You couldn’t hold it against your family for caring too much about you. You might want to, but you couldn’t. “Is my being in a good mood that scary?” I complained halfheartedly.

“Terrifying,” he said. The word rang with sincerity. “Absolutely terrifying.”

By the time we reached Monroe County, Illinois, I was behind the wheel. Niko had caught a few hours’ sleep and Robin had yet to wake up from our graveyard festivities. He wasn’t a big believer in sharing the load. The fact that he’d changed on the road and hadn’t been fighting mullos in his pajamas from the car lot was a lucky break for us-and for the mullos, if the dead could be scarred mentally. It was a little past eleven at night when I pulled into the parking lot of the motel with the best rooms money could buy. Thirty-six bucks a night. How could you go wrong?

“We check in, shower, and keep going?” I asked. It wasn’t a problem with Niko’s and my being able to switch off driving. Delilah had a werewolf’s stamina; I knew from personal experience. Although with the Kin’s finding out about us, it was unlikely I was going to keep experiencing that too often in the future-one way or the other. I had to wonder, though, if even Delilah, fearless as she was, wanted to face my brother if she tried and actually succeeded in killing me. Delilah was Delilah, though. She believed she had no equal and in some respects she was right. But Niko… She thought she knew him, but she couldn’t, despite seeing what he’d done six months ago when he’d thought I was dead. She’d seen it, been there, but because she was Delilah, she couldn’t let herself believe it.

Niko was out of her league. Niko, when he wanted to be or had to be, was out of anyone’s league-except for Suyolak’s, who was a whole different ball game. One I wasn’t sure we could play. Killing with a thought: What the hell kind of game was that?

“No, we’ll spend the night. Rafferty is going to meet us here in the morning.” Niko flipped his phone closed after talking with the healer. Being that his side of the conversation had been yes, I see, and yes again, I hadn’t gotten much out of it, besides hoping Rafferty knew how to play Suyolak’s game and win. “He’s leaving his motel now. He also said it’s on the news: Three men were found eighty miles west of Dyer, Indiana, dead of an almost unheard-of cholera outbreak.” He tapped my forearm with the cell. “Their ID is out of state. The authorities are trying to determine now if they’d traveled outside the country and caught it there.”

“But we know better,” I said grimly. I’d given Niko all the details of my dream about Suyolak. “Three strangers with out-of-state ID. You think our thief just lost his muscle.” And lost his relief drivers, which would slow him down. “I still don’t get it. Suyolak knows what’s going on, at least enough to be messing with dreams. The slower whoever snatched him goes, the worse for him. He might think he’ll get out before we catch up, but his chances would be better if there were more guys for the drive.”

“Killing is Suyolak’s nature. He might not be able to help himself. Knowing what’s wisest and being able to do it are two widely different things.” He tapped my arm again with the phone.

“Yeah, that last one was subtle. Not aimed at me at all,” I retorted.

When he checked us in and came back with one key, that was about me, too. Delilah had parked her Harley and was lounging against it. At the sight of the key, she narrowed her eyes at him, but before she could head to the office for another room-our room-Niko told her, “If the Kin find you, they find my brother. I would prefer we showed a united front in that case.”

Robin woke up at that-part of him anyway. A puck mind could sense this type of opportunity at any level of consciousness. “A foursome should be united front enough,” he mumbled. He was climbing out of the car and his eyes hadn’t quite opened yet, but he was unbuttoning his shirt. “Prepare for the pucking of your life.”

“Ishiah,” I said. “And I can’t believe you actually consider that a pickup line.”

His eyes opened to peer through wind-tangled strands of light brown hair and his fingers paused at the third button. “You couldn’t have let me stay asleep, could you? If I’m unconscious, it can’t be cheating.” He buttoned his shirt, tucked Salome under his arm, and headed for the back of the car. “Even if I were conscious,” he muttered as he opened the trunk to retrieve his bags, “sex with the magnificence of me would at worst be considered a heroic act of community service. Ishiah would no doubt give me a medal for benefiting humanity. And that line has worked more times than you’ve drawn breath.”

He plucked the key from Niko’s fingers, scanned the squat building, and started for the far end as he grumbled on. “Cheating isn’t even a word in my language. Just as the old saying that the Eskimos have many words for snow, we have many words for sex-a thousand and three, I think, but not a single one for infidelity. Doesn’t that say something? Doesn’t that mean something?” He vanished behind the motel door, still talking to himself; still questioning himself. But Robin was the only one who could come up with those answers.

As for the issue of Delilah and me, I already had my mind made up: “Nik, I think we can handle a united front if we’re in the next room,” I pointed out.

He folded his arms and stared at me. I stared back, telling him silently that I could take care of myself. Aloud, I said, “It’s the Kin, Cyrano. I can handle the Kin. I’ve kicked furry ass in the past. Now is no different.”

“I think it’s considerably different, and you know it. There’re Kin and then there’re Kin,” he returned-not particularly cryptic to anyone, but I didn’t think he meant it to be. He let it go, though, and went for his own bags. “With Suyolak capable of toying with our dreams, I would sleep in shifts.” He slammed the trunk shut, tossing me my own bag. “If you sleep at all,” he added dryly.

I didn’t.

I wasn’t sure if Niko had either. Robin might be living the puck ultimate terror of monogamy, but Niko was a big fan of the “Trust no one” philosophy. He had his exceptions. He trusted me, and he trusted Robin as well. He trusted him to watch his back in a fight and to step up whenever we needed help. He trusted him in any situation that could go south fast. But he’d also been chased ruthlessly by Robin before the puck’s reconnection, in all senses of the word, with Ishiah. Niko had an infallibly long memory and an extremely sharp sense of survival. Whether it was a sudden catastrophic monogamy failure and things going south in an entirely different way than how the phrase was normally used, Niko would be prepared for any eventuality.

That was why I wasn’t surprised to see him in the parking lot just after dawn when I opened the door, leaving a gloriously nude Delilah stretching and yawning in bed. With an exotic and fiercely intelligent woman, is there any other kind of nude? “Go. I sleep. Will catch up.” I didn’t hesitate. She would catch up, like she said; I had no doubt about that, just as I had no doubt about what she’d told me last night in the nest of sheets with the lullaby rush of cars passing by on the interstate. “The Kin cannot control me,” she’d said, her eyes reflecting the faint light coming through the blinds in a way a human’s never would. “I will survive.”

“I know you will,” I’d replied, and I believed her.

“I will do what I must do.”

“I know you will,” I’d repeated, and that I had believed, too-completely. If she had to kill me to get back in the good graces of the Kin, she would. If she could do the same without killing me, she would do that. Until the actual moment came, I had no idea what she would do. That was life.

Possibly death too.

I closed the door behind me and spotted Nik over at his car, having breakfast while sitting in the lotus position on the hood. He wasn’t alone. There was a man with shaggy auburn hair sitting beside him, but with legs hanging over the grille and a large reddish wolf at his feet: Rafferty and Catcher-finally. “Rafferty, you son of a bitch. Where the hell have you been?” I said as I walked toward them.