The power still worked—that made sense, since it wasn’t like the dragons had ever been paying for it in the first place—and after flipping a few dozen switches, we were able to get a good idea of what we were dealing with: a huge, two-story building with a ground floor that consisted almost entirely of one enormous room. The gold that used to fill the place was gone, taken by the dragons when they moved to their new home beneath the city. The patched-together carpet was still on the floor, but that was about it. There was no furniture, and whatever illusion the building might have possessed of being something other than a part of the industrial wasteland had departed with the dragons.

Stairs led to the offices on the second floor, which were arrayed all the way around the edges of the room. The layout was left over from the original slaughterhouse design, letting the occupants of those offices look out on the livestock waiting to be put to death below. Charming stuff, and the reason I was vaguely afraid of being haunted by the ghosts of hamburgers past while we were staying at the Nest. A waist-high rail ran along the walkway to keep people from plummeting to their deaths, presumably out of sorrow for the cows, sheep, and other victims of the slaughterhouse assembly line. There were enough offices that we could each have one as a bedroom, with another to use as an armory, and another for the mice. Even after all that, there were easily half a dozen offices standing empty, and we hadn’t even looked at the basement.

The mice were thrilled about having an entire office for their Barbie Nightmare House. It must have been an incredible step up after being confined in a single closet. They had started arranging raiding parties as soon as I put them down. All the raiding parties were armed with tiny spears, crossbows, and swords. There would be no rats left in the slaughterhouse by morning, and the mice would feast for days.

It can be easy to forget that Aeslin aren’t cute Disney cartoons come to life. They’re vicious fighters when they have to be, and they’ve survived in a world filled with bigger, meaner, better-armed creatures by being smart and absolutely ruthless. That’s something else they have in common with our family. Prices and Aeslin always, always shoot to kill.

“Verity!”

“Coming!” I stepped out of the office we’d given to the mice, walking to the rail and looking down. Ryan and Mike were on the main floor of the slaughterhouse, piling my meager possessions—mostly weapons and clothing—around the coolers and gear boxes Mike had brought with him from Chicago. “What’cha need?”

“Do you own a bed?” asked Mike. He somehow managed to shout without sounding like he was shouting. Probably a skill developed to make it easier to talk to sea monsters who didn’t feel like coming to shore, but didn’t want to be yelled at, either.

“Not here,” I said. I sat down on the walkway, squeezing through the gap between the bars intended to keep us from plummeting to our deaths. Then I turned, hooking my toes against the base of the rail, and leaned backward. This resulted in my dangling about eight feet off the floor. Mike and Ryan watched this process without comment. “I left my bed back in Portland.”

“Got it. We’re going to want to pick up some inflatables, maybe a bean bag chair or something. Things we can carry in without attracting attention.” Mike returned to surveying my belongings, for all the world like I wasn’t dangling from the walkway behind him. I leaned forward again, grabbed the lowest bar of the railing, and tucked my knees, bracing against the side of the walkway in a sort of horizontal squat before letting my feet drop. “I think we’ve got enough food to hold out for a few days—did you know there’s a full kitchen?”

“I guess they couldn’t replace that with gold,” I said, hand-walking my way over to the nearest of the support beams holding up the walkway. It was like the monkey bars on my elementary school playground, only without as many yard monitors waiting to tell me that it wasn’t ladylike to climb. “Thanks again for helping us get moved in, Ryan.”

“Yeah, about that—it wasn’t purely altruistic.” The therianthrope bartender moved toward me as he spoke, lacking Uncle Mike’s skill at shouting without shouting. “I wanted to ask you for a favor.”

“Name it.” I had reached the pillar. I grasped it firmly with my knees and let go of the rail, flipping so that I was facing toward the floor. With this accomplished, I began climbing carefully down.

“Istas and I were wondering if maybe—what the hell are you doing?”

“I’m going to assume that wasn’t your original question. What I’m doing is figuring out the tactical shape of the room. Most of the time, if I can’t shoot something in the first thirty seconds of dealing with it, my style of staying alive involves being able to go up as much as possible. So knowing what will and won’t support my weight is important.” It was also fun, and extremely relaxing. I needed to relax. This wasn’t going to end overnight.

“Oh. That’s weird, Very.”

“I know.”

“Anyway, Istas and I were wondering if we could come and stay here with you. You know, until all this is taken care of. Kitty says we can crash at the Freakshow if we want, but Istas really can’t do crowds twenty-four seven. I’m afraid she’d take somebody’s head off. And then she’d eat it, which would probably get her fired.”

“You want to crash with us?” I grabbed the pillar and flipped myself around again, landing with my feet neatly on the floor. Then I blinked at Ryan. “You realize that if the Covenant finds out about this place, it’s going to be open season.”

“I don’t think any place in this city is safe now that they’re here. I’d rather be unsafe with you than unsafe on my own, and I don’t want Istas eating one of the barmaids without a really good reason.”

I glanced toward Mike. He put his hands up, and said, “Ryan already said he was going to ask you. I told him it was your call.”

“But what do you think?” I asked. He’d acknowledged that this was my operation. I could be magnanimous.

Mike lowered his hands, looking serious. “I think we need all the muscle we can get, and I can cook for four as easy as I can cook for two.”

Given that Ryan and Istas were both therianthropes, I was pretty sure Mike was going to regret saying that. This wasn’t the time to point that out. I turned back to Ryan. “As long as you can be subtle about moving your stuff over here, you and Istas are both welcome to stay.”