I pressed my lips tight together and shot him a pleading look. “Please,” I ground out.
His throat bobbed. He stared at me, eyes glassy and suddenly far away. He licked his lips and looked down at his feet. “Sure.” He nodded. “Of course.” His voice came out tight and gruff. He looked up at the lady cop. “She’s cleared and can go.”
The woman’s eyes darted to me briefly. She jerked her head toward the gangway, then turned back to examining the scroll in her hand.
I gasped in a shaky breath and mouthed “thank you” to Peter. He gave me a grim nod in return before watching Eve and Zale for a long moment. He slunk off toward the rest of the crowd on deck with his shoulders hunched.
Daisy glared at me and flattened her pointy ears. She growled and the partygoers near her edged away. You hurt my Peter. She turned and padded after him.
Well… I felt like a real bottom feeder. I let out a heavy sigh, then lifted my eyes to find Zale’s on my face. He opened his mouth, but I spun quickly away and dashed past the lady cop and down the gangplank.
Whatever he had to say, I certainly didn’t want to hear it. Now… or ever. He’d betrayed me, and so had Eve. My heels thudded down the wooden planks. I’d been a fool to think this night could’ve ended any other way… though I certainly couldn’t have predicted the whole drowning thing.
HALF AN HOUR LATER, I dragged myself down my street with its thumping bass beats from clubs, food carts billowing steam, and drunken revelers staggering down the street. I fished a big iron key out of the pocket of my dress and unlocked the graffiti-covered metal door to the flight of stairs that led up to my apartment. I looked up and pressed a palm against the door to shove it open but froze.
There, at eye level, was the mark of the shifter underground, magically carved into my door. My breath caught.
The mark looked like a slightly askew lowercase t, the cross slanting up and to the right. An old rune the shifter underground had co-opted. I’d never seen it personally, but all shifters knew what it meant and feared it—a summons to go see Ludolf Caterwaul himself.
I let out a heavy sigh and leaned forward, thunking my forehead against the cold metal. Just when I thought this crabby night couldn’t get any snaking worse.
14
THE UNDERGROUND
I stood beside the grated sewer drain and whistled. Then cawed like a crow and finished it off with a, “The salamander swims at moonrise,” just for good measure. I’d never been to the secret Shifter Underground headquarters before, which was literally underground, but all shifters knew the entrance. The main one at least. I suspected Ludolf had inlets and outlets hidden all over the city.
I kicked the toe of my boot against a brown glass bottle, which sent it tinkling over the rocks, and sighed loudly. “I don’t have all night, you know.” My old boots, to be clear. No way was I about to go traipsing around the sewers in the new ones I’d bought with my police consulting money.
I’d changed back into my worn jeans and favorite band tee before dragging myself down to the seediest part of the docks to answer Ludolf’s summons. I had no idea if someone was going to meet me or what the secret password was or how this all worked.
I huffed. As much as I was annoyed with all the dramatics of carving a rune on my front door (which I was so sure my landlady, “the dragon,” would be thrilled about) and making me answer a mysterious summons, I couldn’t quell the nerves that made me want to bolt from the island and never look back.
Then again, where would I go? I needed a special permit to go to the human lands, and if I went illegally, I’d be even more of an outcast for the rest of my life.
I groaned and leaned forward, trying to peek around the side of the tunnel and through the grate without stepping into the trickle of putrid sludge that poured from it. Was anyone even on the other side?
“Fine.” I shrugged and tried to make my bluff sound convincing. “I’ll just go home then.”
But that was the thing. I couldn’t. You didn’t ignore a summons from Ludolf Caterwaul. Anyone who did disappeared.
A rat—no, I blinked—a ferret scuttled out of the grate and peeked up at me with dark, beady eyes.
I gave it a flat look. “Hey, Victor.” I wiggled my fingers in a wave.
A moment later, it spun around and scampered back into the tunnel, squeaking, and then the grate swung outward with a groan. I gripped the stone side of the tunnel and leapt over the sludge river—only to land in more of it with a little splash.
“A little light, fellas?”
Shadowy figures stood inside the dark tunnel, their features completely hidden, but I knew who to expect, even before torches magically burst into flames in their hands.
I blinked a few times, as circles danced behind my eyelids, to clear my vision and adjust to the sudden brightness.
“Hi, Jolene,” Sacha grunted. The enormous brute of a man stood with his bald head slightly dipped, due to the relative lowness of the tunnel.
I nodded in greeting back. Sacha was always the politest of the bunch.
Neo, who’d grown up in the orphanage with me and was a few years younger, passed his torch to his right hand and used his left to fix a strand of hair that’d fallen loose of his perfectly coifed ’do. Shaved on the sides and slicked back on top, his black hair gleamed in the flickering orange torchlight. He worked a toothpick between his lips.
“A summons?” He rolled the toothpick to the corner of his mouth and
