Night Shift

by Nalini Singh, Ilona Andrews, Lisa Shearin, Milla Vane

Genres: Urban Fantasy; Anthologies; Shifters

Synopsis

Four masters of urban fantasy and paranormal romance plunge readers into the dangerous, captivating world unearthed beyond the dark...

New York Times bestselling author Nalini Singh delivers a smoldering story with Secrets at Midnight, as the scent of Bastien Smith’s elusive lover ignites a possessiveness in him that’s as feral as it is ecstatic. And now that he’s found his mate, he’ll do anything to keep her.

In #1 New York Times bestselling author Ilona Andrews’ novella, Magic Steals, when people start going missing, shapeshifting tigress Dali Harimau and jaguar shifter Jim Shrapshire must uncover the truth about the mysterious creatures responsible.

From Milla Vane—a warrior princess must tame The Beast of Blackmoor to earn a place among her people. But she quickly discovers that the beast isn't a monster, but a barbarian warrior who intends to do some taming himself. 

It’s seer Makenna Frazier's first day on the job at Supernatural Protection and Investigations, and her first assignment is more than she bargained for when bodyguard duty for a leprechaun prince’s bachelor party goes every which way but right in national bestselling author Lisa Shearin’s Lucky Charms.

Release date: November 25, 2014

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 384

Sample

SECRETS AT MIDNIGHT

NALINI SINGH

CHAPTER 1

Bastien Smith knew he’d been suckered. By his own mother no less. The only thing that might make it bearable was if Sage had been suckered, too. “Tell me you didn’t know,” he said to his younger brother through gritted teeth, both of them propping up the wall nearest the door and an escape they couldn’t make.

Eyes narrowing, Sage folded his arms. “Are you accusing me of breaking the bro code?”

Bastien shoved a hand through his hair, the dark red strands no doubt a mess by now. “Sorry.” It was only right he apologize after suspecting Sage of something so heinous, even if it had resulted from sheer exhausted frustration. “Mom told me she needed help setting up.”

“Technically, she did.” Sage nodded toward the heavy dining table their mother had asked the two of them to shift into the large living area of the home where they’d both grown up. It fit, plenty of space around it for their mother’s guests to mingle, only because Bastien and Sage had first hauled the usual living room furniture into other rooms of the house.

It hadn’t taken long, both of them happy to help their mom prepare for the “book club luncheon” she’d been looking forward to all week. What she’d neglected to mention was that all her book club buddies were bringing along their nubile daughters, nieces, neighbors, and any other random young female they could corral into this excruciating exercise.

Normally, Bastien would’ve groaned, then sucked it up. He loved his mother, would never hurt her. But normally, he wasn’t strung out from two solid weeks of sleepless nights . . . because he didn’t want just any woman. He wanted her, the woman he knew in his gut was his mate, but who, against all known laws of changeling mating, he couldn’t find.

He’d first tasted the scent of his elusive lover on a street in Chinatown fourteen days, eight hours, and seventeen minutes ago, the scent igniting a possessiveness in him that was as feral as it was joyous. Yes, he’d thought, yes, and turned to follow the scent that spoke to him in a way nothing else ever had . . . only for it to dissipate into intangible mist even his changeling-acute senses couldn’t pierce.

Refusing to believe he’d lost her, he’d spent hours searching the area, day fading into darkest midnight, until he’d finally had to go home empty-handed, his soul craving the touch of hers. The leopard inside his skin had clawed him awake only hours later, certain she was just beyond his reach, hurt and in pain. Torn apart at the idea that he wasn’t there when his mate needed him, he’d immediately gone out again.

Dawn had come on a smudge of light that grew steadily brighter, bringing with it hundreds of people of every size and shape and hue, but not her.

The rest of the world might be in the grip of a tense silence as they waited to see if the days-old historic change in the lives of the Psy, the psychic race that shared the planet with changelings and humans, would spill out into new violence, but Bastien cared only about finding her.

