Boundary Haunted
Author: Melissa F. Olson
Date: 2000-01-01 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Urban Fantasy; Fantasy; Paranormal; Vampires; Witches; Magic; Fiction; Mystery; Adult; Ghosts
Description: Months after her battles in Wyoming, Allison “Lex” Luther is still struggling with the aftereffects of the psychic attack she suffered—and with the new developments in her own magic. Then Lex’s boss, the cardinal vampire of Colorado, passes along a strange request from her counterpart in Atlanta. Hundreds of Civil War spirits have abruptly vanished in Beau Calhoun’s territory, and he wants Lex to figure out why. In exchange, Beau can help her understand boundary magic, which runs in his family line as well. Despite her trepidation, Lex journeys to the Deep South, where she discovers that ghost
Publisher: 47north

By Melissa F. Olson

Scarlett Bernard novels

Dead Spots

Trail of Dead

Hunter’s Trail

Disrupted Magic series

Midnight Curse

Blood Gamble

Shadow Hunt

Boundary Magic series

Boundary Crossed

Boundary Lines

Boundary Born

Boundary Broken

Nightshades series

Nightshades

Switchback

Outbreak

Short Fiction

Bloodsick: An Old World Tale

Companion Pieces: Stories from the Old World and Beyond

Also by Melissa

The Big Keep: A Lena Dane Mystery

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2019 by Melissa F. Olson

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by 47North, Seattle
www.apub.com

Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47North are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

ISBN-13: 9781542000048

ISBN-10: 1542000041

Cover design by Kirk DouPonce, DogEared Design

Cover photography by Elizabeth Kraft

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Chapter 1

“Come on, guys,” I urged, patting my leg. “One more mile.”

Cody was panting too hard to even acknowledge me, but Chip shot me a sideways look as if to say, You’ve got to be kidding.

It was the first Thursday in March, and I’d decided to take advantage of the warmer weather—and my unconventional work schedule—to bring two of my rescue dogs into Chautauqua Park in downtown Boulder to run the trails. March is too early for actual spring in the mountains, but the barren-looking landscape was softened by bright sunlight, which warmed the sleeves of my dark hoodie.

I hadn’t been sleeping well lately, but for the first time in ages, I felt awake and content. Chautauqua was one of my favorite places in the world, and this was the best time to be there: a weekday morning while most of the CU students were busy cramming for midterms. The dogs and I had the place . . . well, not quite to ourselves, but close.

For once, though, Chip and Cody didn’t seem to share my enjoyment. They had a special pass to run the trails off-leash, but for the last two miles, it had been a constant struggle to keep them from slowing down or wandering off. It felt more like I was herding them than anything else.

Chip was in the lead, but now he began to drift to the side, like he might go lie in the shade by himself. “Come on, Chip,” I called. “Keep going!”

I was trying to encourage him, but it backfired: when he heard his name, the big dope trotted into my path and slowed to a stop right in front of my knees.

“Dammit!” By some miracle I managed to jump over the dog without falling on my ass, but I had to plant my arms on the ground and push off. It was damned close to being a cartwheel.

Okay, fine. It was more or less a running handspring. I stumbled to a stop and turned to face the dogs, who were skulking after me, looking embarrassed. “What is with you two today?” I muttered, dusting off my hands and resting them on my knees. At least this particular trail was deserted, so I didn’t have to worry about ending up on YouTube.

They wagged their tails, still panting hard. I sighed and looked around. There was a little outcropping on the path just ahead of where we’d stopped, where a scrubby tree created some shade. I led the dogs toward it, pulling my sling backpack around so I could reach my water bottle and the collapsible dog bowl.

The bag was just big enough for the water, a cell phone, and my Beretta M9 in a nylon holster. I didn’t go anywhere unarmed anymore, although I’d left my shredder stakes in the car for this daytime run.

I set the bowl in the shade and filled it with water, then straightened up to watch the dogs gulp it down like we were in the Sahara. Only a year ago, we’d run this whole trail without so much as a water break. Now that I really looked at them in the bright sun, though, I could see flecks of gray in Chip’s muzzle, and Cody flopped tiredly onto his side in the shade, still panting.

Fear and worry churned in my empty stomach. As a boundary witch, my magic involved the line between life and death, which had some odd ramifications on my life. Boundary witches have a special connection with vampires, which was how I’d ended up dating one, and we can see ghosts at night. I’d also died several times and been brought back by my own magic. My best friend, Lily, called me “death-resistant,” and it was as good a description as any.

This resistance to death went down to the cellular level . . . which meant my aging had slowed to practically a stop. I tried not to think about it, but there were moments like this when it hit me all over again. The dogs were getting older. And I wasn’t.

Even worse, the humans in my life were getting older too. Eventually they would die, and I would still be here—or rather, I’d be somewhere else, because I wouldn’t be able to stay in Boulder once it became obvious that I wasn’t aging.

The water bowl was empty, so I scooped it up, shook it to get rid of the extra drops, and tucked it back into the bag with the water bottle. “Let’s go, guys,” I said gently, and started off on the trail again, this time at a pace that allowed the dogs to walk.

I needed to push this out of my head. It’s fine, I told myself. Chip and Cody had a lot of good years left. There was no reason to freak out about—

I stumbled to a halt.

We were still a few hundred yards from the road, but I’d felt some kind of energy coming off an area to my right and maybe forty yards from the path. It was like a physical pull.

Whatever it was didn’t seem to affect the dogs, who continued on for a few seconds before they realized I’d stopped. They turned back to look at me, their wagging tails slowing as they looked at me with genial confusion, waiting for the reassurance of my voice.

But I couldn’t speak. My mind was too full of whatever was gleaming at me.

I’m not sure how else to describe it. When I’d first been discharged from the army, years ago, I could sort of feel the weapons safe I kept in the third bedroom. I was depressed and isolated, and it was as though that safe glowed in my subconscious—an easy and complete solution to all my problems.

I hadn’t felt suicidal in years, but the odd energy pulling at me from just up the trail reminded me of that gleam—or kind of how I felt when I was near Maven, the most powerful vampire I’d ever met.

But it was the middle of the day. Feeling the strange pull in broad daylight was so jarring it nearly made me dizzy. Automatically, I glanced around to see if anyone else could feel it, but the trail was still empty. My eyes went down to the dogs, but they just gazed up at me with the vacant pleasantness of Labs, their ears lifting hopefully in case we were stopping for treats.

“Sam?” I said aloud, to my dead twin sister. “Any ideas?”

I don’t know.

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and dropped into my boundary magic mindset.

All witches can look at the magical spectrum in one way or another, but boundary witches can only see life forces and ghosts—and ghosts are only visible after dark. I wasn’t sure what else to do, though. Ignoring the gleam of energy didn’t really feel like an option.

My brain’s interpretation of the magical spectrum is kind of like looking at heat through thermal-imaging goggles, only with different colors: living things are blue and vampires glow red. My eyes were on Chip when I opened them, and I immediately took in the warm blue of the life essence in his chest, and a fainter blue outlining his limbs and head. Cody, when I looked over, was practically identical.

Steeling myself, I raised my eyes to the area where I’d felt the gleaming—and my breath caught. This was a faint yellow-gray outline in the shape of a human body—except unlike most humans, who always had a bright glow in their center representing their soul, this form was the same faded yellow all over.

I usually saw yellow only when someone was dying. I thought of that color as death-essence.

I blinked hard to return to my regular vision. I pulled the sling bag around on my chest and unzipped the side compartment, pulling out my M9, holding it low and close to my body. The dogs picked up on my sudden tension and began to rise, but I held up a flat palm. “Stay,” I said firmly. They sat back down, but they didn’t look happy about it, and I figured I had only a couple of minutes before they decided to follow me anyway.

I crept forward, glancing over my shoulder every minute or so to reinforce my command to the dogs. Finally, I cleared the tall grass—and found myself looking down at a human corpse.

He was probably in his seventies, dressed in a faded white T-shirt and black CU sweatpants. There was obviously no point in checking for a pulse—the man’s eyes were wide open, staring up at the blue sky, one hand out to the side, one flat on his chest. He didn’t smell, but his skin was mottled gray, and I wondered how long he’d been out here. A few hours? A day? The flies had just begun to find him, and as I watched, one landed on his open left eye.

Before I backed away, I saw a bright red medical alert bracelet. I was tempted to get close enough to read it, but I could hear the dogs whining behind me and I doubted they would stay put much longer. Besides, this man was beyond medical help.

As I walked back to Chip and Cody, I put the M9 back in my bag and pulled out my cell phone. I probably should have dialed 911, but there were still a few people at Boulder PD who weren’t exactly members of my fan club. Instead, I called my cousin Elise, a detective in the department. She would know it was serious if I was calling her at work.

Sure enough, Elise answered on the second ring. “Lex? Everything okay?”

My mouth felt dry, and I swallowed hard so I could speak. “I’m fine, but I’m at Chautauqua Park, I was hiking, and . . . there’s a body.”

To her credit, Elise hesitated for only about three seconds. “I’m on my way.”

I put the phone away and took out the dogs’ leashes. My hand was shaking a little, and it took two tries to clip the leash onto Cody’s collar. I told myself it was just adrenaline. There was a thigh-high boulder near where I’d turned off the trail. I led the dogs back to it and sat down, staring at the sky without seeing anything.

Just before Christmas, I’d used boundary magic to do something that still horrified me. I had raised the dead.

I’d needed to question someone so I could save my aunt’s life, but the boundary witch who’d told me how to perform the ritual, Nellie, had tried to convince me that bringing someone back was too dangerous. “Once you raise the dead,” she had warned, “they’ll begin to call to you.”

It was an odd statement, especially coming from a ghost, but Katia would have died if I hadn’t intervened. At the time, it hadn’t felt like I had much of a choice.

A couple of weeks later, when Katia and I had both recovered from our injuries, I’d returned to Nellie’s brothel to ask her about the warning. Nellie hadn’t toyed with me, or even demanded some kind of payment for information. She just gave me a surprisingly sad smile and told me I would understand soon.

Was this what she’d meant? Was I now some kind of psychic bloodhound for dead people? Did that include only the recently dead, or people who hadn’t been laid to rest in a grave? What were the rules here?

Every time I thought I understood what it meant to be a boundary witch, I got blindsided again. A lot of that was because I’d been raised with no knowledge of magic. This time, though, I’d walked myself right into this mess without asking any questions. I had raised a fucking dead person. The image of the poor woman’s face filled my head, and I felt a great swell of hatred—for myself, for my magic, for my stupid decisions.

Chapter 2

My thoughts were still churning two hours later, as I sat on the same boulder and watched Elise talking to the small group of people working around the body. One of them was the patrolwoman who’d taken my statement, but I hadn’t bothered to remember anyone’s names. I was starving, I wanted a shower, and I was struggling to stay awake. I’d put Chip and Cody in my car when the police had arrived so they wouldn’t drive everyone nuts, but that had left me with nothing to do but sit and wait for the police to dismiss me. It had been so long since I’d had a full night of sleep, but it wouldn’t look great if I nodded off thirty feet from a dead body.

Finally, Elise finished her conversations and turned to walk toward me. “Well?” I asked my cousin, squinting up at her in the stark afternoon sunshine.

Elise sat down next to me, snapping off a glove so she could push her short honey-blonde hair behind her ear. “I’m not supposed to tell you,” she said in a low voice, “but his name is James Cumberland; he’s a retired professor at CU. His bracelet says he has a heart condition. We’ll do an autopsy, but the medic says this looks like a textbook natural death.”

I breathed out a sigh of relief. It was sad that Cumberland was dead, but if he had been murdered, I would be spending a lot more time with the Boulder Police than I cared to. I was in BPD’s good graces at the moment—against my wishes, Quinn had once pressed the police chief to believe that I was a model citizen—but there was no reason to push it.

“Are you okay?” Elise was studying my face. “You look tired. And . . . well, a little rattled.”

“I did just find a dead body,” I reminded her, trying to keep my voice even. It wasn’t Elise’s fault I was here.

“Yeah, but . . . you know.” Not finding a polite way to phrase it, she waved a hand as if to say, You’ve seen plenty of dead people.

She was right, of course. Elise didn’t know about the Old World, but she knew I’d spent ten years in the US Army. Normally, a nonviolent, natural death wouldn’t shake me. But Nellie’s words kept ringing in my head. They’ll begin to call to you. I didn’t want to think about that night.

Elise was still looking at me, still waiting for some kind of response. “I guess,” I said carefully, “coming across him just brought up some bad memories.”

“Oh. Oh.” Elise gave me a worried look and briefly rested her arm around my shoulders. “I’m sorry, Lex. I didn’t mean to be flippant.”

I realized that she thought I’d been talking about Iraq and the people I’d lost there, and I almost choked on a broken laugh. Great. Now I’d used my dead friends as an excuse to get out of a conversation.

So can anyone attend this pity party, or is it invitation only?

Sam’s voice in my head sounded amused. I pushed out a breath and managed not to snap at her out loud. My cousin was already concerned about me. This was not a good moment to announce that I had psychic conversations with my dead twin sister.

“Can I go now?” I asked Elise, my voice coming out shrill and unsteady. “Do they need me for anything else?”

“No, we’ve got your statement, but . . .” Abandoning her professionalism, Elise turned sideways to hug me, which was a surprise. Elise was a lesbian, and although Boulder PD was a lot more liberal than many police departments, I knew my cousin tried to keep a low profile. Hugging what appeared to be a random female witness wouldn’t help that, but she didn’t care.

Touched, I hugged her back. “What are you doing the rest of the day?” she asked when she finally pulled away.

I had a feeling that if I said “nothing,” Elise or one of my other family members would be showing up at my cabin later to make sure Lex was emotionally stable. Again. Luckily, for once I really did have normal human plans. “I’m helping Katia move,” I told her, checking my watch. I’d already texted to say I was running late.

“Oh, right.” Elise looked relieved. “Tell her hi for me.”

“I will.” I yawned, unable to help myself, and stood up without looking back toward the professor’s body. I was ready to get the hell out of there.

“And get some sleep,” Elise called after me. I waved a hand over my shoulder and hurried toward the car.

An hour and a half later, I was hauling an overstuffed love seat up a second set of stairs. Well, I was trying to, but my moving partner was having a hard time. “Can we stop for a second?” Simon begged, his face already red.

I lowered my half of the couch carefully onto the hard floor of the landing, holding it steady. Above me, Simon propped his side on the steps and leaned on the wall, panting. “Goddamn . . . broken elevator . . .” he mumbled between breaths.

I tried not to smile. Simon Pellar was Lily’s brother, and a good friend to both me and my partner, Quinn. He was also one of the few males to have the active gene for witchblood . . . although that didn’t seem to be helping him at the moment. I’d asked earlier if there was a spell for making furniture lighter, but he’d just pitched a throw pillow at my head. I was taking that as a no. Or if there was, it wasn’t safe to do the spell in public, where humans might walk in.

“Lex?”

I realized I’d been staring into space. “Sorry, what?”

Simon was studying me. “Is everything okay? I know you’re not supposed to tell women they look tired, but . . . you look tired.”

I hadn’t mentioned finding the body at Chautauqua. Simon had been there when Nellie warned me not to raise the dead, and he rarely forgot anything. I figured he would get really excited and ask a bunch of questions I couldn’t answer.

But he was right; I looked like shit. “I didn’t sleep well last night,” I admitted.

“The nightmares?” he said sympathetically.

For a moment, I just stared at him, because that was exactly the reason.

Three months earlier, Simon’s sister Morgan had dragged me through a tightly packed group of ghosts. They’d died horribly in a fire, and it was like being yanked through their deaths, one after another. It had happened to me before, but never so concentrated, and never wraiths, and never . . .

Anyway. The point was, I hadn’t told Simon, or anyone else, about the tunnel. Even the werewolves who were there with me, like Tobias and Mary, didn’t really understand how bad it had been. How could Simon know I was having nightmares?

When I didn’t say anything, he added, “You had them when we were at the hotel, remember?”

I swallowed a slightly hysterical laugh, forcing myself to take a slow breath instead. Simon thought I was having the Iraq nightmares again. Which, to be fair, I still was. These days it was like a competition in my subconscious for which nightmares would get center stage. “I’m fine,” I told him. “You ready to keep going?”

Simon didn’t move from the wall. “You know, Quinn could do this in about two seconds, by himself,” he grumbled. “Tell me again why we have to help Katia move.”

“We don’t need magic to fix all our problems,” I reminded him. “And you’re helping because you live in the building and had literally nothing else to do today.”

He glared at me but gave a grudging nod. Lily was tied up in clan politics, and unless any major security issues came up, Simon actually had free time. He was an assistant professor at the University of Boulder, but he was on spring break for the next week.

The stairwell door above his head swung open with a little pop of air pressure, and Katia’s head poked through, looking down at us with obvious anxiety. “Are you all right? Did one of the legs break on the couch? Let me help you—”

“It’s okay,” Simon reassured her, straightening up a little bit. “It’s a two-person job; Lex just needed to rest for a second.” Gallantly, he picked up his end again. “Come on, Lex, jeez.”

Katia, who was no fool, gave me an inquisitive look. I waved a hand and got a grip on the underside of the couch again. “Do you want to hold the door open for us?” I offered, more to give her something to do than because we needed it.

“Oh! Right! Yes!” She hurried to push the door open, pressing her back against it to create as much space as possible.

I fought down a smile.

Katia was a boundary witch too, but she had spent nearly twenty years under the control of a cruel, abusive vampire named Oskar. After he was killed Katia hadn’t wanted to swear an oath of loyalty to another vampire, which eventually forced her to leave Colorado. When I’d gotten in trouble in Wyoming, though, Katia had come running—and been beaten nearly to death as a result.

While she was healing, I’d found a kind of loophole to get her back to Boulder: I had started my own witch clan, which meant my aunt could swear loyalty to me rather than Maven. But that still left Katia with the problem of no money or possessions, not to mention finding a place to live.

She had insisted that she didn’t want any handouts—clearly my stubbornness was genetic—but as usual, my family chose to interpret that in their own way. No one wrote her a check, but my dad bulldozed her into taking a job in the Luther Shoes plant. Katia turned out to be great at it.

Two months later, she’d saved up enough for a deposit on an apartment. Her credit history was an issue, but after getting turned down for several places, Katia had finally agreed to take a vacant apartment in a building owned by Maven. And my aunts and cousins had gleefully donated all their old furniture to fill it.

Katia had been stunned by all this generosity—even though I explained that at least two of my aunts had just been looking for an excuse to redecorate—and the rather entertaining result was that she was fiercely protective of her mismatched, secondhand furniture.

In the apartment, Katia guided us to the far wall of the living room. “Let’s try it here,” she said. She nibbled her lip as she watched Simon and me set the couch down on the carpeting. “No, maybe a little toward the window?”

“One, two, three—” Simon counted, and we hefted the couch. Katia stepped back to look at it.

“What do you think?” she asked anxiously, glancing at me. “Is the placement okay?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Simon trying not to grin. She was just so earnest.

I tried to look reassuring. “I think you can try it here, and if it doesn’t work we can move it.”

“Right, yes.” She relaxed her shoulders. “Of course.”

We went back down to the U-Haul for the next load, and the one after that. There was a quick break for pizza, and the sun set just as we were finishing the last of the furniture. A few minutes later, my phone buzzed, and I pulled it out to check the screen.

“Maven or Quinn?” Katia asked.

“Maven. Quinn had to run an errand to Denver tonight.”

“You gotta go in?” Simon asked.

“Yup.” I stood up and started collecting my things. “Assuming I can get away, are we still meeting up with Lily later?”

Simon grimaced. “Probably? She says she won’t have time, but I might straight-up kidnap her.”

Simon and Lily’s mother, the witch queen of Colorado, had been killed just before Christmas. It was early March now, and while life had gone back to normal for most of the state’s witches, Lily was burning the candle at both ends. In addition to grieving, she’d been chosen to succeed her mother as the witches’ representative to Maven, the state’s cardinal vampire and my boss. That was a huge responsibility in itself, but Maven was also embarking on a radical new plan to share more of her power with Lily and Mary, the alpha werewolf of the new Boulder pack. Lily was putting out fires day and night at this point.

I was worried about her—especially since tomorrow would have been her mother’s birthday. They would be remembering Hazel with family and the rest of the witch clan tomorrow, so Simon and I had conspired to arrange a night off for all four of us tonight. Quinn wouldn’t be back from his meeting with the Denver vampires until nine or ten, but we were all used to staying up late.

We just had to convince Lily to come out. “Let me know if you need a getaway driver,” I told Simon. I looked at Katia, who was kneeling on the floor, fussing with a small IKEA rug. “Do you want to come with us for drinks tonight?”

Distractedly, she sat back on her heels and looked around the room. “I think I will stay here and keep organizing,” she said after a moment.

“You sure? Simon’s gonna kidnap Lily and everything.” Simon wasn’t looking at Katia’s face, but I was, and I saw the little spark in her eyes when I mentioned Lily’s name. My aunt had a crush on my best friend, which was a sentence I’d never thought I’d string together.

Katia gave me a smile tinged with sadness. “I’m okay here.”

That was what I’d expected her to say. I kept trying to get Lily and Katia in a room together—not to fix them up, but to give Katia a chance to move past the awkwardness, one way or another. I wanted to include Katia in my life, and it wasn’t going to work if she was hiding from her feelings for Lily. But I gave a little headshake and let it go. It wasn’t my business.

Chapter 3

Magic Beans is a twenty-four-hour coffee shop right in the heart of downtown Boulder, where locals and students mingle with tourists and parking is a nightmare. I would usually look for street parking in a nonemergency, but since it was supposed to be my night off, I took an open spot in the coffee shop’s tiny lot, hoping my visit would be brief.

The inside of Magic Beans was a labyrinth of small rooms with connecting doors, and you had to follow a series of arrows spray-painted on the floor just to reach the counter—although by now I could have done it blindfolded. I nodded at the stressed-looking college kid behind the counter and kept going to the massive back room, where a discreet door led into Maven’s tiny office.

My boss was sitting at her desk. Maven is a small woman with neon-green hair, ugly glasses, piles of cheap jewelry, and a sense of style that can best be described as “Boulder-ish. Tonight she was wearing a shapeless, knee-length plaid shirt that looked like it would have been thrown away at a thrift store.

She was scrutinizing an actual paper spreadsheet she’d laid out on the desk, but she looked up and smiled when I entered. I felt an instant spike of adrenaline. Maven was so old and so powerful that if I wasn’t ready for it, meeting her eyes could feel like looking at the sun. “Hello, Lex,” she said pleasantly. “Thanks for coming in tonight.”

“No problem.” I closed the door of the tiny office, positioned my chair sideways so I could see both the door and my boss, and sat down. “What’s up? Another call?”

I tried not to sound bored. During the past couple of months, I’d sat in on a number of calls between Maven and the Old World leaders she was trying to recruit for her new project: a countrywide system of government in the Old World. The calls were long, dull, and filled with careful language and absolutely no commitments. Maven said that was how most vampire deals went—lots of circling each other before any decisions were made.

“No, not a call.” Maven studied me for a heartbeat, and said, “Is everything all right, Lex?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said instantly. I hoped that a quick answer would keep her from noticing the lie. It worked sometimes with Quinn . . . or at least, I thought it did.

Maven gave me a small smile that suggested she was not an idiot. “At any rate, I actually have a real assignment for you. If you want it.”

“Really? Now?” I hadn’t expected to get an actual assignment until Maven had marshaled more support . . . which had seemed like it would take months, if not years.

“Believe it or not, you’ve been requested,” she said. “In Atlanta.”

I almost said, “Atlanta, Georgia?” but stopped myself in time. Of course she meant Georgia.

You need to get more sleep, babe.

Ignoring Sam, I squinted for a second, trying to remember Maven’s lectures on the power structure of the continental US. Like most older, large cities, Atlanta was vampire territory. But there was something weird about the cardinal vampire. What was it?

Oh. Right.

“The Mad Cavalier,” I said, earning a slight nod from Maven.

“Some of his people call him that, although I don’t think he appreciates it,” she said mildly. “He’s one of the rare vampires who still uses his full name, Abner Beaumont Calhoun. What do you remember about him?”

“Uh . . . not a lot.” I searched my memory. “He was turned during the Civil War; he’s been in charge of Atlanta for a long time . . . and you’re hoping to get him to accept the parliament’s authority, but you don’t want him as one of the actual members because he’s nuts.”

She frowned. “I wouldn’t say that he’s nuts. He’s . . . eccentric.”

“Isn’t he the one who turned four of his buddies and named them the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?”

Maven actually chuckled. “So you were paying attention. Yes, he did turn four of his own men when they were dying on the battlefield. He can be . . . impulsive.” She paused for a moment, considering. “If he were a woman, he’d probably be called ‘emotional.’”

I snorted. “Still,” she continued, “Calhoun is seen as nonconformist, independent. He’s not a man who would willingly be anyone’s puppet. That’s exactly why I would like you to go help him, if you’re willing.”

Ah. That made more sense.

Maven’s plan required two things: she needed to recruit the parliament members themselves, of course, but she also needed the majority of the American Old World to agree to be governed. That would be the harder part.

Right now, the Old World was a disparate collection of territories, each with its own leadership. Many of those leaders would see the parliament as Maven trying to take over the whole country, or trying to interfere in their business. That wasn’t her intention at all, but in order to prove that, she would need to get a number of influential people to trust her. Calhoun could be one of them.

“Have you already pitched the parliament to him?” I asked.

“He wanted to think about it,” she said, straight-faced. That was more or less the response we’d been getting from everyone since Dashiell. Nobody wanted to be the next domino—or the first one to defy Maven. “My hope is that by going to Atlanta and helping him with his problem, you can convince him to join the cause.”

“This sounds suspiciously like a diplomatic mission,” I said, then winced at my own phrasing. Sometimes I forget that Maven is one of the most powerful vampires on the planet.

Maven raised a single eyebrow. “Is that a problem?”

I blew out a breath, choosing my words more carefully. “It’s just . . . not exactly in line with what we discussed for this job.”

When Maven had first told me about her parliament plan, she had asked if I would serve as a troubleshooter for the organization’s activities. I thought of it as sort of a fixer, with a bit of law enforcement thrown in. My background was military, and I’d had a bit of investigatory experience working with Quinn. I have plenty of strengths, but I wouldn’t include diplomacy among them.

“I know,” Maven said, “but we did anticipate that some unusual situations would crop up. More importantly, I think you’ll be interested in your own right. Calhoun wants help with some local ghosts. He can see them.”

“Really?” My stomach had lurched at the mention of ghosts, but she was right: my interest was caught. I’d never heard of a vampire who could see remnants—other than Maven, who was one of the oldest vampires on the planet. “He’s not that old. How is that possible?”

“Well, it could just be a quirk of his lineage, the way some vampires inherit a certain skill—Quinn being particularly good at pressing people, for example.” She paused for a second, then added, “I suspect, however, it’s because Calhoun comes from a long line of boundary witches.”

That startled me, but before I could speak, she held out her hands. “I’m assuming, as a male, he didn’t have the gene to become a boundary witch, which is how he was able to be turned into a vampire.”

“Okay . . .” I tried to mentally sort through my questions, settling on, “How do you know? About his family line?”

Maven gave me a faint smile. “It’s fairly common knowledge. As I’m sure you know by now, most of the people who inherit boundary witchblood never activate their magic.”

Oh yes, I knew all about that. Witches—any kind of witches—have a window of time around puberty when they need to perform some sort of spell to activate their magic. Normally, that could be anything: a cleaning charm, a practical-joke hex, a ward, whatever. Boundary witches, on the other hand, have to die. And if they want to create a new generation, they eventually have to kill their own children. Not many parents are willing to murder their kids for a power that’s basically considered a curse.

“The Calhouns are well known as one of those families who do not practice,” Maven continued. “I’m not sure whether they even could become active witches at this point, as their witchblood may be too diluted.” She gave a little shrug.

That went well beyond the amount of background she’d given me on most of the Old World players in the United States. “It seems like you know a lot about this guy.”

Maven gave me a nod of approval. “In this case, I do. I have a spy in Georgia.”

I stared at her for a moment. I’d heard about the practice of cardinal vampires sending their people around the country to spy, but this was the first time I’d heard Maven mention one of hers.

It was also the first time she’d mentioned turning anyone into a vampire herself, but that was the only way the spy thing could work. In order to live in a vampire’s territory, you had to swear loyalty to the cardinal vampire. Those oaths were serious business—but so was your allegiance to the vampire who made you. It was sort of a loophole in the system. Or, Simon had once suggested in front of Quinn, it was like owing loyalty to both your parent and your spouse—even if the two didn’t get along. Quinn had thrown a paperback book at him in response.

The spy thing was interesting, but I didn’t want to get any more sidetracked than I already was. “Okay, so Calhoun comes from a dormant boundary magic line and he’s a little eccentric. But what does he actually want me to do? Lay some ghosts?”

I tried not to show my anxiety, but Maven was a vampire and would probably sense the change in my pulse. I had been avoiding ghosts for months, which was only possible because I’d spent much of last year putting ghosts to rest all over my hometown.

Maven tilted her head just a little, the only sign that she could tell I was apprehensive. She was good about not calling out your feelings unless it was necessary. “Actually,” she said, “it sounds as though he has the exact opposite problem.”

My brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“He says his ghosts are missing.”

Chapter 4

“His ghosts,” I repeated, half expecting a punch line, “are missing. What the hell does that mean?”

“Apparently Calhoun is used to living in the presence of quite a lot of ghosts,” Maven answered. “Both at his home and his base of operations. All of them have abruptly disappeared.”

“Where is his base of operations?” Some vampires did business in their homes, if they were willing to spend a lot of money on security, but more often they worked out of a separate location, like Maven and Magic Beans.

Maven looked like she was fighting a smile. “Actually, Abner Calhoun is the only vampire I’ve ever heard of who governs from a cemetery.”

“A cemetery?” I was starting to sound like an echo.

“A very nice one,” Maven answered cheerfully. “Oakland Cemetery, right in Atlanta. During the social season, Calhoun hosts a weekly soiree for the local vampires at Oakland. That’s where he holds court, for lack of a better term. I know a cemetery sounds like a strange place to socialize, but the grounds are quite lovely. And until a few days ago,” she added, “quite haunted.”

I just stared at her for a moment, with no idea where to start. She wasn’t joking—Maven didn’t have that kind of sense of humor—but I was completely lost. “Ghosts don’t live in cemeteries.”

“Not in most places,” she agreed. “But things work a little differently in the South.”

I stared at her for a long moment. “You want to send me to Atlanta,” I said slowly, “because a cardinal vampire is worried that his vampire social event is missing its ghosts?”

She didn’t react, so I added, “And you don’t think he’s crazy?”

“I know. It sounds ridiculous . . . but that’s why I’m fairly certain it’s the truth. If Calhoun wanted to lure you there for some other purpose—to kill you, or even just get you out of the way so that I would be more vulnerable—he could have come up with something much more straightforward.”

That was true. And, I had to admit, I was curious. There were so few people I could ask about boundary magic, especially ghosts. But a youngish vampire who could also see ghosts, who in fact didn’t want them to leave his base of operations? I mean, they had probably either crossed over or been laid by some local witches, but still, it was . . . interesting.

But it would also require me to interact with ghosts again. I hated feeling like a coward, but I wasn’t sure I was physically capable of facing them at the moment.

“Would Quinn come with me?” I asked, trying not to sound like a hopeful schoolgirl. Moving a vampire across the country was annoying, but Maven had ways to do it. And when I’d agreed to take this job, she’d promised he could help me when I needed him.

But now she hesitated, looking like she wasn’t sure what to say. It was an odd look on Maven. “What?” I asked.

“Quinn can’t go to Atlanta.”

“You said—”

“It’s not that,” Maven said, her voice suddenly very soft. “It’s his daughter.”

I blinked hard. I knew, of course, that Quinn had a human daughter. He didn’t talk about her much, but she had to be twenty-two or twenty-three by now, and he used social media to keep an eye on her. “I don’t understand.”

Now it was Maven’s turn to raise an eyebrow, as if surprised that I didn’t know. “Quinn’s daughter, Holly, is currently at Georgia College, ninety minutes outside of Atlanta, finishing a degree in criminal justice,” she said. “I cannot send him anywhere near there. Aside from the temptation for him to make contact, she and her friends go into Atlanta sometimes. It’s too much of a risk. You’d have to go without him.”

I opened my mouth to say . . . something . . . but closed it again. No Quinn. Lots of ghosts. A crazy cardinal vampire.

There was no way I could do this.

Maven must have seen the thought on my face, because she added gently, “This isn’t an official assignment, Lex, especially since we don’t have the parliament up and running yet. You don’t have to go at all . . . but if you decide to take the job, Calhoun has offered you a generous consultant fee. He’s also offered to swear an oath of mutual safety.”

I knew vampire magic was pretty much limited to pressing humans and swearing fancy oaths, but this was a new one for me. “What does that mean?”

Maven gave me a faint smile. “It means you will be temporarily under his protection. If something were to happen to you, Calhoun would abdicate his position as cardinal.”

“He’d . . . give up his power?” That made even less sense than the weird ghost thing.

She nodded. “A mutual safety oath is a big deal, Lex. He’s essentially tied your fate to his own.”

Huh. “What if someone really wants to get him out of power, so they attack me to get rid of Calhoun?”

“Then he will spend the rest of his time on earth hunting for that person,” she replied, showing a few teeth.

I didn’t like that. It was too big, too complicated. And I was so tired.

I tried to think of a way to say no that didn’t make me sound like a coward. But wasn’t that exactly what I was? I had allowed one bad incident to completely incapacitate me.

That’s not how PTSD works, babe, and you know it.

I ignored Sam and tried to focus on my boss. Maven was resting her chin on her fist, looking at me thoughtfully. Probably listening to my pulse. “Atlanta is very different from Colorado, Lex. You should know that before you decide.”

“Different how?”

“It’s older, of course, but the city was occupied territory during the War between the States. There were a number of military skirmishes, plus the fires and looting. Thousands of people died.”

She gave me a meaningful look, and a rush of fear rolled through my stomach. I pictured the wraith attack in Montana again and had to shift in my seat to suppress a shudder. I hadn’t told her about being dragged through the tunnel of wraiths, of course, but she hadn’t missed my reaction earlier when she brought up the ghosts.

“I think I better pass,” I told her, looking away. “There’s a lot going on now with Katia getting settled and Lily taking over and everything.”

Maven studied me, her nostrils flaring, and I wondered what information she was getting from my body chemistry. Strictly speaking, none of those words were lies—I was getting better at talking around actual falsehoods—but by now she could probably smell that I was afraid, and I hated that, both the fear and my inability to hide it. My hands clenched into fists in my lap.

“Why don’t you sleep on it?” Maven said at last. “Or at least pretend to. I’m perfectly content to turn down the request, but it will soften the blow if it appears that we gave it serious consideration. Tomorrow night I can inform Calhoun that you’re not interested.”

“Fine.” I stood up. All I cared about was getting out of there.

“Oh, wait—here.” She reached into her desk drawer and pulled out a fifty-dollar bill, holding it out to me across the desk.

“What’s that for?” I asked without taking it.

“Hazel’s birthday,” she replied, giving me a wistful smile. “I want to buy the first round tonight.”

I took the cash with a nod of gratitude, and fled.

Chapter 5

Simon had let Lily pick the bar, which meant we ended up at Mountain Sun Pub and Brewery, one of the older bars on Pearl Street. It was small and cheerful, with high wooden booths and colorful handmade signs on the walls. It was also, as Quinn put it, “peak Boulder.”

I’d had to stop at home to let the herd out, so Quinn and Simon both beat me to the restaurant. The moment I walked in I could hear Simon’s laughter ringing out from the last booth, and then Quinn was grinning as he stood up to greet me. The smile faded as he took me in, and I didn’t miss the little glance he gave Simon over his shoulder. They’d been talking about how tired I looked.

“Hi,” I said with forced cheer, kissing his cheek. “I see you two are having fun. Any sign of Lily?”

“I’m here,” came a frazzled voice from right behind me. I turned to look at my best friend. Lily’s hair was in dreadlocks to her shoulders, and she wore a bulky cream-colored fisherman’s sweater over skintight faux-leather pants. Her eyes were tired, but she opened her arms for a hug. “Happy almost Mom’s birthday.”

I embraced my friend. “Happy almost Hazel’s birthday,” I said sincerely. “Come on, let’s get you a drink.”

We got settled into the booth, with me next to Quinn and Lily on Simon’s side. My butt had barely touched the seat before the server, a young, twentyish woman with a buzz cut and a lip piercing, practically ran for our table. I had the feeling Quinn had already started overtipping. “Hi, I’m Henna. What can I get you?” she said, anxious to please. “Do you want to hear our specials? Or maybe you need more time? I could come back—”

I shot my partner a sideways glare, but he just shrugged, unapologetic. Quinn didn’t drink, obviously, so on the few occasions when we went out, he tended to throw money around. He said it was for security—his bribes usually involved keeping the tables closest to us empty so we could talk—but I suspected he felt guilty for not buying himself drinks.

Simon already had a beer in front of him. Lily ordered a Brewery Taster, which was basically choosing mini versions of six different beers, and she began rattling off the four-word names for each of her picks. When she’d finally finished, the server looked eagerly at me, and I pointed to Simon’s glass. “What he’s having, and another for him.”

After Henna rushed off, I told the others about Maven buying the first round. “That was nice of her,” Simon said mildly. Lily suddenly became very interested in staring at the food menu, and Quinn and I exchanged a look. I wondered if I’d already put my foot in my mouth.

Completely aside from the normal grief process, Hazel’s death was a sore spot for all of us. Hazel had been shot after Simon and Lily’s eldest sister, Morgan, had made a grab at their mother’s leadership role in the state. Morgan had been stopped and captured in Cheyenne, but before Maven and the witches could decide what to do with her, a group of armed men had arrived at the Pellar farm and tried to rescue her. Both Morgan and Hazel had been killed in the firefight.

Simon blamed himself because he’d pushed me to bring Morgan back to Boulder alive. I blamed myself because I’d actually done it, even though I had known it was a risky and futile action. Maven—and, by extension, Quinn—had shown up at the farmhouse too late to save Hazel, so even he shared in the guilt.

Only Lily was completely blameless—yet she was the one who had to carry the burden of Hazel’s responsibilities.

After a moment of awkward silence, Simon asked me about Maven’s summons earlier that evening. “I’m guessing it was another phone call,” he said cheerfully, “since you don’t seem to be covered in blood.”

“I could have changed my clothes,” I pointed out. “But no, she wanted to offer me a sort of . . . freelance job, I guess,” I told them. I added hastily, “But I’m not taking it.”

“What was the job?” Simon and Lily asked in unison.

I sighed. “There’s this vampire in the South who’s missing some ghosts. He sounds nuts, and I’m not going.”

“What do you mean, missing?” Lily asked. “Like someone’s been laying them?”

“That, or they crossed over on their own.” I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not going.”

My best friend frowned at me. “You haven’t talked about ghosts in forever. Are you still laying the remnants around town? I know I haven’t had time to help . . .” She trailed off, her eyebrows raised.

My mouth was suddenly dry. I snuck a glance at the others: Simon had a look of dawning realization—oh yeah, she hasn’t been talking about ghosts—and Quinn’s nostrils flared. He was reacting to me, rather than the question. Fuck.

Thankfully, at that moment Henna rushed over with a full tray balanced rather impressively on her arm. I mentally thanked my boyfriend for his foresight in bribing the server.

Henna laid out our drinks and began scribbling down food orders, but I barely heard what I said, much less anyone else. I was scrambling to think of a quick change in topic.

Not for the first time, Quinn swooped in to save me. When Henna had hurried off to put in our food order, he picked up the water glass in front of him and raised it. “To Hazel,” he said quietly.

Simon raised his beer and set it against Quinn’s glass. “Blessings on her and the circle she holds.”

He looked at Lily. My friend raised one of her small glasses but didn’t speak. Her lower lip trembled. A terrible, pregnant silence seemed to fall over the table.

I picked up my glass. “To Hazel,” I said firmly, clinking the others’ glasses.

We all took a sip—even Quinn, whose body could absorb a swallow or two of water. Lily downed the rest of the beer sample like it was a shot.

“How are things going with you, Lil?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

She rolled her eyes. “Ugh. Every witch leader in the state wants to have a face-to-face meeting, just so they can go back to their clans and say they told me off. They never actually have anything to say.”

“Not even ‘sorry for your loss’?” Simon asked, looking annoyed.

She shrugged. “Some of them give condolences, but half the time they also slip in some kind of hint about how they were unhappy with Mom, or they’re relieved that there’s going to be new blood, or whatever. They might just be trying to kiss my ass, but it’s still kind of—”

“Horrible?” I suggested.

