Seeing me, Douglas blinked, and looked beside him. Figures. Here I was, worrying that he’d been searching for me, and he probably hadn’t even noticed I’d been gone.

Marsten reached for my arm, to steer me away from Douglas, but I waved him back and veered onto a new course myself. Douglas only lifted his brows in polite question. When I gestured to the buffet table, he smiled, nodded, and turned back to the Bairds.

“Don’t mind me,” I muttered. “I’m just passing through, killers in hot pursuit. No, no, it’s okay. You go back to whatever you were doing. I’m fine.”

Beside me, Marsten chuckled. “Your mother knows how to pick them, doesn’t she?”

As I rolled my eyes, Marsten’s gaze shot back to the door, and I saw Tristan and the other guard brush past the drunken quartet. At that moment, Douglas turned and lifted a finger, motioning me over. Probably wanted me to grab him something from the buffet.

When I hesitated, trying to gesture back, Marsten grabbed the back of my dress and nearly yanked me off my feet. I backpedaled as fast as I could to keep from tripping, as Marsten dragged me into a large group of people and out of Douglas’s sight.

“He’s coming,” he hissed by my ear, as I spouted apologies to the partygoers whose circle we’d invaded.

Tristan’s guard was striding around the back of the buffet table, moving as fast as he dared without calling attention to himself. How he’d seen us in the crowded room, I couldn’t imagine.

As we broke free from the group, Marsten gave me a shove, none too gently, toward the main door. With him behind me, I hurried out it, then left, toward the exhibits.

When I rounded the first corner, Marsten caught up and pushed something at me. A tuxedo jacket, which presumably he had grabbed from a chair in the gala.

“Take it,” he said when I made no move to do so. “Put it on.”

I almost said, “But I’m not cold,” an automatic response that, under the circumstances, would have made me sound like an idiot. Instead, I settled for an equally idiotic “huh?” stare.

“Your dress,” he said.

My…? Oh shit. My canary yellow dress. How had Tristan spotted us in that crowded room? Well, duh. When I’d bought this dress, I pictured myself as a glowing beacon in the black night. Now, I had my wish.

Marsten steered me through around the next corner.

“No,” I said. “The ceramics are the other—”

“I know. We’re circling back. He won’t expect that. Now put this on.”

I took the jacket as we jogged into a room of Grecian urns. The coat fell past my short skirt, and wrapped around me easily…could have wrapped around me twice. The sleeves hung past my fingertips.

“A bit big,” I whispered.

“No, you’re just a bit small. Now move—”

He grabbed my arm and stopped me from moving. Before I could comment, I caught the distant sound of footsteps—running footsteps, growing louder. Marsten pushed me into a gap between two stelae, and squeezed in with me.

When only one set of footfalls entered the room, Marsten’s eyes narrowed, and his fingers flexed against my sides. As he tracked the steps, his face went taut and a glimmer of that icy rage I’d seen earlier seeped into his gaze.

What had Tristan said about a cornered werewolf? That they were ten times as dangerous as any other supernatural. Looking up at Marsten’s face, I knew Tristan was right, and I knew why: no predator willingly accepts the position of prey.

So when Marsten’s lips moved to my ear, I knew what he was going to say.

“Wait here.”

I opened my mouth, but took one look at Marsten’s eyes, and stopped. He was right. Things had changed since the last time he’d halfheartedly tried to keep me from following him into danger. Two men had died and I’d learned this wasn’t some movie jewel heist caper. As much as I wanted to help Marsten and stop Tristan, now wasn’t the time to redeem past stupidity.

So I nodded, and let him slip off into the darkness alone.

The footsteps had stopped as if our pursuer had paused to look around. Was it Tristan or his guard? I wished I could tell, but trusted Marsten’s nose could. It would make a difference—facing a sorcerer versus a half-demon…presuming that’s what the guard was.

I should have tried harder to figure out the guard’s race when we’d been tying him up. I’d need to practice more.

Practice for what? You’re not—

I stifled the voice and concentrated on listening. With the other man gone still, the room was silent, but Marsten managed to move without breaking that silence. I could see his white shirt gliding—

His white shirt? Why hadn’t I offered him the jacket? I told myself he must have known what he was doing, and prayed I was right.

Pulling the jacket tighter around me, I eased forward enough to glance out. There, about fifteen feet away, by a gilt statue of Athena, was the guard we’d originally knocked out and handcuffed. He faced the other side of the room, his profile to me…and his back to Marsten.

Marsten crept forward, his gaze fixed on the guard, managing to skirt obstacles as if by instinct. His feet rolled from heel to toe, soundless. The guard’s gaze swept a hundred and eighty degrees, and I fell back, but Marsten only froze in place.

The guard took three steps, then peered around another statue. Marsten kept pace less than five feet behind, so close I half-expected the guard to feel Marsten’s breath on his neck.

Marsten took one last step. He tensed, then sprang. At the last second the guard turned, too late to fire his gun, but soon enough to throw Marsten off his trajectory.

Marsten checked his leap at the last second and smacked the guard’s gun arm back hard and fast. The guard let out a hiss, part pain, part rage, and dove for the gun as it spun across the room.

Marsten knocked the guard flying. The guard crashed into a vase stuffed with replica scrolls. As he reached up, sparks flew from his fingertips, and I knew his power. Fire.

The guard’s hand closed around the scroll. Even as my lips were parting to shout a warning to Marsten, the paper burst into flame. The guard swung the fiery torch at Marsten, who was already in mid-leap, coming straight at him.

The scroll caught Marsten in the side of the face, and he fell back. The guard dropped the paper, now nearly ash, and dove for Marsten, his good hand going to Marsten’s throat. Marsten drilled his fist into the guard’s stomach. As the guard fell, he grabbed Marsten’s arm, and Marsten yanked away, but I could see the guard’s scorched handprint on his white sleeve.

It was then, as the two men launched into a full supernatural strength versus fire brawl, that I snapped out of my chaos intoxication and realized that I, too, had a weapon—a loaded gun lying, forgotten, less than twenty feet away.

So I left my hiding place. Instead of dashing across the open room to the guard’s gun, I crept along the shadows, moving from exhibit to exhibit. While I’ll admit I was worried about the guard seeing me and deciding I made an easier target, I was even more worried about Marsten seeing me out of my hidey-hole and being, if not concerned, at least distracted.

Whether Marsten could be distracted was another question. He fought with a single-minded purpose of someone who’s done a lot of it. Not what I would have expected. But was I surprised? No. I’d seen that look in his eyes as the civilized skin sloughed away, and I hoped never to be on the receiving end of it again.

As the two men fought, I circled around the outside. The gun had slid under a scale model of Pompeii. I managed to get behind the low table, then stretched out on my stomach. I reached into the narrow opening until my shoulder jammed against it, then swept my hand back and forth, feeling nothing but gum wrappers and dust.

I peered under the display table. In the dim emergency lighting, I could see the gun, its barrel pointed toward me, still inches from my fingertips. I wriggled and stretched and twisted and finally brushed the gun’s barrel. Another wiggle, and I got my index finger into the lip of the barrel. Not the safest thing to do with a loaded gun, I’m sure, but I managed to tug it forward an inch or two, enough to grab it from a safer angle and pull it out.