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“Smile, Merle, she’ll heal.”

“I’m beginning to agree with what the wererats said.”

“And what was that?”

“That you were scary enough all on your own without being Nimir-Ra.”

“This isn’t even close to as scary as I get,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows at me. “Really?”

It was Nathaniel who said, “Really.” My other cats echoed him, nodding.

“Then why aren’t you afraid of her?” Gina asked.

“Because she doesn’t try to be scary to us,” Zane said. He looked down at Elizabeth on the ground, still unable to move much. “Of course, maybe the rules have changed.”

“Only for bad little leopards,” I said, “Let’s get to the rats and go see the wolves.”

“And the swans,” Micah said.

“Swans?” I asked.

He smiled. “You just keep making conquests, Anita, even when you don’t mean to do it.” He held his hand out to me. I hesitated, then, slowly, I took it. Our fingers interlaced, and we walked together hand-in-hand down the road, and it felt good, and right, like I’d found a piece of myself that was missing. I left Zane behind to make sure Elizabeth didn’t get run over by a car. We’d send Dr. Lillian back for her. The rest of the leopards followed behind Micah and me, and for the first time since I’d inherited the cats, I felt like I really was Nimir-Ra. And maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t fail them.

21

RAFAEL THE RAT king had a black limo. He’d never struck me as a limo kind of guy, and I said as much. He said, “Marcus and Raina used to put on quite a show for things like this. I and my rats are not willing to make a spectacle of ourselves, so the limo.”

“Hey, I wore makeup,” I said. That had made him smile.

We were riding in the back of the limo, with one of his wererats driving. Merle and Zane were in the front with the driver. Merle, because he’d objected to us all being split up among people he didn’t know, and Zane, because I just didn’t completely trust Merle yet. Though I had no illusions about which of them would win the fight, if it came to that. Richard had a werewolf or two that I would have bet on against Merle, but there was something downright scary about Micah’s head bodyguard, a “something” that all of my leopards lacked. Not ruthlessness, more an ultimate practicality. You just knew Merle would do whatever needed to be done, no hesitation, no sympathy, just business. When that’s pretty much how you operate yourself, you begin to recognize it in other people, and you watch them closely.

All the leaders got to ride in the back of the limo, which smacked of elitism to me, but it did allow us all to talk together, and no one else seemed to have a problem with it. I wasn’t sure why it bugged me, but it did.

Rafael was tall, dark, handsome, and strongly Mexican. He spoke with no trace of an accent, or rather he sounded like he was from Missouri. He sat facing us. Yes, us. Micah and I sat across from him. We were not holding hands. We were not casting longing glances at each other. In fact, strangely, once I was away from the other leopards, I was uncomfortable around him. Maybe it was my usual discomfort that always set in after intimacy. But I wasn’t sure, it felt different. Or maybe it was the closer we got to seeing Richard, the more I wondered what the hell I was doing. Was I really going to tell Richard that I’d taken a lover, another shapeshifter? We’d broken up before and gotten back together, but if Richard thought I’d taken a permanent lover besides Jean-Claude, it was over. I didn’t want it to be over, though part of me wasn’t at all sure that dating Richard was healthy for either of us. We weren’t really good for each other. Love is like that sometimes.

I pushed away serious thoughts and looked at the last member of our little party. Donovan Reece was the new swan king in town. He was about six feet tall, though it was hard to tell exactly while he was sitting down. His skin was that flawless milk and cream complexion that the beauty aids promise when tan is out for a year or two, but Donovan’s was the real deal. He was whiter than I was, as white