“Well, yeah. It’s like they’re relieved they didn’t have to go to the trouble of ousting Mom.”

“Gods,” Simon said in disgust. “How convenient that she got murdered so no one had to face the awkwardness.”

“I’m sorry,” I said to both of them. “It really sucks that you have to deal with that attitude on top of everything else.”

“Thanks. But that reminds me . . .” Lily’s voice was nonchalant, but her eyes were practically burning holes through Quinn. “Has there been any progress on who was helping Morgan?”

The big room suddenly seemed suffocating.

Before she died Morgan Pellar had waved around a lot of money—more than a banished witch should have been able to scrape together in a few years. Someone had been backing her, and Quinn, the former police detective, was trying to figure out who. This was what he’d been working on while Maven gave me government history lessons.

“The trail’s gone cold,” he said grimly. “I met with Maven’s tech team in Denver tonight. They were able to find the rest of Morgan’s accounts, but she had deposited cash at a number of different branches. Five thousand or so at a time. She probably has some other form of money somewhere, but we can’t find it.”

“Where are the banks?” Simon asked.

“New York.”

That didn’t mean anything to me, but Simon and Lily exchanged a worried glance. “What?” I asked.

“Malcolm,” Lily said in a small voice, and then she had to lean back in her chair as Henna arrived with our food.

There were a few moments of bustle while she delivered plates and we reassured her that no, we really didn’t need anything else. When she was gone the table got very quiet. Simon and Lily both stared morosely at their food. I looked at Quinn, who gave a miniscule shrug.

It felt like I was missing something. I’d heard Malcolm’s name, of course—Maven had mentioned him during her crash course in Old World politics. The cardinal vampire of New York City was notoriously power-hungry and generally not to be trusted—she wasn’t going to bother approaching him about the parliament, not until she had practically the whole rest of the country lined up. But that didn’t really explain why the Pellars looked so worried.

“New York is a big city,” Quinn said to them, his voice gentle. “There are plenty of assholes there. And Morgan was smart—she might have gone to New York to do her banking just so we would get distracted thinking about Malcolm.”

“Still,” Lily said. She had already downed all her minibeers and was toying with an empty glass.

I looked at each of them in turn. “I’m sorry, I’m still lost,” I said. “He’s just one vampire . . . right?”

“He’s a tyrant,” Simon said simply. “His own people are terrified of him.”

“You mean the vampires?” I asked. It seemed sort of normal for vampires to be scared of their leader.

“Witches too,” Lily chimed in. “There used to be a thriving witch community in New York. Now it’s down to a few clans, and they’re basically Malcolm’s puppets.”

“And there aren’t any werewolves in the five boroughs,” Simon added. “He drove them all out.”

Hmm. It wouldn’t surprise me if Simon and Lily were exaggerating a little—they had probably grown up hearing boogeyman stories about this guy. But I was watching Quinn, and I didn’t like his concerned expression one bit.

“What is it?” I asked him, realizing my own voice was hushed. I forced myself to ask the question in a normal speaking voice. “Is this guy stronger than Maven?”

“In a one-on-one fight?” Quinn shook his head. “Of course not. But she worries about him more than any other vampire in the States. He thinks outside the box.”

“What does that mean?”

Quinn sighed, taking his time to answer. Simon and Lily were staring at him, hanging on every word. “Do you remember last spring when Scarlett Bernard came here, and we learned she was pregnant? Maven asked me to find out who the father was.”

I nodded. I had been present for that conversation. Nulls, like Scarlett and my niece, Charlie, weren’t supposed to be able to procreate . . . but apparently two nulls could have a kid together. This wasn’t common knowledge, but Maven had seen it before, centuries ago.

She had asked Quinn to find the father, because, well, you just didn’t want an adult null running around without knowing their loyalties. Quinn had learned the man was dead, and that had been the end of the matter. Oh, he’d asked me if I wanted more details, but I’d declined. Scarlett and I had become—well, “friends” wasn’t the right word, but she was an ally, and it didn’t seem right for me to pry into her sex life if it wasn’t something I absolutely needed to know.

“His name was Jameson Thomas, and he used to be Malcolm’s pet null,” Quinn said. “He broke off on his own in Vegas, and Malcolm sent skinners to kill him.”

Simon’s back went as straight as a steel rod, and Lily actually gasped. “Jesus,” I blurted. Skinners were mercenaries—usually well-armed humans from expensive security firms—who killed people from the Old World for money. Sending one of them after a null, who was basically a human . . .

“That seems like overkill,” I said.

“Apparently,” Quinn said dryly, “it was just enough kill.”

I tried to imagine Maven, who had banned skinners from Colorado, sending some of them after an enemy, but I couldn’t picture it.

At least I was getting a better picture of New York’s cardinal vampire. That story reminded me of a witch I’d met in Reno a few years earlier, Sara, who had figured out a novel way to kill vampires. She shot them with a crossbow, aiming for the heart—but that’s a difficult shot, especially if it’s dark and the vampire is moving. More often than not, the arrow would go into the vampire’s side, or stomach, or the wrong side of the chest . . . in which case Sara would simply use her magic to pull the arrow sideways.

I didn’t know much about that kind of spell—it was well beyond anything I could do as a boundary witch, and it didn’t involve the usual sympathetic magics the Pellars frequently practiced. But Sara had discovered a way to make a very small thing—moving an arrow a few inches in an unexpected direction—bring down an angry vampire. Out-of-the-box thinking.

“So what do we do now?” Simon asked Quinn.

He gave a slight shrug, looking uncomfortable. “There’s nothing else I can do, unfortunately. Whoever helped Morgan has done an excellent job of chopping off any loose threads that might lead back to him. I don’t have any more threads to pull.”

I knew then that Quinn believed it was Malcolm. He tended to be careful about pronouns, especially when discussing suspects.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one who picked up on that. Lily narrowed her eyes at Quinn. “You do think it was Malcolm. And you’re not going to do anything.”

Quinn laid his hands flat on the table and gave her an open look. “I don’t have any evidence, Lily. Certainly not enough to act on.”

“So, what, Malcolm gets to skate on murdering our mom, just because he’s a creative thinker or whatever?” Lily clenched her fists, and I actually saw a tiny spark jump out of one of them as she involuntarily flexed her magic.

Simon saw it too, and reached over to cover his sister’s hands. To anyone else it would look like he was trying to be supportive, but he glanced at me with worried eyes. Neither of us had ever seen Lily lose her cool in public like that.

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Quinn began, but Lily abruptly rose from her chair, her food practically untouched.

“I don’t feel like eating,” she said. “I need some air.”

“I’ll come too,” I said, starting to stand up, but she waved me off.

“I just want to be alone,” she snapped. “Stay with your boyfriend.” With a last, angry look at Quinn, she stalked out of the restaurant.

Chapter 6

After she’d left, Simon kept trying to apologize for Lily, but Quinn wouldn’t accept it. “She’s not wrong,” he said, looking as miserable as I’d ever seen him, at least when nobody’s life was at immediate risk.

“But she knows the deal with vampires,” Simon insisted. “Maven has to be able to prove it publicly before she can act.”

“She’s frustrated,” I said tiredly. “We all are.”

There was little else to say after that.

Later that night, when Quinn and I were in bed, he rolled onto his side to face me. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“Ugh.” I picked up a pillow and dropped it over my face. “Why does everyone keep asking me that? I am fine.”

Quinn lifted the pillow slowly so he could meet my eyes. “I meant after talking to Lily.”

“Oh.” I pulled the pillow back down over my face, because now I felt stupid.

“It wasn’t exactly the fun night out you and Simon were hoping to give her,” he added.

I sighed and came out from hiding, jamming the pillow underneath my head again. “No. But I don’t know what to do about it. Lily is looking for someone to hate. She knows deep down that this isn’t your fault.”

“I know she does,” Quinn said. “And I don’t care if she needs to hate me for a while, if it helps her.”

“You’re a good friend,” I told him. “The problem is, I don’t know that it’s actually helping her. She’s pushing herself too hard. And Simon seems like he’s flailing for purpose.”

“And you’re not sleeping,” Quinn finished. I didn’t answer, and he pushed a lock of hair behind my ear.

“Tell me why you don’t want to go on Maven’s trip,” he said.

I shrugged, pulling the covers up to my shoulders. “There’s so much going on here, with the new witch clan and parliament and everything, and I want to be here for Lily—”

“Bullshit,” Quinn broke in. “Sashi’s still packing up her house in Vegas, and Katia is pretty settled with her job and the apartment. It’s not like you’re running biweekly meetings.”

I made a face. Was my new clan really going to need biweekly meetings? I hadn’t gotten to those details. We were pretty much in the “I’m starting a witch clan, move to the state” phase.

“If anything, we’re in the calm before the storm for Maven’s parliament,” Quinn went on. “And there’s nothing you can do to help Lily right now. So what is it?”

I didn’t answer, and he searched my face. “The plane ride?”

I shook my head. I was claustrophobic, but an airplane ride was the least of my worries. I might not be able to look up coping mechanisms for murderous ghost encounters, but “claustrophobic on airplane” was something anyone could google.

“I could come with you,” Quinn offered.

“You can’t,” I told him. “It’s in Atlanta.”

Like most of the vampires I’d met, Quinn was excellent at keeping his feelings off his face, but I knew him too well to miss the flicker of hope and longing as he put it together.

“Is that why you turned it down?” he said softly. “If you’re worried that I’m going to pressure you to go check on Holly—”

“No, no.” I leaned my head forward to kiss him. “It’s not you, I promise.”

“Then why not go?”

I scooted my body closer, closing the gap between us, so I wouldn’t have to look at him. “I don’t want to deal with some crazy Confederate soldier and his ghosts. Not my idea of a good time.”

Quinn slid one arm underneath me, wrapping me into him. I could feel the impossible strength in his arms, and for the first time in what felt like forever, my whole body relaxed. “The Civil War in Atlanta,” he said thoughtfully. “Wasn’t the whole city under siege?”

I nodded, the top of my head rubbing against his chin. “I looked it up after I left Maven’s. There wasn’t just one battle there—there were a bunch of them. Atlanta was critical because of the railroads, and both sides knew it. The city was under siege for a whole summer and part of the fall before the Confederate army surrendered. And after that Atlanta was burned to the ground.”

“That sounds like a lot of traumatic death.” Quinn’s voice was gentle. “But you’ve handled ghosts before.”

I didn’t answer.

“Lily’s right; you haven’t been laying ghosts lately,” Quinn said. “I thought you abandoned your project because Lily and Simon got busy, but that’s not it, is it?”

Shit. Quinn loosened his arms and pulled back so he could see my face. “Lex?”

“It’s fine,” I whispered. “I’m fine.”

Tell him the truth, Sam urged. Come on, babe. It’s time.

Quinn wasn’t an idiot, but he just stroked my cheek. “When you’re ready to talk, I’m here,” he said quietly.

“I know.”

He kissed my forehead. As though he’d put a spell on me, my eyes felt suddenly heavy. It wasn’t that late, for me, but it had been a long day. And a lot of sleepless nights.

“You look so tired,” Quinn said. “You’ve been having the nightmares a lot.”

“I’m fine.” But of course now I stifled a yawn.

He wrapped me up in his arms again. “Sleep.”

I didn’t want to sleep, but I allowed my eyes to close, just for a few minutes. “Do you worry about her?” I asked.

“About Holly?” He was silent for a moment, thinking. “Not the same way you worry about Charlie. But I think about her a lot. She was only four when I died, and I’d been a shitty father up to that point. I was barely there. That’s the part I think about.”

I opened my eyes and tilted my head back so I could look at him. His angular features were full of such sadness. He touched my hair, smoothing strands back from my face.

I couldn’t stand the silence. “You keep an eye on her online,” I pointed out. “You know she’s all right.”

He nodded, but his expression didn’t change. “She’s all right in spite of me, not because of me. I threw away my chance to be her dad so I could focus on my career. And I did it with a carelessness that stuns me now.”

I wanted to say something that would make it better, but I understood guilt too well for that. Guilt isn’t necessarily logical, and it doesn’t have a statute of limitations. I still felt guilty that I hadn’t saved Sam from being mauled to death, and I hadn’t known about werewolves at the time. Hell, I hadn’t even lived in the same state. Guilt doesn’t care.

“You know,” Quinn said softly, stroking the skin of my back, “Holly is just about the only proof that I was ever alive. That I was ever a human.”

“That’s not true,” I protested. “You impacted so many lives—”

He stopped me with a quick kiss. “I know that. But the world goes on. People forget; they move on. In another twenty or thirty years, the people who knew me when I was human won’t remember me. None of the criminals I put in jail will still be there, one way or another.”

For maybe the first time, I wondered if Quinn the human had been very different from Quinn the vampire. All this time I’d thought of them as the same person, but that obviously wasn’t how he saw himself. “I’m sorry,” I said awkwardly. “I’m sorry that you died.”

He kissed me again. “The funny thing is, I’m probably a better person as a vampire than I was as a human. That’s at least partly because I met you.” He reached over and carefully brushed away the tear that had started down my cheek. “But Holly . . . she’s a legacy for the human I was. It’s like a gift that she’s given me, only I don’t deserve it. I didn’t earn it, like fathers are supposed to.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I just lay there for a long moment, looking at him. This was the most he’d ever said about his daughter. This was more than missing someone you loved. It was years and years of tangled guilt and regret.

And he’d let me see it. I opened my mouth, ready to tell him about the tunnel, about the ghosts in my head, and how much they were damaging me. But I closed it again. It didn’t seem right to bring up my pain as though I were comparing it. As though it were a competition.

Instead, I shifted up to look in his eyes. “In another twenty or thirty years,” I said fiercely, “I will be here, and I won’t be much older than this. And I will need you.”

He gave me a sad smile, just for an instant, and I could practically see the words he was thinking: no you won’t.

I kissed him before he could say it.

Chapter 7

Later, when I couldn’t fight it any longer, I finally fell asleep.

Since Cheyenne, I’d had a wake-up-screaming nightmare nearly every night, although it was a toss-up whether I’d dream of the tunnel or my time in Iraq. But that night, I found myself in my old bedroom at my parents’ house, the one I had shared with Sam. I was sitting on my twin bed, back against the wall, and Sam was sitting across from me on her own bed. It might have been our childhood room, but this was the adult Sam, as I’d last seen her. I grinned. “Hi, Sammy.”

She smiled back, and it hurt my heart. Having a psychic connection with your dead twin can be great, but it always made me miss her even more. “Hey, babe.”

“Do you have a dire but cryptic prediction about my impending doom, or is this a social call?”

Sam grabbed a stuffed animal and flung it at my head, where it bounced off and fell to the floor. “Ow!” I said, though I was surprised rather than hurt. “How are you able to throw things at me in my own brain?”

“You’re not the only one getting stronger,” Sam said, raising a smug eyebrow.

I opened my mouth to ask what that meant, but she gave me a tight headshake to say I can’t talk about it. There were a lot of rules about what Sam was and wasn’t permitted to tell me. Most annoyingly, she wasn’t allowed to tell me the list of rules.

“What’s going on?” I asked, wary. Sam could talk to me in my head sometimes, but she rarely pulled me into a dream. Or pulled me out of a dream. However you wanted to look at it.

“Allie,” Sam said seriously, “you need to talk to someone about what happened to you in the tunnel.”

I sat back against the wall, eyeing my sister. “I’m dealing with it.”

Sam just snorted. “I am,” I insisted. “I’m just taking a break from laying ghosts. It’s not a big deal.”

“Don’t lie to me; I’m in your head,” she said pragmatically. “You won’t even tell Quinn why you’re not sleeping.”

“I thought we agreed that you would stay away when Quinn and I are in bed.”

Sam waved it away. “Don’t try to change the subject. I’m worried about you. You’re pushing too hard.”

Now it was my turn to snort. “Pushing what? I’m listening to lectures on power structure and sitting in on phone calls and watching my friends unravel. I’m not pushing anything.”

“That’s funny—just a few hours ago, you were telling Maven you were too busy to go to Atlanta. And you found a dead guy today and you didn’t tell a single person. You’re trying to avoid your own magic, and it’s not going to work.”

I glared at her. “That’s what this is about? You just wanted to lecture me on my communication skills?”

“No, it’s about the trip,” she said at once. “I think you should go.”

I blinked. Usually she was all about hedging and giving me vague advice. It was rare for Sam to champion something so strongly. “Why?”

“Because you need to spank this particular monkey.”

I rolled my eyes, but she went on. “The ghosts, Allie. You need exposure therapy, and what better place for it than a city of ghosts?”

“Don’t give me therapy advice,” I snapped. “I had enough of that bullshit when I was discharged, thanks.”

“So what’s your plan? Just stay in Boulder and hide?”

“I’m not hiding!”

“Of course you are.” Sam folded her arms over her chest. “You’re hiding what happened from everybody who loves you, and you’re hiding from ghosts by never leaving your little safe zones or talking about your magic.”

“Don’t talk to me about hiding!” I was practically shouting now, but I didn’t care. “All you do is park yourself in my head and pass judgment on my choices. It must be really easy to sit there and criticize when you can’t actually help!”

I regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth, but it was too late. Sam’s eyes narrowed. “You mean, because I’m dead?”

I looked away, blinking back tears.

“Now I know you’re fucked-up about this. You would never have said that otherwise.”

“I’m sorry. Really. But why are you forcing this, Sammy?”

Sam hesitated, and I recognized her expression: she was trying to figure out how much she was allowed to tell me about something. “What?” I asked. “Is it the situation in Atlanta? Is something weird actually going on?”

“No. I mean, maybe. I don’t actually know anything about what’s happening there,” Sam admitted. Her mouth tightened, and I knew she was choosing her next words carefully. “But I know about some other things, and babe . . . you’re going to be needed. Not tomorrow, not the next day, but not so far from now either. You need to get your head straight before that happens.”

I sighed, leaning back against the wall. I didn’t feel the same fear here that I felt in the real world, or in my nightmares. But thinking about the tunnel in Cheyenne still hurt. It hurts when ghosts get inside your head. I’d experienced it before, but never like that.

Magic is like a muscle, though—if you don’t use your strength, it ebbs. I hadn’t been out of practice for all that long, but if I stopped using boundary magic and a moment came when I truly needed it . . . I might not be strong enough.

Goddammit.

“You don’t know what you’re asking me, Sam.”

“Actually, I might be the only one who does.” She shrugged. “Just . . . think about it, okay?” She gave me a crooked smile. “I’m not the only one in favor of you going.”

“What does that—”

I woke up with a start. My bedroom was still dark, so I automatically reached for Quinn. His side of the bed was empty, but when I stretched my arms out, yawning, I dislodged something on the pillow. I sat up and flicked on my bedside lamp.

There was a small gift box on Quinn’s pillow. I picked it up, surprised at the weight, and lifted off the lid. Inside the box was a piece of mahogany obsidian the size of my palm, so beautiful and well-formed that I gasped. “Whoa.”

I picked up the stone, feeling the heft of it. Mahogany obsidian was the crystal that prevented ghosts from getting into my head. This piece was almost twice as big as the chunk of obsidian I already owned, and judging by the weight, I was betting it was higher quality. Someone—probably Lily—had wrapped thin wire into a makeshift cage around the stone so it could be attached to a necklace.

It definitely wasn’t something Quinn could just pick up in the middle of the night. He must have been working on getting it for a while . . . even though I hadn’t talked to him about the tunnel ghosts.

There was a note underneath the crystal, which I picked up. “I was saving this for your birthday. Thought you might want it early,” was written in Quinn’s cramped, blocky handwriting.

I smiled like an idiot. God, he loved me.

Pulling my mother’s bloodstone over my head, I added the obsidian to the leather cord and checked the time. Sam had woken me up fifteen minutes before sunrise. Of course.

The vampires would be tucked into their dens for the night, but they still had their phones. I reached for my cell and called Maven.

Chapter 8

Calhoun’s daytime business manager, a woman named Maya, called an hour after sunrise to say she’d booked me on a flight out of Denver late that afternoon. Calhoun apparently didn’t want to waste any time getting me to Atlanta.

The rest of my morning was spent getting everything ready for an impromptu trip. I did laundry, tidied up the house a little, and sent my family a mass text letting them know I’d be out of town for a few days. Katia immediately responded with an offer to drive me to the airport. It was Friday, and she said she’d already worked enough during the week that she could leave a couple of hours early.

When I had worked out all my logistical arrangements, I spent some time with the herd. My last foster dog, Stitch, had been adopted a few weeks earlier—by Simon’s ex-girlfriend Tracy, of all people—so I spent a couple of hours in the backyard with the regulars, throwing grimy tennis balls and getting muddy paw prints on my jeans. Then it was time to go inside and get cleaned up for the trip.

My 5:30 flight was unpleasant but uneventful. By the time we touched down, it was just after ten o’clock, and the sun had fallen well below the horizon. I’d never been in the Atlanta airport before, but it was easy enough to follow the signs to the shuttle, and from the shuttle to the enormous baggage claim area. A mass of bleary-eyed people tried to shuffle to the exit, and for a moment there the crowd threatened to swallow me up. I had to take a few deep breaths and carefully work my way to the side before I got panicky.

I was so distracted by the need for space that I almost missed the tasteful placard with Ms. Luther written in curly script. I caught it out of the corner of my eye and stumbled to a halt, backtracking a few steps to get a look at the man holding it.

He was short and swarthy-looking, dressed in a well-tailored gray suit and mirrored sunglasses. He didn’t look particularly impressive, but I knew he was one of Beau’s famed Four Horsemen. Even if Calhoun’s assistant hadn’t emailed a photo of the man who’d be picking me up, the sunglasses would have tipped me off. They were often worn by paranoid vampires who knew I was a boundary witch and thought the glasses would protect them from being pressed. They were wrong, but I saw no reason to disclose that.

Hitching up my backpack, I approached him. “I’m Lex.” Vampires didn’t usually shake hands, so I didn’t offer mine.

“Warton,” he said stiffly, dropping the arm with the sign. “Did you check a bag?”

“Yes.” Maven’s person in Georgia was going to get me some firearms, but I’d needed to pack my stakes.

“Fine. I’ll bring the car and meet you at that door, one level up.” He pointed at an exit, turned on his heel, and practically marched away.

So much for southern hospitality, I thought, and went to find my oversized duffel bag.

The drive to Calhoun’s house was rough.

It wasn’t the traffic, although even this late, there were plenty of cars on the road. And it wasn’t the car, a Lincoln Continental with a buttery leather interior that definitely cost more than my annual salary.

It was the ghosts.

The mahogany obsidian from Quinn didn’t prevent me from seeing the ghosts; it only kept them from getting into my head—and Maven hadn’t been exaggerating about the volume of ghosts in Atlanta. There weren’t many in the airport itself, but from the moment we got in the car, every block had at least a dozen remnants, dressed in clothes from various periods. Many of them were from a time before paved roads, and the roads had probably changed somewhat, so there was no real sense to their locations: the middle of the street, inside the wall of a building, whatever. The most disturbing was when live humans were standing in the midst of the remnants—talking, eating, laughing, unable to see the person being stabbed to death right on top of them.

It wasn’t as though I hadn’t seen any ghosts since the tunnel in Cheyenne—even with the areas I’d cleared, there were plenty of haunted places in Boulder. But it had always been from a distance, and I’d been able to keep that distance. Now, the car occasionally drove right through ghosts, and if not for the obsidian pressed to my skin, I knew I would be feeling exactly what each one had felt in their last moments. There was no way to stay away from them.

I was pathetically grateful that Warton had raised the privacy screen, because I completely froze up during the car ride. If he had pulled the car over, lowered the privacy screen, and shot me in the head, I doubt I would have been able to even get my arms up.

Eventually I had to close my eyes. I didn’t like losing my sense of orientation, and it felt shameful to ignore the dead, but I was starting to have trouble breathing. It took another few minutes for me to realize my fingers were aching. I was clutching my fists so hard that I was certain my palms had little half-moon indents from my short fingernails. I sure as hell wasn’t going to open my eyes to look.

Exposure therapy my ass. Thanks a lot, Sam.

There was no answer, and I remembered that my sister couldn’t talk to me. The same obsidian that protected my mind from the ghosts kept her out of it.

Her absence felt like an additional blow. Sam’s presence in my head was probably the greatest comfort I had. I felt exposed and alone without her, but I didn’t dare take off the crystal.

After what seemed like hours, the car turned onto what felt like a dirt road, and I risked peeking out the window.

It was as though we’d been transported to another planet. All the remnants were gone, replaced by a dark, foreboding forest. Hitting the button to lower my window, I gulped in air that practically tasted green. I relaxed back against the seat, leaving the window down. In that moment, I would have taken on any possible threat in those woods in exchange for fresh air. Bears, wolves, ninjas—anything.

The driveway wound through the dark trees for maybe half a mile before the car began to slow, and an oasis of light appeared in front of us. I leaned my head out the window until I could see the house ahead: a three-story mansion with a blocky, vaguely Egyptian-looking exterior, outlined by twin rows of pink flowers. It was oddly like coming upon a gingerbread house in the forest—if the gingerbread house were an Art Deco mansion surrounded by azaleas. I’d never seen such a display of color in a single breed of flower. They looked like a watercolor cloud holding up the building.

The ride had seemed long, but I didn’t think we had actually traveled far from the city center. What was a property like this doing in the middle of Atlanta?

Warton stopped the car right in front of the entrance. He climbed out, heading for my door, but I pushed it open myself, prompting an annoyed look from the bottom half of his face. He turned toward the front door, but it popped open and a man rushed out at vampire speed.

He stopped in front of me, smiling broadly: a short man with a big handlebar mustache that somehow worked perfectly on him. His skin looked tanned—vampires froze however they’d looked at their death—and he was dressed in a simple white button-down and brown pants tucked into tall black riding boots.

“Good evening, Ms. Luther,” he said warmly. “I’m Abner Beaumont Calhoun, but everyone calls me Beau.”

I was so distracted by the surreal location that I automatically stuck out my hand. Without missing a beat, Beau reached out and took it in both of his, shaking vigorously.

“Your home is beautiful,” I said. “I wasn’t expecting, um, this style of architecture.”

He smiled, displaying twin rows of crooked white teeth. Vampires had access to plenty of teeth whiteners, but I’d never yet met one who’d tried braces. “Let me guess—you thought it’d be an antebellum mansion? A plantation house or similar?” His eyes were twinkling.

“I guess I did,” I admitted.

“Most of the fine homes in Atlanta were burned during the war,” he said matter-of-factly.

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so I searched for something true to say. “The flowers are gorgeous.”

“Thank you,” Beau said, smiling proudly. “This house is actually called Azalea Manor. They’ve been planted around the building since it was built in 1928. Do you garden?”

“No, not really,” I admitted. “My friend’s mother was a big gardener, though, and I spent a lot of time at her house.” I felt a brief pang of grief for Hazel Pellar.

“Ah, I see. Well, I’m not a gardener either. These days my niece oversees the azaleas.”

“Your . . . niece?”

He waved a hand. “Great, great, great, et cetera.”

“She’s human?” I tried not to sound surprised. Very few humans were allowed to know about the Old World, and I didn’t know any vampires who openly kept in touch with their descendants. I had sort of thought it was forbidden, the way Quinn wasn’t permitted to be near Holly. Maybe it was different for cardinal vampires.

Beau simply nodded. “I’d like you to meet her, actually.” He held out the crook of his arm. “Would you mind a stroll over to the stables? She’s usually with the horses this time of night.”

I looked from his face to the proffered arm and back. If I took his elbow, I’d have to use my left—my shooting hand. “That would be nice, sir, but I would prefer to walk unassisted,” I said as politely as I could.

I wasn’t sure how he was going to respond to that, but he threw back his head and laughed, a deep rumbling sound. “Yes, of course. Pardon me, Sergeant Luther. For a moment there I forgot to whom I was speaking.”

That made me blink. My military rank at the time of my discharge wasn’t a secret, exactly, but it wasn’t something I went around advertising. “Please call me Lex,” I said, trying to keep my voice from getting tight.

“Of course, as long as you’ll call me Beau.” With a little follow me wave, he started down the path, and I quickly followed.

Someone had planted solar-paneled lights on either side of the walkway, so I could at least see where I was stepping. The path was made of a thin layer of wood chips covering reddish-looking dirt. Trees loomed dark and close on either side, making me uneasy. Then I thought, Snakes, and I became very focused on watching my step.

“As Atlanta was rebuilding during the late nineteenth century, some of our local naturalists decided they wanted to preserve this forest for future generations of Georgian schoolchildren,” Beau said as we walked. “I agreed to donate the land to the conservationists in exchange for keeping a few acres to myself.”

Even in the dark, I could see why they’d want to protect the forest, which seemed a world away from the scrubby brush in most of Boulder, or even the mountain forests where I used to camp with my family. It was more lush, with a strong smell of decaying leaves and fresh blooms. We were in the heart of a major city, but I couldn’t hear a single car on the road, or smell any exhaust.

“It’s a beautiful property,” I said carefully. “How is this possible, right here in the city?”

“Wards,” he said simply. “I contract with a local clan leader, Tallulah Finch. She is particularly skilled with wards, and has woven a barrier that keeps away the curious and ill-intentioned.”

Interesting. I knew Maven had wards around her coffee shop, but since I couldn’t perform that kind of magic myself, I’d never really put thought into the details. “It helps that there’s a golf course on one side of the property and public forests on the other,” Beau added. “Neither party looks too hard at the precise location of the border.”

There was a slight smugness to his tone, and I figured the golf course and forest management employees were either pressed or bribed. It seemed like an awful lot of inconvenience and work just to keep this one bit of land. Then again, I had met plenty of other vampires who were obsessed with territory and property.

We turned a final corner, and the path ended abruptly, giving way to a wide, flat clearing enclosed by a wooden fence and lit by the same type of floodlights used for baseball fields or big parking lots. I had to blink against the sudden brightness. When my eyes adjusted, I realized I was looking at a huge oval paddock.

“It’s bright out here,” I said. “Do you worry about airplanes spotting you?”

“Oh, the wards also camouflage us from the air,” Beau replied. “It’s a nuisance, of course, but the lights are necessary for both horse and rider. Do you ride?”

“I took lessons for a year or two when I was a child, but didn’t have the passion for it.” Sam had been the better rider, and kept up with lessons most of the way through high school. Funny, I hadn’t thought about that in ages.

“You must not have met the right horse,” Beau said, in the pompous way of someone who considers himself an expert.

I wasn’t sure how to respond, but I didn’t need to. “Ah, here they come,” he said happily.

I squinted. Even with the lights, I could just barely make out the barn at the far end of the clearing. The space was that big. Something was moving toward us, and a second later the rhythmic sound of pounding hooves filled the air like a drumbeat.

As bright as the paddock was, the horse and rider were moving so fast that they were fifty feet away before I could make out any details. The horse was enormous, nearly as big as a draft horse, and pale gray. It seemed to glow against the night, and I had to appreciate the beauty of its movement, especially considering its size. The rider was a petite woman who seemed downright tiny in comparison.

As they came closer, the horse slowed to a trot and then a walk, until finally he began to snort and paw at the ground. I glanced at Beau and saw a look of resignation come over his face. The rider steered the horse sideways, away from the vampire.

“And that’s as close as he will allow,” Beau said with attempted gallantry. It was obvious, from the way he watched the horse, that he longed to be the one on its back. “Deimos is less skittish around vampires than many of the horses I’ve owned, but he still has his limits.”

Interesting. I knew animals disliked vampires—with the exception of Dopey, who was too stupid, all my rescues hid or freaked out whenever Quinn was at the house, and that was after years of exposure. But I hadn’t really considered that horses would have the same reaction. I felt a jab of sympathy for Beau.

“He’s gorgeous,” I said honestly. “What, um, breed is he?” Horses came in breeds, right?

“Deimos is a Percheron mix. They were originally bred as warhorses.”

“He’s enormous.”

“Eighteen hands, over two thousand pounds,” Beau replied, looking pleased. “A stallion.”

I was running out of semicompetent questions. “The rider, that’s your niece?”

“Yes,” he said, “my thrice-great niece, Odessa.”

“She knows about you?”

“About vampires, yes.” He raised an eyebrow, as though daring me to challenge him. I didn’t take the bait.

The path continued along the length of the paddock, but Beau stopped at the end of the paddock, where he leaned his forearms against the fence like it was his default position. I stood next to him, watching as the rider wheeled her horse around and guided him over several jumps. I had thought Deimos was graceful when he was running, but he soared over the jumps like he’d been waiting his whole life to do it. It was beautiful.

After a few minutes I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, and spotted a golf cart zipping along the path toward us from the direction of the barn. “That’s Elliot,” Beau said to me without taking his eyes off the horse and rider. “One of my grooms.”

The driver stopped well short of us and hopped out, climbing easily through the fence and circling toward the horse’s head with practiced caution. Odessa caught sight of him, and they exchanged a few words. Then she swung her right leg over the saddle and landed on the ground with a simple ease that suggested years of practice. She handed the reins to Elliot, patted Deimos’s neck, and jogged toward us.

As she got close I saw that Odessa was older than I’d first thought, maybe eighteen or twenty. She wore a green button-down tucked into tight jeans, with knee-high black riding boots spattered with mud. She was small and muscular, with dark hair pulled into a tight bun. A few little wisps had pulled free, framing her tanned, pixie face. She bounded up to us, blue eyes bright with excitement. For a moment I was reminded so much of Sam that it took my breath away.

“Is this her? Hello!” she cried, reaching out to pump my hand. She was wearing skintight riding gloves, the leather as soft as flannel. “I’m Odessa Calhoun. It’s so lovely to meet you, Ms. Luther.”

“Lex,” I said, my eyebrows raised a tad. “Nice to meet you too. You looked great out there.”

Odessa beamed with pride, but Beau said in a harder tone, “I thought we agreed that you would wear a riding helmet, Odessa.”

She reddened, but tore her eyes off me long enough to give Beau a contrite look. “Uncle Beau, I absolutely meant to, but I was so excited to see y’all I forgot to grab it, and Deimos seemed just as anxious to get out. Can you forgive me, just this once?”

She smiled prettily at him, her cheeks dimpling, and I thought, whoa. This was a girl who knew how to get what she wanted.

“Of course,” Beau said, appeased. He looked at me. “Odessa has been looking forward to meeting you, so I promised we’d come say hello.”

“Oh,” I said, not knowing what else to say. Odessa was looking at me with huge eyes. Was it possible that I had . . . a fan?

“Could we maybe grab lunch or dinner while you’re here?” Odessa said hopefully. “I’d just love to hear about you—” She cast a quick glance at Beau and added, “And of course, I’d like to welcome you properly to Atlanta. We so appreciate you coming. What do you say?”

“Sure.”

“Wonderful! What time—” Odessa began, but Beau cut her off.

“You can work out the details with Maya in the morning.” He turned toward the groom and raised his voice. “Elliot, do you have a spare helmet in that golf cart?”

“Yes, sir!” The groom practically dived for the back of the golf cart. Elliot was no fool.

“There,” Beau said to Odessa, who managed not to look disappointed. “Run along and put Deimos through the rest of his paces. I’m sure you and Miss Lex will get together soon.”

For a moment, I thought the girl would argue with the powerful vampire, but Odessa just smiled, going on tiptoes to kiss Beau on the cheek. “Of course, Uncle.” To me, she added, “Lovely to meet you.”

“You too.”

Beau stood there, quiet and still, while Odessa turned around and sprinted along the clay path toward the cart, where Elliot held out a black riding helmet. She snuck a look over her shoulder to see if we were watching, and I realized that was why Beau and I were still waiting there. Smiling a little sheepishly, Odessa put the helmet on and waved at us. Then she practically vaulted onto the enormous horse, who responded instantly to her touch.

Chapter 9

Beau seemed like he would have been happy to stand there watching the horse and rider all night, but when Odessa returned to the jumps, he held his hand out, gesturing the way we had come, and we started back along the path.

“Odessa’s parents died in an accident when she was a child,” Beau explained as we walked. “Her two older brothers were nearly college-age, and they stayed with friends. Odessa came to live with me.”

“I don’t know much about riding, but she seems very talented,” I said, in what I hoped was a neutral voice. “It must run in the family.”

Beau turned to look at me. “Thank you. Yes, she’s a born horsewoman, but please don’t tell her I said so. We are having a disagreement right now over college.”

“She doesn’t want to go?” I asked, a little surprised. Odessa seemed like she’d be right at home in a sorority. Or maybe a cheerleading squad.

He shook his head. “She would prefer to take Deimos to the Olympics.”

“Really? Could she do it?”

“You mean, are they good enough? Yes, I expect they are. Last year they won a number of competitions, and began to draw a bit of attention. I knew it wouldn’t be long before the world began asking about Deimos’s owner and Odessa’s background, so I forbade any further competitions.” He gave me a wry smile. “Sometimes I think she deferred college out of spite.”

“I see,” I said, not sure what else to say. None of this seemed like any of my business.

Beau seemed to pick up the thought, because he added, “I apologize, Miss Lex. That’s not why you’re here.”

“Maven said you were having a problem with ghosts,” I said cautiously.

He frowned. “Yes. Someone is taking the Unsettled.”

Taking them? That was an odd way to phrase it. I’d never heard of anyone stealing a ghost. “The Unsettled?” I echoed. “That’s what you call them?”

He shot me a slightly confused look. “That’s what they are. The ghosts of battle.”

I felt like I was missing something, or like we were having two different conversations, but before I could figure it out, he had moved on. “Are you aware of Georgia’s history during the war?” he asked.

I didn’t have to ask which war he meant. It was pretty obvious that Beau still had one foot in his past. “Just what every kid learns in public high school.”

He nodded, his face disappointed but resigned. “Many, many ghosts were made during the siege of Atlanta, as you probably saw on your way here. It wasn’t just the trauma of a violent death—the dead also suffered the indignities of disrespect.”

I wanted to ask what that meant, but we had reached the driveway again, and Beau gestured toward the house. “Come, we can finish this conversation in my study.”

He led me through two of the massive stone pillars to the double door, opening the left side and ushering me in.

It was like stepping into The Great Gatsby. I have no particular interest in architecture or interior design, but I stopped dead for a moment, taking in the ornate grand staircase, the black-and-white floor tiles, the baby grand piano.

“If we have time later, I can give you a tour, but for now . . .” Beau pointed at a heavy wooden door on the right.

“Right. Sorry.”

I let him get past me, open the door, and usher me inside.

The office was brighter than I’d expected, with marigold walls lit by Tiffany-style sconces. The furniture was a warm cherrywood, and included a heavy desk, two visitor chairs, a couch, and built-in floor-to-ceiling bookcases on two of the walls.

“It’s beautiful,” I said in awe. As I turned to glance back at Beau, who was closing the door, I realized that the yellow-gold walls weren’t made of plaster. I touched one, and felt a spongy pad.

“Acoustic tiles,” Beau said proudly. “This room is soundproofed, even against vampires.”

I expected him to take the desk chair, but he sat on the couch, motioning at the other furniture. “Wherever you’re comfortable.”

I picked a visitor chair, turning it slightly so I could see both Beau and the door we’d come through. “Before we continue, can I offer you something to eat or drink?” Beau asked. “I have some whiskey in here somewhere, I believe, or I can get tea, soda, or coffee from the kitchen.”

I lifted my eyebrows. I’d assumed that Beau would have some sort of domestic help, considering the size of the house and his need for a food source. Even Maven, who was the least pretentious vampire I’d ever met, had plenty of human employees, and other vampires were constantly coming in and out of the coffee shop.

Beau picked up on my surprise and gave me a rueful smile. “The daytime staff, who take care of Odessa’s needs, have gone home for the night. And I’m afraid a number of my compatriots declined to be present this evening.”

That was an awfully fancy way to say, “They didn’t want to meet you.” I thought of Warton’s mirrored sunglasses. “They’re afraid of me,” I stated.

“Yes.” His face gave away nothing.

I took a second to absorb that and then decided it wasn’t really important to my purpose here. “I don’t need anything to drink, thank you,” I said, shifting a little in my chair. “Please, go back to your concern about the missing remnants.”

I hadn’t meant to sound dismissive, but Beau went still for a moment, his polite smile fading away. “They aren’t remnants,” he said in a dangerously quiet voice. “These men were my friends, my brothers. Many of them served in my brigade, or even my regiment.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, though I automatically flexed my wrist, just enough to feel the shredder stake I’d secured to my forearm. “To me, each ghost is a leftover piece of a human soul. By laying the ghost, I send that piece to be with the rest on the other side.”

Beau gave a slight headshake. “The ghosts of battle are not like your usual scattered pieces of psyche. I thought you understood that.”

“Maybe you could explain it to me.”

I did my best to sound diplomatic, but his eyes flashed with irritation. “Hundreds of thousands of soldiers died during the war,” he answered tightly. “Aside from the human tragedy, it created a logistical nightmare. Here in Atlanta, for example, most of the fighting took place during the summer. After each battle, the bodies were usually buried where they fell, in shallow mass graves.”

