Livy ignored it all.

But she couldn’t really ignore the tall, beautiful woman who suddenly filled her doorway. Well, she could ignore her, but she’d tried that before and got hit in the face for her trouble. The reasoning? “I was worried you were dead. . . . I was just checking that you weren’t. Aren’t you glad someone cares?” Cella Malone had asked at the time with no sense of irony.

“Hey, Livy.” And here came the requisite sad face. The expression everyone used when someone they knew had a death in the family, but they didn’t actually know the person who’d died. Toni had burst into tears at the news. But she’d known Damon Kowalski well, once even managing to get Livy’s father to pay for art school by using an extreme level of guilt.

More sad face from the She-tiger who coached the New York Carnivores hockey team. “How ya doin’, hon?”

Livy briefly debated not answering and seeing if the female would just leave, but . . . she wasn’t in the mood to be hit. Again.

“I’m fine.”

Cella gave her the “Be brave, little one. Be brave” expression.

Unable to keep up the façade anymore—and for Livy, five seconds of keeping up the façade was damn near a record—she asked, “Need something, Cella?”

“I know it’s your first day back . . .” And Livy watched the She-tiger actually struggle with the mere idea of giving Livy work “at this difficult time.”

Putting it down to Irish-Catholic guilt, something even Catholic honey badgers never worried about, Livy decided to let the woman off the hook.

“It’s all right,” Livy soothed. “I, uh, need something to do to get my mind off things.” That was what people said when they were going through mourning, right? It sounded right. Like something she heard on one of those made-for-TV movies she’d had on in the background last night while she was up playing computer games.

“If you’re sure,” Cella hedged.

“I’m sure. What do you need?”

Malone held up an eight-by-ten picture of one of her players. “Is it possible we can make him look less . . . serial killer-y?”

Livy stared at the picture. “The man is seven-five, he weighs nearly five hundred pounds, and he’s missing part of his face.”

“Not missing it.” Malone looked at the picture. “Those are just claw marks . . . from his wife. A lovely She-lion.” She leaned in a bit and whispered, “Given during the throes of passion, I’ve heard.”

“So I don’t need to put ‘How to Stop Domestic Violence’ pamphlets in his locker?”

The She-tiger gazed at Livy, not getting the tacky joke at all. Before this job, Livy had spent most of her time with full-humans. Likemost HBs, who either hung around other HBs or full-humans. It was rare for a honey badger to be around so many other breeds and species of shifters, and Livy often had to remind herself that life among shifters was . . . different. Shifter males often respected their mates because if they didn’t they knew the repercussions would be swift and long-term. Cops were rarely involved. Shelters never used. So those tacky jokes she heard around full-humans—that she, tragically, was not above using—most shifters never got.

Livy’s father once pushed Livy’s mother during a fight, around the time his drinking had just begun to get bad. Joan Kowalski retaliated by pinning his hand to the kitchen table with a steak knife. The move, of course, didn’t kill him . . . but it reminded Damon how far he could go with a fellow shifter. Especially a female one.

“Do you want me to take the scars out? Or rebuild his jaw?” Livy finally asked when the She-tiger continued to just stare at her.

“I don’t know if his fans would like that.” Cella continued to study the pictures. “Maybe we could put a hat on him.”

Livy scratched her cheek. “A hat? You want me to take the picture with him wearing a hat?”

“Uh-huh. Just cover his face a bit.”

A couple of years ago, this would be where Livy would jump up, snarl she couldn’t work under these conditions, and storm out. Unless the photo editor was rude about his feedback; then Livy would just go for his face. This time, though, the fight completely out of her, Livy just shrugged and said, “Sure. Let’s use a hat.”

Malone blinked and now studied Livy. “Really? You don’t mind?”

“Nope.”

“Okay.” Malone placed the photo on Livy’s desk and walked to the doorway. She stopped, looked back at Livy, nodded, and walked out.

Once she was alone, Livy spun her chair away from the door so that she faced the wall behind her. She had some proofs of shots she was planning to use for her gallery show but she didn’t even see them. She didn’t see anything. She just stared straight ahead and waited. For what? Livy had no idea.

“How do you tolerate that noise?” Dee-Ann Smith asked, her cold, dead, dog-like eyes glaring. She sat behind a desk with absolutely nothing on it. No computer. No paper. No phone. Not even a little lamp. There was just a chair on one side, two chairs on the other, and a metal desk in between. And there was just something so damn disturbing about that. The woman had missed her true calling as a Soviet agent during the Cold War. The Communists might have actually won with her on their side.

Vic shrugged. “What noise?”

“That noise.” She pointed at Shen, who sat next to him, munching on his bamboo.