“You heard us?”

He shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep. And it’s not like you guys were whispering.”

I set the paper cup on my nightstand and reached for another bite of the brownie. Of course he’d heard. “You really think he’ll come back?”

“Well, I didn’t say that. But it’s not like getting dumped is lethal.”

I glared at him as I chewed. “Yeah, like you’d know.”

“I’m pretty sure none of my exes have died of it,” he said. I glared harder, and Ethan smiled in sympathy. “Sorry, Faythe, but you have to admit you kind of deserved it. You did stand him up at his own wedding.”

“That was five years ago! Whose side are you on, anyway?” I snapped, reaching for the paper cup. I drained the contents in a single, scorching gulp, and Ethan nodded in approval. And a little amusement.

“There are no sides,” he said, and I kicked his elbow out from under him. He sat up, smiling faintly. “Look, I’m not saying he won’t take you back. I’m just saying it won’t hurt you to stew in your own juices until he does.”

“Thanks, Ethan. You’re a huge help.”

“No problem.” He crushed the paper cup and tossed it across the room into the trash can by my desk.

From the foyer, the grandfather clock chimed four times, and I glanced at the clock on my radio to confirm the time. Sure enough, it was four in the morning and I had yet to close my eyes for anything longer than a single blink. Wonderful.

“You’d better go get some sleep before you lose your chance,” I said, knowing full well that Michael would make Ethan do most of the day’s driving.

“Yeah, I guess.” He stood, backing toward my nonfunctional door and watching me through eyes just a shade greener than my own. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, pulling my covers straight. “I deserved it, remember?”

He grinned. “Yeah, you’re the devil’s spawn. Really, you’re lucky he didn’t call for an exorcist.”

I tossed my punching pillow at him, and Ethan laughed, dashing into the hall as the fluffy pink missile narrowly missed his head, bouncing off the splintered door frame instead. Suddenly exhausted, I got up and set my door in place, propping my desk chair against it when it wouldn’t stand on its own. I bent down for the pillow, and as I stood, my eye caught my reflection in the dresser mirror.

My face was red and puffy from crying, my hair swept back behind one shoulder, framing the row of crescent-shaped scars trailing up my neck—a permanent reminder of my run-in with Miguel, the jungle cat who’d haunted my nightmares ever since. Miguel was the first stray I’d ever personally seen, other than Marc, and in spite of similar looks and a shared tendency to cuss at me in Spanish, they had almost nothing in common.

Wait…. Miguel wasn’t my first encounter with a stray. Luiz was. I’d fought him on campus and sent him packing with a broken nose. That was the night Marc showed up to haul me home. It was also only hours after I’d bitten my human boyfriend. If Marc hadn’t come for me, I’d have figured out what happened to Andrew that very night. I would have taken care of him. I would never have left him to the mercy of whatever psychotic cat happened upon him first….

Oh, fuck. My eyes closed, and my image in the mirror was swallowed by my own private darkness.

Luiz. There were no other cats on campus, or anywhere near UNT.

We’d have known, if there had been. But Luiz was there. He’d been sent to snatch me, and Miguel would not have been happy with his failure. He might even have sent Luiz back for a second shot. Fortunately, I was already gone. But Andrew wasn’t. He was sick, and by then likely reeking of my base scent.

Andrew’s with Luiz. The minute the thought surfaced, I knew it was true. No wonder they were targeting strippers who look like me. They both hated me.

My new theory made perfect sense to me, but no one else was ever going to believe Luiz had been not only alive, but in our territory all this time. Undetected. The only way he could possibly have hidden from a Pride of more than thirty cats for more than ninety days was to lie low and stay in one place. But that wasn’t Luiz’s style. Three months ago, he’d been killing college girls and leaving them exposed, on some sort of assignment from Miguel. If he’d kept up his little project, we would have found him. Shit, even the police would have caught up with him eventually, which would have been disastrous.

But since the night I’d kicked Luiz’s ass at UNT, we hadn’t found a single dead college girl. Or any other sign of Luiz, until the strippers started disappearing. No one else knew he was involved with that yet, but I had no doubt. Was Luiz continuing his “work” with a new set of victims? If so, why the change in MO? And why the three-month hiatus?

Three months. I grabbed the fluffy pink pillow from my dresser and twisted it in my hands, pacing as I worked to piece together the puzzle in my head. The hiatus was Andrew’s recovery period. It had to be. Luiz had put his little hobby on hold to nurse my ex through scratch-fever.

But that was oddly altruistic for a jungle cat. Why would he give a shit whether or not one more stray survived?

Because I’d infected Andrew. Luiz probably thought he could use my ex to draw me out. It was because of me. He had likely fol owed Andrew around the day after I’d left, trying to find me, and discovered what I’d done by accident.

I’d not only infected Andrew, I’d led Luiz right to him.