He was assuming that I’d given it to the fae again. If it hadn’t been for the apology in his voice, I think I might have been happy to … not lie, not precisely. Because I didn’t know where the walking stick was, I only knew who it was with.

“Not exactly,” I told him, then stalled out. Zee had been very clear that the fae would not be amused at where that walking stick had ended up.

“Then what ‘exactly’ do you know? Whom did you give it to?”

There was a thump from the stairs, and both of us jumped. Beauclaire focused his attention, and I felt his magic send shivers of ice along my arms.

“Hold on,” I said. “I’ll check.” Before the first word had left my mouth, I hopped out of my chair and headed for the stairway. Whoever had made the noise was likely to be someone I cared about, and I didn’t want them to get blasted by a Gray Lord.

I turned the corner, and Medea stared up at me from the fourth step from the bottom. “It’s okay,” I told Beauclaire. I picked her up, and, true to form, the cat went limp and started purring.

“What was it?” he said.

“I know it’s a horror-film cliché,” I said as I walked back into the kitchen. “But, really, it’s just the cat. I thought you put her to sleep like everyone else?”

Beauclaire frowned at my cat, the magic in the air dissipating gradually. I sat down, and the cat consented to continue to be petted.

“Cats are tricky,” he told me. “Rather like you, they tend to shed enchantments. I didn’t expect to find one in a house full of werewolves, and magic on the fly, delicate magic, is not my specialty.” He looked at me, and there was a threat in his voice when he said, “Hurricanes, tidal waves, drowned cities—those are easier.”

“Don’t feel too bad about it,” I told him, my voice conciliatory. His brows lowered, and I continued in a bland tone, “No one else has heard of a cat who likes werewolves, either.”

Medea—maybe because dangerous men with threatening voices, in her experience, were the people most apt to drop whatever they were doing and cuddle her—decided that Beauclaire was fair game. She oozed from my lap to the tabletop and began a very-slow-motion creep across the table toward him.

“We were talking about the walking stick?” he said, raising an eyebrow. I couldn’t tell if the eyebrow was at me or at my cat—watching Medea do her slo-mo cat stalk can be disconcerting.

“An oakman used the walking stick to kill a vampire,” I told him. It was either the beginning of the story or a diversion, I wasn’t certain myself.