the bear down and didn't. Curran took ownership of it and got it done. That's what an alpha does. It was damn clear after that who was in charge."
Jim leaned forward, his arms on the table. "An alpha's first law must be solid. It shows what the alpha stands for. No matter what other shit happens, the alpha has got to uphold that law, because once he lets somebody question it, his whole rule comes into doubt. Curran's first law is 'Don't touch the Games.' "
"It's a good law," Jim continued. "We don't need to be messing around with a place that's interested in making us dead in a pretty way. Even the People stay the hell away from it since it's gone underground."
He fell silent. Like Curran, Jim mostly hid his emotions, but his eyes betrayed him this time.
Dark and troubled, they brimmed with anxiety. He was keeping it in check, but I could sense it. Jim was uneasy. Haunted.
"So what made you mess with the Games, Jim?" I prompted.
"They're importing shapeshifters. Some are on the level. They brought a mountain cat out from Missouri a few months ago. A decent female. But some are scum. They come in to scope our territory. They're a threat. That's a security issue, and that makes it mine."
Pieces clicked together in my head. "You put a mole into the Games. And you didn't tell Curran because you didn't think he would be reasonable about it." Jim took it upon himself to make a decision only the Beast Lord could've made. It wasn't just a Bad Idea. It was a Sure to Get You Killed in a Hurry Idea.
Jim pushed the photograph toward me. "Garabed. Good, strong cat. Armenian. Found him like this a block from the Northern Office."
Now I saw it. Jim had a dead shapeshifter and he couldn't tell Curran about it. Knowing Curran, he would shut down the whole operation at the root. The Beast Lord had to uphold his laws. But now that one of his people was lost, Jim couldn't let it go. He had to find and punish the guilty. First, to avenge the death, and second, because his crew would abandon him if he didn't. The first duty of an alpha was to protect his clan, and Jim's crew was his clan for the time being.
"Garabed showed no signs of shifting shape?" I asked.
"None."
If I were Jim, I'd put somebody back into the Games. Somebody vicious, smart, and skilled.
Somebody hard to take down . . .
"You brought Derek in."
Jim nodded. "He's the best covert agent I have. He looks" - words caught in his throat - "
looked like a brainless pretty boy. Nobody pays him any mind. But he misses nothing."
"What happened?"
Jim grimaced. "He went there for a month and came back with this weird-ass story about the Reapers. It's the name of a team. They came out of nowhere a few weeks ago and landed with a lot of noise. Half of them m-scanned as human, but Derek said they weren't. Didn't smell right. He thought they had some sort of beef with us. Not just with the Pack but with our whole kind. Something about us being a meld of humans and animals, and those guys hate both. He told me there was a human girl in the Reaper crew and spun this long story about how she wanted to switch sides and would tell us all about the Reapers and Gar's murder if we got her out."
"And you told him no."
Jim drained a third of his glass. "I told him it was too risky. The Reapers travel together, fifteen, twenty, sometimes thirty per group, always armed."
"As if they know they're going in and out of enemy territory."
Jim nodded.
"And they can't be tracked by scent? They have to have a base of some sort."
Jim looked like he'd just bitten a lime. "The problem isn't tracking. The problem is the location of their base."
"Where is it?" Why did I have a feeling this wouldn't be good? With my luck, the next thing to come out of his mouth would be something crazy, like Unicorn Lane . . .
"In Unicorn - "
I held my hand out. "Got it."
Unicorn Lane gave no quarter. Savage magic roiled there, streaming through the gutted corpses of skyscrapers, too powerful to harness, too dangerous to fight. Ordinary objects became suffused with lethal power. Horrible things that shunned the light hid in Unicorn, feeding on lesser monsters and spinning foul magics of