Copyright 2014 by Georgette St. Clair

This book is intended for readers 18 and older only. It is a work of fiction. All

characters and locations in this book are products of the feverish imagination of the

author, a tarnished Southern belle with a very dirty mind.

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Pixie Montana is a reformed (mostly) thief and a hustler. Dominick is the sexy lion shifter who’s
been voted “most likely to bite Pixie’s head off – literally”. And the two of them are Shifters, Inc.’s,
only hope. A mysterious intruder has infected the staff of Shifters, Inc. with a deadly plague, and his
price for the cure is a mysterious jewel known as The Bloodstone – a jewel that’s impossible to
steal, because it kills all those who touch it. If Pixie doesn’t return with the jewel in 3 days, every
one of her friends will die. Pixie and Dominick must set aside their differences and battle their
strange, growing attraction to each other, or demons from both of their pasts will derail their mission
and put all of their lives at risk.

Chapter One

Playa Linda, California

On a warm June morning, shafts of sunlight pierced thick white clouds and glinted off the

darkened windows of the Shifters, Incorporated building. The nondescript brick and glass building
was tucked away in an industrial area of Playa Linda, where the security agency’s clients could
expect a measure of privacy. The sign outside the building read “Harwell Industrial”, a vague name
that revealed nothing about its true identity or purpose. Clients were accepted by referral only.

A golden shaft of sunlight pooled around the slim, purple-haired human woman who sat in a

small parking lot to the left of the building, cross legged on the hood of a Lexus, illuminating her like
a Botticelli angel.

The trick of the light was as deceptive as the bland building. Pixie Montana was no angel.

She wasn’t exactly a devil, either; more like an energetic imp with a talent for stirring up trouble.

The roars of an enraged lion shifter, rolling out from the lobby of the building, were testament

to that.

“So how long, exactly, have you had a death wish?” Hillary Mease asked Pixie anxiously. “I

should have been told about this. And shouldn’t you be running for your life?”

“Nah, he’ll get over it. Don’t get your panties in a wad.” Pixie grinned insolently.

The roars of rage coming from inside the building were increasing in volume, but Pixie

wasn’t worried. She’d been dealing with Dominick for the past year, or rather, deliberately
provoking him for the last year, and he hadn’t killed her…yet.

Hillary just wasn’t used to the special brand of mayhem that was the Pixie/Dominick

dynamic; she usually worked in human resources and missed out on all the action.

However, with Pixie’s best friend Bobbi about to leave for her honeymoon, Pixie’s boss had

felt that someone should be assigned to hang out with Pixie. Apparently Pixie could be, according to
Kenneth, a “handful.” And a “security risk”. And a “wild card”. And various other less flattering
things he muttered under his breath when he thought she wasn’t listening.

She was also one of the best thieves and pickpockets in the world, and Kenneth seemed to be

oddly fond of her in a protective-uncle kind of way, so he kept her on staff, but he didn’t want her
running around unsupervised.

Hillary wasn’t the ideal choice for the job of Pixie’s babysitter. Hillary was a nervous,

follow-the-rules kind of girl who called home to her mother every day and blanched at the idea of
jaywalking. Pixie was a minor league criminal who’d been hustling and living on her own since she
was twelve. It was a slow day when she didn’t commit at least a misdemeanor.

However, Shifters, Inc. was so successful that most of their employees were currently

scattered around the world on assignments, and there weren’t a lot of alternatives, so Hillary had

drawn the short straw and gotten stuck on Pixie-watch today.

That was fine with Pixie. Hillary was almost as much fun to torture as Dominick.

Dominick was a temperamental lion shifter who seemed to descend into an angry funk the minute
Pixie walked into a room, and who regularly flipped his switch every time Pixie lifted a wallet or
otherwise openly flaunted the rules.

Take today, for instance. A skinny, stuck up hyena shifter bitch in tight jeans and a scoop

neck halter had strolled into the lobby of Shifters, Inc., hand in hand with a lion shifter who looked a
lot like Dominick. While the lion shifter had spoken to the receptionist, asking for Dominick, the
skinny bitch had raked Pixie with a look of utter contempt.

Shortly thereafter, Pixie might or might not have removed several items from the stuck up

bitch’s purse. In Pixie’s opinion, if nobody had seen her do it, it had never happened.

And voila, instant angry lion shifter. Just add Pixie. In fact, there were dueling roars coming

from inside the lobby of the building. Two angry lion shifters.

“I really think they’re going to cause you physical harm,” Hillary said, her voice rising to a

high pitch.

She was a slender, pale blonde with big blue eyes that were owlish behind round glasses.

Today she wore a pearl buttoned rose pink cashmere sweater over a pink silk shell, with a gray
flannel skirt and sensible low heeled pink and gray plaid pumps.

“They can try.” Pixie climbed off the hood of the Lexus, pulled a set of lock picks from the

pocket of her jacket, and within seconds, had swung the door open and slid into the driver’s seat.
“Mmm, leather. Pretty. Want a ride?” She caressed the car seat next to her. “Come on, you know you
want to.”

“You can’t do that!” Hillary squawked. “How did you do that? Those locks are supposed to

be theft proof. Do you even know whose car this is?”

“Don’t know, don’t care.” Pixie fished in her pocket again, pulled out a tiny device of her

own invention, waved it in front of the keyless entry remote, and seconds later, the engine purred to
life.

“See, one of the things that I do for Kenneth is test security systems,” Pixie said. “If I can

breach them, so can any other extremely talented and brilliant thief.”

“Yes, but did he ask you to test the security on this car?” Hillary put her hands on her narrow

hips, a frown of disapproval puckering her face. “If not, I’m afraid I’m going to have to file a report.
You are exposing this corporation to liability-stop that!”

Pixie had turned to her, stuck out her tongue, and made a rude raspberry noise.

Before Hillary could get another word in edgewise, the door flung open, and Dominick

stormed out, his face like thunder.

In human form, he was a handsome blond man with a perpetual scruff of beard, and a body

that would have made Renaissance sculptors swoon.

He was wearing his usual uniform of t-shirt and jeans. The cloth of his white T-shirt molded

to his biceps as if it was painted on, and the jeans accentuated muscular thighs. He was extremely
pretty to look at, but too much of an irritable jerk for Pixie ever to have considered for a roll in the
hay.

The hyena shifter followed behind him. She was pretty in a spray-tanned, overly-bleached,

heavily made up fashion. She was skinny, had improbably huge boobs, and waist length bleached
blonde hair. She had a huge glittering rock on her ring finger, and clung on to the muscular arm of a
lion shifter who looked so much like Dominick that the two were clearly brothers.

“He’s coming straight for us,” Hillary said, her voice rising several octaves higher. “I’m

supposed to keep you safe. All right, you can drive a stolen car just this once– no, darn it! I can’t
condone that! Just – er – run, and I’ll stall him.”

Pixie laughed. “How, exactly? Are you going to beat him to death with the Etiquette For

Bobcat Shifters book that you carry in your purse?”

“That etiquette book comes in very handy on many occasions,” Hillary said in a wounded

tone. “Wait, how do you know what’s in my purse?”

“Girl, please.” Why did people always underestimate Pixie?

Dominick shouldered past Hillary, who was trying to block him, and she stumbled

backwards with a squeak of fright.

He reached into the car, grabbed Pixie’s arm, and hauled her out.

“Hey! This is not what it looks like!” she snapped.

“You didn’t just break into and hotwire my brother’s pussy-ass Lexus?” Dominick roared, his

gold eyes blazing with anger. It was the eyes that always gave shifters away. Shifters could always
scent each other, as well, but a human like Pixie could tell someone was a shifter because their eyes
were the same color as their animal species.

“Okay. It is what it looks like.” Like they couldn’t spare a Lexus. Dominick came from a

family of lion shifter millionaires.

“Ryder! Are you going to let your brother talk about your car like that?” the woman wailed,

clinging to the man’s arm.

She turned and glared at Pixie, and then turned to Ryder, pouting. “And make her give back

what she stole from me!”

As they spoke, two shifters rushed from inside the building. One was a bear shifter named

Kory, one was an elephant shifter named Hans. Dominick flicked a glance at them, then turned back
to Pixie.

“Hand it over.” Dominick said to Pixie, his voice gone low and dangerous. Fur rippled on

his face, and then sank back into his skin.

He held out his hand. With a martyred sigh, she reached into the pocket on the inside of her

jacket, and pulled out the keys to the Lexus, a rhinestone encrusted purse shaped like a pair of red
lips, a pink rhinestone cell phone. Bitch can’t even color coordinate her tacky accessories, she
thought. She slapped them into Dominick’s palm.

“You had the keys to the car?” Hillary’s voice was an outraged squawk. “Why didn’t you

just use them instead of picking the lock?”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Pixie asked, baffled.

“Give me my stuff, you asshole! Now!” the blonde shrieked at Dominick, her nasal tone

scraping like nails on a chalkboard.

Dominick shot her a look of utter disgust, and then hurled the cell phone, the keys, and the

change purse, on to the ground and crushed them under his boot heel. The cell phone shattered into
pieces and the purse tore open. The blonde let out an inarticulate shriek of rage.

Ryder’s face contorted with fury. He shifted into lion form, his clothing splitting and falling

off his massive tawny body, and leaped at Dominick with a roar, and Dominick shifted, and the
elephant and bear shifted, and Hillary screamed and hid behind Pixie.

The lions rolled on the asphalt, growling and snapping at each other. The blonde stood back

on the sidewalk watching them, with a satisfied smirk on her face.

Hillary crouched low behind Pixie, who was standing by the open door of the Lexus.

“Nice job, bodyguard,” Pixie said. “I’ve never felt safer.”

“I did not sign up for this!” Hillary wailed. “Is this how you people carry on all the time? I

am seriously considering handing in my resignation!”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. No, it’s not usually like this,” Pixie lied. Pixie didn’t really want

Hillary to quit. She just wanted her to go back to her nice safe office where she belonged. If Hillary
quit, Kenneth would subject Pixie to one of his scathing lectures, which were considerably more
boring than watching paint dry.

The fight was over in less than a minute. The bear shifter hurled himself onto Dominick and

knocked him away from his brother, then grabbed and pinned him in a bear hug, and the elephant
shifter grabbed Ryder in its trunk and lifted him off the ground, and after a minute the two snarling,
roaring lions shifted back to human form.

In another minute, there were four angry men standing on the sidewalk, with the shreds of

their clothes scattered around them.

Pixie couldn’t help but flick an admiring glance at Dominick. All of his clothes had fallen

away, and he wore nothing except a leather necklace with some odd feathered talisman dangling from
it, which he always wore, even in lion form. He had an amazing body, with those perfectly sculpted
muscles and the six pack that looked as if it had been chiseled by Michaelangelo. Since Pixie tended
to aggravate Dominick so much that he shifted and burst out of his clothes, she got to see him naked a
lot. That was a nice side benefit of taunting the cranky shifter.

“My phone!” the woman wailed. “My purse! Make him pay for that, baby!”

She shot Pixie a look of disgust. “You. Get away from my car. I’m already going to have to

fumigate it the second we get home.”

“That does it.” Pixie flung open the door to the Lexus and leaped in. She slammed the door

shut behind her and hit the gas, tearing out of the parking lot with a screech of rubber on the asphalt.

Glancing in the rearview mirror behind her, she saw Dominick leap into his car. The blonde

was literally stamping her feet up and down on the ground with rage. Hillary just stood there with her
mouth hanging open.

Pixie was annoyed enough that she deliberately led Dominick on a good half hour long chase,

bobbing and weaving all through town before she ditched him. He was very good, but when it came
to evading capture, she was better. Then she turned around and headed back towards Shifters, Inc.

She grabbed her cell phone and called the main office line to tell them she’d be back in a

couple of minutes, and to have someone on hand to keep Dominick from ripping her face off when she
pulled in.

To her surprise, the phone went straight to voicemail. That was unusual. There was always a

live person answering the phone.

She tried to call Bobbi, and the phone rang half a dozen times, and then went to voicemail.

Then she tried Hillary. Then Kenneth.

Voicemail.

What the heck was happening? Was she wrong to be worried? She could understand one or

two lines being busy, but all of them?

By then, she was pulling up in front of the building, behind Dominick’s parked car. There

was another car parked in front of Dominick’s, a limousine with darkened windows, and the engine
was running.

A new client? She’d worry about that later.

She hadn’t survived growing up in the worst neighborhood of Playa Linda without

developing an instinct for sensing trouble. Something was wrong; fear hummed along her nerves and
quickened her heartbeat. She quickly parked and leaped out of the car, leaving it running, and dashed
to the front door.

Dominick stood there, his back to her. The front door was wide open. Dominick was

backing away slowly, and as she ran up the sidewalk, he spun to face her.

“Pixie, stop!” he bellowed, holding up a warning hand.

He didn’t look angry. He looked panicked. Pixie had never seen that look on his face

before.

For once, Pixie didn’t challenge him. She did what he said; she stopped in her tracks. “What

is it?” she called out.

She looked past him, and her heart froze in her chest.

There were at least half a dozen people sprawled on the floor of the lobby, not moving. The

receptionist was slumped over her desk.

Her boss, Kenneth. Kenneth’s wife, Chloe. Her best friend Bobbi. Bobbi’s husband, Jax.
Hillary. Kory. Hans. Were they unconscious, or dead? From where she stood, Pixie couldn’t tell.

Furniture was overturned. A blue glass vase which had rested on the desk was shattered on

the floor, flowers and little glass marbles scattered around it. A chair was broken.

In the distance, sirens wailed, and grew louder.

Chapter Two

“Don’t take another step,” Dominick called out to her. “Don’t come close to me, I might be
contaminated. I checked on them, and they’re all burning up with fever. I’m waiting for Haz-Mat to
arrive.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t bother with that. They won’t have what you need to save your friends.” The

voice was deep and mocking, and it came from inside the building, behind Dominick.

A tall, silver haired man stood in the lobby. He wore shiny mirrored sunglasses which
obscured much of his narrow face. He was clad in a black tailored suit of raw silk, with a red
handkerchief in the pocket, and his shoes were shiny and black, and he held up a syringe in one hand.

“They won’t have this,” he said. He spoke with an Eastern European accent, but Pixie
couldn’t quite place it.

Pixie let out a yell of anger and tried to run past Dominick, who grabbed her by the arm.

“Pixie, don’t!” His grip on her arm was firm. “The air could be contaminated. You don’t
know what’s in there.”

“He’s standing there breathing just fine. Let go of me!” Pixie struggled, but she was no match
for a lion shifter’s strength.

The man in black didn’t seem the least bit concerned with Pixie or Dominick. “Let’s see,
who shall I revive?”

There were at least a dozen shifters scattered around the room. Some were crumpled in a
heap, some lay sprawled out on their backs. All of them were flushed with fever and completely still.

The man glanced around the room, then bent down over Hillary and jabbed the syringe into

her leg. He swiftly capped it and shoved it in his pocket.

Hillary sat up with a gasp, her eyes huge, her chest heaving. Her hair was matted to her
forehead with sweat. Her glasses had fallen onto the floor. She stared around her, eyes wild.

“What happened?” she cried out.

Dominick let out a roar of rage and rushed forward, with Pixie hot on his heels. He shoved
the man backwards, and the man fell back against the reception desk, laughing.

“Who are you? What the hell have you done?” Dominick growled, his hand closing on the
man’s throat. “Answer me, or I’ll rip your god damned throat out.”

“Oh, but that would be such a terrible mistake.” The man showed no sign of fear. “Because I
only bought enough antidote to revive one of your friends. I have the rest stored…elsewhere.
They’ve got days to live, if that. And if you want to save the rest of them, you will do exactly as I
say, when I say.”

Pixie ran over to Hillary, who’d found her glasses and was staring around her with a

bewildered look on her face. Her face was flushed, her face covered with a sheen of perspiration,
her hair plastered to her forehead, but overall she looked all right. Pixie reached out and grabbed her
hand and pulled her to her feet.

Then Pixie knelt down next to Bobbi. Bobbi lay sprawled on her back on the carpeted floor.
Her face was flushed, and her forehead beaded with sweat; Pixie could feel the heat radiating off her.
Her chest rose and fell with each breath, and Pixie quickly found her pulse, which was slow but
steady. Her eyes were closed, and when Pixie pinched her wrist hard, she didn’t respond or show a
flicker of consciousness.

A wave of panic swept over Pixie, threatening to choke her.

Bobbi was the one who’d befriended Pixie when Pixie was still a thief and a hustler, living

in empty tenement buildings and making her living in ways she didn’t like to remember. Bobbi had
gotten her the job at Shifters Inc., and had always believed in her. She’d never patronized her, or
smothered her, or tried to change her. She’d just believed that Pixie could be a better person and lead
a better life.

Now she lay there like a barely breathing corpse.

“Answer me, motherfucker!” Dominick grabbed the front of the man’s collar and slammed
him into the reception desk, knocking his sunglasses loose. The man threw back his head and laughed

The sirens were growing closer. Pixie looked up at the tall silver-haired man, looked right
into his eyes. They were dark pools, dark like black holes which absorbed and trapped all that was
light and good.

She felt an icy shiver run through her. She’d been in some pretty bad spots over the years,
and she’d felt afraid before, but she’d never felt anything like this. There was a sickness in the man.
Normally only witches could sense the presence of magic in other people. Pixie wasn’t a witch, but
she could sense the presence of something dark and foul clinging to him.

He was also the man who’d somehow caused all of her friends to be sickened with a
mysterious plague, however, and she’d find out what he’d done, or die trying.

She shot to her feet as Dominick slammed the man against the desk. The man turned and

shoved Dominick so hard that Dominick flew halfway across the room, crashing into a wooden table
by the reception area. He shouldn’t have been able to do that; even in human form, shifters were
much stronger than non- shifters.