I nodded, though I had never really considered this problem. During my war, soldiers’ remains had been sent home.

“It was weeks or even years before anyone could be bothered to reinter the bodies,” Beau went on, “and nearly all were unidentifiable by then.” He hesitated for a moment as if searching for the right words. “They were not put to rest, not in a proper sense. As a result, the spirits wandered.”

He looked at me expectantly, like he’d finished leading me to an easy conclusion. But the remnants I was used to were tethered to the place they had died—or, in one case, to the person who had killed them.

Then again, if I was certain of anything, it was that I still had a lot to learn about ghosts. “Are they still wandering?” I asked Beau.

“No.” He looked impatient again. “Over time, the Unsettled drifted toward one another, pulling together like gravity. As years passed, many of those small groups were drawn to the relics of their former lives: bodies, of course, but also weapons, uniforms, supplies—the objects that were closest to them.”

Relics? I tried to keep the confusion off my face. “You say that like it’s a good thing. Like having them around is beneficial.”

“Of course it’s beneficial!” he snapped. “They are a testament, Miss Luther. An uncomfortable reminder of the hubris and cruelty of men, and the terrible cost we paid in blood.”

“A reminder to who?” I said as calmly as I could manage. “You and me, and a handful of humans with enough witchblood to pick up EVP?”

“You don’t . . .” He shook his head. “I thought you were supposed to be the most powerful boundary witch alive,” he said with disgust. “How can you know so little about ghosts?”

I just shrugged. Pointing out my lack of knowledge about boundary magic wasn’t going to offend me. It was too fair. “I was adopted,” I replied.

His face went slack. “I see,” Beau said slowly. He leaned back and smoothed his unwrinkled shirt, giving us both a moment to regroup. “I apologize for my quick temper, Miss . . . Lex.”

“No apology necessary.” But his sudden changes in temperament were disconcerting, and I felt like I was starting to get the whole “Mad Cavalier” nickname. He was emotional, which in itself was odd for a vampire.

Then again, it must be frustrating to be the only one who could see something you were so passionate about. And I couldn’t exactly fault him for getting worked up over ghosts. An image of the tunnels popped up in my thoughts again, and I had to clench my fists and will it away.

Beau frowned, and I realized he’d probably caught a spike in my pulse. Goddamned vampires. “To answer your question,” Beau said, in a let’s move on tone, “the Unsettled are not just noticeable to you and me. Because they collect in certain places, in dense concentrations, they reach a sort of”—his eyes jumped back and forth, searching for the words—“a critical mass. They affect auras. They provoke moods and thoughtfulness. They weigh on people, even humans. That is as it should be.”

I blinked, trying to keep my total surprise off my face. He was right; I’d never heard of ghosts behaving like that. “You . . . want them to keep haunting people?”

He huffed. “I want the same thing I have wanted for more than a hundred and fifty years. For their deaths to have meaning.”

“Even though you fought for the South?” I said without thinking.

Several expressions crossed over Beau’s face very quickly: anger, grief, irritation. “That is not a conversation I wish to have,” he said tightly. “The point is that I am the guardian of the Unsettled, and someone is interfering with me.” He took a breath and added, in the tone of a man admitting his greatest fear, “And possibly with Odessa.”

I had been about to dismiss him as an actual crazy person, but at the mention of Odessa, I frowned. What could she have to do with this? “Okay, wait. Start at the beginning.”

“The Unsettled first disappeared from my property a week ago,” he said, gesturing around the room. “I stopped at Oakland the following evening and found them missing there too. Since then, I have been making the rounds of my city, checking on their usual domains. They have also vanished from Utoy Cemetery and the Atlanta History Center. Two cemeteries and two locations containing artifacts from the war.”

“Artifacts?” I automatically glanced around the orderly study as though Beau might be using a bayonet as a paperweight or something.

“Not in here,” he said impatiently. “I don’t advertise it, but I have the largest private collection of war relics in the world. I simply choose not to display them.”

“Just a minute, please.” I pulled the mahogany obsidian out of my shirt and over my head, setting it on the floor next to me. Then I dropped into my boundary mindset. I saw the red glow of Warton near the front of the house, and another bright red from Beau, but that was it. Not even the slightest hint of remnants. I kicked myself for not noticing earlier. I’d been so relieved to get a break from Atlanta’s ghosts, it hadn’t occurred to me that there should have been at least a few in a house this old.

“You’re right,” I told Beau.

“Of course I am,” he said, angry again. “Understand, Lex, that I spend most of my time here, on the grounds, or at Oakland. The Unsettled vanished from Azalea Manor while I was at Promenade, and from Oakland while I was here. Someone knew I would be gone, and took them away from me.”

His eyes flashed at me, and for a moment I got a visceral sense of his strength, the amount of power and anger he was trying to contain. It wasn’t like being near Maven, who practically had her own gravitational pull, but it was . . . something.

I broke eye contact and told myself to focus on the problem. “Promenade” must be the name for those weekly parties at Oakland. The ghosts had been there, and now they were gone. Very carefully, I asked, “How is your relationship with the local witch clans?”

In theory, any witch could lay ghosts. But trades witches—those without a magical specialty—would require a number of people and a small amount of mandragora, one of the magic herbs outlawed in the United States.

Beau shook his head vehemently. “Not to be indelicate, but the local witches are in my pocket. I pay Tallulah Finch, the leader of the largest clan in Atlanta, a ridiculous amount of money for my wards. She would be foolish to do something like this without permission, and she is not foolish. It’s not the local witches.” He folded his arms over his chest and gave me an expectant look.

It took me a second, but I got it . . . and I felt like a complete idiot for not having seen through him sooner. The big consultant fee, the willingness to swear on my safety, all the money and fuss to bring me here. Anger rushed up in me.

“Mr. Calhoun,” I said when I was sure of my voice, “did you bring me to Atlanta to hunt a rogue boundary witch?”

Calhoun’s eyes gleamed as he took in my question. “Have you heard the expression, ‘send a monster to catch a monster’?”

Chapter 10

Slow down, cautioned Sam’s voice in my head. It startled me for a second before I remembered that I’d removed the obsidian. Take a breath. Unclench your fists.

I hated that she was right, but I forced myself to do as she’d said. This kind of crap was exactly why you shouldn’t send a boundary witch on diplomatic missions.

Oh, it wasn’t the “monster” thing. That was rude, but . . . well, not entirely unwarranted. Everyone in the Old World hated boundary witches. Vampires didn’t like that we could press them. Other witches resented what boundary practitioners had done during the Inquisition—raising the dead and sending them after the Inquisitors.

And everyone was pretty repulsed by how boundary magic was activated. Any culture would find killing your kids to turn them into witches horrifying, but for the Old World, where reproducing was always difficult and offspring of any species were valued, it was particularly repugnant.

But though I understood Beau’s attitude, I really didn’t like being misled.

“Why didn’t you just tell me all this before I came here?” I asked. I was kind of proud that my voice was steady.

“If I had,” he said, arms still crossed over his chest, “would you have come?”

“I don’t know. But summoning me here on false, or at least vague, pretenses was not a great way to start a working relationship.”

“I couldn’t risk you saying no,” he said, matter-of-fact now. “Because of Odessa.”

“What about her?”

“My theory is that a boundary witch—a rogue, as you say—is angry about the Calhouns because we never activate our witchblood. She’s laying the Unsettled to distract and upset me, but there’s no reason for her to stop there,” he said. “Odessa is the last female of the Calhoun line. It’s too late to make her a witch, of course, but if she were taken, if she were forced to have a child . . .”

My stomach churned. This was sounding familiar. It was exactly what had happened to my birth mother, thanks to a group of psychotic men with boundary witchblood and a fear of dying out.

“Are you talking about milites mortis?” I gave Beau an icy smile. “Because I can assure you, they are no longer operating.”

I had personally made sure of it.

Beau leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I’m aware of your activities in that respect. In fact, that’s exactly why I sought you out. You’re a boundary witch, but you weren’t born of murder, and you seek vengeance against those who wish to perpetuate boundary magic. Hell, you killed Lysander, your own biological father. You are the monster who fights monsters.”

Sam’s annoyed voice rang out in my head. I take it back, Lex. Punch him.

I didn’t, but it was hard to keep the revulsion off my face. Beau had the facts more or less right—I had killed most of the milites mortis, including Lysander and even my half brother, Emil. That group had spent generations raping and imprisoning young women like my birth mother, all to promote boundary magic bloodlines.

But Beau’s characterization still irked me. “That’s not who I am,” I told Beau, trying to look calm. “I’m not some kind of magical bounty hunter. I didn’t declare war on boundary magic itself.”

He lifted a hand impatiently, as though he could just wave away my words. “I don’t particularly care how you see yourself. I want you to find out who’s doing this and stop them before they lay any more of the Unsettled. And before they get to Odessa.”

I noticed that he mentioned the ghosts before his living niece. Real classy. “How do you expect me to do that?” I countered. “I’m not a detective.”

Beau looked as frustrated as I felt. “You’ll attend Promenade tomorrow night and meet my Horsemen.”

“Why?”

“Because,” he said impatiently, “the witch who did this knew precisely when I would be at Promenade. She knew when I would be away from the other locations too. Do you think my schedule is public knowledge?”

“You think someone in your camp is passing information. A mole.”

“Of course not,” he huffed. “I think someone in my group is being pressed. Isn’t that what you people do?”

Oh. I rubbed my forehead, trying to think through the implications. I was tired, and it was catching up with me. I felt stupid, and ignorant, and sick of this person. “Even if you’re right, there’s no way for me to instantly know a vampire has been pressed. If you want to break a press, you need a null, not a boundary witch. And I don’t like being lied to.” I stood up. “I think you’ve wasted your time.”

Whoa. Slow down, babe.

Beau stood too, stepping across the short space between us, getting into what I defined as my personal space. “So first you don’t know about your own magic, and now you can’t tell when someone else is using it?” He sneered. “Perhaps I should have hired your niece instead. Charlie, right?”

Maybe it was the long day of travel after so little sleep, or the fact that he had said “Charlie” instead of “Charlotte.” Whatever it was, I snapped.

And attacked a cardinal vampire.

Chapter 11

As powerful as my magic is, there’s not a lot I can do, physically, against most of the Old World. I can suck the life out of anything without magic, but that doesn’t get me very far against a vampire or werewolf, or even a strong trades witch. During the fiasco in Montana, I’d gone up against a werewolf, and if Mary hadn’t stepped in, he would have killed me. As it was, I still had fading white scars on my legs from werewolf claws.

That whole situation had freaked Quinn out, and it hadn’t exactly helped with my nightmares. So for the last few months, Quinn and I had been working on what Lily referred to as “fang-fu”—figuring out how I, as a basically human-powered person, could handle a fight with vampires or werewolves. Quinn had even gotten a couple of other vampires (and Mary, who enjoyed herself a little too much) to come spar with us, so I could practice against multiple opponents.

It had become obvious right away that I wasn’t going to win a fight if it went more than a couple of minutes, so the main objective of fang-fu was to attack as hard and fast as I could, and hopefully surprise my opponent.

I hadn’t actually tried it for real until that moment with Beau, though. Without slowing to think about it, I dropped down, swept Beau’s legs out from under him, and was perched on his chest pressing the shredder to his heart before he realized what was happening.

For a second, maybe two, we were both frozen in shock. I was threatening the life of a cardinal vampire. I’d personally seen Maven kill people for less than this.

The safest thing for me might be to plunge the shredder into his chest, exploding his heart, or at least try to press him to forget my actions. But I didn’t know if I could press a cardinal vampire, and failing to press him could make things even worse.

Another second ticked by. Before I could decide what to do, Beau tilted his head back on the carpet and let out a huge, booming belly laugh.

The tension broke like cheap yarn. I felt his body relax underneath me, and I became very aware that I was straddling a strange man’s chest, while he was doing nothing more than chuckling to himself.

Embarrassed, I sat up and swung my leg over so I was sitting on the floor next to him. Beau made no move to get up. “That was just wonderful,” he chortled, his chest still shaking with laughter. “I wanted to see what you could do, and I admit, you exceeded my highest expectations. No wonder Maven keeps you around.”

I actually blushed. “You were baiting me?” I asked, although by now it was obvious.

“Mostly, I was just being an ass,” he admitted, sitting up. “But it’s also pretty common knowledge that you have a weak spot. I wanted to know how hard I’d have to push before you lashed out.”

Charlie. Charlie was my weak spot. All he’d had to do was drop her name, and I’d attacked like a bull in an arena. This was so embarrassing. What a childish fucking move.

This is what happens when you go without sleep, babe.

I couldn’t even be annoyed with Sam, because she was right. I hadn’t been thinking. “I could have killed you,” I blurted, immediately regretting the words.

“With that?” He looked scornfully at my shredder, which I was busy tucking back into my sleeve. “Maybe if you’d swung it immediately you could have pierced my chest cavity. You didn’t have the leverage once you hesitated.”

“It’s spelled to explode when it hits tissue,” I told him.

“Oh.” Beau blinked, rolling to his feet with easy grace. “I see.”

He reached down, holding out his hand. I allowed him to effortlessly pull me to my feet. When I stood, we were toe to toe. “I’m—I’m so sorry,” I stammered. “I can get a cab back to the airport.”

“Good gracious, I hope not.” Beau touched his mustache, as if worried my attack might have ruffled it. “I apologize, Miss Luther. You’re right, I shouldn’t have lied to get you here. And I shouldn’t have baited you. I could have avoided this confusion if I’d been more forthcoming.”

He sighed, and the laugh lines on his face faded away, replaced by a furrow between his eyebrows. “We have this in common, you know. When it comes to Odessa, I do seem to behave in a rash manner. Perhaps that’s something both of us need to work on.”

I winced. He was absolutely right, and so was Sam. I was too tired, and I’d been reckless. “Perhaps it is,” I said.

Beau gestured to the chair where I’d been sitting. “Please, can we start over?”

I sat down on the edge of the chair, struggling to think of a rational question. I missed Quinn, the actual investigator. “Has Odessa actually been attacked?” I asked.

He shook his head. “She has said on several occasions that she felt someone watching her, but this other witch has not approached her—yet. However,” he continued, “right after the first ghosts went missing, I hired a daytime bodyguard for her, Becca Rhodes. Both of them are wearing witch bags at all times.”

A witch bag was a charm that protected the wearer from being directly impacted by spells. Beau was doing exactly what I would have suggested. “I suspect Becca’s presence has been keeping this other witch at bay,” he went on, “but she’s getting bolder. Oakland is one thing—unless it’s Promenade, the grounds are nearly empty at night—but laying ghosts at the Atlanta History Center is downright brazen. I want you to find this bitch before she gets to Odessa.”

“You don’t know that Odessa is actually what this person wants,” I pointed out.

“True. But if there’s even a chance . . .” The anger suddenly dropped away from his face, and he gave me a pleading look. “Please. The Unsettled and Odessa are the two most important things in my life.” He gestured around the gorgeous study with its stained-glass wall sconces. “Without them, none of this matters.”

Goddammit. I didn’t like this—I didn’t trust Beau—but I was going to have to stay. If there was any chance someone was attempting to do to Odessa what the milites mortis had done to my birth mother, I needed to try and stop it.

I stared right into his eyes, though I was careful not to open a connection between us. “If you lie to me again, Mr. Calhoun, I’m on the next plane to Denver, Odessa or not.”

“Understood,” Beau said, then added pleasantly, “And if you point that stake at me again, I’ll snap your neck and then cut off your head.”

I knew he meant it, but I found myself fighting a smile. At least we were on the same page now. “Understood.”

“Where would you like to begin?”

I had to think about that for a moment. How would one go about tracking a boundary witch? I thought about the things Quinn and I usually looked for when there was a problem: witnesses, evidence, motive. “Do you have someone in Atlanta PD?” I asked.

“Of course,” Beau said, looking slightly offended. It’s hard to run a city without having at least a few cops on your payroll.

“I’m assuming whatever happened to the Unsettled happened at night, when they were active. You should ask the police if there have been reports of disturbances at those locations. Trespassing, vandalism, noise complaints, whatever.”

Beau nodded. “That’s a good idea.”

“Did any of the locations have night security? Human or otherwise?”

He tapped his fingers against the arm of the couch, thinking. “Oakland has a single guard at night, but we work closely with the man, and I’ve already spoken to him. He doesn’t remember anything unusual happening.”

“What about the History Center?”

“It depends on the night,” he said. “They have a number of private events, when it would be difficult to get in and do serious magic. But at other times there are only one or two guards covering a great deal of ground.”

“Maybe someone’s been asking about the event schedule?” I suggested.

“I will talk to them.”

“Okay. In the meantime, tomorrow I’d like to speak to the leader of the witch clans and the bodyguard protecting Odessa.”

Beau nodded, looking pleased. “I’ll have Maya arrange it.”

I stood up again. “I should get to the hotel, grab a few hours of sleep.” But I paused for a moment, hesitating.

“What is it?”

I thought of the empty mansion. “I’m getting the impression that a lot of your people won’t appreciate having me around.”

Beau practically puffed up, ready to defend his authority, but I raised my hands, placating. “Let me finish. I don’t give a shit what any of them think of me, but I don’t want to deal with people lying or working against me because of what I can do. And, to be completely blunt, you stepping down from power won’t do me a lot of good if I’m dead.”

Beau tilted his head in acknowledgment. “True.”

“I guess what I’m asking is, aside from the concern about being pressed, who do you really trust to help me?”

“The Horsemen,” Beau said immediately. “Warton, Hempstead, Milburn, and Vick.”

I already knew their names from Maven’s research, but I nodded like I was making a mental note. If Warton was any indication, the Horsemen probably weren’t going to be particularly welcoming, but Beau was sure they would cooperate, and that was all I cared about.

He thought for a moment, then added, “Plus Maya and Odessa.”

“Okay.” He hadn’t included Becca Rhodes. Beau probably trusted her to keep Odessa safe, but not with any sensitive information. “I’ll look forward to hearing from Maya in the morning. Good night, Mr. Calhoun.”

He gave me a grim smile. “Good hunting, Miss Luther.”

I hadn’t let Maya Elkins make my hotel reservation, preferring to book myself into the newest chain hotel on the same side of town as Azalea Manor. I figured I didn’t have much chance of keeping it a secret from Beau, so I let Warton drive me there. If I didn’t feel safe, I could always switch hotels during the day.

The moment we left Calhoun’s property, I put the mahogany obsidian back around my neck. The deluge of ghosts wasn’t quite such a shock this time, but I also squeezed my eyes shut right away, letting my head rest on the window.

I was tired of looking at death.

The hotel was just as new and generic as advertised. There were a few remnants floating around the lobby—a new building didn’t keep away the ghosts that were already on the grounds—but my room was on the fourth floor, and whatever had caused their deaths hadn’t reached that height.

In the room, I did a quick check of the closet and bathroom and made sure the sliding glass door to the balcony was locked. Then I dug through my bag for the new burner phone I’d put in my checked luggage. I tore it out of the packaging, plugged it in, and called Quinn.

He answered right away, sounding a little worried. “Hey. Did you get in okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine,” I said, feeling a little guilty. I’d left him a note explaining what I was doing, but I should have texted when I’d gotten to Atlanta. I’d been distracted by the ghosts.

I touched my necklace. “Thank you for the mahogany obsidian. It’s been a big help already.”

“Good.” His voice relaxed. “I’m glad you decided to go, but I wasn’t expecting you to be gone already tonight. He must really want you there.”

“Uh . . . you could say that.”

I told Quinn about my conversation with Beau, and he was, predictably, pissed off. “I can’t believe he lied to Maven,” he said in disbelief. “And he called you there just to play Most Dangerous Game with another witch? This is bullshit. You should come home.”

I thought of Odessa, vaulting herself onto her horse as easily as I could stand up. “I agree that it was a dick move, but I’m going to give it a couple of days. I need to see if someone really is stalking this kid,” I told him. “She’s not an active witch, but . . . she’s got boundary witchblood, Quinn.”

He quieted, picking up on the implication. “You think she’s like your mom,” he said.

“Beau thinks that,” I corrected. “But I have to know if it’s true.”

There was a pause, then: “You know, if he knew about milites mortis . . .”

“Yeah?”

“Isn’t it also possible that there is no threat to Odessa, and he’s using your past to manipulate you?”

I leaned back against the headboard. Quinn was thinking like a vampire, but he wasn’t wrong. “Yeah, it’s possible. But I can’t take the risk.”

“I understand. Just be careful, okay?”

“I will.” I thought of Warton and his mirrored sunglasses. “They really don’t like boundary witches, but I haven’t gotten the impression that anyone in Beau’s camp actually wants to hurt me.”

“Have you heard from Maven’s contact?”

“No. But I just opened this phone. Can you make sure Maven passes on the number? And forward my other calls?”

Quinn promised to do so, and then there was a long pause. “Lex? You okay?”

“Yeah, but . . . I have to ask you kind of an uncomfortable question.”

“Okay . . .”

I took a deep breath. I hated, hated having to ask him this.

“When I pressed you, did you know afterward that you’d been pressed?”

There was another long pause, during which I squeezed my eyes shut. I had pressed Quinn to save his life, but it was still a sore spot.

“Why are you asking?” he said carefully.

I told him about Beau’s suspicion that one of his Four Horsemen may have been pressed. “He wants me to question them tomorrow night, but I’m not sure what to ask. I’m so sorry, but you’re the only vampire I can think of who I’ve pressed and still talk to, other than Clara, and that was, um . . . too much.”

I’d once pressed a rebellious vampire way too hard, and as a result she was basically loyal to me in her DNA. If I hadn’t done it, she would have died, but that didn’t make me feel less guilty.

“I see.” Quinn’s voice was stilted, formal.

“Never mind,” I rushed to say. “I’ll figure it out another—”

“Ask them if they have time missing,” Quinn said abruptly. “Or if they had really strong feelings about something at a certain time, but then later couldn’t remember why they cared so much.”

I pushed out a breath. “I will. Thanks.”

“Goodnight, Lex.”

He hung up without another word.

Leaving the phone on the nightstand to charge, I unpacked the rest of my things, including the four shredder stakes I’d brought from Colorado. Lily had given me the idea of using extra-large wooden knitting needles for the shredders, so they seemed innocuous if other people saw them. I’d found some that were the exact length of my forearm, and Maven had paid a witch in Denver to weave the magic that caused them to explode on impact. The magic worked only once, though, so I’d needed to bring more than the two I had in my carry-on.

When I felt organized, I brought my toiletry bag into the bathroom and took a long shower. It wasn’t even midnight, but the adrenaline boost of facing ghosts and meeting Beau had worn off, and I felt a wave of exhaustion.

As I came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, I noticed that I’d left the balcony curtains open. I padded over to the glass doors to close the curtains before I got dressed—and gasped, taking a little jump backward.

There was a cardboard box sitting on the balcony.

Chapter 12

I ran for the lights first.

I was four stories up, which meant whoever had left the box on my balcony was Old World and could likely see just fine in the dark. But I needed to see outside.

After I flipped the switch, I grabbed a shredder off the desk and crouched down, giving my eyes a few seconds to adjust. When I could see as well as possible, I crawled across the room, trying to spot someone on the balcony. The small space was backlit by streetlights, and even when I squinted, I couldn’t make out any movement. I crawled closer, until my face was inches from the glass doors.

There was no one there.

Babe. You have more than one way to look for people.

Shit. Sam was right. Feeling stupid, I dropped into my boundary mindset. There were hundreds of dim glows coming up from the street level, but nothing at all on the balcony. No red glow of a vampire, no blue glow of life. Whoever had left the box was long gone.

Only then did I relax.

I didn’t have a robe, but I threw on a sleep shirt and a pair of underpants before I unlocked the balcony door and cautiously slid it open. As quickly as possible, I pulled the box inside, closed and locked the door, and yanked the curtains closed.

Then it was just me and a strange package.

Memories of IEDs flooded my mind, but I forced myself to lift the flap. The familiar scent of gun oil filled my nose.

The box was full of weapons.

There was a Sig Sauer P320, a Glock, a broken-open Benelli shotgun, and plenty of ammunition. I also found a sheathed stiletto knife, which I picked up and pulled out of the sheath, giving a low whistle. It looked just like a Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife, the model made famous by British commandos during World War II . . . except that it appeared to be silver-plated on one side.

At the very bottom of the box was a Post-it note that read simply, Per our mutual friend.

I frowned. This was obviously from Maven’s spy, but why hadn’t he or she just introduced themselves? They must be afraid I might reveal their identity . . . or that someone could make me tell. Either way, not a great show of faith in my abilities. I had to admit, though, that I probably would have done the same thing.

I checked all the weapons, making sure they were unloaded, and paid special attention to how the Sig Sauer handled. I hadn’t used this particular sidearm before, but it was similar enough to my Beretta that I wouldn’t have a problem. I’d used both the Glock and Benelli models in the past.

My mysterious benefactor had included a couple of holsters, but I’d also packed the Old West–style quickdraw holster that had been a gift from Quinn. I was a little sentimental about it.

I put everything back in the box and sat down on the bed, reaching for the phone. I texted Maven to let her know I’d gotten the weapons, and she texted back a thumbs-up, which made me smile. By the time I put the phone down again, the adrenaline shock of finding the box had worn off, leaving me slightly queasy with exhaustion. As much as I didn’t want to go to sleep, I couldn’t fight it any longer. I pulled the covers over myself and hoped, once again, that tonight might be different.

I woke up at six thirty to the trill of the phone on my nightstand. I was tangled in a sheet, bathed in sweat and nearly hyperventilating, but eventually I managed to extricate myself and grab the phone.

“Ms. Luther?” said a worried voice. “This is Juan-Carlos, your concierge. We’ve received a complaint about shouting. Is everything okay?”

Pulling the sweaty nightshirt away from my chest, I tried to find my voice to speak. “Fine,” I finally panted. “TV was on too loud. I’ll turn it down.”

Without waiting for a response, I dropped the handset in the cradle and pressed my back against the headboard, running my hands over my arms and legs to reassure myself that nothing was burned. When I was satisfied that my skin was fine, I rested my forehead on my knees.

That had been a bad one. But then, I’d been back in the company of ghosts. Of course I’d dreamed about the tunnel.

Fuck.

I was still tired, but there was no way in hell I was going back to sleep. I got dressed and went down to the hotel gym.

When I got out of the shower a couple of hours later, there was a text waiting for me from Maya: Tallulah Finch will see you at 11 am at her house. I can arrange a car. Lunch with Odessa at 1. Details to follow. There was a second text with addresses.

I sent back a thank-you and said I would get my own car. Then I dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, with the Sig Sauer secured in a pancake holster at the small of my back. I pulled on a light jacket and tucked the freshly cleansed mahogany obsidian in a silk pouch into one of the pockets. I didn’t really need its protection during the day, but I wasn’t going anywhere without it either. That was a lesson I’d learned the hard way.

I kept my birth mother’s bloodstone on its cord around my neck, more from habit than because I expected to use boundary magic. Then I checked myself in the mirror to make sure the Sig Sauer was hidden. I made a point not to look at the bags under my eyes. I didn’t need any more reminders that I wasn’t getting enough sleep.

The hotel valet hailed a cab for me and I went straight to the nearest rental car agency. Maya had made it onto Beau’s list of trustworthy people, but I figured it was safer to be as independent as possible. I rented a boring Toyota sedan and followed my cell phone’s GPS to Tallulah Finch’s house.

I could finally look around Atlanta without being disturbed by the remnants, but I paid little attention to my surroundings. I was busy mulling over my conversation with Beau the night before, trying to figure out what I was going to ask Tallulah Finch. I was picturing someone like Hazel Pellar: earthy, powerful, foreboding. I wanted to be prepared.

When I arrived at my destination and looked around, however, I realized I was on a street of nearly identical suburban mansions. Every yard was immaculate, and there were no cars in driveways or bikes dumped on sidewalks. The whole neighborhood looked like it had been designed by a focus group of rich white people with an unlimited budget. It definitely did not look like any witch’s house I’d ever been to.

There was nobody on the street at this time of day—it was probably a bit late for the gardeners and housekeepers to be arriving, and too early for people coming home from work—but the door to the Finch house swung open as I pulled into the driveway. A woman in her early fifties stepped onto the front porch, lifting a manicured hand to shade her eyes. She wore white linen pants and a floral blouse, with a wristful of bangles and two beaded necklaces that perfectly matched the blouse. Long brown hair with carefully expensive highlights tumbled over her shoulders in perfect waves, and her flawlessly made-up face broke into a smile.

“Why, hello there,” she drawled as I climbed out of the rental car. Her voice was a gentle southern purr. “You must be Allison Luther. Please come right in.”

“Thank you,” I said, feeling oddly nervous. And underdressed.

As I walked up, she held out her hand, knuckles up as though she were royalty. Enormous diamond rings glittered on two of her fingers. “Tallulah Finch.”

“I’m Lex.” Awkwardly, I took her hand and turned my wrist to shake it. Her handshake didn’t match the rest of her—despite the manicure, I could feel calluses on her hands, serious ones. Interesting.

“I’ve got sweet tea set up in the parlor, unless you’d prefer lemonade or Coca-Cola?”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

“Well then, come right this way,” Tallulah said gaily, ushering me into the foyer.

The inside of the house was as meticulously designed as the exterior, with the walls and accents done in warm, sunny shades of yellow and blue. Unlike most of the family homes I was used to, there was no clutter on any of the surfaces. In fact, there were very few loose objects at all, other than a handmade woven basket on one table, filled with expensive-looking balls of yarn and a pair of knitting needles. I wondered if they were purely decorative.

Tallulah led me down the hall to an open door, where I could see a tray of iced drinks resting on a coffee table. As we crossed the room to the sofa set, I noticed the large framed portrait over the fireplace: Tallulah with a jowly middle-aged man and two children: a boy in his early teens and a girl about college age. I paused to look. On either side of the family photo, there were a few smaller frames with individual shots—including one of the girl with her arm around Odessa Calhoun. The two of them were dressed in demure summer dresses, standing in front of an enormous fountain.

Tallulah saw me focusing on the picture. “My daughter, Whitney,” she said proudly. “She’s a freshman at Emory this year.”

“She and Odessa are friends?”

Tallulah had picked up the pitcher of sweet tea, which hovered in the air as she nodded at me. “Since they were little,” she said, smiling. “Dessa was . . . oh, ten or eleven when her parents passed. Beau needed quite a bit of advice on how to raise a little girl.” She poured the first glass of tea, then a second.

I came and sat down. “Do you mind if I ask what happened to Odessa’s parents?”

“Not at all.” Tallulah lifted her glass and took a leisurely sip of the tea. I didn’t touch mine. “It’s not a secret,” she said when she’d set the glass back down. “They were hit by a drunk driver on the way to Azalea Manor.” Her friendly expression faded, replaced by sadness. “Beau was actually first on the scene, from what I understand. Louise and Brian were already dead, but he took Odessa to the hospital.”

“She was in the car?” It came out much sharper than I’d intended, but I was startled. If Odessa had boundary witchblood, and she’d been in a fatal car crash when she was eleven . . . what if she was a boundary witch? I remembered what Beau had said about the Olympics. Could Odessa be pissed enough to lash out by laying Beau’s favorite ghosts?

But Tallulah seemed to read my mind. She raised an index finger and said, “I know what you’re thinking, but Odessa wasn’t at great risk. She broke both legs, the poor dear, and there were some cuts, but she did not die. Of this I am absolutely certain.”

Her voice grew very hard on this last sentence, and for just a moment I saw the powerful witch behind the genteel southern mask. And something else—an unmistakable hint of revulsion at the thought of Odessa turning into a boundary witch. Tallulah had made damned sure that the girl’s heart hadn’t stopped before she’d let Odessa play with her daughter. It wouldn’t be that difficult for a witch with plenty of money to get hold of a medical file.

Tallulah gave a light laugh. “Of course, the hardest part was keeping Dessa off horses while her legs were in casts. Horse-crazy since she could walk, that girl. He wouldn’t say so, but I’m sure it makes Beau proud.”

The segue was very well done. I smiled awkwardly, not sure how to respond. I was used to talking to suspects. I didn’t know what to do with a glossy southern woman who seemed like a different species from the witches I knew.

“So,” Tallulah said pleasantly, uncrossing and then recrossing her ankles, “how are you finding Georgia? It must be so very different from where you’re from. Denver, is it?”

“Boulder.”

“Of course, my mistake. Will you get to see much of Atlanta while you’re here?”

I just looked at her for a moment. She was still smiling, but it was like looking at a wall.

You don’t have to play her game, babe. You don’t work for The Real Housewives of Atlanta.

Fuck it. Sam was right. “Tallulah, would you mind terribly if we cut the shit?”

She simply raised a perfect eyebrow, giving away nothing. “I beg your pardon?”

“Beau brought me here because something is happening to his ghosts. Do you have anything to do with that?”

She put down her glass of tea with an air of poised indignation. “Of course not.”

“Do you know what’s going on?”

I thought her lips pursed for a moment, but she shook her head, turning it into a hair toss. “I have nothing to do with Beau’s ghosts. I don’t pretend to understand his obsession with them, but as he probably told you, I make a nice living from Beau and his people. I have absolutely no reason to interfere with his . . . interests.”

She reached up to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear, and as her silver bangles shifted, I realized they were catching on something instead of sliding straight down her wrist. When I looked closely I saw it was one of those paracord bracelets, the kind campers and hikers wear in case of emergency.

Interesting. Tallulah didn’t exactly strike me as the camping type. Even in Boulder, people were more likely to attach them to backpacks or camp gear than to wear them. Besides, this one was flesh-colored, clearly meant to be hidden by the bangles. “Nice jewelry,” I said.

She made a subtle adjustment to the bracelets, covering the paracord. “Is that all you needed to ask?”

“Besides me, are there any boundary witches in Atlanta?”

I was watching closely for some kind of subtle reaction, but she relaxed, leaning back in her seat. “I don’t believe so.”

“Would you know?”

She tilted her head a moment, thinking it over. “If a boundary witch came here and kept an absolutely low profile, without doing magic, I suppose not. But the Atlanta Old World is a fairly small community. I know every clan leader, every child with witchblood, every store that sells authentic supplies. More importantly, I constructed the wards for at least two of the locations where ghosts have gone missing, so I visit them regularly.”

“Would a boundary witch need to interfere with your wards to perform magic?”

She hesitated for a second, then admitted, “Not necessarily. The wards at Oakland, for example, are designed to keep humans away during Promenade. They wouldn’t prevent witch magic. But,” she added, holding up a manicured finger, “there would likely be signs of spellwork. Supplies, chalk lines”—her lips curled with disgust—“blood spatters from sacrifices.”

I blinked. “Not a fan of boundary magic, are you?”

I was baiting her, but Tallulah’s glossy lips pressed in a line, like she was working hard to restrain herself. “Go ahead,” I said in a bored voice. “I’ve heard it all before.”

To my surprise, she gave me a thin smile, showing teeth. “Bless your heart,” she said, her voice soft and dangerous. “You have no idea where you are, do you, child?”

I didn’t like that, but I made myself smile back at her. “Maybe you can explain it to me.”

Leisurely, Tallulah leaned back in her seat, crossing her legs—at the knee this time. “Honey, this is Atlanta. Capital of the new South, home of Georgia’s best in culture, economics, and aesthetics. And do you know what’s just outside this city?”

I just raised an eyebrow. “Anarchy,” she spat. “Trash magic. The South is old, older than you can imagine, and we’ve got more than enough perversions of magic to prove it. Voodoo, Witchery Way, rootwork, granny magic, even Santeria up from the Mexicans.” She flicked her fingers dismissively. “Nonsense built on superstition and dead religions rather than sympathetic or natural magics.”

Well, that was racist. “What’s your point?”

“My point,” she said, uncrossing her legs and leaning forward to stab her finger at me, “is that your little necromancy bit might impress Beau, or some out-of-touch vampire in some nowhere northern state, but I have bigger concerns. I have a dozen disparate magical traditions running around my backyard threatening my home, and my job—my real job—is to hold the line.”

“What does that have to do with Beau?”

She gave a self-satisfied snort, as though I’d just proven her point. “Nothing.” Her hand returned to her glass, lifting it to her lips. “I’ve got no horse in this race, girl. Solve Beau’s problem, or take his money and go home. I personally don’t give a damn.”

She took a long sip of her iced tea, eyes drifting away from me as though I were already gone.

I considered staying and pushing her just for fun, but I just didn’t have enough information to know what to ask, and if I seriously pissed off one of Beau’s allies for no reason, it would reflect poorly on Maven. So I stood up. I hadn’t touched the sweet tea.

“Thank you so much for your time, Tallulah,” I said in my sweetest tone. “It’s been most enlightening. I can’t wait to let Beau know how helpful you’ve been.”

Worry flickered on her face as I turned on my heel and did my best to sashay out of there.

Chapter 13

The restaurant Odessa had chosen turned out to be a small, trendy-looking cafe that reminded me of a lot of the nicer places on Pearl Street . . . only the menu didn’t have gluten-free options, and there were massive shutters that could be opened for an open-air dining experience.

It took me a second to spot Odessa, mostly because she blended in so well with the other patrons. Today she’d eschewed the riding clothes in favor of a demure blue dress with a cardigan and a lot of subtle makeup. Her hair was in loose ringlets at her shoulders, and she had layered on a number of silver rings to match the delicate silver hoops in her ears.

There was a woman in her early forties at the table with Odessa, though she stood up the moment I began to approach. The stranger was tall and striking, with a deep tan, strong nose, and a watchful expression. She wore jeans, a red floral blouse, and a well-tailored blazer, and I instantly thought cop. Or maybe ex-cop. As soon as I looked for it, I spotted the sidearm in a discreet hip holster. I lowered my eyes and saw a bulge at her ankle too. Backup weapon. This had to be the bodyguard.

She leaned over and murmured something to Odessa, who looked up from her phone and sprang to her feet. “Lex! I’m so glad you could make it!” she sang, coming around the table and giving me a hug.

I hadn’t realized we were on hugging terms, but I had a big family and they loved to hug, so I managed not to stiffen up. I even patted her back with one hand.

Odessa pulled away and turned to include her companion. “Oh, I’m sorry, this is Becca Rhodes, my”—she gave a little eye roll—“chaperone.”

“Hello,” I said, holding out my hand to the taller woman. “I’m Lex—”

“Luther, I heard,” Becca said, her eyes sparkling as she shook my hand. Her blouse shifted with the movement, and I spotted the small lump on her chest, not quite disguised by the floral pattern of her blouse. Witch bag. “An army nickname if I’ve ever heard one. Let me guess: You shaved your head?”

“Yeah.” I smiled in spite of myself. “Were you military?”

She nodded. “I was an MP. Afghanistan.”

Odessa chimed in. “Uncle Beau loves to hire ex-soldiers. It’s like his thing. Even Elliot was in the air force or something.”

“You seem awfully young to have served and been discharged,” Becca said, eyeing me.

Sometimes I forget that I look a lot younger than I am. “I was injured,” I said simply, and Becca nodded. I turned toward the table, ready to sit down, before I realized there were only two chairs. “I’ll just be over there, give you two a chance to talk,” Becca said amiably. She gestured at a smaller table near the windows before turning back to me. “Are you armed?”

There was no point in denying it. “Sig Sauer at the small of my back.”

“Thought so. Don’t pull it, okay?”

Her voice was still relaxed, but there was a certain authority now too. I nodded to show that I understood, and Becca strode toward the other table.

When Odessa and I were settled in our chairs, I raised an eyebrow at her. “I take it Becca doesn’t know about . . . us?” I asked quietly.

“No.” Odessa had opened the menu, but she shook her head without looking up. “She thinks I have a stalker.”

Which might be more or less the truth. “What about the witch bag?”

Now Odessa looked up long enough to roll her eyes. “Becca thinks Uncle Beau is harmlessly superstitious. He pays her extra to wear it anytime she’s with me, and she doesn’t ask questions.” She shrugged. “I mean, it’s basically an ugly necklace.”

Hmm. Beau was smart. “Who does she think I am?”

Odessa smiled. “A distant relative who will be consulting with Beau on some of his businesses. That explains why you have access to both of us.”

We’d just sat down, but the server, a very young woman with dark hair and a turned-up nose, hurried over. “Wonderful to see you again, Miss Calhoun,” she said to Odessa. “Are you ready to order, or would you like a few minutes?”

“I’ll have the Cobb salad,” Odessa said, handing over her menu. She looked at me with her eyebrows raised.

I picked up the menu, which was a piece of artfully distressed paper on a sort of fancy wooden clipboard. Luckily for me, there was only one page of choices. I ordered a grilled cheese sandwich, made with five different cheeses, and sweet potato fries. We both watched the server scuttle away to put in our order.

