartment above a Greek bakery. That explained her scent. Her apartment probably smelled entirely of baked goods.

Mystery solved, Damian put the phone back into his pocket. But his mind went right back to her. *Andi.* What an odd name for a girl. He had the strangest urge to say it out loud, irrationally, to see if the sound tasted as good as she smelled. And that interesting streak of blue that he’d glimpsed a flash of before she’d wound her dark hair up—something about the act of her hiding it made him want to unwind and expose it again, to possibly feel the wrap of it around his hand.

* *“Why’d you warn her about the house?” Austin asked Damian, distracting him from his thoughts.

“Because Grimalkin doesn’t like strangers.”

“He doesn’t like anyone,” Austin countered.

“He’s keeping an eye on Zach, isn’t he?” Max said from the driver’s seat, defending Damian’s guardian’s integrity. Damian knew his cat and his old weapons master got along—they had to; they were the only two things that’d come from the Realms with him, albeit at different times. The battle armor Max had on made the whiteness of his skin around it even more shocking, and Damian knew if he had his hat off, all his hair would be ghostly pale. He’d had an albino’s pale eyes, too, before he’d lost them in a fight with another bear-shifter. Mills had replaced them with something magical hidden by goggles, turning him into the perfect bearer of Damian’s Forgetting Fire, since its powers no longer seemed to work on him. And whatever kind of eyes he had now, he could snipe an Unearthly creature down at eight hundred yards.

“Grimalkin’s probably hoping that he’ll die,” Austin said darkly.

Max broke into a toothy grin. “Nah, if Grimalkin wanted either of you dead, you’d be dead already, puppy.”

Austin snorted at him. “Better to be a wolf who’s a fighter than a bear who’s a chimney sweep,” Austin muttered, before addressing Damian again. “Was she sensitive enough for the perimeter to bother her?”

“Definitely.”

Austin grunted. “How’d she do?”

“Admirably, considering she didn’t know she was being magically attacked.” There were several concentric security rings around his mansion, some magical, some not. He’d both seen and tasted her panic as they’d driven over one of them—the one Austin had been supposed to turn off. He’d seen other men throw themselves out of moving cars in fear and not know why to crawl crying back downhill. While she’d been scared, Andi hadn’t run. Another interesting point.

“Do you think she bought it?” Austin asked, pretending to put a driver’s hat on.

Damian knew he meant the subterfuge of him pretending to be a driver in his own employ. He’d wanted to meet the person taking care of Zach, to get a feel for her—he hadn’t expected for him to wind up being so intrigued.

“Doesn’t matter,” he answered. “Either she doesn’t figure it out, fine; or she does, and the fire will make her forget.”

“Why bother? No one would believe her. She’d just be another internet crackpot,” Jamison said while staring intently at the computer on his lap, as immersed in it as Austin was his weapons. He was very dark-skinned and lean in opposition to Max’s bright whiteness and Austin’s bulk, and between the hardware on his lap and the hardware of his arm that they’d replaced with tech, the man was practically half-computer.

“You mean, like you?” Austin said, goading the younger man.

“Don’t make me change your Netflix password,” Jamison snarked, then waved his hand for silence. “We’re approaching the source of the signal. Slow down, Max.”

Max grunted an acknowledgement. He was driving what Damian called “the tour bus.” It was a heavily armored SUV, fortified with metal shielding, bulletproof glass, blast-resistant undercarriage, and, more importantly, personally warded by the most powerful witch on this side of the Pacific. Damian knew where they were by scent—the saltwater, gas, and oil fumes could only be from the familiar miasma of the docks—and they were here because somewhere nearby there was an Unearthly creature they needed to kill.

Back from Italian — translated blind, in full

She pulled out a pen and paper and wrote everything down, asking the right questions at the right moments, but she couldn't shake the feeling that they were partly yelling at her and definitely judging her. When he finished, she held up a hand. "Three things."

"Go ahead," he allowed.

"The cat?" She couldn't help asking.

The chauffeur answered for him. "He's practically a member of the family. His presence is non-negotiable. What else?"

"Fine, then." *Rich fucking people.* Andi shrugged and looked at the patient again. "So why is he here? Why not in a hospital?"

"In the city?" Mr. Midwest was incredulous.

"Yeah. Why not? There are good hospitals there."

"Hospitals aren't safe," Mr. Midwest declared, like it was common knowledge.

Andi bit down hard on her lips to keep from saying anything about his absurd opinions. "Fine, then," she continued. "Third thing is: who are you? In a medical sense, I mean."

"His name is Austin; he used to be a paramedic," Mr. No-Name said in his place.

"And I was in the Marines," Austin added.

She stuck out her hand so Austin would be forced to shake it. "I'm Andi."

"Ah. An Andi, not an Andy," Austin said, with a slightly different emphasis, shooting a dirty look at Mr. No-Name.

"It's not my fault your assumptions were sexist," Mr. No-Name said, the ghost of a smile flickering at the corner of his mouth. He glanced pointedly at his watch again, and Austin disappeared down a corridor. "So. Eight hours?" he asked her.

From Austin's account, the patient seemed mostly like a wait-and-see case. He was injured and unconscious, but there was no real reason he hadn't woken up yet, aside from possible brain damage. Which, yes, maybe made this level of secrecy understandable. If you were the head of a huge family fortune and someone got hurt under your watch, you might need to keep the whole thing quiet. She glanced at the patient's vitals on the monitor, the amount of urine in the Foley catheter, and the chest drain slowly filling. She could keep almost anyone alive for eight hours in a hospital. But here, if things went wrong, what would happen? The situation was absurd, and even though they were paying her a ton, she still had to think about her license. She looked up and found Mr. No-Name watching her without the slightest shame, so openly that she blushed.

Austin reappeared, pushing an emergency cart, before she could stammer out anything. "Do you know how to use it?"

"Of course." The presence of an emergency cart only partly eased her fears. "But… I'm not a doctor."

"If he needs a doctor, call me and I'll get one here. My number's already saved." Mr. No-Name handed her a phone while Austin continued.

"And who do I ask for?" she asked, trying not to sound the least bit curious.

Mr. No-Name let out a huff that said: *nice try*. "I'll know it's you."

Austin cut in. "There are extra oxygen tanks against the wall. Keep him as comfortable as you can until we get back."

Andi looked at both of them. None of this made sense—not the cat, not this job, not this house, and definitely not these two extremely handsome, extremely strange men. "And where are you going, anyway?"

Mr. No-Name shook his head at her question. "Out. But we'll be back by dawn, and I promise you'll catch the first bus into the city. Okay?"

Mr. No-Name's gaze bore down on her while Austin hovered beside him.

She drew a breath, ready to tell him how insane all of this was and back out, but then she remembered that the only thing that needed to make sense was that one night here equaled a month of her regular salary. She glanced at the patient and did her best to read him with her nurse's radar, honed by months of too many shifts, taking in his color and the numbers on the screen. He was by far the most normal thing in the room. "Yeah, okay," she said, making up her mind. She pulled out the phone they'd given her and waved it at Mr. No-Name. "I'll call you if something happens; otherwise, see you in eight hours."

"Good," Mr. No-Name said, and smiled at her openly for the first time all evening. The feel of his pleased attention on her was almost as terrible as what had happened to her on the road getting there. She wanted to run, but she realized she couldn't. She'd been hit, pierced through, like a doe caught in headlights. It was simply too much.

Then the cat jumped off the bed and wound around Mr. No-Name's legs. He looked down, and the moment broke. The spotlight had shifted. She buckled, caught herself instantly, and hoped he hadn't noticed. He didn't seem to have, because he knelt and brushed the cat's head gently with his knuckles.

The cat meowed at him repeatedly, as if it had very strong opinions, and Mr. No-Name gave it a dark look. "No, she didn't bring you anything," he told the cat, then turned to her. "If you hear noises in the house, just ignore them. It's an old house; it creaks a lot." Austin cleared his throat from the doorway, and Mr. No-Name headed toward him. Her audience was over. The two men left, and the cat followed them.

Andi relaxed, then felt embarrassed about how she'd felt. What was she, some kind of schoolgirl? *You know better than that.* Whoever she'd been in the moment he'd looked at her—stupidly happy, foolishly hopeful, and just a little bit terrified—wasn't the real her.

The real Andi was a nurse who always knew what to do—every time, every moment.

She went to the bed, pulled the stethoscope from around her neck, and began assessing the patient.

"What did Grim say?" Austin asked Damian as they headed toward the garage.

"That she's too small to be of any use." In reality, Grimalkin had asked whether Andi had brought him any cheese—the moldier the better—because the house was out. Fortunately, Damian was the only one who could understand the supremely powerful multidimensional guardian assigned to him at birth, so no one else knew how easily a cheese offering could distract him.

"For once, me and the cat agree. If my brother wakes up…"

"I know," Damian said, cutting off any further discussion. If Zach woke up while they were gone—a very big *if*—then, hopefully, he and the nurse could have a reasonable conversation, after which she'd remove his restraints. He'd be confused about what had happened, but alert enough to understand she was a stranger.

He climbed into the armored SUV, where some of the rest of the team were waiting. Tonight it was just him and the guys. Max was driving, Jamison had his eyes glued to his electronic instruments, and he sat down next to Austin, who was busy cleaning the barrel of something black and gleaming.

He leaned back against the seat, thinking about the nurse.

*She smelled good,* his dragon commented.

*Shut up,* he told his dragon—but it was right.

Oil, plastic, but above all the smell of iron surrounded him. Humans had so much iron in their blood it was almost a miracle they weren't magnetic. Living in human society, he'd gotten used to that metallic smell, but for some reason tonight it seemed sharper than usual.

That was her fault.

When she'd gotten into the car, the stink of exhaust from the bus she'd ridden and the chemical, medicinal odors—the hallmark of her profession—had clung to her coat. Those were predictable.

But underneath all of it was her scent, faint, imperceptible to most humans, and yet suddenly enough to make his mouth water.

Apples and caramel, yes, that was what it reminded him of—and salt water.

How strange.

He scrolled through his emails, opening the unread files Mills had sent him. Top of her class at both community college and nursing school. But she carried student loans, a staggering amount of debt to a hospital that appeared to be medical expenses for a family member before being written off—presumably when that relative died—and a brother who, apparently, couldn't resist the temptation of getting carted around in police cars. Which made her perfect for his purposes: desperate enough to go hunting for money, smart enough to keep Zach alive, and, hopefully, smart enough not to ask too many other questions. There was always the Fire of Oblivion if she got too curious. At the end of the background check, he found out she lived in a gentrifying part of the city, in an apartment above a Greek bakery. That explained her scent. Her apartment probably smelled entirely of baked goods.

Mystery solved, Damian slipped the phone back into his pocket. But his mind drifted right back to her. *Andi.* What a strange name for a girl. He felt the oddest urge to say it out loud, irrationally, just to see if the sound was as good as her scent. And that curious blue streak he'd caught a glimpse of before she'd pulled her dark hair up—there was something about the way she'd hidden it that made him want to undo it all and put it back on display, maybe feel it wind around his hand.

"Why'd you warn her about the house?" Austin asked Damian, pulling him from his thoughts.

"Because Grimalkin doesn't like strangers."

"He doesn't like anyone," Austin shot back.

"He's keeping an eye on Zach, isn't he?" Max said from the driver's seat, defending the integrity of Damian's guardian. Damian knew his cat and his old weapons master got along—they had to; they were the only two things that had come from the Realms with him, though at different times. The battle armor Max wore made the whiteness of his exposed skin even more striking, and Damian knew that if he took off his hat, his hair would be a ghostly pale blond. Before losing them in a fight with another bear shifter, he'd had the pale eyes of an albino too. Mills had replaced them with something magical, hidden behind protective goggles, making him the perfect bearer of Damian's Fire of Oblivion, since Damian's power no longer seemed to work on him. And whatever kind of eyes he had now, he could take down an Otherworldly creature with a rifle shot at eight hundred meters.

"Grimalkin probably hopes he dies," Austin said darkly.

Max flashed a toothy grin. "Nah, if Grimalkin wanted either of you two dead, you'd already be dead, pup."

Austin snorted. "Better to be a wolf who fights than a bear who sweeps chimneys," he muttered, then turned back to Damian. "Was she sensitive enough to be bothered by the perimeter?"

"Definitely."

