Burning Up

foot.”
    Amber laughed. “Probably. Baby Wembley has a future as a football player. Fitting really, given the family name.”
    “Don’t tell Jet,” Ria teased, biting into her cake. The familiar taste was as welcome as a hug, soft and comforting. “He’s hoping for a golf buddy.”
    “What about you, Ria?” Breaking off a piece of her own slice, Amber brought it to her mouth. “You thinking of popping out any golf buddies sometime soon?”
    “Amber!” Ria fell back, laughing. “Where do you think I’m going to get the other half of the equation now that the Great Match is done for?”
    “Oh, I don’t know.” Amber’s eyes turned sly. “But I know a cat who looks at you like he wants to eat you up, then come back for seconds.”
    Ria was still gasping at the scandalous comment from her—usually—shy sister-in-law, when Miaoling began laughing. Slapping her thigh, she laughed so hard that Ria could do nothing but join in. “You heard”—she sobbed between bursts that left her stomach aching—“what Jet said. They don’t get serious with humans.”
    “Who says?” Amber’s eyes were shiny with humor. “Just because we don’t know about any.”
    That cut off Ria’s laughter. She sat back. Thought about it. Shook her head. “We’d have heard. I’d have heard at the college.”
    “Not necessarily,” Amber argued. “They don’t exactly advertise things. I’d say I’d never met a more closemouthed lot, but . . .” She waved a hand.
    Ria blew out a breath. “I can’t ask him. You know that.”
    “Why?” Miaoling asked.
    “Because then he’d think I was hinting at something!”
    Her grandmother gave her a gimlet-eyed glance. “If you don’t hint, how’s he going to know?”
    Ria’s mind flooded with the memories of her pressed up against that gym door, his hand stroking over her, his tongue in her mouth. “He knows.”
    “Yes,” Amber said. “Changelings have a better sense of smell than humans. He can probably scent your you-know-what.”
    Ria stared. “Amber, what’s come over you?”
    Her sister-in-law picked up another piece of cake. “I’m going to blame it on the pregnancy.” A slow grin.

SEVEN
    E mmett’s blood was at fever point. Returning to the restaurant, he caught the scent of the shooter and began tracking. Dorian and Clay had both picked up the trail while he escorted Ria home, but this was his hunt.
    His fingers remembered the soft feel of Ria’s skin, the delicate roughness of the scratch that shouldn’t have been on her face. The leopard paced inside his skull, wanting out, wanting to do damage, but Emmett held on to his humanity. For now.
    Minutes later, he found both Dorian and Clay standing frustrated at a busy intersection. “Fuck,” Emmett said, sensing what they had. The shooter’s scent simply disappeared.
    “Probably someone waiting to pick him up,” Dorian muttered, looking around. “No CCTV cameras in this area. We need to fix that.”
    Emmett narrowed his eyes, making a slow circuit of all four points of the intersection. It was clogged with people. “Can’t have been a pickup. It’d be too hard to make a quick getaway,” he muttered almost to himself . . . and looked up.
    The old-fashioned fire escape ladder hung a few feet off the ground, just far enough up to confuse the scent trail with this many people around. Landing on the ladder with a single powerful jump, he began to follow the fading trail with the fluid grace of the leopard he was. No human could ever hope to match a predatory changeling moving at full speed.
    Making it to the top of the building in seconds, he pursued the scent to the other side. Another ladder, this one looking down into a small parklike area thronged with elders playing what looked like a combination of mahjong and chess. Ignoring the ladder, he jumped straight to the ground, making several people scream. His cat ensured he landed on his feet, his body perfectly balanced.
    Again, the scent was muddied by the number of people in the park. But worse, a few meters later it was overwhelmed totally by the strong disinfectant used to sanitize the nearby automated public toilets. Swearing under his breath, he did a circle of the park and came up with nothing. Frustration clawed at him. He was certain this was where the shooter had been picked up—on one of these narrow streets.
    Thrusting a hand through his hair, he was striding back the way he’d come when an old man waved him over. “Here—he