“You must come here a lot.”

Odessa gave me a demure smile. “Uncle Beau is a silent partner. He has a lot of businesses.”

“I see.”

“So,” Odessa said, her eyes sparkling as she turned her full attention to me, “I want to hear all about what you do.”

“What I do?” I was wary. “You mean for Maven?”

“No, no!” She flapped a hand. “I’m not pumping you for trade secrets, promise. I want to hear about boundary magic.”

I must have looked shocked, because she let out a small laugh. “Come on, you must understand why I’m so curious. It’s this big shameful family legacy, only no one will tell me anything about it.” She rolled her eyes again, reminding me that I was, in fact, dealing with a teenager.

I wasn’t quite sure what to do here. Odessa was technically an adult, but everyone in her life seemed intent on sheltering her from knowledge about her own heritage. “How did you first hear about boundary magic?” I asked cautiously.

“After Mama and Daddy died,” she said, her voice matter-of-fact, “everyone was very worried that I would die and come back, breaking three hundred years of Calhouns avoiding the curse. No offense,” she added, wincing.

“None taken.”

“Anyway, I knew a little about magic before that—there’s lots of superstition in the South, and half the kids at my school had an aunt or a granny who did rootwork. It was no big deal. But after the accident, I came to live with Uncle Beau. He explained to me about vampires and witches.”

“Did you believe him?”

A smile played at the corners of her mouth. “Not at first. I mean, we’d gone to visit Uncle Beau practically every week for my entire life. I’d never realized we were always there after dark—kids don’t notice that stuff.

“But that night, when I came home from the hospital, I made him run around the house in a circle, as fast as he could. And again. And again. Until I believed.” She gave a little shrug. “At that point, Mama and Daddy’s deaths were so fresh, and I think grief made it easier for me to accept magic, in a weird way.” Her smile faded. “A world of magic made more sense to me than a world without Mama and Daddy in it.”

I flinched, because that was exactly how I’d felt when I found out about magic. I was already living with a giant hole in the world where Sam was supposed to be. Might as well add “death magic” to the list of impossible things I had to deal with. “I’m sorry about your parents,” I told her.

“Thanks.”

The food arrived, but Odessa didn’t make a move toward it. Her eyes were faraway. “Sometimes I wonder, if I’d been a boundary witch, if I could maybe have saved them.”

I felt a great swell of sadness for her. I hadn’t really thought that Odessa was secretly a boundary witch, but now I crossed it off my list of possibilities. Her longing in that moment was just too real, too clear. More importantly, it was obvious that she knew very little about how boundary magic was used. “It doesn’t work like that,” I told her, keeping my voice low.

She looked up at me, finally picking up her fork. “I thought you could raise people from the dead.”

I glanced around, but no one was listening in. Becca, who had a newspaper spread across her own table, raised her eyebrows for a second, asking if we were okay. I nodded and looked back at Odessa. “Yes, I can raise someone who’s dead, but only by killing someone else. Like everything else, boundary magic requires balance. A life for a life.” I shook my head, deciding to be frank with her. “If you were alone in a car with your mom and dad, and they were already dead, there’s nothing you could have done, even if you were the most powerful boundary witch in the world.”

“Huh.”

I’d hoped that might be of some comfort, but Odessa just looked thoughtful, as if she needed to do some internal reorganizing.

Then she shrugged. “Anyway. To Uncle Beau and the Finches and everyone, I’m, like, this weird anomaly. I’m human, but I know about their world, and I kind of live in it, but I’m not a part of it. I could have been part of it, but only at the cost of, like”—she winced—“my innocence. Their words. Sorry again.”

I smiled, unable to hide my amusement. “No offense taken.”

“Would you . . . I mean, can you tell me . . .” She lowered her voice. “Would you mind if I asked how you died?”

“The first time? I drowned. It was an accident, on a white-water rafting trip. I was thirteen.” I added, “But I didn’t find out about boundary magic until a few years ago.”

I told her the story of someone trying to kidnap my niece. I didn’t mention that Charlie was a null. Beau already had that intel, but there was no reason to assume he’d told Odessa. The fewer people who knew about Charlie, the better.

“Wow,” Odessa marveled. “And then you died again?”

“A few more times,” I admitted. “My heart kept stopping on the operating table, but the boundary magic in my blood kept me from crossing over.”

She shook her head, looking amazed. “You can’t be killed. That’s so cool.”

“Oh, I can be killed,” I said. “It just takes a little more effort.”

She looked at me thoughtfully until she’d finished chewing a ladylike bite. “Like how? Decapitation?”

I smiled. “That would do it, yes. Anything that destroys the heart or severs the spine, as far as I know.”

“So . . . like a vampire.”

I hadn’t really thought about it that way, but she wasn’t wrong. “I guess so.”

“Do you have any kids? Like to pass on your magic?”

I managed not to cough out my bite of grilled cheese. “Um, no. And I’m not going to.”

Odessa furrowed her brow as though I’d announced I was taking a break from oxygen. “You don’t want kids?”

“Nope.”

“Because being a boundary witch sucks too much?”

There was a hint of real worry on her face, and I realized my mistake: she thought I didn’t want kids because I would pass down my witchblood, and that was sort of insulting to Odessa herself.

Thankfully, I had just taken another bite of my sandwich, so I took a moment to choose my words. “The boundary witchblood is a concern, I guess, but it’s more complicated than that. I love having kids in my life, I just don’t want my own.

“As to your question,” I added, mainly to change the subject, “yeah, sometimes it sucks. It feels like there’s this”—I waved a hand above my head, earning a sharp look from Becca—“dark cloud above my head, all the time. Like a pressure.” I shrugged. “On the other hand, I found my friends, my boyfriend, and my job because of being a witch. That’s pretty valuable to me.”

Odessa’s face fell. It reminded me a lot of when I’d first come home from Iraq, and people would ask me about my tours as though I’d been off on some grand adventure. They wanted stories of bravery, heroism, and danger—but that was a fantasy, a child’s idea of war. What I’d actually experienced was a lot of heat and monotony, punctuated by brief, terrifying periods of thinking I was about to die. And then, of course, I’d seen all my friends die, and I myself had been killed. It had been brutal and painful and senseless.

Not my idea of a grand adventure.

After that, I turned the conversation to Odessa, asking her about Atlanta and her friends. I have a big family; I am capable of small talk if I need it, but Odessa seemed more subdued. I felt like I’d let her down . . . but I didn’t apologize either. Boundary magic isn’t a wild, romantic escapade. If she actually had been a boundary witch, she would know that.

When our food was finished, we said goodbye, and Odessa excused herself to use the restroom. I went over to Becca Rhodes’s table. She looked up from her newspaper, eyebrows lifting. “Hey, do you use a local range?” I asked. “I’m looking for a recommendation.”

Impossibly, her eyebrows went up farther. “Itchy trigger finger?”

I smiled. “It’s just how I blow off steam.”

That wasn’t particularly true, but I did want to practice with the unfamiliar weapons. Becca looked at me thoughtfully for a moment, then pulled a small notebook and pen out of her blazer pocket. “If you’re up for a drive, a buddy of mine runs a place in Monticello, kind of low profile. I can let him know you might stop by.” She scribbled an address, tore off the sheet, and handed it to me.

I took the piece of paper. “That’d be good, thanks.”

Waving goodbye, I went out to the rental car and consulted the navigation system. The shooting range was more than an hour away. I checked my watch. Two o’clock. The sun wouldn’t set until around six thirty, so I had just enough time to either go practice with the weapons or go on a scouting trip. Beau had made a point of requesting that I wait for him to come pick me up for Promenade. He hadn’t come out and said it, but even with the vow of mutual safety or whatever it was called, I suspected he was worried about my welfare if I walked into a throng of vampires without him. That’s how well-liked boundary witches were.

But that didn’t mean I had to stay away from Oakland now, when the sun was out and the cemetery was open to the public. I smiled to myself and started the car.

Chapter 14

I followed the navigation to Oakland Avenue, a north-south street that served as the western boundary of the cemetery grounds. It wasn’t difficult to find the entrance—a tall brick arch with the word “Oakland” inscribed in simple block letters across the top. There was a small lot just across the street from the arch, so I parked the rental and walked over, keeping my sunglasses on to cut the glare.

The entrance opened onto the cemetery’s main road, which was ominously named Old Hunter Street. It was as wide as a city street and dotted with visitors: mothers in expensive leggings, elderly couples engaged in conversation, even a couple of joggers panting in the sun.

That should have seemed strange—in Boulder, cemeteries were mainly visited by mourners. Then again, the cemeteries in Boulder didn’t look like this: lush and green and welcoming. I’d never seen a burial ground with so many trees, or so many statues that weren’t actually on headstones.

A hundred feet from the entrance, a small redbrick guard building caught my eye, mostly because it was shaped like a castle tower, with windows on several sides. A sign identified it as the Watch House, and the elderly African American guard inside raised a hand in greeting, which I returned. I wondered if Beau’s people used the Watch House at night, or if Oakland had a night guard that had to be pressed.

I followed the map on my phone to the visitors center, which took up the cramped ground floor of a pretty, whitewashed building with a bell tower. I purchased a visitor’s guide and opened it to study the more detailed map.

The entire cemetery was shaped like a trapezoid. I’d walked in through the oldest section, the Original Six Acres, which formed a rectangle at the southwest corner of the trapezoid. I doubted Beau would care much about that area, which had been filled well before the Civil War.

Bell Tower Ridge, where I stood now, was just north of the Original Six Acres. Beau might use this area—it was old enough, and the Bell Tower building was probably the largest one in the cemetery—but I also spotted a section in the center of the trapezoid called the Confederate Memorial Grounds. That seemed the most likely place for a Civil War vampire to spend time. I decided to start in that direction and try to get a sense of both sections as I worked through them.

Using the map to guide me, I left the Bell Tower building and started down the path, feeling a little self-conscious, like I was on some sort of scavenger hunt. I wasn’t the only one, though: there were a number of other people in this area who had purchased guides and were wandering around, peering at the map and then squinting up at the scenery. It probably would have seemed rude to any actual mourners, but I’d read online that Oakland rarely had any new burials. All the plots had been sold ages ago, so you needed to have a family mausoleum or a special role in the city to be interred here now.

I’d been half hoping to spot signs of recent magic use, but now that I was here, the idea seemed ludicrous—the cemetery was just too big, with too many places where someone could tuck away their supplies. There were gorgeous statues and fountains scattered throughout the nearly fifty acres of land, and that wasn’t even counting the mausoleums and graves that would easily hide small items. Assuming the boundary witch had been here, I wasn’t going to find her by stumbling on her stash of supplies.

I made my way along the walkways until I saw a group of tourists clustered around a small wrought-iron fence that blocked off a monument. It was a massive statue of a lion, lying on its stomach with its head resting on one paw. At first I thought the lion was asleep, but as I got closer I realized it seemed to be weeping. The inscription on the bottom of the monument read UNKNOWN CONFEDERATE DEAD.

When the group of tourists moved on, I approached the fence and wrapped my hands around the bars, leaning forward for a better look. The lion was incredibly expressive, even mournful, and after a moment I saw that it was lying on a draped Confederate flag. This, I realized with some disgust, must be how Beau saw the Confederacy—doomed and noble and dignified.

My cell phone buzzed in my pocket, making me actually jump. I fished it out and saw that Lily was calling. I hit “Talk.”

“Hey, Lily. Everything okay?” I glanced around, but there were no other people nearby.

“That’s pretty much what I was calling to ask you,” she replied. Lily’s voice was a little cool, and I wondered if she was still upset about the awkwardness at drinks. “I wanted to know how the meeting with the witch went.”

“Quinn filled you in?”

“Yup, he called Simon at the crack of early this morning, and Simon called me. He wanted someone else to know what you were up to in case there were problems during the day.”

I was a little surprised that she was calling and not Simon, but maybe he had pushed Lily to do it. I decided to just take it as a good sign that she wanted to talk to me at all. I took a seat on a nearby bench and told her about my conversation with Tallulah Finch.

“She sounds like a fraud,” Lily said when I was finished. My friend sounded almost dismissive now, and a little distracted. “Did she have spell stuff at the house?”

“I didn’t exactly get a tour,” I replied. “But what I did see was immaculate, like they moved in yesterday and the cleaners came this morning.”

“So pretty much the opposite of every witch’s house we’ve ever seen,” Lily said, amused.

My friend Sashi’s house was always neat, but I decided not to mention that. “Pretty much, yeah. Oh, there was one weird thing. She was wearing a paracord bracelet.”

Lily, who would probably figure out how to make an ordinary broomstick fly before she went camping or rock climbing, said, “A what now?”

I described the bracelet, made up of yards and yards of braided cord. “Rock climbers and campers have them in case they need a lot of rope quickly, but if Tallulah Finch is a rock climber, I’m a debutante.”

Lily let out a laugh. “Did you shake her hand? Did she have calluses?” Her voice was clear, and for the first time I thought I had her full attention.

“Well, yeah,” I said, surprised. “How did you know?”

“I could be wrong, but it sounds like she’s a cord witch. I’ve heard of it being used for healing or affecting the weather, but never for wards. Kind of a cool idea, really.” Her voice had the same dreamy, pensive quality that I was used to hearing from Simon when he talked about his experiments.

“Back up. What’s a cord witch?”

Lily sighed. “Sorry. I always forget you didn’t grow up with this stuff. Cord magic, or knot magic, is pretty much what it sounds like. The witch’s intention is sort of woven—no pun intended—into the rope, which is then knotted to seal the spell. To undo the spell, she has to undo the knot.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah. The more powerful cord witches tend to build up calluses from so much practice with various kinds of rope. It’s like a badge of honor for them.”

I thought about the paracord bracelet. It hadn’t looked like a bunch of homemade knots. It had looked like the kind of thing that was mass-manufactured. “So the bracelet is her actual spells?” I said dubiously.

“It could be, but I’ve never heard of a witch keeping them so public and obvious. My guess is that the bracelet is a sort of . . . mmm . . .” She trailed off for a moment, searching for the words. “Like an emergency backup supply. It’s like you carrying a gun when there’s nothing dangerous going on. Better to have it and not need it . . .”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Should I be worried about Tallulah?”

Lily hesitated for a second, then said, “I’d just, you know, forget what I said before and take her seriously. Cord magic is fussy and delicate—kind of like really good wards, actually. I’m impressed that she came up with the combination.”

Another group was approaching to look at the lion statue. “Thanks, Lily. I should get going.”

“Yeah.” Lily sounded distracted again, but I had the feeling she was still thinking about Tallulah Finch. “Be careful, Lex, okay?”

“Always,” I said, and hung up the phone.

I did a quick walkthrough of the cemetery’s other major areas—Bell Tower Ridge, Potter’s Field, the African American Grounds, and two Jewish sections—and by the time I was finished, I’d begun to sweat through my clothes. It was only seventy degrees, but trekking through the cemetery in the humidity was tiring, especially since I’d already run on the treadmill that morning. I needed to get back to the hotel to shower and change before Beau’s driver picked me up.

As I walked back to my rental car, I was a little disappointed that I hadn’t found any signs of boundary magic—the remnants of a chalk line, maybe, or a plastic bag of herbs. Hell, I would have been happy with loose chicken feathers, which might have indicated a sacrifice. It would have been nice to have some sort of progress to show Beau.

As I passed the tiny guard shack, I waved at the elderly man inside and passed through the arch. Then I paused and turned around.

I hadn’t felt anything calling to me.

This was the first time I’d been in a cemetery in years—Hazel Pellar had been cremated—but unlike what had happened with Professor Cumberland, I felt nothing from the dead here. Not even a tingle.

What did that mean?

Chapter 15

When I got back to the hotel room, I realized that I had no idea what to wear to a vampire party in a cemetery.

Beau had implied that the vampires who attended Promenade liked to “dress up,” but I didn’t know if that meant fancy clothes or clothes from their various time periods. For all I knew, people wore their favorite Halloween costumes.

Normally I wouldn’t care, but I was there representing Maven, so in the end I called Maya, Beau’s daytime assistant.

“Hello, Miss Luther,” she said. I’d asked her several times to call me Lex, but it didn’t seem like I was getting through on that one. Maya took the concept of “professional” to a new level. “I trust you made it around the city with no problems?”

“Yes,” I said, wondering if that was a dig because I’d rented my own car. I decided I didn’t really care. “But I wanted to ask about the dress code for tonight.”

A pause. “Ah, yes. I can assure you that there’s an enormous range of formality. You’d be fine in jeans or a ball gown.”

“Have you gone to Promenade?”

“I’ve heard a lot about it,” Maya replied primly. “I organize transportation for out-of-town vampires, so I can assure you I’m familiar with the dress code.”

“I wasn’t doubting your accuracy. Just curious.”

“Yes, Miss Luther. Warton will be picking you up at seven this evening. Will there be anything else?”

I chewed on my lip for a second, then asked, “Do you know much about Tallulah Finch’s wards at Oakland?”

An edge slid into her voice. “What about them?”

“Will they keep the rest of Atlanta from coming into the cemetery tonight?”

“Yes. No one will be able to see or hear any of the activity in the cemetery between sunset and sunrise. That’s standard.”

She said “standard” like she was describing the features of a new Prius. It seemed silly to think I’d be able to get any gossip out of this woman, especially over the phone, but I had to try. “What do you think happened to the Unsettled, Maya?”

There was a long pause. “I will be available at this number until seven o’clock, Miss Luther. If you have any pertinent questions after that, please contact Beau or one of his men.” And she hung up the phone.

I hadn’t packed a ball gown, so I decided to just go with jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, and a jacket with plenty of pockets. For Christmas, Simon and Lily had gone in together and bought me two leather forearm bracers, each with a sort of holster pocket that fit a shredder. Strapping stakes to my forearms with athletic hairbands worked fine, but these were easier to conceal under my sleeves and more comfortable for long-term wear. I hadn’t had a chance to put them on before meeting Beau last night, but they’d be perfect for Promenade.

I attached the holstered Sig Sauer to my belt, where it wouldn’t be obvious but I could easily reach it. After a moment of consideration, I picked up the sheathed knife as well. I rarely bothered to carry fighting knives—if a vampire or werewolf had already gotten inside my reach, a knife wasn’t going to do me much good—but this one was obviously special.

The Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife had been developed during World War II to be easily thrust between ribs. The fact that someone had taken the time to plate one in silver intrigued me. Beau hadn’t said anything about werewolves in Atlanta, but I’d been surprised by wolves before. Besides, even vampires would get a little itchy if they were stabbed with silver. It might work as a decent distraction.

What the hell. I attached the sheath at the small of my back, so the knife lined up with my spine. I tried sitting down in the hotel room’s desk chair, and was pleased to discover that the knife placement didn’t bother me, especially compared to a small-of-the-back sidearm holster.

As I was pulling my shirt down to hide the knife, my phone buzzed with a text. Warton was waiting out front.

The valet area at the hotel wasn’t swarmed with ghosts—there were a couple of deaths on either end of the lot, but neither was particularly gruesome. Warton was standing at parade rest in front of a sleek-looking vehicle, different from what he’d picked me up in the night before. He was still wearing the mirrored sunglasses, but he had on a different suit: steel gray, with a coordinating gray tie. As he saw me walk up, Warton began opening the car door, but I stopped in front of him. “I need to ask you a question,” I said in a low voice.

Warton’s perpetual frown deepened. He hadn’t expected he’d have to actually speak to me. “What?”

“Beau wants me to find out if any of you have been pressed,” I said. “Do you have any chunks of time missing?”

“No.”

He’d barely stopped to consider it. “How about strong feelings that seemed uncharacteristic to the people you know?”

Warton shook his head. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, lady. If the boundary witch was going to press someone, she wouldn’t pick me.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m Beau’s bodyguard. Of the four of us, I’m the one who’s with him every single night. If I were missing chunks of time, Beau would know about it.”

That . . . actually made sense. I gave him a little shrug. “Okay. I’ll check with the others.” I climbed into the car.

“You do that.” Warton swung the door shut and circled to the driver’s side. He’d already put up the privacy screen.

I squeezed my eyes shut as soon as the car door closed, and didn’t open them again until the car slowed to a crawl, its tires biting into brick.

We were back at Oakland.

There were plenty of cars in the parking area, but Warton turned through the redbrick entrance gate right onto Old Hunter Street. It looked dark and deserted as he made the turn, but I felt a quiet rush of something, like wind had slipped in through the closed windows and riffled my hair. Then we were through Tallulah Finch’s wards and the entire grounds suddenly glowed with lines of low, romantic light.

I rolled down my window for a better look. Beau’s people had set out rows of old-fashioned kerosene lanterns along either side of Old Hunter Street and the main pathways, giving the evening a kind of Victorian-parlor vibe. Between camping trips and the army, I had messed around with plenty of lanterns, and I knew what this particular style was called: a dead flame. In the cemetery.

Someone in party planning had a sense of humor.

There were only a few people hurrying along Old Hunter Street when we entered, but by the time we reached the center of the cemetery, it had grown so crowded that Warton was pretty much forced to stop the car. He put it in park, but I didn’t bother waiting for him to come open my door. I climbed out, trying to take in the bizarre sight of hundreds of vampires talking and laughing in the lamplight. It felt like we were at the world’s strangest high school dance.

Maya had been right about the dress code, I saw. There really were women in ball gowns, and plenty of people in jeans. Others were dressed in period clothes, which may or may not have been original.

There was one common factor: almost every single vampire present was white. I’d read somewhere that the population of Atlanta was more than 50 percent black, but I saw only a handful of nonwhites, and most of them were probably mixed race. It looked like Atlanta’s Old World didn’t reflect the diverse, trendy city Tallulah Finch had described. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it couldn’t be good.

Warton came skulking around the car, his mirrored shades in place, his hand lifted as though he was determined to take my arm. I took an automatic step backward, but a jovial voice rang out from my left before either of us could speak. “Why, Warton, what do you have for us?”

I turned to see a tall, gaunt vampire swaggering toward the car. He had probably died in his early thirties, and even in a crowd of vampires, his movements looked predatory. As he came closer I saw that he was wearing the exact same gray suit as Warton, minus the reflective shades.

“This is the evocator,” Warton muttered, tilting his head at me. I hadn’t heard that word in a while, but Nellie used it sometimes. Just another term for boundary witch.

The newcomer gave me a slight bow. “Welcome, Miss Luther. I’m Erasmus Milburn.”

I recognized the name: he was another one of the Four Horsemen. “Nice to meet you,” I said.

Milburn looked at Warton. “I can bring her to meet Beau, if you’d like. I happen to be headed in that direction.”

“Fine. Good.” Without another word to me, Warton turned and strode away, already pulling off the sunglasses.

Milburn looked after him fondly, shaking his head. “Ah, our Warton. What he lacks in social skills he makes up for in eloquence.”

Surprised, I choked on a laugh. I wondered if Warton, with his vampire hearing, had overheard the comment. Maybe there was too much background noise. Or maybe Warton just didn’t care.

Milburn turned to me, a smile softening the line of his hollow cheekbones. His hands were in his pants pockets, and even though the suit was identical to Warton’s, on Milburn it looked debonair. Must have been the tailoring. “Well, Miss Luther, shall we promenade?”

He held out his elbow gallantly, but I shook my head. “I’m happy for a guide, but I walk by myself, thanks.”

The vampire didn’t miss a beat. “Of course. Let’s take a stroll.”

We started down the road to the left, in the general direction of the Bell Tower building. Milburn had long, thin, spiderlike limbs like Jack Skellington in Charlie’s favorite movie, The Nightmare Before Christmas. I had to hurry to keep up as I skirted the groups of chatting vampires.

The Horseman bent his head to speak quietly in my ear. “They just love the chance to put those on,” he murmured. I followed his gaze to a cluster of men in bedraggled gray outfits. Now that I was looking for it, I saw more men in the same clothes walking along the brick path. It suddenly clicked that they were wearing Confederate war uniforms.

“Many are authentic, of course,” Milburn confided. “But that man there died in 1932.” He nodded toward one of the gray-uniformed men, whose handlebar mustache was quivering as he chuckled at someone’s joke. “And I recognize him.” Milburn discreetly tilted his head at a man on the other side of the road. This one appeared older, in his late fifties, with a long white beard and a gray uniform in better shape than most. “He joined up three months before the war ended, and lived the rest of his life off his reputation as a fierce warrior.” Milburn gave a little snort and eyed me for a reaction. I just kept walking. I didn’t have the energy to worry about soldier wannabes, past or present.

It struck me that both Milburn and Warton had been soldiers, yet they were in suits tonight instead of uniforms. I wondered if that was some kind of statement. Milburn gave me a cocky grin like he expected me to ask, so I deliberately kept quiet.

We passed an ornate Gothic mausoleum close to the path lights, and I saw that a vampire had set up a lawn chair out front. He seemed almost . . . proprietary. Like he was holding court.

“Is that . . .” I wasn’t sure how to finish. The question seemed tacky.

“His actual grave? Yes.” Milburn shrugged. “They’re gorgeous little buildings, most of them. Vampires are often the family member who pays to have them built. Seems only fair that they should get to show them off now.”

I just shook my head. It really was like a little city. Which made Beau . . . what? The mayor?

Nobody stopped us, and I soon realized that they were actively getting out of our way. I couldn’t tell if it was because Milburn was part of Beau’s inner circle or because of me, but since I wasn’t getting any dirty looks—yet—I was guessing the former.

“You don’t talk much, do you?” Milburn said, glancing down at me. “I expected a thousand questions.”

“It’s a lot to take in,” I said, watching as a woman in an enormous hoopskirt effortlessly navigated between several chatting vampires. I was impressed. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t make it five feet without tripping myself in a dress like that.

“Not what you expected?” Milburn asked.

“I don’t know what I expected.”

The Bell Tower building had actual outdoor lights, and as we neared the entrance, I could practically see the news about me traveling through the crowd of vampires. More and more fearful or angry looks were sent my way, and I couldn’t help but feel a little nervous. I could take on one, maybe two vampires in a fight, but there were hundreds of them strolling through the cemetery. If even a handful decided to approach me at once . . .

Milburn must have noticed the looks—or maybe he just caught the scent of my fear—because he said, “Ah, I see the cat is out of the proverbial bag.”

I gave him a sidelong look. He sounded so unconcerned. “Should I be worried?”

“About your safety?” His glance at me was almost amused. “Not at all. Beau made sure we got the word out that you are under his protection. There are plenty of people who don’t like him, but everyone loves Promenade, and he’s the only vampire in the city who can pull off something this elaborate. Nobody would make such a bold move against him in public. They’d never get support from the rest of the Atlanta vampires.”

“It might be worth it to them,” I pointed out, “if they’re the ones stealing Beau’s ghosts.”

Milburn snorted. “If someone is stealing the ghosts, it has to be a boundary witch, and she’s stayed under the radar so far.”

I hadn’t expected any of the Horsemen to express doubt about Beau’s accusations, but I didn’t get a chance to ask before Milburn gestured ahead of us. “Oh look, here’s Beau,” he said gaily. We had reached the side of the bell tower, where Beau was helping a group of musicians get themselves situated.

The cardinal vampire was dressed head to toe in gray—gray suit, gray shirt, gray tie, polished gray shoes—but everything looked modern and expensive. It was the same suit, I realized, that Milburn and Warton were wearing, only those two had white shirts and black shoes. Some kind of symbolism, I figured, but I didn’t know what it meant.

The band had to be Old World, given the humans-go-away spell, but they looked like any ordinary jazz ensemble: three men and two women with a trumpet, a trombone, a saxophone, a guitar, and a set of drums. They’d mostly unpacked the instruments, but they were still organizing cords for the amplifiers. A sixth person, a dark-haired white woman in a slinky green dress, adjusted the microphone stand, frowned at it, then adjusted it again.

“Do we need more stands?” Beau was asking as we walked up. “Cole, you need a stand?”

The trumpet player, a black man in a slightly rumpled brown suit, gave a lazy shake of his head. “Got it memorized.”

Beau turned his head at the sound of our approach, his face brightening. “Good evening, Miss Lex. Glad you made it.”

“Hello,” I said, trying to sound pleasant. Well, pleasant for me.

The singer blinked at me, then turned away, holding up a hand like she was shielding her eyes from the sun. “You’re her,” she said, sounding unsteady. “The famous boundary witch.” Behind her, I saw the other musicians exchanging glances.

I couldn’t see the singer’s eyes, but her head lifted to Beau. “I’m out of here.”

The woman started past him, but Beau gently caught her arm and wheeled her around with her own momentum. “Now, Eloise, give me some credit. She’s here as my guest, and she’s sworn not to press any vampires without my explicit permission. Isn’t that right, Miss Lex?”

“Yes,” I said firmly, knowing they would be able to smell that I was telling the truth. I stood at parade rest, trying to look casual but unafraid. “Beau is interested in finding whoever is interfering with ghosts in Atlanta, and he needs someone else who can see ghosts to help. That’s all I’m here to do.”

Milburn had sidled up to the singer’s other side, trapping her against Beau. “Of course,” Milburn drawled, casually resting his arm on Eloise’s shoulder, “anyone who did interfere with the Unsettled, that person would definitely want to skedaddle right quick before Lex got too close to ’em.”

I didn’t actually expect that to work, but Eloise slowly lowered her eyes, pretending to be suddenly immersed in the music in front of her.

I looked at Beau. “Where are the other men you’d like me to meet?”

A throng of vampires passed close by, a couple of them shouting greetings to Beau. “What time is dinner?” one vampire yelled over his shoulder. Rather than answer, Beau sent him a good-natured wave.

I frowned. “What does—”

“Milburn,” Beau said, causing the Horseman to snap to attention, “please introduce Miss Lex to Vick and Hempstead. She has some questions for all of you.”

Raising his eyebrows, Milburn pulled out a pocket watch to check the time. “I hate to miss the refreshments, Major.”

“Plenty of time.” Beau turned back to Eloise, the singer. “If you would?”

The band began to loudly play a bluesy song that I didn’t recognize, and Eloise returned to her microphone.

Putting his pocket watch away, Milburn started down the brick path behind the bell tower, leading us north. “I just saw Hempstead,” he said absently, scanning the crowd as he strode along on his spiderlike legs. “He was probably headed back to—ah. There he is.”

I followed him to a rather modest mausoleum with Hempstead’s name on it, and a short man with a full blond beard that curled down over his barrel-shaped chest, nearly to his belly button. He was chatting with a pretty female vampire who was nearly a foot taller than him. She took one look at me, broke off midsentence, and turned and walked away, leaving the bearded man standing there with his brow furrowed.

“Hello, Jonas,” Milburn said amiably as we walked up. He gestured at me. “Miss Luther, this is Jonas Hempstead. Jonas, meet Miss Luther, the evocator helping Beau with his little issue.”

“Call me Lex,” I said.

“Oh.” A look of comprehension came over the shorter man’s face, followed by a pinch of distaste. “I see.”

“Beau says she has questions for us,” Milburn said mildly. Hempstead’s lip curled, his eyes following the pretty female vampire, and Milburn added more pointedly, “Questions that Beau wants us to answer.”

The bearded man gave a grudging nod. “Right. Understood.”

Milburn looked down at me. “You okay here if I go get Vick?”

“Yes.”

The taller vampire disappeared into the night, and Hempstead turned his attention to me, his expression only slightly sour.

I wanted to get right to the point, and maybe catch him a little off guard, so I said, “Have you been missing any time?”

Hempstead stroked his beard, a hint of a sneer on his face. “Why, yes. I lose time every day between sunrise and sunset.”

So much for that plan. “I’m talking about gaps in your memory. Think about the last few weeks. Do you remember time seeming to jump forward?”

He frowned, his face wrinkling with concentration as he took in my meaning. “No, nothing like that.”

“What about strong feelings that made you behave in a way that you couldn’t really understand later?”

Whatever his faults, Hempstead was not an idiot. “You’re talking about being pressed, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

Milburn appeared beside me, so suddenly that I half drew a shredder before I realized what was happening. He grinned at me and gestured to the man next to him, who was fortyish and on the heavy side, with huge, ornate sideburns. “This is Vick,” Milburn said, enjoying my spike of tension. “You’re jumpy.”

“Erasmus, she’s asking us about missing time.” Hempstead’s beard bristled as he turned back to me. “Beau is concerned about this?”

All three men crowded close. “Someone who knows his schedule has been passing information to a boundary witch,” I told them. “He doesn’t doubt your loyalty, but he’s concerned that one of you might have been pressed.”

The three men exchanged a look, and although we’d just met, I understood what it meant: they were silently agreeing to drop whatever grudges or personas they’d adopted and take this seriously.

Then, as though they’d reached a decision telepathically, Milburn turned to me and demanded, “Press one of us now.”

I blinked. “Excuse me?”

“A test,” Vick said, his first words to me. He stroked one sideburn a little nervously. “We need to know how it would have affected us.”

Chewing my lip, I thought about that for a moment. Beau had made me promise not to press any vampires, but this was different. His most loyal followers had asked me to do it. “Which of you has the strongest will?” I asked them.

Without hesitating, Hempstead and Vick pointed at Milburn, whose mouth crooked up on one side.

“Okay. Hempstead, can we borrow your mausoleum for a minute?” I asked.

“Sure. Why?”

I smiled. “Because you’re going to tell Milburn something you don’t want me to know.”

Chapter 16

I went into the mausoleum first, while the three of them figured out a secret to keep from me. At the wrought-iron door I turned on my phone’s flashlight, illuminating a small, empty marble room with a long window opposite the door.

Milburn came in just a few seconds after me, and I got right to business. Less than five minutes after we left the others, he and I returned to the street.

The two other Horsemen looked Milburn over as though I might have left marks on him. “Milly?” Hempstead ventured. “You all right?”

Milburn shrugged. “Of course. Nothing at all happened; it was quite disappointing.”

“What did you tell her?” Vick asked.

The taller vampire’s brow furrowed. “Nothing.”

“What did it feel like?”

“It didn’t feel like anything. We went into the mausoleum, then we turned around and popped right back out. Surely you must have seen that.”

Vick and Hempstead exchanged a look. “You were in there for four minutes, Milly,” Hempstead said. “We timed it.”

Lightning-quick, Milburn pulled out his pocket watch, consulting the face. It was too dim for me to make out the time, but I knew what he’d see.

“What about the secret?” Vick asked. All three of them looked at me.

“Beau dyes his hair,” I said as quietly as possible. “To hide the gray.”

“That’s correct,” Milburn said, looking down at me with new worry on his face. “This is deeply unsettling, Miss Luther.”

“Lex.” I spread my hands. “Now that you know, do any of you recall missing any chunks of time?” I angled my body to include all three of them.

The vampires shook their heads, looking troubled. I sighed. “Shit. I guess that would have been too easy, huh?”

“At least now that we know,” Hempstead pointed out, “we’re more likely to notice if it happens again. We can keep a closer eye on ourselves.”

“Do that,” I said. “Until I find out who’s behind this, check the time frequently, and it’s not a bad idea to be with each other as much as possible. Pressing multiple vampires at once is possible, but it requires more power and skill.”

All three men nodded, and began discussing their schedules in low voices. Over Hempstead’s shoulder, I caught a glimpse of unusual movement, and I leaned sideways for a better look.

A column of women wove their way through the crowd, led by Warton. Beau’s bodyguard was wearing his sunglasses again, but a smug smile played at the corners of his mouth. A black woman in her sixties strode behind him, her head held high. She was holding the hand of a younger Hispanic woman, who looked around with eyes as big as saucers. The second woman’s face was red and blotchy like she’d been crying. She stumbled on the brick path, and I knew she wasn’t a vampire.

Eight more women trailed behind them, in various stages of distress or defiance, and the last two women in line were so young that I sucked in my breath. There was no way in hell they were old enough to drink, but they were being paraded down the main road in Oakland like they were meat.

Vampires on either side of the road called out to them, jeering and catcalling, and I felt Milburn’s hand on my upper arm before I realized I’d stepped forward. “You don’t want to do that,” he said quietly. Over his shoulder, he asked Hempstead, “Isn’t it a little early?”

I glanced back and saw Hempstead nodding, stroking his beard again. “And they don’t usually come through the north entrance.”

“What the hell’s going on?” I hissed at Milburn.

He tilted his head in the direction of the women. “They’re here for the blood tribute.”

From the Horsemen’s comments earlier I’d figured there were going to be humans here to feed the vampires, but I’d assumed they’d be willing volunteers, with witch bags to get past the wards. “Why haven’t they been pressed?” I demanded.

Milburn raised an eyebrow, clearly not liking my tone. “Because they’re witches.”

I stared at him for a moment, hoping it was a joke, but Milburn wasn’t backing down. “You can’t interfere,” Vick said, hands clutching his lapels like a pompous cartoon mayor. “Everyone loves the tribute.”

“Those witches don’t,” I snapped.

“They’re not killed,” Milburn said with a touch of scorn. “If we did that, we’d run out of witches.”

Vick and Hempstead guffawed. I hated that the two Horsemen were talking as though I wasn’t a threat. More than anything, I hated that in this particular situation, they were probably right. I glared at Milburn. “Let go of my arm.”

He tightened his grip instead, stepping very close so he could speak to me in something even lower than a whisper. His hollowed-out face had hardened. “The thing about an oath of mutual safety,” he said, “is that it doesn’t apply to Beau himself. If he kills you and makes the body go away, do you really think anyone here is going to tell your boss what happened?”

Maven’s spy would.

I tried to keep the thought off my face, but Milburn’s eyes widened slightly. Before he could say anything, I tore my arm free of his grasp and stalked down the path after the line of women.

They were being led to the Bell Tower building, twenty yards away, but I didn’t catch up before they reached Beau. He greeted the lead witch with a broad smile. The band had stopped playing, and most of the members were looking at the witches with open hunger.

“Let’s just get this over with,” the lead witch was saying. Her voice was clear and firm, but the woman holding her hand was visibly shaking.

“Of course.” Beau waved at Warton, who stepped forward and unsheathed a knife.

I strode up to Beau, who looked at me with surprise. “Is there somewhere we could speak privately?” I said through my teeth.

Beau raised his eyebrows, but gave me a gallant little bow. “Certainly. My mausoleum is just across the path.”

With a nod at Warton, Beau ushered me away from the bell tower. “This area is the highest ground in the cemetery,” Beau remarked. “During the war it was an observation outpost. General John B. Hood watched the Battle of Atlanta from this spot.”

I wasn’t listening, too busy craning my head to see what was happening with the witches. Warton had led them into the Bell Tower building, and all the surrounding vampires were beginning to close in on it. I swallowed hard, telling myself to focus, and followed Beau as he strode toward one of the mausoleums. It wasn’t the largest one I’d seen, but much bigger and more ornate than Hempstead’s. It reminded me of a miniature church made of weathered white brick, complete with narrow stained-glass windows, miniature pillars, and even a steeple. We’d passed it on the way, but it had been too dark for me to make out the name engraved on the marble doorway: Calhoun.

There was a locked wrought-iron door, and Beau casually pulled out an iron key that looked as old as the building. “Gothic revival,” he explained as he swung open the door, like I’d just been salivating for details about the architecture. “I don’t suppose you brought a flashlight?”

My cell phone light wasn’t going to cut it in here, so I reached into my pocket and pulled out the small, high-powered Maglite I’d brought. I covered the beam with the bottom of my shirt and clicked the light on, creating a warm glow that filled the room.

The chamber was smaller than I’d expected: just a tiny marble room with a wall of flat interment spaces on one side and a bench on the other. Beau’s eyes automatically slid over to the interment wall, dropping low, and I saw the names etched into the marble there. This was why the building appeared smaller on the inside than it did on the outside—there were caskets in the walls.

Where I was from, people were generally buried in the ground. Now here were generations of the same family, squeezed together into a small space for eternity. The oldest carvings were for Abner Beaumont Calhoun and Carlotta Reginald Calhoun. Her date of death was eight years after his own.

The fury I’d felt after seeing the witches flagged a little. “Your wife?” I asked, looking up at him.

He nodded, his face as impassive as I’d ever seen it. “You wanted to speak to me?”

“What the fuck did I just see?”

Beau blanched for a moment, but recovered smoothly. “Ah. Every Promenade, one of the clans sends us ten witches to donate blood.”

“Why?”

“Because this is my city,” Beau snapped. “I protect it, and I am owed a tribute. Some cardinal vampires require money, or labor, or worse.” He shrugged carelessly. “I ask only for a small donation.”

“There aren’t enough witches out there to feed every vampire here, not by a long shot.”

“It’s not about the feeding,” he ground out. “It’s ceremonial. It reminds everyone of their place in the system.”

“The system,” I repeated. “What about Tallulah Finch? Do her witches have to participate in this little ceremony?”

Beau crossed his arms over his chest without answering. “That’s what I thought,” I said angrily. “So the rich white clan gets to take your money, but all the other clans have to go through this humiliating bullshit ritual?”