Austin grunted. "How'd she handle it?"

"Admirably, considering she had no idea she was under magical attack." There were several concentric security rings around his estate, some magical, some not. He'd watched—almost tasted—her panic as they passed through one of them, the one Austin should have deactivated. He'd seen other men throw themselves out of moving cars in terror and, without knowing why, crawl back down the hill in tears. She'd been frightened, but she hadn't run. Another interesting point.

"Think she bought it?" Austin asked, miming putting on a chauffeur's cap.

Damian knew he was referring to the charade of pretending to be his own employee. He'd wanted to meet the person who'd be taking care of Zach, get a read on her—he hadn't expected to find himself this intrigued.

"Doesn't matter," he replied. "Either she doesn't figure it out, great; or she does, and the fire will make her forget."

"Why go to the trouble? Nobody would believe her. She'd just be another internet nut," Jamison said, staring intently at the computer on his lap, as absorbed in that as Austin was in his weapons. His skin was very dark and he was lean, in contrast to Max's dazzling pallor and Austin's bulk, and between the hardware on his lap and the tech that had replaced his arm, the man was practically half computer.

"You mean, like you?" Austin said, needling the younger man.

"Don't make me change your Netflix password," Jamison fired back, then held up a hand for silence. "We're closing in on the signal source. Slow down, Max."

Max grunted in acknowledgment. He was driving what Damian called "the bus." It was a heavily armored SUV, reinforced with metal shielding, bulletproof glass, a blast-resistant undercarriage, and—most importantly—personally warded by the most powerful witch on this side of the Pacific. Damian knew where they were by the smell—the salt water and the fumes of gasoline and oil could only come from the familiar miasma of the docks—and they were there because somewhere nearby was an Otherworldly creature they had to kill.

What she wrote — the full passage

She pulled out a pen and paper and wrote everything down, asking appropriate questions at appropriate times, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being partially shouted at and definitely judged. When he was through, she held up a hand. “Three things.”

“Go,” he allowed her.

“The cat?” She couldn’t help but ask.

The driver answered her. “He’s practically a family member. Presence nonnegotiable. Next?”

“Okay, then.” *Weird-ass rich people. *Andi shrugged and looked back at the patient. “So, why is he here? Why not a hospital?”

“In the city?” Mr. Midwest was incredulous.

“Yeah. Why not? There’re good hospitals there.”

“Hospitals aren’t safe,” Mr. Midwest stated—like that was a known fact.

Andi bit her lips, hard, to not say anything about his bizarre opinions. “All right, then,” she went on. “Third is, who are you? Medically, I mean.”

“His name’s Austin; he used to be a paramedic,” Mr. No-Name said for the man.

“And in the Marines,” Austin added.

She stuck her hand out, so Austin would have to shake it. “I’m Andi.”

“Ah. An Andi, not Andy,” Austin said, with slightly different emphasis, giving Mr. No-Name a glare.

“It’s not my fault your assumptions were sexist,” Mr. No-Name said, a slight grin flickering at the corner of his mouth. He looked meaningfully at his watch again, and Austin disappeared down a hall. “So. Eight hours?” Mr. No-Name asked her.

From Austin’s report, this patient mostly sounded like a wait-and-see. He was injured and unconscious, but there was no real reason he hadn’t woken up yet—other than possible brain damage. Which, yeah, made this whole level of secrecy, perhaps understandable? If you were the head of a household worth a fortune and someone got injured on your watch, you might need to keep their issues under wraps. She glanced at the patient’s vitals on the monitor, the level of urine in the foley, and the slowly draining chest tube. She could keep almost anyone alive for eight hours—at the hospital. But what would happen here if things went poorly? This situation was bizarre, and even though they were paying her a ton, she still had her license to think of. She glanced up and found Mr. No-Name watching her shamelessly—so shamelessly, she flushed.

Austin reappeared, pushing a crash cart before she could stutter out any words. “You know what to do with this?”

“Of course.” The presence of a crash cart allayed only some of her fears. “But…I’m not a doctor.”

“If he needs a doctor, just call me, and I’ll get one. My number’s preprogrammed.” Mr. No-Name handed her a phone as Austin went on.

“And who should I ask for?” she asked, trying not to sound curious in the least.

Mr. No-Name let out a snort as if to say, *nice try. *“I’ll know it’s you.”

Austin interrupted. “There’s more oxygen tanks against the wall. Just keep him comfortable until we get back.”

Andi looked between them. None of this made sense—not the cat, not this job, not this house, and definitely not these two extremely handsome, yet extremely odd men. “Where are you going anyhow?”

Mr. No-Name shook his head at her question. “Out. But we’ll return by dawn, and I promise you’ll be on the first bus back to the city. Okay?”

Mr. No-Name’s gaze pressed her, as Austin loomed.

She inhaled—to tell them how insane all this was and back out—but then she reminded herself that the only thing that needed to make sense was the fact that one night here would equal a month of her normal paycheck. She glanced at the patient and did her best to ping out with her inherent nurse-radar, honed by months of taking too many shifts, taking in his color, and the numbers on the screen. He was the most normal thing here, hands down. “Yeah, okay,” she said, deciding. She pulled out the phone she’d been given and waved it at Mr. No-Name. “I’ll call if anything happens; otherwise, I’ll see you in eight.”

“Good,” Mr. No-Name said and smiled at her—fully—for the first time all night. The sensation of his pleased attention on her was almost as bad as whatever had happened to her on the road here. She wanted to run away, but she found she couldn’t. She was struck—pierced—like she was a deer in headlights. He was just too much.

Then the cat leapt off the bed and wound around Mr. No-Name’s legs. He glanced down, and the moment was over. The spotlight had moved on. She sagged, caught herself, and hoped he hadn’t seen it. It didn’t seem like he had as he knelt down to knuckle the cat’s head softly.

The cat meowed at him, repeatedly, as if it had strong opinions, and Mr. No-Name gave it a dour look. “No, she didn’t bring anything for you,” he told the cat, and then looked back to her. “If you hear any sounds in the house, just ignore them. It’s an old house; it creaks a lot.” Austin coughed from the door, and Mr. No-Name headed toward him. Her audience was over. The men left, and the cat followed them.

Andi relaxed, then became embarrassed by how she’d felt. What was she, some kind of schoolgirl? *You know better!* Whoever she’d been in the moment he’d looked at her—stupidly happy, foolishly hopeful, and just a teensy bit terrified—it wasn’t the real her.

The real Andi was a nurse who knew what to do—every time, all of the time.

She went to the bed, unlooped her stethoscope from her neck, and started to assess her patient.

“What’d Grim say?” Austin asked Damian on their way to the garage.

“That she’s too small to be of any use.” In reality, Grimalkin had asked if Andi had brought him any cheese, the bluer, the better—because the house was out. Luckily, Damian was the only one who could understand the hugely powerful multidimensional guardian he’d been assigned at birth, so no one else knew how easily a gift of cheese would distract him.

"For once, the cat and I agree. If my brother wakes up–"

“I know,” Damian said, shutting down further conversation. If Zach woke up while they were gone—a big *if*—then hopefully he and the nurse could have an intelligent conversation, after which she’d take off his restraints. He’d be confused about what had happened, but he’d be smart enough to realize she was an outsider.

He got into the armored SUV, waiting with some of the rest of his crew. It was just him and the guys tonight. Max was driving, Jamison had his eyes on his electronics, and he sat close to Austin who was busy wiping down the barrel of something black and shiny.

He sank back into his seat, thinking about the nurse.

*She smelled good*, his dragon commented*.* * *

*Shush,* he told his dragon—but it was right*.*

Oil, plastics, but more overwhelmingly, the aroma of iron, surrounded him. Humans had so much iron in their blood; it was a wonder to him that they weren’t magnetic. Living in human society, he had gotten used to the metallic scent, but for some reason, tonight it seemed more pungent than usual.

It was all because of her.

When she had gotten into the car, the gaseous stink of the bus she had been on and the medicinal chemical scents that were a hallmark of her occupation clung to her coat. Those were expected.

But underlying all that was her own subtle scent, undetectable to most humans, and yet abruptly mouthwatering all the same.

Apples and caramel, yes, that’s what it reminded him of—and saltwater.

How strange.

He swiped through his emails, opening the unread files Mills had sent over. Top of her class in community college and then nursing school. But she’d suffered student loans, a staggeringly high amount of debt owed to a hospital which looked like medical bills for a relative before it got wiped—presumably by that relative’s death—and a brother who apparently couldn’t resist taking rides in cop cars. Which made her perfect for his purposes: hungry enough to be looking for cash, smart enough to keep Zach alive, and hopefully, smart enough to not ask many more questions.* *There was always the Forgetting Fire if she got too curious. He reached the end of her background check and found she lived in a gentrifying part of town in an apartment above a Greek bakery. That explained her scent. Her apartment probably smelled entirely of baked goods.

Mystery solved, Damian put the phone back into his pocket. But his mind went right back to her. *Andi.* What an odd name for a girl. He had the strangest urge to say it out loud, irrationally, to see if the sound tasted as good as she smelled. And that interesting streak of blue that he’d glimpsed a flash of before she’d wound her dark hair up—something about the act of her hiding it made him want to unwind and expose it again, to possibly feel the wrap of it around his hand.

* *“Why’d you warn her about the house?” Austin asked Damian, distracting him from his thoughts.

“Because Grimalkin doesn’t like strangers.”

“He doesn’t like anyone,” Austin countered.

“He’s keeping an eye on Zach, isn’t he?” Max said from the driver’s seat, defending Damian’s guardian’s integrity. Damian knew his cat and his old weapons master got along—they had to; they were the only two things that’d come from the Realms with him, albeit at different times. The battle armor Max had on made the whiteness of his skin around it even more shocking, and Damian knew if he had his hat off, all his hair would be ghostly pale. He’d had an albino’s pale eyes, too, before he’d lost them in a fight with another bear-shifter. Mills had replaced them with something magical hidden by goggles, turning him into the perfect bearer of Damian’s Forgetting Fire, since its powers no longer seemed to work on him. And whatever kind of eyes he had now, he could snipe an Unearthly creature down at eight hundred yards.

“Grimalkin’s probably hoping that he’ll die,” Austin said darkly.

Max broke into a toothy grin. “Nah, if Grimalkin wanted either of you dead, you’d be dead already, puppy.”

Austin snorted at him. “Better to be a wolf who’s a fighter than a bear who’s a chimney sweep,” Austin muttered, before addressing Damian again. “Was she sensitive enough for the perimeter to bother her?”

“Definitely.”

Austin grunted. “How’d she do?”

“Admirably, considering she didn’t know she was being magically attacked.” There were several concentric security rings around his mansion, some magical, some not. He’d both seen and tasted her panic as they’d driven over one of them—the one Austin had been supposed to turn off. He’d seen other men throw themselves out of moving cars in fear and not know why to crawl crying back downhill. While she’d been scared, Andi hadn’t run. Another interesting point.

“Do you think she bought it?” Austin asked, pretending to put a driver’s hat on.

Damian knew he meant the subterfuge of him pretending to be a driver in his own employ. He’d wanted to meet the person taking care of Zach, to get a feel for her—he hadn’t expected for him to wind up being so intrigued.

“Doesn’t matter,” he answered. “Either she doesn’t figure it out, fine; or she does, and the fire will make her forget.”

“Why bother? No one would believe her. She’d just be another internet crackpot,” Jamison said while staring intently at the computer on his lap, as immersed in it as Austin was his weapons. He was very dark-skinned and lean in opposition to Max’s bright whiteness and Austin’s bulk, and between the hardware on his lap and the hardware of his arm that they’d replaced with tech, the man was practically half-computer.

“You mean, like you?” Austin said, goading the younger man.

“Don’t make me change your Netflix password,” Jamison snarked, then waved his hand for silence. “We’re approaching the source of the signal. Slow down, Max.”

Max grunted an acknowledgement. He was driving what Damian called “the tour bus.” It was a heavily armored SUV, fortified with metal shielding, bulletproof glass, blast-resistant undercarriage, and, more importantly, personally warded by the most powerful witch on this side of the Pacific. Damian knew where they were by scent—the saltwater, gas, and oil fumes could only be from the familiar miasma of the docks—and they were here because somewhere nearby there was an Unearthly creature they needed to kill.