He’d repeated the pattern from that first night every night since, prowling the empty and fog-shrouded city streets in his leopard form long after its other residents found their beds. He’d discarded thousands of trails, sensed myriad secrets, and three or four times, he’d caught the wild, sweet, utterly unique and just as intoxicating scent that was hers, but it never lasted. Not as a scent should last. It faded out with impossible abruptness in the middle of a narrow pathway between buildings, or halfway down a flight of stairs—places where she couldn’t have gone anywhere unless she had wings.

The idea that she might be an aerial changeling, perhaps part of the falcon wing with which Bastien’s pack had an alliance, would’ve been an answer that gave him a way to find her, but there was a feline undertone to her scent that told him he was stalking a fellow cat changeling.

One who was there one instant, gone the next.

Always when the changeling scent ended, he caught a softer one below it that also awakened his most primal instincts. Despite the fact he knew a changeling male couldn’t have that kind of a visceral reaction to two different women, he’d followed that scent, too—only it was too gentle, too easily lost among the bitter odors of coffee and spice outside a restaurant, or the overpowering aromas that poured from a beauty parlor, the city a kaleidoscope to his senses.

In truth, both scents were less intense than they should be. The only reason he could track the feline one longer was that it had a bitingly primal edge to it that made it stand out even amid the other changeling scents in the city.

It was starting to drive him to madness.

“I didn’t even get a bite of the brownies.” Sage’s mournful voice broke into his thoughts, his brother’s gaze on the table groaning with food on the other side of the wall of female flesh. “I was just about to grab one when they began arriving, and I tried to bolt out the back door.”

So had Bastien. Only to be stopped by their mother’s firm order to stay.

“Why is it”—Bastien folded his arms, mirroring his brother’s stance—“that though we’re the ones ostensibly doing the choosing, this feels like a two-man meat market?”

Sage bared his teeth at a tall human blonde who turned his way, her body angled in invitation. She hurriedly glanced in another direction, and Sage smirked . . . until he found himself on the receiving end of a patented maternal glare, Lia Smith’s petite body as stiff as a general’s.

Smirk wilting, he pushed off the wall, a big, tough leopard changeling with his metaphorical tail between his legs. “Crap, I have to go make nice now, or I might as well say good-bye to ever again tasting one of Mom’s brownies.” Shoulders hunched, he shot Bastien a pleading look. “Don’t abandon me, man.”

Bastien turned into a rock, feet glued to the floor and arms still folded. “Hell no. And don’t even think of bringing up the bro code,” he added when Sage went as if to open his mouth. “I’ve had to suffer through far more of these than you.”

As he watched his brother thrust his hands into the pockets of his jeans and slink off to join the lovely, perfumed mass of women who might as well have been a tank of ravenous sharks, Bastien fought the urge to simply shove open the door and leave. No matter how raw and trapped he felt right now, he knew his mother was only trying to help, because though he hadn’t said anything to her, Lia Smith knew her children.

She’d clearly sensed he was unhappy, even made the connection that it had to do with his single status. How could he explain the impossible to his mom? A changeling male never lost the scent of his mate once he’d caught it. He should’ve been able to stalk her through fire and hail, snow and rain, much less down city streets.

“Sweetheart.” His mother’s hand on his arm, the scent of her familiar and of home. “Come into the kitchen. I need you to grab some glasses from the top cabinet.”

He followed her without argument, avoiding even the glancing touch of other women. His leopard was in no mood to be touched by any unmated female but the one he couldn’t find; Bastien wasn’t certain he’d be able to control the urge to snarl if one of the women in the room dared attempt even minor skin privileges. Better to make certain the situation didn’t arise.

“I know which ones,” he said once he and his mom had reached the thankful emptiness of the kitchen. Opening the cabinet, he easily grabbed the spare set his mother would’ve had to use her step stool to access.

“Thank you, baby boy.”

Bastien didn’t protest her address. He’d long ago accepted the fact that no matter his age or maturity or position in the pack hierarchy, he’d always be her cub. Now, she cupped his face with gentle hands, her eyes searching his, the brown of her irises ringed by a rich yellow-green as her leopard rose to the surface of her mind. “I made a mistake today, didn’t I?”

