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How could I not? Namir was a massive man, with medium brown skin, black hair, and a tightly trimmed beard. He had green eyes that I could still almost see in the dark, and he was wearing the same suit he wore as second-in-command on the casino’s floor. As Rax’s casino catered exclusively to shifter clientele and some few brave or insane humans, that was saying something.
He stopped a good thirty feet away from me and shrugged, making his suit’s crisp shoulders roll up and down. “I’m not hiding, Lily. I’m making sure you get home safe.”
“Uh-huh.”
A smile lit up his face, and he lifted up both hands, protesting his innocence, as he started walking closer. “Fine. You can talk to HR tomorrow.”
I crossed my arms. “I wasn’t aware we had an HR.”
“We don’t, really,” he said, still smiling. “It’s just me. But if you want, your next shift, I’ll send Charles out here instead.” He stopped again, just five feet in front of me, and looked around warily. “You’re a popular dealer, Lily. You walk out with a wad of cash big enough to choke a horse each night. I’m just keeping Rax’s assets safe for him.”
“Of course,” I said, with a hint of sarcasm. From this close, I could scent the musk of what Namir was on him—atiger-shifter—and it should have terrified me. As a swan maiden, I’d beenattuned to predators my whole life. But there was something about being around Namir that felt less like danger and more like electricity.
“Of course,” he repeated, much more kindly than I had.
I paused, torn between ripping him a new one for thinking me incapable of managing myself versus finding something about his presence there wholesomely proprietary. In the great mass of people I didn’t know and would never meet in this city, it was almost—but not quite—charming that someone cared.
“Get in your car and I’ll watch you leave,” he said, jerking his chin at my ride.
I turned to my car and opened up the door. “I bet that’s not the only thing you’d like to watch,” I quietly muttered, then slammed my door shut solidly, watching him give me a low wave as I drove off.
Chapter 2
I took route-four-hundred-and-twelve home after that, checking in my mirrors to make sure I wasn’t being followed the whole time, because this was the longest I’d stayed anywhere and I didn’t want anyone to follow me.
My parents had both been swans. They’d taught me how to survive in the world, and right now, I was doing pretty much the opposite.
Unlike the other shifters I was surrounded by at work—my shifting ability wasn’t innate, something I could control, or something pulled by the moon.
I could only shift if I was wearing my feathers—like a feather-skin cloak—and if I wasn’t, and someone else got hold of them, they could control me.
It was why my parents had kept me as sheltered as possible. They’d given each other their feathers when they’d mated, then burned them, choosing to never become swans again rather than take the risk of being parted.
But they’d known I was like them the second I was born with a downy white caul—and they would’ve protectedmyfeathers with their lives, up until the point I was old enough to be in control of them, which I now was.
I’d been on my own for years, doing what I was supposed to be doing: using magic to hide who I was and change my scent, and moving every few months to a new place before anyone could get attached to me, or get too curious.
But when I’d heard about the vault at Rax’s casino—because the casino was a front for the dragon-shifter’s magical object racket—I couldn’t resist. The price the dragon-shifter hadquoted me to store my feathers was usurious—fifty thousand dollars a year!—but at the thought of them finally being safe, it seemed worth trying for.
So here I was, six months into a job for the first time in my life, with thirty-thousand dollars saved up due to high-tippers and me living off of ramen, and maybe, just maybe, in another four or five months, my feathers would be safe. Then I’d get the dragon-shifter to put me on a monthly payment plan and I could have a real life, without looking over my shoulder all the time.
Andthenmaybe it wouldn’t matter so much, if I found myself being followed by a cat.
Maybe I could even slow my roll finally.
Maybe I could turn around, and give the cat a pet.
I parked in front of my house, sure that my secret was safe for another night, and thinking about Namir, when I realized my front door was open.
Chapter 3
I ran through the devastation of my house—the couch that’d been slashed, the TV that’d been ripped off the mount—for my bathroom, where I found my mirror shattered, and the wall caved in behind it, leaving chunks of drywall in the glass.
My feathers were gone.
I grabbed hold of the sink, got a fistful of glass, and wouldn’t have even noticed it, except for the red streaks my own blood left behind.
Static rushed in my ears, my pulse thumped at my throat.
