“His friend was busy staring at the football cheerleaders or dancers or whatever they are who’d just passed by. But Vic watched you.”

“And? Your point?”

Toni shrugged and looked out the window. “Just sayin’.”

“Again,” Livy felt the need to make clear, “little tolerance for those kinds of girls.”

“I feel bad,” Vic told Shen as they headed toward the car he kept in long-term parking at the airport for when he came into town.

“About what?”

“Livy. I had no idea her dad passed away.”

“Doesn’t seem like they were close.”

“So? He’s still her father.”

“Not everyone is as close to their family as you are.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you and me are close to our families. My father dies? I’m sitting alone in my house for a few weeks, sobbing and eating bamboo stalks in his honor. But not everybody deals with death the way I do.”

“Still . . . I feel like I should do something.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. I was hoping you had some ideas.”

“You know what helps me have great ideas?”

Vic sighed. “A free dinner?”

“At a steakhouse that’s not afraid to include raw bamboo on the menu.”

“You want me to pay for us to go to the Van Holtz Steak House?” A shifter-run establishment that catered to all species and breeds and was the only restaurant Vic could think of that offered raw bamboo as a side dish.

Shen raised and lowered his hands in the air before digging another short bamboo stalk out of the pack he kept in his denim jacket pocket. “You want ideas, don’t you? My ideas ain’t free.”

Livy walked into her apartment, leaving her bag by the door. She didn’t bother to turn the lights on. Not much to see. Some crappy furniture she’d bought on sale. A TV she left on when home as background noise. And piles of books. She liked to read. Something her parents adored about her when she was only three, but became less a fan of when she’d rather spend time reading than taking the family’s fun and informative “How to remove wallets from back pockets without getting caught” tutorials, held every couple of weeks for the youngest kids.

But the reality of Livy’s apartment couldn’t be avoided. It was set up to make it easy to abandon at the first sign of trouble. And she only had this place because Toni kept insisting, “You have to have your own place. You have to live like a normal person.” Apparently Toni didn’t think a series of “safe houses” set up all over the world by Livy’s family was living like a normal person.

So Livy had plunked down money on this one bedroom that didn’t actually have a bed. On the rare times she stayed here, she slept on the couch and used the bedroom as an office slash art studio.

Yet as soon as Livy stepped inside that particular room, she had to walk out again.The reality was that although Livy had been doing photography, she hadn’t been doing any real “art.”

She didn’t know when it happened. When that font of constant creativity dried up. Creativity had been with her since she was six, when she began to play with a camera that her father had brought home from a small home burglary he’d done one night when he needed a little extra cash. There’d been film inside and once she’d used it all, she’d insisted her father have the film developed. Even her parents had been shocked at how good some of the pictures were. And not one had been a simple family photo or picture of a flower. Far from it. The images included shots of some homeless in the downtown area, teenage children smoking pot, and a full-blood bear that had been caught wandering around town. That had really freaked out her mother when it was obvious from the pics that Livy had spent time in the bear’s lap, and her parents finally realized that their six-year-old daughter was wandering around the town alone when they were out of the house, working on their next heist, or arguing about something ridiculous.

Of course their attempts to curb their daughter’s wandering ways lasted about . . . a week until their next heist came up. Then Livy was free to start down the photography path. She’d read every book she could get her hands on. From straight technical to those big coffee table books from the likes of Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange. She studied all magazines, including fashion, teaching herself to understand lighting and shadow. When she was older, she purchased old cameras and camera equipment, took them apart, and then taught herself to put them back together again, so she understood her equipment inside and out.

Honestly, as far back as Livy could remember, she was never without her camera. Whether it was around her neck, hanging off her shoulder, or in easy reach inside her bag, Livy always had it because she never knew when some image was going to catch her attention.

But for the last year . . . that hadn’t been the case. She’d kept her camera on her but she’d found herself using it less and less. Until eventually it got buried at the bottom of her backpack right along with the lipstick she never used and the gum she’d forgotten had been in there.

What people didn’t understand, though, was losing that desire, losing her interest in photography and in art, hurt Livy. Physically. Right in her chest. And forcing herself to come up with something interesting for her day job at the Sports Center hurt just as much. It was like pulling teeth without anesthesia. Every shot she took was like torture. She didn’t know why, though. She’d done regular photography to pay the bills for years. She’d been an assistant—a sometimes thankless job depending on whom you worked for—a set dresser on fashion shoots. She’d even worked in a mall portrait studio that involved interacting with annoying families. She’d done every menial task necessary because it was all about photography, and every additional dime she got went toward her art.