Swamped by a wave of love for the woman who’d kissed countless scraped knees for him when he’d been a child, he closed his hands over her wrists. “Ignore me. I’m just in a bad mood.”

“No.” She straightened the collar of the white shirt he wore over black pants, having intended to go into the office to catch up on work after helping move the furniture. “Something’s wrong, and I’ve made it worse. I know I shouldn’t interfere”—a rueful cast to her expression—“but I love you all so much I can’t help myself.”

“I know.” Never had he questioned his parents’ love for him and his siblings, that love the foundation on which his life was built. It was why he hadn’t walked out when Lia ordered him and Sage to stay; hurting her would make neither the animal nor the human part of him feel good.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No, not yet.” He drew her into a tight hug, his leopard rubbing against his skin, akin to how he’d rubbed against Lia’s side as a cub when they’d both been in their leopard forms. “I have to handle this myself.”

Squeezing him with fierce affection, Lia drew back and brushed his hair off his forehead, Bastien leaning down instinctively to make it easier for her. “Go on,” she whispered with a conspiratorial smile, “you can escape out the back.”

“Oh good,” Vera Robbins said from the kitchen doorway, having appeared just as Lia spoke. “You can give me a ride, young Bastien.”

Bastien barely refrained from groaning. The elder was a vigorous and energetic hundred and twenty-five, a woman noted for her warmth and wisdom. She also delighted in reveling in Bastien’s past as a “ladies’ man.” Bastien didn’t deny he’d indulged in skin privileges enthusiastically in his early twenties, but so did most leopard changelings at that age, their sexuality an integral aspect of their nature.

Vera would be shocked to hear he hadn’t taken a lover in eight months, and now the only lover he wanted was an illusion he couldn’t track. “Happy to,” he said, because while he wasn’t sure he could handle Vera’s teasing in his current frame of mind, refusing her was simply not on the cards. She was pack—more, she was a former soldier who’d put her life on the line to protect that pack more than once.

Vera had earned the right to demand whatever the hell she damn well pleased.

Kissing his mom good-bye on the cheek, he escorted Vera to the sleek black car that was his own and got her settled in before he went around to take the driver’s seat.

“What a nice car.” Vera stroked the soft black leather-synth of her seat. “Though not what I’d expect from a healthy young dominant in his prime.” A raised eyebrow. “I was looking forward to a ride on that jetcycle of yours.”

Grinning despite himself, he put the gleaming beauty of his car on hoverdrive and guided it silently out of the forested area around his parents’ home deep in DarkRiver’s Yosemite territory. “I’ll bring it by next week, take you for a spin.”

“Hmph.” She tapped her cane on the floor. “You could’ve at least made sure this car was red.”

“I have enough red in my life,” he said, referring to the dark shade of his hair.

That made the older changeling throw back her head and laugh, the sound big and open. “I suppose you’re too big to fit in those zippy sports cars.”

Bastien had sat in one once; he’d lasted exactly two seconds before the claustrophobia had him wanting to rip the damn thing to shreds with his claws.

“All shoulders and muscle,” Vera said before he could respond. “Strong thighs, too.”

“Are you hitting on me, Vera?”

“You can only dream, young Bastien.” Another burst of laughter, before she poked him in the arm. “Why aren’t you mated or with a long-term lover? We both know you have no trouble attracting women.”

The question grated against his insides. “Does no one respect my private life?”

“You’re in a pack. Of course not,” was the rapid response, one he couldn’t argue with. “Now answer me. I’m a hundred and twenty-five—I don’t have time to dillydally.”

“No one can pass Mercy’s tests,” he said, wanting Vera off the painful and currently maddening subject of mating.

“That sister of yours has a good head on her shoulders.”

Noticing Vera tug her shawl around her shoulders, he quietly turned up the heat.

“So,” the elder said a moment later, “she’s overprotective, is she?”

Bastien thought of the infamous “kitten defurring tools” with which Mercy had scared off the last woman he’d been seeing—after first convincing his date Bastien ate live kittens for breakfast. She’d even put a “kitten cage” in one of his cupboards, the better to horrify his date. Bastien had already known he and the woman in question weren’t the right fit, so the fact she’d believed Mercy’s ridiculous story had simply been the last nail in the coffin. “If it’s the right girl,” he said, “it won’t matter.”