If Dominick couldn’t take this guy, there was no chance that she could, but she never was one

to let common sense stand in her way. She pulled her switchblade from her pocket and ran towards
him, screaming with fury.

At the same time, Dominick charged forward, launched himself at the man, and in a moment
Pixie, Dominick and the man were on the floor, punching and clawing.

Then the man somehow pulled free, and leaped gracefully to his feet.

The sirens were much closer now.

The man reached into his suit pocket and tossed Pixie a cell phone.

“Pixie Montana,” the man said, and when he looked at Pixie his pupils were so big that she
couldn’t even see what color his eyes were. He shoved the sunglasses back in place.

“All of this rests with you,” he said. “You have what I need. Keep that phone with you. I’ll
be in touch.”

The silver haired man turned and dashed out, and Pixie ran after him. He climbed into the
back of the limousine and the limo quickly pulled away.

Ambulances and fire trucks and police cars pulled up a block away, and stopped.

Dominick ran up behind Pixie, breathing hard. “Why the hell did you get in my way?” he
demanded, his voice a low, rumbling growl. “I had him.”

“You so did not have him,” Pixie said. She held up an empty hypodermic needle, which had
been capped; it was the needle he’d used to jab Hillary. “But I got this, from his pocket. Score one
for Pixie.”

Dominick patted his neck and looked around uneasily. “Have you seen my necklace?”

“What? No, I haven’t seen your damned necklace, you jackass. It’s a freaking strip of
leather. I’ll make you another one in arts and craft class. Can we focus on the problem here?”

The firefighters down the street were pulling on haz-mat suits. Nobody was approaching the

building yet.

Dominick grabbed Pixie’s arm, and dragged her back inside.

“When I called 911, I told them that everyone in the building was unconscious, and they all

had high fevers.” Dominick said. “The authorities have no idea what they’re dealing with here. For
public safety reasons, they’re going to want to quarantine us. We’ll be locked up in a hospital room,
probably for days. We won’t be able to do anything to help our friends in time. You heard that guy,
he said that they won’t survive like this for more than a few days.”

“Do you think we’re contagious?” Pixie asked. “I don’t want to risk infecting anyone.”

“I don’t think so,” Dominick said. “Whatever hit these people knocked them out

immediately. We went inside and it didn’t affect us.”

“What should we do?” Hillary asked, her voice weak. She stood leaning on the desk,

clutching her stomach and looking queasy.

Pixie couldn’t imagine Hillary being any good in the field. “You should just go home. Maybe

go to the hospital, get checked out.”

“No, I have to help. These are my friends too,” Hillary insisted. “I can’t just sit back and let

everyone die. Unless…unless you don’t want me to help. If you don’t think I’d be useful…” her
voice quavered.

Pixie didn’t have the time or energy to deal with Hillary’s histrionics.

“Fine. You can come with us if you do exactly what I say, when I say.” She could keep

Hillary busy with internet research, where she wouldn’t be a danger to herself and others.

Dominick glanced at their friends and co-workers who lay sprawled out on the floor.

“He’s got the cure to whatever this is. We need to be able to investigate, to hunt this

motherfucker down, and we can’t do that if we stay here,” he said. “None of us can go to our homes;
the authorities might be able to track us down there, and they’d drag us off to the hospital.”

Pixie took a deep breath. “So we need a place we can lay low while we work on finding this

psycho. All right, come with me. I know a guy.”

Chapter Three

Pixie and Dominick sat on empty crates in what had once been the office of a warehouse

building and now served as the headquarters to a local gang leader. Most of the original furniture had
been removed long ago, and light filtered in weakly through cracked, grime-encrusted windows.
Hillary refused to sit on, or touch, anything. An expression of utter horror wrinkled her face, and
Pixie had no doubt that if she could have, she’d have levitated so she wouldn’t have to touch the
floor.

They were in what had once been the warehouse district of Playa Linda. In the 1970s all the

manufacturing jobs had moved overseas, so the factory employees who’d lived in the post-war
housing tracts had drifted away, and now the entire district was largely abandoned to gangs, drug
dealers, and thieves. The police avoided the neighborhood, refusing to patrol after dark.

Pixie had grown up there, in one of the former post-war housing tracts, which were now low-

income housing projects. The city shoveled all of the welfare cases there so they could kill each
other out of the view of the decent folk in the better neighborhoods. She’d largely raised herself,
fending off the attentions of her mother’s tricks and hustling and stealing to survive.

The district was filthy and dangerous and unpredictable, but Pixie knew the streets and back

alleys and the denizens as intimately as she knew her own flesh.

They were in a neighborhood controlled by Fraser Maxwell, leopard shifter and the leader of

a low-level criminal gang who made most of their money by trafficking in stolen merchandise. The
filthy room served as his office. He leaned back in old office chair behind a desk made of a wooden
pallet laid across wooden crates.

There was electricity in the office, which he’d obtained by illegally tapping into city power,

as well as internet service. He had a shiny new laptop on his desk, and Pixie would have been
willing to bet her right kidney that he’d stolen it. He could have afforded to buy a laptop; he just hated
paying for things, on general principle. The grimy surroundings were an affectation, as well, because
he could have paid for a real office. Pixie knew him well enough to know that he kept that location
not just to stay out of sight of authorities, but because it enhanced his reputation as a tough guy who’d
clawed his way, literally, to the top of the heap.

“So now what?” Dominick asked.

Pixie turned to Hillary.

“Tell us everything you remember,” she said.

Hillary took a deep, quavery, breath. “Well, after you left, and Dominick took off after you,

we got his brother some clothes and called him and his fiancee a cab. Good heavens, the language
she used. Anyway, I was in the lobby when that man with the glasses walked in. Kory was there
talking to the receptionist. The man didn’t say a word, he just grabbed Kory by the collar, and threw
him against the wall for no reason. The receptionist hit the panic button, people came rushing in to
the room, he was throwing them around everywhere as if they were feather pillows, and then…

everything went blank.”

Dominick frowned. “Attacking Kory like that…it was like he was trying to attract attention.

He wanted as many people in there as possible so they could be exposed to whatever it was he did to
them. And I don’t know where the hell his strength came from. He’s human, but I smelled something
else on him too. Something rotten.”

Frances cleared his throat impatiently.

“So tell me again why I should help you?” Frances asked.

“We practically grew up together. I’ve saved your life more than once,” Pixie said

indignantly.

“I’ve saved your life more than once, too,” he pointed out. “And I shanked my half-brother

last month for ratting me out to the cops. He’s still in the hospital pissing into a bag. Sentimentality
doesn’t count for shit with me. You know that.”

Dominick stifled a growl, and Pixie kicked him in the leg. She couldn’t risk having his bad

temper alienate Fraser; they needed his good will if they were going to survive here.

“I work for a security firm. There are a lot of favors we could do for you,” Pixie said,
tension twisting in her gut. She could feel the seconds ticking away, along with her friends’ chance of
survival.

“Not if they all die.” He leaned back in the chair and propped his feet up on the desk.

“That’s a horrible thing to say!” Hillary burst out, blinking back tears.

Pixie resisted the urge to smack her. Hillary was just being Hillary. She didn’t understand
the basic rules of negotiating; don’t reveal your emotional investment. Pretend you’re willing to walk
away at any time.

Fraser winked at her, and leered. “Fraser Maxwell, professional asswipe, at your service.”
Hillary glowered at him and sniffed indignantly.

“My boss is very rich. If you help us, and we’re able to save his life, he can reward you
handsomely,” Pixie said. “Half a million dollars, in cash.” Kenneth was good for it, easily.

“And if I do my best to help you, and he dies of whatever ails him, I won’t get jack shit,”
Fraser pointed out.

“What do you want?”

“A million dollars if he lives. If not…how about your professional services for one
month? For thirty days, you work exclusively for me. You do anything I say.” He leered again, and
waggled his eyebrows.

At that, Dominick leapt to his feet, letting out a rumbling growl. Fur rippled over his face,
and his ears turned round and tufted. His fangs shot down, and his face lengthened. Pixie couldn’t
believe it. He was acting every bit as if he were her jealous mate. Dominick. Acting jealous of her.

Pixie jumped to her feet as well. “Dominick! Cut it out!” she hissed. What the hell? Between
him and Hillary, she was amazed that Fraser hadn’t tossed them out on their asses yet. How was she
supposed to negotiate with these two morons undermining her every move?

“Fine, lover boy. She’s yours. I mostly wanted her services as a thief, anyway. Mostly.
How about I take this one instead?” He turned to Hillary, raking her with a long, slow, appraising
look.

Hillary gasped and went pale. She pressed her hand to her chest, and took a step back,
shrinking into herself.

“I believe I’m experiencing a myocardial infarction,” she announced in a quavering voice.
“If I die right now, please move my body to a better neighborhood and come up with a suitable cover
story for my mother.”

Pixie whipped her switchblade out of her pocket, lunged forward, and slammed her knife in
the desk an inch from Fraser’s hand. He started, sitting up straight and glaring at her.

“Leave my friends the fuck alone,” she snarled. “If we can’t revive Kenneth, then I work for
you for two full months, and I’ll steal anything that you want, but Hillary is off the table. You do not
even look at her. She doesn’t exist. And I’m not having sex with you, you pig.”

She glanced over at Dominick, who’d gone back to human form but was glaring at Fraser
with murder in his eyes. “And he is not my lover boy.”

“Sure he isn’t.” Fraser looked amused, which made Pixie want to punch him really hard.

“No, you jackhole, he really isn’t. Do we have a deal?”

“We have a deal. What do you need from me?”

“For starters, I’d like to consult with Anastasia. Today.”

Fraser looked at her through narrowed eyes. “You suspect black magic.”

“Wait, we’re dealing with black magic here? Is Anastasia a witch who deals in black
magic?” Hillary piped up, eyes big as saucers.

“She’s more gray magic,” Pixie shrugged, and turned back to Fraser, but Hillary wasn’t
done.

“There is no such thing as grey magic in the eyes of the law.” Hillary’s voice rose to a shrill
keen. “Magic is either black, or white. All practitioners of magic must be licensed by the Council of
Magic and must keep a log of each use of magic, and submit the log weekly to their local-”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” Pixie barked. “Do you want to save our friends, or not?
Because if we do this by the book they’ll all die.”

“But everyone at Shifters, Inc. will be taken to the hospital. When they evaluate them, they’ll
scan them for the effects of black magic. They’ll do it legally.” Hillary’s tone was pleading.

“They’ll be scanned by a White Magic Practitioner. They’re not going to be up on the latest

street hoodoo. Nobody knows black magic like someone who deals in it,” Pixie said firmly. “Let the
hospital do whatever they can. I hope it works. In the meantime, I’m going to do things my way.”

“I’ll contact Anastasia,” Fraser said. “What else do you need?”

Before Pixie could answer, Dominick’s cell phone rang. He grabbed it and answered
quickly.

“Tyler? You’re all right? Thank God. Yeah, don’t go anywhere near the building, and don’t
talk to the police. We’re at 39

th

and Green, at the old Bromwell warehouse. Get here as fast as you

can, and don’t talk to anyone else until you get here.”

“What did he say?” Pixie asked anxiously.

“He was out picking up a new laptop, when the attack happened. He was heading back in
when he saw the commotion around the building and turned on his police scanner. Apparently there
were a total of 15 people who were affected, and they’ve all been transported to Playa Linda
General. No news yet on their condition. Police are calling it a terrorist attack.”

Tyler ran their computer security department, and could hack into any database in the world,
which would prove mighty useful.

Of course, it would be awkward working side by side with him. He and Pixie had briefly
dated, until Pixie put her foot down and demanded to know if she was his fated mate. He had to admit
that she wasn’t. When a shifter met his or her fated mate, they had a strong and immediate reaction,
both physical and emotional; they pretty much knew right away that they’d met The One. Tyler had to
confess that although he found her attractive, and liked her, she wasn’t the one.

So she’d broken it off with him. Ever since then, he’d been secretly giving her gifts. She’d
even caught him leaving some of the gifts on her desk when he thought she wasn’t looking. Perfume,
extremely expensive jewelry, gift cards to stores that she shopped at…

Oh well. At the moment, she didn’t have the luxury of being picky about who she’d work
with. If she did, she’d have picked Bobbi first, but Bobbi was…she swallowed hard and tried not to
think about Bobbi.

Pixie turned to Fraser. “How’s your internet connection here?”

“Excellent. And we operate behind a firewall which completely hides our trail from the
authorities.”

“Of course you do. All right, now we just need a place to hang out while we wait for
Anastasia and our friend Tyler to get here,” Pixie said. “Big wolf shifter with curly brown hair and
glasses. Please don’t kill him, we need his help.”

Fraser had lookouts posted all over, and a gang of punks watching over the warehouse.
Pixie, Dominick and Hillary had only gained entrance because Pixie knew him.

Fraser nodded. “Okay. If you head down the hall, three doors to your right, you can wait for

your friend. It’s one of the rooms that my guys crash in sometimes. There’s a couple couches there,
internet, a bathroom. I’ll have some pizza sent in.”

As they walked out, Pixie saw Fraser cast another lascivious look at Hillary, staring directly
at her ass.

She shot him a warning look, but he just smirked at her and went back to the video game he’d
been playing on his laptop when they arrived.

Dominick was breathing hard, clenching and unclenching his hands as they walked down the
hall. He looked pale and sweaty.

“What is it?” Pixie asked him. “You’re acting weird. Do you think you were exposed to
whatever was in our office building?”

“No, that’s not it.”

“How do you know?” Pixie demanded. “How much experience do you have with mysterious
viruses that knock out dozens of people in one pass?”

“Because I know. I’m fine. Leave it alone,” Dominick growled.

Chapter Four

Dominick was not fine. The necklace which had been ripped from him when he was
wrestling with the silver-haired psycho was more than a necklace.

He’d been wearing it continuously for three years now, ever since the day he’d come home

early from work and…his gut churned as he thought of it. He forced the memory out of his mind.

The necklace bore a talisman, one that he’d paid a hefty sum for. And it had worked

perfectly. It had done what he’d asked its creator to do – it had suppressed his lustful urges. That
was exactly what he’d needed, since he’d sworn off women forever.

Now, without the necklace, it seemed that all the pent-up, suppressed lust from the past three

years was exploding inside him. He was a seething cauldron of sexual frustration, and it was making
all of his instincts go bonkers. When Fraser had propositioned Pixie before, it had taken all of his
strength not to shift into lion form and rip his head off. What was up with that? That was the kind of
reaction that a shifter only felt when someone was sniffing after his fated mate – and he knew for a
fact that Pixie couldn’t be his fated mate, because he’d already met his.

He watched Pixie striding rapidly down the hallway ahead of him, her slim legs scissoring

impatiently as she hurried into the room that Fraser had directed them to. The wave of desire that
rolled over him nearly knocked him off his feet.

The room was as dingy and smelled like mold. He barely noticed. For some reason, all he

could think of was Pixie. Her slim body, her small, perfect breasts, her full lips…

“Dominick.” She’d said something to him.

“What?” He shook his head in a desperate attempt to clear it. She was staring at him,

worried.

“I’m fine. I’ll be fine. I need to go for a walk. Clear my head. I’ll be back,” and he rushed

from the room, and headed down the hallway and out the back door, leaving Pixie gaping in
amazement behind him.

He had to get away from her, before he gave in to temptation and ripped her clothes off right

there. Of course Pixie would probably stab him if he tried that, and he’d deserve it.

He smacked himself in the face, hard, as he rushed outside. It didn’t help.

At least he wasn’t suddenly overwhelmed by lust for Hillary, or anyone else. Just Pixie. All

his thoughts were swirling around Pixie.

He paused outside in the alleyway behind the warehouse building. Normally, he found Pixie

absolutely maddening. When she walked in the room, it flipped some kind of switch in him, caused
an angry, itchy rage to prickle at him from the inside.

Without the necklace, though, the anger and the irritation were gone…and replaced with raw,

unbridled desire.

What lousy timing, to lose the necklace when he most needed to keep his wits about him. He

couldn’t go back to Shifters, Inc. to search for it; he was sure that the public health department would
have it cordoned off and under heavy guard.

The shaman who’d made him the talisman lived in Dominick’s hometown of Big Timber, six

hours to the north, on the coast near the mountains. He wouldn’t have time to go get another one while
he was dealing with this crisis. He’d just have to soldier through, somehow.

To take his mind off of Pixie, he grabbed his cell phone. He had half a dozen missed texts

from his brother.

He hit the call back button, scowling at the phone. “I’m fine,” he said when his brother
answered.

“I heard on the news that a building in your area had been quarantined, but they won’t say
why. What’s going on?” Ryder demanded.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out. I’m going to have to lay low for a few days. Tell mom
and dad I’m okay. And I’m sorry, we had to leave your car behind in the parking lot, which is now
crawling with haz-mat teams.”

“Don’t worry about the car. So you’re all right?”

“As far as I can tell, I wasn’t exposed to whatever was in that building. As for me being all
right -what were you thinking bringing that bitch to my office to rub your engagement in my face?”

His brother let out a warning growl. “She’s my fated mate, and my fiancee, whether you like
it or not. You need to get past this. We’re getting married in two weeks, our parents expect you to be
there, and you had better behave. Do you realize how much grief you’re causing our parents, with
your attitude?”

Dominick let out a bitter laugh. “My attitude. Right, that’s a good one. You’re the one who’s
hurting our parents. They hate her even more than I do. If you could just see-” But he was talking to
empty air. He could hear the click of the phone as Ryder hung up on him.

Cursing, he shoved the phone back in his pocket. What the hell else could go wrong today?

Better not to ask.

He turned and stalked off, striding away from the building. The hood rats and gangster
wanna-bes who lurked in doorways and clumped together on street corners cast sullen glances his
way, but he met their gaze straight on and they looked away.