Back from Czech — translated blind, in full

She pulled out a pen and paper and wrote everything down, asking the right questions at the right moments, but she couldn't shake the feeling that the man was half-yelling at her and definitely judging her. When he finished, she raised a hand. "Three things."

"Go ahead," he allowed.

"The cat?" She couldn't help it—she had to ask.

The chauffeur answered for him. "He's practically a member of the family. His presence is not up for discussion. Next?"

"Okay, sure." *Rich people are weird.* Andi shrugged and looked back at the patient. "So why is he here? Why not in a hospital?"

"In the city?" Mr. Midwest looked incredulous.

"Yeah. Why not? There are good hospitals there."

"Hospitals aren't safe," Mr. Midwest declared—as though this were common knowledge.

Andi bit her lip hard to keep herself from commenting on his bizarre views. "All right then," she continued. "And third, who exactly are you? Medically speaking."

"His name is Austin; he used to be a paramedic," Mr. No-Name answered for him.

"And I served in the Marines," Austin added.

She reached out a hand so he'd have to shake it. "I'm Andi."

"Ah. Andi, not Andy," Austin said with a slightly different emphasis, and shot Mr. No-Name a sharp look.

"Can't help it if your assumptions were sexist," Mr. No-Name said, the corner of his mouth twitching with the hint of a smile. He glanced pointedly at his watch again and Austin disappeared down the corridor. "Well? Eight hours?" Mr. No-Name asked her.

From Austin's report, this looked mostly like a wait-and-see situation. The patient was injured and unconscious, but there was no real reason he hadn't woken up yet—aside from possible brain damage. Which did make this level of secrecy at least somewhat understandable. If you were the head of a household worth billions and someone got hurt on your watch, maybe you'd need to keep it quiet too. She checked the patient's vitals on the monitor, the urine output in the Foley catheter, and the slowly draining chest tube. She could keep just about anyone alive for eight hours—in a hospital. But what would happen here if things went sideways? The whole situation was bizarre, and even though they were paying her a fortune, she still had to think about her license. She looked up and found Mr. No-Name watching her shamelessly—so shamelessly that she blushed.

Austin reappeared, pushing a crash cart in front of him before she could stammer out a single word. "Do you know how to use this?"

"Of course." The crash cart's presence eased only some of her concerns. "But… I'm not a doctor."

"If he needs a doctor, just call me and I'll get one somehow. My number's already saved in there." Mr. No-Name handed her the phone.

"And who do I ask for?" she said, trying to sound as un-curious as possible.

Mr. No-Name snorted, as if to say, *Nice try.* "I'll know it's you."

Austin cut in. "There are more oxygen tanks against the wall. Just keep him comfortable until we get back."

Andi looked from one to the other. None of this made sense—not the cat, not this job, not this house, and definitely not these two ridiculously attractive but ridiculously strange men. "And where exactly are you going?"

Mr. No-Name shook his head at her question. "Away. But we'll be back by dawn, and I promise you'll be on the first bus back to the city. Deal?"

Mr. No-Name pressed her with his gaze while Austin loomed over her.

She drew a breath—to tell them how insane all of this was and back out—but then she reminded herself that the only thing that needed to make sense was the fact that one night here equaled a month of her regular pay. She looked at the patient and tried to get a read on him with her innate nursing radar, honed by months of too many shifts; she took in his color and the numbers on the monitor. He was unquestionably the most normal one here. "Yeah, okay," she said, making her decision. She pulled out the phone she'd been given and waved it at Mr. No-Name. "If something happens, I'll call. Otherwise, see you in eight hours."

"Good," Mr. No-Name said, and for the first time all evening, he smiled at her—fully, completely. The feeling of his satisfied attention fixed on her was almost as awful as what had happened to her on the way here. She wanted to run, but found she couldn't. She stood there stunned—skewered—like a deer in headlights. He was simply too much.

Then the cat jumped down from the bed and wound itself around his legs. He dropped his gaze to it, and the moment was gone. The spotlight had moved on. Andi sagged, collected herself, and hoped he hadn't noticed. He didn't seem to have; he knelt down and gently rubbed the cat's head with his knuckles.

The cat meowed at him repeatedly, as though it had very strong opinions on the matter, and Mr. No-Name gave it a stern look. "No, she didn't bring you anything," he told the cat, then looked at Andi again. "If you hear any noises in the house, just ignore them. It's an old house; it creaks a lot." Austin cleared his throat from the doorway and Mr. No-Name headed toward him. Her audience was over. The men left and the cat followed them.

Andi relaxed and then felt embarrassed about how she'd been feeling. What was she, some schoolgirl? *You know better than this!* Whoever she'd been in that moment when he looked at her—stupidly happy, foolishly hopeful, and just a tiny bit terrified—that wasn't who she really was.

The real Andi was a nurse who always knew what to do—every time, in every situation.

She crossed to the bed, lifted the stethoscope from around her neck, and began examining her patient.

"What did Grim say?" Austin asked Damian on the way to the garage.

"That she's too small to be any use." In reality, Grimalkin had asked whether Andi had brought him any cheese—the moldier the better—because the house was out. Fortunately, Damian was the only one who understood the immensely powerful multidimensional guardian assigned to him at birth, so no one else knew how easily a gift of cheese would distract it.

"For once I agree with the cat. If my brother wakes up—"

"I know," Damian said, cutting off further debate. If Zach woke up while they were gone—and that was a big *if*—then hopefully he and the nurse could have a reasonable conversation, after which she'd remove his restraints. He'd be confused about what had happened, but he'd be smart enough to recognize that he was among strangers.

He climbed into the armored SUV where part of his team was already waiting. Tonight it was just him and the guys. Max was driving, Jamison had his eyes fixed on his electronics, and he settled in next to Austin, who was busy wiping down the barrel of something black and gleaming.

He sank into the seat and thought about the nurse.

*She smelled nice,* his dragon remarked.

*Shut up,* he told his dragon—but it was right.

He was surrounded by the scent of oil, plastic, and above all iron. Humans had so much iron in their blood, he was surprised they weren't magnetic. Living among human society, he'd gotten used to the metallic smell, but for some reason tonight it seemed sharper than usual.

It was because of her.

When she'd gotten into the car, her coat had carried the gaseous smell of the bus she'd arrived on, along with the medicinal chemical scents that were the hallmark of her profession. That was to be expected.

But beneath all of it was her own subtle scent, imperceptible to most people, and yet suddenly so strong it made his mouth water.

Apples and caramel, yes, that's what it reminded him of—and salt water.

How strange.

He scrolled through the emails and opened the unread files Mills had sent him. She'd been near the top of her class at community college and then again at nursing school. But she was weighed down by student loans, a staggeringly high debt to the hospital that looked like medical bills for a relative before it was erased—most likely by that relative's death—and a brother who apparently couldn't resist rides in police cars. Which made her perfect for his purposes: desperate enough to chase the money, smart enough to keep Zach alive, and hopefully smart enough not to ask too many more questions. If she got too curious, there was always the Fire of Forgetting. When he reached the end of her background check, he found she lived in a gentrifying part of town in an apartment above a Greek bakery. That explained her scent. Her whole apartment probably smelled like baked goods.

Mystery solved, Damian slid the phone back into his pocket. But his thoughts drifted right back to her. *Andi.* What a strange name for a girl. He had the oddest urge to say it out loud, irrationally, just to see if the sound tasted as good as she smelled. And that interesting blue streak he'd glimpsed earlier before she'd swept her dark hair up—something about the fact that she'd hidden it made him want to let it all down again and uncover it, maybe feel it wind around his hand.

"Why'd you warn her about the house?" Austin asked Damian, pulling him from his thoughts.

"Because Grimalkin doesn't like strangers."

"He doesn't like anyone," Austin countered.

"He watches over Zach, doesn't he?" Max said from the driver's seat, defending the reputation of Damian's guardian. Damian knew his tomcat and his old weapons master got along—they had to; they were the only two beings who'd come with him from the Realms, though at different times. The battle armor Max wore made the whiteness of his skin around it all the more striking, and Damian knew that if he took off his cap, every hair underneath would be ghostly pale. He'd once had the pale eyes of an albino too, before he lost them fighting another bear shifter. Mills had replaced them with something magical, hidden behind protective goggles, making him the perfect wielder of Damian's Fire of Forgetting, since its power apparently no longer worked on him. And whatever his eyes were now, he could shoot an Otherworldly being from eight hundred yards.

"Grimalkin's probably hoping he dies," Austin said darkly.

Max grinned wide. "Nah, if Grimalkin wanted one of you dead, you'd already be dead, pup."

Austin snorted. "Better a wolf who can fight than a bear who plays chimney sweep," he muttered, then turned back to Damian. "Was she sensitive enough for the perimeter to bother her?"

"Definitely."

Austin grunted. "How'd she handle it?"

"Admirably, considering she had no idea she was under magical attack." There were several concentric security rings around his estate, some magical, some not. He'd not only seen but felt her panic when they'd crossed one of them—the one Austin was supposed to have deactivated. He'd seen other men throw themselves from moving cars in terror without knowing why, only to crawl back up the slope afterward in tears. Andi had been afraid, but she hadn't run. Another interesting observation.

"Think she bought it?" Austin asked, miming putting on a chauffeur's cap.

Damian knew he meant the ruse of posing as his own driver. He'd wanted to personally meet the person who'd be caring for Zach, to get a read on her—he hadn't expected her to intrigue him this much.

"Doesn't matter," he replied. "Either she won't figure it out, fine. Or she will, and the fire will make her forget."

"Why even bother? Nobody would believe her. She'd just be another internet crackpot," Jamison said, staring intently at the laptop on his knees, as absorbed in it as Austin was in his weapons. Against Max's blazing whiteness and Austin's bulk, he was very dark and lean, and between the tech on his lap and the arm they'd replaced with technology, the guy was practically half computer.

"You mean like you?" Austin said, needling the younger man.

"Don't make me change your Netflix password," Jamison snapped, waving a hand for quiet. "We're approaching the signal source. Slow down, Max."

Max grunted in agreement. He was driving what Damian called the "tour bus." It was a heavily armored SUV, reinforced with metal shielding, bulletproof glass, a blast-resistant chassis, and, more importantly, personally warded by the most powerful sorceress on this side of the Pacific. Damian could tell by the smell where they were—salt water, gasoline, and oil fumes could only come from the familiar miasma of the docks—and they were here because somewhere nearby was an Otherworldly being they had to kill.

What she wrote — the full passage

She pulled out a pen and paper and wrote everything down, asking appropriate questions at appropriate times, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being partially shouted at and definitely judged. When he was through, she held up a hand. “Three things.”

“Go,” he allowed her.

“The cat?” She couldn’t help but ask.

The driver answered her. “He’s practically a family member. Presence nonnegotiable. Next?”

“Okay, then.” *Weird-ass rich people. *Andi shrugged and looked back at the patient. “So, why is he here? Why not a hospital?”

“In the city?” Mr. Midwest was incredulous.

“Yeah. Why not? There’re good hospitals there.”

“Hospitals aren’t safe,” Mr. Midwest stated—like that was a known fact.

Andi bit her lips, hard, to not say anything about his bizarre opinions. “All right, then,” she went on. “Third is, who are you? Medically, I mean.”

“His name’s Austin; he used to be a paramedic,” Mr. No-Name said for the man.

“And in the Marines,” Austin added.

She stuck her hand out, so Austin would have to shake it. “I’m Andi.”

“Ah. An Andi, not Andy,” Austin said, with slightly different emphasis, giving Mr. No-Name a glare.

“It’s not my fault your assumptions were sexist,” Mr. No-Name said, a slight grin flickering at the corner of his mouth. He looked meaningfully at his watch again, and Austin disappeared down a hall. “So. Eight hours?” Mr. No-Name asked her.

From Austin’s report, this patient mostly sounded like a wait-and-see. He was injured and unconscious, but there was no real reason he hadn’t woken up yet—other than possible brain damage. Which, yeah, made this whole level of secrecy, perhaps understandable? If you were the head of a household worth a fortune and someone got injured on your watch, you might need to keep their issues under wraps. She glanced at the patient’s vitals on the monitor, the level of urine in the foley, and the slowly draining chest tube. She could keep almost anyone alive for eight hours—at the hospital. But what would happen here if things went poorly? This situation was bizarre, and even though they were paying her a ton, she still had her license to think of. She glanced up and found Mr. No-Name watching her shamelessly—so shamelessly, she flushed.