Vera’s smile caused her face to seam with the lines of a life generously and fully lived. “Yes,” was all she said, before settling back into her seat.

A half hour later—having been forced to insult his panther of a car by keeping it to a crawling speed that didn’t make Vera threaten to whack him with her cane—Bastien parked in front of a single-floor dwelling not far from the home of the pack healer. Walking around to open Vera’s door, he didn’t make the mistake of offering her a helping hand. The elder would bloody him for the insult.

His nape prickled a second later, a wild, intoxicating scent with a softer undertone making his nostrils flare and his pulse slam against his skin: her scent, all of it, the soft and the sharply primal, not two women but one.

Too stunned—too happy—to wonder how or why his mate’s scent had split in two on the streets, Bastien’s leopard sat up, muscles quivering and head cocked in absolute attention. All this time, he’d been searching the city, but she was here.

Hand clenching on the edge of the car door, he turned to look back down the drive.

A slamming punch to the heart, a kick to the gut, a sense of absolute rightness.

It was as if he’d been seeing the world through a misty fog until this moment of piercing clarity. And what he saw was a small, curvy woman with masses of honey-colored hair and big hazel eyes set against skin of a darker honey.

A cat, he thought at once; he’d been right, she was a cat. Then the feline scent whispered away as inexplicably as it’d done on the streets, and all he could taste was the lush, sweet scent of a human female he wanted to lick up from head to toe. Cat or human, one thing was clear: She was his.

“Kirby, honey. What good timing.”

Kirby. Her name is Kirby.

Shutting the door and curling his fingers into his palms to conceal the claws that had sliced out as his leopard reacted to her, he waited for Kirby to reach them instead of pouncing like he wanted to do with every single cell in his body.

Patience, he counseled the more primitive half of his nature, and forced his claws to retract. The leopard growled within him but assented to the human’s will—because scaring her away was not on the agenda. No, he’d coax, charm, and pet her into his life, into his arms.

Bastien Michael Smith had found his mate, and he was keeping her.

VIVID green eyes watched her with an unwavering focus that raised the tiny hairs on Kirby’s arms and made her stomach go tight, a strange breathlessness in her chest. She didn’t recognize the tall, muscled male with skin tanned a beautiful gold, but he had to be part of the DarkRiver leopard pack—there was something feline about the way he stood, a stealthy predator at rest. She had the insane urge to go up to him, touch him, curl naked against him, skin to skin.

The uncharacteristic nature of the forceful, sensual compulsion snapped her back to her senses, and all at once, she was aware of Vera looking at her with a distinctly quizzical expression on her face. Not sure how long she’d been standing stock-still staring at the stranger, Kirby held up a small white box in her arms and said, “I baked yesterday.” Her pulse thudded hard and fast, her words huskier than they should’ve been. “I thought I’d drop off half the cake for you, since I know you like black forest.”

“I like black forest, too.” A deep male voice that brushed over her senses like the most luxuriant fur, the lips that had shaped the words curved in a teasing smile, until she could almost believe she’d imagined the feral intensity of him when he’d first looked at her.

Tapping her cane on the ground, Vera looked up into that green-eyed face that had twisted Kirby’s insides into a tangled snarl. “I suppose you want some?”

“Yes, please.” Hands behind his back, expression as innocent as a five-year-old’s.

Snorting, Vera jerked her head at Kirby. “This is Bastien. Don’t let him charm you—next thing you know, you’ll be naked.”

Kirby’s face filled with heat, the rush of blood so loud in her ears that she almost missed Bastien’s protests. Ignoring them both, Vera walked toward her door at a spry pace, a grace to her movements even at this age that made it clear she was changeling. Not able to look Bastien in the face when her own was no doubt the color of an overripe tomato, Kirby began to follow the other woman . . . and realized she’d acquired a six-foot-plus shadow.

“I feel I have to defend myself,” he murmured, the words a purr of sound against her ears.

