them as an anchor. Even when their corners sank, their irises darkened, and a velvet fringe of dark eyelashes sheathed them, I could still tell it was Saiman.
“What I offer is much greater than sex,” a Hispanic woman of startling beauty said. “I offer wish fulfillment. Anything you want. Anyone you want. I can give you your fantasy. And more, I can give you the forbidden.”
His face shifted again. Derek. A very reasonable facsimile, good enough to fool me in a bad light. The body still remained female, however. He was getting tired. He must’ve chugged a gallon of nutrients in anticipation of my arrival to be able to pull this show off.
“I can give you a friend.” Saiman-Derek grinned. “Guilt-free. Nobody would ever know. All the secret faces you picture when you pleasure yourself? I can give them to you in the flesh.”
Derek just stared, speechless, an expression of utter disgust stamped on his face.
“Is there a point to this demonstration, besides upsetting my stomach?”
Saiman sighed. “You refuse everything I offer, Kate. It hurts my pride.”
I crossed my arms. “I refuse because no matter what shape you wear, I know it’s you. And you don’t really want me for who I am. You want me because I said no.”
He considered it. “Perhaps. But the fact remains: by refusing me, you are now my ultimate luxury. That one thing I can’t have. You won’t see me. You don’t return my phone calls. All my attempts to apologize for my behavior during the flare have gone unanswered. It’s very difficult to seduce a woman when she refuses to acknowledge your existence. I’m looking forward to having you to myself for an entire night.”
“Fucking pervert.” Derek finally found adequate words to express his take on the situation.
“I prefer the term ‘sexual deviant’ myself,” Saiman said.
“When I get out . . .”
I raised my hand, halting Derek’s promises of very painful and highly illegal things he would have liked to inflict on Saiman. “I’ll come with you to the Games.” Even if I would rather clean an outhouse. “In return, you acknowledge that Derek never broke into your apartment and you’ll surrender all evidence of him ever being present here. Don’t plan on a date. There will be no wooing, no seduction, and no sex. That’s my best offer and it’s not open to negotiation. If you choose to accept it, keep in mind that I’m still a representative of the Order, attending a highly illegal event. Don’t put me into the position where I feel compelled to do something about it.”
Saiman rose, walked over to the room that served as his lab, and returned with a stack of digital printouts showing Derek in the cage in all his glory. He handed me the pictures, turned on a digital camera, and wiped the memory card clean.
Derek’s mask slipped and beyond it I saw guilt. Good. I planned on cashing in on that guilt to get him talking.
Saiman raised a remote, pressed a button, and the cage door fell open. Derek surged up and I stepped between him and Saiman before he could add murder to his list of transgressions.
“I’ll pick you up at your apartment at ten,” Saiman said.
THE GLASS DOORS OF THE LOBBY SHUT BEHIND US and I let out a breath. The sunrise was still a long way off, and the parking lot lay steeped in darkness, the night breeze cool and cleansing after the perfumed atmosphere of the high-rise.
Derek shook his head, as if clearing fog from his skull. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“I shouldn’t have gone through the window.” Derek measured the tower with his gaze. “I figured fifteenth floor, sure bet the window would be unprotected. But he’s got the whole place booby-trapped.”
“He had issues with breaking and entering a few years back. That’s why I had to bodyguard him for a while.” A vivid image of a man with a pencil through his left eye orbit flashed before me, complete with bloody smudges of my fingerprints on the yellow shaft of the pencil. Thank you, dear memory, for once again attempting to sabotage my conversation. “Saiman takes his security very seriously.”
“Yeah.”
We reached my car. “There was a shapeshifter death on the corner of Ponce de Leon and Dead Cat. Jim was there and a Pack crew. Know anything about it?”
A dark shadow crossed Derek’s face. “No. Who died?”
“I don’t know. Jim wouldn’t let me get within thirty feet of the body.” I looked right into his eyes. “Derek, did you have anything to do with it?”
“No.”
“If you did, you need to tell me now.”
“I didn’t.”
I believed him. Derek had many talents, but lying wasn’t one of them.
We stood by the car.
“You shouldn’t go with that freak.” Derek dragged his fingers through his short hair. “He’s dangerous.”
“I gave my word. I have to go. Besides, Saiman is a degenerate. He’s ruled completely by his appetites. For him, there is no higher goal than to satisfy his urges, and that makes him predictable. I’ll be fine.”
In the distance a dog erupted in an explosion of hysterical barks. Derek glanced in the direction of the sound. A faint yellow sheen rolled over his irises. He focused, leaning forward, light on his toes, listening to the night, the wolf crouching with hackles raised just beneath his skin.
Derek expected to be jumped any second. Something was seriously wrong.
“Derek?”
He had pulled the calm back on and his face looked inscrutable. But the beast refused to be completely tamed. It clawed and howled behind his eyes.
“Is this Pack or personal?”
“Personal.”
“Does Curran know?”
Derek looked at his feet.
I took that as a no. “Anything I can do to help?”
“No.”
“I came all this way to bust you out, and you won’t even tell me what this is about?”
He shook his head and took off into the night. So much for the guilt.
I watched him fall into that particular wolf gait, long-legged and deceptively easy. He could run like that for days, devouring miles. Derek reached the end of the parking lot, jumped to clear a three-foot concrete wall, and changed his mind in midleap. It was a peculiar thing to see: he shot in the air, unable to stop himself, but instead of going long, he jumped straight up, landed in almost exactly the same spot, turned on one foot, and sprinted to me.
In a breath he halted by my side. “I lied. I need your help.”
“Who are we killing?”
“Do you have a pen?”
I got a notepad and a pencil out of my car. He scribbled something on a piece of paper, tore it out, and folded the paper in half. “Promise me you won’t read this. This is important. This is the most important thing I’ve ever done. At the Games there will be a girl. Her name is Livie. She’s on the Reaper team. There are only two women on the team and she has long dark hair. Give this to her. Please.”
A girl. He risked Curran’s rage for a girl.
On the surface, it made sense. He was nineteen and wading through the sea of hormones. But I had never perceived Derek as the type to become blindly infatuated. He took stoic to a new level. More, he worshipped the ground Curran walked on. There had to be more to this. Unfortunately, Derek’s face was doing a wonderful impression of a granite wall.
“You tried to steal the tickets to give a note to a girl?”
“Yes.”
I scratched my head. “I know you’re in trouble. I can feel it. Usually this is the part where I threaten you with terrible bodily harm and promise to dance on your grave unless you tell me everything you know. There’s just one slight problem.”