Austin reappeared, pushing a crash cart before she could stutter out any words. “You know what to do with this?”

“Of course.” The presence of a crash cart allayed only some of her fears. “But…I’m not a doctor.”

“If he needs a doctor, just call me, and I’ll get one. My number’s preprogrammed.” Mr. No-Name handed her a phone as Austin went on.

“And who should I ask for?” she asked, trying not to sound curious in the least.

Mr. No-Name let out a snort as if to say, *nice try. *“I’ll know it’s you.”

Austin interrupted. “There’s more oxygen tanks against the wall. Just keep him comfortable until we get back.”

Andi looked between them. None of this made sense—not the cat, not this job, not this house, and definitely not these two extremely handsome, yet extremely odd men. “Where are you going anyhow?”

Mr. No-Name shook his head at her question. “Out. But we’ll return by dawn, and I promise you’ll be on the first bus back to the city. Okay?”

Mr. No-Name’s gaze pressed her, as Austin loomed.

She inhaled—to tell them how insane all this was and back out—but then she reminded herself that the only thing that needed to make sense was the fact that one night here would equal a month of her normal paycheck. She glanced at the patient and did her best to ping out with her inherent nurse-radar, honed by months of taking too many shifts, taking in his color, and the numbers on the screen. He was the most normal thing here, hands down. “Yeah, okay,” she said, deciding. She pulled out the phone she’d been given and waved it at Mr. No-Name. “I’ll call if anything happens; otherwise, I’ll see you in eight.”

“Good,” Mr. No-Name said and smiled at her—fully—for the first time all night. The sensation of his pleased attention on her was almost as bad as whatever had happened to her on the road here. She wanted to run away, but she found she couldn’t. She was struck—pierced—like she was a deer in headlights. He was just too much.

Then the cat leapt off the bed and wound around Mr. No-Name’s legs. He glanced down, and the moment was over. The spotlight had moved on. She sagged, caught herself, and hoped he hadn’t seen it. It didn’t seem like he had as he knelt down to knuckle the cat’s head softly.

The cat meowed at him, repeatedly, as if it had strong opinions, and Mr. No-Name gave it a dour look. “No, she didn’t bring anything for you,” he told the cat, and then looked back to her. “If you hear any sounds in the house, just ignore them. It’s an old house; it creaks a lot.” Austin coughed from the door, and Mr. No-Name headed toward him. Her audience was over. The men left, and the cat followed them.

Andi relaxed, then became embarrassed by how she’d felt. What was she, some kind of schoolgirl? *You know better!* Whoever she’d been in the moment he’d looked at her—stupidly happy, foolishly hopeful, and just a teensy bit terrified—it wasn’t the real her.

The real Andi was a nurse who knew what to do—every time, all of the time.

She went to the bed, unlooped her stethoscope from her neck, and started to assess her patient.

“What’d Grim say?” Austin asked Damian on their way to the garage.

“That she’s too small to be of any use.” In reality, Grimalkin had asked if Andi had brought him any cheese, the bluer, the better—because the house was out. Luckily, Damian was the only one who could understand the hugely powerful multidimensional guardian he’d been assigned at birth, so no one else knew how easily a gift of cheese would distract him.

"For once, the cat and I agree. If my brother wakes up–"

“I know,” Damian said, shutting down further conversation. If Zach woke up while they were gone—a big *if*—then hopefully he and the nurse could have an intelligent conversation, after which she’d take off his restraints. He’d be confused about what had happened, but he’d be smart enough to realize she was an outsider.

He got into the armored SUV, waiting with some of the rest of his crew. It was just him and the guys tonight. Max was driving, Jamison had his eyes on his electronics, and he sat close to Austin who was busy wiping down the barrel of something black and shiny.

He sank back into his seat, thinking about the nurse.

*She smelled good*, his dragon commented*.* * *

*Shush,* he told his dragon—but it was right*.*

Oil, plastics, but more overwhelmingly, the aroma of iron, surrounded him. Humans had so much iron in their blood; it was a wonder to him that they weren’t magnetic. Living in human society, he had gotten used to the metallic scent, but for some reason, tonight it seemed more pungent than usual.

It was all because of her.

When she had gotten into the car, the gaseous stink of the bus she had been on and the medicinal chemical scents that were a hallmark of her occupation clung to her coat. Those were expected.

But underlying all that was her own subtle scent, undetectable to most humans, and yet abruptly mouthwatering all the same.

Apples and caramel, yes, that’s what it reminded him of—and saltwater.

How strange.

He swiped through his emails, opening the unread files Mills had sent over. Top of her class in community college and then nursing school. But she’d suffered student loans, a staggeringly high amount of debt owed to a hospital which looked like medical bills for a relative before it got wiped—presumably by that relative’s death—and a brother who apparently couldn’t resist taking rides in cop cars. Which made her perfect for his purposes: hungry enough to be looking for cash, smart enough to keep Zach alive, and hopefully, smart enough to not ask many more questions.* *There was always the Forgetting Fire if she got too curious. He reached the end of her background check and found she lived in a gentrifying part of town in an apartment above a Greek bakery. That explained her scent. Her apartment probably smelled entirely of baked goods.

Mystery solved, Damian put the phone back into his pocket. But his mind went right back to her. *Andi.* What an odd name for a girl. He had the strangest urge to say it out loud, irrationally, to see if the sound tasted as good as she smelled. And that interesting streak of blue that he’d glimpsed a flash of before she’d wound her dark hair up—something about the act of her hiding it made him want to unwind and expose it again, to possibly feel the wrap of it around his hand.

* *“Why’d you warn her about the house?” Austin asked Damian, distracting him from his thoughts.

“Because Grimalkin doesn’t like strangers.”

“He doesn’t like anyone,” Austin countered.

“He’s keeping an eye on Zach, isn’t he?” Max said from the driver’s seat, defending Damian’s guardian’s integrity. Damian knew his cat and his old weapons master got along—they had to; they were the only two things that’d come from the Realms with him, albeit at different times. The battle armor Max had on made the whiteness of his skin around it even more shocking, and Damian knew if he had his hat off, all his hair would be ghostly pale. He’d had an albino’s pale eyes, too, before he’d lost them in a fight with another bear-shifter. Mills had replaced them with something magical hidden by goggles, turning him into the perfect bearer of Damian’s Forgetting Fire, since its powers no longer seemed to work on him. And whatever kind of eyes he had now, he could snipe an Unearthly creature down at eight hundred yards.

“Grimalkin’s probably hoping that he’ll die,” Austin said darkly.

Max broke into a toothy grin. “Nah, if Grimalkin wanted either of you dead, you’d be dead already, puppy.”

Austin snorted at him. “Better to be a wolf who’s a fighter than a bear who’s a chimney sweep,” Austin muttered, before addressing Damian again. “Was she sensitive enough for the perimeter to bother her?”

“Definitely.”

Austin grunted. “How’d she do?”

“Admirably, considering she didn’t know she was being magically attacked.” There were several concentric security rings around his mansion, some magical, some not. He’d both seen and tasted her panic as they’d driven over one of them—the one Austin had been supposed to turn off. He’d seen other men throw themselves out of moving cars in fear and not know why to crawl crying back downhill. While she’d been scared, Andi hadn’t run. Another interesting point.

“Do you think she bought it?” Austin asked, pretending to put a driver’s hat on.

Damian knew he meant the subterfuge of him pretending to be a driver in his own employ. He’d wanted to meet the person taking care of Zach, to get a feel for her—he hadn’t expected for him to wind up being so intrigued.

“Doesn’t matter,” he answered. “Either she doesn’t figure it out, fine; or she does, and the fire will make her forget.”

“Why bother? No one would believe her. She’d just be another internet crackpot,” Jamison said while staring intently at the computer on his lap, as immersed in it as Austin was his weapons. He was very dark-skinned and lean in opposition to Max’s bright whiteness and Austin’s bulk, and between the hardware on his lap and the hardware of his arm that they’d replaced with tech, the man was practically half-computer.

“You mean, like you?” Austin said, goading the younger man.

“Don’t make me change your Netflix password,” Jamison snarked, then waved his hand for silence. “We’re approaching the source of the signal. Slow down, Max.”

Max grunted an acknowledgement. He was driving what Damian called “the tour bus.” It was a heavily armored SUV, fortified with metal shielding, bulletproof glass, blast-resistant undercarriage, and, more importantly, personally warded by the most powerful witch on this side of the Pacific. Damian knew where they were by scent—the saltwater, gas, and oil fumes could only be from the familiar miasma of the docks—and they were here because somewhere nearby there was an Unearthly creature they needed to kill.

Back from Polish — translated blind, in full

She pulled out a pen and a sheet of paper, writing everything down, asking the right questions at the right moments, but she couldn't shake the feeling that the guy was kind of barking at her and definitely judging her. When he finished, she held up a hand. "Three things."

"Go ahead," he allowed.

"The cat?" She couldn't help asking.

The chauffeur answered for him. "He's practically a member of the family. His presence is non-negotiable. What else?"

"Okay then." *Rich people are insane.* Andi shrugged and looked back at the patient. "So why is he here? Why not in a hospital?"

"In the city?" Mr. Midwest sounded like he couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"Yeah. Why not? There are good hospitals there."

"Hospitals aren't safe," Mr. Midwest stated, as if this were common knowledge.

Andi bit down hard on her lips to keep from saying anything about his absurd views. "Okay," she went on. "Third, who are you? Medically, I mean."

"His name is Austin. He used to be an EMT," Mr. No-Name answered for him.

"And I served in the Marines," Austin added.

She stuck out her hand so Austin had to shake it. "I'm Andi."

"Ah. Andi, not Andy," Austin said, putting a slightly different emphasis on the name, and shot Mr. No-Name an icy look.

"It's not my fault your assumptions were sexist," Mr. No-Name replied, the corner of his mouth twitching in a barely visible smile. He glanced pointedly at his watch again, and Austin disappeared down the hall. "So. Eight hours?" Mr. No-Name asked her.

From Austin's report, this patient was mostly a wait-and-watch situation. He was injured and unconscious, but there was no specific reason he hadn't woken up yet—except possible brain damage. Which, okay, made this whole level of secrecy a little more understandable. If you were the head of a family worth a fortune and someone got hurt under your roof, you'd probably want to keep it quiet too. She glanced at the patient's vitals on the monitor, the amount of urine in the catheter bag, and the chest drain slowly drawing off fluid. She could keep almost anyone alive for eight hours—in a hospital. But what would happen here if everything went wrong? The situation was absurd, and even though they were paying her a fortune, she still had to think about her nursing license. She looked up and found Mr. No-Name watching her brazenly—so brazenly that a blush rose in her cheeks.

Austin reappeared, pushing a crash cart in front of him before she could stammer out a single word. "Know what to do with this?"

"Of course." The crash cart only eased some of her fears. "But… I'm not a doctor."

"If he needs a doctor, just call me and I'll arrange one. My number's already saved." Mr. No-Name handed her the phone while Austin kept talking.

"And who do I ask for?" she asked, trying to sound not even a little bit curious.

Mr. No-Name snorted, as if to say, *nice try.* "I'll know it's you."

Austin cut in. "There are extra oxygen tanks against the wall. Just keep him comfortable until we get back."

Andi looked from one to the other. None of this made sense—not the cat, not this job, not this house, and definitely not these two extremely handsome and at the same time extremely weird men. "So where are you actually going?"

Mr. No-Name shook his head at her question. "We're heading out. But we'll be back before dawn, and I promise you'll catch the first bus into the city. Okay?"

Mr. No-Name's gaze pressed on her, and Austin stood beside him, overwhelming in his sheer presence.

She drew a breath—to tell them how crazy all of this was and back out—but then she remembered that the only thing that had to make sense here was the fact that one night here equaled a month of her usual pay. She glanced at the patient and tried with everything she had to activate her innate nursing radar, sharpened by months of taking too many shifts, assessing his color and the numbers on the screen. He was without question the most normal thing here. "Yeah, okay," she said, making her decision. She pulled out the phone she'd been given and waved it at Mr. No-Name. "I'll call if anything happens. If not, see you in eight hours."

"Good," Mr. No-Name said, and for the first time that night, he really smiled at her—a full smile. The feeling of his pleased attention focused on her was almost as awful as what had happened to her on the way here. She wanted to run, but found she couldn't. Struck—pierced through—like a deer in headlights. He was simply too intense.

