“They found a body in the subway tonight. Blood still needs to be typed, but the kid was partially shifted.”
“Kid?” Jono asked sharply.
“Teenager,” Patrick amended. “Late teens. I’m wondering if you’ve heard of anyone who has gone missing in the werecreature community lately?”
Jono frowned. “Not that I’m aware of.”
Until this summer, Jono had been an independent-ranked werewolf, with no pack to claim as his own over the years, either back in London or here in New York. Carrying the god strain of the werevirus meant he should have been absorbed into a god pack, but he had never been accepted by any. He knew now part of that reason was because of the Fates and Patrick, and the rest because of the animal-god patron who clawed at his soul.
Fenrir was a presence in Jono’s life that had come on slowly and subtly, a voice in the back of his mind that had kept him company off and on through the lonely years of running without a pack. But he had Patrick now, even if no one but his closest friends knew he’d finally formed a pack after living so long without one.
He and Patrick had told no one about the soulbond.
“Do you know anyone who could tell me about the independent werecreatures that pass through here? Anyone whoisn’tEstelle or Youssef?” Patrick asked.
Jono scratched at the edge of his jaw, fingernails scraping over the shadow of a beard on his face. “Might do.”
“Great. Got a number for me?”
“You already have Sage’s number, but you’ll want to chat with her in person about something like this.”
Patrick seemed surprised at that announcement. “Sage?”
“Yeah, mate. She was an independent before Emma took her on.”
While Jono didn’t have a pack, he’d grown close to those in the Tempest pack. Led by Emma Zhang, she and her partner in all the ways that mattered, Leon Hernandez, were best friends with Marek Taylor, a powerful seer who owned one of the premier social media tech companies in use these days.
Marek was the one who’d pulled Jono out of London three years ago for reasons that didn’t become apparent until Patrick arrived in New York this past summer. Marek had been dating Sage Beacot well before Jono ever came to the States. Sage was the lone weretiger in a pack of werewolves, though no one ever treated her differently after Emma claimed Sage for her pack.
The four of them were his friends—family, really—but Jono and Sage had similar backgrounds in how they’d lived within the werecreature community. They’d bonded over that early on after he first arrived to manage the bar. Jono might have been instructed to not act as an official god pack alpha in any way while living in New York City, but that hadn’t stopped Sage from coming to him for advice.
“Sage keeps tabs on the independents better than the god pack does. She does pro bono work for them through her law firm when the need arises,” Jono said.
Patrick grimaced. “I fucking hate dealing with fae lawyers.”
“Lucky it’s not the fae we’ll be seeing. Right, then. Let’s be off. The sooner you chat with her, the sooner we can go home.”
The Chelsea flat they called home had felt far too empty over the past week. Jono was keen on dragging Patrick to bed for a full night’s rest.
“Yeah, all right.”
Patrick waved his hand through the mageglobe and it vanished, along with the silence ward. Sound rushed back into Jono’s ears with apop. Enhanced senses meant he could see, hear, and smell better than a mundane human, but control had been hard earned over the years.
Patrick left the back room and headed out of the bar. Jono took a minute to chat with his closers before joining him outside. The temperature difference between the air-conditioned bar and muggy night air didn’t bother him. Patrick was waiting for him on the sidewalk, mobile pressed to his ear. Jono kicked up his hearing a couple of notches to listen to the conversation on both sides of the line.
“…you’re sure about the werevirus type?” Patrick was saying. He raised an eyebrow at Jono, jerked his head to the left, and started walking. Jono matched him stride for stride.
“Werejackal,” a tired-sounding female voice said through the speaker. Her voice echoed with a bit of static in Jono’s ears. “I’m starting the autopsy, and that was the first test I ran.”
“Send me your preliminary report when you’re finished. I don’t care what time it is, I’ll take it.”
“It’ll go to you and the chief.”
“Thanks, Catherine.” Patrick ended the call and shoved his mobile into his pocket. Jono wanted to kiss the scowl off his face. “You heard that?”
Jono nodded. “I heard.”
“So. Dead werejackal. You know one of those?”
