One of the guys at the bar was humming. While we sat hunched over our food and argued, Jenks had some guy at the bar singing about a tanker that had sunk forty-some years ago. Shaking my head in wonder, I returned my attention to Nick. “We’re waiting,” I said, then wrangled my burger to my mouth. My eyes closed as I bit into it. Sweet bliss, it was good.

His eyes stressed, Nick picked up one of his burgers, leaning his elbows on the table. “Rachel, you saw how there were three packs on that island, didn’t you? All working together?”

I scrambled for a napkin. “It was freaking weird,” I said around my full mouth. “You should have seen how fast their alpha Wered. And they were nasty too. Like alphas without the restraint. Cocky little bastards …” My words trailed off as I took another bite.

“That’s what it does,” Nick said, and Ivy swore under her breath. “I found it in Detroit.”

“Then it’s the focus?” she whispered, and I waved a hand for their attention, fry weaving between the two of them, but they weren’t listening to me. “That thing can’t be the focus,” Ivy added. “It was destroyed five millennia ago. We don’t even know if it even really existed. And if it did, it sure as hell wouldn’t be in Detroit.”

“That’s where I found it,” Nick said, then took a bite. A small moan came from him. “You can’t destroy something that powerful,” he mumbled. “Not with rocks and sticks. And not with magic.” He swallowed. “Maybe with a car crusher, but they didn’t have them back then.”

“What is it?” I insisted, only marginally aware of the flirting going on across the room between the stanzas of men dying on the waves. Get a clue, Jenks.

Ivy pushed her untouched plate with her burger away. “It’s trouble,” she said. “I was going to make him give it to the Weres, but now—”

“Damn it!” I shouted, and the three women ogling Jenks giggled and jiggled—in that order. I lowered my voice. “Someone tell me what I have sitting on my lap before I explode.”

“You’re the professor,” Ivy said bitingly to Nick, taking a fry from Jenks’s plate. “You tell her.”

Nick washed a bite of his first burger down and hesitated. “Vamps can either be born or bitten, but the only way to become a Were is to be born one.”

“Duh,” I said. “Witches are like that too, along with most of Inderland.”

“Well …” Nick paused, his eyes flicking everywhere. “… the Were holding that thing can make a Were by a bite.”

I chewed and swallowed. “And they want to kill you for that?”

Ivy brought her head up. “Think about it, Rachel,” she cajoled. “Right now, vampires are at the top of the food chain.”