* * *

“What’s wrong with him? Are we sure that Dominic isn’t infected with…whatever everyone

else was infected with?” Hillary asked.

The room that Fraser had directed them to was as grimy as the rest of the warehouse. The

couches were passable, at least. One was plaid, one was pink and had a floral pattern. There was an
overstuffed brown armchair that somebody could sleep in. Fraser had probably stolen all the

furniture from somewhere, as well as the odd assortment of mismatched coffee tables, lamps, desk
and chairs.

“We’re not sure of anything,” Pixie sighed. “Then again, it seems like everyone who was

infected, or bewitched, or whatever, just keeled over right away. Dominick’s still walking around,
he’s just acting weird as hell. Tyler! What took you so long?”

“Are you kidding? I practically flew here.” Tyler strode through the door, accompanied by

one of Fraser’s human bodyguards. He carried a small leather suitcase.

The bodyguard nodded at Pixie and walked away.

Tyler was a wolf shifter, handsome in a bookish way, with a stocky body and gold-rimmed

glasses.

He sat down on the couch and opened up the suitcase, scowling. As usual, he didn’t look

Pixie in the eye.

“Where’s Dominick?” he said as he unpacked his laptop, and various other machines that

Pixie didn’t recognize, but that she knew Tyler could use to hack into any database or computer in the
world.

“He went for a walk.”

“Now?” Tyler was startled.

“He’s acting weird. Weirder than usual. What have you got so far?” Pixie asked impatiently.

“I’m getting calls from our operatives out in the field,” Tyler said. “I’ve told them all to stay

put and carry on with their assignments. It wouldn’t be safe for them to come back here anyway, not
until we figure out what we’re dealing with.”

Tyler was Kenneth’s second in command. Pixie didn’t envy him his position at the moment,

having to run Shifters, Inc. while trying to track down the source of a deadly plague, but if anyone
could handle it, he could.

“Have you heard anything about the situation at headquarters? About what happened to

everybody?”

“Nothing useful. ” He was turning on his laptop as he spoke to her. “Everyone has been

transported to the hospital, they’re all alive but unresponsive, and nobody has identified the cause
yet. I spoke with the Chief of Police, he ordered me to come to police headquarters immediately to
speak to him, I declined. I can get more done out in the field than I can locked away in some briefing
room.”

“That’s what we figured,” Pixie said. “We’re going to have to lay low and investigate this on

our own. The chief didn’t tell you anything about anyone’s condition?”

“He just said that tests are being run. You know they’re not going to give me too much

information on a case that’s under investigation.”

Pixie quickly filled Tyler in on what had happened, and showed him the cell phone that the

man had handed her. “He hasn’t called back yet.”

Tyler examined the phone. “It’s a burner phone. A disposable. Still, I might be able to trace

where any calls originate from.”

He opened up the phone, pried out the sim card, and slid it into a tiny slot on one of his

machines. After a few seconds, there was a ping sound; he pulled the card back out and put it back in
the phone, handing it to her.

“That should work. If he calls you, I can track down where the call is coming from. What

did he mean that you had what he needed?” Tyler asked her.

Pixie shook her head. “I’ve been racking my brains. I have no idea. I don’t have anything of

value, especially to someone like that. You could tell that he’s rich just from the way he dressed and
carried himself. He looked like some corrupt billionaire. What could he want from me?”

“Anything that you might have stolen from somebody?”

“I’ve largely retired from that business since I came to work for Shifters. Nowadays I steal

things to amuse myself and then I put them back.”

“That is not amusing,” Hillary said indignantly. “I will have to report this to Kenneth when he

recovers.”

“He already knows,” Pixie snapped. “Don’t make me regret that I let you come with us; oh,

too late, I already am.” She deliberately turned her back on Hillary, talking to Tyler, who hunched
over the laptop. He was doing searches for the virus symptoms, she saw.

“I never kept anything I stole before, anyway; I fenced it. I certainly never stole anything that

would interest someone like him. And if I had something that he wanted, why wouldn’t he just ask for
it?”

“I guess we won’t know until he calls you back. Let’s hope it’s soon.”

“He had a strong Eastern European accent, but I couldn’t place the country exactly,” Pixie

said. She described his looks, and the strange appearance of his eyes.

“That’s helpful,” Tyler nodded. “I can check incoming flights to all local airports, and see if

anyone who fits that description has entered the country recently, and I’ll hack into the police
database and see if they’ve found out anything that they’re not telling us.”

“Is that legal?” Hillary asked nervously. “I’m not sure that I can allow this.”

Pixie groaned. She didn’t need any more stress right now, and Hillary’s anxiety was about to

give her an aneurysm. Of all the people that the man had to revive, he had to pick Hillary? He
couldn’t have actually picked someone who was cut out for field work, and for skirting around the
law when necessary?

“Hillary, let’s go for a walk. Just stay with me,” Pixie said, and she leaped to her feet.

Hillary followed her out of the room.

They walked out front, passing Fraser’s office. “Anastasia will be here shortly,” he called

out.

Pixie nodded, and led Hillary out the front of the warehouse.

Even in daylight, the neighborhood somehow always looked dingier and darker than the

wealthier area to the east of them, as if a pall perpetually hung over it. Stray dogs nosed turned -over
garbage cans. Weeds poked up through cracks in the sidewalk. The few people who were
wandering around looked sullen and dangerous.

“So, you really grew up here?” Hillary looked around in wide eyed astonishment.

“About ten blocks from here, in the projects.” Pixie shrugged. “It wasn’t so bad. It taught me
how to fend for myself.”

“Do you still talk to your parents?”

“Good God, no. My mother was an alcoholic who died of liver failure. And I have no idea
who my father was. Anyone who’d voluntarily associate with my mother, I’m better off not knowing.
How are things with your mother?”

“Oh, you know.” Hillary’s face turned doleful. “The same.”

Hillary’s mother was shrill, waspish and critical. Just about every phone call she made to
Hillary ended with Hillary crying.

“You could stick up for yourself, you know. She has no right to speak to you that way.
You’re very smart, you’re good at what you do, and Kenneth really values you as an employee.”

“He does?” Hillary’s eyes went wide.

“Of course he does.” Pixie had no idea what Kenneth thought of Hillary, but the girl was
clearly desperately in need of a self esteem boost.

“Oh look, there’s Anastasia,” Pixie said. She could see her pulling up in front of the
building. “Let’s go inside and wait for her. She’ll want to talk to Fraser before she talks to us.”

Pixie saw the ripple of dismay run across Hillary’s face as they walked back inside.
Hillary glanced nervously at Fraser’s office as they passed it, but he didn’t look up as they walked
by.

Tyler was hunched over his laptop, and he gestured at them eagerly when they came in.
“I’ve got something,” he said. “A man going by the name of Ion Barbu flew a private jet into a small
commercial airport two hours from here, three days ago. He departed from Romania.” He turned the
computer screen towards Pixie. The picture looked exactly the silver-haired man. He wasn’t
wearing sun-glasses, but looking at the picture, his eyes still seemed odd. They were blue, but too
bright and perfect.

“That’s him. I think he’s wearing contact lenses, though,” Pixie said.

“Yes, it looks like it. I’m also sure the name is fake, because when I search other databases,

this person seems to have appeared out of nowhere. I’d say the same for the people that he’s
travelling with; database searches don’t turn up anything on them. I think their passports are fake.”

“Shouldn’t we call the police?” Hillary asked.

Tyler frowned. “Not yet. If they put out an APB on him, it might spook him, and he might flee
the area and take the antidote with him. Let’s give it a little time, see if he contacts Pixie tonight.”

Fraser banged on the doorway and leaned in, the perpetual leer tugging at his mouth.

“Looking good, Pixie,” he smirked.

“You saw me like twenty minutes ago. I haven’t changed,” Pixie said irritably. “What’s

up?”

“Your black magic connection is here.”

Chapter Five

Anastasia strode through the doorway, her black ankle length silk dress hugging her lean

frame. She had a pale heart shaped face and flowing black curls. She wore a leather braided
necklace with various talismans and totems hanging off it, and over her shoulder was slung a black
suede fringed purse.

There were dark circles under her big dark eyes, and she looked tired and drawn.

“Pixie,” she said. “Long time no see. We used to be friends. You never write, you never

call.”

“Apparently I should have,” Pixie said, surveying Anastasia with a critical eye. “You don’t

look so good.”

“I understand, really I do. If I ever got out of this hellhole, I wouldn’t look back.”

“You could get out any time you wanted. I did call you a while back, in fact. I told you we

had work for you. You could go legit.”

“Oh, I think it’s a little late for that.” Anastasia’s smile had no humor and no warmth. Her

eyes looked darker than Pixie remembered. “Why are you staring at me?”

“Your eyes are dark. They didn’t used to look like that.”

“Black magic, my dear. It rots you from the inside out. It shows up in the eyes.”

“I told you,” Hillary muttered, glaring at Pixie. “How is dealing with her any better than

dealing with that man with the sunglasses?”

Anastasia sneered at her. “Afraid I’ll turn you into a toad? Oops, looks like someone beat

me to it.”

“Pixie!” Hillary wailed. “Are you going to let her talk to me like that?”

“If you don’t want my help, I’ve got plenty of people who do,” Anastasia said, turning to

leave.

Great. Just what Pixie needed right now. Two adults acting like kindergarteners. And Pixie

would have to be the mature one? Like anyone outside of this room would ever believe that.

“Hillary. Go take a walk,” Pixie snapped.

“Fine. I need to call my mother anyway.” Hillary didn’t need to be told twice. She rushed

out of the room without looking back.

“She has to call her mommy?” Anastasia echoed mockingly.

“Yeah, yeah. She calls her mother at least three times a day. It’s a beautiful thing. Anyway,

let’s get back to our problem.” Pixie introduced Anastasia to Tyler and described, yet again, what had
happened at Shifters Inc., including what the silver-haired man had looked like.

Then Pixie pulled the empty syringe from her pocket and handed it to Anastasia.

“This was the antidote that he injected in Hillary,” Pixie said. “There have got to still be

traces inside the syringe. Can it be reproduced? And what would cause something like this?”

Anastasia held the syringe up to the light, and shuddered. “I pick up traces of dark magic just

from touching this. Very dark. Makes me look pure as the driven snow.”

She turned and fixed her dark gaze on Pixie. “This will cost you, you know.”

“Of course.” Everyone wanted their cut. Kenneth was a billionaire; money wouldn’t be an

issue. The issue was whether Anastasia, or anyone, could counteract magic this dark.

Anastasia examined the syringe thoughtfully. She leaned forward and sniffed at it. She

closed her eyes for a moment, concentrating hard, then opened them again. “It’s most likely some
type of virus that was infused with a strain of black magic so it would behave exactly the way the
maker wanted it to. A designer virus. The antidote is created at the same time as the virus, and
works uniquely to counteract it.”

“Why didn’t the virus affect Dominick and me?”

“He probably designed it to be fast acting, so it would target only who he wanted.

Obviously, since he needs something from you, he didn’t want it to affect you. Many viruses, whether
magical or otherwise, die within minutes of being exposed to the air. So by the time you got there, it
was probably no longer contagious.”

Pixie nodded. Anastasia knew her stuff.

“So what are your next steps?”

Anastasia opened up her purse and dropped the syringe in.

“I know someone who works with black magic curses. It is possible that he will be able to

replicate the antidote. We also might be able to track down its origin. You know how scientists use
DNA to identify people? Magic has its own unique signature, a kind of vibration that a very sensitive
magician can detect. There’s only a handful of witches and wizards in the entire world who dabble in
this kind of thing, and if we can trace it back to them, we can find out who the client was. I’ll need a
down payment.”

Tyler, who’d been sitting back and listening to their conversation without a word, spoke up.

“I can take care of that. I have access to the company bank accounts.”

“One hundred thousand. And another hundred and fifty thousand if we can come up with an

antidote.”

Tyler nodded. He didn’t even blink.

“What bank account shall I transfer it into?”

She rattled off a string of numbers.

Within minutes, he’d transferred the money into a bank account in the Cayman Islands.

“A witch with an offshore bank account. I had no idea,” Pixie said.

“We keep up with the times just like everybody else. You and Tyler need to give me your

contact information,” she said. “If we can trace this to its maker, we’ll have a better idea how to
counter-act it. I’ll make this top priority, and I’ll call you as soon as I hear anything.”

Tyler and Pixie both recited their phone numbers.

“You know, this money…this would be enough to get you out,” Pixie said. “You’re still

supporting your family, right? You moved your little brother out to the suburbs with your aunt? This is
enough to buy them financial security.”

Anastasia gave a small, resigned shrug of her shoulders. “It’s no longer just that. Tapering

off from black magic is harder than you’d think. It becomes addictive, like a drug that gives you an
incredible high when you’re casting, and then makes you feel sick and loathsome when the high wears
off. There’s a point of no return. The man you described to me, his eyes…he’s definitely passed that
point, long ago.”

“You haven’t,” Pixie insisted. She knew what it felt like to live one day at a time, without

hope of things ever getting better.

“So now you’re a professional do-gooder? Just worry about yourself, Pixie, I’m really not

worth the effort. And don’t argue with me; you have no idea what I’ve done for money.”

“I know what I’ve done for money. In the past,” Pixie said. “I know how I let people treat

me.”

Anastasia turned away, ready to leave. “I’ve got work to do.”

Dominick walked in, his face radiating tension, and Anastasia glanced up at him, then Pixie.

“Your fated mate?” she asked.

Pixie barked out a laugh. “Thanks, Anastasia, I needed the comic relief.”

“No, he is,” Anastasia said, her voice serious. Now Pixie was worried. This dark magic

stuff had apparently given Anastasia brain damage.

“Okay,” she said in a soothing voice. “Sure he is. You call us the minute you find out

anything, all right?”

Anastasia nodded, and left. Pixie watched her go, frustrated. She should have made more of

an effort to keep in touch, although who knows if that would have helped.

One emergency at a time, she reminded herself.

Tyler glared at Dominick. “Good of you to join us,” he snapped. “Did you have a nice

walk?”

“Hey,” Dominick growled at him. “I’m dealing with something here. Where are we right

now? Have we made any progress?”

Before Tyler could answer, the disposable cell phone rang.

Pixie pulled the phone out of her pocket, her stomach clenching. If she messed up, said one

wrong thing, it meant her friends’ lives. She hated it that everything was resting on her shoulders.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Pixie.” His voice sent chills crawling up her spine.

“How do you know my name, and what is it you want with me?” she snapped.

“All in good time. I will need your services tomorrow. Be available, and keep the phone

with you at all times; sleep with it by your bedside. I’ll tell you where to go, and a car will be
waiting to pick you up. No police. If you call them, I will know, and I will let every last one of your
friends burn up and die.”

Then there was a click. “Wait!” Pixie yelled. “God damn it…”

“I have a location,” Tyler said. “I’ve locked on to the phone that he used to call you.” He
looked at the computer screen. “Hmm. It looks as if he’s at the Gilded Swan Hotel. Give me a
minute…” He tapped on the computer for a while, and then looked up.

“An anonymous party booked the penthouse suite and the entire top floor of the hotel.
There’s literally no name in the hotel register, and it says the room was paid for in cash. Thirty
thousand dollars a day.”

Pixie nodded. “We can disguise ourselves as bellhops, go up to his floor. Tell him the
management is sending up a complimentary bottle of champagne. Once we get in, we can play it by
ear. My hope is we can grab him, drag him out of there, and force him to talk. If there’s too much
security in there, we can at least plant a bug so we can gather some more intel, and have men planted
outside the hotel who can follow him if he leaves.”

“I’ll come with you,” Tyler said.

“No, you need to stay here and keep doing whatever research you can, and keep running
Shifters Inc.,” Dominick said. “Coordinate with all of the firm’s connections and resources. You’re
much better at that than either of us would be.”

“Yeah, you need to be here when Anastasia calls back, too,” Pixie said. “And by the way,
for the love of God, don’t tell Hillary where we’re going. Tell her we went out for a drive. I can’t
deal with any more of her nagging.”

Tyler grimaced, but nodded. “All right. I just feel like I’m sitting here on my ass while our
friends are-” he glanced at Pixie, then glanced away. “While our friends are getting excellent
medical care.”

Pixie pictured all her friends lying on hospital beds, burning with fever as the virus
overwhelmed their systems, their organs straining and failing, and she realized that she was actually,
literally, about to cry. She turned away from him and Dominick and blinked furiously, desperate not
to shed tears in front of him. Where she’d grown up, showing weakness got you killed.

To her surprise, Dominick grabbed her hand and squeezed it, and didn’t say a word. He

stood there for a moment, his big, strong hand wrapped around hers, and she felt an odd calm flowing
into her.

“I’m fine,” she said finally. She should have let go of his hand, but she found herself
enjoying his comforting warmth far too much.

“You better be,” he growled. “If you cry, I’m going to have to smack you around some, and
you might like it too much.”

Pixie burst out laughing.

With newfound strength and resolve flowing into her, she squeezed his hand and then let go.

“Let’s get this party started,” she said.

Chapter Six

Pixie paused outside the penthouse room on the 15

th

floor and turned to look at Dominick,

annoyance rippling through her. She had enough to worry about; she didn’t need Dominick freaking
out on her right now.

“Dominick, seriously, what is wrong with you?” she asked.

He was still breathing hard, clenching and unclenching his fists, and he couldn’t look Pixie in

the eye. What was his problem? Pixie knew she annoyed the hell out of him with the way she needled
him, and he’d threatened her with dire consequences more than once, but she’d always assumed that
she and he were mostly joking around. Apparently not. Apparently he really couldn’t stand her.

She’d never been forced to work this closely with him before, and obviously he was hating

every second of it, which stung more than she’d expected it to.

