“Down, boy,” Carmen purred.
“Carmen,” Jono ground out.
She sauntered inside on high-heeled boots, the leather pants she wore paired with an oversized red sweater. It almost matched the color of her irises when she dropped her glamour, the horns of her kind spiraling back over her skull. The scent of desire thickened in the air, and Jono thought about reaching for the ward carved underneath the coffee table. Patrick had hidden several such wards throughout the apartment, the embedded magic in them capable of being triggered by a non-magic user.
He stayed his hand.
Behind Carmen, a slim woman stepped onto the landing. Naheed blinked lazily, taking in the room at large, but she stayed put. Lucien’s favorite human servant doubled as Carmen’s bodyguard during the day, along with a few others. The weather outside was cold, but she’d foregone a scarf, putting on display the necklace of bite mark scars encircling her throat.
Carmen came to a stop on the other side of the coffee table, peering around Leon’s tense form to smirk at Jono. “I hear there’s a bounty on your head.”
“You here to collect?”
“Over my dead body,” Emma growled.
Carmen wriggled her fingers at Emma. “That can be arranged.”
“Carmen,” Jono said sharply, shooting Emma a warning look. “What do you want?”
“You crossed into Jamere’s territory and demanded an audience with your betters.”
“He shares that border with a pack under my protection. He’s going to need to accept the new boundaries.” Jono levered himself to his feet, refusing to show any hint of discomfort, despite the dull, throbbing pain that ran through his entire body. “And I have no betters.”
Carmen’s bloodred lips curved into a mocking smile, her gaze drifting down his body. The air thickened with the scent of sex and desire, and Jono wished Patrick were there to block her power. It wasn’t affecting him, but the others were struggling to fight it.
“You certainly have few betters in the dick department, I’ll give you that.”
“Explain why you’re here, or get the fuck out of my home.”
Something pulsed in the walls of the flat, a brief flare of magic that smelled distantly bitter. The threshold wrapped around the flat was still active even without a mage present. Carmen’s lashes fluttered a bit at that reminder, but her expression never changed.
“You asked for a meeting with my master. Lucien will see you tomorrow night at Ginnungagap.”
“Is that it? You could’ve rang if all you needed to do was deliver a message.”
“Of course not,” Carmen said with a throaty laugh that made Jono wish Patrick was by his side, dagger in hand and mageglobe at the ready, soulbond humming between them. “I’ve brought you a gift. A, shall we say, special delivery to show what happens when people cross us.”
“We’ve made no move against you.”
Carmen arched an eyebrow. “You were in Brooklyn.”
“I have packs there.”
“You can discuss that tomorrow night with Lucien.”
Footsteps down on the ground floor caught Jono’s attention, and he dialed up his hearing to listen. Two people were coming up the stairs, the cadence of their steps indicating they were carrying something.
A minute later, two human servants maneuvered their way around the landing and through the doorway, carrying a heavy-looking plastic crate. The smell of blood was impossible to miss, cutting through the heaviness of sexual desire still in the air.
“Put it in the kitchen. I don’t want bloodstains on the carpet,” Sage snapped.
The two human servants looked at Carmen first for orders, and she lazily waved them toward the kitchen. “Do it.”
Jono would’ve followed them into the kitchen to see what messy problem Carmen had delivered to them, but Emma reached out and snagged his wrist with strong fingers, though her grip was gentle.
“Don’t even think about it,” Emma replied in a low voice.
Leon went into the kitchen, coming back a few seconds later looking a little green in the face. “It’s a body. The pieces look like they could’ve been someone who was a Krossed Knight. They’re dressed like one of the fuckers from last night.”
Jono ran a hand over his face. “This is not the sort of attention we need, Carmen.”
Carmen extended her hand to the side, and Naheed stepped forward to place something small and smelling of metal in her palm. She held it up for Jono to see. It was a medallion with antiqued spaces surrounding a St. Andrews Cross, and the words Deus Vult curved around the bottom edge.
The symbol of a member in good standing with the Krossed Knights was one they all carried, either inked in skin or like what Carmen held between her thumb and forefinger. Proof of acceptance into an order of hunters who would never see Jono as anything other than a monster. He knew, like everyone else, that the Krossed Knights never stopped hunting until their prey was dead.
“We don’t take kindly to breaches of our borders,” Carmen said.
“Then you should’ve taken care of the problem when it first arrived and gotten rid of the bodies. Maybe dropped them in the river on your way back from Brooklyn. You’re a shit neighbor for not warning us.”
“You can’t get answers from a dead man without a necromancer. We have no need to hire hunters to clean up our borders. That would be your favorite wolves.”
Anger coursed through Jono so quick it left him feeling light-headed—or maybe that was the poison working itself out of his system. He swallowed, tasting bitterness in the back of his throat.
“Do you have proof?” Sage asked flatly. “Because if not, you can take the body with you when you leave.”
Jono got a hold of his temper, letting Sage take the lead for the moment. Part of him hoped Carmen didn’t have proof because that would mean he’d get to sleep and not deal with this mess right now.
Except he was turning out to have Patrick’s form of luck this week, because Carmen pulled out her mobile, held it up so they could
