Cipher

fan any day now, so the training wheels are coming off. You know what to do, and you need to start doing it without checking with me first.”

Andrew choked back a growl. “It might be that simple for you, Alec, but my situation’s a little more complicated.”

“Yeah, on the subject of complicated, have you heard from Derek this week?”

“No.” Andrew tensed. If he’d somehow heard what happened to Kat…

Alec sighed again, something that was starting to sound like a nervous tic. “Great. Okay, I’m telling you this because the rumor’s spreading so fast you’re probably going to hear it before he calms down enough to call you. Nicole’s pregnant.”

“Holy shit.” It seemed like the sort of thing Derek would want to shout from the rooftops, and the fact that he hadn’t made Andrew’s hands clench into fists. “Is something wrong?”

“Nothing life-threatening, but Nick’s not feeling well. Sicker than usual, I guess. Carmen’s tried to tell him it’s all manageable, but Derek watched his wife’s twin sister go through a miserable pregnancy and premature labor, so panic has set in pretty hard. He’s calling Carmen at all hours, damn near every time Nick twitches a toe.”

They were going to have a baby. “He hasn’t told Kat yet, either. She’d have mentioned it.”

Alec’s eyebrows climbed up. “I thought you and Kat weren’t talking.”

It was stupid to feel as though he’d gotten caught smoking under the bleachers. “That was the situation.

I was helping Kat with some stuff about her mom.”

“Uh-huh.” Alec scrubbed his hand over his hair again, leaving it half sticking up this time. He looked ragged around the edges in general, as if it’d been a few days since his last shave—or his last full night of sleep. “Shit. Okay, you’ve got to handle this, Andrew. Derek can barely handle himself and his wife, and John Peyton’s got a daughter to worry about and that cagey little shit on his council who’s stirring up trouble. Can you and Julio keep Kat safe and get this shit done?”

“Yeah, I’ll get it done.” For the first time, Andrew caught a gleam in Alec’s eyes, a satisfaction that belied his apparent frustration. For all his exasperation, he was in his element. “This thing with Kat’s mom might be big, Alec.”

“I don’t doubt that. I know Derek’s never thought her mother’s death was really an accident. Is she digging around again? She was obsessed with it for a few months when she was nineteen and had just gotten access to our list of contacts at the detective agency.”

“Yeah, she was digging.” And she just might have broken the whole thing wide open. “What do you usually buy McNeely to say thanks when he’s just saved your ass? Scotch?”

“Not anymore. McNeely’s on the wagon. Get him some music. A CD or two.”

“Done. Thanks, Alec.”

“Hey. If shit gets so bad you can’t figure out your next move…call me. But if you know the next move, take it. You’ve got the instincts, kid. Time to start trusting them.”

“Right.” Julio had undoubtedly already been taking care of business while Andrew kept his head in the sand, but that was going to change. “I’ll keep you posted.”

“You do that.” Alec paused. Frowned. “Tell me one thing. Are you tangled up because it’s Kat?”

“Yes,” he replied readily. “And also because her contact was looking for protection from the Southeast council. It had to be me or Julio, and Julio wasn’t touching it.”

“No, I didn’t mean—” He made an amused noise. “Is your head tangled up? And your instincts? That girl has never made it easy for you to think.”

“My brain’s working fine, Alec.” It was even mostly true.

“Uh-huh. It’s the rest of you working just fine that I’m worried about.”

Andrew couldn’t resist an arrogant grin. “That’s working all right too.”

Six months in New York had perfected Alec’s exasperated peevishness. “God help us all. Don’t be an idiot.”

“No more than usual, you have my word on that.”

“Good.” Alec’s finger rushed toward the screen, diverting at the last moment to crash into the keyboard, judging by the sound. He looked back up at Andrew, cursed, then pounded another key before bellowing, “Carmen, how the fuck do I turn this thing off?”

The call dropped, and Andrew muffled a snort as he closed the laptop. Things may have changed a hell of a lot over the last year, but some things never would. It was comforting, in a way.

Not that he had time to sit around and ponder it. He had to get on the phone with McNeely and clean up his mess, and then he had to figure out what to tell Kat about her cousin’s impending fatherhood—and what it could mean if she chose to pursue her investigation.

Dixie John’s was the sort of restaurant tourists would have driven miles out of their way to visit, if they’d had any way of knowing the place was there. Once in a while, a tourist wandered in and enjoyed a meal, utterly oblivious to the fact that they were surrounded by witches and priestesses or psychics and shapeshifters.

Not that everyone who visited the place was a supernatural, but the humans who tended to return were the sort who didn’t mind the rumors that Dixie John dabbled in voodoo. If patrons saw the regulars acting oddly, they shrugged it off and went on about their business.

They probably didn’t imagine that the pretty redhead taking orders turned into a coyote sometimes, or that the bartender wasn’t just skilled at anticipating their orders—he really could read their minds.

Kat loved Dixie John’s. During the worst months after Andrew had been attacked, John had given her sanctuary within the walls of his restaurant. At Mahalia’s, she always felt compelled to paste on a smile and pretend she felt healthy and happy, or the staff would tell their boss—and their boss’s husband. Derek had enough to worry about without reports that she was moping about, even if she was.

John never tattled. Kat had written her thesis in a cozy corner booth, sustained by coffee, music and some of the best damn cooking in the state. John had even given Sera a job, one where she made decent enough money to feel independent as she struggled to find her place. There was something soothing about the big man’s steady presence, an odd mixture of determination and utter belief in fate.

It had done wonders for Sera, that was for sure. Kat pushed through the front door and found her roommate bent over a table, making faces at a toddler whose shrieks of laughter hit Kat a moment before the wave of youthful glee.

The few minutes it took to settle her psychic barriers firmly in place gave Sera time to cross the room.

Even in jeans and a T-shirt, Sera attracted the gazes of most of the men she passed. Her curvy, pin-up girl looks made Kat feel like one of Cinderella’s stepsisters, an insecurity not soothed when Sera nodded to the back booth. “Anna’s waiting for you. I’ve got to get a couple orders in before I take my break.”

Time alone with Anna. Fabulous. Kat managed a smile. “Okay.”

Sera sighed, clearly exasperated by the lukewarm response. “Be nice, Kat. Be nice, and I’ll bring you coffee, okay?”

“I’m nice.” But the admonition reminded her of a blurry moment in a motel in Alabama. Andrew, holding her foot and whispering that he’d never be nice about Miguel.

As she started toward the booth, Kat forced herself to admit that it was hard to be nice about Anna.

Blonde, petite, practically a damn bounty hunter—Anna was everything Kat wasn’t. Including a shapeshifter, one who’d been able to handle Andrew’s strength in the first months after his transformation.

With a shapeshifter’s instincts, she’d understood him, probably in ways Kat never would.

Every time she looked at Anna, all Kat could see were the ways she hadn’t been enough.

Even now. Anna was halfway through one of John’s omelets, and she waved at Kat as she lifted her coffee cup. “This place is insane. Did you know John mixes his own andouille?”

“Is that the sausage?” Kat slid into the opposite side of the booth and dropped her bag onto the seat next to her. “He’s a great cook.” See, she could be nice. She was the damn queen of polite, meaningless chitchat about breakfast foods.