For the time being, I was stuck in old-school PI-research mode. I had to find Kellen, and I had to prove Calliope hadn’t killed the pizza boy. Without supernatural help.

All before the full moon next week, if I could.

No big deal.

I started with the murder investigation, trusting Keaty would stay true to his word and ask about Kellen with his sources. Nothing says serious detective like showing up at a Papa John’s at eleven o’clock at night on a Thursday.

“What can I get you?” A bored-looking teenage girl snapped her bubble gum and stared through me like I was invisible.

“Did you know Peter Giambi?”

Now I had her attention. “Petey?” Her expression fell, and genuine sadness replaced her ennui. She’d liked him. “What do you want?” she demanded, her tone suspicious.

“I’m a private investigator working with his parents.”

“You have a badge or something?” Man alive, when did teenagers stop being blindly trusting? I pulled out my PI license and showed it to her, not bothering to hide the holstered gun under my jacket.

“Did Peter have any regular runs? Places he delivered to all the time?”

“Sure, we have a few regulars. People who order two or three times a week. It’s New York, lady, no one cooks anymore.”

Sad, but true. A lot of people in the city viewed their ovens as a wildly unnecessary waste of good bookshelf or closet space. My own kitchen was about the size of a shoebox.

“Did anyone request him by name?”

The girl—her nametag said Becca—shook her head. “No, ma’am. We have a real serious policy about that. If a customer requests a specific delivery driver, we send the manager instead. It’s a safety thing.”

I was impressed. They took care of their staff here. Too bad it hadn’t helped Petey.

A man was standing behind me now, the smell of him woodsy, like pine and dirt. I bristled. He was a werewolf, and I didn’t need to turn around to know he wasn’t part of Lucas’s pack. I slipped a card out of my jacket pocket and handed it to the girl.

“If you could make a list of any locations in the Hell’s Kitchen area Petey delivered to on a regular basis, that would be helpful to me.”

She took my card and gave an enthusiastic nod. I could tell the idea of helping in the investigation of Petey’s death was important to her.

“I’ll let you get to your other customers,” I said.

“What other customers?” Becca replied.

When I turned around, the werewolf who had been standing behind me was gone.

Chapter Eight

Stepping into the cool night, I was on edge.

I was also expecting the attack.

Expectation didn’t make the punch across my face hurt any less.

The werewolf had at least been smart enough to wait until I was away from the small line of businesses and had crossed the street towards a darker area where nothing was open. I’d smelled dirt before he hit me, but the punch landed square on my jaw, knocking my head to the side and making me see stars.

This bugger was strong.

I staggered and regained my footing, but he was already on the move. I tried to get a fix on his scent. Having met all the wolves in both Lucas’s and Callum’s packs, I was certain I’d be able to tell if he belonged to one or the other. He smelled completely foreign.

Ducking, I avoided the next swing and darted a fist into the meat of his belly. He swore and stumbled backwards. I reached for my gun, but he’d righted himself and dove at me, knocking me back into the wall, smacking my skull against the brick.

“Who are you?” I demanded before head-butting him.

He took two steps back, and I unholstered my weapon, training the armed gun on him in lightning speed before he decided to make another jump at me.

“Answer my question or lose the top of your head.”

He laughed. Well, this brought back memories. It had been a long time since someone had laughed while they were fighting me. “I don’t need to answer to you,” he replied.

“Mr. SIG P226 would like to suggest otherwise.”

The werewolf chuckled again, but between the two of us, I had a gun and he had a bloody nose.

“I’m going to ask one more time, and I’d really appreciate if we could bypass the whole I’m a scary werewolf and you’re Little Red Riding Hood bullshit, okay? Who are you?”

“A loyalist.”

“Loyal to what?”

“The true queen.”

In spite of the general warmth of the night air, I was suddenly freezing. “What did you say?”

“The true queen.” This time he spit at the ground in front of my feet.

I’d heard this before, the delusional ramblings about rightful queens. A lot of people didn’t believe I deserved to wear a werewolf crown, and I wasn’t disagreeing with them. But two had gone to great lengths to see me lose my head rather than have it be the one wearing a tiara. One of them was in Siberia.

Morgan Scott wasn’t the werewolf I was worried about when faced with this wild-eyed stranger.

