Rinn followed Satsu back to her room. As they went inside, Max sat up from where he’d been sleeping at the foot of the bed, and Rinn tossed him a peanut she’d swiped from the bar. Satsu pretended not to notice.

“So what do you think of our new friends?” Rinn asked, taking a seat on the bed where she could scritch Max.

Satsu tried to be annoyed with how Rinn was making herself at home, but couldn’t quite manage it. “I think they’re fine. Tafari in particular will be useful.”

Valentin…there was just something about Valentin that was pinging as not-quite-right. Nothing Satsu could put her finger on—not yet—and nothing she could share with Rinn. Particularly since it was spy-Satsu, rather than pack-Satsu who was noticing these things.

It was possible Valentin was a fellow Serpent. Xie had the etheric gift for it. Satsu’s cover meant she kept her gift hidden, but that wasn’t the only covert approach the clan employed.

On the other hand, the etheric gift was common enough in the other clans that it wasn’t evidence of anything, and it was possible Satsu was simply being jumpy. Suspicion was a hazard of the trade. For now, Satsu would simply keep her eyes open and her mouth shut.

“So when are you going to ask me the question?” Rinn asked.

“Which question?”

“You know. Where did I see this before? How did I know it was a demon? A more general what am I hiding?”

Rinn really wasn’t good at covert work. Why would Satsu ask those questions when it was perfectly clear Rinn was just waiting to share. Rather than say that, though, Satsu deflected with a simple, “Would you tell me if I asked?”

Max’s tail thumped as Rinn rubbed at his ears. Rinn was looking at him, not at Satsu. “The problem with all this is—I honestly don’t know what’s supposed to be secret and what isn’t. Especially since some of what was secret, by the end, no one could keep hidden anymore.”

“Why don’t you start with that?”

“Right. So.” Rinn took a deep breath. “At the end of the last Shadow Court, there was an attack. The attackers came out of darkspace—opened a breach inside Pax’s defenses. Flew a bunch of ships through, which was bad enough, but managed to draw a demon through, which was even worse.”

Satsu took a moment to be impressed this had been kept secret. “You’re certain this happened?”

Rinn answered with a feral grin. “I had the demon’s teeth in my shoulder to prove it. Not that you’d know. They healed me up pretty well after, to make sure no one noticed.”

Satsu had been plenty impressed with Rinn already. She was smart, she was accomplished. The little bits of magic she’d tossed off seemingly effortlessly were a wonder to Satsu, who had never been close enough to akashics to begin to understand how they did things. But this—Satsu realized, with a touch of dismay, how much she had truly become pack. That no matter how much she liked Rinn, or how well she thought of Rinn, some part of her had still been…judging, maybe even patronizing. Because Rinn wasn’t pack and only pack faced demons.

Rinn, it seemed, had fought a demon. Had been up close and personal. Satsu didn’t care for how surprised she was by that fact, or how her first thought had been how that raised her impression of Rinn.

And maybe Rinn, who had been living with Wolves for over a year now, recognized that look on Satsu’s face. “Yes. I’ve fought a demon. Without one of your fancy swords or anything.”

Satsu hadn’t even gotten that far in her thinking. Of course, if this thing had attacked on Pax—hardly anyone would have had nima blades. “How?”

Rinn winked. “Maybe you’ll see.” After that, she was serious again. “The demon isn’t even the important part. It’s what we found after. A group of people—they were using…well, you saw it up there in the cave. It isn’t the power of the nima. It’s different. But every example I’ve seen—and there have been a few now—have involved a whole lot of blood.”

Satsu didn’t like any part of what was happening here. Which meant the best answer was to end it quickly. “Thank you for telling me this.”

Rinn gave a half-shrug. “Yeah, well, I figured it might be relevant.”

Still, they had a long road ahead. “You better go get packed and get what sleep you can.”

That was clearly a dismissal, so Satsu opened the door into the hall…and froze.

The hotel had screens in most of the hallways, playing a soft background mix of music and unobjectionably mediocre soap operas, but at this moment, the channel had clearly switched to a news report. Tafari, too, had been caught by the change and stood before the screen watching words scroll by beneath the shocked-looking newscaster.

“Executor was discovered drifting, demon-infested, with nearly all aboard dead. The status of the Griffon Lords has not yet been released.”

“Fuck,” Rinn muttered behind Satsu.

Tafari turned, looked at them, but he said nothing. What was there to say?

Except, “Focus. Whatever’s happening with the Lords Suri, we can’t fix it. We’ve got our own demons to chase.”

But she could see on Rinn’s too-open face a reflection of the thoughts that were swirling through Satsu’s own mind. Conspiracy. Connection. An attack on the last shadow court, and now an attack on the Griffon Lords.

Satsu needed to get ready to leave. And she needed sleep. And before that, most important of all, she needed to craft a report to send to Lord Miyōshi.