Cat, very definitely a cat. A big, gorgeous, stalking cat. “Really?” she managed to say, goose bumps rising over her skin at his proximity, the scent of clean, fresh soap and warm-blooded male in her every breath. “You don’t like making women naked?” It was a response driven by some heretofore hidden part of her that told her to show him her claws, despite the fact she was human, didn’t have claws. No matter if it felt as if the sharply curved tips were shoving against her skin.

CHAPTER 2

A pause.

Kirby had the feeling she’d surprised the leopard at her side, but he recovered quickly. “Oh, I do.” His voice had dropped, acquired a rougher edge that threw her stomach into a dangerous free fall. “However, and despite Vera’s refusal to believe me, I’m very particular about who I make naked now that I’m no longer a hormone-driven teenager. Of course, when I was a teenager, a naked woman would’ve ended things rather abruptly, physically speaking.”

Skin burning again when it had just settled, Kirby nonetheless refused to back down. “I hope your ability to stand . . . firm”—Was she really saying this?—“against temptation has improved with time?” She’d never flirted in such a sinfully sexual way, hadn’t known she could.

A hand on her lower back, the touch searing her through her cardigan and the camisole she wore beneath, and his breath warm against her earlobe as he bent close to say, “You have no idea, little cat.”

Fighting the shiver that threatened, she walked into Vera’s house and to the kitchen, where she placed the cake on the counter and said, “I’ll make the coffee,” before either Bastien or Vera could make the offer themselves.

The routine task gave her something to do, though if she’d thought it’d help her ignore Bastien, that proved a futile effort. Sprawled in a chair opposite Vera at the kitchen table, he was saying something that had his packmate laughing.

“Why are you dressed up so spiffy?” Vera asked once her laughter had faded, lifting her fashionable but unnecessary cane to tap Bastien’s forearm. “Was it for the girl selection?”

Bastien dropped his head in his hands, the stunning dark red of his hair catching the sunlight pouring through the kitchen windows, all of which overlooked woods filled with verdant green firs. His white shirt was pulled taut over his shoulders in this position, his strength apparent. “I thought Mom needed a few minutes’ help moving furniture for a book club lunch,” he growled when he raised his head. “If I’d known it was about matchmaking, I’d have worn my rattiest jeans and a stained T-shirt.”

Ears straining to catch every snarly word, Kirby found the cups as the coffee began to perk.

“Your mother loves you.” Vera glared at Bastien. “You’re in fine form, prime of your life, you should find a girl before you get old and crinkly.”

“Gee, thanks, Vera.” A masculine mutter as he leaned back again, one arm braced lazily against the back of his chair, his big body loose limbed, very much a cat at rest. “I was hoping I had a few more years yet.”

Vera’s response was a grin bright and full of anticipation. “I’ll enjoy watching you fall, Bastien Smith. I bet she wraps you around her finger.”

A shrug, those deliciously broad shoulders catching Kirby’s attention again. “Of course she will.” Impossible as it was, it felt as if his voice was pitched to stroke over her senses. “What would be the point otherwise?”

Vera’s smile turned affectionate. “I’m glad to see you understand that.” Glancing up as Kirby brought across the tray holding the coffee, Vera’s expression softened. “And you, Kirby?” She tugged Kirby into a seat. “Have you found someone yet?”

“I’ve only been in the city two weeks,” she said, conscious of Bastien going preternaturally still for a single, taut moment, the green of his eyes no longer human, before he rose to get the cake.

“From the accent,” he said, “I’m guessing . . . Georgia?”

Kirby nodded, happy he’d changed the subject, but Vera wasn’t done.

“Two weeks, schmoo weeks. It’s never too early to start looking.” The older woman’s eyes glinted, flicking from Kirby to Bastien. “You two would make pretty cubs together.”

Kirby wanted to die. Dig a hole, jump inside, bury herself for good measure.

Bastien on the other hand—now standing between her and Vera—served up the cake without missing a beat, his body heat lapping against her like a tactile caress. “Undoubtedly,” he said, “but not if you terrify Kirby away with warnings about the likelihood of ending up naked while with me.”

