Cipher

She’d make them crawl.

The power had always been there, a burden and a nuisance. Shields kept it contained, but nothing could contain the protective rage gathering just under the surface.

She took Andrew’s pain. There was so much it should have split her in two, but she took it. Her nails scratched against the rough carpet as she took his anger too, his anger at himself for not being able to protect her. She took the shapeshifters’ rage and their fear and their determination to see her dead, she took her own breaking heart and the ice that would never melt.

She took it all, then took Andrew himself and imagined him safe in her arms, safe in the numbness making the world a distant dream. With him wrapped in her shields, she stripped her soul bare and let everything go in a terrifying thrust of power that hollowed her out and left her trembling.

Her pulse pounded in her ears. Throbbed in her temples. Everything was silent, so silent she was sure she’d failed-And then the screaming started.

Chapter One

Someone was cooking waffles.

For one disoriented moment, trapped between sleep and waking, Kat thought she was home again. A teenager, safe in her uncle’s house with her aunt making breakfast and her parents alive and the world at her fingertips. If she rolled out of bed, she’d find hot chocolate waiting for her in the kitchen, and her aunt would ask her about the boy in her math class and laugh when she blushed…

The bed shifted, and a solid arm settled over her waist, jerking her abruptly into the present. Miguel, her brain identified at once. He was warm, a comforting weight at her back, and as familiar as her favorite pair of slippers. Kat threaded her fingers with his and gave his hand a tug. “Hey, lazy ass. Wake up. Sera’s making us breakfast before she goes into work.”

He laughed but didn’t move. “Score. I’m starving.”

“Impossible. You ate a supreme pizza last night all by yourself.” He’d eaten a few slices of her pepperoni pizza too, proof that his appetite hadn’t waned after six months of being a full-blooded shapeshifter.

“Shapeshifter and psychic,” he corrected aloud. “That burns a lot of calories.”

Kat groaned and dragged a pillow over her face, spending a few careful moments reinforcing her shields. Not that they’d stop Miguel from picking up her surface thoughts any more than his mental shields kept her from reading his mood, but the practice never hurt. “If being a psychic burned that many calories, I’d be a lot scrawnier.”

Miguel slapped her hip through her flannel pajama pants. “That’d be a crying shame. Zola’s already worked too much of your ass off.”

“There’s plenty left.” She tossed the pillow aside and leaned over the side of the bed until her fingers brushed the edge of her netbook. “And all of it off limits. Your new girlfriend doesn’t strike me as the sort who wants to listen to explanations about why you were smacking another woman’s ass this morning.”

“Victoria,” he said slowly, carefully enunciating every syllable, “does not own me. And I’ve done nothing wrong.”

The tiniest hint of defensiveness echoed between them, sharp enough to ruffle his otherwise placid emotions. Kat didn’t much care for How-Dare-You-Call-Me-Vicky-It’s- Victoria and didn’t give a damn if Miguel plucked that thought out of her head. She dragged her computer up onto her stomach and popped it open. “She’s too prissy for you. And you know it, or you wouldn’t have crashed in my sexless bed last night, Mr. Playboy.”

“She had to work. And I like your sexless bed.” He rolled to his side, propped his head on his hand and blew away the hair that fell over his forehead. “It’s better than being at home until Julio finishes moving out. It’s all politics, all the time since the coup.”

A dangerous route of thought, especially with a psychic in her bed. Thinking about the coup always lead back to the men who’d led it. And one of those men…

She jerked her thoughts under control and wiggled her finger over the track pad on her computer until the screen came to life. “Politics get tiring,” she managed, and it sounded like a weak attempt even to her.

“Sera and I don’t mind you crashing. She gets to cook for three, and I don’t have to turn the heat above sixty-five because you’re like a shapeshifter radiator.”

“Uh-huh. And my sister says that’s why I eat like a horse now. Increased metabolic function.”

“Yeah, it takes a lot of dedicated eating to be a chubby shapeshifter.” She’d left her browser open, and the endless row of tabs retraced the path of the previous night’s research. Seventeen in all, ranging from Wikipedia to her Gmail, which now had thirty-seven unfiltered messages awaiting her attention. “Sera likes cooking for you. Maybe you should ditch Victoria and start putting the moves on her. She could use some damn fun.”

He studied the bedspread and nodded. “She’s not really my type.”

The words were right, but empathy told her he was laughing inside, amused over some joke she was missing. “Is it because she’s a coyote and not a wolf?”

He stretched out on his back and grinned. “Maybe it’d be more correct to say I’m not really her type.

I’m not badass enough for your roommate.”

“That’s a shame.” But easy enough to believe. The last time Sera had managed to get her hands on enough alcohol to make a shapeshifter drunk, she’d scrawled No fucking alpha bastards! across the bathroom mirror with a Sharpie. Kat had tried three different types of cleaner before giving up and repunctuating it. No, fucking alpha bastards! was a motto she could get behind, at least.

And speaking of alpha bastards… She actually had email from her boss. The timestamp was seven-thirty—eight-thirty in New York, where he was clearly already awake and busily messing with shapeshifter politics. Kat flagged it to check later and scanned the rest of the subjects. Junk, most of it, with a spattering of casual correspondence and a few messages from potential clients and colleagues at the university.

Then, third from the top, she stumbled across a sentence that made her heart stutter. Regarding your mother’s association with the Cult o… The subject line was too long to display in full, but what was there stole her breath.

“Hey.” Miguel laid a hand on her shoulder. “You okay?”

“I don’t—” She rocked upright, spilling the netbook onto the covers in her haste. After a moment groping behind her back, she closed her fingers on her pillow and hauled it around to serve as a makeshift desk. “I sent out some emails last week. I just—I didn’t really expect to get a reply.”

He must have caught a stray thought. “Cult? Some kind of cult shit? Is this something you’re doing for work?”

“Ancient history.” Crossing her legs, she set the pillow in her lap and resituated the computer. It could be nothing or a scam or even a joke.

It could be answers.

Miguel hesitated. “Do you need me here, or do you need me gone? I can’t tell.”

Neither could she. Her hands shook like she’d mainlined espresso and chased it with Red Bull…and if she didn’t get herself under control, she’d have two worried shapeshifters climbing all over her. “I think I need a few minutes. And Sera’s going to all that trouble making breakfast—someone should eat it.”

“You should eat some of it.”

“I will, I promise. In a little bit.”

“Kat.”

She dragged her gaze away from the browser window and met his eyes. “I’m okay, Miguel. It’s not like I can sneak out the window. I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

“All right.” He rolled off the bed and snagged his shirt from the chair by the wall. “I’ll grab some coffee and