Why did Hugh let Dorie go? I rubbed my face. It didn’t make me any smarter. If I were Hugh, what would I do with Dorie? How could I use her? If Dorie was dead, the Pack couldn’t turn her over in time for the deadline, which would guarantee a war. We could still produce her corpse or acknowledge that she was the killer and offer to pay restitution. But if Dorie was alive, things would get really complicated. If we did turn her over, we would look weak. If we didn’t, we would look like we thought we were above the law. There was no good way to resolve this situation, and the responsibility for it would land on my shoulders. Whichever decision I made, the Pack would detest me for it.

No, Hugh wouldn’t kill her. Why, when he could kill a whole flock of birds with one stone? “Dorie is still alive.”

Ascanio raised his eyebrows at me.

“The question isn’t why Dorie killed Mulradin, it’s what we do about Dorie. We have to get out of here.”

“We have company,” Robert announced, looking out the window.

I willed my legs to move and crossed the room. My head was still swimming. Riders flooded the street, one, two . . . twelve. The leader rode a familiar dark horse. Hugh.

We’d been in the apartment about six minutes, and here he was.

Desandra leaned out to glance past Robert. Her clawed fingers grazed the wall.

Magic pulsed through the window in a flash of dark green. Desandra jerked her hand-paw away and cursed. “I know, I know. I touched something. My fault.”

Tiny runes ignited in the paint of the windowsill, pulsed, and vanished, as a ward snapped closed.

I spun around. “Door?”

Ascanio was already checking. “Warded,” he called out a second later.

We were trapped. Great. I moved to the window and pushed against the ward with my palm. It nipped at me with magic teeth. Not a blood ward. This was incantation-based and someone had sunk a wallop of power into it. Shit.

Ascanio returned.

“Is it breakable?” Robert asked me.

“Sure. Give me an hour to figure out how it was made.”

Derek swore.

I dropped on my knees by the window and slid my hand against the ward, trying to trace its boundaries. Magic scraped at my skin with pale green lightning. Ouch. If Hugh had warded the whole building, we’d be in trouble.

At the street, the riders dismounted.

I found an edge of the ward. Another edge. “He didn’t ward the entire building. He just warded the openings, the windows and the door.”

Derek bared his teeth. “Ceiling or floor?”

“Ceiling,” Robert said.

It would take them at least a few minutes to break through the ceiling onto the roof. A few minutes, and nothing between us and Hugh except for a busted door. I ran to the door.