Gabriel nodded at my grandfather, at Jeff, then looked at Ethan.

“Sullivan,” he said, then glanced at me. “Kitten. He’s one of ours?”

“We don’t know if he’s one of the Pack’s,” Ethan said. “But he’s definitely a shifter, so we wanted to give you the opportunity to find out.”

We escorted him to the body, and Gabriel crouched by the fallen shifter, his leather boots creaking with the movement. Elbows on his knees, hands linked together, he looked slowly and carefully over the body, his gaze finally settling on the wounds at his throat.

The silence was thick and to my mind, threatening.

“His name was Caleb Franklin,” Gabe said. “He was a Pack member—a soldier. A shifter who helped keep order in the territory. He’d go on runs with Damien, actually.”

Damien Garza was a tall, dark, and handsome shifter with a quiet personality, a dry wit, and an exceptional hand with an omelet.

Gabriel stood up. “But Caleb’s not a Pack member anymore. He defected.”

Ethan’s eyebrows lifted. “He left the Pack by choice?”

“He did.”

“Why?” Ethan asked.

“He wanted more freedom.”

Since the Pack was all about freedom—the open road, communing with nature, good food, and good drink—I guessed we weren’t getting the full story. The look on Ethan’s face said he didn’t entirely buy it, either. But this wasn’t the setting for an interrogation of the Pack Apex.

“The vampire?” Gabriel asked.

“We gave chase, but he got away.”

Gabriel nodded, noticed the bandage on my arm. “And got you in the process.”

“Handgun through the window of a beat-up Trans Am. I don’t suppose that vehicle rings any bells?”

He shook his head, glanced at Fallon. She shook her head, too.

“He did this in a relatively public space,” my grandfather said, “but he was eager to get away.”

“We found something else,” I said, gesturing down the alley.

We walked toward the pedestal—a human, two vampires, three shifters, and two sorcerers, all of us impotent in the face of death.

Fallon, Gabriel, and my grandfather studied the pedestal.

“Alchemical,” my grandfather said.

“And the Merits are two for two,” Catcher said. “That’s as far as we’ve gotten. We can pick out individual symbols, but we don’t know what they mean in context.” He glanced at Gabriel. “This mean anything to you?”

Gabe shook his head. “I can feel the magic but don’t recognize it.”

“It’s weird, isn’t it?” All eyes turned to me. “I mean, it has a weird edge. A sharp edge.”

“Metallic,” Mallory said, nodding. “That’s the nature of alchemy.”

“And there’s one more thing,” Catcher said. “Mallory felt something. Some kind of magic.”

All eyes shifted to her now.

“That’s how I found him,” she told Gabriel. “I felt—I don’t know how else to describe it—like a magical pulse. And then we looked for him, found him.”

Gabriel cocked his head at her. “You haven’t sensed anything like that before?”

“No,” she said. “And God knows I’ve been around enough bad magic in my time.”

I reached out and squeezed her hand, found it a little clammy. She gripped mine hard and didn’t let go.

•   •   •

Jeff and Catcher took photographs of the symbols. My and Mallory’s hands were still linked when we walked back toward the body. Three more of the shifters had dismounted, and they stood around him protectively.

“We’ll want to take him home tonight,” Gabriel said.

“You know that won’t be possible.” My grandfather’s tone was polite but firm. “We’ll release him to his family, but not until the postmortem is complete.”

“We’re his family,” Gabriel said gruffly. “Or the closest thing to it. The Pack doesn’t give two shits what Cook County has to say about cause of death. Especially since that cause should be brutally obvious to anyone with a brain.”

“Gabriel,” Ethan said, the word as much warning as name.

“Don’t start with me, Sullivan.” Magic began to rise in the air, peppery and dangerous. “He may not have been mine when he was alive, but he’s mine now.”

He and Ethan might have been friends and colleagues, but they were also leaders with people to protect, and very little tolerance for those who challenged them.

“And you watch your tone, Keene. I recognize your people have endured a tragedy, but we are not your enemy. And you are not immune to the rules of the city in which you live.”

Gabriel growled, and his eyes lit with the promise of anger, of fighting, of action. “A vampire killed one of my people.”

Ethan, who had his own steam to work off, stepped forward. “Not one of my vampires.”

I considered pushing between them, demanding they separate and calm down. But I wasn’t about to incur Ethan’s wrath by playing that card again. Besides, it wasn’t the first time they’d nearly come to blows; maybe their beating the crap out of each other would clear the air.

Fallon apparently decided she wasn’t having any of it. She nudged her way between them, both towering over her by five or six inches.