Inked Read Free

surprised.
    Or watching her morph into a 150-pound wolf, of course.
    Not that I’d ever seen Arnou’s leader in wolf form, or caught off guard, either. And today was no exception. He was wearing a crisp tan suit that set off his short dark hair and vivid blue eyes. His shoes were Prada, his watch was Piaget and his demeanor was set on pleasant. It was difficult to imagine anyone who looked less like the slavering beast of legend.
    “His title is bardric ,” I explained. “The Weres don’t actually have a—” I stopped at the blistering look Hargrove sent me. “And he’s more of an acquaintance, really.”
    Hargrove threw a sound shield around us with an impatient gesture; I guess he knew about Were hearing. “He said you were family!”
    “It wasn’t meant literally. I recently did a favor for his clan and they, um, sort of adopted me. It’s an honorary thing.”
    Hargrove didn’t look satisfied. “Then perhaps you can explain why he insisted on seeing you after the incident this morning?”
    “What incident?”
    “A Were, or what was left of one, was fished out of a ditch along Highway 91 by one of our patrols. They saw several men dragging it out of a drainage tunnel, and when they went to investigate, the men ran off, leaving the corpse behind. Of course we informed the Clan Council. I assumed they would send someone for the body, but imagine my surprise when the Arnou himself showed up to take possession! And demanded to see you and Kempster.”
    “Jamie?” I’d assumed I was in for it, but I’d wondered why Hargrove had ordered him upstairs, too.
    “And he wants the most current map we have of Tartarus. But he won’t say why.”
    I assumed that Sebastian wasn’t asking for a map of the Greek underworld, but of its Vegas equivalent. Back in the eighties, an extensive network of drainage tunnels had been put in place beneath the city to help control the runoff from the brief rainy season. Since they were dry much of the year, they’d quickly been settled by bums, druggies and the portion of the supernatural population who couldn’t pass for human even with a glamourie.
    Over time, bars, brothels, markets and casinos had opened up, forming a mirror image of the world above, only more desperate and a lot more dangerous. Someone in the Corps had named the place after the deep, dark pit reserved for evildoers in Greek mythology and it had stuck, maybe because it was so apt. I couldn’t imagine what interest Vegas’s shadow city could hold for someone like Sebastian Arnou.
    “Jamie used to be a tunnel rat,” I said slowly. “If anyone is interested in Tartarus, he’d be the one to ask.” The Rats were a group of war mages who once patrolled the tunnels, before the current war in the supernatural community pulled them to other duties.
    “But why you?”
    “I’m dating his brother,” I admitted, because it wasn’t exactly a secret. Cyrus had haunted the infirmary while I recovered from my recent brush with the hereafter. And ever since, he’d been showing up for lunch in the cafeteria, despite what it considered food. He’d become so much of a staple that people had almost stopped staring at him as if he planned to eat them instead of the rubbery quiche.
    “And is that all?”
    I shrugged. “Technically, I am part of his clan. Sebastian trusts me. Well, as much as any Were ever trusts a mage…”
    Hargrove threw an arm across the staircase, halting me in my tracks. “Let us have one thing perfectly clear,” he told me, gray eyes flashing. “Were or not, you are Corps. Therefore you answer to me, not to some bardric or whatever he is.”
    “I’m not a Were,” I said flatly. “My mother was a member of Clan Lobizon, but my father was human.”
    “Be that as it may, I won’t have someone on my team hiding things from me. The Weres have the right to deal with their own kind as they see fit, but if anything about this bears on our activities, I expect to be informed. Is that