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in the hall outside Micah’s office. So everyone could hear her tell me that two CCU research students got killed near Luna’s Temple last week during the blackout. My shift. My section. My fault.”
    Bryce winced. “It took a week to hear about this?”
    “Apparently.”
    “Who killed them?”
    Crescent City University students were always out in the Old Square, always causing trouble. Even as alums Bryce and Danika often bemoaned the fact that there wasn’t a sky-high electric fence penning CCU students into their corner of the city. Just to keep them from puking and pissing all over the Old Square every Friday night to Sunday morning.
    Danika drank again. “No clue who did it.” A shiver, her caramel eyes darkening. “Even with their scents marking them as human, it took twenty minutes to identify who they were. They were ripped to shreds and partially eaten.”
    Bryce tried not to imagine it. “Motive?”
    Danika’s throat bobbed. “No idea, either. But Sabine told me in front of everyone exactly what she thought of such a public butchering happening on my watch.”
    Bryce asked, “What’d the Prime say about it?”
    “Nothing,” Danika said. “The old man fell asleep during the meeting, and Sabine didn’t bother to wake him before cornering me.” It would be soon now, everyone said—only a matter of a year or two until the current Prime of the wolves, nearly four hundred years old, had his Sailing across the Istros to the Bone Quarter for his final sleep. There was no way the black boat would tip for him during the final rite—no way his soul would be deemed unworthy and given to the river. He’d be welcomed into the Under-King’s realm, granted access to its mist-veiled shores … and then Sabine’s reign would begin.
    Gods spare them all.
    “It’s not your fault, you know,” Bryce said, flipping open the cardboard lids of the two closest pizza boxes. Sausage, pepperoni, and meatball in one. The other held cured meats and stinky cheeses—Bronson’s choice, no doubt.
    “I know,” Danika muttered, draining the last of her beer, clunking the bottle in the sink, and rooting around in the fridge for another. Every muscle in her lean body seemed taut—on a hair trigger. She slammed the fridge shut and leaned against it. Danika didn’t meet Bryce’s eyes as she breathed, “I was three blocks away that night. Three . And I didn’t hear or see or smell them being shredded.”
    Bryce became aware of the silence from the other room. Keen hearing in both human and wolf form meant endless, entitled eavesdropping.
    They could finish this conversation later.
    Bryce flipped open the rest of the pizza boxes, surveying the culinary landscape. “Shouldn’t you put them out of their misery and let them get a bite before you demolish the rest?”
    She’d had the pleasure of witnessing Danika eat three large pies in one sitting. In this sort of mood, Danika might very well break her record and hit four.
    “Please let us eat,” begged Bronson’s deep, rumbling voice from the other room.
    Danika swigged from her beer. “Come get it, mongrels.”
    The wolves rushed in.
    In the frenzy, Bryce was nearly flattened against the back wall of the kitchen, the monthly calendar pinned to it crumpling behind her.
    Damn it—she loved that calendar: Hottest Bachelors of Crescent City: Clothing-Optional Edition . This month had the most gorgeous daemonaki she’d ever seen, his propped leg on a stool the only thing keeping everything from being shown. She smoothed out the new wrinkles in all the tan skin and muscles, the curling horns, and then turned to scowl at the wolves.
    A step away, Danika stood among her pack like a stone in a river. She smirked at Bryce. “Any update on your hunt for the Horn?”
    “No.”
    “Jesiba must be thrilled.”
    Bryce grimaced. “Overjoyed.” She’d seen Jesiba for all of two minutes this afternoon before the sorceress threatened to turn Bryce into a donkey, and then vanished