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I told myself this as regularly as I told myself it was enough. But my shoulders kept creeping up towards my ears as I typed at my desk.

By seven in the evening, the office had emptied. I was still at my desk. Which was not unusual. Which was, in fact, the most usual thing about me. In the Sterling years, it had been necessity; the work that needed doing didn't get done unless I did it. The only uninterrupted hours were the ones before and after everyone else was at home. Now it was habit and preference. And if I was honest with myself, which I was trying to be in small doses, it was also avoidance.

I picked up my jacket and my bag. Told my detail that I was going out and not straight home. The bar was a three-block walk from the office. The wolves insisted on driving me there.

The bar was dark wood, good bourbon, and a sound level calibrated for conversation. I wanted to call Addie, but I realized I needed to give her time to adjust to her new life, just as I was adjusting to mine. I came here sometimes when the city felt too large, and my apartment felt too quiet, and I needed the comfort of being anonymous in a room full of people.

I ordered a drink and found a seat at the bar. Then spent twenty minutes being pleasantly invisible, which was exactly what I needed.

"That's a serious expression for a Thursday."

The Pick Up Artist was exactly my type. Tall, broad-shouldered. His suit was bespoke, the kind where someone had measured every inch of him and the fabric had agreed to the terms. His watch told time and announced its price, and considered both functions equally important. His grooming was precise without being fussy. His skin was an unblemished brown, smooth as a promise. The low fade that melted seamlessly into a full-shaped beard told me he had a barber on retainer and a standing Saturday appointment that he did not cancel for anyone.

Six months ago, I would have had his number in my phone within ten minutes. We'd be in a taxi to his place in an hour. I'd be gone before breakfast. Tonight I sipped my drink.

"The expression is an occupational hazard."

He smiled. It was a good smile, the kind that reached the eyes. "What's your occupation?"

"Corporate restructuring."

"Sounds like you eat companies for breakfast."

"Only those that deserve it. You?"

"Private equity." He nodded at my glass. "Can I get you another one of those?"

I did the math that I had always done in these situations — the quick, unsentimental calculation of available interest, compatible schedules, the probability of an hour that was worth the morning after. The math came out positive.

I inhaled. And there it was.

Or rather, there it wasn't. The thing I had been trying not to notice since Magnus Blackwood left my new office sucking his thumb, which had been covered in my cream.

This man didn't smell like a storm. He didn't smell of heat and expensive tobacco. He smelled of warm grass and dry earth. Must be a runner. There was also the musk of some kind of incense. It smelled familiar. Like maybe something my grandmother had burned when I was a kid.

Smell had always been something I paid particular attention to. I had preferences: I liked clean scents, disliked heavy cologne, had strong feelings about synthetic musk. I had never once declined an otherwise promising situation on olfactory grounds.

"I'm good, thanks," I said.

He blinked, recalibrating. "You sure? I was going to recommend the Pappy. They have the twenty-three year."

"I appreciate it." I picked up my bag. "But I have an early morning."

I left a twenty on the bar for my drink and walked out into the night air. My detail materialized from their positions at the door. I declined the car. I needed the air and the movement and the New York night that didn't care about any of my problems.

I breathed deep: diesel and hot garbage and the funk of a subway grate exhaling from somewhere underground. The smell of ten million people living in close quarters and not always being considerate about it. New York smelled like ambition and takeout containers and the exhaustion of a place that never fully slept and was tired of not stopping.

I slowed down without meaning to. Stood there for a moment, just breathing it in. Then I registered my detail two paces behind me and slightly to either side. Underneath the professional neutrality of their scent was the scent of cloves. Faint. Secondhand. The ghost of a man who wasn't here, carried in the fabric and the skin of the men he'd sent in his place.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

MAGNUS

Huxley's briefings ran thirty minutes on a good day and an hour on a complicated one. Tonight's ran forty-five, which meant the operational picture was stable. We had righted the ship in just four days.

"The Lobo network processed the Jersey shipment without incident," Huxley said, moving through his tablet with the methodical efficiency I had trained him to. "The pharmaceutical couriers ran the route clean — no tails, no interference, the federal transponders logged normal activity at every checkpoint. The Volki didn't touch it."

"Good," I said. "What's the Volki status?"