was doused with battery acid.”
“No, he was shot to death in his own apartment. Bled out in minutes.”
“Too quick.”
“Damned right,” Garsea muttered.
“Anyway, he had a warehouse down by the river where they’d break the cubs, then sell them as exotic pets.”
Must have a drink. Right now. “Did you say pets?”
“Yeah.”
“We speculated it was their twisted version of, say, tropical fish.” Garsea was apparently on board with Team Booze, because she’d fixed herself something, then set an orange drink in front of Lila that she prayed had at least an inch of vodka. “Or a potbellied pig.”
She sipped. Two inches! Excellent. “That must have been horrible. Stumbling across that must have been truly horrible. I’m sorry. But I’m glad you got them.”
“It was Annette’s case; she’s the one who figured it all out.”
“With Oz’s help,” Garsea put in quickly. “He’s the one who figured out about the overseas accounts and the shell corps.”
Oz ducked his head a little, clearly pleased Garsea had given credit where it was due. In that moment, he looked like a shy boy happy to get his big sister’s praise. “But, Lila, that’s not the worst of it.”
“Jesus. Hit me.”
“The worst of it was, Lund wasn’t breaking Shifter juveniles just to be a humongous dickcheese. He was breaking them—house-breaking them—for syndicate members who wanted their very own pet Shifters. But also…”
He trailed off and they both looked at her and she didn’t want to finish the sentence but she had to finish the sentence because the end of the sentence was perfectly, horribly obvious: “But also Stables. This Lund guy, he was selling werebears and werewolves and—and werefoxes and werelabradors and wereroos, he was selling them to people like me.”
“Not people like you,” Oz said firmly.
“People who know about werewolves and keep quiet, but only because they want to own one for their very own. Like slaves.”
“Told you it was bad.”
“But you got him.” She pointed at the Lund circle, which should be in red and scribbled over with great big loops of black. “He’s dead, you saved Caro. So why would you…d’you think some are still out there?”
“We’re very nearly positive,” Garsea replied as Lila drained half her glass. “Because it was never just Lund. He was simply—how’d you put it? Satan’s office manager. We had a mole at IPA. She would help Lund target vulnerable weres. Not to worry,” she added, anticipating Lila’s next question. “I killed her and ate her.” She smiled with a great many teeth, and Lila felt every hair on the back of her neck come to attention as she recalled an earlier conversation in that very room.
Be careful! If you make Oz mad, his sister will eat you.
Please tell me that’s hyperbole.
“Okay. Now I know why you work for IPA but don’t want to work at IPA. Because where there was one, there could be another. You’re pretty sure work is a safe place to do this stuff, but not a hundred percent. Am I getting that right?” She couldn’t imagine what it was like to find out a colleague—someone whose job description meant they had to be on your side—was complicit in the trafficking of children. “So Lund is dead, and the Sindicate member at IPA, she’s dead. And not just dead. Devoured, even. So, super-duper dead.”
“As well as a few SAS foot soldiers,” Garsea added.
“SAS?”
Garsea looked away while Oz rolled his eyes and replied, “They’re a fucking embarrassment. The Shifter version of the Ku Klux Klan.”
“Oh, charming.” But it wasn’t a surprise once she thought about it. Garsea and Oz and Auberon and probably Sally could all take her in a fight. They were faster, stronger, and at least one of them didn’t mind eating people. No surprise there were some supremacists in the mix. “Was there a war, like there was just before the KKK was founded? A reaction to, what would you call it—changing social mores?”
“Not a war,” Oz replied. And was he having trouble meeting her gaze? “More like a few lame skirmishes that most people never noticed.”
“Given the sudden lack of eye contact from you both, I’m pretty sure you’re downplaying.”
“It’s embarrassing,” Oz admitted. “Ten years ago, there was an attempted takeover. A bunch of SAS assholes and their allies staged a takeover attempt in Shakopee, which was gonna be the starting off point for a worldwide coup. They disguised it as a protest against climate change.”
“Are you talking about the Kiyuska thing?”
“Unfortunately,” Garsea replied sourly.
“But that really was about climate change. It made