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wrong. But he was wearing his knowing face, not the stubborn one. I saw the stubborn face this morning when he insisted that I bring guards with me today. He might be right, he might not, but he was surely stubborn.”
    Someone who could be unbelievably pigheaded—
    “His knowing face, though—that’s how he looks when he talks about running four-footed. He
knows
what that’s like. Stubborn doesn’t come into the picture.”
    —someone who wasn’t human. Nathan couldn’t turn furry the way Arjenie’s lover did. He had only one shape, and that was very much a man’s shape, but he’d been born a hellhound. “What do you do when he’s being stubborn?”
    “Depends on if it’s stubborn-reasonable or stubborn-idiotic. The guards, now, I have to admit that’s reasonable. Someone could try to grab me to use against Benedict. I’m not much of a threat to the Enemy, but he is.”
    Kai’s lupi hosts were at war. So were the humans around them, but mostly they didn’t know it. Their enemy was an Old One they usually referred to as the Great Bitch or the Great Enemy. Battling an Old One would have made for a short and lopsided war if
she
had been able to conduct her battles in person. But
she
had been locked out of the realms when the Great War ended over three thousand years ago, so she had to fight through proxies—like the one whose possession of a forbidden artifact had brought Kai and Nathan back to Earth a few weeks ago.
    Kai wondered if Arjenie felt as matter-of-fact about the possibility of being kidnapped as she sounded. She couldn’t, could she? Without her Gift, Kai couldn’t tell. It was disconcerting. “And if he’s being stubborn and unreasonable?”
    Arjenie’s eyebrows lifted. “You might as well tell me, you know.”
    “Ah . . .”
    “Nathan seems like a reasonable guy, but no one is reasonable about everything all the time.”
    Reluctantly Kai smiled. “I’m being obvious, huh?”
    “Oh, yes.”
    “It’s this business about getting my eyes fixed. Nathan thinks surgery is barbaric. He . . . I told you why Dell can’t help me, didn’t I?”
    “She doesn’t know how to change just one part of a body.”
    “Pretty much, yeah. But there are people who could fix my eyes in a blink. No surgery, no pain, no problems. I’d go from 20/200 to 20/20. Maybe better than 20/20.” Kai paused. Nathan expected her to keep this secret. But the offer had been made to her, not him, right? So it was up to her to decide how much of a secret it should be. “People like the Winter Queen.”
    “I’m sure she could, but—wait. You mean she’d do that?”
    “For a price. She wants me to take service with her.”
    “Well, that bitch.”
    Kai laughed. Arjenie never cursed, not even the occasional “damn,” which made it even funnier. “It’s not like she’s being evil to make the offer, but I don’t like the idea of putting myself in her hands. I’d have to vow to her, you see. And she to me,” Kai added, wanting to be fair. “And there are some strong benefits to that. I’d get the very best training, for one. I’d also become a legal adult, which—”
    “Wait, you aren’t one now?”
    “Not in sidhe eyes. I’m human. The trace of sidhe blood in my makeup may be the reason for my Gift—they certainly think so—but it’s not enough to make me sidhe, so I’m not one of the grownups. Not in the realms.” Kai paused. And blinked. The flowers on the vine behind Arjenie were moving. Fluttering. But there wasn’t any wind. “That is so weird.”
    The flowers burst up into the air.
    Not flowers. Butterflies. Hundreds of bright pink butterflies exploded silently from the leaves of the vine where, a moment ago, they’d been growing. They blossomed up into the air in a cloud of frothing pink.
    People exclaimed. Four tables away, two chairs scraped. “Arjenie—wink out!” Doug called.
    Kai didn’t remember standing, but she was on her feet when Arjenie vanished. One second the