“What in the world?” Mrs. Cassopolis said faintly. Her husband silenced her with a glance.

Feeling more than a little silly, I buckled the belt over my denim miniskirt. Although the leather was stiff, the belt fit well and sat perfectly on my hips.

“It will soften with wear,” Cody said briefly. “And I’ll give you some oil for it. Try the dagger.”

Dauda-dagr caught the early-morning light as I eased it out of the makeshift deerskin scabbard, its etched runes flaring. It slid into the new scabbard as if . . . well, as if it were made for it.

Both the Cassopolises stared.

And suddenly I didn’t feel silly anymore. I was Hel’s liaison. The Norse goddess of the underworld had marked a rune onto my left palm with the hand of life, and she had given me dauda-dagr with the hand of death, a badge of status visible for all to see, eldritch and mundane alike, a symbol of her trust. I had the right to bear it openly, maybe even a duty. I found myself standing a little straighter, a little taller.

At that moment, Jen returned to eye me with disbelief. “Jesus! Way to accessorize, Daise.”

Okay, maybe it didn’t exactly go with a miniskirt. “It’s a magic dagger,” I informed her. “And it has a name.”

“Okay.” She processed that without blinking. “Shall we go?”

Cody gave a brusque nod. “Time’s wasting. Show me which way you think your brother went.”

The Cassopolises’ backyard was small and overgrown, boasting a rusty swing set that I was pretty sure had been there when they bought the place decades ago. Beyond it, a faint trail led into the woody underbrush.

It wasn’t a nice wood, not like the old forest in the game preserve near the Fairfax compound. It was a scrubby, dank wood. We picked our way along the trail until we’d gone far enough that the house behind us was hidden from view, and Cody called for a halt.

“Here?” I asked.

He shrugged, removing his off-duty shoulder holster and stripping off his T-shirt. “It’s as good a place as any.”

If I’d thought about it, which I would have if I weren’t so ungodly hungover, I would have realized that asking Cody to shift meant asking Cody to get naked first. And I probably would have imagined a scenario in which he asked Jen and me to turn our backs or look away for modesty’s sake.

I would have been wrong.

Cody took off his clothes with an utter lack of self-consciousness that gave me a brief flash of insight into werewolves’ relationship with their own physicality. And yes, he looked very good naked, all lean, hard muscle and sinew, not hairy except for that treasure trail leading down from his belly toward even more tempting parts, which I commended myself for not checking out.