“Do you mean Mercy McQueen?”

“The queen,” he corrected.

Oh sweet merciful crap. As if I didn’t have enough on my plate right now.

“My mother sent you?”

That stopped his laughter. “Your mother?” He must not have been too bright if he hadn’t sorted the connection out on his own.

“Secret,” I replied, pointing to myself. “McQueen.”

“The pretender.”

“Oh for the love of God,” I groaned.

The wolf advanced, trying to punch me again. His strike glanced off my shoulder, and I replied by cold-cocking him with the gun. “Stop that.”

He was slumped against the brick wall, glaring up at me. His expression said, When I stop being concussed, I’m going to get you really good.

“What bullshit line is she feeding you now to make you believe she’s the rightful queen of anything?”

“Ian, don’t answer her.” A few feet away a trio of men had arrived to join our party. Awesome, so Mercy had more than one lackey believing her lies now. And me with only the one gun. The three new wolves drew closer, and much to my chagrin I recognized one of them. The scrawny, racist asshole I’d met in Callum’s compound the previous month. I’d enjoyed meeting him so much I’d introduced him to my fist.

“Hank,” I growled.

“Princess.”

“You in charge of this charade?”

The man in the middle of the group, whose dark hair was pulled into a ponytail and looked like he hadn’t shaved in days, laughed at my question. “We answer to the queen.”

“I’m no expert in werewolf politics, boys, but I know whose territory you’re in, and the only queen here is not the one giving you orders.” None of these wolves had been part of Marcus’s hostile takeover attempts, so where were they getting this queen garbage from?

“Our queen has been misplaced from her territory,” Pony-boy replied, casting a glance to Hank. “So she’s looking for a new throne. Yours.”

“Mine isn’t currently available.”

“That can be changed.” Ian, the werewolf I’d knocked to the ground, made a grab for my ankle, and I kicked him in the head.

“Do you understand the hell you’ve just invited on yourselves?” My tone wasn’t threatening, it didn’t need to be. Given my history, they should have known it would take more than a few rogue wolves to get me out of Mercy’s way.

“We’ll see.”

Between Callum and Lucas, they’d signed their own death warrants. The implication, as I understood it, was that Mercy believed she was the rightful heir to the Southern kingdom. And if Callum wouldn’t give it up to her—which he wouldn’t—she was going to come east and try to lay claim to my pack.

To Lucas’s pack.

And she was doing it right when he was at his weakest.

Which meant if Kellen wasn’t sunning herself on a beach somewhere, my mother might be behind her disappearance. The thought that Kellen might be in trouble because of me made me sick. I couldn’t bring this kind of darkness on the people in my life anymore.

At least I knew now what Mercy had been up to since the last time she’d tried to kill me: building her own little werewolf cult.

“She should have told you it wouldn’t be that easy to get rid of me.”

Pony-boy gave me a wry smile. “She did.”

“You should have listened.”

Another figure melted out of the darkness, and I was momentarily worried I might be badly outnumbered until I saw it was Holden. He chose a rather fruitful moment to start taking his job as my bodyguard seriously. “You know dogs, Secret. They never listen to instructions unless you give them a treat.”

Hank snarled. “Vampire.”

“Oh, this one speaks,” Holden said, delight painting his words in bright, cheery tones that were sorely out of place in the current circumstances. “Have a cookie.” He threw a quarter at Hank. The werewolf growled, a purely animal sound.

The last time Holden and I had been outnumbered by werewolves it hadn’t gone well. But this was two on two, and I’d already taken one of them out. I liked our odds here better than I had in Deliverance country.

“They were just leaving,” I said, my weapon trained on Pony-boy.

“We’ll see you again,” he promised.

“I look forward to it. I’ll dress up for the occasion, since it’ll be the last thing you idiots ever see.”

I backed away from Ian’s slumped form and let them reclaim their fallen comrade before they slinked off with their tails between their legs.

“You’re having a productive evening,” Holden observed.

“Never a dull moment.”

Chapter Nine

My productive evening took me to Mercedes’s police station where Holden and I spent several uneventful—and somewhat tense—hours going through police records to see if any of Kellen’s friends had problematic histories or had recently been arrested.