“The fuck?” Theo said.

“Demon influence?”

“I don’t think they need it,” I said.

Two CPD officers approached. We held out our badges.

“Thanks for getting here fast,” said the one on the left. “Officer Padwicky. That’s Officer Jones.”

“Sullivan and Martin,” I said. “What’s going on?”

“Anger, as far as I can tell. It started at the NAC Industries building,” Jones said. A rookie, I guessed, as he was brimming with nervous energy.

“Fight started inside, spilled onto the sidewalk, then the streets, then . . . this,” Padwicky said, gesturing. “Neighbors got nervous when the fighting started. And they’ve been chanting.”

“Chanting?”

“Honestly, it sounds like conspiracy theory–type stuff? A lot of ‘Tell the truth’ and ‘Release the Apex.’ ”

Theo climbed onto the bed of a truck parked beside us, looked over the crowd. “Eighty or so shifters. Couple circles of fighting.” He narrowed his gaze. “And you’ll never guess who’s leading the party.”

“The interlopers,” I said, anger rising again.

“Your eyes are a little silvery,” Padwicky said in the same tone a trusted friend would let you know you had lipstick on your teeth.

I nodded, blew out a breath, tried to calm down. Escalation wasn’t going to help.

Theo jumped down from the truck. “Didn’t you stop a Pack fight recently?”

“Yeah. I got a shifter the opportunity to help Connor work on his bike,” I said.

“That’s not going to help here,” Theo said.

“No,” I said. “They don’t seem like the teamwork or manual labor types.”

The sound of breaking glass echoed from somewhere in the crowd. “We need to get this contained,” Padwicky said, “before it spreads or becomes a full-on riot, or someone ends up dead.”

* * *

I didn’t see any sign of Connor, and I didn’t get a response to my messages to him. So we were going to have to start without him.

The street the shifters had picked for their near riot was bounded by town houses on both sides, and the crowd flowed nearly to the fronts of those buildings. We sent CPD officers into the crowd to thin it out at the edges and locate any shifters or humans who needed help. Theo and I would work our way to the front the only way possible—through the morass of shifters who were busy hiding their fear with booze and screaming.

But they didn’t want to stop the party; they didn’t even want to move aside as we tried to press through them, and I knew I’d have bruises tomorrow. Instead of cooperation, there was plenty of booze, plenty of anger, and more than a few shouted conspiracy theories and insults. A few knives strapped to belts, but no larger weapons that I could see.

“Fucking asshole cops,” a big man murmured.

“We aren’t cops. We’re Ombuds,” Theo said. “Here to serve and assist supernaturals. And I’m feeling real good about that career decision right now.”

Someone threw out an elbow toward me, and I instinctively grabbed it, twisted it away. “Hands to yourself,” I said to the responding shout before letting him go and moving forward again.