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When Phoebe called me to request this meeting, I did a little fact checking, and there have indeed been three fatal dog attacks recently. Jack’s right that it’s all pretty bizarre. What kind of wild dog pack is randomly going to maul three adult men, all in different parts of the city, and with absolutely no witnesses?”
    “No witnesses to the attacks,” Jack added, “and no reported sightings of a pack of dogs large enough to do it.”
    We all chewed that one over for a while. It wasn’t so ridiculous to think the attacks might be supernaturalin nature. Once you allowed yourself to admit that the supernatural exists at all, of course.
    “Just because a Liberi is probably behind the attacks doesn’t mean anything else Phoebe said was true,” Blake argued. “Like her explanation of why the Olympians care about someone who kills people.”
    “It’s plausible that they would be concerned about the risk of exposure,” Anderson said. “It’s also plausible that there’s something else behind their request for help.”
    “Like they’re going to use this hunt to try to trap Nikki and force her to work for them,” Blake suggested.
    Konstantin had tried to recruit me for the Olympians when I’d first become Liberi . His recruitment techniques included such compelling persuasions as having his right-hand man kidnap and rape my sister—a fate I could supposedly have saved her from if only I’d agreed to join them. Of course, since it was their mission in life to wipe out every mortal Descendant in the world except for the chosen few they indoctrinated, if I’d joined them, they’d have made me hunt for who knows how many innocent men, women, and children whom they would slaughter. File that under “Not Gonna Happen.”
    “I’m not suggesting we go blundering into anything blindly,” Anderson said. “I’d like us to start out by just doing a little more research.” He turned to Leo, who was sneaking glances at a handheld every few seconds. Guess he was afraid the stock market would pull a fast one on him if he didn’t keep an eye on it.“See if you can get hold of the actual police reports. There might be information they haven’t shared with the public that will help us figure out whether the attacks are supernatural or not.”
    “Sure thing, boss,” Leo said. I’d known he was good with computers, but the confidence with which he agreed to go searching for police reports said he was hacker-level good.
    “And Nikki,” Anderson continued, “see what you can find out about the victims. See if you can find any link between them and the Olympians.”
    That was something I could do, something my years as a private investigator had prepared me for. Hunting for a supernatural serial killer, on the other hand, was so far outside my comfort zone it might as well have been brain surgery. I hoped to God we’d find out there was nothing supernatural whatsoever about these attacks so that I could get off the hook. It was a selfish attitude, no doubt about it, but I figured after the hell I’d been through lately, I was entitled to a little selfishness.
    I stopped by the kitchen before going up to my suite. I needed a healthy dose of coffee before I got to work. By the time I’d brewed a pot, doctored it to my liking, and gotten to my suite, Leo had already emailed me several articles about the dog attacks, along with the police report on the first one.
    I skimmed the news articles, although I seriously doubted they’d have a lot of important information compared with what I would find in the police reports.Maybe I was just stalling because I wasn’t looking forward to cracking open files that would have photos of dead, mauled bodies. I was a P.I., not a cop, and I was embarrassingly squeamish. I’d thrown up when we had to dissect a frog in high school, and even thinking about looking at the photos was making me a little queasy.
    According to online reports, the attacks had each occurred on a Friday