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into the blankets on her bed. King immediately leapt up to sit vigil. He would have just hunkered down there to watch, but I wasn’t having any of his mystery right now.
    “No way,” I said, shaking a finger at him. “You have to tell us what you know if we’re going to help him.”
    “Absolutely,” Meagan agreed. “We have to know how much of this has happened already.”
    He narrowed his eyes at me and looked hostile.
    “Shift and spill it, Fish Breath,” I said, sounding tougher than I felt. “What happened? What did you see?”
    He gave a mewl of protest and glared at both of us; then there was a familiar shimmer of blue light. I closed my eyes to be diplomatic about it all, and when I opened them, there was a guy sitting on the end of Meagan’s bed.
    In human form, King has sandy hair and is built like a football player. He carries himself as if he owns the world. People step aside for him, even when he’s a cat. He doesn’t say much, and when he does, he’s surprisingly soft-spoken.
    “I woke up and he was gone,” he said even more quietly than usual, flicking a glance at the closed door. He gentlyrubbed Mozart’s chin as he spoke, but the other cat didn’t respond at all. “I went looking for him, found him halfway down the block, dragging himself back here. He was exhausted. As soon as he saw me, he gave it up.”
    “He knew you’d bring him home,” Meagan said, sitting down on the other side of the injured cat.
    “I didn’t know how else to bring him into the house,” King said. “I had to shift to human form to carry him home, but couldn’t enter the house that way. So I hid him and came to get Zoë.”
    “Thank goodness your parents installed that cat door,” I said.
    King’s lips tightened. “He would have been better off if they hadn’t.”
    “Did he tell you what happened?” Meagan asked.
    King shook his head.
    “Did you see anything? Was anyone else around?” I asked.
    King frowned. “There was something strange in the air. Like electricity. I felt like my hair was standing up the minute I went outside.” He shuddered. “It felt bad, like something evil was brewing.”
    I sat down, thinking, on the twin bed on the other side of the room. “Why Mozart?” I asked. “I wonder what he saw.” You know I was thinking about ShadowEaters walking the earth.
    “He can’t tell us, not when he’s like this,” Meagan said, gently touching his ears. “How do we help him? How do cat shifters heal?”
    “I can’t tell you more,” King said forcefully. His heated reaction surprised me a bit. “You need to ask Jessica.”
    I would have asked him more despite that warning, but he shifted shape, effectively ending the conversation. What had he been worried about? He gave me a lethal look in his catform, then curled himself behind and around Mozart, his lush tail wrapping protectively around his friend.
    Like a guardian.
    One that wouldn’t be bypassed easily.
    Meagan was stroking Mozart’s head with a care that King was prepared to tolerate. “My mom’s going to want to take him to the vet in the morning.”
    “The vet isn’t going to be able to do anything about this,” I said. “We need to figure out how to heal his shadow, and I don’t think they teach shifter physiology in college. Like King says, we’ll have to ask Jessica.”
    King purred approval.
    “Maybe we could hide him here.” Meagan looked up. “Will you stay with him while we’re at school, King?”
    King lowered his head protectively. He seemed to enfold Mozart and I knew that the other cat shifter couldn’t have a better defender.
    Even if I wasn’t sure what he could do against apprentice Mages or ShadowEaters on the hunt.
    M EAGAN WAS SURE THAT IF
my dream had already happened, then Mozart would have died. She had a point—the apprentice Mages nibbled at shadows, but the ShadowEaters consumed them. So, we knew two apprentice Mages, and we knew where one of them was.
    “I have to talk to Trevor