His eyes flashed. “No one said you had to like the way I do things,” he said in a low, dangerous tone. “But let me make myself clear: you are hired help. You can’t come into my territory and embarrass me.” He took a step back, straightening his gray tie. “Now. Was that all?”

My hands were clenched into fists, but I managed to not reach for a shredder. Beau knew what they were now. If I didn’t kill him on the first strike, he would kill me.

“Your Horsemen can’t remember if they were pressed,” I said, as calmly as I could. “And you can keep your money. I’m done here.”

I turned on my heel and walked out.

Beau called my name once, but he made no effort to follow, probably because he would lose face. I wondered if he would call Maven and complain about me. I just didn’t give a shit.

The crowd of vampires near the bell tower paid no attention to me, jostling for position in line. That was good, because I was barely watching where I was going.

I was angry with Beau, but even angrier with myself. I was so used to working with Maven and being with Quinn that I had assumed the best of Beau. He was passionate about the Unsettled and his love for Odessa, so I had taken for granted that he was a good leader.

Good leaders do not need to terrorize young women to look big and strong.

I walked alone down the winding diagonal street that connected to Old Hunter Street. I turned right and passed the round brick guardhouse, which now stood deserted.

My head was spinning. Right now I needed to get away from the cemetery, but would it really be wise to go back to Colorado in the morning? Was my anger over Beau’s cruelty enough to blow off the possibility that Odessa was in actual danger?

Except . . . was Odessa in danger, or was she just a paranoid teenager who liked the attention of Beau worrying over her? Or was Beau using her to manipulate me? Even if she was safe, did I have a responsibility to the Unsettled? I’d always seen laying ghosts as a good thing, but perhaps Beau was right about them performing a sort of service.

Too many unknowns, too many circular thoughts. I was nearly back to the arch, so I fished my cell phone out of my jacket pocket to call for a cab. I would call Maven as soon as I got back to the hotel, I decided. I didn’t trust Atlanta’s cardinal vampire, but I trusted my own. She would know what I should do.

I paused inside the arch, squinting down at the suddenly bright light of my phone. I thought I heard a tiny scuffling noise behind me, and I automatically turned to face the cemetery I’d just left, blinking against my disrupted night vision.

That’s how I managed to be facing the wrong way when the sniper’s bullet hit me.

Chapter 17

I didn’t actually hear the shot, so for a moment I didn’t understand what had happened. I just felt a blow to my back like I’d been kicked by Odessa’s horse, and suddenly I was facedown on the bricks. I didn’t have time to get my arms all the way up to catch myself, so I landed awkwardly on my left hand and right cheekbone.

My eyes immediately watered, and for a moment there was nothing but dizziness and confusion.

Then there was a small coughing sound that I recognized as another bullet hitting the bricks a foot away from me, and my adrenaline kicked in. I needed cover, but I was nearly blinded by involuntary tears. Feeling with my good hand, I managed to half roll, half drag myself behind one of the brick columns holding up the arch.

I heard another scuffling sound from the direction of the street—this time I could tell it was someone running toward me at human speed, making no attempt to hide their movements. They were already close, and I heard the safety of a gun being released. I tried to push myself up, but there was something wrong with my left wrist, and I cried out in pain. Falling back onto my stomach, I tried to work my right hand around to the Sig Sauer on my left hip, but my whole lower back was a mess of pain, and I couldn’t seem to find the handle.

I’m going to die.

Something fluttered past me, like a stirring wind, and I heard a guttural roar and a distant shriek before I managed to flip myself over. I cried out again—I’d landed on my back, and the pain was savage—but I managed to wipe my eyes and make out a figure standing over me, facing away, with his feet planted protectively. Beyond him, a second figure in a black mask and hood—the runner—was staggering to their feet, a big dent in the car behind them. That had to be my attacker. One of my attackers. The sniper shot had been from too far away for the shooter to run up the sidewalk so fast, which meant there were at least two of them.

The runner looked at the man standing over me, turned, and sprinted away. My protector glanced down at me over his shoulder, starting to speak, and a thwap sound punctured the air.

He cursed, dropping low behind the column and duckwalking until he was crouched next to me. “Shit, that stings,” he muttered, looking down at his bicep with irritation. There was a bullet hole in his jacket sleeve, but almost no blood.

Pain was screaming for my attention, but I forced myself to focus on his face. It was the trumpet player from the band . . . Cole, that was his name.

My breath was coming in shallow pants, but I managed to say, “Maven?”

Cole nodded. “She asked me to keep an eye on you, although I wasn’t expecting to get quite this involved. You shot?”

My back hurt like a motherfucker, but I’d been shot before. This didn’t feel like that. “Don’t think so. Pain is . . . wrong. You see the sniper?”

He ducked his head past the brick pillar for a second, then pulled it back. There were a couple of small coughing sounds—bullets hitting the other side of the column. “He’s on the roof of an apartment building on Grant, but he’s wearing a mask,” Cole reported. “All I see’s the glint of metal.”

I started to speak, but he held up a finger, listening intently. He ducked his head out again, and this time there were no more shots. “The sniper is running,” he said. “I can just see his silhouette moving.”

“Go after him!”

He turned his head and grinned, white teeth flashing at me. “Girl, that is not what you want me to do.” He pointed to my cheekbone. “I fed well tonight, but any of the others come out and smell that blood, we’re gonna have a riot.”

I didn’t understand what he meant until I gingerly touched my cheek and my hand came back bloody. I’d cut it open on the pavement. Looking down, I saw the blood had dripped onto my shirt and jacket. “Fuck.”

Cole reached into his pocket and held out an actual handkerchief. I accepted it with my right hand and pressed it against the cut. “Let me see your back,” he commanded.

Too hurt to argue, I rolled onto my right side, allowing him to lift up the back of my jacket and shirt. He whistled. “Damn.”

“What?”

“Bullet hit dead center of that knife I gave you. Damned lucky shot.”

He was right, although at the moment it didn’t feel very lucky—the blade must have dented inward, because as I moved I felt it digging into me. “Take the knife out of the sheath,” I urged, and Cole complied. I sighed with relief when the pressure lifted.

He held up the dagger, and I could see exactly where the bullet had plowed into the metal, right in the center, where the blade had been strapped flat against my spine. Jesus. That shot probably wouldn’t have killed me—at least, not permanently—but I might have been paralyzed for life.

Or just long enough for the second shooter to run up and finish me off. Whoever this was had been ready for a boundary witch.

“We should get out of here before anyone else smells the blood,” Cole said. “Can you walk?”

“Sure. Walk, fly, whatever you want.” I started to climb to my feet, but my thinking wasn’t straight yet, and I yelped as I unintentionally put weight on my left wrist again. I fell back onto my butt, leaning against the brick column and cradling my hand. I didn’t think I was concussed, but I had a hell of a headache radiating inward from my cheekbone. My left eye had cleared of tears, but things still looked a little fuzzy out of the other one.

“Shit,” Cole muttered. “Just stay there a minute.”

That sounded like such an excellent plan that I went one further and allowed my eyes to close.

A moment later, Cole said, “I need you to get to the arch entrance right now.”

I opened my eyes and saw him pocketing a cell phone. “Who did you call?” I asked in alarm.

“Beau.”

“I don’t want—”

He cut me off. “Too late.”

I followed his gaze down the path leading deeper into the cemetery. Beau had just emerged from the shadows. He must’ve run at vampire speed, because he dropped down beside me before my eyes could focus on him. His nostrils flared, but he ignored the bloody handkerchief. “What happened?” he asked, looking at Cole.

I was a little annoyed that the vampires were talking over me, but I also felt too shitty to care. “She stepped through the arch and turned back like she’d forgotten something,” Cole reported. “Sniper took her in the lower back, but she was carrying a knife, and the bullet hit the sheath instead of her spine.” He held up the battered knife. I didn’t know where the bullet was—maybe still trapped in the sheath? I didn’t care.

Cole nodded toward the sidewalk on the other side of the arch. “Then a second shooter ran up on foot, probably looking for a head shot. I pushed him into that car and he ran off.”

Beau followed his eyes to the dented van and back. “You get a look at him?”

“Naw, he had a ski mask. I’ve a good sense of his height and weight, though.”

Beau looked at the hole in Cole’s jacket. “Sniper still up there?” Cole shook his head. “Why were you following her?”

My eyes had been drifting shut again, but I opened them to witness Cole’s answer. He gave Beau a sheepish grin. “You know me, boss—always interested in a new lady. I thought it’d be kinda cool to sleep with a boundary witch . . . if the lady was so inclined, of course.” He gave me a very suggestive wink, and I managed not to roll my eyes in return. The numbness in my cheek was wearing off, and I was trying not to throw up from pain.

If Beau was suspicious about that answer, he showed no sign of it. “Glad you came along, Mr. Cole.” Then the cardinal vampire looked back down at me, obviously distressed. “I’m so sorry this happened. Let’s get you to a hospital.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary . . . don’t you have someone?”

“To patch up a minor injury? Sure. But that hand is swelling fast. You need an X-ray.” He patted his pockets, looking newly distressed. “I don’t have keys.”

“I s’pose I could drive you,” Cole offered. He pointed to the parking lot, just across the street. “Car’s just there.”

“Thank you kindly,” Beau said, and to me: “Let’s get you up.”

He and Cole each lifted one of my arms, and as we made our way toward the parking lot, my feet barely touched the ground.

Chapter 18

Cole drove a light-blue Cadillac DeVille. I’d spent a decade serving with a bunch of guys who loved to argue about cars, and I was pretty sure this was a fourth-generation DeVille, from the early seventies. It had a bit of wear and tear, but looked like it’d been lovingly cared for. When the vampires loaded me into the back seat, I turned myself sideways and leaned my head against a leather seat that had definitely been regularly conditioned. Awkwardly, I dug my cell phone out of my left jacket pocket with my right hand.

The screen was cracked from when I’d fallen, but the phone still worked. As soon as all three of us were in the car, I called Maven and told her that I had minor injuries, Beau and another vampire were taking me to the hospital, and I’d get back to her when I had more information.

“All right,” Maven said, her voice tight. She was aware that Beau could hear what she was saying. “What hospital will you be at?”

I looked at Beau. “Emory University Hospital,” he informed me. “I know people there.”

As I hung up with Maven, Beau was telling Cole that he could drop the two of us off. “I’ll send for a car to get us home afterward.”

Cole raised his eyebrows at me in the rearview mirror, but I just nodded wearily. I wasn’t worried about being alone with Beau, not if Maven knew what was going on.

“You got it,” Cole said easily.

“I won’t forget this,” Beau added in a serious voice.

I don’t remember the rest of the ride to the hospital. I know I closed my eyes to avoid seeing the ghosts, but I might also have passed out. Or, more likely, the come-down from the adrenaline made everything hazy for a while.

In the back of my mind, I worried that the hospital would be packed with ghosts, but when Cole dropped us off at the ER entrance, there weren’t nearly as many as I’d feared. I suppose many of the people who die at the hospital see it coming, or consider it a relief.

The ghosts I did see, however, were clustered in the emergency room area, right where we had to be. Luckily, Beau’s comment about “knowing people” at Emory was a hell of an understatement: in less than an hour we were processed through the ER, both my wrist and face had been x-rayed, and I was installed in a private room with an IV drip and an attending on the way. We’d walked past a couple of patient rooms that were crowded with remnants, but the one I was in was ghost-free. I wondered if Beau had specifically requested it because he knew it wasn’t haunted. It was nice working with someone else who could see them.

As far as I could tell, Beau didn’t actually press anyone that whole time, and I figured he was probably a major donor, either to the school or the hospital. Or maybe both.

When the nurse came in to put in my IV, Beau went to wait in a chair outside my door. He said he wanted to keep an eye out for another attack—and, I suspected, make some calls to his people. I figured he could probably hear everything going on in my room anyway, but even the semblance of privacy was comforting.

The attending doctor on duty, a stout woman in her early fifties named Dr. Latham, came in a few minutes later to put eight stitches in my cheekbone, where the skin had split when I hit the pavement. By the time she was done, an orderly had delivered a file of my X-rays. Latham pulled out the facial X-rays first and jammed them into the light box on the wall. “As we suspected, the cheekbone isn’t broken,” she said.

I just nodded, unsurprised. It hurt like hell, but it felt swollen, not broken.

Latham pulled those films out and stuck two more in. “There’s a fracture in the left wrist, though.”

“Shit.” I’d been really, really hoping it was just a sprain.

“At least it’s your left and not your right,” she offered.

“I’m left-handed.”

She winced, glancing over at me. “Ah. Then . . . tough break?”

I rolled my eyes good-naturedly. “At any rate,” she continued, “it’s nondisplaced, which means—”

“The bone is fractured but already in alignment,” I finished for her.

“Well . . . yes.”

I gave her a grim smile. “It’s not my first time.”

“Right. Well, you’re in good health and I don’t anticipate any problems with it healing. Since you’re in town visiting friends, I would suggest you use a brace until you head home. Your own doctor can cast it once the swelling has gone down.”

“I can do that.”

“Meanwhile,” she said, picking up my chart and looking it over, “I’d like to keep you overnight for observation.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

She glanced up at me over her reading glasses. “A tough guy, huh? All right, well, at least finish the bag of IV fluids. Your blood pressure was a little low.”

“Okay.”

She paused, looking at me hard. “Anything else you want to talk about? Any other injuries?”

I hadn’t told the admitting nurse about the bruising on my back. It didn’t exactly match the story I’d told about being side-checked by a jogger and falling on my face. Besides, they’d given me some hydrocodone, and the pain had already receded to a dull ache. “Nope.”

She frowned, lowering her voice. “Do you feel safe at home?”

I blinked for a second, before I understood that she was asking if Beau had really been the one who’d hurt me. “Yes. I’m fine, really.”

With a little shrug, she pulled a business card and a pen out of the pocket of her lab coat. She scribbled something on the back of the card and handed it to me. “All right, well. Mr. Calhoun is a major donor, and I’ve been asked to help you any way I can. If the pain gets worse, or something else happens, call me. I can at least tell you whether or not you need to come in.”

I took the card and thanked her, tucking it carefully into my pants pocket.

As Dr. Latham walked out the door, Beau was just coming in. He closed it behind him. “I’ve got the Horsemen installed at either end of the hallway,” he said in a low voice. “So we can talk.”

I gestured to the visitor chair, and he pulled it next to the bed, sitting down heavily. He looked anguished and haggard, which was not a normal look for a vampire.

“You talked to Maven, didn’t you?”

He nodded. “We needed to discuss the oath I’ve broken.”

I blinked several times. In all the uproar, I’d forgotten all about Beau’s promise of mutual safety. No wonder he seemed so upset. “But I quit,” I said stupidly. “I wasn’t working for you when I was attacked.”

He gave me a wan smile. “That’s generous of you, but it doesn’t matter. I swore to get you back to Colorado safely.”

I felt a knot of panic tighten in my stomach. I didn’t want the responsibility of unseating Beau. “I could break your wrist and give you a few bruises,” I offered. “That would even things up.”

He gave me the same sad smile again, but his heart wasn’t in it. “I guaranteed your safety, then grew careless about your protection. Sloppy. If Cole hadn’t come upon you, you likely would have died.”

I shrugged. “I’ve died before.”

“Don’t make jokes,” he said. “The people who did this knew to knock you down from a distance and then finish you off up close. They came prepared to kill a boundary witch.”

So he’d reached the same conclusion. “I agree, but the attack didn’t feel professional. The second shooter hesitated, for one thing. If I hadn’t fallen and hit my face, I might have made it to my gun.”

“Hmm.” Beau looked thoughtful, and I realized my mistake: Was he going to ask me where I’d gotten a gun in a strange city?

To avoid having to lie, I said quickly, “Did you find the bullet?”

He nodded. “I’m getting it to my contact at Atlanta PD as we speak. If the shooter left a print and it’s in the system, we’ll find them.”

“So what happens in the meantime?” I asked Beau.

He leaned forward onto his elbows, and I saw that there were a few small spatters of blood on his suit, probably from my cheek. “I will get you on the first flight to Denver tomorrow morning. Tomorrow evening, I’ll surrender my leadership status to one of the Horsemen, and turn all my attention to finding whoever did this.” He gestured at the injuries on my face.

“What happens to Odessa?”

“I’ll send her away,” he replied. He’d obviously been thinking about this. “I have plenty of money, especially if I sell off a couple of my businesses. I can afford to send her to school somewhere else, and hire bodyguards to protect her there for as long as she needs.”

I had a hard time picturing Odessa being happy with that. I looked down at my wrist in the splint. I thought about Odessa’s bright smile at the restaurant, and Beau’s passion when he spoke about the Unsettled. Again, I felt that tight knot of unwanted responsibility.

“Or,” I said slowly, “we could make a deal.”

Beau’s eyebrows lifted. “Oh?”

“I’m assuming I can waive the oath?”

He looked a little embarrassed. “In this case, it would have to be Maven. It’s a vampire thing.”

I suspected he was trying to avoid a sentence like “because she’s your master.” “Whatever. I’ll ask her to drop the oath, and I’ll stay and find out who did this to me.”

Beau began to brighten, but I held up a finger. “Wait. In exchange, I want two things. First, you agree to be governed by Maven’s parliament when it gets off the ground.”

His face fell again, but he didn’t say no. He looked like he’d expected exactly that condition. “And the second?”

“No more blood tributes at Promenade. Ever.”

Beau went very still for a moment, thinking that over. “I do not know if my people would be satisfied with that.”

“Well, I do miss Boulder,” I said, putting my right index finger on my chin as though in deep thought. “Be nice to get home.”

Beau flashed me a tiny smile. “Let me suggest a compromise: the witches still donate blood, but they do so at another location, using medical equipment. The blood is then delivered to Promenade by car.”

I considered the offer. My main problem with the tribute had been the humiliation and degradation, not to mention the fear and physical pain of a bite. “Do you know any witches in the medical profession?”

“I do. Two nurses and a doctor.”

“Then the clan giving the blood gets to choose the location, and you will pay for one of those three witches to do the blood draw.”

His mustache twitched. “You have me over a barrel, Miss Luther.”

I held up my hand in the splint. “I didn’t create this situation, Mr. Calhoun. I would have been just as happy to not get shot and injured.”

“Fair enough.” His lips curled up into a full smile. “You’ve got a deal.”

I held out my right hand, and he shook it.

After my conversation with Beau, he left the room, promising to go down the hall where he couldn’t overhear, and I called Maven.

“Lex? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“Quinn is on the line too.”

I exhaled. “Hey, Quinn.”

“Hi.” His voice was tight, but he was trying to keep it together. “What happened?”

“I was careless.”

I told them everything: the cemetery, the blood tribute, getting shot, getting saved by another vampire, the injuries. I didn’t use Cole’s name or say that it had been Maven’s spy, but they probably inferred it.

Quinn wanted me to come home, but I explained the deal I’d cut with Beau.

There was a long pause, and then Maven said cautiously, “You’re sure you want to do that?”

“Yes.”

“She needs help,” Quinn said, and I knew he wasn’t talking to me. “I should be there.”

“You know very well that you can’t,” came Maven’s calm voice. Into the phone, she said, “Lex, I will send someone to watch your back. Let me ask around.”

I hadn’t realized how tense I was until my shoulders relaxed. Maven would send someone I trusted. I wouldn’t be alone here. “Thank you.”

“As soon as we hang up, I’ll call Beau and formalize this deal,” she said, her voice hardening a little. “Before I waive the oath, I’m going to get all of this in writing.”

“Sounds good.” I suddenly felt exhausted. It was only ten o’clock, but now that my plan for the immediate future was settled, the lack of sleep and the painkillers were hitting me all at once.

“I’m also going to tell him that you are taking the rest of tonight and tomorrow morning off, and that under no circumstances is he to require your presence before your help arrives,” she said sharply. “I’ll try to have someone there by the afternoon.”

I yawned, trying to keep from making any sounds they’d hear over the phone. “All right,” I said.

“Get some rest.”

Chapter 19

When Beau came back into the room a little later, he handed me a plastic shopping bag. I peeked inside and saw the Sig Sauer, which Beau had held on to while I was being treated, a new T-shirt and hoodie from the hospital gift shop, and a plain white mailing envelope. I put the bag on my lap so I could open the envelope. It was full of cash.

The shirt made sense—blood had dripped all over my own top—but I looked at the money in confusion. “Uh . . .”

“For a hotel room,” Beau said. “And clothes, toiletries, whatever you need for tonight. Maven said she was sending someone to help, but I don’t want you going back to your hotel. Take a cab to a new one.”

I blinked. That was a little paranoid, but I kind of liked it. “I’ll stay somewhere else, but can someone bring me my things? Maybe that guy from before . . . Cole, right? I’m pretty confident that he’s not trying to kill me.”

Beau thought that over for a moment, but even without knowing that Cole was Maven’s spy, he could see the logic. If the trumpet player wanted me dead, he wouldn’t have stuck his neck out to save me.

“All right,” Beau agreed. “If he’s willing, I’ll ask him to go to your old hotel, get your things, and meet you wherever you’d like. Are you okay with that?”

I actually opened my mouth to ask how Cole would get into my hotel room, which goes to show why I shouldn’t do serious painkillers. Vampire. Duh. “Yeah, that’s fine.”

Beau nodded. “That’s settled then. Keep the cash anyway, you’ll need a replacement phone. Tomorrow, whenever your friend arrives, call either Maya or me and we can resume the inquiry. Until then . . .” He paused, then shrugged and gave me a tired smile. “Please be careful. If you do get killed, Maven will probably have me murdered.”

If I got killed, I thought, Maven wasn’t necessarily the one he’d have to worry about.

I was allowed to check out of the hospital a little later, after I’d promised to follow up with a doctor in a few days. I took a cab to a twenty-four-hour pharmacy to pick up a new burner phone and some over-the-counter painkillers, got Quinn to forward my calls again, and found an all-night diner for some eggs and toast. I hadn’t eaten much that day.

I couldn’t use my left hand to eat, since it was still wrapped up with two chemical ice packs from the hospital. It took a frustratingly long time to eat with my nondominant hand. As I was picking up my last piece of toast, Cole prowled into the dining room like a cat, his eyes scanning the room until he spotted me. He’d taken off his jacket and acquired a fedora, which looked damned good on him. A couple of heads turned as he sauntered across the room to me, carrying my big duffel bag.

“Your luggage, ma’am,” he drawled, setting the bag next to me on the booth seat.

Out of curiosity, I lifted the handle. The bag was definitely heavier than it had been when I’d flown in—which meant Cole had packed the other guns. “Thanks,” I told him.

He flashed a grin. The waitress came over to ask him what he wanted, blushing a little when she met his eyes. “Nothing for me, thanks,” Cole said, smiling up at her. I got the impression he was a guy who smiled a lot. “I’ll just watch her eat.” He somehow made it sound flirty.

The waitress giggled. After she’d left, Cole turned back to me.

“Is Beau paying you for your time tonight?” I asked.

“Nope. But it’s always a good idea to do a favor for the cardinal vampire. The major seemed a little surprised that you asked for me.” He gave me a sly look. “I think he suspects you’re going to take me up on that offer to spend the night with me.”

I just took a slow sip of my coffee, ignoring his raised eyebrows.

“So, how do you know Maven?” I said when I’d put the cup down.

“She didn’t tell you? She turned me.”

“I figured that out, yeah. But how did you meet her?”

He leaned back in his chair, smiling at me again. “That’s a very personal question. Will I get to ask one in return?”

I shrugged, one of the few movements I could still do without extra pain. “You can always ask. Doesn’t mean I’m obligated to answer.”

His smile didn’t waver. “You are just determined not to flirt, aren’t you?”

“Pretty much.” I popped the last bite of toast in my mouth.

When I didn’t say anything else, Cole’s crooked smile faded. “I was in the Onward Brass Band in New Orleans in 1905, when the last epidemic of yellow fever hit the city.” He fussed with the fedora for a moment, and added, “I think Maven just liked my music.”

I noticed he was meeting my eyes. “You’re not afraid of me,” I stated.

Cole smiled again, draping his arms over the back of the booth on either side. “No, ma’am. Maven said you never press vampires without an excellent reason, and I figure I must be on your good side after tonight.”

I laughed. “True.” He had an expectant look, so I waved with my right hand. “Go ahead, ask.”

“Why’re you here?” he said without preamble. “I mean, from what I hear, before tonight Beau just had you tilting at his windmills. Why do it?”

I thought of Odessa. I didn’t really want to go into the whole saga of my birth mother’s history and the milites mortis, so I just said, “It’s complicated.”

He gave a big theatrical eye roll. “Well, I suppose you did warn me.”

“Do you like it here?” I asked, just out of curiosity.

He gave a short laugh. “Hell yes. Love Atlanta. Now, it’s not the best jazz city in the South, but I have to keep a low profile, and I get good gigs here.”

“Like playing at Promenade?” My voice came out harder than I’d intended, and Cole’s expression soured.

The server chose that moment to come over, and I asked her for the check. When she left, Cole leaned forward and looked me in the eye. “Lady, I don’t much care about Promenade, or Beau for that matter. He’s an okay guy, and a pretty good leader, and that’s good enough for me. Maybe you’re feeling bad about getting in bed with him, but don’t put that shit on me.”

“I wasn’t—”

Cole held up his hand to stop me. “I ain’t a soldier. I’m not even a very good spy. What I am is a damned good musician.”

He draped his arms across the back of the seat again, his sly smile returning. “Wine, women, and song, that’s what I’m here for. Though it ain’t exactly wine. If the price of that is playing for a bunch of white assholes once a week during the season, well, that’s the cost of doing business.”

He was right. I’d been judgmental. “I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it. “That was a dick thing to say.”

He sighed, but he was smiling a little now. “Lord save me from Yankee women.”

Chapter 20

After paying the check, I thanked Cole for bringing my things and went out front to find a cab. There were a lot of ghosts in this part of town, but I was sore, exhausted, and still a little drugged, and somehow my obsidian had escaped all the excitement unscathed, so it wasn’t that hard to ignore them. I used my new phone to direct the driver to the closest big chain hotel, where I stumbled my way through check-in and getting to the room. As soon as I got in, I dropped the bag and collapsed on the bed.

For once, I didn’t have nightmares—probably a parting gift from the painkillers. When I woke at eight, though, it was because so many parts of me were aching and stiff with pain. My wrist in particular was throbbing, and I groaned and dragged myself out of bed and over to my bag to dig out Tylenol and Advil.

There was no hope of going back to sleep, so I checked my new phone. I’d missed a couple of texts from Maven and Maya—my backup would be arriving that evening around 6:00 p.m. Which left me with a lot of hours to kill.

Even I wasn’t reckless enough to work out with this many injuries, so I did a few cautious stretches to keep my circulation moving, wrapped a replacement bag from the ice bucket around my left hand, and climbed into the shower.

After I got dressed, I went out onto the room’s cramped balcony to review my options. It was another warm day, the temperature in the low seventies and humidity that amazed me, even in March. I wondered how anyone could stand to live in Georgia in July or August. I already felt like I was breathing in steam.

Maven had told me not to work the case until my backup arrived, but what was I supposed to do until then? If I just sat around the hotel room hurting, I was going to lose my mind.

I would go to Monticello, I decided. I needed to try out the firearms, especially now that I’d need to shoot right-handed. First, though, I needed to retrieve my rental car, and hope I would be able to drive it wearing my wrist brace.

Before I left, I retrieved my crystals and took them out to the balcony so I could cleanse them. I rinsed them with water in the bright sunshine and put the bloodstone back on right away, though I wrapped the obsidian carefully in a washcloth I’d borrowed from the hotel. I would put it in a jacket pocket until after dark.

I packed the rest of my weapons into my duffel bag, slung it carefully over my shoulder, and got a cab back to my old hotel.

In the parking lot I waited until the cab driver took off, then gave the car a cursory examination for tracking devices or explosives. When I was satisfied the car was fine, I got in and put my left hand experimentally on the wheel. As long as I used my fingers on that hand, not my palm, it was okay. Not ideal, but okay. I started it up and headed south.

The range Becca Rhodes had recommended turned out to be a small, mostly outdoor place in the country—just a few lanes separated by strings, with targets marked at ten, fifty, and a hundred yards. The operation was run by a gap-toothed, completely bald ex-marine improbably named Red. When we shook hands, he took a quick glance at my bruised face, and I could practically see him decide not to ask about it. I didn’t know the laws in Georgia, but I gave him fifty bucks and he didn’t ask to see a license or check my weapons.

I shot until my right hand ached and my back and cheekbone began to join in. Both sidearms fired just fine, but the Benelli was hard to handle without my left hand. I could kind of prop it on my left forearm and squeeze the trigger with my right, but it affected my aim, and I didn’t plan to use it unless I had to.

Not great.

When I finally said goodbye to Red and climbed into the car, I turned the ignition and just sat there for a minute, weighing the pros and cons.

Really? Like there’s any chance you’re not going to do it? came my sister’s amused voice in my head. You’re already more than halfway to Milledgeville.

I was pathetically relieved to hear from her. I’d been wearing the mahogany obsidian so much lately; I hadn’t realized how much I missed her. “From a security perspective, it’s not exactly a great idea,” I argued, “and who knows if I can even find her.”

But I was already pulling out my phone.

Social media was never my forte—I had a Facebook account, but I only logged in when one of my family members mentioned a post they wanted me to see—so it took me a little while to download Instagram and create an account under a fake name. Then I spent a few more minutes searching until I found the account I was looking for: Holly Noelle Quinlin in Milledgeville, Georgia.

Quinn had changed his name, but not by much.

The young woman in the photos looked so much like him that I let out a little gasp. She had his ruddy cheeks, blond hair, and angular features. On Quinn they were craggy and handsome in a skiwear-model way, but they made Holly’s face too fierce and sharp to be conventionally pretty. It was a great face.

Most of the photos were of Holly out with her friends, or pictures of just the friends, usually with a massive mug of coffee in front of them. I peered closer, tilting the phone so it wouldn’t catch the sunlight. There were an awful lot of pictures of lattes with those foam designs on top. I scrolled back through her account again until I was certain that all the coffee-related photos seemed to be at the same location. On a few of the foam-art shots, she’d tagged another profile, for a coffee shop called Bobby Cat’s.

“I could use some coffee,” I said out loud. The odds that Holly would be there at the exact right moment weren’t great, but I still had time to kill. Besides, it would drive me nuts later if I didn’t at least try. I put the rental car in gear.

Milledgeville, Georgia, definitely had more of an “antebellum South” vibe than I was used to, but it was still a college town. I almost felt at home as I drove past the kinds of businesses that appealed to students—bars, convenience stores, and of course, a disproportionately high number of coffee shops.

Once I got inside Bobby Cat’s, however, the layout had little in common with the labyrinthine organization of Magic Beans. The whole place consisted of a single large room with very high ceilings; colorful, painted wood trimmings; and tables that looked like they’d been scrounged from a wide variety of estate sales. An enormous, industrial-looking coffee grinder took up one whole corner of the space near the cash register, in case there was any doubt about how much Bobby Cat’s valued its tea drinkers.

There was a line of small tables along the opposite wall, and bigger tables in the center of the room. All the one- or two-person tables were occupied by coeds with a familiar frazzled look, and I wondered if Georgia College was also on the verge of midterms.

A tinkling bell had sounded as I walked in the door. The counter was off to my right, and it appeared to be empty, but at the sound of the bell, a young woman straightened up from where she’d been bent down under the counter. She turned around, and I nearly stumbled. It was Holly.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, smiling and pushing back some of the hair that had come loose from her bun. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Just looking for some extra lids.”

“Right. Cool,” I said stupidly. She worked here. Duh, Lex. No wonder she had so many photos.

There was a long chalkboard above the counter, and I glanced quickly at the list of drinks. “Can I get a large dead-eye, please?”

Her eyes twinkled as she pushed buttons on the cash register. “Studying not going well, huh?”

I just stared at her for a moment before my brain kicked in and reminded me that I looked young. “Something like that. I just needed a break.” There, that explained why I didn’t have any actual study materials with me.

Holly gave me a little placard with a number on it, and I turned and set it on a table near the counter. Then I wound my way through the other tables to a bookshelf jammed against the back wall, underneath some watercolors that were, a sign informed me, done by local artists. I grabbed the first book I saw, something with spaceships on the cover, and carried it back to my table to pretend to read.

“Here you go,” Holly said a few minutes later, setting the coffee at my elbow. She lowered her voice. “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”

“Uh, no.”

“Were you in the military?”

I flushed. This was supposed to be an undercover mission and I’d already managed to blow it. “What gave me away?”

Holly’s face lit up. “I knew it. Can I . . .” She gestured toward the chair opposite me, and I nodded. Dropping into the seat, she went on, “You look a couple of years older than most of our students, but more than anything it’s your posture. My mom says you can spot a soldier because they always fall into parade rest.” She smiled, her eyes sparkling at me. Quinn’s eyes. It was unnerving.

I picked up the coffee and took a sip. “Was your mom a soldier?”

“No, but my dad was. He died when I was little.”

This was so weird. I tried to think of a normal response to that. “I’m sorry to hear that. Um, did he die in combat?”

Holly traced a couple of deep gouges on the Formica table with one finger. “No, he was a police officer after the army. He was ambushed on a case.”

“Oh.”

I had no idea what to say next. It was hard to pretend to know nothing about the man I’d been with for the last three years.

“Anyway, my senior capstone project involves veterans who go from the military straight to the police,” Holly went on, and gave a self-deprecating nose wrinkle. “I know—I’m basically announcing that I have daddy issues, but it makes me feel closer to him. And I saw you come in, and figured I might as well ask if you were in the Criminal Justice program too. Nothing ventured, et cetera.” She smiled, looking at me expectantly.

I almost laughed. Holly looked like Quinn, but she hadn’t inherited his reticence. “No, I’m sorry, I’m an English major,” I said, figuring I could at least fake that much. “But it sounds like a cool project.”

“Thanks. And you know, damn. It would have been cool to have a female subject.”

She started to stand up, and I tried to think of something that would prolong the conversation, help me know more about her. “Do you mind if I ask, do you remember him?”

She paused, then sat back down again. “I do,” she said thoughtfully. “Not a lot, and of course it’s all filtered through the brain of a four-year-old. But I have these impressions that he was kind, and quiet. And distracted. And intense.” She shrugged, looking embarrassed, like she may have offended me. “I don’t mean this as a criticism, but I’ve been volunteering with veterans since I was fifteen, and along with the posture, that’s the common denominator. You all have this . . . intensity.” She gave me a sheepish look. “You’ve probably heard that before.”

“I have. But it’s not an unfair assessment.” I took another sip of my coffee. “You said you’re a senior. What are you going to do after graduation?”

“Join the circus,” she said, completely straight-faced. “I’m thinking lion tamer, but I’ve always wanted to ride the elephants, so we’ll see.”

I laughed, and she grinned, pleased that she’d gotten me to laugh, and for just an instant I could see a universe in which Quinn had stayed human and been this girl’s father. He’d sit here just like I was, and she’d try to make him laugh. The thought stung.

“No, I’m going to the police academy,” Holly went on. “I just haven’t decided where yet. I grew up in Chicago, but Mom’s family is in Macon, so I’d kind of like to stay close.”

The little bell rang over the door, and we both looked up to see a woman limping in, leaning on a cane. She was in her fifties, with dark hair and gorgeous high cheekbones. Despite the warmth of the day, she wore a long-sleeved blouse with a high neck, and slacks. She smiled as her eyes found Holly. “Well, speak of the devil,” Holly said happily, raising her voice. A couple of students at the tables along the wall shot her annoyed looks, but Holly paid them no attention. She stood up and started toward the woman, stepping forward for a hug. “Hey, Mom.”

I tried to keep the surprise off my face. This was Quinn’s ex-wife? Wait, that wasn’t right. They’d still been married when he was turned. This was Quinn’s . . . widow.

I felt almost dizzy with surprise. I’d never expected to meet her. I knew very little about her, except that Quinn had attacked and nearly killed her when he’d lost control shortly after becoming a vampire. I eyed the long sleeves and the cane, then reminded myself not to stare.

Holly was leading her back toward the counter. “I was just chatting with this girl,” she said, gesturing at my table. “She’s a vet.” To me, she added, “Although, I’m sorry, I don’t think I got your name. I’m Holly.”

Shit. I didn’t want to lie to them, but I also couldn’t give them too much information about me.

Um, you have more than one name, babe.

Oh. Right. I stood up and held out my hand. “Allison,” I said. That was the name on my birth certificate, even though no one had ever called me by it. “Nice to meet you.”

“You too.” Holly shook my hand, then gestured to her mother. “This my mom, Rosemary.”

Rosemary switched her cane to the other hand so we could shake. “Lovely to meet you,” she said, giving me a reserved smile. “Thank you for your service.”

I flushed again. I never knew what to say to this, so I mumbled, “Good to meet you too, ma’am. It’s nice that you come see your daughter at work.”

“Oh, she got me good and addicted to her espresso,” Rosemary said, rolling her eyes fondly at Holly. “She started bringing them to me after her shifts, and before I knew it I could hardly make it through the day without them. She’s sneaky like that.”

“I was telling Allison about Dad, and my capstone project,” Holly said, in a quieter tone. She was watching her mom for a reaction, but Rosemary’s expression gave nothing away.

“Oh, are you in law enforcement too, Allison?” she asked, with a new chill in her tone. Her eyes went to the bruising on my cheek and the brace on my hand.

“No, ma’am. I’m getting my degree in English.” I gestured toward my cheek with my braced hand. “I was in a fender bender.”

“Ah.” Rosemary relaxed, like I’d passed a test. “An English degree sounds lovely. People so rarely get shot for reading Great Expectations.”

“Mom,” Holly warned.

“Yeah, it’s really the Hemingway you have to watch out for,” I said. It was the first thing that popped into my head, but it earned a grin from Holly.

Rosemary looked at me critically. “Do you have kids, Allison?”

“Mom!” Holly complained. “She’s too young.”

“I don’t have my own, no,” I replied. “But I’m extremely close to my niece. She’s almost five.”

The older woman nodded. “Just wait until she’s old enough to choose a career. There’s such a fine line between raising a legacy and a vulnerability.”

Over her shoulder, Holly rolled her eyes and mouthed, I’m sorry.

I wondered, for the first time, how I’d feel if Charlie wanted to enlist when she grew up. I’d probably be torn right down the middle between pride and “over my dead body.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said simply.

“We’ve kept Allison long enough,” Holly said. “Let’s go get you that espresso, Mom.”

She waved a cheerful goodbye, and I walked out of the shop feeling slightly dazed, as though I’d made it successfully across a field of land mines . . . barely.

Chapter 21

Maya texted me as I was driving back to Atlanta, wanting to know if I would meet Beau at the Atlanta History Center later that night. He wanted to discuss next steps.

I needed to stop for gas and a bathroom break anyway, so I pulled off at the next exit and looked it up on my phone. The Atlanta History Center “campus” was made up of a bunch of connected properties, including a general history museum, a historic farmhouse, and something called the Swan House, a former residential mansion that looked a lot like Azalea Manor. Beau wanted to meet at the main History Center building, which was famous for its Civil War relics. So that was pretty on-brand.

I wasn’t sure why he wanted to do it there instead of at his home, but I figured he might be trying to keep me away from Odessa. If someone was gunning for me, that was a smart move. And at least the History Center was another ghost-free location. I texted Maya back and agreed.

By the time I got back to the Atlanta metro area, it was time to go to the airport and pick up my backup.

He was waiting for me right where I’d instructed—the same baggage claim door where Warton had picked me up two days earlier. When I pulled up, he was sitting on his suitcase, looking bored, but he brightened like a puppy seeing a treat. “Lex!”

As I climbed out, Tobias scrambled off the suitcase and came forward to throw his arms around me. “Ow!” I yelped as his shoulder bumped my cheekbone.

“Sorry, sorry!” The werewolf stepped back, looking crushed. “I’m so sorry . . . damn, that is a hell of a bruise.”

“Yup.” I fought the urge to touch it.

“I’ll load my bag and then you can tell me everything.” And he scurried back to the suitcase.

Tobias and I had met three years earlier, when I needed information about werewolves. Back then he was spending all his time in wolf form, hanging out at a preserve for displaced wolves. He wasn’t really a prisoner—it wasn’t like normal chain-link fences could hold a determined werewolf—but his former alpha had seriously fucked with his head, using pack magic to more or less drive him insane.

I’d come back to the preserve later with Sashi, who had supernatural healing powers, and because the ley lines were boosted at the time, she’d been able to heal most of his psychic damage.

I’d done it because I needed his help, but Tobias still treated me as his personal hero, and no matter how many times I tried to explain that Sashi had done everything, not me, he was eager to help me in any way he could. According to my text from Maven, he’d volunteered for this trip, but she was also making sure he was well paid. I didn’t know who was picking up the check, but it didn’t really matter to me. As backup went, Tobias was a good choice. He had enhanced strength and senses, but he would be able to stay awake during the day in case I needed help.

