I dried myself off and stepped back into the diner to a snap of dryer, warmer air. Lily tended to make things damp.

Will smiled over the remains of his cheeseburger. "There you are. I was about to send in a search party and some rescue dogs with brandy."

"Sweetie?" I said, taking his free hand. The French fry grease warmed our grip. Will went serious.

"Uh-oh. I know that look. What's gone wrong?"

I took in a deep breath. "I lied to you. There is something going on with me."

Will's gaze softened from panicked to concerned. For a minute, I pictured that I could tell him what had really happened in Kiev and he wouldn't react with disgust or, worse, pity. It was the pity I really couldn't deal with.

But the feeling only lasted for a second before I brought myself back to the real world, where there are some secrets you just don't share, no matter how understanding your boyfriend appears.

"I see things," I said. "Well, not forever, but lately. Istarted seeing Lily Dubois. Not dreams, I swear. Really seeing seeing. "

Will cocked his head. "That's not something you had to be afraid to tell me, Luna."

"I don't know why, or what I did, or why this this victim, out of the hundreds, decided to start visiting me," I said. "But I don't think it's going away, so I just wanted to warn you." victim, out of the hundreds, decided to start visiting me," I said. "But I don't think it's going away, so I just wanted to warn you."

"Warned," Will said with a smile. "Not running scared. But you should talk to your cousin, figure out why you suddenly have this ability..."

I held up a hand. "Later. There's plenty of time for that later, when I'm not eating my first bacon-cheesy slice of heaven in weeks." Sunny had cried on the phone when I called to tell her I was home, but there was time. Time to see her, time to be nicer about her and Mac. Time to be a human being and not a human with a monster digging claws into her back.

Be that person, starting now. For such a bratty kid, she made some damned good sense. I dug into my burger, and Will shifted in his seat, bringing something out of his jacket pocket. "I had hoped for a slightly more romantic way to do this, but..."

He popped open the velvet box and I gasped involuntarily at the square-cut diamond and white-gold setting inside. "Oh gods, Will. That's beautiful. And huge huge. Are you on the take?"

His mouth crooked. "No. It's something I've had for a while. I got it in Paris in the 1920s. Just never found the right girl to give it to." He extended the box toward me. "But I have now."

Before I could say anything, Will was down on one knee in the middle of the Devere Diner, in front of the gods and everybody. "Luna Joanne Wilder, I love you and I need you in my life. I don't even care that I had to ask this question twice: Marry me?"

A million things went through my head at that moment, a million in a second and a half. Will would be with me when I phased. He'd see me for what I was.

He'd know what I'd done.

But in that moment, I felt worry wash away like a tide. My life might constantly be in ruins, but the part with Will Fagin was right. Had always been right. Could Could always be right. Was that enough to give my life over to completely? always be right. Was that enough to give my life over to completely?

"Yes," I said, softly. "Yes, Will."

He jumped up and hugged me, and the other diners broke into applause, and the whole thing was a scene I never thought I'd get to play in a thousand years. Not me. Not Luna Wilder, who attracted the wrong kind of men and inevitably screwed everything up, anyway.

"Thank you," Will said quietly. He gave me a wide grin. "I was going to feel like a real ass if you said no. Male ego and all, you know."

"I wouldn't have," I said, looking down at my uneaten cheeseburger. I still didn't have my appetite back, but for entirely different reasons.

What had I just done? Will loved me and he had absolute faith in me and I'd looked him in the eye and lied that I had the same sort of faith, in him and in myself.

This was going to blow up in my face, just like every other time I'd tried to be normal, to keep the were inside ...

I took a breath. It wouldn't, this time, because I wouldn't let it. Above all else, I was a survivor, and survivors didn't let the tide drag them down. They kept their heads up, and they forged ahead.

"This is going to be great," Will said. "We'll get married in the fall; I mean, we will if that's all right with you. Just, try to keep Bryson out of the wedding party, okay? Somehow, I think that can only end badly."

He saw the look on my face and trailed off, going serious. "Doll, what's wrong?"

"Will," I said, taking his hands in mine. "There's something I have to tell you."

Epilogue.The courtroom in Kiev wasn't ventilated, windows shut up tight, and the air was oppressively thick in the midsummer sun that was beating down on the square outside.

I sat in the witness box, feeling the sweat slide down every piece of skin that didn't already have my blouse stuck to it. Red-faced and soaked. What a great impression on the court.

