Page 23 of Branding the Bat

"One week," the shark said. "Same quality as the good batch, or better. If you can't deliver that, the Grizzly's going to want to know why. And he's going to want to know who your source is."

The shark turned and got into the SUV. The engine started. He felt the weight of attention, two sets of predator eyes watching him through tinted glass. The SUV pulled out of the lot and turned onto the street, and Trevor stood in the parking lot with an envelope of cash and the taste of bile in his throat.

They wanted the gold.

They wanted Sero.

Trevor didn't go to his car. He went back inside, locked his apartment door, and sat on his immaculate couch with his hands between his knees.

The envelope sat on the coffee table, unopened. The succulent sat beside it, perfectly positioned, indifferent.

He needed to think.

The Grizzly's operation was simple: he was an old bear whose body had been damaged in a fight decades ago, and Trevor's serum was the only thing that gave him any sexual function. The serum was expensive, difficult to produce, and, until Sero, inconsistent. The Grizzly had tolerated the inconsistency because Trevor was his only supplier. There was no one else who could do what Trevor did, because what Trevor did required a specific combination of alchemical talent,mechanical ingenuity, and a willingness to extract intimate material from other men without their knowledge.

The Grizzly didn't know about the machine's hidden function. He didn't know that the serum was distilled from other shifters' sexual energy. He thought Trevor was an alchemist who'd figured out a potion, which was partially true, in the same way that saying a bomb was "a device that released energy" was partially true. The Grizzly didn't ask questions because the Grizzly didn't care. He cared about results.

And the results he wanted were golden.

Trevor went to the workshop. Opened the door. The overhead lamp clicked on, illuminating the bench, the burner, the magic circles, the racks. And on the shelf, two vials of liquid sunlight.

He could give the Grizzly one vial and keep one. That would satisfy the immediate demand and buy time. But it would also set the standard: the Grizzly would expect gold from now on, would demand it, would send sharks when Trevor couldn't deliver. And Trevor couldn't deliver gold without Sero.

Which meant the Grizzly would eventually want to know who the source was. And when the Grizzly found out, he wouldn't politely request that Sero provide weekly samples. He would acquire Sero the way he acquired everything: through money, through force, through the kind of leverage that came from operating outside the bounds of shifter law.

The Playground. The Grizzly was a regular there, an old bear with deep pockets and no patience for rules, the kind of client places like that existed to serve. A place where consent was a foreign concept and people were resources.

Trevor stared at the golden vials.

He could stop. Right now, today, he could flush the gold down the sink, dismantle the machine, return the Grizzly's money, and walk away. He'd lose his income, his clients, hiscarefully constructed life. The Grizzly would be furious, but Trevor was a housecat, small, fast, capable of disappearing into a city and not being found. He could leave Vegas. Start over somewhere else. Change his name, find a real job, become a person who didn't extract and sell other people's trust.

But that would mean leaving Sero.

And it would mean Sero never knowing what Trevor had done to him. He'd just vanish, the man who brought grapes and made quiche and booked four Wednesdays, gone without explanation. Sero would add him to the graveyard in his phone. Another name deleted. Another man who got bored and left.

That was unbearable. Not because Trevor couldn't stand to be forgotten, but because Sero deserved better than a disappearance. Sero deserved the truth.

Trevor sat in his workshop for a long time.

Then he picked up his phone and called the one person he could think of who might help him figure out what to do.

Amani answered on the second ring.

"Kinky Kritters, this is Amani, and if you're calling about reservations we open at—"

"It's Trevor."

A pause. "Trevor. Hi." The warmth Amani usually had in his voice was dialed back about sixty percent, which Trevor figured was fair. "What can I do for you?"

"I need to talk to you. Not on the phone. In person. Can I come to the club?"

"We're not open for another two hours."

"I know. I need to talk to you before anyone else is there."

Another pause. Longer this time. Trevor could hear the faint sounds of the club in the background, glasses clinking, the hum of the refrigeration unit behind the bar, Amani's breathing. He was weighing something.

"This about Sero?" Amani asked.