Then the cat jumped off the bed and wound around Mr. No-Name's legs. He looked down, and the moment passed. The spotlight shifted elsewhere. Andi's knees almost buckled; she caught herself at once and hoped he hadn't noticed. Apparently not, because he was already kneeling to gently scratch the cat's head.

The cat meowed at him again and again, as though he had a very definite opinion, and Mr. No-Name looked at him grimly. "No, she didn't bring you anything," he told the cat, then looked back at Andi. "If you hear any sounds in the house, just ignore them. It's an old house. It creaks a lot." Austin cleared his throat from the doorway, and Mr. No-Name moved toward him. Her audience was over. The men left, and the cat followed them.

Andi relaxed, then felt ashamed of what she'd been feeling. What was she, some boarding-school girl? *You know better than this!* Whoever she'd been in the moment he looked at her—stupidly happy, ridiculously hopeful, and just a tiny bit frightened—that wasn't the real her.

The real Andi was a nurse who knew what to do—always and in every situation.

She walked to the bed, pulled the stethoscope from around her neck, and began assessing the patient.

"What did Grim say?" Austin asked Damian on the way to the garage.

"That she's too small to be useful." In reality, Grimalkin had asked whether Andi had brought him cheese—the moldier the better—because the house had run out. Fortunately, Damian was the only one who understood the extraordinarily powerful multidimensional guardian assigned to him at birth, so no one else knew how easily a piece of cheese could distract him.

"For once the cat and I agree. If my brother wakes up…"

"I know," Damian said, cutting the conversation short. If Zach woke up while they were gone—and that was a big *if*—then hopefully he and the nurse would have a sensible conversation, after which she'd undo his restraints. He'd be disoriented by what had happened, but sharp enough to understand she was an outsider.

He climbed into the armored SUV, where some of the rest of his crew were waiting. Tonight it was all men. Max was driving, Jamison had his eyes glued to his electronics, and he sat down next to Austin, who was busy wiping down the barrel of something black and gleaming.

He sank back in his seat, thinking about the nurse.

*She smelled nice*, his dragon commented.

*Quiet*, he ordered the dragon—but it was right.

He was surrounded by oil, plastic, but above all the smell of iron. Humans had so much iron in their blood it was a wonder they weren't magnetic. Living in the human world, he'd grown used to the metallic scent, but for some reason tonight it seemed sharper than usual.

And it was all because of her.

When she'd gotten into the car, the gaseous reek of the bus she'd ridden clung to her coat, along with the medical, chemical smells that were the hallmark of her profession. That much he'd expected.

But underneath all of it was her own subtle scent, undetectable to most people, yet instantly mouthwatering.

Apples and caramel—yes, that's exactly what it reminded him of—and sea salt.

Strange.

He scrolled through his emails, opening the unread files Mills had sent. Top of her class at community college, then again in nursing school. But she had student loans, a staggeringly high debt to the hospital that looked like bills for a relative's medical care before it had been written off—presumably when that relative died—and a brother who apparently couldn't stop taking rides in squad cars. That made her perfect for his purposes: hungry enough for money to go looking for it, smart enough to keep Zach alive, and—hopefully—sensible enough not to ask too many more questions. There was always the Forgetting Fire if she got too inquisitive. He reached the end of her background check and saw that she lived in a gentrifying part of town, in an apartment above a Greek bakery. That explained her scent. Her apartment probably smelled of baked goods all the time.

Mystery solved, Damian slipped his phone back into his pocket. But his thoughts immediately drifted back to her. *Andi.* A strange name for a girl. He felt the oddest urge to say it out loud—irrationally—and see whether the sound of it tasted as good as she smelled. And that intriguing blue streak he'd caught a glimpse of before she'd pinned up her dark hair—there was something about the very fact that she'd hidden it that made him want to loosen it again, reveal it, maybe even feel it winding around his hand.

"Why'd you warn her about the house?" Austin asked Damian, snapping him out of his reverie.

"Because Grimalkin doesn't like strangers."

"He doesn't like anyone," Austin replied.

"He guards Zach, doesn't he?" Max spoke up from the driver's seat, defending Damian's guardian's honor. Damian knew his cat and the former weapons master got along well—they had to; they were the only two things that had come with him from the Realms, though at different times. The combat armor Max wore made the whiteness of his skin seem even more striking, and Damian knew that if he took off his cap, every hair on his head would be eerily pale. He'd had the pale eyes of an albino, too, before he'd lost them in a fight with another bear shifter. Mills had replaced them with something magical, hidden behind goggles, making him the perfect bearer of Damian's Forgetting Fire, because its power had apparently stopped working on him. And whatever eyes he had now, he could shoot an Otherworldly creature dead from eight hundred yards.

"Grimalkin's probably hoping Zach dies," Austin said darkly.

Max flashed a wide grin. "Nah, if Grimalkin wanted any of you dead, you'd already be dead, pup."

Austin snorted. "Better a fighting wolf than a chimney-sweeping bear," he muttered, then turned back to Damian. "Was she sensitive enough for the perimeter to hit her?"

"Definitely."

Austin grunted. "And how'd she handle it?"

"Remarkably well, considering she had no idea she was under magical attack." Several concentric rings of protection extended around his estate—some magical, some not. He'd seen and practically tasted her panic as they drove through one of them—the one Austin was supposed to have deactivated. He'd seen men throw themselves from moving cars in terror and, not knowing why, crawl back down the hillside sobbing. Andi had been afraid, but she hadn't run. Another interesting thing.

"Think she bought the act?" Austin asked, pantomiming putting on a chauffeur's cap.

Damian knew he meant the ruse of pretending to be a driver in his own household. He'd wanted to meet the person who'd be looking after Zach, get a read on her—he hadn't expected her to intrigue him this much.

"It doesn't matter," he replied. "Either she doesn't figure it out, and that's fine. Or she does, and the fire will make her forget."

"Why bother? No one would believe her. She'd just be another internet nutcase," Jamison said, staring intently at the computer on his lap, every bit as absorbed in it as Austin was in his weapon. He had very dark skin and a lean build, the opposite of Max's vivid whiteness and Austin's burly frame, and between the hardware on his lap and the hardware in his arm, which had been replaced with tech, the guy was practically half computer.

"You mean like you?" Austin shot back, needling the younger man.

"Don't make me change your Netflix password," Jamison fired back, then held up a hand, demanding silence. "We're approaching the signal source. Slow down, Max."

Max grunted in confirmation. He was driving what Damian called the "tour bus." It was a heavily armored SUV, reinforced with metal plating, bulletproof glass, and a blast-resistant undercarriage, and more importantly, personally layered with protective spells by the most powerful witch on this side of the Pacific. Damian knew where they were by smell—salt water, gasoline, and oil fumes could only mean the familiar miasma of the docks—and they were here because somewhere nearby was an Otherworldly creature they needed to kill.

What she wrote — the full passage

She pulled out a pen and paper and wrote everything down, asking appropriate questions at appropriate times, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being partially shouted at and definitely judged. When he was through, she held up a hand. “Three things.”

“Go,” he allowed her.

“The cat?” She couldn’t help but ask.

The driver answered her. “He’s practically a family member. Presence nonnegotiable. Next?”

“Okay, then.” *Weird-ass rich people. *Andi shrugged and looked back at the patient. “So, why is he here? Why not a hospital?”

“In the city?” Mr. Midwest was incredulous.

“Yeah. Why not? There’re good hospitals there.”

“Hospitals aren’t safe,” Mr. Midwest stated—like that was a known fact.

Andi bit her lips, hard, to not say anything about his bizarre opinions. “All right, then,” she went on. “Third is, who are you? Medically, I mean.”

“His name’s Austin; he used to be a paramedic,” Mr. No-Name said for the man.

“And in the Marines,” Austin added.

She stuck her hand out, so Austin would have to shake it. “I’m Andi.”

“Ah. An Andi, not Andy,” Austin said, with slightly different emphasis, giving Mr. No-Name a glare.

“It’s not my fault your assumptions were sexist,” Mr. No-Name said, a slight grin flickering at the corner of his mouth. He looked meaningfully at his watch again, and Austin disappeared down a hall. “So. Eight hours?” Mr. No-Name asked her.

From Austin’s report, this patient mostly sounded like a wait-and-see. He was injured and unconscious, but there was no real reason he hadn’t woken up yet—other than possible brain damage. Which, yeah, made this whole level of secrecy, perhaps understandable? If you were the head of a household worth a fortune and someone got injured on your watch, you might need to keep their issues under wraps. She glanced at the patient’s vitals on the monitor, the level of urine in the foley, and the slowly draining chest tube. She could keep almost anyone alive for eight hours—at the hospital. But what would happen here if things went poorly? This situation was bizarre, and even though they were paying her a ton, she still had her license to think of. She glanced up and found Mr. No-Name watching her shamelessly—so shamelessly, she flushed.

Austin reappeared, pushing a crash cart before she could stutter out any words. “You know what to do with this?”

“Of course.” The presence of a crash cart allayed only some of her fears. “But…I’m not a doctor.”

“If he needs a doctor, just call me, and I’ll get one. My number’s preprogrammed.” Mr. No-Name handed her a phone as Austin went on.

“And who should I ask for?” she asked, trying not to sound curious in the least.

Mr. No-Name let out a snort as if to say, *nice try. *“I’ll know it’s you.”

Austin interrupted. “There’s more oxygen tanks against the wall. Just keep him comfortable until we get back.”

Andi looked between them. None of this made sense—not the cat, not this job, not this house, and definitely not these two extremely handsome, yet extremely odd men. “Where are you going anyhow?”

Mr. No-Name shook his head at her question. “Out. But we’ll return by dawn, and I promise you’ll be on the first bus back to the city. Okay?”

Mr. No-Name’s gaze pressed her, as Austin loomed.

She inhaled—to tell them how insane all this was and back out—but then she reminded herself that the only thing that needed to make sense was the fact that one night here would equal a month of her normal paycheck. She glanced at the patient and did her best to ping out with her inherent nurse-radar, honed by months of taking too many shifts, taking in his color, and the numbers on the screen. He was the most normal thing here, hands down. “Yeah, okay,” she said, deciding. She pulled out the phone she’d been given and waved it at Mr. No-Name. “I’ll call if anything happens; otherwise, I’ll see you in eight.”

“Good,” Mr. No-Name said and smiled at her—fully—for the first time all night. The sensation of his pleased attention on her was almost as bad as whatever had happened to her on the road here. She wanted to run away, but she found she couldn’t. She was struck—pierced—like she was a deer in headlights. He was just too much.

Then the cat leapt off the bed and wound around Mr. No-Name’s legs. He glanced down, and the moment was over. The spotlight had moved on. She sagged, caught herself, and hoped he hadn’t seen it. It didn’t seem like he had as he knelt down to knuckle the cat’s head softly.

The cat meowed at him, repeatedly, as if it had strong opinions, and Mr. No-Name gave it a dour look. “No, she didn’t bring anything for you,” he told the cat, and then looked back to her. “If you hear any sounds in the house, just ignore them. It’s an old house; it creaks a lot.” Austin coughed from the door, and Mr. No-Name headed toward him. Her audience was over. The men left, and the cat followed them.

Andi relaxed, then became embarrassed by how she’d felt. What was she, some kind of schoolgirl? *You know better!* Whoever she’d been in the moment he’d looked at her—stupidly happy, foolishly hopeful, and just a teensy bit terrified—it wasn’t the real her.

The real Andi was a nurse who knew what to do—every time, all of the time.

She went to the bed, unlooped her stethoscope from her neck, and started to assess her patient.

“What’d Grim say?” Austin asked Damian on their way to the garage.

“That she’s too small to be of any use.” In reality, Grimalkin had asked if Andi had brought him any cheese, the bluer, the better—because the house was out. Luckily, Damian was the only one who could understand the hugely powerful multidimensional guardian he’d been assigned at birth, so no one else knew how easily a gift of cheese would distract him.

"For once, the cat and I agree. If my brother wakes up–"

“I know,” Damian said, shutting down further conversation. If Zach woke up while they were gone—a big *if*—then hopefully he and the nurse could have an intelligent conversation, after which she’d take off his restraints. He’d be confused about what had happened, but he’d be smart enough to realize she was an outsider.

