It was close to noon when I finally walked through the doors of the office. Kate sat at her desk. Grendel sprawled by her feet, an enormous black monstrosity that had more in common with the hound of the Baskervilles than with any poodle I had ever seen. He saw me and wagged his tail.

I paused to pet his head. “The Consort in the flesh. You grace us with your presence, Your Majesty. I’m so honored.” I pressed my hand to my chest, hyperventilating. “I shall alert the media posthaste!”

She grimaced. “Har-de-har-har. Did you have lunch yet?”

“No, and I’m starving. I could eat a small horse.”

“Acropolis?” Kate asked, rising.

“Way ahead of you.” I grabbed the file off my desk and went out the door. “By the way, we have a nice police tail that we aren’t supposed to lose.”

“The more, the merrier.”

When we had both worked at the Order, Parthenon had been our favorite lunch joint. It served the best gyros. Unfortunately, now we were about forty-five minutes away from Parthenon, but we had found Acropolis, half a mile away, which was just as good if not better. It didn’t have Parthenon’s outdoor garden, but we made do with a secluded booth near the window in the back.

We ordered a heap of gyros, tzatziki sauce, a plate of bones for Grendel, and yummy pink-drop fruity drinks. Even with my shapeshifter senses, I had no idea what was in them and we both had decided it wasn’t prudent to ask. Our police escorts, an older woman and a man in his twenties, were seated all the way across the room, by the window. For now we had privacy, at least.

I took the picture of the knife from the file and pushed it toward her. “Ancient knife.”

She pondered it. “This is not battle-ready.”

“Raphael thought it was ceremonial.”

She nodded. “It’s a fang.”

“What?”

“It’s a fang.” She turned the picture toward me. “Wolf, maybe. Here, look.”

She reached down and pulled Grendel’s upper lip up, revealing huge canines. “Exactly the same.”

She was right. The knife was shaped just like a canine tooth. “How did I miss this?”

Kate wiped her hands on the cloth napkin. “I wouldn’t have connected it either, except Curran gave Grendel a pork chop last night and this doofus wolfed it down and got a bone shard stuck in his gum. I had to pull it out and got a close look at his teeth. I can’t seem to impress on the Beast Lord that giving him pork chops is not a good idea. He says wolves eat boars. I say that wolves never had a boar sliced into chops, which makes pork bones very sharp.”

I unloaded the whole story on her, sparing no details. Kate’s eyes kept getting bigger and bigger.

“And here we are,” I finished.