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“You’ve lost me.”

His lips curled at the side into a slight, indulgent smile. “I’ve detected Were energy in a few animals.”

Thatgot my attention.

The energy in each of the clans should never cross to another clan or to animals, and it never remained in small amounts like that. If it infected a person, it took over.

“So there are Were animals?”

“No. They weren’t changed, but that energy infected them like an illness. I have not yet found it in a Nature, but this is a situation that has never occurred before. There is no way it isn’t connected, that it doesn’t have something to do with the Were problem.”

“So why haven’t you told Galen?”

The expression on Porter’s face implied he really would rather not do that. Or that he’d prefer to go have dental work for fun rather than talk to Galen.

Which I could understand if we were talking about Kelvin or Ruben, but Galen was almost the life of the party compared to the others. Or, rather, he was the least likely to try to kill someone.

I’d take my few wins where I could, honestly.

“Galen’s looking into the Were problem. You need to ask him—he might know something.”

“Have you learned nothing from your time on the council? We do not work well together. It simply isn’t something that we are intended to do. We naturally repel one another, something that spawns from our very spirit energy. We can’t help it, and nothing will change it.”

I kicked my feet out, sighing at the speed with which they decided to give up. Weren’t these supposed to be men who ruled the entire spiritual world, at least in this area? Why would they act so afraid of just a little meeting?

Babies.

“Well, I work with you all just fine and I’m a Spirit,” I reminded him, as though he might have forgotten the fact.

“You are, but you are a type that we have never encountered before. You don’t seem to follow the same rules as the rest of us.”

“That sounds like a bullshit excuse,” I snapped. “That’s like when people tell artists that they’re so talented but totally ignore all the work it took for them to get like that. I work with you all because I have to, because I’ve always had to. I never had the luxury of just sitting back and saying, ‘it’s too hard.’” My cheeks warmed at my little tirade.

It was the truth, though. They’d all come into this world with battle lines drawn, with allies and enemies.

Me?

I’d had nothing. I’d had to carve my own way, to figure out how to survive in a world where nothing was on my side.

So, I wasn’t about to listen to Porter as he bitched and moaned about just how sad it was that he had to be here, all by himself, that working with Galen was just too much of a challenge.

Suck it up, cupcake.

“Very well,” he said after a moment, giving in much faster than I would have thought. I would have complained for longer before I ever actually listened to good advice—maybe he wasn’t as stubborn as I was. “Will you set up a meeting for us?”

“Me? I figured you’d go to Ruben for that.”

“I prefer to stay as far away from Justices as possible.” He shuddered. “They have an unnatural energy that I don’t like to come into contact with. Besides, if we go through Ruben, it all becomes official information, and I suspect Galen is attempting to solve this issue on his own, without council intervention. He would likely appreciate if we spoke on our own.”

* * * *

The idea was good, or so I thought until that night, when I sat down at my worn kitchen table, in my little house, with two of the most powerful Spirits drinking coffee out of my coffee cups—the ones with naked men on them.

Yeah…this wasn’t how I’d thought my night would go.

The men hadn’t spoken since they’d arrived. They’d both walked in without appearing nervous, but had clearly been on guard.

They weren’t really supposed to be in the Null space, where my house was, but that didn’t seem to matter if I invited them. So long as they didn’t fight, it was seen as a necessary breach.