What was with him squeezing her hand like that before? With him acting jealous of her when

Fraser leered at her? Why was he suddenly sending weird, mixed signals? She liked it better when
he was consistently grouchy. At least she knew what to expect.

“I’m fine.” He didn’t look fine, but Pixie didn’t have anyone else to call on as backup.

She’d just have to pray that he didn’t screw things up.

Earlier, Pixie and Dominick had gone to the dry cleaners that was used by the Gilded Swan,

and while Dominick distracted the owner, she’d stolen two bellhop’s uniforms.

Then Pixie had taken out her lip piercing, scrubbed off her cat eye makeup, and slapped on a

wig that they’d picked up from a wig shop, to hide her purple hair. She now had sleek blond hair,
subtle makeup in natural tones, and frosty pink lip gloss. Her best friend in the world wouldn’t
recognize her.

The bell hop uniforms came with a hat. Dominick had shaved his scruffy beard off and

donned brown contact lenses, and Pixie had used stage makeup to darken his skin and hands. With the
hat and the uniform, Ion was unlikely to recognize him, or so she hoped.

Fraser’s men were parked in a car across the street from the hotel, watching out in case Ion

left the hotel. Tyler had shown them the passport picture of him.

Tucked discretely under both her and Dominick’s uniform were smoke bombs and goggles. If

they decided that they could grab Ion and make it out of the hotel, Fraser had a car full of his thugs
parked outside. Their next move depended on how well guarded their target was.

Now they were standing outside Ion Barbu’s room with a room service tray, with a stolen

bottle of champagne on it.

“Calm down and act normal,” she snapped. “If you go in there acting like you’re about to

have a stroke, you’ll blow our cover.”

He nodded, slowed his breathing, and forced a smile on his face. “I’m okay,” he said.

“Bullshit,” she muttered, but they had no choice but to forge ahead.

“Room service!” she called out cheerfully, disguising her voice and giving it a southern lilt.

“We didn’t order any room service!” A voice from inside snarled back.

“We’ve got a magnum of champagne, compliments of management.”

There was a pause, and Pixie saw someone looking through the peephole. Then the door
swung open, and she and Dominick wheeled the cart in.

The room was lavishly decorated with 18

th

century gilded furniture and plush sofas and

loveseats, with a floor to ceiling view of the city. Ion Barbu sat at a table across the room, playing
cards with two men in dark suits. He was still wearing the dark glasses. He glanced up as they
walked in. She and Pixie had their heads down as they wheeled the cart inside.

Pixie could hear Dominick’s harsh breathing as they walked in the room. Keep it together,
keep it together, she thought.

As they wheeled the cart, she casually slipped a small electronic bug under a small side
table. Nobody seemed to notice. Pixie was a master of sleight of hand.

Dominick caught Pixie’s eye and he gave a slight shake of his head. There were too many
people in the room for them to grab Ion. They needed to leave, and discuss their next move. They
might have to call the cops after all; waiting for Ion to make his next move was too risky.

There were a dozen men in the room. Some of them had their jackets off, and their gun
holsters were clearly visible. There were semi-automatic weapons lying on the coffee tables, on the
couches, and on the table in front of Ion and his card playing body-guards…so a quick snatch and
grab of Ion was probably out. Especially if they had silver-coated bullets, which, even though they
were illegal, was pretty likely. None of these people looked like the type who’d let the law put a
crimp in their style.

She and Dominick would have to go back to Fraser’s headquarters, sit down with Tyler, and
figure out their next move. Maybe they’d have to call the cops in after all. Time was running out.

One of the men glanced over at Pixie, a long appraising glance that ran up and down her
body like filthy hands. Dominick let out a low rumbling growl.

No, no, no…

“Is she on the menu?” the man smirked. He reached out and grabbed her ass, causing Pixie
to yelp and jump back.

With a roar, Dominick shifted, exploding out of his uniform. His skin rippled and was
covered with golden fur in an instant, and claws shot from massive paws. Within seconds he was an
enormous, tawny lion with a flowing mane, his tail thrashing violently as he crouched to leap.

The guards jumped to their feet, shouting. One of them leveled a gun at Dominick and, as
Dominick leaped through the air, he fired, and a tranquilizer dart lodged in Dominick’s thick neck.
Dominick crashed to the ground on top of the man who’d grabbed Pixie, knocking him down and

pinning him underneath his unconscious body.

Under the tranquilizer’s effects, Dominick rippled again, his fur sinking back into his skin,
his limbs straightening, massive jaw sinking back in until his face was back in human form. He lay
naked and unconscious on the floor, and the guard shoved his body off, and leaped to his feet, kicking
him.

“Get the hell off him!” Pixie hurled herself at the guard and they went down on the floor.
She kneed him in the groin so hard he doubled over, wheezing, tears streaming from his eyes. Then
she slammed the palm of her hand upward into his nose, shattering it with a crunch, and sending a
spray of blood across the room.

Within seconds, she was yanked off him by two of the bodyguards, and hauled to her feet,
kicking and cursing.

Ion stood facing her, a look of amusement on his face.

“Pixie. So good of you to drop in,” he said.

* * *

Tyler, Fraser and Hillary were gathered around the laptop, which played back the sounds

emanating from the bug planted in Ion Barbu’s room.

They’d hidden their plans from her for most of the evening, to her indignation. By the time

she realized what they were up to, it was too late to convince them that what they were planning was
far too dangerous.

Now they heard shouts, screams, curses in the background. She’d heard Dominick’s angry

roar, and Pixie’s screech of rage.

“We’ve been made.” It was a man’s voice. “They know we’re here.”

“Indeed.” Another man, this one with an Eastern European accent. That must be Ion Barbu.

“We need to move to the countryside.”

“Where are you taking us?” Pixie’s voice, loud and angry.

“You’ll find out when we get there.” Well, shoot. If only he’d rattled off an address. That

would have been much too easy, though?

“Should we take him, or leave him? You only need her, right? We could just kill him and

dump his body.”

Hillary and Tyler exchanged panicked glances.

“We’ll bring him. He could actually be useful tomorrow night,” Tyler said.

“I should…I don’t know. I should go to the hotel. See if there’s anything I can do.”

“Don’t be an ass,” Fraser growled. “My men will follow them.” He smirked at her. “You

should stay here and entertain me.”

Hillary sniffed. Oh, the things she did for her job. This type of thing certainly hadn’t been in

the Human Resources Manager job description. Someone owed her a huge, huge bonus.

“First of all, I’d rather bathe in the sewer. And secondly, what if your men lose them?”

“They won’t. And you don’t know what you’re missing.”

She curled her lip. “I’m guessing a trip to the STD clinic.”

Before he could answer, his cell phone rang, and he answered quickly.

“Anastasia? What have you found out?” He paused and listened to her talk. Hillary strained
to hear, but she couldn’t make out the words. “All right, that’s great news. Good to hear. Keep me
posted.”

He hung up the phone.

“She called a contact of hers in Romania. She says that they’ve already identified the man
who provided Ion Barbu with that spell; there aren’t many people who can do work that specialized,
and there’s only one in all of Eastern Europe. Her contact in Romania turned it over to Interpol.
Authorities in Europe have an APB out for him, and if they pick him up, they can force him to give up
Ion’s real identity.”

“If he even knows it,” Tyler sighed. “Okay, here’s my guess. Pixie is a talented thief. I
suspect there’s a good chance that Ion wants her to steal something for him, and he’ll make Dominick
help her. I don’t think they’ll be harmed before tomorrow night. So we can just-”

Fraser’s phone rang again, and he answered it, and then scowled.

“Fucking morons,” he snarled.

“What?” Hillary said, wincing at his entirely inappropriate language.

“My men lost them.”

Chapter Seven

The mansion they’d been taken to was faux-Mediterranean , with red barrel tile roof and a

cream colored stucco exterior. Dominick had a sheet from the hotel wrapped around his naked body,
since when he’d shifted he’d destroyed his bell-hop uniform. They didn’t get much time to check
out their surroundings, however. Pixie and Dominick were led through a courtyard decorated with
gigantic potted palms and hustled inside quickly, at gunpoint.

Dominick could smell the silver coating on the bodyguard’s bullets, which meant there was

no point in resisting; they’d kill him within seconds, and then where would that leave his friends?
He’d just have to bide his time until an opportunity presented itself – and then, he promised himself,
he’d rip Ion’s intestines out.

He couldn’t believe how badly he’d screwed things up back at the hotel. Pixie was furious at

him, as well she should be; it was obvious from the dirty looks she kept shooting him.

They paused inside the cavernous entry room as the guards locked the door behind them.

“What is this place?” Pixie asked, glancing around.

Ion shrugged. “One of my backups. I’ve survived as long as I have because I always have a

backup plan. Remember that.” There was a hard edge to his voice as he spoke.

“So why are we here? What is it that you need me to do?” Pixie asked.

“You’ll find out at the appropriate time.”

He gestured at one of his guards.

“Put a collar on him. No point in taking chances.”

Dominick glowered as one of the guards knelt down and snapped a thick copper ring on his

ankle. Now he wouldn’t be able to shift.

Ion reached out and grabbed Pixie’s wig, pulling it off her head. “Well, well, a set of lock

picking tools,” he said, smiling at the set of picks she’d taped to the scalp of the wig. “How
resourceful of you. Sorry, I’ll have to keep those.”

He nodded to his guards. “Lock them in.”

The guards hustled them down a hallway, and into a room without windows. There was a

bed with a wooden frame, and no other furniture. The door was thick, solid wood.

As soon as the door slammed shut, Pixie reached up and fished around in her hair.

She pulled out a hairpin, twisted it, and a sharp end was exposed. “Ha,” she said. “People

always underestimate me.”

Then she set to work on the copper ring. “Okay, I’ve got the lock open, but leave it on for
now. If you get the opportunity to shift, you’ll be able to rip it off instantly.”

Then she stood up and punched him in the arm.

“Nice going back there in the hotel, by the way,” she snapped. “What the hell was that?”

Dominick groaned and buried his face in his hands. “I know. Believe me, I know. I

completely blew it for us. I may have killed all of our friends with my foolishness.”

“Would you care to share your thoughts? Why the hell did you do that?”

Dominick grimaced. Telling her was going to be humiliating. He’d rather just let her keep

hitting him. “If I tell you, you’ll laugh.”

“Why would I laugh?” Pixie was baffled.

“The necklace. The one that got torn off when I was wrestling with Ion. There was a

talisman on it that…suppressed my sex drive. And now that it’s been torn off, I can’t concentrate. I’m
acting like a crazy man, I know.”

Pixie started at Dominick in astonishment. “Why would you have that kind of talisman?”

“Because my fated mate cheated on me.”

“I’m sorry, she did what?” Pixie’s eyes went wide with shock.

Dominick wasn’t surprised at her reaction. It was just about unprecedented. He’d never

heard of a shifter cheating on their fated mate before.

His family had been shocked. Everyone in their home town of Big Timber had been

shocked. Dominick had been so furious, and so humiliated, that he’d stayed only long enough to break
off his engagement with his fated mate, get the shaman to make that talisman which would ensure he’d
never be with a woman again, and leave town.

“I can’t believe she did that to you. What a bitch.” Well, at least Pixie looked indignant, not

amused.

He sat down on the bed, staring at the floor.

“I guess I wasn’t enough for her.” Even thinking about it made him queasy. Was it something

he’d done? Their sex had been passionate, he’d tried very, very hard to be the perfect mate despite
the strange doubts that had plagued him from the beginning…was it his fault for having doubted her?

“Are you crazy?” Pixie demanded. “You’re incredibly hot. You’re a catch. She was lucky

to have you.”

Oh, God. Pixie telling him he was hot…that was just what he didn’t need. He was struggling

with every last bit of his self control, and all he wanted to do was jump on her and rip her clothes off
with his teeth.

“Anyway,” Pixie continued. “Your fated mate – uh – isn’t it possible that there was some

mistake? She wasn’t really your fated mate?”

“I wish that were the case, but from the minute I first met her, I couldn’t stop thinking about

her. I couldn’t stand her personality, I used to wish every day that she wasn’t my fated mate, but the
way I couldn’t stop thinking about her – I’d never felt that way about anyone before. It was an
obsession. I could hardly concentrate at work, when she wasn’t near me it was physically painful. It
was pretty damned obvious that she was my fated mate.”

“Huh. I don’t know, somehow that doesn’t sound right,” Pixie said. “I mean, I’ve talked to

people who are shifters, and that doesn’t sound like what they experienced at all.”

“Maybe fate just doesn’t want me to have a mate. I don’t know, Pixie, I wish I knew.”

“So…are you thinking about her again, now that the bracelet is off?”

Dominick looked up and met Pixie’s eyes. “No,” he said in a choked voice. “All that I can

think about is you.”

Chapter Eight

What astonished Pixie, even more than hearing those words, was realizing how much she’d

longed to hear him say them.

Where had that come from? Had she always wanted Dominick and just never let herself

acknowledge it?

“You’re not just saying that?” she asked suspiciously. Dominick wanted her? Dominick, the
handsome lion from a family of millionaires, wanted Pixie, the street rat?

“Of course I’m not just saying that. I want you so much I can’t see straight. When that guy
asked if you were on the menu, I came close to killing him. I wish that I hadn’t already met my fated
mate, because if I hadn’t, I’d swear that it was you.”

Pixie was speechless. Of all the words that she’d ever expected to hear out of Dominick’s
mouth…those definitely weren’t on the list. “Pixie, I swear to God I’ll kill you if you don’t give my
wallet back right now” – now THAT was what she expected to hear out of Dominick’s mouth.

However, this presented her with an interesting possibility. Especially given the fact that
this could, literally, be their last night on Earth. She had no idea what Ion would ask of her tomorrow,
or whether she’d survive it.

“So,” she said. “You’ve got all this pent up sexual energy and it’s making it impossible for
you to concentrate, or even function.”

“Yeah, that’s about the size of it.”

At that, Pixie couldn’t help but glance at his crotch, and the erection tenting the sheet still
wrapped around his waist. The size of it was pretty impressive, actually.

“Well,” she said, “I can’t risk having you screw things up for us again, so we’re going to

have to figure out a way to relieve all that sexual tension.”

“But how?” he groaned dolefully. “There’s no way for me to get another talisman without

going back to the shaman who- Pixie, what are you doing?” he asked, as she straddled his lap.

“Are you really that stupid?” she demanded.

“I can’t do this to you,” he said in a strangled voice. “I can’t use you like that.”

“Who says you’re using me?” She looped her arms around his neck, pressing against him.

“Maybe I’m using you.”

She felt his rock hard erection jerk, and she pushed herself up against it.

“Pixie,” he groaned, his voice agonized. “I won’t be able to stop myself.” His words came

out in between harsh rasps of breath.

“I don’t want you to stop yourself.” She brushed her lips against his. “And by the way, I like

it rough,” she said, murmuring into his neck.

With a growl, he half stood up and moved his body, and she slid onto the bed. He straddled

her, the sheet falling away.

He reached down, grabbed her bellhop uniform shirt with both hands, and ripped it open in

the front. Buttons flew everywhere. Then he did the same to her bra, tearing it open as if it were
tissue paper.

“Like this?”

He grabbed her hands and pinned them above her head, and pressed his body against hers.

His hard, muscular body pressed into hers, trapping her on the mattress.

She felt a wave of heat rush through her, soaking her panties and turning her bones to liquid.

She yanked her hands against his, but he kept them pinned, and she stifled a whimper. She wanted to
touch him, to run her hands over his smooth, hard flesh, but she also loved how he was dominating
her.

He nipped at her neck, scraping it with his teeth, and she squirmed and moaned beneath him.

“Oh, God,” she whimpered. “I want you.”

Instead of answering, he ran his tongue over the spot he’d just bitten, and then moved on to

claim her mouth in a passionate, hungry kiss. His tongue swept through her mouth, slowly, swirling
around her tongue and leading it in an intimate dance. She kissed back, wrapping one leg around him
and pressing him into her.

He moved his hands so only one hand was pinning both her wrists. With his other hand he

reached down and unsnapped the button of her pants, then unzipped it.

She lifted her hips so he could push her pants down, and his fingers slipped between her legs,

stroking the slippery petals of her pussy.

“Yes,” she moaned. “Touch me. More.”

“Like that, baby?”

A finger slipped inside her, curving inward, moving and stroking until it found the spot that

made her arch her back beneath him and cry out.

“Yes!” she cried out. “Right there. Yes.”

As he stroked her, he moved back to kiss her again, as if he couldn’t bear to stop. His kiss

was demanding, all-consuming. The heat built inside her, and she moaned into his mouth.

While his index finger stroked her inner wall, he moved his thumb to her clit, massaging the

swollen pink button with his thumb pad. The warmth inside her grew, and she felt an urgency that
was almost painful. She writhed under his hand, and small whimpers were wrenched from her
mouth. That cock – she wanted it inside her, filling her, thrusting into her.

But her hands were pinned, and her mouth was filled with his kiss, and she could do nothing

but writhe helplessly underneath him, as the pleasure and heat swelled in her lower abdomen. She
felt herself growing more and more sensitive, until pain and pleasure mingled, and she whimpered

with desperate need.

Finally the dam broke, and she felt the massive explosion of pleasure that started in her

pelvis and spread through her body in waves.

Dominick released her mouth as she cried out her pleasure, and he thrust two more fingers
inside her as she convulsed in orgasm.

“Oh, yeah, baby,” he groaned. “I love to feel you come.”

Then the thick head of his cock was nudging the entrance to her tunnel, which was already
slick with the juices of her arousal. He pushed hard, once, twice, and he was a couple inches inside
her.

“You’re so tight. I love it,” Dominick gasped.

“No, you’re so huge,” Pixie sighed with pleasure, as he worked his way in deeper with
several thrusts of his hips.

