Keller is never late to appointments, but there is somebody waiting at her desk when she gets in. He isn't looking her way, so she surreptitiously checks her calendar on her phone to make certain she had no appointments before she crosses the room to her desk.

He turns as she approaches, looks her up and down and smiles. He's blond and handsome in an unpracticed sort of way that speaks to a lifetime of unconsciously relying on it. "Agent Raksha Keller?" he asks, holding out his hand.

"Just Keller," she says automatically. She lets the moment stretch almost long enough to be awkward before she takes his hand and shakes it. There's a flash there - a hint of familiarity. Is he a shapeshifter? She doesn't get the sense of any particular animal from him.

There's something else, like a spark. A crackle of something powerful and intense that makes the hairs on her arm rise in response.

She lets go of his hand as soon as she can.

"I'm Galen," he says. "I'm your new partner."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"I've just been transferred here," he explains, giving her another easy smile. "And I've been assigned as your partner."

Keller shakes her head. "There must be some mistake. I work alone." Well, not alone. She works with other teams. She's been working with Winnie and Nissa enough recently that she was thinking of requesting it as a permanent assignment.

She definitely doesn't work with blond men used to trading on their good looks and gut-clenching smiles.

"It was a last-minute decision," he admits. "There should be an email about it in your inbox."

Keller reads all her email, even when she's off-duty. You never know when time-sensitive information might pop up. "No," she says. "There was not."

Her phone pings ominously. She pulls it out and finds a calendar invitation from the director for half an hour from now, with accompanying department email to explain that one Galen Drache has just joined the department and he has been partnered with Keller for the foreseeable future.

She puts her phone aside. "How long have you been with the Agency, Galen?"

"Actually, this is my first assignment. But I really wanted to work with this office because—"

Keller holds up a hand to cut him off. This just keeps getting better and better. She looks down at her phone again. "Wait. Galen Drache," she repeats. Now she realizes why the name is familiar. "Of the First House of the Shapeshifters?"

He looks faintly embarrassed. "I try not to trade on that."

So not only does she have to babysit a green recruit, she has to babysit a shapeshifter who can't even shift. She wonders if it would be unprofessional to groan out loud.

Winnie pops up behind Galen with a grin. "Are you Galen? I'm Winnie - Winfrith Arlin. I'm our resident Witch."

Nissa introduces herself with her usual quiet dignity and accompanying edge of impatience with being pulled away from her work in order to handle social niceties.

One by one, the rest of the office come by to introduce themselves to Galen. Keller can feel her resentment rising by the minute.

She's almost relieved when the reminder for their meeting with the director comes up. She stalks into the director's office, leaving Galen to hurry to catch up.

"He'll be a liability," Keller tells Director Harman as soon as the door is closed behind her. "There's no way I can do my job while I'm worrying about the precious son of the First House of the Shapeshifters being injured in the line of duty."

"I can take care of myself," Galen protests.

Director Harman just raises her eyebrows. "I picked you as the most likely agent who could perform her duties under those circumstances," she said. "Are you telling me I'm wrong, Agent Keller?"

"This is insane," she says. "You can't expect—"

"I expect you to do your duty, Agent Keller. Speaking of which, I have an assignment for you both."

Keller takes the sheaf of papers, her mind still wheeling.

"We've found another Wild Power. She's a lost witch - a Harman, in fact. You'll be working with Arlin and Johnson for this one. I'm sure I don't need to emphasize how important it is that she not be harmed."

"Of course," says Keller, offended. She can sense Galen nodding next to her.

"The public are already asking too many questions about the strange incidents around the other two Wild Powers," says Director Harman. "Your secondary priority is secrecy. Both of our governments agree that we are not ready to go public yet."

"I understand," says Keller. The integration of the Night World and the human world some twenty years earlier meant that humans were aware of the their existence, but thus far knowledge of the appearance of the Wild Powers and their significance was limited to those who needed it.

Galen hesitates. "I don't want to question orders, but the humans are going to be just as affected as we are if everything goes wrong."

"That's why it's our job to keep it from going wrong," says Director Harman. "You are dismissed."

Keller drops the case file on Nissa's desk and tells her and Winnie to meet them in the briefing room in ten minutes.

She lets Galen follow her to the briefing room, pointing out the office kitchen and temperamental coffee maker as she goes.

"Are you going to give me the 'I don't like you and I expect you to follow orders' speech now?" asks Galen, his lips quirked into a little half-smile.

She turns abruptly and looks him up and down, taking her time about it until he squirms under her scrutiny. "You said you can look after yourself."

"I went through the same training you did."

The same Agency training, perhaps, she thinks. But he didn't have the life she had before that. Not a happy life, but the best kind of training for the kind of life she lives now.

"I need you to be able to keep yourself alive," she says, at last. "I need you to be able to think for yourself. I can't expect you to follow orders because there won't be any orders. If we have to engage with the enemy, every split second counts."

He looks serious for the first time so far. "I understand." She looks at him dubiously and he shakes his head. "Keller, I do understand. How can you think I don't? I know how important the Wild Powers are."

She watches him for another moment, then nods. "Good."

His expression turns devious again. "And the 'I don't like you' part?"

Goddess help her. She does like him. "Don't push me, Drache."