And he isn’t Simon, a tiny voice in the back of my head whispered. I was wearing my mahogany obsidian again, so it was just my conscience speaking, not Sam. Simon was a great friend, but there was a certain awkwardness between us, something that had wriggled into our relationship after I brought him back from the dead. I didn’t really want to spend twenty-four hours a day dealing with that.

“So,” Tobias said, buckling his seat belt. “Where are we going first?”

“We’ll grab something to eat, and then we have to meet Beau at the museum,” I told him.

“Great!” he exclaimed. “Who’s Beau?”

Traffic had picked up, so I had plenty of time to fill Tobias in on what was going on in Atlanta. When I finished, I glanced over, expecting questions, but he was just squirming in his seat. “What?” I asked.

“I just . . . there’s more than one kind of ghost?”

I chuckled. “I know of four—well, five now. Wraiths are the really bad ones, they’re full of violence and hate.” Tobias shot me a knowing look, and I nodded. He’d been with me in the tunnels under Cheyenne. I hurried to continue. “Remnants are the most common, and they’re like a short recording of the person’s death, not sentient or anything. There are ghosts who connect to people instead of places—I actually don’t know much about those—and Beau’s missing ghosts, the Unsettled.”

“That’s four,” Tobias pointed out. “What’s the fifth kind?”

“Boundary witches,” I said. “When we die, we leave behind a fully sentient ghost.”

“Always?”

“Well, no, not always.” Nellie, the boundary witch I knew, deliberately chose not to cross over to the other side.

Tobias thought about that for a moment. “Still, if boundary witches leave behind a sentient ghost, and Beau is from a family of boundary witches, could there be a ghost who can help answer some of your questions about what’s happening?”

“That . . . is a very interesting question. Beau made it sound like nobody in his family actually took up boundary magic, but there could have been a black sheep.” I shrugged. “We can ask him.”

We dropped off Tobias’s bag in my new hotel, where I’d been able to get him the room right across the hall. Then, at his request, we stopped at a cafe-style BBQ joint near Georgia State University. I watched him eat two enormous meal platters of pork while I picked at a meatless salad and corn bread. It still hurt if I opened my mouth too far to chew.

By the time we finished, the sun was dropping below the horizon, and I asked him to drive the rest of the way to the Atlanta History Center, explaining that I couldn’t really drive at night with so many ghosts everywhere.

Tobias looked around. “You mean there are ghosts here right now?”

I had to smile. “They’re starting to become visible, yes.”

We were walking around the building to the car, but Tobias had stopped on the sidewalk, blinking at me. “You smell kinda nervous. Are you okay?”

Right. I swallowed and straightened my shoulders, trying to project confidence. I couldn’t change my smell, but body language was a big deal for werewolves. “I’m okay, just . . . a woman died right where you’re standing,” I told him, taking his elbow and gently steering him out of the ghost’s path.

“Oh.” He glanced down at the sidewalk he’d just left, as though a closer look might make her visible. “What does she look like?”

“She’s wearing a period nurse’s uniform, and she was struck down by something fast, probably a horse and carriage. She only had enough time to throw up her arms.”

“You can’t see what hit her?” he asked.

I shook my head, automatically touching my shirt to reassure myself that I was still wearing the obsidian. “I only see the remnant of a human soul in the moment they died. Animals and objects don’t leave ghosts.”

“Huh.” He was fascinated. “And there are more remnants around here?”

I nodded without needing to look. I was guessing there had been a hospital very close to this spot during the Civil War, because death was all around me.

I took Tobias’s arm and pulled him toward the car, trying to keep my breathing even. “You could say that.”

Chapter 22

Despite its name, the Atlanta History Center was a sleek, concrete-and-glass behemoth that looked like multiple massive shapes had been fused together as modern art. It had its own parking structure, but the GPS took us to the opposite side of the building, so we parked on the street instead.

When Tobias and I walked around to the front, Beau was waiting at the entrance in a sleek charcoal suit, his hands in his jacket pockets. Warton stood behind him in those stupid sunglasses. As we walked up, Tobias automatically moved to flank me, and I saw Beau shoot him an approving smile. Warton’s lips twisted with distaste, but that might also have been for me.

“A werewolf,” Beau said jovially. “I haven’t met a new werewolf in years. Good day, sir.”

“Hello,” Tobias said cautiously, which was maybe the least effusive I’d ever seen him. “I’m just here to protect Lex. Not claiming territory. Not interfering with packs.”

“That’s all right, my boy, there aren’t any in the Metro area.” He actually clapped Tobias on the back before turning to me. “Shall we?”

“Isn’t the museum closed?” Tobias asked.

“They rent it out for private events,” Beau said with a smirk. “I’m a frequent visitor—not to mention a rather large donor.”

And, of course, a vampire who could press anyone he wanted.

Warton held the door open, and Beau guided us through the massive, empty lobby to a wide carpeted hallway with barn-style glass doors at the end that led to the exhibitions. The lights were on in only one of them, and I could see a sign that read TURNING POINTS: 1860. Beau had already slid one of the doors open so we could enter.

The exhibit space was set up like a lot of museums I’d visited: a series of display rooms with one way in and out, forming a sort of corridor herding visitors in one direction so they wouldn’t miss anything. There were also dark corners with TV screens, which probably showed informational videos during working hours.

I followed Beau through an anteroom and a round room consisting of displays of uniforms and supplies. “Many of these items were given to the museum by me, or other vampires who fought in the war,” he commented, drifting past a case of cooking pans. “Through intermediaries, of course.” He made a show of looking in one of the cases.

Tobias gamely peered through the glass, but my hand and cheek were aching, and I wasn’t sure what to say. I had thought Beau wanted to meet to discuss the previous night’s events and where the investigation should go next. I wasn’t sure why he was playing tour guide again. Sure, the Unsettled were missing from the History Center, but that had happened a while ago. What was the point of being here now?

Only one way to find out. “Not that this isn’t interesting,” I said carefully, edging around a velvet rope protecting flags, “but why are we here, Beau?”

The cardinal vampire glanced at me and then his bodyguard. “Warton?” he said. “The hallway, if you please.”

Warton retreated back to the exhibit entrance, still looking disgruntled. At least he didn’t talk much; I had to give him that. “Should I go stand in the hall too?” Tobias asked me.

I smiled at him. “Maybe just for a few minutes.”

Beau watched the two of them retreat and then turned to me. “After last night, I wanted you to see what was taken,” Beau said gravely. “You’ve met Odessa, but to truly understand the stakes, you should see this too.”

That annoyed me a little—did he think I didn’t understand what was lost during a war? But I took a breath and told myself to give him the benefit of the doubt. At least for a while. “All right.”

We wound our way past clothing and gear, mannequins dressed like soldiers from the North and South, and weapons—lots of weapons. “Only a few weeks ago, this whole room was packed with the Unsettled,” Beau explained. He’d finally stopped in front of an arrangement of objects made from metal and leather. He rested his fingertips lightly on the edges of the glass, like a blessing. I stepped closer so I could read the heading on the display: CAVALRY RIDING AND HORSE EQUIPMENT. Only then did I recognize the pieces of old metal as a bridle and spurs. You could hardly distinguish one from the other.

“Were these your things?” I asked Beau.

“Most of them.” His eyes were fixed on the display with a look of longing. “The strangest thing about soldiering is that no matter how terrible the war, there are things I miss. Odessa says I have selective amnesia.”

I had to swallow a couple of times before I could speak. My thoughts had flown to a hot desert sky and my friend Cisco insisting on showing us his hacky-sack skills. He’d been just terrible at it. The rest of the squad had laughed so hard we’d had to hold each other up.

“It’s not amnesia,” I said to Beau. “There were good parts.”

He gave me a wan smile. “I was a Spiritualist, you know, before the war. Many people were back then. We believed that after death our souls would go on to a better place, but also that we would have ways of communicating with our loved ones who were still alive.” His eyes became distant. “It made it ever so much easier for us to die by the hundreds.”

“A lot of the books in your study are about Spiritualism,” I said, just to pull his attention away from whatever had put that expression on his face.

Beau sighed and started walking through the exhibit again, winding past racks of rifles and ordnance. “Yes, well. I studied everything I could, both before and after my death. It was my idea that death magic and Spiritualism were nearly one and the same. What is a boundary witch, after all, but a medium who can speak to the dead?”

Huh. I had actually met a boundary witch who made her living doing that kind of magic—speaking to the dead—but I’d never connected it with the concept of the fake psychics who did cold readings on television.

Then I remembered Tobias’s question. “Yet none of the Calhouns chose to become witches . . . right?”

“Not that I am aware of,” Beau replied. “At least, not since my grandmother’s time, when the family moved from Savannah to Atlanta. No one wanted to take the risk with their children.”

So much for finding the ghost of one of the Calhoun ancestors.

Beau was quiet after that, and I found myself wandering through the exhibit, reading plaques and trying not to shudder. Being overseas had been hard, but I’d had so many small comforts compared to soldiers a hundred and fifty years ago. I stopped at a display about medicine and disease, looking with horror at the rudimentary saws used for amputation.

“We didn’t know about germs then,” Beau said quietly, appearing at my shoulder. “Doctors would cut off a leg or an arm, move on to the next soldier, and do it again. No sterilization. Did you know that for every man who died on the battlefield, two more died of disease?”

“No, I didn’t.” I glanced at him, eyebrows raised in invitation.

Beau nodded. “I received a relatively minor injury from a ricochet, but I died in an Atlanta hospital. Typhoid.”

“Do you mind if I ask how you became a vampire?”

He smiled, wandering toward a massive cannon display. “Both sides of the war had vampires. They couldn’t fight or march during the day, but at night they served as excellent scouts, spies, and assassins. We had to be very careful about recruiting, though. Creating too many hungry vampires too quickly might lead to men turning on their own companies for food. It happened a few times.”

“There was one woman who posed as a nurse. She would visit hospitals at night to feed. Plenty of blood for the taking, and no one was exactly conducting autopsies.” He paused, his eyes distant. “She also looked for dying soldiers who had particular promise.”

“And she chose you.”

He finally met my gaze, inclining his head. “I’m not sure why, but yes. She turned me, but instead of serving her, I was born with power. I used it to turn four of my men without permission. We wound up having to disappear for a bit until the transgression was forgotten.”

I looked at him. “You didn’t finish the war?”

“No, and that is the thing for which I am most grateful.” He took in my look of surprise. “You thought I would lament the loss of the Confederacy?” He shook his head. “Ours was not a just cause, Miss Lex.”

I didn’t consider the question. It just came out. “If you knew that, why did you join?”

“I didn’t know then. I fell for all the Southern propaganda.” He gave a little headshake. “I’d never even met a slave—I had a job working for the railroads, just like my father did. But we were told it was the second Revolutionary War, and we needed to protect the Southern way of life.” He stared morosely into the display. “We were so full of manufactured patriotism and self-righteousness that we never questioned if the Southern way of life was an honorable one.”

I felt a swell of compassion then. I’d misjudged Beau, assuming all this time that his obsession with the Civil War was the result of nostalgia. But I knew what it felt like to realize you might have been on the wrong side of a war—or at least, that the reasons you’d been given had been lies. How much worse to truly understand and internalize that you’d been fighting for actual slavery. How could anyone keep going after that, much less for centuries?

By doing whatever you could to make sure the warning wasn’t forgotten, I realized. I had to blink back tears. For the first time I really understood why Beau cared so much about the Unsettled.

Beau sensed the change in my emotions and straightened up from the display he’d been perusing. He met my eyes and held them for a long moment before bowing his head. “I do hope you’re not feeling sorry for me, Miss Lex. I am not the wronged party here.”

“No, I just . . .” I cleared my throat and glanced around. God help me, I was not going to cry. “All these items,” I said. “Do any of them still have happy memories for you? Any favorites?”

Beau thought for a second, then smiled. “Come back this way.”

We retraced our steps to a room with two mannequins, one dressed as a Union soldier and one as a Confederate soldier, with a canvas tent in between them. “Does he look familiar?” Beau asked, gesturing to the Confederate mannequin.

I squinted. “Is that . . . Hempstead? Without the beard?”

Beau grinned widely. “When they were putting this exhibit together, I’d recently given them some old group photographs. I don’t know if they commissioned the mannequin to look like this or if they found a close match by happenstance, but it is a source of great amusement for the five of us.”

“Did he grow the beard so he wouldn’t look so much like the mannequin?” Vampire hair does grow, though not as quickly as human hair.

“He’d already started on the beard, but . . . yes.” Beau chuckled, but then his face creased into a frown and he leaned over the railing. “That’s odd.”

“What is?” I glanced at the display, but I didn’t see anything strange.

“They must have added to the exhibit.” He pointed at the floor of the tent. “That whiskey bottle wasn’t there last time I visited.”

I looked closely at the container. It was green-brown, with a smooth neck and an aged-looking cork, though I didn’t see any liquid inside. It appeared just like the bottles in some of the other displays, at least to me. “They must have other donors,” I offered.

“Maybe.” Beau raised his voice and called, “Maynard? Can you come in here?”

Warton’s first name was Maynard? I managed not to snort.

The bodyguard came skulking through the displays with Tobias at his heels. My friend gave me a worried look, but I discreetly held up a flat palm to show that I was fine.

“Do you recall seeing that bottle in the exhibit?” Beau asked Warton, making room so the other vampire could get close to the railing.

Warton’s face scrunched up in thought. “No. It doesn’t look right either. It’s close, but I don’t think the time period is right.”

“Curious. I would go and pick it up, but I didn’t press anyone to turn off the alarms.”

“Do you want me to—” Warton began, but then the bottle exploded.

Chapter 23

I was at a forty-five-degree angle, but the explosion seemed to hit me right in the center of my chest, forcing me to stumble backward. It was a large room, and there was nothing to grab, so I ended up tipping backward onto my ass. I automatically put my hands down to cushion the fall, and for a moment pain exploded into my brain, because of course I’d used my left hand without thinking.

The sudden chaos and pain reminded me so much of an IED attack that my panic spiked in a way that had nothing to do with whatever had just happened. For a second my vision began to darken at the edges and I started to hyperventilate.

Then I noticed that I could hear myself breathing.

I’d been near explosions before, and they were so loud that it left a temporary deafness, but my ears weren’t even ringing. In fact, I realized, there’d been no sound from the explosion at all, other than grunts from the men and some glass breaking.

What the hell had just happened?

Then the museum’s alarm went off, a sharp, tinny trill, and the sound brought me back to the here and now.

I didn’t seem to be any more hurt than I had been before, so I looked around, trying to take stock. When the . . . whatever it was . . . went off, I had been standing closer to the railing than Tobias, and Warton had been standing directly in front of Beau. I looked for Tobias first, but he wasn’t right behind me anymore. I found him a good four feet away, getting to his hands and knees in the wreckage of an antique wooden trunk that had been lying on the ground. I didn’t see any blood, but his fingers were curling like claws, and he was panting in short breaths. Uh-oh.

“Tobias?” I said cautiously, not moving closer. I was still getting used to having werewolf friends, but I recognized when I needed to stay the hell back. “Um, it’s okay if you need to go—”

Without a word, Tobias bolted out of the room, bent over clutching his stomach like he was holding his guts in. I turned to the empty space where Beau and Warton had been standing. “Beau?” I yelled.

“Back here!” Even over the trilling alarm, I could hear the ragged fear in his voice. “Lex, I need you!”

I turned toward the sound, and spotted the vampires’ legs on the ground. They’d been thrown more than ten feet through the air, hitting a glass display and rolling off the other side of it. Feeling off-balance, I forced myself to my feet and stumbled toward them. As I rounded the display, I saw Beau lying on the floor, trying to squirm out from underneath Warton. The bodyguard’s eyes were closed, and he wasn’t moving.

“Please, he needs blood,” Beau begged.

I dropped to my knees, mindful of the broken glass from the display. It was seriously thick glass, so the force must have been incredible. Why hadn’t I flown like the rest of them?

It didn’t matter at the moment. I picked up a shard from the carpet, ready to slice my hand—but by then I could smell the decay.

I looked down. Warton’s body was shriveling up, decaying in seconds like a time-lapse video.

“Do it!” Beau yelled.

I put the glass shard down. “It’s too late. I’m sorry.”

“No,” Beau whispered, but he didn’t argue with me. It was just too obvious.

In less than a minute, all that was left of Warton was some very fragile-looking bones that were swallowed up by a modern suit.

Beau turned sideways and began vomiting up blood.

I’d never heard of a vampire doing that, and I was so startled that I flinched away. After a few seconds, though, Beau collapsed onto the ground next to Warton’s remains, and I scooted over to his side. He whispered something, and I had to lean close to his ear to hear it over the low, insistent drone of the alarm. “Something’s . . . wrong.” His eyes were still pleading, and despite his age and authority, for a moment he reminded me of an injured boy who just couldn’t believe his fun evening had gotten dangerous so quickly.

I looked over his body, touching his clothing lightly as I moved the folds aside to check for cuts or bleeding. “I can’t find an injury,” I said.

Automatically, I rested my hand on his forehead, like I did when Charlie had a fever. Beau’s skin was very cool, but no more so than Quinn’s when he hadn’t fed for a while. “You’re not going to die on me, are you?” I asked.

Beau gave a tiny headshake. “I feel . . . awful. But I don’t think it’s getting any worse. What just happened?” His eyes rolled toward me, widening. “Are you all right?”

“I seem to be fine,” I admitted, but then I felt some kind of irritation on my chest, under my clothes. I reached for the cord that held my crystals, pulling it out of my shirt. My mother’s bloodstone looked perfectly fine, but the mahogany obsidian from Quinn . . . it was disintegrating.

“What is that?” Beau said as we watched it crumble away until it was just a pile of dust in my hand.

“Mahogany obsidian. It’s for protection from a psychic attack. Hold on.”

Standing up, I went over and looked at the display where this had started, the one with the mannequins in uniform. The large glass bottle had actually exploded—I could see shards glittering in the exhibit spotlights—but it hadn’t even tipped over the mannequins. The only physical damage seemed to be to the trunk where Tobias landed and the glass case that Warton and Beau had hit.

I looked from the glass shards to the pile of dust in my hand, and then I heard my sister in my head, her voice hushed with awe. Holy shit, Allie. That was a spirit bottle.

I was going to ask what that meant, but then I realized I didn’t have to. Maybe my subconscious was making the right connections, or maybe it was a boundary magic thing, but I just knew.

“Beau,” I said in a shaky voice, “I think I know what happened to your missing ghosts.”

“You’ll have to explain it to me, but not now.” The vampire started to sit up, wincing and holding on to his stomach.

“Are you sure you should—” I began, but he cut me off.

“I pressed the night guard to go home, which means the police will get that alarm,” Beau said. “I need to press them, clean up here, and take care of poor Warton.” He looked down mournfully at the empty suit where his friend used to be, then wrenched his gaze back to me. “You should probably go make sure your friend doesn’t eat the police when they arrive.”

“Oh, shit.” I hurried back through the exhibit until I reached the glass doors leading into the lobby. Tobias had managed to slide the door closed after him, but I wasn’t sure how much it would protect me if he’d truly lost it. I stood next to the wall and craned my neck to peek through the glass.

Just a couple of feet away, on the other side of the door, I could see a tangled pile of clothing and Tobias’s sturdy brown boots. Beyond them, an enormous sandy-brown wolf was pacing back and forth in a familiar anxious lope. I went still, viscerally reminded of when I’d first seen him, prowling a cage at the animal preserve. He’d barely made it a step away from the door before he’d started pulling off his clothes.

I took my cell phone out of my pocket—the blast didn’t seem to have affected it—and called Mary, Tobias’s alpha.

“Lex?”

“Hi, Mary. I’ve got a bit of a situation here.”

“Is Tobias okay?” she demanded.

“Yes,” I answered immediately, because I understood she meant physically. “I mean, he looks okay. But he changed without meaning to.”

There was a sharp intake of breath. The full moon had been two weeks earlier, so Tobias shouldn’t have needed to turn until we got back to Colorado. “Tell me what happened.”

“I don’t really know what happened. I think maybe someone, probably a boundary witch, collected a whole bunch of ghosts and shoved them into a bottle. And it created a kind of . . . psychic bomb.”

“A psychic bomb,” Mary repeated.

I didn’t really blame her for being skeptical. I could picture it clearly in my head now, thanks in part to Sam, but I struggled to explain it with words. “Sort of like an EMP, but for life force instead of electronics. It killed the vampire who was closest, and wounded another vampire who’d been standing behind him. I was between Tobias and the bomb, but I think it still hurt him, because he started to change. You guys do that when you’re really hurt, right?”

“Yeah, or if there’s immediate danger, or if he just lost control.” She started to say something else, but I overrode her.

“I don’t have time; listen: I need to know if he’ll hurt me.” I didn’t have any silver now, not that I’d use it on Tobias anyway. This wasn’t his fault.

There was a beat, and then Mary said, “Honestly, Lex, I don’t think so . . . but I can’t promise without seeing him.”

I was about to suggest a video call—maybe seeing Mary would help him anyway?—but at that moment I heard the first sirens. I was out of time. “Good enough. I’ll call you back.”

Without waiting for her response, I hung up the phone.

Be careful, Allie, Sam’s voice cautioned. You can’t stink of fear.

She was right. I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment. After Sam’s murder, I’d hated and feared werewolves for a long time. I needed to push that down and remember that Tobias was my friend. I took a breath, opened my eyes, and cracked the door open. “Tobias?”

He was already trotting over to me, claws clicking on the floor and intelligent blue eyes searching my face and body for messages. I forced myself to relax my body language. If it had been anyone else, I might have just yanked the door shut and begged Beau to handle the situation. But this was Tobias, who usually insisted on putting his paws on my shoulders and panting with happiness whenever he saw me in his wolf form.

He’s one of yours, Sam said in my head, and I understood what she meant. I hadn’t really put it in words before, but Tobias was one of the people I considered under my personal protection. Even if the idea of me protecting him seemed ridiculous at the moment.

I opened the door all the way, and he immediately darted forward and thrust his head under my hand. He wanted reassurance, I realized. He was probably worried that I’d been hurt too. I felt stupid.

“It’s okay,” I told him. “I’m not sure what happened, but I’m perfectly fine, and so are you now.”

He licked my hand, gazing up at me with worried, contrite eyes. “That was definitely not your fault,” I added. “I didn’t even know that was possible, and I’m a witch.”

Beau appeared at my side, taking in Tobias with a glance. “I’ll take care of the authorities,” he said briskly. “You two should go out the back.” He gestured to the left, away from the lobby. “Go down the stairs and through the emergency exit. You’ll have to hop a fence.”

I nodded and started in that direction. I could climb a fence just fine, and I’d seen werewolves jump pretty fucking high. There was probably some sort of surveillance on the property, but Beau would have that locked down.

Before I’d gone a full step, though, Beau touched my arm. “I don’t know if this was directed at me or you, or even Warton,” he told me, his shoulders stiff with tension, “but I would be deeply grateful if you’d go straight to the manor to check on Odessa.”

I didn’t have to think about it. “Absolutely.”

Flashing emergency lights were suddenly bouncing through the glass doors of the lobby and partway down the hall to my right. I remembered to scoop up Tobias’s clothes and boots, and the two of us hurried the other way, following Beau’s instructions.

In seconds we were sprinting toward the rental car—well, I was sprinting. Tobias was barely at a trot. I unlocked the car with the remote and opened the back door for Tobias to jump in, shutting it behind him with a sigh of relief that he hadn’t been seen.

I’d already pulled onto the road before I realized what I was doing.

This was still Atlanta—and I no longer had my obsidian.

Chapter 24

The Atlanta History Center may have been cleared of ghosts, but we weren’t even a block east before the streets were once again littered with the silent dead. I was terrified of letting even one of them into my head—which didn’t exactly make me a competent driver.

I managed to navigate the rental car a few blocks to the nearest empty parking lot and pulled over, gasping for air. My broken wrist ached from where I’d been clutching the wheel, not even feeling the pain as I drove. Stupid, stupid Lex.

Deep breaths, babe. You can do this.

Tobias whined from the back seat. Shit, I probably reeked of fear. “I’m okay,” I said, though it was hard to catch my breath. I rolled the windows halfway down, letting in the cooler night air and trying to take stock. My cheekbone and wrist hurt like hell, and I hadn’t done my back any favors by vaulting the fence and throwing myself into the seat. I scrabbled for the bottle of ibuprofen I’d left in the rental car and swallowed three of them dry.

It’s okay, babe. You’re okay.

The hell I was. At the end of the parking lot, three men dangled in the air, their legs twitching helplessly as they tried to pull on ropes that were no longer there. The remnants eventually relaxed completely, their bodies hanging limply, and then there was a flicker and the horror show began again.

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Shit, shit, shit,” I muttered, which probably didn’t exactly reassure the nervous werewolf in back.

What could I do? I’d brought along my old obsidian from home, but it was back at the hotel. I needed to call Quinn and Maven and tell them about the spirit bottle bomb, but I wanted to get somewhere safe first. I needed to get Tobias somewhere safe.

Fuck. I hated to drag him back into it, but I didn’t see any other option. Keeping my eyes down, I picked up my cell and called my new pal Cole.

After I’d made the call, I leaned back in my seat, eyes closed again, and concentrated on calming myself down. I didn’t care if Tobias knew I was scared, but Cole barely knew me, and if I seemed incompetent he would likely tell Maven. She’d tell Quinn, or he’d figure it out, and then he would worry . . .

“Slow down,” I told myself out loud. I kept my eyes closed, focused on breathing. My gut—or my witchblood, or whatever—was telling me to get out and lay the remnants. I hated myself for being too scared to do it.

But here we were.

I don’t know how much time passed, but when I was sure I could at least sound calm, I picked up my phone again and called Katia.

She answered on the first ring. “Hello?”

I exhaled. Right. She wouldn’t have this number. “It’s me.”

“Lex! Quinn said you were hurt.”

I glanced at my braced wrist. “It’s nothing. There’s something else I need to ask you, though.”

“Yes?”

“Have you ever heard of a spirit bottle?” There was a long silence. “Katia?”

“I’m thinking,” she replied. “I feel like I heard my mother use that phrase when I was a little girl, but I can’t remember anything about it. I’m sorry. What’s going on?”

I didn’t think I had enough time to fill her in on everything, so I just told her about the explosion at the museum. “You weren’t hurt?” she asked immediately. “Are you safe right now?”

I glanced around the parking lot, trying to focus on the present reality. I had no idea whether this was a safe neighborhood, but I figured the wolf sticking his muzzle out one of the back seat windows would dissuade any would-be muggers. “I’m safe, and I don’t have a scratch on me from the explosion,” I answered. “I think the mahogany obsidian I was wearing absorbed the energy.” I told her about it disintegrating in my hand.

“Quinn told me about that crystal,” she said, her voice a little awed. “It was very powerful.”

I winced. “Yeah, well, so was . . . whatever that thing was.” Katia was the one person I knew who wasn’t put off by my conversations with Sam, so I added, “Sam called it a spirit bottle, but she can’t or won’t answer any questions about it.”

You know I’m not Wikipedia, Allie. Sam’s voice sounded frustrated. There are other ways to get information.

There was another moment of silence from Katia, but this time I understood that she was asking Valerya, my birth mother, the same question. I waited.

“Valerya will only say you should be careful,” Katia said, with just the slightest annoyance in her tone.

“Shit. I was afraid of that.”

A familiar blue Cadillac tooled into the parking lot. “I have to go, Katia. Call you later,” I said, and hung up the phone.

Cole got out of his car and sauntered over to my window, leaning down to look at me. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” he said with amusement.

“Where I get in a jam and you bail me out? I don’t know, I feel like we’ve kind of found a rhythm.”

Cole threw back his head and laughed. There was a rumbled warning from the back seat, where Tobias had finally lain down, and the vampire’s nostrils flared. “Is that a werewolf?” he said, sounding fascinated. He stepped back so he could peer into the back seat. “Well, I’ll be damned twice. Haven’t seen one of them in years.”

“His name is Tobias, and he’s a friend,” I said. “Unfortunately, he can’t drive at the moment, and I don’t have a safe place for him to change back.”

“I see. So y’all want me to drive you to Beau’s and then, what? Run back here to get my car?”

“That’s pretty much it, yeah, unless one of Beau’s people can give you a ride. Oh, and sometimes I’m going to ask you to make some kind of crazy swerve or detour to avoid something you won’t be able to see.”

He stared at me for only a heartbeat before grinning. “Sounds fun,” Cole said, reaching for the door handle. “Slide over.”

Traffic was light by that point in the evening, and Cole got us back to Azalea Manor inside of fifteen minutes, even with some crazy zigzagging.

“Impressive,” I said, as we entered the long driveway. Cole touched the brim of his fedora.

I rolled the window down again. Being back in a ghost-free zone was like coming up for air after a long trip underwater. I took in a few deep breaths as we reached the parking area, inhaling the scent of azaleas. There were two extra cars parked in the driveway, along with the Lincoln that Warton had driven to pick me up at the airport.

Cole put my rental in park and handed over the keys. “Anything else you need before I go on my merry way?” he drawled. “Want me to wash the car? Maybe rummage through your underwear drawer again?”

Tobias let out an indignant little woof. “He’s kidding,” I told the werewolf. “Kind of.”

I turned back to Cole. “Actually . . . do you know of any crystal stores in the area?”

“In Atlanta?” He pursed his lips. “Well, I could google it for you.”

“No, these would need to be the real thing: high quality, well maintained, cleaned often. Bonus points if they were left out during an eclipse or something.”

Cole shook his head. “That’s witch business, man.”

“You friendly with any of the locals?”

He laughed, but not in a happy way. “Tallulah Finch would never allow that. She don’t like us anywhere near her girls.”

“To be fair,” I pointed out, “you guys do put them through ritual humiliation.”

Cole’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? You want to have that conversation again? After I just saved your ass?”

I held up my hands. “Sorry, you’re right. But if you can think of anyone to ask, would you mind talking to them?”

“I’ll see what I can do.” We both started to climb out of the car, but by the time I was out and closed the door, Cole had disappeared into the darkness.

Vampires. So dramatic.

I opened the back door to let Tobias out. The huge wolf shook out his pelt and danced his feet a little, looking up at me with his nostrils flaring. He had to be receiving a lot of new sensory input out here. “I’ll let you go explore in a minute,” I promised, starting toward the house. I had expected Odessa to be at the barn riding Deimos, but given the extra cars, I decided to check inside first.

To my surprise, the door was opened by Erasmus Milburn, the tall, self-assured vampire I’d pressed at the cemetery. “Ah, Miss Luther,” he said, looking instantly relieved. “Good.” He looked over my shoulder at Tobias and gave a nod of greeting.

“Please call me Lex,” I said automatically. “Beau called you?”

“Yes. Cleanup at the museum is taking a little longer than he expected.” A terrible gravity came over his face. “I can’t believe Warton is gone. The five of us have been together for a hundred and sixty years.”

“I’m very sorry,” I told him, feeling, as I always did, that those words were entirely inadequate. I hadn’t liked Warton—he’d seemed like kind of a dick—but I could respect the impact his death would have on his friends. I understood the kind of brotherhood they had. I’d had it once too.

“Thank you,” Milburn said.

“I told Beau I would check on Odessa,” I said. “Do you know where she is?”

Milburn waved a hand in the direction of the grand staircase. “Miss Odessa arrived with her friends shortly after I did.”

As if on cue, a peal of laughter rang out from upstairs, the sound echoing in the big empty foyer. Milburn rolled his eyes, and I had to suppress a smile. It was a somber moment for Milburn, but the thought of a Civil War vampire babysitting rich, capricious teenage girls was kind of funny.

“Is the building secure?”

He straightened up. “Yes. I checked every room myself.”

“Cool.” I glanced over my shoulder at Tobias. “You want to check the grounds?” I figured I might as well take advantage of his nose.

The werewolf licked his lips and wheeled around, vanishing into the shadows. “He’ll make sure no one else is here tonight who doesn’t belong,” I told Milburn.

The vampire just nodded distractedly, holding the door open so I could come into the foyer. He still looked distracted, his head cocked slightly like he was listening to the conversation upstairs. I couldn’t hear anything, so I gestured toward the staircase. “Did you tell her about Warton?”

“No. She’s with her friends, and . . . I didn’t think it was my place.” He looked a little sheepish.

“Is it okay if I go talk to them?”

Milburn made a sweeping gesture toward the staircase, his expression a clear better you than me. “Left at the top of the stairs, second door on the right.”

“Make sure no one on the grounds hurts my friend, okay?”

The vampire nodded, already reaching into his pocket for a phone. “There’s a skeleton crew at night, but I’ll inform the grooms at the barn that someone has a pet dog running around. As long as your cur doesn’t go right up to them, anyone who catches a glimpse will think he’s a husky.”

“Cur” was a fairly pejorative term for werewolves, but since Tobias was out of hearing and Milburn had just lost a friend, I decided to let it pass this once.

Chapter 25

I turned and started hiking up the decadent marble steps, which rose to a landing and then curved off in two directions. I went left, noticing the azaleas etched into the wooden banister. They were so beautiful that I was half-afraid to touch it. Whoever had designed this house had possessed a serious eye for detail.

I followed the sound to the second door on the right, which had been left open a few inches. I knocked on the door and heard Odessa’s voice chirp back, “Come in.”

Feeling like the nosy mom in a kids’ movie, I poked my head in the door.

It wasn’t actually a bedroom, but a sort of sitting room or parlor, whatever the right word was. There was a door on the left, probably leading to an actual sleeping area, and a smaller door on the right that was open far enough for me to see it was a white-tiled bathroom. Odessa and three of her friends were lounging on antique furniture done in various shades of purple, which popped nicely against the sunshine-colored wallpaper. Odessa was draped over a chaise lounge, and two of the girls were stretched out on the floor with their heads propped on tapestry pillows. A fourth girl sat cross-legged in an armchair, and I recognized Whitney Finch from the photo at Tallulah’s house.

“Hello,” I said to Odessa.

“Lex!” she cried. She practically bounced up from her chair and rushed over. She was wearing a lot of makeup, about twelve different rings, and a tight denim miniskirt, but her feet were bare and she’d thrown a battered-looking Emory sweatshirt on over her top. As she threw her arms around me, I could smell bourbon and stale cigarette smoke. I patted her back awkwardly, and she turned to her friends, keeping one arm around me. “Ladies, this is Lex, the boundary witch.” To me, she added, “They’re all from witch families. That’s Whitney, Priscilla, and Emmaline.” She pointed at each of the girls in turn.

“Hi, everyone,” I said, feeling suddenly awkward and ancient.

“Do you really make zombies that you can send to kill people?” This was from Priscilla, a pale brunette who was so thin I could see the bones in her arms. The blonde girl next to her, Emmaline, snickered softly. Whitney was looking at me with cool assessment, waiting to hear my answer.

Before I could say anything, Odessa jumped in, her face filled with injured concern. “Cilla! It’s not like you to be so rude. You okay, hon? You’re not pregnant again?”

Priscilla flushed, shrinking back an inch. “Dess,” she mumbled.

“It’s fine,” I hurried to say. “Odessa, can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Sure, we can go in my bedroom.” Taking my hand, Odessa pulled me through the door on the left.

The actual bedroom was windowless and smaller than I would have imagined, done in soft gold tones. Odessa’s queen-sized bed was made, but otherwise the room looked like that of every other teenage girl I knew: clothes on the floor, makeup strewn over the small vanity, photos stuck in the full-size mirror. There was a big walk-in closet, but clothes were spilling out of it like a designer avalanche.

As she closed the door, I noticed that the wall beside it had that same odd, spongy look as Beau’s office downstairs. “Soundproofing,” Odessa confirmed. She’d stepped nearer to close the door and I could smell the booze again. “Beau did it years ago so I could blast music or talk on the phone to my friends without him listening in. Living with a vampire is weird.”

I hadn’t really considered how strange it would be for a human child to be raised by someone with supernatural powers, who interacted with her only after sundown. For a second I imagined Odessa as a kid, eating her meals alone in this massive, empty house, waiting for Beau to wake up so he could check her homework.

“And I’m sorry about Regina George in there,” Odessa said, her voice low. She was clearly one of those people who rambles when they drink. Sam had been like that too. “To them, having you here is kind of like inviting Voldemort over for tea.”

“I don’t know who Regina George is, but it doesn’t matter,” I said. “Listen, Odessa, there’s something I have to tell you. There’s been an attack—”

“Oh, duh.” She mimed smacking her palm into her forehead. “I’m so sorry. The cemetery thing, Beau told me. How are you feeling?” She squinted at me. “Oh, the stitches aren’t even noticeable. I mean the bruise is, you know, but you could put makeup on it—”

I cut her off. “No, I mean tonight. There was an attack tonight. Your uncle—”

Her eyes went wide, her hand rising to her chest. “He’s dead?”

“No!” I blew out a breath. “I’m sorry, I’m doing this badly. Beau is all right, but his bodyguard was killed. Warton.”

“Warton,” Odessa repeated, looking dazed. She dropped down onto the bed, and I figured I’d finally gotten through the haze of whatever she’d been drinking. “Oh. I see.” She blinked a few times, then looked up to focus on my face. “But Beau is okay?”

“He’s fine,” I promised. “He has to take care of some things at the History Center, and then he’ll be back. He’s worried about you.”

“Me?” Odessa echoed, her delicate face scrunching up with confusion. “Why would Warton’s killer want me?”

“I’m not sure she does,” I said honestly. “But Beau wants to be careful. He worries.”

Odessa rolled her eyes. “Don’t I know it.” She sighed. “At least he hasn’t made poor Becca work nights too. Okay.” She picked up the drawstring of her sweatshirt and began playing with it. “We should get back out there.”

When we returned to the sitting room, all three other girls were scrolling on their phones. Only Whitney looked up. “My mom is on her way here,” she announced.

Odessa went and picked up her own phone from a side table.

“Tallulah? Why?” I asked Whitney.

“Uncle Beau wants her to tighten the wards,” Odessa answered for her. She was frowning down at her own phone. “Against witches.” She glanced at me. “We’ll get a special witch bag that allows you in and out, like a key.”

Odessa’s other two friends exchanged a glance, and then Priscilla stood up. “We should go.” The fourth girl, whose name I had forgotten—Emily?—followed her lead.

“Okay.” Odessa leaned over and gave Priscilla a hug. “Whit?” she said over the other girl’s shoulder.

Whitney gave me a sidelong glance. “I’ll stay and wait for my mom.”

“Cool.” Odessa raised her eyebrows at me. “You want to hang with us?”

I shook my head. Young as I might look, I had no desire to sprawl out on a floor with teenagers. “If you’re all right, I’m going to go talk to my friend. He was checking the security.”

Odessa waved a hand, her gesture bigger than it needed to be. “Have at it.”

I almost asked if I could get her a glass of water or something, but I held my tongue. Odessa was a legal adult. It wasn’t my place to mother her.

I went back downstairs. There was no sign of Milburn in the grand entrance. Before I checked in Beau’s office, I heard a scratching sound at the front door. I opened it, and Tobias was there, tail lifted and alert.

“Hey,” I said. “Anything to worry about?” I figured he would have howled if there were serious trouble.

Tobias reached his muzzle out and gently took the right sleeve of my jacket in his teeth, pulling lightly. “You want to show me something?” I asked. In answer, he tugged again. I stepped out on the front porch and pulled the door closed behind me. “Okay, lead on.”

I expected him to head for the woods on the opposite side of the driveway, where we’d taken the path to the stable, but he turned and trotted around the house, forcing me to jog to keep up. The exercise might have felt good under other conditions, but my lower back was starting to ache again, and I had to hold one hand on the holstered Glock as I ran so it wouldn’t chafe my skin.

But I didn’t ask Tobias to slow down, and we soon rounded the corner of the house to a yard big enough for a wedding reception. Beyond the yard, at the very edge of the light from the house, I could make out a line of trees. That must be the forest that Beau had donated to be a public park. I slowed to a walk and then stopped long enough to briefly check the woods with my boundary magic mindset.

Beyond the bright blue of Tobias’s life force, I could see glowing things moving around up ahead—remnants. We’d reached the edge of Beau’s property and the end of the ghost-free zone.

Remnants wandering around a creepy, unfamiliar forest. Awesome.

I dug in my pocket and pulled out my small Maglite, clicking it on. Tobias had turned to check on me, and my flashlight beam caught his eye shine, making him look like a demon himself. He was standing at the edge of the trees, waiting.

“I really don’t want to go into the forest,” I told him when I caught up.

Tobias turned and pawed at something at the base of a tree. Thankfully, it was one of the closest trees, and well away from any ghosts.