“We fit together perfectly.” He was all the way inside, and then he began pumping into her.

She felt stretched, filled to the very limit, but it was deliciously pleasurable at the same
time. He pumped inside her, and she felt the heat building again.

Dominick tangled his fingers in her hair, tipping her head back as he plunged into her, and he
nuzzled her neck.

He felt so good inside her, so right. She circled her arms around him, grabbing his perfect
butt with her hands, pulling him into her. He was so big that it hurt, but in an exquisitely pleasurable
way.

A small part of her, from a million miles away, nagged at her. The voice of reason.

This is crazy, the voice said. This can’t last. Will you fall for him? Will it break your heart
when he walks away?

But it felt too good to stop. Dominick’s huge cock filled her perfectly, and every jerk of his
hips brought her closer to a second climax.

“Harder,” she begged. “I’m going to…ohhh….”

He responded by pumping even harder, and every slam of his hips thudded her in to the
mattress, and she exploded again. She could feel her inner muscles convulsively clamping on his
cock.

His breathing grew harsh and fast, and then suddenly he pulled out and exploded, his hot
come lashing her stomach.

“Oh, my God,” he groaned. Shudders racked his whole body, and he collapsed on the bed
next to her, breathing hard. He reached over and took her small hand in his huge hand and squeezed
it, as they lay their side by side. There was something so intimate about that gesture, so tender, that
Pixie felt hot tears sting her eyes. She blinked them away quickly.

She couldn’t fall for him. This was Dominick. He couldn’t stand her. If they survived the
mission, he’d go get another talisman, and he’d be back to his old grouchy self, and he’d hate her
again.

Dominick rolled on his side and pulled her up against him, wrapping his arms around her.
She pressed into his warmth, and strength, for a brief moment, wanting to stay there forever, and then
started to pull away.

He pulled her back, his arms tightening. “Don’t leave me,” he growled into her ear.

“I should…I should go take a shower and clean off,” she said.

“I’ll come with you. I’ll sponge you off,” he murmured, and kissed her neck.

She sighed and sank back into him. She’d never been known for her willpower.

Chapter Nine

Pixie checked her reflection in the full length mirror. She wore a body hugging blue silk

gown with a plunging neckline, with a skirt that flared out like the bell of a flower. She had a
matching silk purse, and a blue shawl completed the outfit. Dominick was straightening the red
bowtie on his tux. He looked shockingly handsome; he was made to wear a tux.

They’d spent the day locked in their room, with the guards bringing them breakfast and then

lunch.

Then that afternoon, they’d been led into a bigger bedroom, with apricot glazed walls, a hand

painted wooden chest of drawers, and an iron four poster bed with a gown and a tux laid out on it.
They were told to get dressed, and the guards had left them alone.

Ion had even provided shoes, in the right size, and makeup and jewelry for Pixie. He’d given

Pixie her blonde wig back, without the lock picks in it, unfortunately. Dominick still wore the copper
ring on his ankle; he was just waiting for the right moment to tear it off.

Once they’d finished dressing, the door swung open, and Ion strolled in, with a sheaf of

papers in his hand. Today his suit was tweed herringbone, again perfectly tailored, with his pocket
square coordinated to the color of his tie. He still wore the glasses.

He looked them up and down with a cool, appraising glance.

“Very nice,” he said. He handed Dominick a paper envelope, and slapped a copy of a

blueprint down on the chest of drawers in front of them.

“The envelope contains your invitation,” he told them. “You will be attending a party thrown

by a man named Craig Biltmore, at the Freemore House.” Pixie recognized the name. It was a 19

th

century mansion that was frequently rented out for posh parties. She’d been there before, back in her
full time thieving days. She’d gone on a dare, and come back with a designer purse full of stolen
swag. She’d even stolen the purse.

She knew the name of Craig Biltmore, too; she’d seen it in the local papers. He was very

mysterious. She didn’t recall ever seeing a picture of him. He’d come into town a year ago, nobody
knew anything about his past, and he donated massive amounts of money to charity, in the name of
something called the Rose Foundation. Battered women’s shelters, a new wing for a children’s
hospital, renovations for the city’s museum, massive grants to the local university, a string of no kill
animal shelters, afterschool programs for underprivileged kids…he’d donated hundreds of millions of
dollars.

And yet nobody could find out anything about his past, or where his money came from.

“The party is a fundraiser for a local museum,” Ion continued. “Craig doesn’t usually attend

his own parties, but he is making a rare public appearance, which is why I must make my move now.
There will be hundreds of wealthy art patrons there, and plenty of distractions. An orchestra,
jugglers, fire eaters, and the like. Craig always did love a spectacle. The reason you are going there
is that Craig has stolen something of mine, and I need it back. It’s a jewel, and he always wears it
somewhere on his body.”

He held up a picture of the jewel, a ruby the size of a fist. It was so huge that it didn’t even

look real, but Pixie was sure it was, with all of the trouble that Ion was going through to get it. “It
could be anywhere on him, and he may have it in a necklace, on a belt buckle, anywhere.”

“You will arrive at 7 p.m. At precisely 8:00 p.m., my men will see to it that the power is cut

and all of the lights in the house will go off. You need to be right next to him at that point. Because of
your unique talents, I know that you will be able to get ahold of the jewel without him noticing,
although he will very guess likely what’s happening once the lights go out. As soon as you have the
jewel, you will immediately head out through the ballroom, down that hallway, through the kitchen…”
he traced his finger along the path.

“You will exit out the kitchen’s back door,” he concluded. “There will be several catering

vans parked there. One of them will say Van Smythe Brothers Catering. Climb in, they will take you
to meet me, and we will make a trade. You will give me the ruby, I will give you the antidote.”

“How do we know that you will?” Pixie asked suspiciously.

He smiled coldly. “You have no choice but to trust me. I know that if I don’t give you the

antidote, you and your friends, and the authorities, will not rest until you find me. I don’t have any
particular wish to see your friends dead; I just needed to assure your assistance.”

Pixie didn’t bother to tell him that either way, she and her surviving friends would hunt him

down and kill him. The other employees of Shifters, Inc. would come back from their assignments,
and they would join up and make finding him their life’s mission, whether Bobbi and the rest survived
or not.

It was killing her not knowing how her friends were doing. Were they still alive, even now?

She shook her head. Dwelling on it wouldn’t help anything.

“Why me, in particular?” Pixie demanded. “There are plenty of thieves who would do this

for a fee, which you could clearly afford. Why go through all this effort to recruit me?”

“That’s not your concern. Your names are Marie and Thomas Cahill. You’re wealthy art

patrons from the Garden District of Playa Linda. You will need to show them picture i.d. Here it is.”

He handed them two driver’s licenses, which had been printed up with pictures of Dominick

and Pixie, but with the Cahill’s names on them.

“Here you go,” he said.

“These are real people, aren’t they?” Pixie said. “Or they were. You would need to send

people that were actually on his guest list. You hacked your way into this man’s guest list, found
people who more or less looked like us, and…”

She didn’t bother to finish her sentence. He’d killed them.

She stared at him, at the twin mirrors of his sunglasses which hid his strange dark eyes. She

could see her angry face reflected back at her. “Do you ever wonder what Hell’s going to feel like?”
she said coldly.

He threw back his head and laughed. “I won’t have to worry about that for a long, long

time,” he said, a mirthless smile quirking his lips, and then he turned and strode away.

Don’t be too sure, Pixie thought, loathing flowing through her body.

* * *

Dominick’s arm was looped through Pixie’s as they walked up the marble steps of the

McMansion monstrosity. Fluted columns soared three stories high, topped by a massive portico.

They’d been driven to a neighborhood close to the mansion, and then given a Mercedes to

drive. The whole way there, they could see Ion’s men following them in several different cars, in
case they tried to escape. They’d already decided not to, though; at this point, they might as well grab
the ruby and see how everything played out. Dominick had removed the copper ring from his ankle as
they drove, though, so he could shift whenever he needed to.

Their i.d.’s, checked at the mansion’s gate, had worked perfectly, and they’d driven to the

large parking area where they surrendered their car to a valet.

Security was heavy, with muscular humans and shifters in suits wandering very

conspicuously among the guests, scanning the crowd. They were surrounded by the rich and beautiful,
Playa Linda’s elite who streamed into the mansion’s ballroom in a sea of perfumed, flawlessly
coiffed humanity.

“I think I’m breaking out in hives,” Pixie said. “I’m allergic to rich stuck-up assholes. Oh

wait, these are your people, aren’t they? Sorry.” She rolled her eyes.

Dominick laughed. “Money doesn’t have to turn you into a douche. My family is pretty

down to earth. You’ll see when you meet them.”

“Why would I meet your family?” she asked, baffled.

Dominick didn’t get a chance to answer; he just nudged her and jerked his head in the

direction of a silver-haired man in a custom tailored suit. There was a throng of people crowded
around him, eagerly competing for his attention.

“Is that Ion?” Pixie asked, startled.

“No, it isn’t. It must be Craig Biltmore. And they must be brothers, and the name Craig is a

fake as well.”

“Check out those sunglasses,” Pixie murmured.

“I am.” Dominick glanced at him quickly, then guided Pixie towards a table filled with hors

deauvres.

“So they’re both into black magic.”

A string orchestra on a stage played classical music, and a massive crystal chandelier hung

overhead. There were indeed jugglers, and men on unicycles, and fire eaters. The atmosphere was
festive and the crowd was eating it up.

Dominick turned to a man who was standing nearby grabbing stuffed grape leaves.

“Do you know Mr. Biltmore?” he asked the man. “We were sort of invited by friends of

friends.”

“Not really. Nobody really knows him that well.”

She glanced around. “I’ve got an idea,” she said to Dominick. “I’m going to go mingle. I’ll

be back.”

Dominick nodded, walked up to the bar, and ordered a drink. He waited for Pixie and

fended off the attention of half a dozen attractive women in low cut gowns who brushed up against
him, giggling and batting their eyes.

Looking at the other women, he felt nothing. Nothing stirred in his loins, his pulse didn’t

quicken. He felt annoyed. He felt impatient. He wanted Pixie to come back.

He began making his way through the crowd, scouting for her. Soon, the lights would be

turning out, and they needed to be ready to flee.

Pixie was walking through the crowd, drawing the admiring glances of a leopard shifter in a

tux. He felt his temper rising, and he strangled on a low, angry growl as Pixie pushed her way
towards him. His fur itched underneath his skin, and his bones ached as he struggled to retain human
form. She was his, and other men were looking at her. They wanted her. He should hurt them.
Kill them.

She saw the look on his face when she reached him, and she put her hand on his arm.

Instantly he felt himself calming down.

Pixie stood on her tiptoes, and whispered into his ear.

“You have nothing to worry about,” she said, her hand tightening on his bicep. “You’re the

hottest guy here.”

“Well, that’s true.” Dominick felt a grin spread across his face, and sunlight bathed his soul.

“I’m starting to feel better. I don’t know, though, I’m still kinda tempted to shift and rip out the throats
of every man that’s looking at you. You’d better tell me more.”

Pixie stifled a snort of amusement. “Really? Okay, you big baby. You were the best sex I’ve

ever had. I didn’t even think it was possible to have that many orgasms. And when I see all these
bitches checking you out, I want to rip their faces off.” Pixie pressed up against him, and he felt
warmth and contentment flowing through him.

“Really. I like it that you’re jealous of me.” He loved it, in fact. He wanted her to be

territorial. He wanted her to want only him, and he wanted her to want him all to herself.

It was strange to think of the effect that she’d once had on him, the irritation that had pricked

under his skin like burrs every time she walked in the room. Of course, it would happen again as
soon as he donned the talisman.

Suddenly he found himself wishing he didn’t have to don the talisman again. He didn’t want

to forget this feeling.

Maybe he wouldn’t. It had been three years. Maybe it was time for him to start living his life

again, and to try to make a life with Pixie.

But was that wrong of him? Was it selfish? He’d already met his fated mate, so it couldn’t

possibly be Pixie. That meant if they stayed together, he’d basically just be using her for sex. He
cared about her too much to do that. In fact, he cared about her a whole lot. He wanted to stay friends
with her after all of this was over – but who knew if that was even possible. Sex complicated things.

His head started to hurt. Why, of all the shifters in the world, did he have to be the one

whose fated mate cheated on him?

His arm tightened around Pixie’s waist. Having her press up against him felt so good, so

right, that he never wanted to let her go.

Pixie flashed him a grin.

“Listen. I’ve got good news,” she said. “When I went to use the restroom, I-”

Before she could finish her thought, Craig Biltmore slipped in through the throng of people

standing around them, and tapped her shoulder.

“May I borrow your wife for a dance?” he asked, and before Dominick could say a word, the

man had whirled Pixie away.

Dominick swallowed hard. He didn’t like it, didn’t want any other man touching Pixie, and

especially not that man. He felt a darkness rippling around the man, the same kind of darkness that
clung to Ion.

He had no choice, though. Pixie needed to get close to the man in order to take the jewel.

Everything was going exactly according to plan.

Uneasy, he glanced up at the clock on the wall, and started moving towards the back of the

ballroom to wait for the lights to go out.

Chapter Ten

“You dance divinely,” said the man whose name probably wasn’t Craig Biltmore.

Pixie doubted that very much; waltzing was not in her repertoire of skills.

His accent was very similar to Ion’s.

Pixie glanced across the room, and saw Dominick watching her, and she felt safer. She

knew, somehow, that Dominick would die before he let anything happen to her.

“What is your real name?” he asked, as they slowly glided across the dance floor.

“Marie Cahill,” Pixie said uneasily. This wasn’t starting out well.

“Oh, I don’t think so. I’ve met Marie Cahill. You are lovely, but you look nothing like her.”

His hand still rested in the small of her back, his other hand holding hers up high as they spun

and twirled.

Pixie tensed.

She waited for him to say something, but he just kept moving, graceful as a gliding swan,

leading her along.

She stared at him, and he smiled and stopped dancing.

“Why haven’t you called your bodyguards, then?” she asked.

He ignored her question. “I assume that means my brother killed Marie and her husband. A

pity, they were a lovely couple.” He didn’t sound particularly distressed. He sounded as if he was
talking about having to cancel dinner plans, or some other event that ranked on the “mildly
disappointing” scale.

Pixie felt queasy. These men who played with life and death, who played with people as if

they were puppets, sickened her to her very core. “Who the hell are you people? And what is the
matter with you?” she hissed

“Something that can’t be fixed, I’m afraid. I’d much rather talk about you. Tell me about

your life. Are you happy?”

“Everything’s just peachy,” Pixie said coldly. “Couldn’t be better.”

“I’m glad to hear it. That lion shifter back there. He’s your fated mate, I see.”

“No, he isn’t.”

“Of course he is. I can see things, my dear, things that other people can’t see. I know he’ll

treat you well. You’ll have beautiful children. You’ll have a long and happy life.”

For the first time, she heard real emotion in his voice, a strange yearning wistfulness.

“He isn’t,” she insisted. “He already met his fated mate, and she cheated on him. He swore

never to be with another woman again.”

“Nonsense. That doesn’t happen with fated mates,” the man said. “There was some dark

sorcery there. Believe me, I am an expert in such things.”

Pixie stared at him. None of this was going as planned, and nothing that he was saying made

sense.

But then, he let go of her hand and reached around his neck, fishing under his collar. He

pulled off a golden chain with an enormous red ruby attached to it, and dropped it into her hand.

“I assume that my brother sent you here to steal the Bloodstone,” he said. “And here it is.

Did he tell you why you were the only one who could take it from me?”

“No,” Pixie said, startled. She stared at the prize in her hand. Could it truly be this easy?

“Of course he didn’t,” Craig said, and then the room went dark.

There were shouts of dismay, and calls for calm. People pulled out their cell phones to use
them as mini flash-lights. The fire-eaters’ torches gave off an eerie red glow.

Pixie ducked and ran, the ruby clenched in her hand.

She tripped over someone, scrambled to her feet, made it to the door, and Dominick grabbed

her arm. Shifters had excellent night vision, even when they were in human form.

With Dominick guiding her, they pushed their way down the hallway, through the kitchen, and

out the back, with no problem.

It had all gone much too smoothly. It made Pixie nervous when things went this smoothly.

“Craig just gave me the necklace,” she told Dominick. “I swear I felt like he knew I’d be here.
How?”

There were dozens of people pouring out the back door, and they were swept up in the tide of

humanity. Half a dozen catering vans sat at the back door. Nobody was paying attention to them.

The catering van was waiting exactly where Ion had said it would be, in a large paved lot

directly outside the kitchen door. None of Craig’s men seemed to have followed her. Then again,
why would they? He’d handed the necklace to her.

The back door to the back of the van swung open as they approached. Ion was in there, with

half a dozen armed men. Still wearing those glasses; how could he see in the dark with those things?
Pixie wondered.

He gestured at them impatiently.

“Get in!” he snarled.

Pixie and Dominick stopped, a dozen feet from the back of the van. “Give us the antidote,

and I’ll give you this,” she said, holding up the jewel in her hand. “Throw it to me.”

Ion’s face contorted, and he lunged forward, reaching out with a claw-like hand. “Give it to

me! Give it to me now!”

Before Pixie could say anything else, they were surrounded by more bodyguards who slipped

from the shadows, pointing guns at them. Ion wasn’t leaving anything to chance.

Party goers, spotting the guns, screamed and scattered.

The guards jabbed at Pixie and Dominick with their semi-automatics, and hustled them into
the back of the van.

The van shot out of the parking lot, screeching onto the road. He lunged at Pixie and grabbed
the jewel from her hand.

The second he had it in his hand, his face flushed dark red with rage.

“You think this is funny?” he demanded.

“What are you talking about? That’s the jewel you wanted,” Pixie protested.

“It’s a fake! Your friends are going to burn and die!” he raged.

