numbers, and then—
Soft, whispered Arabic filled the space between them.
At first, he thought Tigris was still alive.
But then he realized the lilting, beautiful words—they were coming from her. Catwoman.
Her Arabic was almost perfect.
He hadn’t heard it spoken so well since he’d returned. There was a slight American accent, the same as his own when he spoke it.
He said nothing, lowering his hand from the panel in his arm. Terminating the call.
She finished, kneeling to close Tigris’s open eyes with her gloved fingers.
When Catwoman rose, she stared at the woman’s corpse for a long moment before she said, “She trained me at the League.”
Every thought eddied out of Luke’s head.
She’d been trained at the League, trained by Tigris herself. Which meant—
Catwoman’s head lifted, the moonlight illuminating the lenses over her eyes. “I am a ghūl—as she is. Was.” She flexed her gloved hands, as if shaking the feel of the assassin from them. “It’s what League assassins call themselves. When our training is complete, our final task is to dig our own future graves and recite our own final prayers. We lie in them from dusk until dawn. And when we emerge from the earth afterward…we are ghūls. Wraiths.”
He didn’t ask how many of them ever made it back to their gravesites to fill those holes in the ground.
She wasn’t just some skilled jewel thief.
A trained killer.
From the League of Assassins.
“The prayer,” she went on, more to herself than him. “It was her final rite. What is owed to any wraith.”
“Yet you didn’t want to kill her tonight.”
Even though Tigris had come here to kill her—for something she’d stolen.
Silence.
Luke demanded, “If you’re in the League, why are you working with Harley and Ivy?”
She studied him as if debating her answer. “I left.”
Luke took a moment to process those words. “No one leaves the League.”
“I did.”
Hence the assassin after her. “Why?”
“Nyssa and Talia al Ghūl have always striven to follow in their father’s footsteps.” An ecoterrorist maniac—not like Poison Ivy’s desire to save the planet, to coexist with plant and animal. No, the man wanted the earth wiped clean of all human life. Catwoman shrugged. “I found I no longer fit in.”
Hence the warning the other week. That worse was coming, either as part of Nyssa and Talia’s agenda, or…to hunt the woman before him. “So you left,” he said.
A slight nod.
He wanted to see her face. Wanted to know who he was speaking to, who had fought like a black wind tonight, who had dared walk away from the League, dared defy it—
“And as for why I’m working with Ivy and Harley…” A shrug. “Since I am no longer a part of the League, I need money to establish myself in Gotham.”
Luke blinked, jaw clenching. Right. That.
She went on, “I stole something valuable from Nyssa when I left.” Tigris’s warning echoed in his head. “I’ve been weighing options for potential buyers. But until I sell it, I’m low on funds.”
“What about just getting a job?”
She laughed quietly. “You’re terribly naive to say that.”
Luke stiffened. But instead of lunging for her, he lifted his forearm and finally dialed the GCPD. He gave a clipped explanation that a body had been found at this specific location, hung up, and growled at her, “Don’t even think about running.”
Because he was going to arrest her. Right now. He hit a button on his suit, the tech powering up, readying for the chase. His Bat-Cuffs clicked free from his Utility Belt.
Another soft laugh. “Oh, I don’t think so.”
His suit detected two others beside her. Right as Harley Quinn clenched two of those small circus-ball explosives—one in each hand—a gas mask covering her face. And Poison Ivy thumbed free one of the orchids from the vine snaking across her torso. Smoke rippled from it. Not to take him down but to cloud their escape.
“Hi, handsome,” Ivy drawled. Harley grinned.
Something sparkled at Catwoman’s fingertips.
The necklace. The Fox necklace.
When Tigris had slammed her into that case the second time, she must have swiped it. Too fast for even him to see.
The diamonds burned with blue fire in the moonlight. “Thanks for this,” Catwoman said, and took a step back.
Luke said tightly, “I have it on good authority that necklace is a fake.”
He’d had a replica made yesterday. Cubic zirconia and painted brass.
Total worth: a few hundred bucks.
Catwoman let out a low laugh, the sound echoed by twin rumbles. Motorcycles. Parked on the road a few feet away. She stepped back into the smoke. “Oh, I know.”
Then