I glanced at the ceiling. Our apartment was a bug house filled with enough concealed mics, cameras, and monitors to record our every movement. Allegedly for our safety.

Home sweet home.

Cass caught the motion. She popped a combination of digits into the nearest keyboard and I registered a whine at the edge of my hearing. “I’m muffling the ears. You gonna spill?”

“Still no.” The less she knew, the less likely she was to get dragged out and interrogated. She might have heard of the Shadow Ravens, but she didn’t know I was a member and I wanted to keep it that way. I reflexively rubbed the raven tattooed near my thumb. It was invisible to anyone but other Ravens who’d had their eyes modified. We could identify each other, but I hadn’t been in contact with another agent in more than a year.

I was in deep cover mode until I took myself out, digging into the Seligo power structure like only a senator’s son could. Only a handful of Ravens could safely move in and out of Alpha Citadel, and I was one of even fewer who’d been born on a straight track to Seligo immorality.

I never planned to make it to that destination.

Thus far, I hadn’t stumbled onto anything worth breaking cover for. I wouldn’t drag Cass into it, even if I had. “Let’s say I’m working a few angles you don’t need to know about.”

“Riiiiiiight.” Cass rolled her eyes. “That’s the whole truth.”

It was as much as I could give her. “You going to get in the shower?”

“Nope.”

“You’re making me go alone?”

Her nose wrinkled. “My game needed debugging yesterday and watching Seligo cougars drape themselves on you all night isn’t my kind of fun.”

My loss. I’d been counting on her to play buffer. And to be the one person in the room who wasn’t trying to either manipulate me or suck up to an Orpheus. “You know they’ll both come down on you.”

“What else is new?” Cass tapped a sequence into her comp and the background whine cut off. She pitched her voice slightly higher now that anyone listening could hear. “Mom and Dad can get stuffed.”

“Fair enough.” I left her to her glowing monitors and headed to change. At least one of us deserved a peaceful night. I’d get more attention than I wanted or needed, but Cass would get poison stares. She had the pedigree—just not the drive to impress.

Unfortunately, I had both. Or at least the drive to bluff my way along.