As he spoke, the jewel cracked open, and a scroll of paper rolled out. He read it quickly,
then threw the fake jewel to the ground, screaming and swearing.

“I’ll kill you!” he raged at Pixie. “You’ll die like your mother did, you bitch! You’ll die
screaming!”

Pixie’s mother had gone into a coma when her liver failed, and died in a hospital bed. What
was he talking about?

Dominick let out a warning grown, and fur rippled on his face. “Touch her, and you die,” he
snarled, moving in front of Ion.

Before Ion could do anything, Pixie heard the sound of screeching tires and honking horns
coming from all around them outside the van, and then they slowed to a halt.

“What are you doing?” Ion bellowed. His face was purple with rage. His sunglasses had
fallen off, and his face was contorted with fury. He barely looked human. “Don’t stop, you fools! I’ll
kill you!”

“Sir, we’re boxed in!” one of the men yelled from the front.

Pixie could hear men running towards the van, and then a pounding on the van’s rear door,
and then the sound of metal tearing. The rear door was yanked open. Dominick chose that moment
to shift, and as Ion’s men pointed their guns at the group of armed men who had pulled the door open,
he pounced.

There was screaming, and the spray of hot blood, and then Pixie and Dominick fell out of the
van onto the ground. They were about twenty blocks away from the mansion now, in one of the
wealthier neighborhoods of Playa Linda.

Pixie landed on top of Dominick, in his massive lion form. He still had his jaws clamped on
the head of one of the guards, who was gurgling his last breath.

Ion had scrambled towards the front of the van. His bodyguards moved in front of him. The
door to the van was pulled shut. Sirens were wailing, and the cars which had boxed in the van took
off, scattering in traffic. The catering van took off too.

Dominick shifted back into human form and stood there naked, wiping blood from his face.
The guard lay silent at his feet, in a spreading pool of blood, and the air smelled like copper. Pixie
struggled not to retch.

“Are you all right?” he asked Pixie.

“I’m fine. We don’t have the antidote, though. Damn it to hell. What are we going to do?
They don’t have much time left!” As she spoke, Pixie took off the blue wrap she had slung around her
shoulders and handed it to Dominick, who wrapped it around his waist like a sarong.

“Your friend Anastasia might come through for us. By the way, I recognized some of those
guys who saved us,” Dominick said. “They were the security who worked for Craig. He sent his
guards after us, to save us. Why?”

“I don’t know, but I do know why he stole that jewel from his brother,” Pixie said.

“Apparently all this is a shakedown over money. I palmed the note and read it really quick when he
wasn’t looking. The note told Ion that in exchange for the ruby, he wants a hundred million dollars
and the deeds to all of their property. He told Ion he wants to meet with him tomorrow, but he didn’t
say where. He said he’d be in touch. I guess he likes to play the same games as his brother.”

A car pulled up next to them, and Fraser stuck his head out of the window. He had three of

his goons with him.

“Get in!” he yelled.

Pixie and Dominick quickly scrambled into the back seat.

“Nice loincloth, lover boy,” Fraser said. “And Pixie, you clean up real nice.”

“Don’t push your luck,” Dominick snapped. “How did you find us?”

“Oh, that was me,” Pixie said. “What I was going to tell you, right before Craig asked me to
dance, was that when I went to the restroom, I stole someone’s cell phone. I called Tyler and gave
him our location and told him Ion’s plans, and put the phone back before she even noticed it was
gone.”

“You returned it? Pixie, are you a reformed thief?” Dominick asked in mock astonishment.

Pixie punched his arm. “Reformed? You take that back, you bastard.”

“I’ve got some good news, in case anyone cares, “ Fraser said. “Anastasia’s waiting for us
back at the warehouse. She says that they caught the guy who created the virus. That means they’ll
be able to make the antidote.”

“Oh, thank God,” Pixie said fervently. “Because Ion screwed us over and didn’t give us the
antidote, if he ever even planned to. That bastard.”

Then she flopped back in her seat. “We still have a ton of questions. What did he mean
when he said my mother died screaming? She died in a coma, and how would he even know anything
about my mother? And why does he want that particular ruby so badly?”

Chapter Eleven

Anastasia, Hillary and Tyler were waiting for them at the warehouse when they pulled up

almost an hour later. Empty pizza boxes and soda bottles had been tossed into an upended empty
wooden crate. Tyler, as usual, was hunched over his laptop, and he was still wearing the same
clothes he’d arrived in a day and a half ago. Hillary was sitting on a couch, with a towel spread out
underneath her so she didn’t actually have to touch the furniture. She was wearing a new outfit, a
lilac linen trouser suit; she must have gone home at some point.

Anastasia was reading a book. She glanced up when they came in, and she didn’t look like

someone who had good news to deliver.

“Everything went to hell,” Dominick told Tyler.

“We heard,” Tyler said. “Fraser kept us updated.”

“So please tell us that you have good news,” Pixie added. “Do we know how to make the

antidote? Ion escaped without giving it to us, assuming that he ever really planned to, and he’s furious
because he’s been double crossed by the person we were supposed to steal the jewel from. ”

“Authorities in France have found the man who created the plague, a wizard who actually

calls himself Plague,” Tyler said. “His real name was Elmer Witherspoon. Go figure. Anyway, he
used to work as a laboratory assistant, and apparently he stole plague samples that were being stored
at the facility where he worked, and started peddling magic-enhanced versions on the black market.
Through him, we found out who Ion Barbu and Craig Biltmore really are. The antidote…that’s
where we’re running into a problem.”

“What is the problem? Don’t say there’s a problem.” Pixie felt panic welling up inside her.

“Remember I told you that the virus and the antidote are created at the same time?” Anastasia

said. “The magic ingredient needed to make the virus work is Ion Barbu’s blood, and therefore, we
need the blood for the antidote. Ion Barbu’s blood, at least a full vial. Elmer the Plague
Witherspoon gave the authorities the formula for the antidote, in exchange for them taking the death
penalty off the table, but it won’t work without Ion’s blood.”

Pixie and Dominick exchanged dismayed glances.

She collapsed on to the couch, and he sat next to her. “The man who calls himself Craig

Biltmore sent Ion a note telling him to meet with him tomorrow, but he didn’t say where. He said
he’d give Ion the jewel, in exchange for a hundred million dollars and the deeds to the family
property. We’ve got to find out where they are, and we’ve got to get Ion’s blood. It’s our last
chance. What do we know about them so far, Tyler?”

“We have preliminary information on them that seems to indicate that their names are Stefan

and Tomas Rilke, but they also seem to have used a lot of aliases,” Tyler said. “They’re brothers,
descended from a line of very wealthy aristocrats. Together, they own a large family estate in the
countryside of France, and several others scattered around Europe. Authorities are having a very

hard time finding their birth records. All of their property was originally purchased many centuries
ago. Interpol is working on getting warrants so they can search the properties.”

“What about here?” Dominick asked.

“The police have put out an APB for them. They’re describing what happened at our

headquarters as a terrorist attack. Their faces are all over the news, so it will be hard for them to
move around undetected, but for men that wealthy, it won’t be impossible.”

“Do we know where Craig Baldwin lives?” Pixie asked.

“Craig is probably Tomas Rilke, and from what I’ve found out so far, he arrived in the U.S. a

year ago, using very skillfully forged paperwork. As soon as Pixie called me with his name, and told
me that you guys were going to his party, we notified the Playa Linda police,” Tyler said. “They
arrived to find everybody standing outside because of some kind of power outage, and Tomas was
gone. Nobody saw him leave. Police have already gone to the estate that he was renting. He hasn’t
been back yet. They’ve left an officer in a patrol car to wait for him, but I doubt he’ll return.”

“Ion, or rather, Stefan, told us he always has multiple backup plans,” Dominick said. “So

he’ll have other places to stay and lay low. I’m sure Tomas is the same way. ”

“I have a question,” Anastasia said. “The jewel you were supposed to steal, the one that the

man named Stefan Rilke wants so desperately...tell me about that.”

“It looks like an insanely huge ruby. Stefan told me that it belongs to him, and Tomas stole

it. Tomas apparently suspected something like this would happen, because he wore a necklace with a
fake version of it, which he gave to me. Let’s see, Tomas referred to it as The Bloodstone, and –
what?”

Anastasia was staring at Pixie as if she’d invoked the name of Satan.

“The Bloodstone. You’re sure.”

“Very sure. Why?”

“The Bloodstone is a myth. It’s one of those stories that’s too horrible to believe. The story

goes that it was stolen from an Indian swami in the 16

th

century, and that it gave whoever possessed it

immortality, but at a horrible price. The owner of it has to use the Bloodstone to suck the life force
from a living child, and then they get to live out that child’s natural life span.”

“Oh, God.” Pixie leaned back on the couch, feeling queasy. “Who would want immortality at

that high a cost?”

“Plenty of people,” Anastasia said, with a grim smile. “The kind of people I deal with all of

the time. There are people who would pay any price to cheat death.”

From what Pixie had seen of the Rilke brothers so far, that sounded about right. Neither one

of them would hesitate to kill anyone at all if it benefitted them.

“All right,” Pixie said. “Tell me more about this jewel.”

“Well, if it’s real, it doesn’t make any sense that Stefan would have sent you to steal it back

from his brother.”

“Why?” Pixie asked. “I mean, I do wonder why he specifically sought me out, but then again,

I have a reputation as a pretty good thief.”

“Because according to the legend, the only person who can touch it and survive is the person

who is linked to it. First they have to do some gruesome blood sacrifice, as an offering to the
Bloodstone, and then they and only they can touch it and use its power.”

“Well, I doubt he’d care if I died,” Pixie pointed out. “In fact, he seemed like the type of

person who’d kill me the second I gave him the jewel.”

But Anastasia shook her head. “No, you’d die the second you touched it. So there’s no

practical value in having you steal it. He didn’t offer you any kind of magic protection?”

“Nothing. I don’t know, then,” Pixie said. “None of this makes sense.”

“Well, if I had to guess, and if the Bloodstone is real, the Rilke brothers might be the original

men who stole it,” Anastasia said. “They could be hundreds of years old. Perhaps they share it;
perhaps they both made that blood sacrifice that lets them tap into its power. Then, if one of the
brothers stole it, he’d effectively be condemning his brother to die of old age. They need that jewel
as a conduit.”

Hillary had been sitting back and listening to them. “So what are we going to do next?” she

asked.

Tyler sighed. “If we need Ion’s blood, then our only hope is to find out where they’re

meeting tomorrow. I can start doing internet searches on any property purchases that Craig Baldwin
might have made, but he’s probably hidden them by purchasing through shell corporations. It’s all
I’ve got right now, though, so let me get to it.”

“Fine,” Pixie said. “Can I just borrow you for one minute first? I need to talk to you

privately.”

Dominick let out a surprised growl, scowling at Pixie as she stood up.

“I’ll be right back,” she said.

“Fine.” He didn’t look happy about it, but he didn’t argue with her.

Tyler followed Pixie out into the hallway, and she shut the door behind them.

“That was interesting,” he said to her. “The way Dominick is acting, it’s almost like he’s-”

“Don’t say it. I know. I can’t explain it, and I don’t know what’s going to happen between
us, but here’s the thing. I guess Dominick and I are kind of together, at least for the time being, and I
can’t accept the gifts you’ve been giving me. In fact, I’m going to need to give them all back.”

“I didn’t give you any presents,” Tyler protested, shaking his head.

“Oh, come on, Tyler. I know it was you. I even saw you leaving them on my desk a few

times.”

“Yes. Because someone dropped them off for you at the front desk. A messenger. Once

we’d scanned them to make sure they didn’t have anything explosive in them, I brought them to you
because I was passing your office anyway. For that matter, Hillary’s brought you some of the
packages. You think maybe she’s your secret admirer?” Tyler looked as if he didn’t know whether he
should be amused or angry.

Pixie shook her head. “There was Lilly of the Valley Perfume. Who else besides you would

know that I liked that? One time when I was short on cash, someone sent me an envelope with ten
thousand dollars in it. Who else but you could hack into my bank account?”

“You think I hacked into your bank account?” Tyler was starting to look seriously pissed off.

“Pixie. I like you, but I told you that you’re not my fated mate. And no offense, but I’m not pining
after you. I met my fated mate two months ago. She just moved in with me.”

“You met your fated mate? Why didn’t you say something?” Pixie was shocked.

“Because our office is like a junior high school when it comes to gossip, and it’s none of

anybody’s business.”

Wow. He was right, but she was still astounded that he wouldn’t tell anyone he’d met his

fated mate. Then again Tyler had always been the strong silent type.

Pixie stared at Tyler. “So…you really didn’t give me any of those anonymous gifts.”

Tyler shook his head.

“Well. This is embarrassing,” Pixie muttered.

“Yes, I would imagine.”

“You could at least argue with me. Say it’s a perfectly natural mistake.” Pixie suggested.

“I could.” He just looked at her.

“So who the heck has been sending me all of these gifts?”

Tyler shrugged. “Probably somebody within our organization. Or an ex boyfriend, or

someone you know in your personal life. It would have to be someone who knows what brand of
perfume that you like…although, if they sent you money when you were broke, that means that they
hacked in to your bank account records. So they might also have access to your credit card records,
so they could have seen that you’d purchased that perfume in the past. Once we’ve got Shifters, Inc.
back up and running, we can look into it.”

“Well, all right then. And congratulations on meeting your fated mate,” Pixie said, and

headed back to find Dominick and Tyler, feeling thoroughly foolish.

Chapter Twelve

Later that night…

“You can’t go without me,” Hillary protested. “I’m part of the team.”

They were standing outside the warehouse, where Hillary had followed them, arguing all the

way.

“We need you to stay with Tyler to research real estate purchases and do whatever other

internet searches he needs,” Pixie said firmly.

That wasn’t strictly true. Hillary had no ability to hack into computers, so she’d be very little

use to Tyler; Pixie was just giving her busy work to keep her out of their hair. They were about to
head over to the projects where Pixie grew up, and she didn’t want to have to deal with Hillary
screaming like a little girl every time a rat ran by, or making snide comments about the piles of
garbage they’d have to step over.

“But you need-”

“No buts,” Pixie said firmly. “Go back inside. We’ll be back in an hour or two.”

Sulking, Hillary went back in. They climbed into Dominick’s car, with Hillary sliding into

the back seat.

They were wearing clothing that Fraser had rustled up for them. Pixie wore leggings, a t-

shirt and boots, and Dominick wore jeans and sneakers.

“Oh, thank Goddess,” Anastasia said as they pulled away. “She’s the most whiny crybaby

I’ve ever met. I can’t tell you how many times I had to restrain myself from turning her into a
warthog.”

“You can do that?” Pixie asked uneasily.

“Maybe. For the right price. Seriously, she calls her mother like every hour. What the hell

is wrong with her?”

“At least she’s getting along better with her mother these days,” Pixie said. “Her mother

always rags on her when she calls. She used to sit there and cry after every phone call. When we get
this all cleared up, I’m going to try to find somebody to fix her up with. She’s in serious need of a
self esteem booster. Okay, up ahead, turn left.”

The projects where Pixie grew up were tan concrete, as hard and scarred as their

inhabitants. Rusted fire escapes and layer upon layer of competing gang graffiti were the only
adornment on the buildings.

It was late, and she was tired, but she needed answers. Ever since Stefan, or Ion, or

whatever his real name was, had made that comment about her mother earlier that night, she’d been
wondering about her family origins. Had Ion known her mother? Was Jennifer Montana even her
real mother? Pixie looked absolutely nothing like Jennifer.

If Stefan had really known her mother, how had he known her? Had he killed her? The

answers might help lead her closer to finding him.

Pixie felt herself growing self-conscious as she, Dominick and Anastasia parked in front of

Building 114, where she and her mother had lived in a third floor welfare flat until she’d finally run
away. She’d been twelve at the time, and tired of fending off the eager advances of her mother’s
“boyfriends”. She’d always wondered if her mother had even tried to find her once she left.

“I guess this isn’t the kind of neighborhood your family grew up in,” she said to Dominick.

“Speaking of which, how is your family?”

“Not too great at the moment. Half the family is boycotting the wedding. My parents, who

never fight, are fighting like cats and cats about this.” He managed a rueful smile at his own joke. “It’s
putting them in a terrible position. My brother is going to be the leader of the pride some day in the
not too distant future when my father steps down – but now my father is threatening to name someone
else as his successor. The leader’s wife has to be able to do a lot of politicking, entertaining, all that
crap – and everyone hates Barbara.”

In the dark recesses of the far corner of the parking lot, Pixie saw a group of hyena shifters

gang bangers skulking, watching them. They wouldn’t come too close as long as Dominick was with
them.

She glanced back at him. “Has your brother always been attracted to stuck up bitches?”

Dominick let out a bitter laugh. “No. Barbara’s not his type at all. Then again, she wasn’t my

type either when I first met her.”

Pixie paused. “Whoa. Hold the phone. I’m sorry, are you saying that Barbara was your fated

mate, and now she’s your brother’s fated mate? That doesn’t happen.”

“No kidding,” Anastasia said. “Something’s hinky there.”

“Yeah, my family apparently has the worst luck of any pride in North America,” Dominick

said bitterly. “Can we get this over with? I think I’m actually standing directly in a puddle of
hepatitis.”

Pixie glanced down at whatever foul liquid was ruining Dominick’s shoes. “Nah, probably

not. I don’t think that even germs can live long in this neighborhood.”

She led them into the building. A pale light in the hallway flickered, illuminating a pile of

trash in a corner. Scattered on the cracked tile floor were tained, broken toys and a grocery cart
without wheels. The sour reek of garbage mingled with the fumes of cooking.

