I put down the phone and counted to five in my head. That should give them enough time to get their crap together.

I redialed.

“Help Desk,” Noah croaked.

“It’s me again. Calling for Ghastek.”

“Yes, lady ma’am, um, In-Shinar, um, Your Majesty.”

I waited. Nothing happened.

“Noah?”

“Yes?” he said in a desperate near-whisper. He sounded close to death.

“Transfer the call, please.”

He made a small strangled noise, the line clicked, and Rowena’s smooth voice answered. “Hello, Kate. How is Conlan?”

Telling her that one of her journeymen just called me “lady ma’am” would be counterproductive. “He’s fine.”

“When will you bring him by?”

Rowena came from the same village as my mother. They shared a similar magical talent, although my mother’s had been much stronger. The talent came with a price. Women who possessed it had a hard time getting pregnant and an even harder time carrying a child to term. I was an exception; perhaps it had to do with Roland’s genes, but Curran and I had had no trouble conceiving. Rowena never had children of her own, but she desperately wanted some. She once told me that while my father was alive, the world wasn’t safe enough for her children. Instead she lavished all of her maternal affection on my son.

“As soon as I can. I have some bad news.”

“Is it your father?” A hint of alarm undercut her words.

“No. At least, I don’t think so.”

I explained Serenbe.

“That’s horrible,” Rowena finally said.

Not much shocked a Master of the Dead. Not much shocked me either. By now I’d told this story about seven or eight times. You’d think repetition would file the sharp edge off it, but no, every time was as disturbing as the last.

“We’ll call down to Biohazard and try to get some samples for analysis,” Rowena said.

“That would be amazing.”

I said good-bye and hung up before she had a chance to ask me if Conlan had developed any magical powers. Everybody wanted my son to be something more. He was perfect the way he was.

Someone rapped their knuckles on my door.

“Come in,” I called.

The door swung open and Raphael walked in, carrying a dark-green bottle. He wore a dark-gray suit.

“Beware the boudas,” I said. “Especially when they bear gifts.”

He smiled. “Can I come in?”

“Please.” I pointed to my client chair. “Sit down.”

He did. His black hair fell on his shoulders in a soft wave. Usually when people used words like “smoldering” to describe a man, I just laughed. However, for Raphael that word felt entirely appropriate. There was something about him, something in his dark-blue eyes, in the way he carried himself with a hint of feral shapeshifter cutting through the polish, that made women think of sex. Luckily, I was immune.

“What’s in the bottle?”

He pushed it across the desk to me. The handwritten label with a cute orange-yellow apple read, B’S BEST CIDER.

I whistled. “Now I know it’s bad.”

When Curran and I got married, Clan Bear provided several barrels of honey ale for the wedding. The ale was a roaring success. Raphael realized that the bouda clan house sat in the middle of an apple orchard and sensed a business opportunity. B’s Cider hit the market a year ago, and like all things Raphael touched, it turned to gold.

He leaned back in the chair, one long leg over another. Life with Andrea was good to Raphael. He looked clean-cut. His suit fit him so well, it had to be tailored.

“Let me guess, your tailor is holding your latest outfit hostage and you want me to liberate it.”

“If I asked you to do that, everything would be covered in blood and my suit would be ruined. No, I’d ask my wife. She’d shoot him between the eyes from a hundred yards away.”

That she would.

“I came to talk about the boy,” he said. “I brought the cider, because it isn’t an easy conversation.”

Oh.

“I’ve come to ask you to let him go.”

I thought as much. “Why isn’t Ascanio here to speak for himself?”

“Because you took him in when nobody would have him. Aunt B sent him to you because he was impossible to handle, and she knew that sooner or later he would do the wrong thing or say the wrong thing, and someone would rip out his throat. You gave him a job, a place he belonged, you trained him, and you trusted him. You turned him into someone who is now an asset to the clan. He understands all of this. He’s loyal to you.”

He paused. I waited for him to continue.

“But he also wants things.”

“What things?”

“We can start with money. He can earn money here, but he wants more. He wants wealth.”

He and I both knew that Ascanio wouldn’t get wealth working for me. Cutting Edge paid the bills, but it wouldn’t make anyone rich. I had no interest in expanding. I liked that we were small.

“Also, he wants acceptance, responsibility, and power. He wants to climb the clan’s power hierarchy. At his core, he’s a bouda, and he needs other boudas to acknowledge how good he is.”

“Okay.”

“Both of these are means to an end.” Raphael leaned forward. “What he really wants is . . .”

“Security,” I told him. “I taught him for almost four years, Raphael. He grew up without a male role model in a hellish place, so when he went to the clan, he fixated on you. He wants to be you. A respected, successful, dangerous alpha. I figured all this out a long time ago.”

“He’s been working for me for the last six months,” Raphael said.

“Aha.”

Raphael chewed on his lip. “There is no point in trying to be diplomatic, so I’m just going to come out and say it. Male nineteen-year-old boudas think with their balls. Andrea and I spend half of our time fighting to keep them out of Jim’s rock-hauling camp.”

Like Curran, Jim constantly improved the Keep, adding on towers, walls, and escape tunnels. A good portion of those improvements were built by boudas between ages twelve and twenty-five performing the Pack’s version of community service for various infractions. The boudas couldn’t seem to stay out of trouble, and Jim always welcomed free labor.

“Ascanio is different from his peers,” Raphael said. “He thinks with his head, and he’s strategic in his decisions. When we sent him down to Kentucky, he ran into h . . .” Raphael paused. “. . . into trouble. He handled it. Better than I did.”

“I have no doubt he did.”

“We need him, and he needs us. And I realize that my mother dumped him on you, and you spent four years stabilizing, teaching, and hammering him into what he is today, and now that he’s useful, we want him back and it’s unfair. I’m sorry. I owe you. Our entire clan owes you.”

“You don’t owe me anything. I did it for him, not for you.”

“But you did it and someone has to appreciate it. I’m here to say that we acknowledge it and we won’t forget. If you leave it up to him, he will never walk away from you. He can’t. His sense of loyalty won’t let him. But he won’t be happy here. He wants recognition and acceptance from the Pack. Like it or not, you’re not just anyone, Kate. You are the In-Shinar. The longer you keep him with you, the harder it will be for him to be seen as separate from you.”

He just had to throw it in my face. I sighed. “Do you see any chains around here, Raphael?”

“No.” His smile was sad.

“Okay then. He isn’t an indentured servant. He’s free to do as he wants. I’ll take him off the payroll as of today. He is welcome to come back anytime, but I will stop calling.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“It’s not about you. He should do whatever makes him happy.”

Raphael nodded again. He looked miserable.

I let him off the hook. “How is Baby B doing?”

He grinned. “A wolf boy tried to steal her toy at the picnic last week. She chased him down, took the toy away, and beat him bloody with it.”