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I had to move. Fumbling around with my power, trying to find the most tentative, safe way to get Morrison, Tia and me out of there, was no longer an option, not with claws hauling me out of the chamber, out of the Underground, out of every last excuse I’d ever made up.

I bent and scooped Tia into a fireman’s carry, not sure how I’d get her through tight tunnels that way but damned certain I was not going to flop her gorgeous naked self over Morrison’s furry back.

She bellowed an objection that went abruptly silent when Morrison snapped his teeth half an inch from her nose.

Ravens kept beating at the inside of my head, making my vision flash white and overwhelming, but power called like to like, and we slipped through the circle I’d raised without it objecting.

I kept my own shield up, but put Tia down to walk on her own, sandwiched between Morrison in the lead and me behind her.

She tried once to bolt, and bounced off the shield so hard I expected to hear a clang.

Morrison made a very human sound of amusement as she staggered back into line, and she didn’t try that again.

I let the circle fade once we were back in man-made territory, and all three of us stopped, hairs lifting on napes as the walls around us shuddered and rumbled.

I felt the cavern—not exactly collapsing.

Disappearing. Refilling, like the bits of world that had been taken away were finally returning.

I wondered if Thunderbird Falls would still be there when we got out.

Rita waited for us in the stretch of Underground we’d paused in to borrow flashlights and recruit a small homeless army.

Relief and joy already permeated her aura, but it redoubled when we appeared, and she dashed forward to hug me, despite my burden and my torn-up clothes.

“Detective Holliday brought the guys topside so he could call an ambulance for them. He said he’d wait for you.

Thank you, Detective Walker. Thank you so much.

You—” Her voice went ragged and her hands fluttered, trying to make up for words that meant too much to speak.

I’d gotten pretty good at nonverbal communication lately, though, and interpreted the fluttering as “You came through for us against the odds.” Trusting that was close enough to right, I pulled a little grin up for her.

“You’re welcome. And please, call me Joanne.

I should be on a first-name basis with my streetwise eyes, right? ”

That wonderful smile of hers lit up again. “Joanne.”

Tia snarled, “Please. Can we just arrest me so I don’t have to listen to this sentimental shit?”

I was happy enough to oblige. Rita led us back to the Persephone gate, more for the company than the necessity, and when we crawled out into a Seattle back lot, Billy was waiting for us.

Alone: he had the good sense to be alone, which meant not having to explain the hundred-and-ninety-pound wolf who scrabbled out behind Rita.

He put Tia in cuffs, and I went to get Petite while Morrison waited in the alley.

There was something appealing about having a giant silver wolf climb into Petite’s limited back seat and stretch out.

Not quite as appealing as a tuxedo-clad Morrison in the front seat would’ve been, but still, somehow it went straight to the emo twelve-year-old girl inside me.

“It’s about four in the morning,” I said to his reflection in the rearview mirror.

“I don’t really want to wake the dance troupe up.

I can bring you home and try shifting you back myself, or we can wait until a more reasonable hour and go see them then. Which do you want to do?”

Improved non-verbal communications or not, I’d clearly offered too many choices to a creature who couldn’t actually talk. Morrison glowered at me in the mirror until I sighed. “Sorry. Home?”

He lay down, which I took as a yes, and drove us to his house, where, with an expression of great regret, Morrison nosed out a spare key—under a rock by the door, yes, but by the back door, and it proved to open a shed in the backyard rather than the house.

The house key was in a small nail-filled box in a larger toolbox.

I wisely did not say, “Christ, Morrison, any thief would just break a window anyway,” and let us in the back door.

Morrison left me in the kitchen, his toenails clicking until he reached carpeted floors.

Nosy and curious, I followed him as far as the living room before realizing he was going to a bedroom.

I wobbled in place, curiosity warring with bravery, but being a chickenshit won out.

It didn’t matter: a few seconds later he emerged again, dragging a blanket which he managed to fling over himself quite tidily before looking at me with a certain amount of flat expectation.

“Ah. I take it we’re not waiting on the dance troupe, then.”

He cocked his head, conveying “No shit,” although that wasn’t a phrase I remembered Morrison using.

