He shrugged. “I want him to stick around. You’re safer with both of us looking after you.”

“Saul—”

He held up the arrowhead. “I found out what this means, kitten. And believe me, you don’t want any of it.”

“Well, spill it.”

“Come on into the kitchen and I will. I’ll make you breakfast, and we’ll strategize.” He was utterly serious.

I held up both hands, Mikhail’s ring glittering in the thin hard sunlight. “Wait just a goddamn minute. You don’t like it when I visit him, whether to track down a hellbreed or pay my dues for the bargain I made. What the hell are you doing playing pattycake with him now?”

“If he’s going to help get your stubborn ass through this in one piece I don’t care.” Saul folded his arms, muscle sliding under the T-shirt’s thin cotton. “This is bad, Kiss. As bad as you think it is, it’s worse.”

My heart was doing something strange, pounding so hard I felt faint. I didn’t like the thought of Perry in my house. The thought of something so bad Saul didn’t care if Perry was running around unchaperoned inside the warehouse was even worse. “Why? What is that thing?”

“Come out, have some breakfast, and I’ll tell you. Then you can decide what you’re going to do.”

In the end I gave up. Saul had a good reason for anything he asked me to do, and I trusted him. But for Chrissake, something so bad he wanted Perry around as backup….

It was enough to give even a seasoned hunter the willies.

Chapter Nineteen

Saul set the plate down in front of me. “Eat.”

I eyed it. Eggs, pancakes, bacon, more coffee, an English muffin. Another plate of eggs with hollandaise, and a peach, cut up carefully and decoratively. Nothing experimental, and nothing fancy. For Saul, this was the culinary equivalent of a polite non-answer to a question that hadn’t even been asked.

Perry hunched on the stool at the end of the kitchen counter, his gray suit sharply and immaculately creased. He seemed not to like the sunlight falling through the windows, and I was secretly glad. For all that, his hair glowed and his eyes burned blue, and the warehouse—while smelling of hellbreed—was neat and repaired, the ice gone, every inch of glass swept up and new panes put in, the wood fused back together, shattered furniture either patched up or replaced. It was a massive expenditure of cash and sorcerous power, and one I wasn’t quite sure I liked the thought of incurring.

I finished examining my plate and glanced at Perry, who snickered into his coffee cup. “Don’t worry, Kiss. Saul and I negotiated terms. This doesn’t enter into our bargain.”

“Is that so.” I tried not to look relieved; tried also not to feel a little wriggle of panic that he had guessed what I was thinking. Picked up a piece of bacon, crunched it between my teeth. “Well? Care to clue me in, Saul?”

He leaned against the counter on the other side, and I realized he was keeping Perry in the corner of his eye. “I found out what our hairy little friend is.” Saul poured himself a glass of orange juice. “You want the bad news or the bad news first?”

“Just tell me something. I’m getting impatient.” I tucked in with a will, finding I was indeed hungry and my stomach would, indeed, accept nourishment. Hallelujah.

Perry snickered again.

Saul didn’t even glance at him. “It’s a wendigo.”

I choked on a bite of pancake. “Urf? Mrph murfr mrph!”

“They’re not myths. I wish to Christ they were.” Saul had actually paled. “I had to take the arrowhead to a Moonspeaker in the barrio, an old one. She’d seen a wendigo before and remembered the smell. She said it was a hund’ai, part of a fetish meant to control or create a wendigo. The sight of it turned her into a sobbing heap and her mate nearly had my liver and lights for upsetting her. I ended up at a little bar with a werespider; she’d actually hunted a wendigo up Canada way. She started to shake while she talked about it.” Saul’s tone was dead level. His eyes were as dark and serious as I’d ever seen them.

I glanced at Perry. He stared into the coffee cup, his face arranged in a mask of bland interest. All the same, he looked miserable. My blue eye twinged a little, I could see the edges of his aura fringing a little bit, wearing down.

Maybe our favorite hellbreed didn’t like being out during the day. I was suddenly immensely cheered by the thought. Inside his jacket, pants, and open-collared crisp white shirt he looked almost normal, and profoundly uncomfortable.

Don’t fall for that, sweetheart. It’s just another dirty little façade. If Saul wasn’t here we’d see a different Perry indeed.

“Wendigo.” I crunched on another bit of bacon. “A flesh-eating spirit, with its lips and nose frozen off. Come on, Saul.”

“Jillian, if you don’t cut the crap, I’m going to take your breakfast back and drag you into the sparring room. And make you wash the goddamn blood off the goddamn sheets, too. Look at your coat. This is no fucking laughing matter.” Even, chill, cold. Saul had never spoken to me like this before. “A wendigo is something else. It’s a spirit made mad by neglect and violence, a spirit that has done what is taboo—tasted human flesh, developed a craving for it.”

A craving for human flesh and black-market organs. Why is this fitting together far too neatly for my comfort? And the unearthly, deadly icy chill of the thing rose briefly in memory. I shivered again. “A Were spirit? That thing wasn’t a Were. I know Weres.”

“It’s not Were, it’s a spirit we know about. Totally different kettle of fish.” Saul folded his arms. “Some of the legends say they’re maybe Weres dying without burial rites, or a Were who was taboo in life. I don’t know. The legends are confused. It’s not like hunting scurf. Weres know scurf. These things… humans might get confused about them, but whatever they are, they’re not Were.”

“Jesus.” I was having a little trouble with this. The last thing we needed was it getting out that the Were had anything to do with something like this. This thing was as unlike Weres as…. My brain failed, trying to come up with the simile. But a non-hunter, even one with some nightside experience, wouldn’t understand that. Hell, plenty of nightsiders with grudges against the furkind wouldn’t understand it either.

Perry finally weighed in, as if he couldn’t help himself. “Really, dear Kiss, you should listen to furball here. He knows more than you think. After all, he didn’t go into the barrio to seek facts. He went to confirm.”

My fork paused halfway to my mouth, and I looked up at Saul. His mouth had drawn down bitterly, and he pushed his hair back with one hand. But his other hand was on the counter, and his knuckles were white.

What, did Saul think a transparent little ploy like that would work on me? How far inside my head did he think Pericles had wormed his little hellbreed way?

However far Saul thinks he has, he’s probably gotten in further. Last night proved that, didn’t it? “You suspected it?” I felt like an idiot with my fork in the air, I set it down gently, carefully, on the cobalt-blue counter. “Saul?”

“I didn’t know.” He picked up his juice again, took a sip, his eyes not leaving mine. But I got the idea that if he could have, he would have darted a venomous look at Perry. “Until I knew for sure, I didn’t want to open my mouth and muddy the trail.”

I nodded. Looked down at my plate. “Well, that’s why you’re my partner.” Nice try, Perry. But no dice. “So you’re absolutely satisfied that this thing is a wendigo?”

He nodded. The silver in his hair tinkled, and his dark eyes lost their hardness and for a moment were lambent orange, a Were’s hunting glow. “I’d bet my life on it.”