“Ahh, smells like home,” Pixie said. “Follow me.” She led them up two flights of stairs to the

apartment of her former neighbor, Gemma Timmons. Timmons had been one of her mother’s closest
drinking buddies, and the two of them used to troll for marks together.

They knocked several times, but there was no answer. Pixie could hear the TV blaring

inside, so she pulled her lock picks out of her pocket.

“Of course,” Dominick said, shaking his head.

“Sorry,” Pixie smirked. “It’s in the blood.”

Within a minute they were inside the cramped, dimly lit apartment. An old rabbit-ear TV

was on, its flicking light illuminating the snoring figure of Mrs. Timmons, who lay passed out on a
stained green couch. Empty liquor bottles and beer bottles lay scattered around Mrs. Timmons on the
floor. Pixie had come prepared; she’d brought a bottle of scotch.

It took them a couple of minutes for them to rouse her from her stupor, and a couple of long

pulls on the scotch bottle before she felt sufficiently lubricated and inspired to speak to them.

“Pixie,” she said, squinting blearily. “I thought you were dead. Oh wait, that’s your mother.”

“Yes. That’s who I came to talk to you about. My mother. You’ve lived here longer than we

did, Mrs. Timmons. Is my mother really my mother?”

Mrs. Timmons shrank back against the couch. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” she scowled

defensively.

“I didn’t say you did. All I need is information.”

A sly, speculative look crossed Mrs. Timmons face. “What’s it worth to you?”

Pixie had come prepared for that too. She pulled five twenties out of her wallet and handed

them over. Mrs. Timmons grabbed them and stuffed them down her cleavage.

“More,” she demanded.

“After you tell me what I want to know.”

“My memory’s not so good these days,” Mrs. Timmons said, and she started to move her

considerable bulk off the sofa.

“Answer her questions, you drunk bitch,” Anastasia snapped, and her eyes went dark. She

glared, and suddenly the money in Mrs. Timmons cleavage started to smoke.

“My money!” Mrs. Timmons grabbed the money, pulled it from her cleavage, and threw it on

the floor and stamped out the little flames that licked at the edges.

“That’s not the only thing that’s going to catch on fire if you don’t start talking.” Anastasia’s

eyes were even darker.

Pixie held up her hand warningly. “Anastasia. I got this,” she said.

Dominick stared at Anastasia. He and Pixie exchanged worried glances.

“I don’t like her,” Mrs. Timmons whimpered, sinking back onto the couch. “Make her go
away.”

“We’ll all go away, as soon as you answer my question.”

“I’ll know if you’re lying,” Anastasia added.

Mrs. Timmons flicked her a sullen glance, then muttered “Your mother…one day, her and me
were out looking to find some tricks. We were standing on a corner over on 37

th

, and some lady

parked her car, ran down the alley, put you in a doorway, then ran back out and jumped in a car and
drove off. Then a minute later, another car came screeching down the street, like they were chasing
the lady who’d left you in the alley. Rosie picked you up and brought you home. We argued about
who was going to keep you, but Rosie won out. She had to promise me half of anything she got for
you, though.”

Pixie gasped. She felt as if she’d been struck a physical blow. Dominick reached out and
squeezed her hand, as she swayed where she stood.

Questions flooded her mind. What had happened to her real mother? Her real mother must
be dead, or she’d have come back for her. Who was her father? Who was her mother running from?
Somehow, she had a feeling that the Rilkes were involved. Maybe she’d been running from them.

“Why did she bring me home?”

“All kindsa reasons. She took you to the welfare office, said you were hers, started getting
welfare checks for you. And she told a few different guys they were the dad, and threatened to tell
their wives, so they were sending some money for you every month, for years. I got half, for keeping
my mouth shut.” She looked proud of herself as she said that.

“What else?” Anastasia snapped. She was breathing hard, through her nostrils. “What was
Pixie wearing when you found her? Was there anything with her?”

Mrs. Timmons looked down at the floor, sullen. “She was wrapped in some fancy white
blanket. There was a note in the blanket.”

“What did the note say?” Pixie demanded.

Mrs. Timmons folded her arms across her huge, sagging chest and shot Pixie a sullen, angry
look. “Look at you, with your fancy friends. You made it big, didn’t you? That information is worth
ten thousand dollars, and I won’t tell you for one penny less. And if your witchy friend doesn’t get out
of here, I’ll call the police, that’s what I’ll do.”

She grabbed a cell phone from the scarred coffee table in front of her.

Suddenly the cell phone flared up, flames shooting out. It turned into a black lump of melted
plastic, and Mrs. Timmons dropped it, screaming and shaking her hand.

Dominick glanced at the door uneasily, but Pixie could have told him that nobody was going
to come to Mrs. Timmons aid.

“Anastasia. Stop,” Pixie said.

“Talk!” Anastasia screamed at Mrs. Timmons.

“The note said ‘My baby girl, know that I’ll always love you’, but it wasn’t even signed!
What difference does it make!” Mrs. Timmons wailed, cringing away from her.

“What difference does it make? Pixie had a mother who loved her, a mother who wasn’t a

drunk whore, and she never knew it, and you want to know what difference it makes?” Anastasia was
stalking towards Mrs. Timmons, her eyes glowing black and her voice grown deep and terrible. “It
makes all the difference in the world! I’d have killed to have a mother who loved me! You want to
know the first time I used my magic? How I found out I was magic? I was ten! When my mother
stopped selling me to her johns, and tried to sell my little brother instead, I choked my mother and the
john to death – like this!”

She held out her hand, and bunched it into a fist. Mrs. Timmons clutched at her throat, and
her face turned bright red. She made horrible gasping, wheezing sounds.

“Stop it!” Pixie screamed, launching herself at Anastasia and knocking her back several feet.

Anastasia waved her arm and made a hand gesture, and Pixie flew backwards, crashing into
the wall.

Dominick let out a roar, and lunged at Anastasia, knocking her to the ground.

“Don’t kill her!” Pixie yelled. “It’s not her fault.”

Mrs. Timmons fell back on the sofa, clutching at her throat and wheezing. She burst into
loud, noisy sobs.

“Don’t let her hurt me!” she whimpered. “I didn’t do nothing! It’s not my fault! It was
Jennifer’s idea to take you!”

Anastasia lay on the floor, gasping. Dominick shifted back, and Pixie ran over and pulled
her up off the floor.

The three of them left the apartment quickly, heading down to Dominick’s car.

“That’s it,” Pixie said to Anastasia. “You will get professional help.”

Anastasia’s breath came out in deep heaves, and she clutched the armrest, leaning back with
her eyes shut.

They drove in silence back to the warehouse. Anastasia climbed out, and stumbled back to
her car.

Pixie felt ill, and dizzy, and very angry.

What had happened to her real mother?

Dominick turned to Anastasia. “You’re going to stay the hell away from Pixie from now on,”
he growled. “Leave. Get away from us. I don’t ever want to see you again.”

“Wait!” Pixie called, as Anastasia flung herself into her car. “Anastasia, don’t leave! I can
find you help! We can fix this!” Anastasia took off in a screech of tires, without looking back.

She turned back to Dominick. “She’s sick, Dominick. You shouldn’t have done that.”

“She nearly killed you, Pixie. You’re my fated mate. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

“Excuse me, I’m your what?”

“You are. You have to be. The way I feel about you…”

“No, I’m not, Dominick.” Pixie’s heart thudded painfully in her chest. “I’m a messed up
pickpocket who was raised in the slums by a prostitute. You’re shifter royalty from a family of
millionaires. How could someone like me be your fated mate? You’re just reacting to the effects of
taking that talisman off. A few days, a few weeks, and you’ll realize your mistake.”

Dominick grabbed her arm and spun her around to face him. His blue eyes were so earnest,
so beautiful. “It’s not a mistake, and I’m not going to get another talisman. You are my fated mate,
and I will wait for as long as it takes for you to realize that.”

Pixie wanted it to be true so badly it hurt, but she knew it couldn’t be. Things like that just
ddn’t happen to people like her. Shouldn’t fated mates be some kind of match? “It’s not possible!
You’re letting your hormones do your thinking. I’m not going to trap you like this, Dominick.” Pixie
pushed past him and rushed into the warehouse.

Chapter Thirteen

“Psst. Pixie. I need to talk to you.” There was a light rapping on the door. Hillary was

calling out to her.

Pixie sat bolt upright. She’d refused to speak to Dominick the night before, and had locked
herself in another room of the warehouse and fallen asleep on the couch. A little while later, she’d
heard his car pull away. She’d fallen asleep curled up in a ball on the couch, her head resting on the
crook of her arm.

Blearily, she pulled out her cell phone to check the time. Six a.m. This afternoon, the Rilke

brothers would most likely meet up. If Tyler couldn’t uncover their meeting place, her friends would
die.

She got up and unlocked the door, swinging it open. Hillary glanced around nervously.

“Pixie, come outside with me. I need to talk to you.”

“Is there any news? Anybody find Stefan or Tomas yet? How are our friends doing at the

hospital?”

“No news. Everyone is still alive, but weakening,” Hillary said. “Seriously, come with

me.”

Pixie’s heart sank. She swallowed hard. It’s not over till it’s over, she reminded herself.

But…it felt as if it were over.

“Is Dominick back yet?” Pixie asked. She should go talk to him. She’d over-reacted the

night before. She’d been upset and angry over the news of her mother, and she’d probably been
taking it out on the wrong person. She couldn’t think about romance or a future until her friends were
safe, but she should at least apologize to Dominick.

Hillary nodded impatiently, shifting her weight from one foot to another. She was dressed as

primly as ever, her hair in a chignon, wearing a pale blue linen pantsuit and low heeled pumps.

“Yes, he just went home and got some clothes and then came back. He’s asleep. Tyler’s

asleep too, he was up all night. Listen, keep your voice down and come with me, I mean it. I
overheard something last night…we can’t trust anybody. I need to talk to you.”

“What do you mean?” Pixie rubbed her face with her hands. “Have Stefan and Tomas been

found yet? What did you overhear? It’s too early. I need coffee.”

“No news yet. I can’t tell you in here. Shifters, Inc. is compromised.”

That woke Pixie up. “Compromised?”

“How do you think that Tomas Rilke knew you were going to the charity ball?” Hillary said

in a low voice. “We have a mole. Come on.”

Pixie followed Hillary down the hallway. Who could Hillary mean? Certainly not Dominick.

Tyler? That was very, very hard for Pixie to believe.

Could he be a mole? Had he been distracting them all along, keeping them busy and

pretending to try to find the Rilkes?

“I need to talk to Dominick first,” she called out, but kept Hillary walking. Pixie followed

her outside, out the back door, cursing under her breath. She really needed some coffee.

Hillary kept walking, towards her car. “Get in,” she said to Pixie when they reached the

passenger side of the door.

Pixie glanced at the gangbanger who stood outside the door of the warehouse, keeping

watch. She felt a prickle of alarm rippling the hairs on the back of her neck. She had a bad feeling.

“I need to show you something,” Hillary said, fishing in her purse, and pulled out a pen.

“No, you need to talk. Who do you suspect of being a mole?”

“Me.”

Pixie felt a jab in her arm. The pen had been a disguised hypodermic needle.

“I’m the mole,” Hillary said, as the world started to fade. Pixie heard a shout, and then a

gunshot, which was probably Hillary killing the lookout. Then everything went blank.

* * *

“I have no right to ask you this, after the way that I talked to you,” Dominick said. “But

we’re desperate.”

Dominick felt sick and furious.

Pixie was gone. He should have been there to protect her, should have slept outside her

door. How could someone have stolen her away like that, without him even noticing? The fear and
anger raging inside him threatened to consume him. He struggled to stay human. He had to keep a
clear head if they had any hope of finding her.

Anastasia looked even more pale and haggard than she had the night before. She wore a

rumpled black dress, she hadn’t bothered to brush her hair, and the circles under her eyes were so
dark they looked like bruises.

“Don’t waste my time with apologies, you woke me up at the crack of freaking dawn and I

haven’t had my coffee yet,” she said, her voice raspy. “What’s going on?”

Fraser’s men had gone to fetch her, at Dominick’s suggestion.

Tyler had also called the police, and he was working the phone, in the process of contacting

all the news stations, so they could post pictures of Hillary and Pixie, but Dominick doubted that
would help.

Fraser stood there, bristling with rage. Having one of his men killed made him look weak.

He didn’t like looking weak.

“Hillary and Pixie are missing, and somebody shot one of Fraser’s men. They were

kidnapped, probably half an hour ago,” Dominick said.

Anastasia didn’t look as surprised as she should have.

“I knew Hillary was going dark,” Anastasia muttered. She fished around in her pocketbook

and pulled out a hairbrush.

“What is that? And what do you mean, Hillary’s going dark?”

“Dark. She’s turning evil. It takes one to know one. Okay, I’m going to give you a list of

ingredients, and you’re going to get them for me. This is Hillary’s hairbrush, I stole it from her purse
because I knew she was up to something. With this hairbrush and the ingredients you bring me, I can
create a tracking spell and we can find her, and hopefully, Pixie will be with her. And somebody
bring me some coffee, or seriously, I will kill something.”

“Why didn’t you tell me your suspicions?” Dominick demanded.

Anastasia laughed bitterly. “Would you have believed me? Me, over little miss goody two

shoes?”

“No, probably not,” he admitted. “I never trusted you.”

“Smart lion,” she said. “You shouldn’t. But when it comes to Pixie, if anyone tries to hurt

her, I’ll make them burn.”

* **

Pixie woke up with her heart pounding and her head spinning. She lay perfectly still for a

minute until her head cleared and she could see straight.

The room was dark and her upper arm hurt where she’d been jabbed with the needle. She

could see cracks of light streaming through shuttered windows, and outside she heard the caw of
birds.

“Ah, the sleeping beauty awakes.” It was Ion’s voice, no, Stefan. Stefan Rilke.

Pixie looked around her, scrubbing at her face with her hands. She was on a couch in what

looked like some kind of log cabin. There were animal head trophies on the wall. A hunting lodge.

The room was huge, at least a thousand square feet, with a flagstone fireplace and rough-

hewn furniture, and bear skin rugs on the wood flooring. Scattered throughout the room were several
dozen of Stefan’s men, and Hillary sat at a wooden table, chatting with one of them.

“What am I doing here?” Pixie demanded.

Stefan laughed, and walked over to a bar in the corner and poured himself a drink. He didn’t

bother to answer her.

Pixie looked at Hillary. “You were working with Stefan all along?” she said, dazed.

“No, I was working for his brother. Keeping an eye on you. But recently Stefan made me a

better offer.”

“Your mother will be so disappointed,” Pixie said sarcastically.

Hillary laughed. “That bitch was always disappointed in me. Now she’s dead. Stefan killed

her for me. That was part of his offer. Why do you think he gave me the antidote back at
headquarters? So I could keep an eye on you.”

Pixie was dumbfounded. This was nerdy, helpless, weak little Hillary talking.

“But you still call your mother all day long,” Pixie protested.

“You all think you’re so much smarter than me. I called Stefan all day long, and pretended

that I was speaking to my mother, but I was reporting on you.”

Pixie pressed her lips together and turned away, not bothering to answer. She was seething
with fury. She was completely outnumbered, she was sitting ten feet away from Stefan and she
desperately needed his blood to save her friends but she had no way to get to it, and she couldn’t think
how she was going to get out of this situation alive.

As she sat there scanning the room and trying to figure out what her options were, and
concluding that she was pretty much screwed, she heard the crackling of static.

One of the men pulled out a walkie talkie and keyed it on. “He’s coming, but he’s got that
lion shifter and some woman with him,” a voice said.

Stefan snorted in contempt. “He’ll need more backup than that.”

As all the men in the room drew their guns, Stefan walked over to Pixie, pulled her off the
couch, and circled his arm around her neck. He pressed a gun to her temple.

Tomas Rilke, Dominick, and Anastasia walked through the door of the cabin.

Chapter Fourteen

“How did you get here?” Pixie asked, astonished.

“Tracking spell,” Anastasia said.

“But…you’re with him…” Pixie looked at Tomas.

“No,” Dominick said. “We saw him driving on the road towards the hunting lodge, by

himself. We pulled him over and told him that we were coming to the cabin with him, no matter what
the consequences.”

Tomas flashed that cold smile of his. “We actually want the same thing. We’ve come for

Pixie.”

“No, you came for money, which you’re not going to get,” Stefan sneered. “Don’t try to

pretend that you’re getting sentimental in your old age.”

Then he turned to Anastasia. “Hello, dark witch. I recognize the power in you. I can pay

you more money than anything he’s offering you.”

“This one’s a freebie,” Anastasia said. “I came to get my friend. Give it up, Stefan. It’s

over. You want to know what fuels my magic? Rage. I’ve got plenty of it right now – enough to blast
you through the back of this building. We’ve notified the police, by the way. They’ll be here in a few
minutes. If you just let Pixie go and give me a vial of your blood, we’ll give you a head start. If you
don’t, I’ll burn you from the inside.”

Stefan laughed again. “I’m six hundred years old, you fool. You know how it works. The

older the magician, the stronger their magic. Die with your friends, then, it will be a pure pleasure to
watch. And the police won’t be able to touch me. I always have escape routes planned.”

Before he could say anything else, Tomas suddenly whipped out a pistol from his pocket in a

blur of motion and shot Hillary, who grasped at her chest, staring down at the bloody hole that had
opened there. With a horrified gurgle, she slumped off her chair and fell to the ground.

Stefan didn’t even flinch.

Pixie stifled an urge to vomit. Yes, Hillary had sold out Pixie and everyone else at Shifters,

Inc., but watching her cold-blooded murder was horrifying.

“I don’t like people who double cross me,” Tomas said. “And if you want to negotiate with

me, Stefan, you’ll have to let go of my daughter.”

Pixie jerked in shock. She felt as if she’d been hit by lightning, and a wave of revulsion

washed over her. Stefan tightened his grip on her.