Feeling a bit random, I said, “I need some of your ties,” and went to get a handful, my shyness at entering his bedroom completely evaporated.

He didn’t stop me. He just watched, not growing even one whit more incredulous as I made a circle around him with the ties.

Dogs did baffled very well, so I translated his unchanging expression as my behavior being par for the course.

“Salt would probably make a fine circle barrier, too,” I muttered in unasked-for explanation.

“But it’d be a bitch to get out of the carpet, and the ties are invested with a sense of you as a man.

Just don’t cross out of the circle, okay?

” I stepped within it myself, then lit it up with power: keep-things-in, keep-things-out. “Rattler?”

“She isss busssy today,” my spirit guide responded in amusement.

“Sso much help nessssessssary.” He was a thing of light and lines, but Morrison nearly startled out of his skin, suddenly on all fours with snapping teeth bared.

I put a hand on his big furry shoulder, less surprised than I should have been that Rattler had appeared visibly to my boss.

I’d called him up by name, out loud: that had to signify quite a lot to him, in terms of what I trusted Morrison with.

“It’s been a rough day. I’ll bring you gifts, don’t worry.

” Raven liked shiny food. Rattler was more fond of, well.

Snake food. Rats and rabbits. I wished he’d develop a taste for Pop-Tarts, but it didn’t seem likely, so the pet store on the Way had been getting my business recently.

They had pre-frozen snake food available, and Rattler, thank heavens, didn’t seem to care if it was fresh or frozen.

I didn’t quite get how spirit animals managed to eat, or at least partake of, physical food anyway, but the arrangement was satisfactory on all sides, so I didn’t worry about it too much.

Either way, Rattler gave a satisfied hiss and wound his barely-corporeal self toward Morrison.

Who sat, ears flat against his head as he gave me a credible wolfy scowl, and then lay down with the air of one who would have words with me when this was over.

Well, I needed to have words with him, too, and he probably wouldn’t like them, so that was fine.

My stomach jolted, fresh reminder of the insistent tugging within, and I knelt between my boss and my spirit animal, one hand extended toward each.

Even with all the fresh newborn Siobhán Walkingstick power flaring through me, it would have been easier with the dance troupe and their focused, deliberate shifting magic.

It wasn’t difficult to envision Morrison as a man—God knew I could call up his image in an instant, usually when I didn’t want to—but pouring him from the wolf mold into the man mold simply took a long time.

Rattler’s presence was a calming thrum at the back of my mind, promising that caution was wise and the attempt would be effective for all its ponderousness.

Morrison, unaware of that surety, lay there patiently, blue gaze never straying from my face as he slipped toward human.

There were a handful of moments when he looked like a Hollywood special effect, flawlessly blurred between man and wolf, before very suddenly he was himself again.

I had never had occasion to greet someone who had spent several hours as a wild animal thanks to my screw-ups. I was still trying to figure out what to say when he got up, remarkably dignified for a man draped in a blanket, and went to find clothes.

Saved from having to address the topic of his shapeshifting, I mumbled, “I need to borrow your phone,” to his retreating back, and did so without actually getting permission.

He came back in jeans and a tank top like the one he’d worn in his garden just as I was hanging up.

My brain slipped a notch and I stared at him in drawn-out silence, wondering just what that choice of wardrobe meant.

Maybe everything. Maybe nothing. After a good solid minute of us both just standing there looking at one another, I decided somebody had better say something .

“I need some time off,” was unquestionably the wrong thing to say, but my mouth said it anyway. Morrison’s expression darkened and I pinched the bridge of my nose. “What I really mean is?—”

“You don’t have any time off, Walker.”

Contrary to the end, I said, “Yeah, I do, a couple weeks. I still get my vacation, don’t I? Even if?—”

“Fine. Take it. Get out of my hair.” He brushed by me, scowling, and went into the kitchen, where he began making a pot of coffee. If he was anyone else, I’d say he began slamming things around to make a pot of coffee, actually, but that would be far too emotional and temperamental for my boss.

I stomped after him. “Captain, listen to me. I?—”

He growled, “I thought I said you could have your time off. What the hell do you need now?” in a credible wolf imitation.