Kirby responded in pure self-defense, driven by that strangeness in her that said she couldn’t permit him to overwhelm her. Not now, not ever. She might not be a dominant, but it was critical he didn’t see her as weak. The tips of her fingers stung on that fierce thought, the pain sharp, biting. Putting down the coffee cup that was clearly hotter than she’d realized, she said, “That likelihood is getting less and less with every word you speak.”

Laughing, Vera slapped her thigh. Bastien retook his seat with a meek expression belied by the fact he’d shifted his chair so that his thigh pressed against Kirby’s own. It incited an escalation in her clawing awareness of him, her skin prickling in a way that felt as if it came from inside and out both. Almost as if she had a leopard under her skin, too, one that was rubbing up against it in an effort to get closer to this gorgeous cat who made her nerve endings go haywire.

Shaking off the curious sensation, she focused on his conversation with Vera. Intelligent, witty, a little bit wicked, Bastien was the kind of man who’d never have trouble attracting a woman. Kirby was far from immune. If she was brutally honest, she’d never reacted to anyone as strongly as she’d done to Bastien.

That violent wave of need, of want at the start, followed by an increasing desire to know more about him, know everything . . . it was profoundly unsettling. As was the tearing disappointment that had her nails digging into her palms and her eyes threatening to burn when he glanced at his watch and said, “I better get into the office. With the instability caused by the Psy political situation, I have to keep an extra-sharp eye on things.”

“All work and no play.” Vera shook her head as Kirby stared deliberately into her half-empty coffee cup in an effort to hide her disturbing reaction, her skin flushing alternately hot then cold. “Be careful you don’t become a dull boy.”

“I thought I was making women naked on a regular basis?” Rising with that quip, Bastien went around to kiss Vera on the cheek. “Can I give you a ride somewhere, Kirby?” he asked, his hand on the back of her chair.

Scared by how much she wanted to lean back, rub her cheek against his arm, tug him down to her mouth, she shook her head.

“Don’t be silly,” Vera said. “You haven’t got a car.”

Her fingers flexed, the tingling in her fingertips increasing in strength. “It’s no trouble to catch the—”

Bastien’s breath whispered hot and silken over her ear, his face a caress away from her own. “I promise I don’t bite.” It was a dare.

Kirby had stopped accepting stupid dares as a teenager, but a primal defiance rose up inside her at his words. It swamped the near-panic that had gripped her at the realization that he was about to leave, totally overwhelmed the sense of self-preservation that said she needed to put some distance between them so she could think.

“I deal with five-year-olds every day,” she said, his jaw brushing across her temple when she turned her head slightly. The contact made her want to shudder, ask for more. Swallowing down the wrenching need that was too powerful to make any kind of rational sense, she somehow managed to keep her tone even as she added, “You’re a pussycat by comparison.”

“Careful, Bastien.” Vera’s smile was wide. “Kirby’s got a brain.”

Pulling back Kirby’s chair so she could get up, though he remained close enough to touch, Bastien said, “I like women with brains.”

A snort. “Oh? I thought certain other attributes had priority.”

“’Bye, Vera.” Bastien began to walk backward out of the kitchen, waggling his fingers at the older woman—who, from her smile, was clearly charmed by the packmate she’d been teasing.

When Kirby picked up her purse and joined him, he turned to face the correct way, then placed his hand on her lower back again. The contact renewed the odd sensation of fur rubbing against the inside of her skin, made her toes curl even as her breasts ached.

Kirby knew she should pull away—and not only because of her increasingly out-of-control response to him. Thanks to a changeling friend in junior high, she understood the concept of skin privileges: the right to touch, in and out of the pack, different layers of contact acceptable for different situations. A male’s hand on a female’s lower back was an intimate act in human society, even more so in the changeling world.

If she did nothing about Bastien claiming the right, he’d take it as silent acquiescence to his pursuit. If she said no, he’d back off immediately, DarkRiver a pack that adhered to strict and disciplined codes of behavior. Kirby knew that because Vera had told her after pointing out that Kirby was a young, single woman living in changeling-heavy territory and thus had a good chance of coming into c