“You? Clean?” I feigned shock, one hand over my heart. “Have you seen where you live?”

He laughed. “Just because I don’t dust compulsively doesn’t mean I don’t know how to deal with a corpse. This isn’t my first dead rogue, you know.”

I did know, but knowing something isn’t always the same as understanding it.

I’d always known that being an enforcer sometimes meant getting your hands dirty, but I’d never thought about what that meant for Marc and the guys. Now I was seeing firsthand what all was involved in dealing with a rogue.

A rogue was any cat guilty of breaking Pride law, be he wild, stray, or Pride.

Those terms denoted social status, but said nothing about the cats they labeled.

There were honorable strays, like Marc. And there were criminals among the natural-born cats, like Eric. Miguel, Luiz, Eric and Sean were rogues because they’d kidnapped, raped, and kil ed. Ryan was a rogue too, strictly speaking, because he’d helped.

By necessity, rogues were dealt with quickly, in a manner harsh enough to discourage potential copycats. In our territory, and in some of the free zones, Marc was the one who dealt with rogues, though rarely alone.

Unless the offense was serious, like murder or Shifting in front of a human, Daddy usual y settled for a warning: a deforming scar or handicap. But no one got more than one warning. If a rogue was stupid enough to mess up twice, Marc would take him out of the game. If he was lucky, it would be a snapped neck. However, if the crime was especial y brutal, Marc might make an example of the doomed cat.

That usual y took a while. And it was usual y messy.

“Yeah, I guess you probably know what you’re doing,” I conceded.

“Yeah, we do.” His smile faded into a serious look I didn’t quite care for.

“Besides, you shouldn’t have to mess with this after what you’ve been through.”

Marc stopped talking abruptly, but I knew he wasn’t done. He glanced down at the blood on my chest. “And you should probably take a shower. I guess I can forget about getting my shirt back, huh?”

“Sorry.”

He shrugged, handing me a trash bag from the pile on the table. “It was old anyway. Put your clothes in here when you take them off, and we’l get rid of them with everything else.”

“Thanks.” I took the bag and turned toward the living room. Then, on second thought, I spun back to face him. “Hey, Marc?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t forget Daddy made a deal with Ryan.” He nodded, but I wasn’t convinced. “That means you can’t touch him. Promise me.”

“I swear on all nine of my lives.”

I laughed. No, we don’t real y have nine lives. That would be cool, though.

Especially in Miguel’s case. If he had nine lives, we could each take a turn kil ing him. Oh, wel . We’d just have to settle for doing it right the first time.

Twenty-Eight

Parker and Abby weren’t back with the clothes yet when I got out of the shower, so I wrapped myself in a big white towel secured with a safety pin I found in the bathroom. I stared at my reflection in the mirror, my hair twisted up in a second towel. I’d avoided looking at myself so far, but final y had to admit that I was being a coward. After al , I’d earned my battle scars, and I might as wel know what they looked like.

It wasn’t pretty. Beneath the towel, a carnation bloomed on the left side of my stomach, dark purple, with pink, knuckle-shaped petals. It was too tender to touch, as were the ribs on that side of my body. My left shoulder throbbed dul y along with my pulse, and a chain of bruises adorned my wrist like a bracelet, the latest in fine jewelry for battered women.

But the worst by far was my face. In fact, if my recent Shift had helped heal my cheek as wel as my shoulder, I couldn’t imagine how bad I must have looked before. Now the entire left side of my face was swol en and bruised, an ugly bluish-purple, darkest on my cheekbone. Damn Miguel.

My eyes watered, and I squeezed them shut, trying to deny the tears an outlet, as if they didn’t real y exist if I could keep them from fal ing. Being manhandled by Miguel hadn’t made me cry. Hearing that Marc had nearly beaten Jace to death hadn’t made me cry. Kil ing Eric hadn’t made me cry. But staring into the mirror at the love child of Smurfette and Rocky Balboa was more than enough to bring me to tears.

“I’ve been trying to figure out how to make you cry for more than twenty years,” Ethan said. I opened my eyes and met his in the mirror. He stood behind me, a half-full garbage bag in one hand.

“All you had to do was aim for my face.”

“Makes sense, but Mom would have kil ed me.” He dropped the bag and turned me around by my shoulders. I put my head on his shoulder and let him hold me while I cried. I felt like an idiot, crying over a few bruises, but I couldn’t help it.

“How many times have you seen me with a black eye or a broken nose?”

Ethan asked, stroking my hair.

Several times, but that was one area where women’s lib dared not tread. A mutilated face was always different for a woman than for a man, no matter how highly she valued her equality and asserted her independence. “Besides,” he said,

“compared to Jace, you look great.”

I groaned. How could I not have asked about Jace? “How’s he doing?” I pulled away from Ethan, wiping my face on a mostly clean bath rag.

“He’s fine. It’s nothing a few months in traction won’t fix.”