I walked toward him and shone the flashlight down. In my head I was expecting a weapon or maybe some spell supplies, so at first I thought Tobias was showing me something that had been discarded among the plants. It wasn’t until I crouched down that I understood he wanted me to see the plants themselves.

“Holy shit,” I whispered.

I was squatting in the middle of a massive patch of mandragora.

Chapter 26

At some point in the planet’s history, magic had arrived on the scene and inserted itself into the evolutionary lines of certain organisms.

Most notably, of course, magic had merged with humans to create superpowerful conduits, whose descendants had evolved into three separate groups: witches, werewolves, and vampires. But magic had also appeared in a particular plant family: the Solanaceae, also known as nightshades.

Simon and Lily referred to this magical vegetation as “fetters,” magic-laced plants that were both incredibly dangerous and incredibly useful. Mandragora, wolfberry, and belladonna were the major players, and witch botanists had spent generations breeding magic out of these plants. You could go to a garden store and get yourself a half dozen innocuous strains of mandrake that had no magical properties, but Mandragora interitio, the magical variety, was supposedly almost impossible to find.

As with any controlled substance, though, there were plenty of people willing to pay big money for the fetters, and so the Old World had a weird little black market for magical plants.

It all sounded ridiculous, but I’d seen firsthand what belladonna could do to a vampire. An enormous dose of the stuff had nearly killed Maven, who was probably the most powerful vampire on the planet. After the attack, I’d made a point of familiarizing myself with photos of all the fetters, but I’d never seen mandragora in person until now. I’d certainly never worked with it. I didn’t have to: mandragora was the herb used to mimic boundary magic. If you weren’t a boundary witch but you wanted to fuck around with life and death, that was your key ingredient.

And I was looking at a whole patch of it.

“Fuck,” I whispered, standing up and stepping carefully away as though it were poison oak. What was it doing on Beau’s property? Did he know? It seemed awfully unlikely that he knew this was here and hadn’t mentioned it while we were discussing the Unsettled.

“Tobias,” I said unsteadily. “I’m going to need you to change back so we can talk. Do you think you can do that?”

The werewolf looked at me and opened and closed his mouth several times, miming chewing. “You’ll need to eat for energy,” I said, nodding. “Got it. I’ll put your clothes in the yard and go raid the fridge, okay?”

I circled back to the driveway, retrieved Tobias’s clothes from the car, and left them in a pile in the backyard, averting my eyes from the tree line. No one had ever specifically said it, but werewolves definitely seemed to prefer privacy when they changed.

I went back around the front so I could warn Milburn. Sometimes werewolves cried out with the pain of changing, and I didn’t want him to come investigate.

The vampire opened the door for me again, quickly accepting my explanation about Tobias’s change. When I asked about food, however, his brow furrowed. “I have no idea,” he said, gesturing vaguely toward the back of the building. “But you’re welcome to check the kitchen. The daytime staff uses it for their food, and to prepare meals for Odessa and the night grooms. I’ll be in the study if you need something else.”

I’d never actually gotten a tour, but I wandered until I found a door that led into a small room with cupboards filled with dishes. This was probably where prepared food was laid out before it was served. A door at the back of the little room led into a surprisingly modern kitchen, all gleaming stainless steel and marble countertops. I found the fridge and pulled it open.

There were a number of cartons labeled with names, which I figured belonged to the daytime staff. There also were plenty of carrots and apples, possibly for horse treats, and some cold cuts in a drawer. I found a loaf of bread in an actual bread box on the counter, and grabbed what looked like half a pound of turkey and half a pound of ham from the fridge, carrying everything back to the grand foyer. Underneath the fancy staircase, there was a second exterior door that led to a screened-in porch and the backyard.

I didn’t know if Tobias would want to actually make sandwiches or just inhale the food as it was, so I left the bags on the porch steps and went back inside to wait.

A few minutes crawled by, and I found myself pacing on the pretty black-and-white tiles, trying to figure out what the hell mandragora was doing in Beau’s backyard. It wasn’t exactly native to this climate, so somebody had gone out of their way to plant the patch and tend to it. Without any vampires noticing.

I thought about the placement of Odessa’s parlor windows and the dining room windows. Neither faced that spot at the edge of the woods. So it was possible that no one could see the mandragora from the house, but that didn’t really explain the location. It would have made more sense to hide the plants in the woods between the manor and the barn. No one would notice someone coming and going to—

The front door opened and I jumped, startled out of my reverie. Beau entered the foyer so quietly that I wouldn’t have noticed if I’d been facing the opposite direction.

He saw my startled expression and said quickly, “Odessa?”

“Fine,” I assured him, straightening my shoulders. “She and Whitney are up in her room.”

“Thank God,” Beau said, his shoulders slumping.

At that moment the office door opened and Milburn hurried out to see Beau, who just gave him a long look, resting one hand on his shoulder. Milburn put his own arm around Beau, so they were giving each other an awkward one-armed hug. It should have looked silly, but their faces were anguished.

I let a long moment of silence pass, until finally both of them dropped their arms. “How did it go?” I asked Beau, then quickly added, “With the police, I mean.” I didn’t need to know what they were doing with Warton’s body.

“I have successfully smoothed things over with the History Center,” Beau said wearily. “They believe my cocktail party got out of hand, and a couple of guests accidentally broke the cases. I have already arranged for the glass to be replaced first thing in the morning.”

Milburn was still looking at him. “I have Warton’s remains,” Beau added quietly, his eyes on his friend. “We shall inter him at Oakland, but not tonight. Where are the others?”

“I told them to stay put until we know what’s going on,” Milburn replied. “It occurred to me that if someone is looking to kill us, gathering in one location may not be the best plan.”

“A fair point.”

Seeing them together, it was obvious that Milburn served as the cardinal vampire’s first lieutenant. Warton had been the bodyguard, Vick and Hempstead the foot soldiers. Now their long-standing unit had been broken.

There was a groan from the back of the house, and both vampires turned their heads sharply toward the noise. “That’s Tobias,” I said, automatically holding up my hands. “He’s changing back.”

The vampires relaxed, and Beau said, “I need to know more about that bottle. Have you seen something like that before?”

I shook my head. “Not personally, no. But I know that ghosts are essentially made of energy. I’ve seen them trapped in crystals, and released as a sort of attack. I think whoever did this trapped the Unsettled in a bottle and used them like a bomb.”

Milburn looked stricken. Beau tilted his head in acknowledgment, then asked, “How would they trigger it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Would they need to be on-site?”

“I don’t know. Like I said, I’ve never seen this myself.”

“Now that they’ve been released, will they go back to where they came from?” Both vampires looked at me hopefully.

“I don’t think so,” I said, genuinely sorry I couldn’t give them the answer they wanted. “As I said, they’re made of energy. That energy was what projected outward and caused damage to anyone with a soul.”

Beau shook his head. “I don’t understand. Bottling ghosts . . . that’s witch magic. It shouldn’t have affected us.”

“The energy affected you, not the spell,” I explained, thinking again of the wraiths that had been trapped in crystals. “Whoever did this would have used a spell to get the Unsettled into the device, but the ghosts themselves aren’t magic. They’re just . . . ghosts.”

“I cannot believe someone would do this,” he said. “It was bad enough when I thought this boundary witch was laying the Unsettled, but now she—” He caught the look on my face. “What is it?”

“I’m not sure we’re looking for a boundary witch,” I said carefully. I needed to confront Beau about the mandragora, and quickly. I hadn’t told Tobias not to mention it, and there was a decent chance he’d come in all excited and blurt it out the second he saw me. “Could we speak in private?” I asked Beau. I was pretty sure Milburn wasn’t involved in planting the mandragora—that wasn’t the kind of thing someone could press you to do, and Beau trusted him. But I needed to be sure.

Beau looked slightly put out, but he nodded and held his hand out toward the office. “Yes, of course.” To Milburn, he added, “When her companion comes in, would you please inform him that we will be out shortly?”

Milburn seemed a little disgruntled, but he gave Beau a crisp nod, and we went into the office.

There was no sense of ceremony this time, no offers of food or drink. Beau just walked straight into the office, turned, and looked at me, putting his hands in his suit pockets. “I’m listening.”

I pushed out a breath. “Are you aware,” I asked, “that someone is growing mandragora in your backyard?”

Beau’s frown deepened into confusion. “What?”

“Mandragora interitio,” I said, because Simon had made me memorize the fucking Latin and I might as well show off. “It’s an herb used for—”

“I know what it’s used for,” Beau snapped. “Of course there isn’t any on my property. I’ve outlawed it in Atlanta; even if I were going to keep my own crop on the sly, it would be beyond stupid for me to do it here.”

He paused, taking a moment to smooth his mustache and collect himself. Primly, he added, “You must have found something else, perhaps even some regular old mandrake root. It is dark, and I know your night vision is weak.”

With effort, I managed not to roll my eyes. “It is here, Beau, and I wasn’t the one who found it. Tobias was sniffing around while he was in wolf form.” I took a breath. “How sure are you about your people?”

At that, he looked even more outraged, and I could see this wasn’t going anywhere. I held up a hand. “How about we go see it?”

We left the office again, and Beau stalked through the grand entrance, ignoring a confused-looking Milburn. I followed him out the back door and through the porch, where I nearly stumbled over Tobias. He was sitting cross-legged on the ground outside the back door, finishing an overstuffed sandwich he’d made from the ends of the loaf of bread.

“Lex!” He jumped up and bounced on the balls of his feet, looking back and forth between us. Beau was standing with his arms folded over his chest. “Everything okay?” Tobias asked me.

“Can you show Beau what you showed me?” I said, glad to have him. I was pretty sure I could find the patch of plants myself, but Tobias would remember without the need for a flashlight.

“Sure . . .” Tobias was still looking at Beau with curiosity. I hadn’t warned him that the cardinal vampire was a little temperamental.

“Now, if you please,” Beau snapped.

Tobias straightened up. “You bet! Right this way!”

Chapter 27

“All right,” Beau said a minute later, surveying the plants in the flashlight beam. “I believe you.”

I kept the beam of my phone’s flashlight pointed down, but it was still bright enough to illuminate Beau glaring at the plants as though they’d personally wronged him.

“Any idea who planted them?” I asked quietly.

Beau shook his head. “I don’t come back here. No one comes back here, except the gardeners, and then only to trim the grass.” He looked at Tobias. “How did you even know what they were?”

Cringing, Tobias gave me a worried look, and I put some pieces together. “Trask?” I asked.

He nodded. “This was how he made his money.”

“Ah.” I’d never bothered to consider how Tobias’s abusive former alpha was able to fund his activities, but growing and selling illegal plants seemed pretty on-brand for him. “Tobias’s former alpha was into a lot of shady stuff,” I told Beau, keeping my voice firm. “He’s dead now.”

Beau glanced at me and then Tobias before giving a little shrug. Some of the irritation had left his posture, but I had a feeling there was a good deal of anger still simmering. “Your nose is better than mine, at least in your other form,” he said to Tobias. “Did you pick up anyone’s scent near here?”

Tobias shook his head. “It rained yesterday—not much, but the earth is still damp from it. There are no prints, no leftover smells. I’m sorry.”

“Let me ask a different question, then,” I said, looking at Beau. “When did you decide you wanted to meet me at the History Center tonight?”

He blinked, thinking. “About an hour before dawn. I figured you’d be resting, so I left a note for Maya to contact you after she made arrangements.”

“Did anybody besides Maya know about the plan?”

“Odessa, but . . .” He shook his head. “No, I see where you’re going with this, and it won’t work. We can’t just walk the two of them through their days to figure out if they’ve been pressed.”

“Why not?”

“Because it is my habit to visit the History Center once or twice a week,” Beau replied. “And I don’t always go that far into the exhibit. Assuming I was the target of the attack, the perpetrator could have left the bottle there any time in the last month.”

Assuming he was the target? It hadn’t even occurred to me that the bomb might have been meant for me. But he had a point—whoever was behind this had already tried to kill me once.

“Even if I was the target,” I said, thinking out loud, “you’ve made it clear that you took the oath of mutual safety, so it’s still an attack on you. Besides, there would be no reason for me to be at the History Center at night without you.”

“That is true.” Beau touched his mustache again, stroking the ends so they’d lay flat. “And if you’re killed, I’ll be unseated,” he said finally. “One way or another, I am the target.”

Tobias was glancing around. “Lots of forest noises,” he noted. “There could be other noises too. Can we move somewhere else?”

Beau nodded. “Let’s go back to my office.”

We trooped back into the house, but there was a commotion from the other end of the grand entrance. Tallulah Finch had arrived and was arguing with Milburn.

When she saw us walk in, her eyes laser-focused on Beau. “There you are!” she cried.

“Tallulah.” Beau’s voice was neutral. He gestured for Milburn to let her pass, and the clan witch rushed toward us.

“I’m so terribly sorry for your loss,” she said to Beau, holding out both of her hands.

“Thank you, my dear,” Beau said, accepting her hands for a moment before releasing them. “That’s very kind.”

“You poor man.” Her eyes fixed on me, then flitted to the werewolf just behind me. “Hello again, Miss Luther. I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting your friend.”

“This is Tobias,” I said, turning so he could step forward and shake hands. I didn’t miss the tiny wrinkle of his nose when the witch’s expensive perfume hit him, although Tallulah had already turned her head to speak to Beau again.

“I stopped at the History Center before I came here. My wards are intact.”

I would have expected her to sound more triumphant about that. “You had warding there too?” I asked.

Beau answered for her. “Because I am a frequent patron. Tallulah has wards for my protection at all my usual haunts.” He frowned. “No pun intended.”

“What kind of wards were they?” I asked.

Tallulah narrowed her eyes at me like I’d accused her of farting in public. Then I got it: her wards weren’t broken, but they hadn’t kept out the person who’d planted the spirit bottle. She’d still failed Beau.

“The usual,” she said, lifting her chin. “It was an intention spell, first and foremost. No one intending to harm Beau in any way could come on the property.”

“Even during the day?”

“Yes. It’s also designed to alert me if a vampire or werewolf steps foot on the grounds.”

From behind me, Tobias asked, “Not witches?”

“No, there are too many people in the area with active witchblood,” Tallulah replied briskly. “I would receive alarms for everything from school field trips to board meetings.”

“Hang on.” I held up my good hand. “If the spell works based on a person’s intentions, what’s to stop someone from paying a stranger to drop off a package at the museum during working hours?”

All four of them—Beau, Milburn, Tallulah, and Tobias—turned to look at me. “Think about it,” I insisted. “Say I want to kill Beau, and I’ve got a bomb. I could just grab any stranger off the street”—I took hold of Tobias’s sleeve—“and say, ‘Hey, I’ll give you twenty dollars to drop this off at the History Center.’” I mimed handing Tobias a package, which he gamely pretended to accept. “Now Tobias walks it in and drops it off at the front desk. At no point does he have any ill intentions toward Beau.”

Beau and Tallulah exchanged a troubled glance. “I see now that my ward may have had a blind spot,” Tallulah said stiffly.

“It’s not your fault,” Beau said, shaking his head. “We hadn’t considered the possibility of a bomb. Even if we had, most explosives have a sharp chemical scent, or make some sort of noise.”

He was right. “No one anticipated a spirit bottle,” I said.

Tallulah’s eyes widened, and her skin seemed to pale under her spray tan. “That’s what it was? I thought—that is—some sort of ordinary explosive . . .”

“You smell scared,” Tobias observed.

I fought not to smile. “You’re the first person who knew the term before I explained it,” I said to Tallulah. “Have you seen them before?”

“No!” She took a tiny step backward. “Of course not.” Her eyes flicked toward Beau, and she swallowed hard. “Witches . . . have stories. Old stories.”

Beau stared at her for a second, and then his face cleared. “About my family, you mean.”

“Yes.” She sounded relieved. “The Calhouns used to make spirit bottles.”

Chapter 28

“Now,” Beau said a little while later, when Tallulah and I were seated in his study, “tell me more about these stories.”

Tallulah had accepted a glass of bourbon, and she paused to take a greedy sip before she answered. I’d declined a drink. At this point it would just make me sleepier. Milburn had gone up to check on Odessa and Whitney, and Tobias had volunteered to check the grounds again. He hadn’t actually said so, but I suspected he was eager to get outside and explore the estate some more. I asked him to call Mary while he was out there and update her on the situation now that he had a human voice again.

When Tallulah lowered the glass, she began playing with her bracelets. “You know that the Calhouns gave up boundary magic a generation or two before you were born,” she said to Beau.

“I do,” Beau replied. “My grandmother was the one who decided the family should be done with it. She said black magic brought nothing but pain.”

Tallulah glanced at me curiously to see if I’d be offended, but I just gave her a steady look. Beau’s grandmother sort of had a point.

“That wasn’t here in Atlanta, though,” Tallulah said.

“No, my family was in Savannah then.”

Tallulah nodded. “My mother’s family still lives in Savannah. To this day, when you drive around the older parts of the city, you’ll sometimes see bright blue bottles attached to trees or left out on porches. It’s more decoration than belief now, like hanging a dream catcher, but the tradition originally comes from spirit bottles.”

“That’s hoodoo,” Beau protested. “African magic. My people wouldn’t practice that.”

I managed not to roll my eyes. Ah, racism.

Tallulah shrugged, draining her glass of bourbon. “I don’t know where the Calhouns got the tradition—maybe they picked it up from hoodoo, or maybe the practices had a sort of parallel development. That happens a lot in magic. What I do know is, if you had a pesky ghost on your property back in the eighteenth century, you called the Calhouns to come bottle it for you.”

“And then what?” I asked.

Both of them looked at me as though they’d forgotten I was there. “Then you left the bottle out in the sun,” Tallulah said, as if it were obvious. “Trapped spirits can’t abide sunlight.”

“Don’t I know it,” Beau murmured.

Tallulah actually flushed. “I apologize—”

He waved it off. “I’m just surprised I haven’t heard any of this before, considering it’s my own family.”

“Witches can be very reticent,” she said primly, smoothing her slacks.

I snorted.

“What?” Beau asked me.

“It’s just a massive understatement. You know that boundary witches are feared and hated, but we’re still witches. The clans have to tolerate us. As soon as your family stopped activating your witchblood, though, you stopped being witches to them.” I tilted my head at Tallulah. “They’d have no reason to confide in you or share your family history. If you weren’t a vampire, I doubt anyone would still remember the Calhouns were boundary witches.”

Beau raised his eyebrows at Tallulah. She made a sour face but gave a grudging nod as she fussed with her hair. “It’s not how I would put it, but I don’t entirely disagree.”

“This isn’t getting us anywhere, though,” I said. “For one thing, the spirit bottle that exploded tonight was different from what Tallulah is describing. It’s like someone took that idea and figured out how to weaponize it with the Unsettled.”

Beau nodded, and even Tallulah tipped her head in acknowledgment. “And secondly,” I went on, “this wasn’t a boundary witch.”

Tallulah started in her seat. “What on earth makes you say that?”

Right. We hadn’t told her everything. I glanced at Beau, who gave me a tiny nod. To Tallulah, I said, “Because someone has been growing mandragora in Beau’s backyard.”

“What.” Her reply was so sharp it wasn’t even a question. “That’s impossible.”

She sounded properly outraged, but there was something else in her expression too. I got the impression that Tallulah was not quite as surprised as she wanted us to think. I glanced at Beau, but he gave no indication that he thought Tallulah was lying. Maybe I was just paranoid.

“It’s true, Tally,” Beau said quietly. “I saw it myself.”

“I find it difficult to believe that someone just happened to plant mandragora in Beau’s own backyard at the same time a completely different person is trying to kill him,” I went on. “There is one brain behind this, and they want us to know how smart they are.”

“That’s awfully dramatic,” Tallulah complained.

“It’s true, though,” Beau said. “The mandragora could have been planted anywhere, but they chose the cardinal vampire’s backyard.”

I nodded. “The only reason I can think of is to show off. ‘Look how clever I am.’”

“A very personal touch,” Beau mused.

“It could still be a boundary witch,” Tallulah snapped, looking at both of us.

“No,” I replied. “Whatever this spirit bottle spell is, it’s boundary magic. And a boundary witch wouldn’t need mandragora.” Which meant I’d completely wasted my time questioning the Horsemen at the cemetery.

Tallulah opened and closed her mouth several times, and I felt something move in the air. I checked her hands, and saw that she’d just tugged rather hard on her string bracelet. “If you’re trying to imply that any of my witches—” she began, her chest puffing up with importance.

“Slow down, Tally,” Beau said sharply. “No one is making accusations.”

Yet, I thought. “Who has access to the grounds during the day?” I asked him.

He sighed. “Any number of people. Landscapers, maids, grooms for the stables.”

Okay, that wasn’t going to get us anywhere. And then a horrible new thought struck me. I looked at Beau. “The Unsettled vanished from four locations, right?” He nodded. “You saw how that spirit bottle shattered; it’s a one-time-use thing.”

“Which means there are at least three more bombs out there,” Beau concluded.

We all fell silent. The possibilities were overwhelming. We didn’t know what kind of range the spirit bottles had, or how much damage they could inflict. The first bomb had killed one vampire and hurt a second, not to mention a werewolf, but humans weren’t as durable. How many people would die if a spirit bottle were released in public?

My eyes wandered to the bookshelf on the opposite wall. It was two stories high, with a ladder that swung around on rails. A small glass vase sat on one of the top shelves, and I blinked at it for several seconds.

“Beau,” I said slowly, pointing, and the vampire followed my eyes. “How long has that vase been there?”

He started, then relaxed. “Years. Many years.”

“Whoever is doing this has had access to the grounds. Would you notice if that vase disappeared for a night and then returned?”

“I take your point.” Vampire-fast, Beau flew to the bookshelf, retrieved the vase without the use of a ladder, and crushed it underfoot. Both Tallulah and I let out a breath when nothing happened.

“This house is full of relics,” Beau said, staring fixedly at the broken remains. “For all we know, a spirit bottle has already been planted here.”

“You’ll have to gather anything that could work as a container,” I said, hoping my voice was calmer than I felt.

“Yes.” He rubbed his forehead for a second, thinking. “I’ll get the night grooms to help. If it’s valuable, I’ll put it in storage off-site; anything else can be destroyed. Meanwhile, I will consider the question of whether I have grievously wronged any witches in my long life.” He glanced up, giving me a sharp look. “Your necklace, the one that protected you. How can we get more of those?”

I turned to Tallulah. “Do any of your witches use crystals?”

A look of distaste came over her face, but she knew better than to disparage other kinds of magic just then. “I can make some calls,” she said, “if you tell me what you need.” She checked her watch and I automatically did the same. It was after 1:00 a.m. “I might not be able to actually get them until morning, though.”

“Make the calls,” Beau told her. “Money is no object, but make sure they’re of the highest quality. Then do the wards. I’ll get started on the house.” He paused, then added, “Right after I call the other Horsemen and have them check their own homes. And incinerate those godforsaken plants.”

“That’s all wonderful as far as damage control,” Tallulah said, “but it doesn’t get us any closer to learning more about these spirit bottles.”

“She’s right. We need more information,” I said. “We need to know the limits of these spirit bottles and how we can stop this from happening again.”

Tallulah gave me a shrewd look. “You’re the boundary witch. Don’t you have someone you can ask these things?”

I opened my mouth to tell her to fuck off, but then I remembered what Sam had said. There are other ways to find information. She wouldn’t have said that unless those other ways were available to me. I sighed and thought about it.

Aside from Katia, who I’d already spoken to, the only other boundary witch I knew was Nellie, and she was a ghost back in Colorado. More importantly, if she knew anything about spirit bottles, I was certain she would have already brought it up in one of our many trade negotiations.

Then I understood what Sam must have been getting at, and grimaced. I did know one other living boundary witch. It’s just that she hated my guts.

Chapter 29

More than two years ago, my biological half brother, Emil Jasper, had tracked me down in Boulder. He’d tried to trick me into coming home with him to Halifax so that I could become the keeper of our biological father, Lysander. Oh, and as a side gig, the organization that had arranged all this, milites mortis, wanted to artificially inseminate me with Lysander’s baby.

Yeah.

Emil had done some really shitty things, but he’d done them because if he couldn’t get me to have a baby, milites mortis would try using his mother again. Sophia Jasper was past seventy, but she was strong, magically speaking, and because of her slow aging, her body looked to be in its midforties. Emil was worried about what a pregnancy might do to her . . . and he had terminal lung cancer. He’d decided that my life was a price he was willing to pay to save Sophia before he died.

I’d killed Emil in self-defense, but there had been a moment when I might have been able to save him . . . and he’d asked me not to. He’d asked me to let him die, and I’d respected his wishes.

Then I’d killed our father, chopped his body into pieces, and spread the parts around the world. After that I’d spent months tracking down every single member of milites mortis and killed the shit out of them.

My first stop on that little tour had been Halifax, where I’d gone to see Sophia—and brought her Jasper’s ashes. The old woman wasn’t all there, though I didn’t know if it was because of Emil’s death, or because milites mortis had treated her like a plaything for decades. Either way, she hated me for what I’d done to her son. She hated milites mortis more, though, and she’d eventually given me a list of names.

I won’t say killing those assholes made Sophia and me even, but afterward, we’d agreed to stay out of each other’s way. I’d had every intention of keeping that promise . . . until now. Sophia was the one person who might be able to tell me about spirit bottles.

Ignoring Tallulah, I looked at Beau. “There’s someone I can call for information, but she may want something in return.”

Beau nodded. “If it can be bought with money, give it to her. Milburn can help you with the arrangements.”

“Is it okay if I stay in here to call?” I asked, gesturing at the office.

Beau raised his eyebrows a little, but inclined his head. “Of course.” He looked at Tallulah. “Let’s get started.”

As soon as they left, I called Quinn.

“Lex,” he said, sounding relieved and anxious at the same time. “What’s going on? Mary said there was a bomb?”

Right. Things had happened so quickly; I hadn’t updated him. “I’m perfectly fine,” I assured him, feeling guilty. “But I need you to get a phone number for me. Are you at home, by any chance?”

“Actually, yes. What do you need?”

I directed him to the jewelry box in my bedroom, where I kept a scrap of paper with a phone number written on it. This particular one was too important to be stored in a phone. “Lex,” he said when he had the paper in hand. “Are you sure about this? I thought you said Sophia was pissed at you.”

I had to laugh. “That’s an understatement. If she thought she could kill me, she’d probably do it. But we have an agreement not to interfere with each other.”

“So why are you calling her?”

“Because she’s the only other boundary witch I know.”

Quinn’s voice quieted. “It’s that bad?”

“Remember how Emil had those wraiths trapped in crystals?”

“Yeah . . .”

“Well, someone has figured out how to trap a whole bunch of ghosts and turn them into a bomb. I figure if anyone knows about it, it’ll be Sophia.”

“Jesus.” There was a pause, and I could practically hear his thoughts racing. “Lex, this is above and beyond the parameters of this job. Maven would be the first to tell you this isn’t your fight.”

I almost smiled. “You’re thinking like a vampire. This isn’t about Beau’s money, or even Maven’s parliament, not anymore.” I leaned my head against the back of the couch. I was so tired. “Someone made a new kind of bomb, Quinn. One that doesn’t make any sound or give off any scent. If we don’t stop them, people are going to die.”

He went quiet for another moment. Then: “You’re right. Of course you’re right. I just wish I could be there. I hate this sitting-on-the-sidelines shit.”

“I know. But hey, you saved my life tonight.” I told him about how the mahogany obsidian had taken the hit from the spirit bottle.

“It disintegrated? And now you don’t even have it?”

Whoops. I realized my mistake. “I have my old obsidian. It’s going to be okay,” I said. “But I gotta make this call.”

“Yeah. I know.” He read off the number. Tucking the phone against my ear, I picked up a pen from Beau’s desk and scribbled it on my hand, wincing as my wrist complained about the movement. “I love you,” Quinn said when he finished.

I needed to tell him about Holly, but this wasn’t the moment. It could wait until I got home. “I love you too.”

I hung up the phone and stared at the phone number for a second, bracing myself. Then I took a deep breath and dialed it into the burner.

Sophia answered on the fifth ring. “Who is this?” she demanded. “Do you know what time it is?”

“It’s Allison Luther.”

The line went quiet for a long moment. “I thought you and I agreed we wouldn’t be speaking again. You killed my son.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, telling myself not to engage. “Sophia, I need information about boundary magic, and you can tell I’m pretty desperate, because I’m calling you.”

She snorted. “Go fuck yourself.”

“People will die,” I snapped, hoping she hadn’t hung up. “Because of boundary magic. Don’t you think there’s been enough of that?”

“Oh, please,” she scoffed. “All that power, and you still don’t get it. Boundary magic is simply a mirror we hold up to people. They choose to play games with death. They choose to ask questions they don’t really want answered. I never—”

“Sophia, cut the shit,” I interrupted. “I need to know about spirit bottles.”

I’d hoped to surprise her out of her rant, but the phone went so quiet that I checked the screen to make sure she hadn’t hung up on me. “Spirit bottles,” she said thoughtfully. “I haven’t thought about those in a long time. I prefer the crystals. They hold more.”

Something in my stomach unclenched. “So you do know about spirit bottles.”

“Of course I do,” she said irritably, as though I’d been surprised she knew about the alphabet. “They were a precursor for my own work. But I have no interest in helping you.”

“Do you have an interest in money?” Unless her situation had changed, Sophia ran Emil’s crystal shop and held seances to make ends meet.

The old woman was quiet for a moment, then: “You don’t have enough money to buy me.”

Well, that was true. “I’m calling as a representative of someone who does. He wants everything you know about spirit bottles, and he’s got deep pockets.”

Another silence, but I figured I was on the right track. “Look, I get it. You don’t want to help me,” I went on. “But I’m not acting in my own interests. I’m not even in Boulder. I’m working for the cardinal vampire of Atlanta.”

“Abner Calhoun?” she said, sounding interested for the first time. Apparently Beau was notorious.

“Yes. It’s his town, his problem. But I can’t fix it without your help.”

I figured she’d like that, and I wasn’t wrong. Sophia’s throaty chuckle came over the line. “So you’re working as a consultant, and you promised more than you could deliver, eh?”

I didn’t give a shit how Sophia wanted to look at it. I didn’t even care if she was right. If making me sound like an incompetent con artist got us to answers, that was fine. “Something like that.”

“All right,” she said after a long moment of deliberation. This time it was probably just to make me squirm. “Ten thousand dollars, deposited into my account. Then I’ll answer any questions you want. But I want Calhoun on the call.”

Ugh. “And afterward we return to our previous arrangement?”

“Yes, as long as you promise never to call me for a fucking favor ever again.”

I didn’t really think ten grand qualified as a “favor,” but I didn’t care. “Give me the account number, and I’ll call you back.”

As soon as I hung up, I went out to the foyer to find Milburn. It took less than five minutes for him to get the money deposited in Sophia’s account. He hadn’t blinked an eye when I’d mentioned the amount, and he’d scoffed at my suggestion that we run it by Beau. “Trust me, that amount is not a problem,” he assured me. Must be nice to be a cardinal vampire.

When the money stuff was sorted out, I followed the sound of breaking glass to the butler’s pantry, where Beau was sorting through the china and trashing anything bottle-like in a big garbage bin. I tried not to think about what some of those pieces must have been worth.

“Miss Lex,” he said when I entered. He was standing on a counter so he could reach the top shelf of one of the cupboards. “I’ve already been through the upstairs, but this room is obviously taking longer. Were you able to learn anything new?”

I told him about Sophia’s demands. “She wants me on the call?” he asked, looking perplexed. “Why?”

“Probably so she can embarrass me and try to convince you I should be fired,” I said.

For the first time that night, Beau’s face broke out in a grin. “So she’s an admirer.” He leaped nimbly off the counter, landing soundlessly on the floor like a cat.

I sighed. “I sort of killed her son, who was my half brother. It’s a long story.”

Beau’s eyes widened slightly, but all he said was, “All right. Lead on.”

We went back into the office, where I called Sophia on speakerphone. The bitch let the phone ring seven times before she answered. “Sophia Jasper,” she said, sounding downright professional. Beau shot me an amused look.

“Sophia, it’s Lex again. Did you get the money?”

“I did. Is Abner Calhoun with you?”

“I’m right here, ma’am,” Beau drawled. “So pleased to meet you. Call me Beau.”

Sophia let out an actual girlish laugh. “I’ll do that. And I’m Sophia. My companion speaks very highly of you. His name is Preston, originally from Charleston.”

Well, that explained why Sophia had agreed to the call. I’d known Sophia was in a long-term relationship with a vampire, but I hadn’t known his name. “I know Preston well,” Beau said easily. “Good man. But if you’ll pardon my ill manners, Miss Sophia, we have a rather time-sensitive problem here.”

“Yes, the spirit bottles. What do you need to know?”

Beau nodded at me. “What’s their range?” I asked.

“It depends on the number of spirits captured,” she said, her voice hardening now that I was speaking. “The more spirits, the farther the impact.”

“Can you give us an estimate?”

She let out a small, frustrated noise, but said, “The most powerful spirit bottle I’ve seen had about a hundred ghosts inside. It took out all the people in a fast-food restaurant.”

Beau and I exchanged a look. That gave us an overall sense of scale, but the Atlanta History Center was on a massive piece of property, and we’d been the only living people there that night. “Hold on a moment, please,” I said to Sophia, and pushed the “Mute” button on my phone. “How many ghosts were taken from each location?” I asked Beau.

“I told you, they pool, like gravity. I never got a head count.”

I waved a hand. “Just give me a guess.”

His face was grave. “Four or five hundred, at least.”

Chapter 30

We spent another twenty minutes asking Sophia every question we could think of about spirit bottles. According to her, any glass bottle would work, as long as it had a lid or stopper. They could only be set off at night, but as long as they were kept away from the sun, they could be stored indefinitely and used later. Sophia managed to slip in a couple of disparaging remarks about me, but overall she kept it more professional than I’d expected.

“What about the trigger?” I asked. “How do you actually set it off?”

“That depends on the witch, of course,” Sophia said impatiently. “The idea of putting spirits into bottles came about because trades witches needed a way to free a place of unwanted ghosts. As long as you have access to mandragora, it’s much easier to make a spirit bottle than to actually lay the ghosts—”

“Wait, are you saying that it’s easy to make a spirit bottle?” I interrupted, because that sounded very scary.

She huffed. “I’m saying getting spirits into bottles is easy, but turning the bottle into an explosive, that’s the trick. And that part’s not boundary magic, not really. The way I’ve seen it done, you bind two identical bottles together with magic, and trap spirits in one of them. To set it off, you leave the spirit bottle at the target location and destroy its twin somewhere else.”

Okay, I actually kind of followed that—she was talking about a form of sympathetic magic, which Lily used a lot. It was basically binding two things together so that one could stand in for another.

“But in theory,” Sophia went on, “you could create the trigger another way, depending on the magic you favor. You might be able to tear a slip of paper in half, leave one side inside the bottle, and destroy the other. The right ceremony could destroy the bottle from a distance, although you’d likely need quite a bit of preparation time. The point is that the trigger varies with the witch.”

A terrible thought occurred to me. “What about a cord witch? Could you set off the trigger with knots or whatever?”

Beau shot me a startled look.

“Knots or whatever,” Sophia repeated in disgust. “Good gods, you are ignorant. But yes, in theory cord magic could be altered to form a trigger. I haven’t seen it done, but just about any kind of magic could be adapted to activate the bottle. You’re looking at a very strong witch or a small coven, though.”

Beau gave me a troubled look. “I don’t have any more questions,” I said quietly.

He nodded. “Miss Sophia? I do believe that’s all we have for now. If I think of something else, may I call upon you for assistance?”

“That wasn’t part of the deal I made with Lex . . .” she said, but there was no heat to it. “Oh, fine. You can call back, Beau, but only you.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He nodded to me, and I ended the call.

“You don’t suspect Tallulah?” Beau said right away.

I grimaced. “I know that you haven’t been able to think of a motive for her, but there’s no proof she wasn’t involved. Whoever did this figured out the weaknesses in her wards.”

“True.” Beau still didn’t look convinced. He looked worried, and I couldn’t blame him.

Still, it felt like I was missing something. “Let’s start over,” I said, thinking out loud. “It probably isn’t a vampire or werewolf, because those two shooters weren’t fast or strong. And it isn’t a boundary witch, because of the mandragora. It basically has to be a trades witch, or a human who can do magic.” Like crystals, mandragora was infused with its own magic. In theory, a human with knowledge could use it.

“I haven’t met many of those,” Beau said, shaking his head. “At least, not with the gumption to do this. Most of the humans who find out about magic learn a few tricks, like how to manipulate cards or use sage to cleanse a new home. As Sophia said, this is witchcraft on a pretty large scale.”

“Yeah.” I was thinking of Emil again. He’d used a scrying mirror and crystals to influence things around him. But Sophia was his mother; she would have been able to teach him to use magical artifacts.

“Besides,” Beau said with a frown, “as many enemies as I may have, I can’t think of a single one who is human.”

Yeah, because you can press them to be happy with you, I thought but did not say. “A witch, then. Did you think of any witches or clans you’ve seriously pissed off?”

“Honestly? No. After I was turned I had very little to do with the witch clans, until I became cardinal vampire in 1921. And then it was all dealmaking.” His mustache twitched as he pressed his lips together, thinking. “I don’t believe I’ve ever killed so much as a single witch.”

Typical vampire thinking: if no one died, it was barely a crime.

Then I actually slapped myself in the forehead, though at least I did it with my right hand. “The blood tribute!” I said. “What if one of the witch clans is doing this to stop the tribute?”

Beau frowned. “That . . . is possible,” he admitted. “Another cardinal vampire would be unable to run Promenade, at least for some time, which would give the witches a reprieve.”

I thought back to the frightened witches in line, and their determined clan leader. What leader wouldn’t try to save her people from going through that? Shit, it was obvious. “Have any of them stood out as particularly disgruntled?” I asked, trying to choose my words carefully. “Any serious complaints?”

He shook his head. “Not to me, anyway. It could be any of them.”

“Except Tallulah’s people,” I said, unable to keep a little acid out of my tone. “Because they don’t have to do it.”

He stood up. “Let’s go speak to her.”

I followed him back into the foyer, where Tobias was waiting just outside the office door, pacing.

I’d spent enough time around the werewolves by now to recognize this as a relaxed pacing, a way of burning off physical energy rather than a sign that he was anxious or upset. “Hi!” he said when we emerged. He bounded over to me, looking expectant.

“Hey, Tobias,” I said, smiling at him. “Have you seen Tallulah, the witch from earlier?”

“I’m here,” called a voice from above us. Tallulah was descending the grand staircase. “I was just checking in with Whitney.”

We waited as she finished climbing down, the bracelets on her wrist rattling.

“Were you able to find some of those . . .” Beau glanced to me for help.

“Mahogany obsidians,” I supplied.

“Right.” He turned back to Tallulah.

She sighed. “There are shops in town, but the only contact I can personally vouch for is in Savannah. I did speak to her, and she’d driving over with everything she has—six really good pieces, and a handful of others that will probably work. It’ll be five or six hours until she arrives, though.”

Beau frowned. “That’s after dawn.”

“Are you worried about another attack tonight?” Tallulah asked, her eyebrows raised in alarm.

“We are doing everything we can to prepare for that,” he said, not sounding particularly confident. “Along those lines, I need to speak to you about the witch clans. Have there been any complaints about the blood tributes?”

Tallulah had paused on the bottom stair, quite possibly so she could be taller than me. Now she tapped her manicure on the banister, her eyes narrowing slightly. She wasn’t an idiot—she could see our line of thinking. “Of course, there is always grumbling about the tribute. But it’s just talk, nothing serious.”

I was about to push her for more details, but Beau suddenly waved a hand. “I want justice for Warton, but it can wait. At the moment my main concern is preventing another explosion and buying time to investigate.” To Tallulah, he said, “I’d like you to begin contacting the witch clans. All of them.”

“What, tonight?”

“Right now. Tell them we are changing the terms of the blood tribute.” I looked at him with some surprise, but Beau was focused on Tallulah. He told her about the conditions he and I had discussed: that blood donations would now be made off-site, facilitated by health-care professionals.

Tallulah frowned. “They may see that as a sign of weakness. That you’re scared.”

I snorted. Or Tallulah might see this as her losing her edge on the other clans.

“That is a problem for another night,” Beau said grimly. “For now I am more concerned with the safety of everyone in this house. Have you finished boosting the wards?”

“Almost, I—”

Beau cut her off. “Please make the calls first, then finish the wards.” He turned away from Tallulah, effectively dismissing her.

The witch clan leader looked a little shocked, but she pulled out her phone and moved away, stepping outside to make her calls.

Milburn, who I hadn’t seen when we entered the foyer, sidled up. He must have been lurking behind the stairs. “What’s going on?” he asked Beau.

