He opened his mouth and froze. “Okay. I’m an ass. She wanted to know what could happen, so I told her. But I shouldn’t have.”

Good call. “Bring me a name. Then I’ll give remembering a shot.”

He took off and I went to collect Julie. We needed to find Luther and ask him some questions.

CHAPTER

14

THE BIOHAZARD DIVISION occupied a large solid building made with big blocks of the local gray granite. A large black sign in front announced its official name: The Center for Magical Containment and Disease Prevention. I parked in the front in a visitor spot. It was just me and Julie. I had asked Derek to go to the suspect stalker’s address and watch his house, doing whatever he had to do not to be seen, and Curran was still at the Guild.

The day had burned down to a cold evening, the sky an icy purple in the west as the sun rolled toward the horizon. The magic was strong tonight.

Curran had offered to come with me, but I insisted. He needed to stay and get his hands dirty, because the mercs would respect that, and I needed to see a man about a ghoul. He offered again and I told him no, and not just because Mitchell wouldn’t crawl out of his burrow if he smelled Curran coming.

Curran was impossible to ignore. He wasn’t quite hovering around me, but he was very forcibly there in case I was about to collapse. Right now he was the equivalent of having a squad of trained killers at your beck and call, ready to defend you at the slightest provocation. My stroke had put him on edge. I could feel him surfing that narrow line between maintaining his composure and losing all semblance of rational thought. He had lost his parents and his siblings to loups, and he had never recovered. The fear that something would happen to me constantly gnawed at him, and sitting on his hands for two days waiting to see if I’d die while the kids were freaking out had driven him nuts. He was wound so tight, the energy rolled off him. If someone accidentally bumped into me, he’d rip them to pieces. What he wanted most was to stuff me into an armored room lined with padded pillows and stand guard over it until all the insanity that drove him boiled down to the simple realization that we were both going to be alright. He would never say it and he would definitely never try it, but the urge was there. I saw it in his eyes.

Maybe it was because he was extra wound up, or maybe it was the way we always were, but I felt completely secure when he was near. I felt safe. He was like a one-man army.