The translator, a small trim woman with a librarian's bun, black hair and black eyes, looked to the prosecutor and then to me. "Please describe your association with Mr. Belikov."

Grigorii and Ekaterina were at the defendant's table. Ekaterina looked sour as ever, Grigorii green around the gills and skinny, radiating sickness. He had an antibiotic IV hooked up even in the courtroom. Yesterday, his defender had gone into great detail about the infections, the surgeries, the pain pain Grigorii had gone through as a result of my moment with the scissors, as if that somehow excused everything Lola and the parade of other victims had testified to suffering at his hands. Grigorii had gone through as a result of my moment with the scissors, as if that somehow excused everything Lola and the parade of other victims had testified to suffering at his hands.

No one in the courtroom besides Ekaterina seemed particularly moved by his plight. I was just marveling that the slimy bastard had even survived.

"I met Mr. Belikov when I was transported to his compound in Kiev," I said, the translator speaking along with me. "He told me that I was a whore now, and that I would either have sex with the men who chose me or that I'd be beaten and sent to their blood-sport arena to be used as bait."

I paused for the translator to finish and continued, "When I resisted, I was indeed thrown into the arena, where I managed to fight my opponent to a standstill. Then Mr. Belikov sold me to a man who had expressed an interest in having a girl who was injured. That was his turn-on."

"And how did you escape?" the prosecutor asked.

"The man who bought me turned out to be a friend, and he helped me get out of the compound and dressed my wounds so that I wouldn't die of an infection. He saved my life. He died for me."

The prosecutor withdrew and the Belikovs' defender stood up. She was a woman, a hard-ass red-from-the-bottle type who wore too much makeup and was fond of jabbing her finger into my face.

"Isn't it true that this friend was at the time of his demise a convicted criminal?" the translator said.

"In Russia," I said. "And in America. Not here."

"And isn't it true that you offered Mr. Belikov sexual favors in exchange for your release?"

I blinked. Grigorii must have told her about the moment in the lab. "I felt I had no choice," I said. "When you're a woman in a vulnerable position..."

"And after Mr. Belikov refused your disease-ridden body, you attacked him?" the translator said. She crinkled her nose, as if having to repeat such obvious grandstanding made her slightly ill.

I locked eyes with the defender. "After Mr. Belikov Mr. Belikov threatened to rape me if I didn't comply, I decided enough was enough and I stabbed him in the groin with a pair of surgical scissors, which is threatened to rape me if I didn't comply, I decided enough was enough and I stabbed him in the groin with a pair of surgical scissors, which is far far less than he deserved. In my opinion." less than he deserved. In my opinion."

The court rippled at that, and the magistrate banged his gavel down. "You're excused," the translator said after a moment. "Thank you."

I left the defense box and decided I needed air. Any kind of air, even the sweltering summer day outside. I needed to be out of sight of the Belikovs' hard gazes and the memories they stirred.

I was back to seeing Dr. Merriman, the police shrink in Nocturne City, and I was here in Ukraine testifying against her advice. She said I had post-traumatic stress, that seeing my captors again would just aggravate it.

I told her that the motherfuckers needed to be put away for good, and that if they somehow walked, I was going to be there to kill Grigorii with my bare hands. That had shut her up.

"Luna?" Will jogged out of the courtroom after me, and I paused on the wide steps to wait for him, breathing the slightly cooler air.

"It got pretty Law Order Law Order in there, huh?" I said, trying to keep things light. in there, huh?" I said, trying to keep things light.

After I'd told Will about killing the man in the brothel, about how Dmitri had died, about how I felt like I was one step away from tearing someone's throat out most days, and that I had no hope of holding the were back the way I'd used to, he'd gotten quiet. There had been two or three days of awkward conversation until I'd finally gone home to my own apartment, even though I couldn't sleep and obsessively checked the locks on all of the windows and the front door.

Will hadn't left. He hadn't even asked for the ring back. All of the unsaid words between us were starting to feel like a heavy load on my back.

"I ... I had no idea," he said. "Luna, even when you told me, you didn't tell me." He didn't reach for me, because we seemed to have forgotten how to be close to each other as my interest in sex waned and my nightmares got worse.

"It happened," I said with a shrug. "And I'd really like to stop talking about it, believe me, but the Belikovs need to go away."

Will shoved his hands into his pockets. He'd had to take unpaid vacation to come with me to the trial, after Interpol had finally tracked down Grigorii and Ekaterina in Thailand, trying to get cheap surgery for Grigorii's disfigurement. They were already reaching out to the locals, Ekaterina having a stake in a dance hall on the outskirts of Bangkok, already running "exotic" girls from the back rooms.