“You,” she said flatly, feeling ice cold horror wash over her. “My father. You.” This was

worse than anything that she could have imagined. Her father was a man whose soul was steeped in
evil, a man who snuffed out lives without remorse.

Tomas nodded, his expression resigned. “You deserve the truth. You will loathe me for it

forever, and I accept that. Your mother was a woman named Rose Hodge. She came to work for me
and my brother at our family estate in Romania, as a maid.”

The Rose Foundation…he’d created that charitable organization in her mother’s name, Pixie

realized.

“That’s the truth?” Stefan threw back his head and laughed. “She thought she came to work

for us as a maid. She came to us so Tomas could seduce her and get her with child. That’s what we
do. She was an orphan, with no family to look for her, which is why she was hired. Unfortunately,
she found out the truth about why she was having his baby, and she turned out to be more resourceful
than we thought. She escaped with you.”

“Why?” Pixie had a feeling she knew the answer already, but she had to hear it for herself.

“Because Tomas was going to suck the life from your body. You know about the

Bloodstone,” Stefan said. “It was a witch who gave us our great powers of thievery, so we’d be able
to spirit it away from its owner. The witch left out one little detail, which she didn’t tell us until we
returned with the Bloodstone. The only way to harness its power was to use the life force of our own
infant children, within thirty days of their birth.”

“Wow, a dark witch tricked you. Imagine that,” Anastasia said with a bitter laugh. “And

instead of refusing to use the Bloodstone , you decided to choose option B. How many of your own
babies have you drained?”

Stefan shrugged. “Honestly, I’ve lost count.”

Pixie swallowed the bile rising in her throat. “What did you do to my mother?” she

demanded of Tomas.

“We found she’d fled to America,” Tomas said. “My men and I came after her, meaning to

kill her and bring you back. We tracked her down, but she was no longer pregnant, and she didn’t
have you with her. As my people were closing in on her, in Los Angeles, she jumped off a bridge. I
imagine she feared that we’d torture her to make her reveal your whereabouts. We thought that the
newspapers would report that an abandoned infant had been found, and we’d be able to recover you,
but it never happened. After thirty days, we gave up the search for you, because your life force was
no longer any use to me.”

“You pathetic bastard.” Hot tears stung Pixie’s eyes and ran down her cheeks. Her mother

had sacrificed her life for her. The loathing she felt for her father was tempered by the overpowering
admiration and love she felt for a woman she’d never met. “What the hell are you even doing here?”

“Knowing that I finally had a child that survived…it changed me. Not at first, but over the

years, the knowledge ate away at me. A year ago, I fathered another baby, and when the time came to
use the Bloodstone, I couldn’t make myself do it. I set him and his mother free, and I vowed, no
more. I left our home and took the Bloodstone with me.”

“Well, aren’t you a damned saint,” Pixie sneered.

He shook his head with a sad smile. “Oh no, Pixie, I know what I am. I’m a monster who

has lived for far too long. And I don’t ever expect your forgiveness, or understanding. I don’t deserve
it.”

“You were the one who was sending me all those anonymous gifts this past year.” Pixie

shuddered in revulsion. “You had Hillary drop some of them off for me.”

“They were nowhere near enough compensation for what I’ve done.”

“Damn straight. All the money on the entire planet wouldn’t be enough, and your charitable

organization won’t buy you any karma points either, you scumbag. If I survive the night, I’m going to
burn every filthy thing you ever gave me, because you touched it. So you tracked me down? How?”

“I had a picture of your mother. I hired a security firm to do facial recognition searches for

women of your age in California, and I got lucky. Your face popped up in a news article about
Shifters, Incorporated, and I started doing research. When I discovered that you were a renowned
thief, I knew that the magic of the witch was so strong, the talent for thievery had been passed down to
you. And most likely, the ability to handle the Bloodstone without dying.”

“Well, that was a guess,” Stefan said coldly. “But it was a risk I was willing to take.”

Of course he was.

“But how did you find me?” Pixie asked Stefan.

“It wasn’t that hard to find out where my brother had moved to,” Stefan said. “I couldn’t get

close to him, because he was always surrounded by security, but I knew there must have been a
reason that he came to settle down in Playa Linda. I was able to track down the person who found
you for him, and I tortured him until he talked.” He shrugged as if that was the most natural thing in the
world.

Then he directed his attention at Tomas.

“I’ve let you ramble on,” Stefan snapped. “Now, here’s what’s going to happen. I’m not

going to give you a damned thing. No money, no deeds to our property. You’re going to give me the
Bloodstone, and come back to our estate, and we’re going to resume our lives. Or I will kill your
daughter in front of you, and I’ll find your baby son and kill him too.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. You see, I have this,” Tomas said. He gestured with the pistol.

Stefan laughed. “That’s a good one. As if you’d shoot me. You know that if I die, you die. If

our lives weren’t linked, I’d have killed you myself long ago, you whiny, miserable bastard.”

Tomas pointed the pistol at his temple. “This was never about money; I just used the ransom

demand to draw you out. I came to Playa Linda to spend one glorious year watching my daughter
from afar, and reminding myself every single day of all of the children whose lives I stole. Now it’s
time to look you in the eye for the very last time. We were wrong, Stefan.”

Stefan let out a strangled cry, and let go of Pixie. He took a step towards Tomas, whose

finger tightened on the trigger.

“Stop being melodramatic,” Stefan pleaded, his voice panicked. “We’re gods, Tomas! We

have all the wealth and power in the world, and we can live forever! You’re not ready to die!”

“Oh, I’m so very ready to die. We’ve lived all these years for nothing, Stefan. Our children

would have been our immortality. I threw the Bloodstone in the ocean, by the way.”

And he pulled the trigger, and Pixie closed her eyes for a second, and when she opened them

her father was lying on the ground with a bullet hole in his temple, his dark eyes wide open and
staring.

Stefan let out a strangled scream, clutched at his head, and staggered backwards.

He fell to the ground, thrashing and kicking. His body arched, and he howled in pain and

writhed as if he were burning alive.

In the distance, they heard sirens. The men in the room glanced at each other. One of them

raised a gun and pointed it at Anastasia, and then he let out an agonized scream as his hand caught on
fire. The gun fell to the ground, glowing red.

“Burn, you bastard!” Anastasia screamed, her eyes glowing.

More men burst into flames and ran screaming from the lodge, ablaze like human torches.

Dominick let out a mighty roar, and shifted. He stood huge and golden, eyes glowing with

anger. When the guards reached for their guns, Anastasia set their hands on fire. There were
screams of panic, men running, fleeing the room. Domminick chased after them, his mane flowing,
tail twitching furiously, and Pixie heard agonized screams outside of the hut.

Anastasia ran over and crouched down next to Stefan, who was still thrashing and screaming.

She jabbed his arm with a knife and let the blood run into a vial, which she quickly capped. His
screaming stopped, and he lay still.

Pixie knelt down next to her. “Why didn’t you just bring the cops to begin with?” she asked.

“Because Stefan would have refused to give us his blood, and we’d have to get a warrant for

it, and he’d have rich lawyers stall until all of your friends died. We were hoping we’d find a way to
get his blood ourselves. It was worth the risk.”

The room in the air was hazy. Smoke was curling up from the furniture and the curtains.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Pixie said to Anastasia.

Anastasia handed her the vial. “If you take this to the hospital, they’ll be able to make the

antidote. Go. Leave me.”

“What the hell is the matter with you? Of course I’m not leaving you.”

Anastasia’s eyes were wild. She gestured at the men lying on the floor. “That is my end,

Pixie. That’s what I become. I won’t let that happen to me.”

“Bullshit. You can still be helped. You haven’t gone over. Not all the way. The fact that

you don’t want to become pure evil is proof that you can still be helped.”

“No, I can’t. It’s too hard. I can’t do it.” Anastasia was kneeling on the floor, doubled over.

“Go. I’ll burn you if you try to save me. Go.”

Pixie shrugged. “Well, if you’re sure, then okay, fine. Stay here and fry.” She turned and

walked away, eyes stinging.

On one of the tables, she spotted a heavy wooden candlestick. That should do nicely.

She raised it high, knocked Anastasia unconscious with a blow to the head, and grabbed her

collar, dragging her towards the door. “Sorry, you stubborn dumbass,” she muttered.

It was hard to see. The smoke stung her eyes, and the room felt hot, and she started coughing

and choking as she struggled to pull Anastasia. A growl sounded in her ears, and she looked up,
blinking, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Dominick rushed in, still in lion form. He ran over to Anastasia, grabbed her shirt in his

jaws, and hauled her out of the cabin, with Pixie following behind him, clutching the vial of blood in
her hand as if her life depended on it.

Chapter Fifteen

A week later, in Big Timber, California

“So how do you feel?” Dominick asked Bobbi.

“I feel like having another drink. I’m fine, Dominick, really,” she said. She was still pale,

her dark hair bringing out the pallor in her oval face. She sat next to her husband, Jax, a wolf shifter,
who also looked a little under the weather. Jax raised his mug of beer in a salute to Dominick.

“Thanks again for everything that you did for us. We owe you,” he said.

“Yeah, you do. Don’t worry, I’ll figure out a way to collect,” Dominick grinned. “I’m

thinking you could wash my car for a year.”

“Or not,” Jax suggested. “I’ll buy you a beer next time we’re out, though.”

They were all gathered around a long wooden table on a patio, at his parents’ estate –

everyone but Pixie and Anastasia. His boss Kenneth and Kenneth’s wife Chloe were there, holding
hands.

His parents, May and Christopher, were at the head of the table. His brother Ryder, sat next

to Barbara holding her hand and looking thoroughly miserable.

Barbara wore a plunging lycra halter dress and high heels. Her frosted hair was teased and
streaked, stiff as a helmet. How could he ever have found her attractive?

Actually, he knew how – and everyone else was about to know, too.

Barbara’s obnoxious family, including her uncle Kai, the shaman who had sold Dominick his

talisman, were arguing with each other loudly. Her loud, overbearing father was already drunk, and
it wasn’t noon yet.

Dominick ignored them, soaking in the warmth of the sunshine. The table was laden with

trays of sandwiches, frosty cold pitchers of beer, and bowls of sweet sun-warmed fruit. Life was
good.

Barbara shot Dominick a nasty look. “Too bad you broke up with that ugly little thief,” she

sneered. “You could have had conjugal visits with her in prison; I’m sure she’ll end up there.”

Dominick shrugged and smiled.

“Barbara!” Ryder pleaded. “Please, honey.”

“What?” Barbara snapped at him. “You got a problem?”

Dominick remembered when it had been like that for him. He’d been terrified of offending

Barbara, and despite her constant barrage of nasty comments, he’d frantically tried to placate her for
the whole miserable six months that they’d been engaged.

He’d met her at the hair salon where she worked. She’d cut his hair, tried to flirt with him,

and he’d brushed her off. He’d instantly disliked her. And yet, a day later, he found himself obsessed
with her. They were engaged within the week.

It was all so clear now, he felt like a complete moron for not having seen it.

Dominick’s mother shot Dominick a pained look, and he gave her a slight smile. Patience, he

mentally telegraphed at her.

“You’re in an awfully good mood,” Barbara grumbled, and took a huge swig of beer. She

didn’t like to see Dominick happy. He should be miserable and pining over her. “So, where is the
criminal anyway? Off banging someone else? You never were enough to keep a woman satisfied.”

“Barbara. Please.” Ryder’s hands were shaking.

“Looking for me? I’m right here.” Pixie’s voice made Barbara jump. Dominick broke out in

a huge smile – partly because he always smiled when Pixie was in the room, and partly because of
what was about to happen.

Pixie wore leggings, high heeled boots, and a t-shirt with skull and cross-bones on it. Her

eyes met his, and a lightning bolt of desire shot through Dominick. He winked at her, and she blew
him a kiss. He’d be stripping that outfit off of her in the not too distant future, and continuing his
mission to explore every inch of her body with his tongue.

Anastasia stood next to Pixie. She looked much better. She was in recovery, in a program

designed to help witches taper off dark magic. She took Zoloft to help take the edge off of her anger,
which lessened her craving for dark magic, and she met with a warlock every day to monitor her
progress. She’d even taken up meditation.

“What the hell are you doing here? Ryder, throw her out, honey, this party is for decent

people only.” Barbara’s eyes lit up, and a smirk twisted her pretty lips. She thrived on drama.

“You…you’ll have to leave,” Ryder mumbled, staring into his beer. He looked as if he were

praying the Earth would swallow him up.

“Why is she here? You dumped her!” Barbara snarled to Dominick.

“I’d never dump her. She’s my fated mate.” Dominick was grinning from ear to ear now.

“What the hell are you smirking about, you jackass?” Barbara snapped at him. Then she

turned back to Pixie. “Just finished up with some breaking and entering?”

“Actually, yes,” Pixie said.

Barbara’s eyes widened with surprise.

“At your house.” Pixie paused for effect. “122 Redbird Lane.”

Barbara gasped with anger. “Dad!” she wailed.

“I bought my friend here with me because she’s an expert in sniffing out dark magic,” Pixie

said. “She helped me find this. Under your bed. Man, your house is a pigsty.”

She reached into her purse and pulled out a voodoo doll, with a tuft of blond hair on its little

head. It was crudely sewn out of cloth. There was a pin stabbing it through a cloth heart which was
sewn on the front of it.

Barbara’s parents and her uncle Kai cried out in dismay, and jumped up. Hans, Kory,

Kenneth and Jax all jumped to their feet at the same time.

“Kill her!” Barbara screamed, shaking with rage, her eyes wild with panic. “Get me that

doll, get it for me, baby! It’s mine!”

“No it’s not!” Kai cried out. “No! We’ve never seen it before!”

“She broke into my house? That’s illegal! We can send her to jail for real!” Tears of rage

streamed down Barbara’s face, leaving black gritty streaks of mascara on her cheeks.

“You know what’s really, really illegal? Mind control spells,” Anastasia snapped,. “Like,

life sentence in prison illegal.” She yanked the pin out of the voodoo doll’s heart. She bowed her
head over the doll and began muttering, as Ryder clutched his chest and gasped.

Ryder’s parents jumped up and ran over to him.

“Ryder?” his mother said anxiously.

“He’ll be fine,” Anastasia muttered, and resumed her incantation.

Ryder climbed to his feet, bewildered.

“Baby! Honey! Are you all right?” Barbara bleated plaintively.

“You bitch!” Ryder shouted. “Oh, my God. I can’t believe I was going to marry you. The

way you’ve talked to my family? I hate you. I hated you from the minute I set eyes on you. Get out. Get
off my family’s property and never come back!”

“Wait!” Dominick bellowed. “Not so fast.” He glared at Barbara. “First of all, take off that

engagement ring.” That ring had clearly set his brother back a cool couple hundred thousand. No way
was she walking away with that.

“I will not!” she clutched it to her chest. “Never! It’s mine!”

“Take it OFF!” her father yelled at her. “Do you understand what they could do to us?”

He pounced on her and grabbed at the ring, and she punched him and clawed at him, and her

uncle Kai joined in, and they all fell on the ground. Barbara bit her uncle’s hand, and he screamed and
cursed, and pulled the ring off her as she clawed his arm.

“Here!” Kai jumped up and eagerly thrust the ring into Ryder’s hand. “Here’s your ring back!

No harm done. Okay, we’re leaving now.”

Dominick grabbed him by the arm.

“That’s assault,” Kai snarled, his face turning ugly.

Police sirens wailed in the distance. Kai went pale. “You didn’t,” he said to Dominick.

“No, I did,” Anastasia said. “I reported your violation to the Council. Bad shaman. Very

bad. You used Dominick’s hair to make that voodoo doll after he went to your niece’s salon, and then
when he caught your niece cheating on him, you somehow got Ryder’s hair and did the same to him.
You did it so she could marry into Ryder’s family and leach off them. By the way, now I know why
Dominick used to get so irritated by Pixie; it was because she was his fated mate, and the talisman
that you made for him was fighting it every single second.”

“I swear to God, if my parents hadn’t raised me to never hit a woman-” Ryder was so angry

that he was shaking. “After all the hell you’ve put us through-”

“My parents didn’t raise me that way,” Pixie said, and she hauled off and decked Barbara on

the jaw, sending her sprawling.

“That’s for all the pain you caused my boyfriend, and his family, you whore!” she yelled.

“Get up so I can hit you again!”

“Oh, I like her,” Dominick’s mother said to him. “I really, really like her.”

Barbara’s father pulled her to her feet, and they scrambled off the porch. Everyone followed

them to the front of the house.

Barbara’s family ran over to the baby blue Mercedes which Ryder had bought for her last

week; it was blocked in by Pixie’s car.

“Move! Move! Move!” Barbara screamed at Pixie, shaking with fury.

“Nope,” Dominick said, shaking his head.

Barbara shot Dominick a look of hatred before they quickly piled into her father’s beat up old

pick up truck and roared away, with several police cars in hot pursuit.

“Man, I feel stupid,” Dominick growled. “I actually paid that bastard to make me that

talisman – to fix what him and his niece had done to me. What was I thinking?”

“You weren’t thinking straight,” Pixie said. “You’d been bewitched. My God, what a hag.

She better never cross my path again.”

“You did good, babe,” Dominick said, hugging Pixie to him.

“I know, I am pretty incredible,” she said modestly.

“You holding up okay?”

“Not bad. I mean, finding out I’m fifty percent evil is pretty disturbing.”

“Nahh. It’s what makes you sexy.” He bent down and kissed her lips. “By the way, I’m

never, never letting you go.”

“So I have my own stalker now?”

“Your very own. “ He leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Also, as you may have noticed,

my family’s house has a lot of rooms. Rooms where we could disappear for an hour and nobody

would find us. Come, let’s go exploring.”

THE END

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