“If we meet on the mats, I promise not to eat your anger, or raise the ardeur.”

   “You’d fight me fair?”

   “You’re six feet plus to my five-three, so I’m not sure there’s any way to have a fair fight between us, but if you mean I won’t use any preternatural abilities that we don’t both have, then yeah—a fair fight.”

   “Yeah, I’d like that, a lot.” He gave me a look that held something close to hate. I’d humiliated him the first time we met. Yes, he’d started it, but I might have taken it too far, and if I did, then his reaction to me today was my fault. I was supposed to be his boss, so I’d try to fix it the only way I knew how, by letting him win. He was a big guy, and he was training with our guards, so I didn’t expect to win; and because I didn’t expect it, losing in a match with someone to call it before he hurt me didn’t risk any ego on my part, and it might restore some of his. But this was the last chance for Ricky; if he ever stepped out of line after I saw him on the practice mats, either he was gone or he’d keep pushing until he got dead, and that was about as gone as you could get. I felt vaguely like it was my fault for messing with him the first time, so I’d literally go to the mats with him.

   “Let me get this thing with Damian fixed, and we’ll set something up,” I said.

   “Tomorrow?” Ricky asked.

   “I don’t think my problem will fix that soon,” Damian said, and he managed to sound disdainful and sad at the same time.

   “No,” Nathaniel said, “it won’t be tomorrow.”

   Ricky frowned at us, and just like the first time I’d met him, I wasn’t sure he was the brightest bulb in the box. It was one of the things that had contributed to our misunderstanding. I had overestimated how much he understood of what I was saying until it was too late.

   “It may be a few days,” I said, “but you’ll get your chance on the practice mat with me.”

   “You promise?” he said.

   “I already did.”

   Ricky nodded and for the first time I saw something on his face besides fear, or hatred. I wasn’t sure that his being eager to beat the shit out of me was really an improvement, but some days you take what you can get.

8

   BOBBY LEE CAME back out minutes later with his still-wet hair combed in place. He was all in black, which was the unofficial uniform for the guards. Fully armed, he had on a black T-shirt, black tactical pants, a good leather belt with a black-on-black buckle, and matching boots laced up so that his pants were inside the tops of them. Most former military I knew wore their pants that way. Hell, I had all the same clothes and had started wearing them when I was out in the field serving a warrant of execution with the Marshals Service. I’d never been in the military but a lot of my friends had been, and a lot of the police I worked with had been, and I was always willing to learn from other people’s experience. I still wore jeans a lot, but more and more tactical pants were becoming my go-to. It was partially the extra pockets, so damn useful.

   “How you doing, Bobby Lee?” I asked.

   He gave me a look, and then he smiled; the smile lines around his eyes seemed deeper, but his brown eyes shone with humor. “Darlin’, you are covered in blood, holding a naked gun in one hand and a blood-soaked vampire in the other one, with your blood-covered boyfriend holding the vampire’s other hand. Shouldn’t I be asking you that question?”

   He had a point. I laughed. “I’ll stop throwing stones at your glass house until I get mine in order. I get it.”

   His smile widened into a grin. “Thank you, sugar. Now, let’s get you to some showers that aren’t full of shapeshifters that think all this fresh blood makes you smell good enough to eat.”

   I frowned at him, studying his face. Bobby Lee never flirted with me, so either the double entendre was unintentional, or it was just a statement of fact. Looking into his eyes, I thought the latter. “I’ve been around most of the guards with blood on me, or they’ve been around each other when they’ve been hurt in practice. Why is this more of a temptation?”

   “Let’s walk and talk,” he said, still smiling, but now it didn’t reach his eyes. They looked tired suddenly, as if he couldn’t hide it all.

   I narrowed my eyes a little, but said, “Okay.” I trusted him to explain later when we had more privacy.

   He looked at Harris and Barry and nodded toward the hallway. “You need to report back to Claudia. She’s got another assignment for you.”

   “Hey, we didn’t do nothin’ wrong,” Barry the Brunette said.

   “Nobody said you did.” But something in the way that Bobby Lee looked at the other man made Barry flinch.

   Harris touched his arm. “Come on, Barry, we’ve been ordered to report to Claudia, so that’s what we do.”

   Barry glared at Bobby Lee, then visibly swallowed his anger and said, “Fine. Let’s go report to the Amazon.”

   “That is not Claudia’s name,” I said.

   Barry looked at me and he did that up-and-down look, not sexual, but disdainful. I was a short woman in a bloody nightie, holding another man’s hand. Even the gun in my hand couldn’t offset the rest, at least not for Barry.

   “I know her name.”

   “Then use it,” I said.

   He sneered at me, raised his lip like he didn’t care if I saw. “Fine. We’ll go report to . . . Claudia for reassignment.”

   “Ma’am, or sir,” I said.

   “What?” he asked, frowning.

   “Say yes, ma’am, or yes, sir, when you address me, Barry.”

   “I don’t . . .”

   Harris said, “Yes, ma’am, we will do so in the future. Come on, Barry, we gotta go.”

   Barry still looked sullen, but Harris looked worried. It made me think better of Harris. He was smart enough to be afraid for his future here; Barry wasn’t. Barry needed to go, along with Ricky.

   “You all the guard we need, Bobby Lee?” I asked.

   “Compared to those two, I am an improvement.”

   “I hear that,” I said.

   “But no, I was going to include Kaazim.”

   As if his name had conjured him, Kaazim spilled around the corner of the door behind us like liquid made solid and alive. He was one of the most graceful men I’d ever seen when he moved. I knew and dated dancers, dancers who were wereanimals, but none of them made me think of water poured from long-necked, widemouthed jars to spill and shape itself to everything, except for Kaazim.