Dr. Gorshkov was still at large, but somehow I had the feeling that without Petra's money and Grigorii's desire to build his own private hit squad of mutant weres, he'd be less than no trouble.

"I'm going to stick with you," Will blurted. I held up my hand to tell him that reassurance wasn't really what I needed, but he pressed on. "Just listen to me. I knew when I proposed that our life wasn't going to be all American dreams and great sex. I knew that we both had our baggage. I'm going to stay. No matter what they did to you, I'll be there. I'll hold you while you sleep and I'll be there when you're ready to be with me again. That's my decision and I'm sticking to it, so please don't try to drive me away anymore. It's getting sort of old."

I felt wetness prick my eyes, salt that wasn't sweat. "I do love you, Will," I said softly.

He gave me a lopsided smile. "I can tell."

Before I could say anything else, about how relieved I was that he wasn't bolting for the hills, I caught a familiar scent. Cloves and sweat, the smell that was his alone.

"Hello, Luna," Dmitri said.

Will cocked an eyebrow. If there was one thing he was good at, it was picking up on weirdness. "You all right?"

"No, I..." I stared at Dmitri, at the court reporter who passed through him, lugging a briefcase. "I'm a little dehydrated," I finished lamely.

"Should have said so," Will told me, and went down the steps to a vendor selling water and soda.

"So that's Will," Dmitri said with a smirk. "I thought he'd be taller."

I folded my arms. "You're dead and you're still an ass."

"What can I say?" he told me. "Don't have a lot of time for chitchat."

I knew from Lily that my new mojo didn't work unless the dearly departed in question had serious unfinished business. "What's wrong, Dmitri?" I said, and earned looks from everyone passing by. I ignored them.

"Margarita and Masha are on their way to the States," Dmitri said. "Maybe Los Angeles, maybe San Francisco ... somewhere on the West Coast, where the pack will protect them. I need you to look out for them, Luna. You're the only person I can trust to do it."

"I..." That hadn't been what I was expecting. "Of course I will, Dmitri. She's your daughter, after all."

Dmitri reached for me, dropped his hand just as his fingers would have passed through my cheek.

"I miss you. Seeing you in Kiev, it just ... it hammered home what a mistake we made. I wish I'd had time to give it another try."

I gave him a tired smile. "I didn't want to be that woman, Dmitri. You'd always have the daemon in you. You'd always need a pack. I couldn't..." I sighed, trying to find the kind words. "That isn't the life I could live."

"So you just move on down the line?" Dmitri demanded hoarsely, cold air prickling around us. "To Will? Will? " "

"No," I said. "I have moved on, Dmitri." My eyes were hot, stinging, and I looked at my feet. "But I can't forget you, and I'm so sorry it had to end like it did."

Dmitri dropped his own gaze. "I'm not. You know I loved you, Luna. Maybe we couldn't be together, but I'd've done anything for you."

"I know," I said. "I do."

"Good," he said, starting to shimmer like a heat illusion. "I'm done, then. I'm free."

He tried to reach for me once more, but he flickered and disappeared before he could. I swiped a hand over my face, sweat and tears coming away. I barely got out the whisper, "Good-bye, Dmitri."

I turned my back on the spot where he'd stood, and walked down the steps toward Will, who was holding an Evian water aloft like he'd just won some sort of battle trophy. I had to smile a little. I'd never forget the way Dmitri and I had ended, never stop seeing or feeling it, but I also knew that I'd made the right choice with Will.

The voice stopped me halfway to him, a hiss against the air, hotter than the sun sending zephyrs up from the pavement. A promise of an ending to something I'd set in motion and had no chance of stopping, even now that the man he'd marked was dead. Now I was the only one, the one he was fixed on, the one he would have.

Asmodeus spoke to me, and I could hear him smiling.

"I see you, Insoli. And I'll be with you. Soon enough. "

I turned back to him, met those gold eyes looking not out of the face of a man I'd loved, but out of my own face, a copy of my body, looking at me across a vast distance of power.

"You come right ahead," I told the figure of Asmodeus. "I'll be waiting."

"Kittredge knows how to create a believable world, and her fans will enjoy the mix of magic and city grit."-Publishers Weekly Don't miss these other novels in Caitlin Kittredge's extraordinary Black London series STREET MAGIC.