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here.”

“I’m supposed to be your replacement for Nathaniel’s healing, but if you need me . . .”

I started to dismiss him. I didn’t think of him as a fighter, but the first time I’d met him he had waded into a giant snake gone amok in the Circus of the Damned. He’d risked his life to help kill it. Funny how I’d begun to think of him as someone who helped me do my hair and makeup for Jean-Claude’s fancy events, but not as a fighter. He was about my size, as delicate in his own way as Vivian, but he was also a werewolf and that meant something.

“Thanks, Stephen, but I think staying with Nathaniel will be great. I need to find Richard and bring him back here; after that we’ll have a meeting or something.” I was already moving down the hallway. Nicky followed me. I almost told him to stay at the door, but truthfully I would eventually have to go outside the Circus, and of our guards he wasn’t a bad choice. He might be creepily overattached to me, but his fighting skills were excellent and the only thing that kept his killing in check was my conscience. He didn’t seem to have one of his own. I couldn’t stay in here forever. I had a job. I’d taken last night off, but I had clients to see this afternoon. Of course, all it would take was one of the assassins signing up as a client and they’d get to be alone with me. Or would have; now I’d need guards with me. Shit.

A small screaming part of me was saying something in my head that I was trying really hard not to listen to. Richard is in danger. The only comfort about him not answering his phone was that if he was really hurt I’d know it, the same way I’d known that Nathaniel got shot in the shoulder. I’d feel it. Richard was okay. He was safe, for now.

Then I realized I was being slow. I hit the phone screen and got my contacts list back up. I’d call Jamil, or Shang-Da. They were his main bodyguards, his Sköll and Hatí. One of the three would pick up their damn phone.

Nicky was already on his own phone. I heard him talking to Bobby Lee about the assassins. He was right. I should have told our men first. I had to pull myself together and work this emergency. I’d fall apart later.

Jamil’s number was first alphabetically, so I hit it. He picked up on the second ring. “Anita, what’s up?”

“You need to bring Richard back to the Circus, now.”

I heard his voice twice, like a weird echo, as he said, “That’s going to be a problem.”

I turned to find him coming down the hallway with Shang-Da by his side. “Why aren’t you with your Ulfric?” I asked.

“He’s on a late lunch date. We don’t go on the dates.”

I pushed the whole date thing away. I’d worry about it later, if at all. I told them what was happening. “Well, shit,” Jamil said.

“That about covers it,” I said.

“If he’s with the doc, he won’t answer his phone,” Jamil said. I wanted to say, Richard is dating a doctor? but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t like we were monogamous.

“Contact him mind-to-mind,” Shang-Da said.

“I’ll try. He’s been keeping me out the last few months.”

“Maybe, or maybe you both quit trying,” he said.

I didn’t try to argue. We’d decide who was right and wrong once I knew Richard was safe. I felt Jean-Claude coming toward me. He didn’t try to shut me out. I pushed the thought away. I opened that link between Richard and me. Shang-Da was right; I’d stopped trying a while back. It was just easier that way.

I smelled trees, leaves, pine, forest. It was how I always found him by scent, as if wherever he was he smelled of the wolf pack’s land. I felt him behind the wheel of his four-by-four. I saw him glance up, as if somehow I were hovering near the roof of his truck. We always looked up to see each other—the way we had for the council, come to think of it. That made me lose focus for a moment, and I had to fight to see him. I knew he was already close to his house, because of the trees by the road. I had a moment of seeing him looking up at me, and of seeing the