He got into the armored SUV, waiting with some of the rest of his crew. It was just him and the guys tonight. Max was driving, Jamison had his eyes on his electronics, and he sat close to Austin who was busy wiping down the barrel of something black and shiny.

He sank back into his seat, thinking about the nurse.

*She smelled good*, his dragon commented*.* * *

*Shush,* he told his dragon—but it was right*.*

Oil, plastics, but more overwhelmingly, the aroma of iron, surrounded him. Humans had so much iron in their blood; it was a wonder to him that they weren’t magnetic. Living in human society, he had gotten used to the metallic scent, but for some reason, tonight it seemed more pungent than usual.

It was all because of her.

When she had gotten into the car, the gaseous stink of the bus she had been on and the medicinal chemical scents that were a hallmark of her occupation clung to her coat. Those were expected.

But underlying all that was her own subtle scent, undetectable to most humans, and yet abruptly mouthwatering all the same.

Apples and caramel, yes, that’s what it reminded him of—and saltwater.

How strange.

He swiped through his emails, opening the unread files Mills had sent over. Top of her class in community college and then nursing school. But she’d suffered student loans, a staggeringly high amount of debt owed to a hospital which looked like medical bills for a relative before it got wiped—presumably by that relative’s death—and a brother who apparently couldn’t resist taking rides in cop cars. Which made her perfect for his purposes: hungry enough to be looking for cash, smart enough to keep Zach alive, and hopefully, smart enough to not ask many more questions.* *There was always the Forgetting Fire if she got too curious. He reached the end of her background check and found she lived in a gentrifying part of town in an apartment above a Greek bakery. That explained her scent. Her apartment probably smelled entirely of baked goods.

Mystery solved, Damian put the phone back into his pocket. But his mind went right back to her. *Andi.* What an odd name for a girl. He had the strangest urge to say it out loud, irrationally, to see if the sound tasted as good as she smelled. And that interesting streak of blue that he’d glimpsed a flash of before she’d wound her dark hair up—something about the act of her hiding it made him want to unwind and expose it again, to possibly feel the wrap of it around his hand.

* *“Why’d you warn her about the house?” Austin asked Damian, distracting him from his thoughts.

“Because Grimalkin doesn’t like strangers.”

“He doesn’t like anyone,” Austin countered.

“He’s keeping an eye on Zach, isn’t he?” Max said from the driver’s seat, defending Damian’s guardian’s integrity. Damian knew his cat and his old weapons master got along—they had to; they were the only two things that’d come from the Realms with him, albeit at different times. The battle armor Max had on made the whiteness of his skin around it even more shocking, and Damian knew if he had his hat off, all his hair would be ghostly pale. He’d had an albino’s pale eyes, too, before he’d lost them in a fight with another bear-shifter. Mills had replaced them with something magical hidden by goggles, turning him into the perfect bearer of Damian’s Forgetting Fire, since its powers no longer seemed to work on him. And whatever kind of eyes he had now, he could snipe an Unearthly creature down at eight hundred yards.

“Grimalkin’s probably hoping that he’ll die,” Austin said darkly.

Max broke into a toothy grin. “Nah, if Grimalkin wanted either of you dead, you’d be dead already, puppy.”

Austin snorted at him. “Better to be a wolf who’s a fighter than a bear who’s a chimney sweep,” Austin muttered, before addressing Damian again. “Was she sensitive enough for the perimeter to bother her?”

“Definitely.”

Austin grunted. “How’d she do?”

“Admirably, considering she didn’t know she was being magically attacked.” There were several concentric security rings around his mansion, some magical, some not. He’d both seen and tasted her panic as they’d driven over one of them—the one Austin had been supposed to turn off. He’d seen other men throw themselves out of moving cars in fear and not know why to crawl crying back downhill. While she’d been scared, Andi hadn’t run. Another interesting point.

“Do you think she bought it?” Austin asked, pretending to put a driver’s hat on.

Damian knew he meant the subterfuge of him pretending to be a driver in his own employ. He’d wanted to meet the person taking care of Zach, to get a feel for her—he hadn’t expected for him to wind up being so intrigued.

“Doesn’t matter,” he answered. “Either she doesn’t figure it out, fine; or she does, and the fire will make her forget.”

“Why bother? No one would believe her. She’d just be another internet crackpot,” Jamison said while staring intently at the computer on his lap, as immersed in it as Austin was his weapons. He was very dark-skinned and lean in opposition to Max’s bright whiteness and Austin’s bulk, and between the hardware on his lap and the hardware of his arm that they’d replaced with tech, the man was practically half-computer.

“You mean, like you?” Austin said, goading the younger man.

“Don’t make me change your Netflix password,” Jamison snarked, then waved his hand for silence. “We’re approaching the source of the signal. Slow down, Max.”

Max grunted an acknowledgement. He was driving what Damian called “the tour bus.” It was a heavily armored SUV, fortified with metal shielding, bulletproof glass, blast-resistant undercarriage, and, more importantly, personally warded by the most powerful witch on this side of the Pacific. Damian knew where they were by scent—the saltwater, gas, and oil fumes could only be from the familiar miasma of the docks—and they were here because somewhere nearby there was an Unearthly creature they needed to kill.

Back from Japanese — translated blind, in full

She pulled out a pen and notepad, jotting down everything he said while slipping in the right questions at the right moments. Even so, she couldn't shake the feeling she was being half-shouted-at and definitely sized up. When he finished his rundown, Andi raised her hand. "I have three."

"Go ahead," he permitted.

"The cat?" Andi couldn't help asking.

It was the chauffeur who answered. "Practically family. Non-negotiable. Next?"

"Okay then." *Rich people are so weird.* Andi shrugged and turned her gaze back to the patient. "So why is he here instead of a hospital?"

"A city hospital?" Mr. Midwest looked at her like he couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"Yeah. What's wrong with that? There are good ones."

"Hospitals aren't safe." Mr. Midwest said it flatly—like it was common knowledge.

Andi bit down hard on her lip to keep from saying something about that wildly unhinged opinion. "Okay," she continued. "Third—what are you, exactly? Medically speaking."

"Austin. Former paramedic," No-Name answered for him.

"Marines, too," Austin added.

Andi held out her hand, making Austin shake it. "I'm Andi."

"Ah. Andi, not Andy." Austin said it with a slight shift in emphasis, then glared at No-Name.

"Your assumption was the sexist one," No-Name said, a faint smile ghosting across his lips. He glanced pointedly at his watch again, and Austin disappeared down the corridor. "So. Eight hours—can you handle it?" No-Name asked her.

Based on Austin's report, this patient was basically a wait-and-see case. Injured and unconscious, but no clear reason he still hadn't woken up yet—unless it was brain damage. Well, if that was it, then maybe this extreme secrecy made a little more sense. If you were the head of a fabulously wealthy family and someone got hurt under your watch, you might want to keep it out of the public eye. Andi ran her gaze over the monitor vitals, the Foley output, the chest tube draining slowly. For eight hours, she could keep almost anybody alive—in a hospital. But what happened if something went bad here? The situation was strange, and even if they were offering an outrageous amount of money, she still had to think about her license. When she happened to look up, No-Name was staring at her openly—so openly that Andi felt heat rise in her cheeks.

Before she could scrape together a response, Austin came back pushing a crash cart. "You know how to use this?"

"Of course." Having the crash cart took the edge off some of her anxiety. "But... I'm not a doctor."

"If you need a doctor, call me. Then I'll arrange one. The number's already in there." No-Name handed her the cell phone, and Austin went on.

"And who exactly am I calling?" she asked, not letting a flicker of curiosity show.

No-Name snorted, as if to say, Nice try. "I'll know it's you."

Austin cut in. "Backup oxygen tanks along the wall. Keep him comfortable until we're back."

Andi looked between the two of them. None of this added up—not the cat, not this job, not this mansion, and not these two ridiculously handsome but ridiculously strange men. "Where are you even going?"

No-Name shook his head. "Out. But we'll be back before dawn. I promise we'll get you on the first bus into town. All right?"

No-Name's gaze bore down on her, and Austin stood behind him in silent intimidation.

Andi drew in a breath—to say this was insane and refuse. But she caught herself at once. It didn't have to make sense. She only needed to know one thing: one night here would equal a month's regular pay. She looked at the patient, letting the instincts honed by months of taking too many shifts do their thing, reading his skin color and the numbers on the monitor. The sanest one here was, hands down, this patient. "Yeah, okay," she said decisively, taking out the phone they'd given her and giving it a little wave at No-Name. "I'll call if something comes up. Otherwise—eight hours."

"Good," No-Name said, and for the first time that night, he gave her a full smile. The sensation of having his satisfied attention turned on her was almost as awful as what had hit her on the road up here. She wanted to run, but her body wouldn't move. Pinned—pierced—like a deer in headlights. This man was simply too strong.

Then the cat jumped off the bed and rubbed itself against No-Name's leg. He lowered his gaze, and the spell broke. The spotlight had shifted. Andi sagged with relief, then immediately pulled herself together, hoping no one had noticed. Apparently they hadn't. He was crouched down, gently stroking the cat's head with the back of his fist.

The cat meowed at him several times, as if making an emphatic argument. No-Name gave it a dour look. "No, she didn't bring you anything," he told the cat, then looked back at Andi. "If you hear anything in the house, ignore it. It's an old place. It creaks a lot." Austin cleared his throat from the doorway, and No-Name headed over to him. That was the end of the audience. The men left, and the cat followed after them.

Andi let out a breath, then immediately felt embarrassed for reacting like that. *What are you, twelve? You know better.* That version of herself when he'd looked at her—pathetically pleased, stupidly hopeful, just a little bit terrified—that wasn't the real her.

The real Andi was a nurse who always, always knew what needed to be done.

She walked to the bed, lifted the stethoscope from around her neck, and began assessing her patient.

"What did Grim say?" Austin asked Damian on the way to the garage.

"Too small to be useful." In reality, Grimalkin had asked whether Andi had brought him any cheese. The stronger the blue mold, the better—they were out of it at the estate. Fortunately, Damian was the only one who could understand the tremendously powerful multidimensional guardian that had been attached to him since birth, so no one knew he could be so easily distracted by a piece of cheese.

"Rare day when I agree with the cat. When my brother wakes up—"

"I know." Damian cut him off there. If Zack woke up while they were gone—and that would be saying something—at least he'd be able to have a coherent conversation with the nurse. Then she'd remove the restraints. He'd be confused, with no idea what had happened, but he was clearheaded enough to realize she was an outsider.

He climbed into the armored SUV where the others were waiting. Tonight it was just him and the men. Max drove, Jamison was looking down at his electronics, and Damian sat beside Austin, who was wiping down the barrel of something black and glossy.

He sank deep into the seat and thought about the nurse.

*She smells good*, his dragon said.

*Shut up*, he told his dragon—but it was true.

Oil and plastic surrounded him, and above all, iron. Human blood carried so much iron it was a wonder it wasn't magnetic. Living among humans had accustomed him to that metallic smell, but for some reason tonight it seemed stronger than usual.

All because of her.

When she'd climbed into the car, her coat had carried the stale stench of the bus she'd ridden in on and the medicinal chemical smell that came with the job of nursing. That much he'd expected.

But underneath it was her own faint scent. So subtle most humans would never detect it, and yet it had caught him off guard—viciously appetizing.

Apples and caramel—yes, something like that. And seawater, too.

Strange.

He skimmed through his emails and opened an unread file Mills had sent over. Top of her class at community college and again at nursing school after that. But saddled with student loans, and an absurdly high debt to a hospital—medical bills for a family member, by the look of it, though the debt had later been written off. Probably because that family member had died. On top of that, her sibling apparently couldn't stop ending up in the back of police cars. Which made her ideal for his purposes. Desperate enough for cash to have a reason to want it, smart enough to keep Zack alive, and—hopefully—sensible enough not to dig any deeper. If her curiosity got the better of her, well, that's what the oblivion fire was for. By the end of the background check, he'd learned she lived in an apartment above a Greek bakery in a gentrifying neighborhood. That explained the smell. Her place was probably full of the scent of fresh-baked goods.

