Jono stiffened at her words, sitting up straighter. “I haven’t heard anything.”
Emma held up a hand as Leon finally came back over to them carrying two plates piled high with leftover pasta. Werecreatures burned through a lot of calories, and Emma made it a point to always have a full refrigerator.
“Can you ward the apartment for silence?” Emma asked Patrick.
In response, Patrick uncurled his hands, a mageglobe sparking into existence between his fingers. The same hint of static from the bar flowed across Jono’s ears, silence following in its wake.
“Silence ward is up,” Patrick said.
“What have you been keeping from me?” Jono wanted to know.
He was god pack, even if he had never held any territory. By virtue of the god strain of the werevirus running through his veins and the animal-god patron that had claws sunk deep in his soul, Jono had an obligation to the packs around him, even if he couldn’t act on his rank. He’d discreetly dispensed advice to those Emma sent his way, helping to quietly mediate lesser disputes that Estelle and Youssef never cared to handle with packs he could trust wouldn’t turn around and narc on him.
“You had a rough time of it in June,” Emma said, calmly meeting his gaze. “Anyone who asked, I said you needed some space.”
Jono clenched his hands into fists. “Em.”
“You weretortured, Jono. That’s not something you just shake off after a shift and a night’s rest. You had both the PCB and the SOA breathing down your neck wanting answers and interviews. You’d just made a pack with Patrick and you both needed time to adjust. I handled what I could with the packs.”
Jono didn’t much care to think about what he’d gone through at Ethan’s hand. Waking up from nightmares with Patrick by his side was loads better than waking up alone. “If there was a problem, you should’ve told me.”
Emma gave him a frustrated look. “What more could you have done?”
Jono opened his mouth—then closed it. He clenched his teeth, feeling the pressure in the hinge of his jaw. She was right, and he hated it. New York City wasn’t his territory. He wasn’t judge, jury, and executioner for the packs that called the five boroughs home. That was all Estelle and Youssef and the self-serving arseholes enforcing their orders.
Deep down, Jono knew he could do better.
Patrick pointed at the plate of cooling food in front of him on the coffee table. “Eat.”
Patrick had practically inhaled his food and was already more than halfway finished. Jono picked up the plate because it would be rude not to.
“What’s going on with the independents?” Patrick asked.
Sage shifted on the sofa and tucked one foot underneath her. “Pack law commands any independent werecreature who comes to the city must go before the god pack to get permission to stay. Not everyone is granted that permission, and not all those who receive it stay. I’ve been hearing rumors that some independent werecreatures have gone missing.”
“You sure they didn’t just leave to go try their luck somewhere else?”
“Independents stick together. Doesn’t make us a pack, but it’s a safety thing. We usually tell someone what we’re doing,” Jono said.
“I got a few who say their friends never came home, or didn’t show up for work. Their calls are going unanswered, and no one has seen them or scented them in any pack territory,” Sage added.
Patrick viciously stabbed at a meatball. “Until now.”
“Yes.”
Patrick eyed the meatball on his fork before sighing heavily and setting his plate on the coffee table, apparently no longer hungry. “The victim had shine in his pocket. That information stays between us.”
The sound of ripping fabric had Jono looking over at where Emma sat on the armchair, peeling claws out of the expensive furniture. She didn’t seem to notice the damage she’d done.
“What?” she growled.
Jono’s anger matched hers, a vicious, ugly emotion he had to throttle back. No love was lost between vampires and werecreatures, and Jono had a hatred for them that went deeper than most. His infection by the werevirus was due to a dodgy blood transfusion at a hospital after an auto accident when he was seventeen. The Edgware Night Court had done a tidy little side business in blood procurement through the hospital, and safety standards hadn’t been kept up.
He’d come to terms with his lot in life years ago, but Jono’s opinion on vampires had remained the same—he bloody wellhatedthem. Dealing with Lucien and his transient Night Court in June had only cemented that feeling.
“The treaties the god pack has with the Night Courts here mean we have pass-through rights in each other’s territories, but we don’tstay. It was a bloodbath in the middle of the last century during the Civil Rights era before City Hall worked out the treaties,” Leon said.
In a major metropolitan city, territory was measured by blocks, sometimes by a single address. The density of New York City meant all sorts of various monsters and creatures claimed territory that ran right up against each other. As with street gangs, sometimes fights broke out. Humanity hated when the preternatural world went to war, which was why laws targeting territory rights were so draconian.
