Two women walked in front of them. The first wore a dark blue blouse and jeans. She was about my age, dark-haired, her skin a light bronze, her hair put away into a braid. Her face was interesting, with large, bold features: big eyes, wide mouth, a sharply drawn nose. The girl next to her looked to be on the cusp of her twenties. Shorter, paler, with a slender waist, she wore a white dress. The wind tugged at the cascade of her chocolate-brown hair and her clothes, and the diaphanous fabric flared, making her appear ethereal and light. She all but floated above the rough concrete.

The girl waved. “Curran!”

She knew him.

Curran swore under his breath. “I’ll be damned. They dragged her into this.”

Apparently he knew her, too.

“Curran!” She waved again, standing on her toes, and hurried toward us.

“Lorelei?” Curran called out.

The girl smiled. Wow. The night just got a bit brighter.

The sailors lowered the gangplank and Curran started down the moment it clanged against the pier. Apparently he couldn’t wait to meet her.

“Who is Lorelei?” I asked quietly.

“Lorelei Wilson,” Mahon said. “Daughter of the Ice Fury’s alpha.”

Lorelei’s father led the Alaskan pack, the biggest shapeshifter group in the United States. The one who had left with her mother when Wilson and his European wife divorced. Well, wasn’t that just peachy.

“How do you tempt the Beast Lord?” Barabas murmured. “Simple. Offer him a shapeshifter princess.”

Aunt B reached over and gently popped him on the back of his head.

“I hate her already,” Andrea told me. “George hates her too, right, George?”

“I think she is adorable.” George volunteered next to me. “We should give her milk and cookies, and if she promises to be quiet, she can sit at the big people’s table.”

“Show some respect,” Mahon said. “She is the heir to Ice Fury.”

George arched her eyebrows at him. “Really, Dad?”

On the pier, Curran reached the procession. The woman in blue bowed. Lorelei stepped forward, her arms raised for a hug, then stopped abruptly, as if catching herself, and also bowed. Curran said something. She smiled again.

I touched Slayer’s hilt just to make sure it was there.

“Diplomatic, Kate,” Barabas suggested quietly. “Diplomatic.”

I leaned close to him. “Find out who invited her, what are her attachments, and if she has strings, who is pulling.”

He nodded.

I went down the gangplank. The rough concrete was dry under my feet. I managed a slow, deliberate march and the pier seemed to last forever. Did it need to be this long? Were they going to park a carrier here?

I finally got within hearing range.

“You grew up,” Curran was saying.

“It’s been ten years.” Lorelei’s voice had a light trace of an accent. Not quite French, not quite Italian. “I just turned twenty-one.”