Mystery solved. Damian slipped his phone back into his pocket, satisfied. But his mind drifted right back to her. Andi. An odd name for a girl. He felt a deeply strange urge to say it out loud. Not for any rational reason—more to find out whether the sound of it was as sweet as her scent. And then there was that blue streak. He'd caught only the briefest glimpse of it before she'd twisted her dark hair up. The way she'd hidden it made him want to undo it, expose it again. Maybe even feel it wind around his fingers.

"Why'd you bother warning her about the house?" Austin asked, cutting through his thoughts.

"Grimalkin doesn't like strangers."

"He doesn't like anyone," Austin shot back.

"But he does watch over Zack," Max said from the driver's seat, defending Damian's guardian's honor. Damian knew his cat and the old weapons master got along well enough. They had no choice. They were the only two who had come with him from the Otherworld, though at different times. The combat armor Max wore only made the pale skin visible around it stand out even more starkly. If he took off his hat, his hair would probably be ghostly white too. He'd once had the pale eyes typical of an albino, but he'd lost them in a fight with another bear shifter. Mills had replaced them with a magical device hidden under his goggles. Because of that, and because oblivion fire no longer worked on him, he was ideal as Damian's wielder of oblivion fire. And whatever kind of eyes he had now, he could shoot down an Otherworld monster from eight hundred yards away.

"Grimalkin probably wants Zack dead," Austin said darkly.

Max bared his teeth in a grin. "Nah. If Grimalkin wanted either of you dead, pup, you'd already be gone."

Austin snorted. "I'd take a fighting wolf over a chimney-sweep bear," he muttered, then turned back to Damian. "She was sensitive enough to react to the perimeter?"

"Without question."

Austin grunted. "How'd she handle it?"

"Remarkable, considering she didn't know she was under magical attack." Concentric rings of security surrounded his estate, magical and otherwise. When the car crossed one of them—the one Austin was supposed to have turned off—he saw her panic, and tasted it too. He had seen men before leap from cars, driven by fear they couldn't understand, then crawl back up the hill in tears. Andi had been afraid. But she hadn't run. That, too, was interesting.

"Think she bought it?" Austin asked, miming putting on a chauffeur's cap.

Damian knew he meant the little ploy of pretending to be the chauffeur for one of his servants. He had wanted to meet the person who would be taking care of Zack and see what kind of human she was. He had never expected to find her quite this interesting.

"Doesn't matter," he said. "If she didn't notice, fine. If she did, the fire will make her forget."

"Why bother with that? No one would believe her anyway. She'd just be one more internet lunatic." Jamison said it without taking his eyes off the computer in his lap, as focused on that as Austin was on his weapon. In contrast to Max's blinding whiteness and Austin's large build, he was extremely dark-skinned and lean. Between the equipment on his lap and the mechanisms of the arm replaced by technology, the man was almost half computer.

"So—like you, then?" Austin ribbed the younger man.

"Want me to change the password on your streaming accounts?" Jamison fired back drily, then waved a hand to shut him up. "We're getting close to the source. Slow down, Max."

Max grunted in acknowledgment. The vehicle he was driving was what Damian called the "tour bus"—reinforced with metal plating, fitted with bulletproof glass, and built to withstand an explosion from underneath. More importantly, the most powerful witch on the Pacific coast had personally warded it. Damian could tell where they were by the smell—salt water, gas, and oil. Had to be the familiar miasma of the docks. And they were here because somewhere nearby, there was an Otherworld creature that needed killing.

What she wrote — the full passage

She pulled out a pen and paper and wrote everything down, asking appropriate questions at appropriate times, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being partially shouted at and definitely judged. When he was through, she held up a hand. “Three things.”

“Go,” he allowed her.

“The cat?” She couldn’t help but ask.

The driver answered her. “He’s practically a family member. Presence nonnegotiable. Next?”

“Okay, then.” *Weird-ass rich people. *Andi shrugged and looked back at the patient. “So, why is he here? Why not a hospital?”

“In the city?” Mr. Midwest was incredulous.

“Yeah. Why not? There’re good hospitals there.”

“Hospitals aren’t safe,” Mr. Midwest stated—like that was a known fact.

Andi bit her lips, hard, to not say anything about his bizarre opinions. “All right, then,” she went on. “Third is, who are you? Medically, I mean.”

“His name’s Austin; he used to be a paramedic,” Mr. No-Name said for the man.

“And in the Marines,” Austin added.

She stuck her hand out, so Austin would have to shake it. “I’m Andi.”

“Ah. An Andi, not Andy,” Austin said, with slightly different emphasis, giving Mr. No-Name a glare.

“It’s not my fault your assumptions were sexist,” Mr. No-Name said, a slight grin flickering at the corner of his mouth. He looked meaningfully at his watch again, and Austin disappeared down a hall. “So. Eight hours?” Mr. No-Name asked her.

From Austin’s report, this patient mostly sounded like a wait-and-see. He was injured and unconscious, but there was no real reason he hadn’t woken up yet—other than possible brain damage. Which, yeah, made this whole level of secrecy, perhaps understandable? If you were the head of a household worth a fortune and someone got injured on your watch, you might need to keep their issues under wraps. She glanced at the patient’s vitals on the monitor, the level of urine in the foley, and the slowly draining chest tube. She could keep almost anyone alive for eight hours—at the hospital. But what would happen here if things went poorly? This situation was bizarre, and even though they were paying her a ton, she still had her license to think of. She glanced up and found Mr. No-Name watching her shamelessly—so shamelessly, she flushed.

Austin reappeared, pushing a crash cart before she could stutter out any words. “You know what to do with this?”

“Of course.” The presence of a crash cart allayed only some of her fears. “But…I’m not a doctor.”

“If he needs a doctor, just call me, and I’ll get one. My number’s preprogrammed.” Mr. No-Name handed her a phone as Austin went on.

“And who should I ask for?” she asked, trying not to sound curious in the least.

Mr. No-Name let out a snort as if to say, *nice try. *“I’ll know it’s you.”

Austin interrupted. “There’s more oxygen tanks against the wall. Just keep him comfortable until we get back.”

Andi looked between them. None of this made sense—not the cat, not this job, not this house, and definitely not these two extremely handsome, yet extremely odd men. “Where are you going anyhow?”

Mr. No-Name shook his head at her question. “Out. But we’ll return by dawn, and I promise you’ll be on the first bus back to the city. Okay?”

Mr. No-Name’s gaze pressed her, as Austin loomed.

She inhaled—to tell them how insane all this was and back out—but then she reminded herself that the only thing that needed to make sense was the fact that one night here would equal a month of her normal paycheck. She glanced at the patient and did her best to ping out with her inherent nurse-radar, honed by months of taking too many shifts, taking in his color, and the numbers on the screen. He was the most normal thing here, hands down. “Yeah, okay,” she said, deciding. She pulled out the phone she’d been given and waved it at Mr. No-Name. “I’ll call if anything happens; otherwise, I’ll see you in eight.”

“Good,” Mr. No-Name said and smiled at her—fully—for the first time all night. The sensation of his pleased attention on her was almost as bad as whatever had happened to her on the road here. She wanted to run away, but she found she couldn’t. She was struck—pierced—like she was a deer in headlights. He was just too much.

Then the cat leapt off the bed and wound around Mr. No-Name’s legs. He glanced down, and the moment was over. The spotlight had moved on. She sagged, caught herself, and hoped he hadn’t seen it. It didn’t seem like he had as he knelt down to knuckle the cat’s head softly.

The cat meowed at him, repeatedly, as if it had strong opinions, and Mr. No-Name gave it a dour look. “No, she didn’t bring anything for you,” he told the cat, and then looked back to her. “If you hear any sounds in the house, just ignore them. It’s an old house; it creaks a lot.” Austin coughed from the door, and Mr. No-Name headed toward him. Her audience was over. The men left, and the cat followed them.

Andi relaxed, then became embarrassed by how she’d felt. What was she, some kind of schoolgirl? *You know better!* Whoever she’d been in the moment he’d looked at her—stupidly happy, foolishly hopeful, and just a teensy bit terrified—it wasn’t the real her.

The real Andi was a nurse who knew what to do—every time, all of the time.

She went to the bed, unlooped her stethoscope from her neck, and started to assess her patient.

“What’d Grim say?” Austin asked Damian on their way to the garage.

“That she’s too small to be of any use.” In reality, Grimalkin had asked if Andi had brought him any cheese, the bluer, the better—because the house was out. Luckily, Damian was the only one who could understand the hugely powerful multidimensional guardian he’d been assigned at birth, so no one else knew how easily a gift of cheese would distract him.

"For once, the cat and I agree. If my brother wakes up–"

“I know,” Damian said, shutting down further conversation. If Zach woke up while they were gone—a big *if*—then hopefully he and the nurse could have an intelligent conversation, after which she’d take off his restraints. He’d be confused about what had happened, but he’d be smart enough to realize she was an outsider.

He got into the armored SUV, waiting with some of the rest of his crew. It was just him and the guys tonight. Max was driving, Jamison had his eyes on his electronics, and he sat close to Austin who was busy wiping down the barrel of something black and shiny.

He sank back into his seat, thinking about the nurse.

*She smelled good*, his dragon commented*.* * *

*Shush,* he told his dragon—but it was right*.*

Oil, plastics, but more overwhelmingly, the aroma of iron, surrounded him. Humans had so much iron in their blood; it was a wonder to him that they weren’t magnetic. Living in human society, he had gotten used to the metallic scent, but for some reason, tonight it seemed more pungent than usual.

It was all because of her.

When she had gotten into the car, the gaseous stink of the bus she had been on and the medicinal chemical scents that were a hallmark of her occupation clung to her coat. Those were expected.

But underlying all that was her own subtle scent, undetectable to most humans, and yet abruptly mouthwatering all the same.

Apples and caramel, yes, that’s what it reminded him of—and saltwater.

How strange.

He swiped through his emails, opening the unread files Mills had sent over. Top of her class in community college and then nursing school. But she’d suffered student loans, a staggeringly high amount of debt owed to a hospital which looked like medical bills for a relative before it got wiped—presumably by that relative’s death—and a brother who apparently couldn’t resist taking rides in cop cars. Which made her perfect for his purposes: hungry enough to be looking for cash, smart enough to keep Zach alive, and hopefully, smart enough to not ask many more questions.* *There was always the Forgetting Fire if she got too curious. He reached the end of her background check and found she lived in a gentrifying part of town in an apartment above a Greek bakery. That explained her scent. Her apartment probably smelled entirely of baked goods.

Mystery solved, Damian put the phone back into his pocket. But his mind went right back to her. *Andi.* What an odd name for a girl. He had the strangest urge to say it out loud, irrationally, to see if the sound tasted as good as she smelled. And that interesting streak of blue that he’d glimpsed a flash of before she’d wound her dark hair up—something about the act of her hiding it made him want to unwind and expose it again, to possibly feel the wrap of it around his hand.

* *“Why’d you warn her about the house?” Austin asked Damian, distracting him from his thoughts.

“Because Grimalkin doesn’t like strangers.”

“He doesn’t like anyone,” Austin countered.

“He’s keeping an eye on Zach, isn’t he?” Max said from the driver’s seat, defending Damian’s guardian’s integrity. Damian knew his cat and his old weapons master got along—they had to; they were the only two things that’d come from the Realms with him, albeit at different times. The battle armor Max had on made the whiteness of his skin around it even more shocking, and Damian knew if he had his hat off, all his hair would be ghostly pale. He’d had an albino’s pale eyes, too, before he’d lost them in a fight with another bear-shifter. Mills had replaced them with something magical hidden by goggles, turning him into the perfect bearer of Damian’s Forgetting Fire, since its powers no longer seemed to work on him. And whatever kind of eyes he had now, he could snipe an Unearthly creature down at eight hundred yards.

“Grimalkin’s probably hoping that he’ll die,” Austin said darkly.

Max broke into a toothy grin. “Nah, if Grimalkin wanted either of you dead, you’d be dead already, puppy.”

Austin snorted at him. “Better to be a wolf who’s a fighter than a bear who’s a chimney sweep,” Austin muttered, before addressing Damian again. “Was she sensitive enough for the perimeter to bother her?”

“Definitely.”

Austin grunted. “How’d she do?”

“Admirably, considering she didn’t know she was being magically attacked.” There were several concentric security rings around his mansion, some magical, some not. He’d both seen and tasted her panic as they’d driven over one of them—the one Austin had been supposed to turn off. He’d seen other men throw themselves out of moving cars in fear and not know why to crawl crying back downhill. While she’d been scared, Andi hadn’t run. Another interesting point.

