Not that I was ancient at twenty-five, but my father had also been a war mage, and potions were a particular hobby of his. I'd been told a hundred times that a well-made potion might one day save my life. It looked like today was that day.

The hall was an obstacle course of tumbled boards and burnt-edged holes, but I somehow made it back and threw myself at the fallen ceiling beam. I hit with a bone-shattering thump, half-sliding, half-falling into the room—only to have three pairs of eyes swivel toward me. But Cyrus sent a barrage of bullets over the top of the fridge that divided their attention for an instant, buying me time to throw a tiny glass cylinder.

It burst against their shields, starting a firestorm along the edges, popping them one after the other. They hit the floor to avoid the bullets Cyrus was letting fly, making them perfect targets for a second potion—one designed to induce unconsciousness. It shattered against the wall directly in front of them, spreading a soothing purple smoke across their huddled bodies. I nearly fell over in relief when they folded like card tables in a hurricane.

I sagged back against the floor, exhausted and shaking. I couldn't even begin to guess what the hell had just happened. They'd been fine two days ago. What could have gone so wrong in forty-eight hours?

"Hey." I looked up to see Cyrus staring at me over the fridge. "Is that all of them?"

"Probably." If anyone else had been around, they'd missed a perfect opportunity to take me out while I was doing my acrobatic routine in the bathroom.

"Let's make sure," he said dryly, and his head disappeared.

I didn't bother trying to move the fridge, just picked my way back through the remains of the living room—total loss—out the missing chunk of wall and around the house. My leg was killing me, and I stopped to rip open my pj's and check it out. The wound had bled profusely, but the splinter missed any major arteries. Some pieces of it were still in the wound, but I opted against trying to pull them out before a doctor could look at it. Instead, I went to find Jason.

He was still out cold, lying where he'd fallen by the side of the house. I stripped his coat off and hog-tied him with his own belt because I was all out of knockout potions. I gagged him so he couldn't spell anything if he woke up, and hobbled around to the missing kitchen door.

Cyrus had gotten the fire out, although the blackened walls, singed cabinets, and ruined floor were going to require gutting anyway. He stood by the laundry room, but he didn't so much as twitch as I came up behind him. He turned his head slightly toward me when I put a hand on his shoulder, but he didn't move out of the doorway. "What is it?"

He hesitated, blinking a couple of times. At some point, he'd gotten doused. His lashes were clumped into dark spikes and his T-shirt was wet down the back. Physically, he looked better than me, but the skin under the stubble-darkened throat was pale.

"Cyrus?"

He swallowed. "It wasn't your fault," he told me, upping the sick feeling in my stomach by at least a factor often.

"Move." I started pushing at him, but budging a full-grown werewolf who doesn't want to go is nothing more than a good workout. "Cyrus! I mean it, let me by!"

He finally stepped aside to reveal a far less chaotic scene than the kitchen. The sun was streaming through the small laundry room window, and dust motes were slowly turning in the air. Maybe it was the poststress endorphins running through me, but all the colors seemed extra sharp: the yellow on the walls that the paint store guy had called butter cream, the blue-and-white Laura Ashley curtains at the window, and the bright white appliances that were still in one piece. It looked cheerful and almost normal.

Except for the young blond man sprawled against the far wall, his blue eyes wide and gaping, his hands outstretched against the blood-spattered paint.

The lack of sleep, the pain, and the destruction of my house had crippled my brain, because it took me a full three seconds to process what I was seeing. It was Adam, one of the youngest recruits, whose ability with magic far exceeded his seventeen years. He'd just started training, and wasn't set to take the trials for another year.

My hand had dropped to my belt, but it fell away as understanding finally hit. Adam was still on his feet, but only because a section of the laundry room door had embedded itself in the wall through his abdomen, holding him in place like a bug on a pin. The sickeningly sweet smell in the air was blood, which had poured down his body in wide streams to puddle on the floor beneath him.

I felt the muscles in my legs liquefying, my fingers knotting in Cyrus's sleeve to keep from falling. Past the rushing in my ears, I could hear him saying, "Things happen in battle, Lia. You know that."

Things, I thought blankly. Like a random, meaningless death. Like a spell that sent a door flying off its hinges, practically bisecting a young man.

My spell.

My new supervisor had wavy silver hair, a skeletally thin frame that he hid inside old-fashioned three-piece suits, and a pinched, displeased mouth. He was doing something strange with the last. It took me a minute to realize that he was trying to smile and it wasn't working.

God, I must really look bad if Hargrove was trying to be nice to me.

I was currently in the new Vegas HQ, where the Corps had set up camp after the old headquarters was obliterated in the war. It was a thirteen-thousand-square-foot warehouse on a couple of acres in the vicinity of Nellis Air Force base. The upper level was mainly taken up by administrative offices, training areas, and housing for new recruits. The newly created subterranean sections hid the harder-to-explain stuff, like the interspecies medical facilities, the weapons storage, and the labs.

I'd spent the day there, getting patched up by the doctors and grilled by a series of progressively more senior detectives. It was now 11 p.m., and I was in yet another meeting, this time with my very unhappy boss. "Mage de Croissets!"

I jumped slightly. "Yes, sir."

"Kindly pay attention. I have a seven a.m. meeting tomorrow. I would like to get home before midnight!"

"Yes, sir."

So much for the fatherly bit. I wondered why he'd trotted it out at all. Richard Hargrove was old school, brought out of retirement because of the war, to fill an important desk job and free someone in fighting form for more active duty. He'd made it clear that he didn't like my gender, my service record, or the fact that my mother had been a Were. I'd tried to lie low and stay out of his way, but it hadn't seemed to help.

Of course, it's a little hard to build a relationship with your new boss when you're best known for killing your old one.

He pushed a photograph across the desk at me. "Martina Colafranceschi—that's her birth name. She's going by Ophelia Roberts at the moment."

The woman in the photo was not what I'd have called pretty, but there was something undeniably arresting about her. She was tall, judging by the height of the man standing next to her, with olive skin and short hair gone half-silver. She was well past her prime, but there were traces of beauty in the face—high cheekbones, almond eyes, full lips.

"You're sure she's the one?" It came out remarkably calmly, considering what I'd just learned. I was still in shock, and grateful for it. Because I had an inkling of what I was going to feel when the numbness wore off, and it scared me.

"The trace was ninety percent positive," the man at my elbow said. He was slightly built, almost scrawny, with thinning brown hair and shirtsleeves rolled up around his stringy forearms. They showed off the perpetually pallid skin of someone who does his work inside—in this case, underground.