“Do you think she bought it?” Austin asked, pretending to put a driver’s hat on.

Damian knew he meant the subterfuge of him pretending to be a driver in his own employ. He’d wanted to meet the person taking care of Zach, to get a feel for her—he hadn’t expected for him to wind up being so intrigued.

“Doesn’t matter,” he answered. “Either she doesn’t figure it out, fine; or she does, and the fire will make her forget.”

“Why bother? No one would believe her. She’d just be another internet crackpot,” Jamison said while staring intently at the computer on his lap, as immersed in it as Austin was his weapons. He was very dark-skinned and lean in opposition to Max’s bright whiteness and Austin’s bulk, and between the hardware on his lap and the hardware of his arm that they’d replaced with tech, the man was practically half-computer.

“You mean, like you?” Austin said, goading the younger man.

“Don’t make me change your Netflix password,” Jamison snarked, then waved his hand for silence. “We’re approaching the source of the signal. Slow down, Max.”

Max grunted an acknowledgement. He was driving what Damian called “the tour bus.” It was a heavily armored SUV, fortified with metal shielding, bulletproof glass, blast-resistant undercarriage, and, more importantly, personally warded by the most powerful witch on this side of the Pacific. Damian knew where they were by scent—the saltwater, gas, and oil fumes could only be from the familiar miasma of the docks—and they were here because somewhere nearby there was an Unearthly creature they needed to kill.

Back from Chinese (Simplified) — translated blind, in full

She pulled out a pen and paper, jotting down notes point by point, asking the right questions at the right moments, but she couldn't shake the feeling that he was half-barking, half-talking at her—and definitely sizing her up. When he finished, she held up one hand. "Three things."

"Go ahead," he said.

"The cat?" She couldn't not ask.

The driver answered for him. "He's basically family. He has to be here. Non-negotiable. Next?"

"Okay then." Rich people were weird as hell. She shrugged and turned her gaze back to the patient. "So why is he here? Why not take him to a hospital?"

"Into the city?" The Midwest guy looked at her like she'd lost her mind.

"Yeah, why not? There are several good hospitals in the city."

"Hospitals aren't safe," the Midwest guy said flatly—as if this were common knowledge.

She bit down hard on her lip to keep from commenting on that bizarre little worldview. "All right," she continued, "third question—who are you? I mean, what's your role here, medically?"

"His name's Austin. He used to be an EMT," Mr. No-Name answered for him.

"Also did time in the Marines," Austin added.

She stuck out her hand, forcing Austin to shake it. "I'm Andi."

"Ah, Andi, not Andy." Austin deliberately put a different stress on it and shot Mr. No-Name a glare.

"Your own assumptions are gender-biased. That's not my fault." The corner of Mr. No-Name's mouth twitched with a smile, there and gone. He gave his watch another meaningful look, and Austin disappeared down the hall. "So, eight hours?" Mr. No-Name asked, turning back to her.

Based on Austin's report, for now this patient was basically a wait-and-see case. He was injured and still unconscious, but aside from possible brain damage, there wasn't any real reason to explain why he still hadn't woken up. Looked at that way, maybe this level of secrecy wasn't impossible to understand. If you were the one in charge of some staggeringly wealthy family and someone got hurt under your watch, maybe you really would need to keep it quiet. She glanced at the vitals on the monitor, the amount in the urine bag, and the chest tube slowly draining. In a hospital, she could keep almost anyone alive for eight hours. But what if things got worse here? The whole situation was too weird, and no matter how terrifyingly good the money was, she still had to think about her license. When she looked up, she ran straight into Mr. No-Name openly staring at her—that look so frank it was nearly brazen—and she flushed at once.

Before she could stammer out a single word, Austin reappeared, wheeling in a crash cart. "You know how to use this?"

"Of course." The crash cart made her feel better. A little. "But… I'm not a doctor."

"If he needs a doctor, call me and I'll get one here. My number's already saved." Mr. No-Name handed her a cell phone, and Austin went on.

"And who exactly would I be calling?" she asked, fighting to keep every trace of curiosity out of her voice.

Mr. No-Name gave a low, amused huff, the meaning obvious: trying to pry? Not happening. "I'll know it's you."

Austin cut in. "There are more oxygen tanks along the wall. Just keep him comfortable until we get back."

She looked from one to the other. None of this made sense—not the cat, not this job, not this house, and definitely not these two men who were ridiculously good-looking and impossibly strange. "Where are you even going?"

Mr. No-Name shook his head. "Out. But we'll be back before dawn, and I promise you'll make the first bus back to the city. All right?"

Mr. No-Name's heavy gaze bore down on her, while Austin loomed beside him.

She drew a breath—about to tell them how insane all of this was, then walk away from the whole thing—but then reminded herself that the only thing that needed to make sense was this: one night here was worth a month's pay at her regular job. She looked at the patient and did her best to call up her innate nurse radar—the kind honed by too many back-to-back shifts over the past few months—taking in his coloring and the numbers on the screen. At the end of the day, he was actually the most normal one here. "Fine." She made her decision and lifted the phone they'd given her, giving it a little shake at Mr. No-Name. "If something happens, I'll call. Otherwise, see you in eight hours."

"Good." Mr. No-Name smiled at her—the first real smile of the night, whole and unmistakable. The feeling of being looked at with his approval was almost as bad as that strange sensation on the drive in. She wanted to run, but found she couldn't move. It was as if she'd been pinned to the spot—struck through, skewered—a deer caught in headlights. This man was simply too much.

Then the cat jumped down from the bed and rubbed itself around Mr. No-Name's legs. He looked down, and the moment ended. The spotlight had moved away. Her knees softened, and she hastily steadied herself, hoping he hadn't noticed. It seemed he hadn't, because he was crouching down and lightly rubbing his knuckles over the cat's head.

The cat kept meowing at him as if it genuinely had complaints. Mr. No-Name shot it a dark look. "No, she didn't bring you anything," he told the cat, then turned to her. "If you hear noises in the house, ignore them. Old house. Lots of noises." Austin coughed from the doorway, and Mr. No-Name walked over to him. Her eavesdropping time was over. The two men left, and the cat went with them.

She relaxed, then immediately felt embarrassed by whatever that had been. What was wrong with her—was she some teenage girl with her first crush? You know better than this. The moment he'd looked at her, she'd gone stupidly happy, inexplicably hopeful, and just a tiny bit afraid—but that wasn't the real her.

The real Andi was a nurse who always knew what to do.

She walked to the bedside, unlooped the stethoscope from around her neck, and began assessing her patient.

"What did Grim say?" Austin asked Damian on the way to the garage.

"Said she's too small to be much use." In reality, Grimalkin had asked whether Andi had brought him any cheese—the bluer the better—because the house had run out. Fortunately, only Damian could understand the words of the immensely powerful multidimensional guardian assigned to him at birth, so no one knew that a little cheese could distract him that easily.

"Rare day the cat and I agree. If my brother wakes up—"

"I know." Damian cut him off before he could finish. If Zak woke while they were gone—and that was a big if—the best-case scenario was a rational conversation with the nurse, who would then unbind his restraints. He'd be confused about what had happened, but smart enough to realize she was an outsider.

He climbed into the armored SUV, where the rest of his men were waiting. Tonight it was just him and the boys. Max drove, Jamison was focused on his electronics, and Damian sat next to Austin, who was busy wiping down the barrel of some sleek black weapon.

He leaned back in his seat, thinking about the nurse.

*She smells good,* the dragon inside him observed.

*Shut up,* he told his dragon—but it wasn't wrong.

Engine oil and plastic surrounded him, but stronger still was the smell of iron. Human blood carried so much of it that he sometimes wondered how they didn't turn into magnets. He'd grown accustomed to that metallic tang after living in human society for so long, but tonight, for some reason, it was sharper than usual.

Because of her.

When she'd gotten into the vehicle, she'd been carrying the murky stench left on her by the bus she'd ridden earlier, along with the medicinal and chemical smells of her profession, all clinging to her coat. That much he'd expected.

But underneath it all was her own subtle scent, something most humans would never even detect, and it had made his mouth water without warning.

Apples and caramel—yes, that was it—and the salt of seawater.

Strange.

He scrolled through his emails and opened the unread file Mills had sent. She'd finished at the top of her class at community college, then again in nursing school. But she was carrying student loans and had owed a hospital a shockingly high debt that looked like a relative's medical bills; later, that debt had been erased—probably because the relative had died. And she also had a brother who apparently couldn't resist taking rides in police cars. It made her exactly right for his purposes: poor enough to need quick money, smart enough to keep Zak alive, and ideally smart enough not to ask too many more questions. If she got too curious, there was always the Forgetting Fire. At the end of the background check, he saw that she lived in a part of the city that was in the middle of gentrification, in an apartment above a Greek bakery. That explained her scent. Her apartment probably smelled like baked goods all the time.

Mystery solved. Damian slid his phone back into his pocket. But his mind circled right back to her. Andi. An unusual name for a girl. He felt a strange urge to say it out loud, an irrational need to know whether the sound would taste as good as she smelled. And that flash of blue he'd caught before she twisted her dark hair up—the fact that she'd hidden it somehow made him want to undo it, pull it free, maybe even feel it winding around his hand.

"Why'd you warn her about noises in the house?" Austin asked Damian, pulling him out of his thoughts.

"Because Grimalkin doesn't like strangers."

"He doesn't like anyone," Austin shot back.

"Isn't Grimalkin keeping watch over Zak?" Max said from the driver's seat, defending Damian's guardian. Damian knew his cat and his elderly weapons master got along well—and they should; they were the only two beings who had followed him here from the Realm, just at different times. Max's combat armor made the stark pallor of the exposed skin around it look even more striking. Damian knew that if he took off his hat, every hair on his head would be ghost-white. He'd once had the pale eyes common to an albino too, but he'd lost them in a fight with another bear shifter. Mills had replaced them with some kind of magical device hidden behind goggles, making him the perfect person to carry Damian's Forgetting Fire, because the power of the flames no longer seemed to affect him. Whatever kind of eyes he had now, he could snipe an otherworldly creature from eight hundred yards away.

"Grimalkin probably wishes he'd just die already," Austin said darkly.

Max grinned, all teeth. "Nah. If Grimalkin wanted either of you dead, you'd already be gone, little wolf cub."

Austin snorted. "I'd rather be a wolf who can fight than a bear who sweeps chimneys." He muttered it, then turned to Damian. "Is she perceptive enough to be affected by the outer wards?"

"Absolutely."

Austin grunted. "How'd she handle it?"

"Very well, especially considering she had no idea she was under magical attack." His estate was surrounded by several concentric layers of security, some magical and some not. When the car passed through one of them—the one Austin should've turned off—he had both seen her panic and tasted it. He'd seen other men jump out of moving cars in terror, then climb back up the slope crying, with no idea why they'd done it. Andi had been afraid, but she hadn't run. Another interesting thing about her.

"Think she bought it?" Austin asked, miming pulling a chauffeur's cap over his head.

Damian knew what he meant—the charade of pretending to be a driver in his own employ. He'd wanted to see the person caring for Zak firsthand, get a read on her. He hadn't expected to find himself this intrigued.

"Doesn't matter," he replied. "Either she didn't see through it and it's a non-issue, or she did and the Forgetting Fire takes care of it."

"Why bother? Nobody'd believe her anyway. She'd just be another crazy person on the internet." Jamison said it without looking up from the computer on his knees, absorbed in it the way Austin was absorbed in his weapons. He was dark-skinned and lean, the opposite of Max's blazing pallor and Austin's bulk. Between the hardware on his lap and the arm they'd replaced with tech, the man was practically half computer.

"You mean, like you?" Austin needled him.

"Don't make me change your Netflix password," Jamison fired back, then waved for silence. "We're approaching the signal source. Slow down, Max."

Max grunted in acknowledgment. The vehicle he drove was what Damian called "the bus." A heavy armored SUV fitted with metal plating, bulletproof glass, and a blast-resistant chassis—and more importantly, it had been personally warded by the most powerful witch on this side of the Pacific. Damian could tell where they were by smell alone—seawater, gasoline, and engine oil, a combination that could only mean that familiar dockside miasma—and they were here because somewhere nearby was an otherworldly creature they had to kill.