“If one of the clans is setting off bombs as a protest, I may have just remedied the situation,” Beau replied.

“What if Tallulah doesn’t actually make the calls?” I said.

“She will. She won’t like it, but she’ll do it.”

“How is your daytime security?” I asked him.

Beau turned to look pointedly at me, and I raised my palms. “I don’t need details. And I know they couldn’t set off a spirit bomb during the day. But there are other ways to kill you.”

Beau shook his head. “I stay in an underground vault, nowhere near this house, and I am the only one with the combination. Not even the Horsemen or Odessa can open the door. I’ll be safe.”

I nodded, trying to think of holes in his security. If we could make it to dawn without another spirit bottle going off, I’d have more time to figure out who was behind them.

“Where do you want me, Lex?” Tobias asked, giving me eager puppy eyes.

I thought. “If it’s okay with Beau, I’d like to have you on the grounds until dawn, keeping an eye on things. Look for suspicious activity, any weird bottles or packages, or anyone who smells like fear or lies. Can you do that?”

“Absolutely!” He looked at Beau for permission.

“I ask only that you give the barn a wide berth,” Beau said. “A werewolf would terrify the horses. Besides, I’ve got the grooms helping me search the house for spirit bottles, so there shouldn’t be any damage if a spirit bottle goes off near the barn.” He gave me a sharp look. “Unless you think it could kill the horses?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think they’d work on animals.”

Tobias turned toward the door. “Keep your phone on you,” I reminded him, “and if nothing happens, come find me at dawn.”

“Got it.” He practically skipped on his way outside.

Beau looked at me again. “If you’re willing, Miss Lex, I’d like you to stay with Odessa until Becca arrives in the morning.”

That surprised me. “Do you still think Odessa is in danger?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. But she and the Horsemen are the people I care about, and it wouldn’t take much research for someone to figure that out. There’s always the chance they might use her to get to me.” He looked so worried that I almost wanted to pat his arm. “I’ve texted Becca Rhodes, but she is unable to arrive before 8:00 a.m.”

I nodded and stood up. “I’ll make sure she’s safe.”

“Thank you,” he said, looking relieved. “When the crystals arrive, make sure Odessa and Becca both have one. It would do Odessa no good to survive a bomb and then die because Becca was no longer able to protect her.

“I need to return to the search,” he said distractedly. “And then, if there’s time, I’d like to go visit some of the other locations where the Unsettled have pooled. I want to make sure there aren’t more than three bombs out there.”

“Do you want me to come with you?” I asked, steeling myself for the answer. I didn’t know if I could handle being around that many ghosts. I would probably have to stop at the hotel to pick up my old obsidian, but in that case I’d still have to drive through part of Atlanta without it.

But Beau shook his head. I tried to hide my relief. “Milburn and your werewolf are both watching the property at the moment, so perhaps you could get a few hours of sleep. If you take the couch in Odessa’s parlor, you’ll still be between her and any danger.”

“I’ll stay here, but I can stay awake,” I told Beau. After Becca arrived, I could run to the hotel for the obsidian. I’d get some sleep then.

“There’s no need—” he began, but just then, Whitney Finch started down the stairs, yawning into her fist.

“Oh, hey,” she said when she saw us congregated in the foyer. “I was just about to head home. It’s late.”

“You are welcome to stay over, as usual,” Beau said courteously.

“Thanks, Mr. Calhoun, but I have a nine o’clock class tomorrow,” Whitney replied. “And my mom said I should get out of everybody’s hair so you guys can work.”

“All right,” Beau said, stepping aside so she could get by. “Milburn will walk you to your car. Have a good evening, Whitney.” He nodded at the other vampire, who hurried to open the door for the girl.

To me, Beau added, “As I was saying, now is a good time to rest.”

“I’m okay,” I said.

“I’m sure that wrist must be troubling you.” His eyes twinkled a little as he added, “I believe we have some ice packs in the freezer from when Deimos has gotten fresh with Odessa. You could take a couple of them upstairs and at least sit down for a bit.”

I was trying to fight a yawn just at the thought of sleeping. If I sat down on a couch, I was going to pass out.

And then I was probably going to start screaming. Even in all this chaos, I hadn’t forgotten the nightmares. My exhaustion wouldn’t let me.

While I was hesitating, Beau added, “You’re most valuable to me during the time between dawn and Becca’s arrival. You’ll be better able to keep an eye on things then if you rest now.”

Shit, he was going to make this hard. “I, um, sometimes call out in my sleep,” I admitted, unable to meet Beau’s eyes. “I don’t want to disturb everyone or cause a panic for nothing.”

There was a pause, and when I forced myself to look up, Beau’s eyes were kind. “That’s quite all right, Miss Lex,” he said gently. “Odessa’s bedroom is soundproofed, and this property is full of ex-soldiers. No one here will judge you if you have nightmares.”

I sighed, but there was a time to be tough, and a time to take the goddamned sleep. “You’ll wake me before dawn?”

He gave a little half bow. “Of course.”

I went upstairs and said goodnight to a tired-looking Odessa, who handed me a brand-new toothbrush and toothpaste. “I’ve got loads for when my girlfriends stay over,” she said when I thanked her. “I’m turning in too.”

After she waved goodnight, I brushed my teeth in her small bathroom and sacked out on the purple couch in her “sitting room,” which turned out to be surprisingly comfortable despite its fancy appearance. Or maybe I was just so tired and achy that I didn’t notice otherwise.

The nightmare started as it always did: I was in the tunnel, alone this time, and the wraiths and remnants packed the walls, far more than there had been in real life. I wanted to turn and run, but an invisible force dragged me forward as the wraiths reached hungrily toward me and everything was on fire—

I jolted awake when Beau shook my shoulder. Usually the dream progressed a little further before I started screaming. “I’m sorry,” I mumbled, disoriented. I felt my cheeks redden. I knew I should have stayed awake.

“Lex.” Beau’s voice was heavy, and he hadn’t called me “Miss.”

I squinted up at him. Light was spilling into the room from the hallway, but it was still dark outside. A lot darker than it should have been, just before dawn. There was a bleakness to his face that I hadn’t seen before, and I finally realized that this wasn’t about my nightmare. “Beau? What happened? How long was I out?”

“About four hours.” That made it about an hour until dawn. “I’ve been checking in with my Horsemen,” Beau continued. “Hempstead stopped answering two hours ago. I’ve just returned from his house.”

Oh, no. “Was he . . .”

Beau’s eyes were desolate. “He’s gone.”

Chapter 31

Hempstead, Beau explained, owned a house just outside Atlanta. He’d cleared it of bottles after Beau’s call earlier, but he must have missed one. “As near as I can tell,” Beau said, “it was on a bookshelf, hidden behind the books.”

“I’m so sorry.”

He shook his head, sitting down next to me on the couch. I swung my legs down to make room for him. It was surprisingly intimate. I thought about putting a hand on his shoulder, but that seemed too far.

“Our attempts to defuse the situation didn’t work,” Beau said. “I’m getting Odessa and the other Horsemen out of town tonight. I can’t risk losing anyone else.” He gave me a direct look. “I think you and your friend should go home too.”

“Fuck no,” I said, standing up. “We’re close to figuring out who’s doing this.”

He gave me a sad smile. “Are we?”

“We’ve narrowed down the possibilities, and we’re getting protection against the spirit bottles,” I argued. “That’s a damned good start.”

He tilted his head, acknowledging the point. “But, Lex, I can’t risk you either. If something else happens to you, I’ll lose everything anyway.”

I made a face. “One more day,” I told him. “I’ll do some more asking around. Give us tonight to find whoever’s doing this, and we can go home tomorrow.”

He was still for a long moment, thinking it over, but then he bobbed his head. “I’ll have Maya get you and Tobias plane tickets for tomorrow,” he said. “But I’m still sending Odessa away. Before sunset, if I can manage it.”

That was probably a good idea anyway. “Deal.”

Despite this news, and the pain in my wrist, I fell asleep again after he left, positioned awkwardly on the couch. My body was just too exhausted to plague me.

The next thing I heard was an annoyingly cheerful chirp. “Hey, sleepyhead!”

“Mmph.” I cracked one eyelid open. Judging by the light, it was shortly after dawn, and Odessa was leaning over the back of the couch and grinning at me.

“It’s seven forty-five,” she said brightly. “Becca will be here pretty soon, and I need to go out and feed the horses.”

She was already dressed: jeans, a canvas work shirt that looked like it’d come from Neiman Marcus, and tall black boots that had more in common with galoshes than the cowboy boots she’d had on the other night. She wore the same silver and gold rings on her fingers as the night before, with simple diamond studs in her ears. It was awfully put together for this time of day.

“Ugh, you went to bed when I did,” I grumbled. “How are you this awake?”

She shrugged, still smiling. “What can I say? I’m the rare teenage morning person.”

“Basically a unicorn,” I said with a yawn. “Is there coffee?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t drink it,” she said, looking contrite. “Some of the maids do, but I wouldn’t know where they keep it. I can get you some tea? I was going to make a cup anyway.”

“Do you have any that’s really caffeinated?” I gave her a weary smile.

Odessa showed me straight white teeth that had definitely known braces. “Absolutely. It’s kind of bitter, though. Honey? It’s made right here—we have a bee colony behind the barn.”

How big was this place? “Sure,” I said.

Odessa disappeared, and I rolled off the couch and staggered into the bathroom to wash up.

When I made it downstairs, only slightly more awake now, I found Tobias curled up on the bottom few steps, fast asleep. Feeling guilty, I touched his shoulder.

“Lex?” He rubbed his fists in his eyes, like a little kid.

“Hey, buddy. How are you?”

“I was gonna wake you, but that girl said she’d do it.”

“How long have you been sleeping here?”

He shrugged. “Like five minutes. You said to come get you at dawn. It’s dawn.”

“I take it there wasn’t anything suspicious overnight?”

Tobias shook his head. “Safe here. But I saw your vampire. He said another one of his people was killed.”

“That’s true.” I sat down on the step beside him. “We’ve got today and tonight to figure out who’s doing this. You and I are going home tomorrow either way.”

He brightened. “We are?”

“Yep. But I’d really like to find this fucker before we go.”

Tobias nodded, looking thoughtful. “How can I help?”

“Right now, you can head back to the hotel and get a few hours’ sleep,” I told him. “You’ll be more useful to me if you’re rested. I’ll call you if I figure out something during the day; otherwise I’ll come by early in the afternoon to change and get my backup obsidian, and we can figure out our next steps.”

“Okay,” he said tiredly. “That’s good, you need that.”

“I really do.” And he needed some sleep. I patted him on the shoulder, and went to the kitchen to find Odessa.

She stood by the counter, stirring the last steaming mug in a row of three. Beside the mugs sat a jar of homemade honey with the lid screwed on. I wondered if she might be thinking of going into business with the honey, or opening a riding stable or something. I hadn’t actually asked her what she wanted to do next. I felt a little guilty that I’d been treating Odessa the same way I would my cousin’s high schoolers. She was nineteen, old enough to have her own opinions on things.

Then again, she was probably sick of people asking her about her future.

“Great timing,” she said, still obscenely cheerful. “Becca likes tea too, so I made her a cup.” She handed me one of the mugs, picking up another for herself. Then she put a dessert plate on top of the third mug to keep the heat from escaping.

I took a sip of the tea, some kind of English Breakfast flavor. It had the rich, complicated taste of tea that was particularly expensive.

“This is really good,” I told her. “You were right about the honey.”

“Do you want some toast too?” Odessa offered. “I can make it with the honey. Or some peanut butter.”

“Peanut butter toast sounds good,” I told her.

A moment later we were both munching on toast in companionable quiet. I leaned against the counter—my legs still felt cramped from the couch—but Odessa had hopped up, and was sitting with her boots swinging.

“You know,” she said, blowing across the surface of her tea, “Becca will be here soon. Beau said those spirit bomb thingies can only go off at night. You don’t have to wait around.”

I smiled. “I promised your uncle I would hand you off to Becca in person.”

She gave a little shrug. “You guys are flying out today?”

“No, not until tomorrow. I have one more day and night to find the person who’s doing this.”

“Why?” She looked genuinely curious, and I tried to imagine her perspective on this. I was a ghost specialist who’d come to Atlanta to figure out who was “stealing” Beau’s ghosts, and it had turned into a far more serious matter—two of his closest followers had been murdered. Odessa didn’t know that Quinn and I had done similar investigations before; to her it must seem like I was way out of my element.

Then again, I felt like I was way out of my element. “Those spirit bottles are still out there.”

Odessa chewed at her lower lip. “Are you sure you’ll be okay? I mean, I love Beau, but he’s putting you in an awful lot of danger, and it’s not even your territory. I thought everyone in the Old World was obsessed with territory.”

“Not this time,” I said gently. “It’s a completely uncontrolled weapon, Odessa. It’s dangerous.”

“But if you go back to Colorado, you’ll be safe!”

She was clearly worried. It was kind of touching. “That’s sweet, but I don’t want to go back to my safe little corner while someone is using spirit bombs to kill people in Atlanta. They’re made with boundary magic. If there’s a chance I can help dismantle or find them, I need to be here.”

As I said the words, it occurred to me just how much I meant them. I wasn’t going to get on a plane until I’d found the bomb maker.

Odessa finished her toast and set her mug down on the counter. “Well, I need to get out to the horses.” She gave a little hop off the counter and swung her arms up like an Olympic gymnast. I pretended to applaud, and she beamed at me. “Would you like to come see the barn?”

“Sure,” I said, trying to sound interested. If you’ve seen one barn, you’ve kind of seen them all, but it was obviously important to her.

Odessa brightened. “Great! Let me just leave Becca a note; she can find us there.”

She reached into a drawer for a Post-it pad and pen. We went to the foyer to get our jackets, and Odessa stuck the note on the now-empty coat-tree. Then we carried the mugs outside, where Odessa led me around the side of the house to a row of shiny golf carts. “We could walk,” she said, with a sly smile, “but I just think these are fun.”

“That’s fine.” My back and hips ached along with my wrist now, and I wasn’t overly eager to make the walk. I gingerly climbed in on the passenger side, letting Odessa navigate us across the driveway and down the red-clay path.

She’d set her tea in a cup holder, but I just took small sips to keep mine from sloshing. It was cool enough on the forest path for me to enjoy having the hot cup, even if I could really only hold it in one hand. There was a lot less light in the forest than near the house, and I wondered how something could be so dense and forbidding yet have so much life inside. “Do you ever have problems with animals?” I asked Odessa, raising my voice to be heard over the low purr of the golf cart.

“Nah, not really. There are some rabbits and squirrels, but we get very few predators,” she told me. “Which is good, because the horses would freak out. We used to get deer, but not so much anymore.” She smiled. “Beau used to get mad at me for feeding them during the day. I thought they were cute, but he says they’re pests.”

Privately, I agreed with Beau, but didn’t say so.

In a few minutes we reached the clearing where Beau and I had visited the other night, and Odessa sped the cart along the paddock fence to the barn. I hadn’t gotten a good look at it before, but it was obviously well kept, with bright red paint and white trim that made it look like something on a postcard. It was bigger than I’d imagined, although really, I had no idea how much space you needed to keep horses.

Odessa parked and picked up her mug, swinging her legs out of the cart. There was a bounce in her step now, and I had to move quickly to keep up. “We’ve got five horses now,” she said cheerfully as she approached a door in the center of the building. “When I was younger we kept a pony and a donkey too, but Beau didn’t replace them when they passed away. I think they were mostly there to make me happy.”

She took hold of a metal handle, pulled one-handed, and swung the door sideways in an impressive show of strength. The door was twice as wide as you’d find on a house, and tall enough to accommodate the horses; it had to be heavy. “Deimos is my favorite, of course,” Odessa went on, “but I love them all.”

The smells of manure and hay floated out, and I squinted to see the building’s interior, which was shaped differently from the barn at the Pellar farm. There was a wide aisle going straight down the middle, and spacious stalls on the left side, each with a hand-painted sign bearing the horse’s name. The right side of the building was closed off with doors, and I figured they led to rooms for equipment and feed.

As soon as the door began rolling open, horse heads poked out of the stalls to see who had entered. “Good morning, babies,” Odessa sang, reaching into her jacket pockets. She came out with handfuls of carrots, which she began to feed to each one.

“How often do you usually ride?” I asked.

“Oh, at least twice a day. I ride Deimos every evening, of course, so Beau can live vicariously,” she said with a rueful smile. “But I also rotate among the others, usually during the afternoon. A couple of my friends stop by once a week or so to ride, and so does Maya, Beau’s executive assistant.” She stroked the horse in front of her, a chestnut brown with a white diamond on its face.

“Maya rides too?” The still-unseen personal assistant had sounded so businesslike on the phone.

Which, I realized, might be why I hadn’t considered her as a suspect. Beau was convinced of her loyalty, but had he actually pressed her to see if she was keeping anything from him? Even if he had, there was more than one way to be an unwitting accomplice. She might have divulged information to someone without realizing it was sensitive.

I could go talk to her once Becca had arrived, but while I was here, I might as well see if Odessa knew anything about her that could help me. “Are you guys friendly?”

Odessa had been murmuring nonsense to the horses, the way I talk to the herd, but she paused and turned on her heel to look at me. “Friendly . . . ish? Maya has always done a lot for me. When I was still in school, she was the one who arranged for me to have nannies, a cook, new clothes, all that stuff.” Odessa shrugged. “And she was the emergency contact at school in case I got a fever or fell on the playground. We chat and stuff when she comes to ride. But we’re not, like, tight.”

Hmm. I would need to go see her, but I didn’t see any reason to let Odessa know that.

There was a dusty bench near the tack room, and I sat down, taking a sip of my tea as I watched Odessa interact with the horses. Most of them were docile and affectionate with her, waiting eagerly for their turn. Deimos, who stood a head taller than the others, snorted and stamped impatiently until Odessa reached his stall at the far corner of the barn.

“All right, you big baby.” She pulled the rings off one hand and reached into her pocket to exchange them for an apple. Then she held it out to the horse, who bit off half of it in one loud chomp.

“Jesus,” I said, wincing. “Don’t you worry about losing a finger?”

Odessa laughed. “You learn how to hold it so they can get the right leverage without getting your hand.” She held her palm flat and let Deimos take the second half of the apple, patting him on the neck. “When we first got him, he was half-wild, but he likes me now. He doesn’t like when I wear rings, though.”

“Who did you ride before him?”

“Tuxedo,” she said, nodding at a black-and-white horse a couple of stalls away. He was the next tallest, after Deimos. “He’s a great horse, but Deimos is all power and speed, all the time. We understand each other.”

Deimos nosed her jacket insistently, probably looking for more treats, but she just smiled, patting the side of his face. “I’m going to miss him,” she said softly, without looking away from the horse.

So Beau had already talked to her about leaving town. I put the tea down on the bench next to me. “Where are you going to go?” I asked.

“Oh, Beau’s sending me to New York to stay with one of my brothers. He’s even making Becca fly up there with me, to make sure it’s safe.” She rolled her eyes. “Then Becca’ll come back and I’m stuck up there.”

“Do you get along with your brother?” I asked lightly.

“He works sixty-hour weeks on Wall Street, and his wife does yoga twice a day. I never feel like I can breathe when I’m there.”

“What about the other brother?”

Odessa made a face. “He’s in grad school at Princeton. He doesn’t even have a couch I could sleep on.”

She gave Deimos a last pat and turned to face me. “All right, mealtime. Usually the night grooms do this right before they leave, so we’re already a couple of hours late. You wanna help?”

I eyed the line of expectant horses and fought the urge to stuff my hands in my pockets. I liked animals, and horses were beautiful from a distance, but I couldn’t imagine putting my fingers near those mouths. “Maybe I’ll just watch.”

Odessa gave a no hard feelings shrug and began distributing hay and some kind of grain to each horse’s stall. It wasn’t as much food as I’d expected, but Odessa explained that the horses would get stomachaches if their meals were too big or frequent.

She was perfectly at ease hauling the bales of hay around, and I respected that. This was a girl who’d had to do the messy parts of horse ownership. “Are you going to . . . uh . . . clean the stalls now?” I asked as she was finishing up.

Odessa checked her watch. “No, I’ll—” She broke off as we heard the hum of a quiet motor. “That must be Becca,” she said, and I got up and followed her back to the barn’s entrance, where the bodyguard was just parking another golf cart next to ours. As she hopped out she reached back for something, which turned out to be a travel mug.

“Good morning, ladies,” she said, smiling pleasantly as she saw me. “Good to see you again, Lex.”

“You too.”

“You didn’t see the tea I left out for you?” Odessa asked, looking crestfallen. “I made your favorite.”

Becca lifted her travel mug, which had the word “Chattanooga” printed in a fancy scroll. “Oh, I found it. I had this in the car, and figured it’d stay warmer in the insulated mug.”

“Oh,” Odessa said, relaxing. “Sorry, I just hope you like it. I added some of the honey today; we finally harvested it.”

“Oh, very cool.” The bodyguard grinned at me. “Odessa has turned me into a tea convert. When this job is finished, I’m going to have to figure out where to buy the good stuff.”

Odessa started back into the barn, and Becca and I followed. “I’ll get you a whole crate of it as a thank-you present,” Odessa promised. “When I get back from New York.”

From the way she was trying to please us, it struck me that Odessa likely didn’t spend a lot of time with older women. Or maybe she was just used to being alone during the day. I picked up my tea off the bench again and made a point of taking a sip as I sat down.

“Chattanooga?” I said to Becca.

“Hometown,” she said with the easy smile again. “It’s only a couple hours’ drive from here, so I go up once a month or so to see my folks.”

“Anyway,” Odessa said, maybe trying to draw the conversation back to herself. “I was just telling Lex that I’ll wait and let the horses out later, when the day grooms arrive. That’s when we muck the stalls.”

“Can I say hi?” Becca asked, gesturing at the horses.

“Of course.” To me, Odessa added, “Becca’s been spending a lot of time with me, so they all love her by now.”

“Yeah, because I shamelessly bribe them with treats,” Becca said good-naturedly. She was already reaching into her jacket pockets, coming out with whole carrots with the green stems still attached. “Except Deimos. I don’t fuck with Deimos.” She tossed one of the carrots to Odessa, who caught it easily, chuckled, and went to feed the gray stallion.

It was a nice moment, on a pretty morning. I would have liked to stay and enjoy their camaraderie, but I was running out of time to find Beau’s attacker. “Now that Becca’s here, I should probably take off,” I told them, my thoughts already turning back to the case. I still liked the theory that it was a witch who resented the blood tribute—it was possible she hadn’t heard about the new rules yet, or maybe she hated Beau enough to want revenge anyway. I figured I’d see what Maya knew first, then go back and push Tallulah a little harder.

“Good hunting,” Becca said.

Odessa smiled at me. “It was nice hanging out with you.”

“You too.” I drained the last of my tea and stood up. “Whoa.” I put a hand on the wall to steady myself.

“You okay?” Becca asked, taking a single step toward me.

“Yeah, I think I just stood up too fast.” I shook my head as though that might clear it. I suddenly felt queasy. I dropped back down on the bench . . . not entirely on purpose. “Actually, I don’t feel so great,” I admitted.

Becca was by my side in a moment, bending in front of me. “If you’re anything like the other soldiers I know, you wouldn’t say that unless you feel like total shit,” she said. She felt my forehead, like a mom with a toddler, then pressed her fingers to my wrist. I felt too nauseous to be embarrassed at the moment.

Becca frowned. “I don’t think you have a fever, but you’re sweating and your heart is racing. Were you helping Odessa with the horses?”

I started to shake my head, but that made the dizziness worse. “No.”

At the mention of her name, I automatically looked for Odessa. She was still standing by the horse stalls, but her face was blurry. “Um . . .” I swallowed hard, mortified. “I think I’m going to . . .”

Odessa appeared at my side, thrusting a metal bucket in my hands. I leaned forward and vomited violently into the bucket. Becca held my hair back and made soothing noises.

When I was done I set the bucket under the bench and sat there with my head hanging between my knees. “Sorry,” I mumbled, although I still felt too sick to really feel embarrassed.

“It’s okay, Lex,” Odessa rushed to say.

“Did she eat or drink something that might have disagreed with her?” Becca said over my head.

“Just peanut butter toast and tea, the same as me. And I feel fine.” Odessa sounded worried. “Maybe we should get her to a doctor.”

“I think that’s probably a good idea.”

Odessa crouched down in front of me, though she left plenty of space between us in case I was sick again. “Lex? I don’t want you to have to dick around with the golf cart. I’m going to take it back to the house and get my car. I’ll drive around to the service entrance behind the barn so you can climb right in, okay?”

I nodded, too sick to answer.

“Good idea,” Becca said. “I can stay with her.”

“Thanks.” Odessa disappeared, and Becca sat down next to me on the bench.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” she asked.

I was having trouble staying upright on the bench. “Need to lay down,” I mumbled.

Without another word, Becca guided me down to the concrete floor of the barn. I needed the help too, because my limbs were starting to feel floppy.

I stretched out, pathetically grateful for the cool concrete beneath me. It wasn’t exactly clean, but I didn’t mind a little dirt and hay if it meant I got to be horizontal. The barn was rotating all around me, and the rafters over my head blurred together. I let my eyelids close. “Spinny,” I whispered.

“I’m sure Odessa will be here any minute,” Becca was saying, though I wasn’t sure how long she’d been speaking. Through the sudden chaos in my head, something was itching at me, something I had seen and was supposed to pay attention to.

The metal pail; it was something to do with the metal pail.

I pictured it moving toward me, but I couldn’t hold on to the image. It started rewinding and fast-forwarding like it was stuck on repeat. “Stop,” I said out loud, or at least I think I did, because the image of the bucket being thrust toward me froze.

There. The fingers of Odessa’s right hand, where she’d taken off the rings to feed Deimos. The bottom third of each finger, below the knuckle, had been carefully tattooed. I hadn’t seen the script long enough to read it, but it’d been small and detailed.

Years ago, Lily had tattooed griffins on my arms to help me focus my boundary magic. Odessa’s symbols didn’t look anything like my griffins, and yet . . . there was something similar.

And she’d been hiding them. Since the night I’d first met her.

I opened my eyes and looked at Becca, who was leaning over me with both hands planted on the concrete. “Call 911,” I said, and the effort it cost made me realize that I was going to pass out.

I’m pretty sure I said it out loud, not just in my head, but Becca gave me a strange look and didn’t move. Maybe I was slurring?

I wasn’t going to be able to stay awake much longer, so I put all my waning strength into forming the words clearly. “Becca. Call 911 now.” I was sure it’d come out right this time.

Babe, look at her. Sam’s voice sounded panicked and far away. I almost giggled. How could my dead twin sister sound far away?

But I looked, and saw Becca sway back and forth a few times, her mouth opening and closing. Her forehead was damp with sweat.

Then she collapsed next to me, and everything went dark.

Chapter 32

My dreams were on tumble dry.

Images bounced and sank around and around in my head: Cisco and the hacky sack, the burning ghosts, the IED exploding. Wraiths jumping through the doorway to the other side, Quinn’s spaced-out eyes when I’d pressed him. A noxious swirl of rotten memories and pain.

Sometimes an image of Sam would pop up—her yelling something at me from her side of the bedroom—but I couldn’t get her to stay. I couldn’t stop the spinning.

When I opened my eyes next, Quinn was standing in the barn. Except he wasn’t, because there was a beam of sunlight pouring in from the other end of the barn. One of these things isn’t real, I thought dizzily, Quinn or the sun. There was no way I was lucky enough for it to be the sun.

Not-Quinn crouched down in front of me, looking worried, and although his lips moved, there was no sound. Then his face morphed into Simon’s, complete with nerdy glasses, and before I could adjust he was back to Quinn again.

I reached up a hand to touch him, fascinated, but there was a weightlessness to my arm that made me suspect it hadn’t actually moved at all.

I tried to say his name, but I didn’t have the energy to make my own lips move.

After a while this got frustrating, so I closed my eyes again.

Time passed.

The next time I surfaced, it was because of a voice.

“Look, will you just get over here?” The words were impatient, annoyed. There was a pause, and then she continued, “Yeah, I have Becca’s gun . . . but even after I get them on the tarp, I can’t get them into a vehicle by myself. And my car’s not big enough anyway.”

Odessa. I hadn’t heard that tone from her before, but it was her. Without opening my eyes, I tried to take stock of my body. I wasn’t paralyzed, as I’d first feared, but everything felt frail and empty, like when your fever has broken after the flu but you’re still too drained to get up. It felt like every muscle in my body had been surgically replaced with half-melted rubber, so I was somehow sore, numb, and weak all at the same time.

But at least I could think again.

I cracked my eyes open. My head was facing the right side of the barn now, away from where Becca had fallen. How much time had passed? Was Becca even alive? I didn’t know what Odessa had put in our tea, but it was entirely possible that it was lethal, and my boundary magic had just refused to let me die. Again.

Odessa had asked me how boundary witches could be killed. God, I was an idiot.

I could see Odessa pacing back and forth in front of Deimos as she talked into a cell phone. When she turned, I saw a handgun tucked into the back of her jeans.

“No, that’s not good enough. And might I remind you, we wouldn’t be in this position if you’d done your job the first time?”

Odessa listened for a long moment, then sighed in frustration and snapped, “Forget it. I’ll figure it out myself.” She hung up the phone, but immediately called a new number.

“Hey, hon.” This time, her voice was sugary sweet, and the contrast was startling. Had she been putting on an act the entire time? “Can you get the girls together for tonight? We’re doing the fifth spot.”

She listened for a long moment, looking annoyed. “I know it’s a risk, but I’m burned now. I want to make sure we have enough to impress the buyers and then I’m gone.” Her pacing turned her toward me, and I squeezed my eyes shut again.

There was a long pause, and then: “Great! Meet you at the fifth spot at ten.” There was a pause. “Actually? Make it midnight. I have a couple of things to deal with first.”

She must have hung up, because the next thing I heard was her footsteps walking out of the barn through the opposite doors.

Experimentally, I tried moving my hands, my neck. I could sort of turn my head, but my fingers felt like they’d been replaced by surgical gloves filled with jelly. I couldn’t even make a fist; there was no way I’d be able to jump Odessa and get the gun away from her.

The gun.

Odessa had said she had Becca’s gun, singular, but at the restaurant, the bodyguard had been carrying a backup weapon at her ankle. Did she still have it? Would Odessa know about it?

With great effort, I opened my eyes and turned my head. Becca was on the floor next to me, her eyes closed. She lay doubled over, her head near my feet. She was pale, but I thought I could see her chest moving.

Odessa’s boots scuffed near the entryway again. I tried to turn my head back to where it had been, but I was too late. “Oh,” Odessa said, sounding put out, “you’re awake. I’ll deal with you in a minute.”

No point in pretending now. I opened my eyes. Odessa was walking toward us holding a massive roll of thick plastic, like you see at construction sites. She unrolled a big piece near my feet and stood up to look at her handiwork. I tensed, but she went to Becca first and picked up her wrist, yanking her toward the plastic. Becca moaned.

“Goddammit, you’re alive too?” Odessa sighed. “I gotta get more plants.”

I needed to stall, to buy Becca time to wake up and remember the backup gun. If she still had it. Time to figure out whether I could speak.

“Whuh . . . plans . . .” I croaked. Talking was actually easier than I’d expected, but my mouth was dry. I swallowed several times.

Odessa stood up, nudging Becca’s knees so her legs shifted onto the plastic. When she looked at me, her lips curved in a sneer. “The azaleas, duh. I got ahold of some yellow azaleas straight from Nepal. Should I assume you haven’t heard of mad honey?”

I had, actually—it had come up during one of Simon’s magic lessons. Mad honey was a naturally occurring psychedelic, sort of like peyote or certain mushrooms. Not magic in itself, but often used in rituals.

But I wanted to stall Odessa, so I just stared blankly at her. “The azaleas are toxic,” she said, enunciating with impatient precision. She pointed both hands in the direction of the manor like she was signaling an airplane to land, then moved her hands toward the back of the barn. “The bees eat the nectar, so the honey is toxic.” She pointed both hands toward me now, looking triumphant. “I gotta admit, I wasn’t sure what it would do to you. Y’all are my first test subjects.”

“Why?” I said, pleased with how well the word came out.

A look of great disbelief and outrage came over her face. “Why? Why?” She pulled the sidearm—a Glock, I thought—from the back of her pants and took a couple of steps closer so she could tower over me. “You of all people . . . God . . .” She rubbed her face with her free hand. “I can’t believe you have to ask me that. All that power, all that juice you supposedly have? Beau took that away from me.” She shook her head. “All he had to do was leave me in the car a little longer so I could die. But no, he took that from me. And then he took the Olympics.” She was warming up now, her face full of self-righteousness. From the corner of my eye, I saw Becca’s leg move. I kept my gaze on Odessa so I wouldn’t give it away.

“You could’ve . . . college . . .”

She snorted. “Why, so I could find a husband? Or so I could become a kindergarten teacher or a nurse, one of the vocations Beau finds acceptable?” She shook her head. “You know what I am to him? I’m one of them.” She pointed a finger toward the line of horses. “A prize pony to be trotted out and fawned over whenever he’s in the mood, then put away in the barn when it’s time to get shit done.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, trying to look sincere despite my slurring words. “But you don’t have to do this.”

“Ha. I tried to get you to go home, but you wouldn’t listen to me.” She squatted down in front of me, shaking her head. “I gotta say, meeting you has been one of the great disappointments of my life. The strongest boundary witch in the world, everybody says, and you’re obviously barely keeping it together.”

Old anger began to bubble up in me. It felt a hell of a lot better than nausea and despair. Behind Odessa, I saw Becca drawing her foot up at the same time she tried to slide her arm down. She was going for the backup gun.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said as loudly as I could. It was still barely more than a whisper, but it got Odessa’s face to cloud over with rage, so I pushed on. “You’re a rich, spoiled brat who’s wasting her potential because her feelings got hurt.”

Odessa let out a nasty laugh. “I’m wasting my potential? You’re so focused on not letting your darkness out, you’re stuffing down the purest part of yourself. You were handed all this power and you squander it.” She reached into the top of her boot and pulled out something long and thin. It took me a second to realize it was my mother’s bloodstone. “I’ve been looking at this lump under your shirt for two days. It’s powerful, isn’t it?”

“Give it back,” I whispered, hating that I sounded like a little kid.

She hefted it in her hand for a second, and when she spoke, her voice was filled with contempt. “Why? You don’t use it. You don’t deserve it.” She made a show of putting the cord over her own head and tucking the stone into her shirt, arranging it next to the witch bag she was still wearing. Then she raised the gun, pointing it right at my head. “I thought you’d be different.”

“And I thought you’d be smarter,” I hurried to say. I didn’t dare look at how Becca was doing. “I don’t know how you found out about spirit bombs, but you blew the element of surprise when you missed Beau. Now he’ll know about you.”

“No, he won’t,” she snapped. “Beau has no idea what’s happening under his own roof. The book with the history of spirit bottles? That was on a shelf in his fucking office.”

“He’ll smell that we were in here.”

She scoffed. “Now who’s being an idiot? Beau doesn’t come near this barn. He’d never risk the horses, and I’m betting your little werewolf buddy wouldn’t either. I could walk away right now and the mad honey might still kill you.” She let out a laugh. “From what I’ve read, this shit was used to destroy entire armies who invaded Turkey, and with a lot lower dose.”

“Yeah, and a much more experienced beekeeper.” I was flagging again—I kept trying to move my limbs, but even talking was burning through my energy. “What’s your endgame here? Kill Beau and inherit his money?”

“Oh, God,” she said with complete disdain. “I’m going to kill him, of course, but this was never about money. While we’re on the subject, though, you know what’s pretty fucking valuable? Those spirit bottles. I can sell them to skinners for a half mil each.”

Shit. It hadn’t even occurred to me that she’d put the spirit bottles on the open market. God, if skinners got ahold of them, that’d be like mercenaries getting their own undetectable hydrogen bombs.

There was a bit more movement from Becca, and I scrambled to think of anything else to stall Odessa. “You can’t just walk away, y’know,” I slurred. “People’ll come after you.” I don’t ordinarily throw Maven’s name around, but even my thoughts felt blurry, and it was all I could come up with. “My boss will hunt you down if I don’t come back.”

Odessa’s eyes narrowed. “You know what, Lex? You’re right. I better not take any chances.” The barrel of the Glock had lowered while she was talking, but she raised it again. “You’ll die of a gunshot wound—to the head, of course. I’ll dump you downtown somewhere. Just another crime victim in Atlan—”

Becca shot her through the left bicep.

Everything happened in seconds. The horses went wild, whinnying in loud, frantic cries. Odessa screamed too, as she wheeled around to shoot at Becca—who fired a second round that hit Odessa in the right forearm, forcing her to drop the gun.

There was a moment where I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but Becca lifted the shaking gun again, and Odessa turned and sprinted out of the barn.

“Thank you,” I began, struggling to raise my head so I could see Becca. “Are you—”

I broke off, because Becca was curled up just past my feet, her arm wrapped around her stomach. The blood was already trickling through her fingers.

Chapter 33

“No!” I threw everything I had into moving toward her, and managed to sort of flop like a fish out of water. I kept throwing myself sideways as hard as I could, inch by inch, until finally my head was a foot away from hers.

Then everything in my body went limp, and I couldn’t get any closer. “Becca, look at me,” I begged, and the older woman’s eyes lifted up to focus on my face.

“My aim was for shit,” she whispered with a weak smile.

I almost sobbed, but I didn’t have the strength. “You did great. I can barely move.”

“Had less of . . . the honey . . .”

That was right; she’d had only a little of the tea. But now she was fucking gutshot. “How bad is it?” I asked as I tried to work my closest hand toward her. My fingers weren’t even twitching, they were so weak.

“I’m dying, Lex,” Becca said simply. She didn’t seem upset, or even surprised, as though she’d always expected this moment.

“Take the witch bag off.”

She gave me a blank look. “The necklace that Beau gave you,” I said urgently. “Please, can you get it off?”

Hesitantly, Becca moved her hand away from her stomach, the blood flowing more freely as soon as the pressure let up. She reached up with agonizing slowness, finally getting her fingers wrapped around the leather cord. “Pull, you have to pull it,” I pleaded.

Wincing, Becca pulled, and after a moment the bag broke loose in her hand. She dropped it next to her, returning her hand to clutch her stomach.

Without hesitating, I dropped into my boundary mindset, looking her over. It was as I’d feared—yellow death-essence was leaking out of her. “No no no no,” I chanted, struggling to move. I could feel a tidal wave of exhaustion rushing toward me—getting close to Becca had used up everything I had—but I still tried to lift my arms. If I could just cut my arm and get my blood into her system, I could delay her death, like I had once with my brother-in-law.

I pushed as hard as I could, until I was ready to throw up from weakness, but it was no good. The most I could do was inch my hand toward her. I had no way to cut myself, no way to get close to her wound.

“I’m so sorry,” I sobbed, though I felt like I didn’t have the strength to cry. “I’m so sorry.”

Becca slid out the arm that had been tucked beneath her, using it to clutch her stomach. She slid her free hand along until she could touch my fingers.

“Just hold on, Becca,” I said, my voice a whisper now. “The honey will wear off and—and—”

She gave me a weak smile. “You know, I always figured I’d go out protecting a client . . . but I never thought the client was the one who’d kill me.”

“I should have seen it.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” Becca said tiredly, but there was a wan smile on her face. “I’ve spent every day with her and I didn’t see it. This wasn’t your fault. I don’t know you, but I know how soldiers carry their deaths. I won’t let you carry mine.”

Tears were still leaking out of my eyes, but I didn’t have the breath to sob. “I think . . . you’re gonna make it,” Becca said, her voice beginning to fade. “And I want you to promise me you’ll get that little bitch.”

“Promise,” I whispered, though it came out in a slur.

“Good.” Becca’s eyes fluttered and then closed.

A few minutes later, while Becca’s breath was still coming in shallow jags, I lost consciousness. It was probably a mercy.

If I dreamed, I didn’t remember it later. The next time I opened my eyes, the sun had traveled most of the length of the barn, and Becca was still beside me. I knew she was dead just by looking at her.

Then I felt the gleaming.

It was just like the professor back in Boulder, only even stronger: a pull, a terrifying magnetism that was as unavoidable as it was powerful. I dropped into my boundary mindset and saw Becca’s spirit, her form a soft yellow glow. She wasn’t lying on the ground with her body, like the professor had. She was sitting in the midst of it with her knees drawn up, hugging them to her chest. Her eyes stared at nothing.

“Becca,” I said softly. I felt a little stronger now, but it was too late. Too late to save her.

She blinked, her gaze sort of wandering its way to me. Her eyes widened, as if to say, You can see me?

“I see you,” I assured her. She looked relieved, and then confused, and I felt a fresh pang of grief. “Sammy?” I said out loud, reaching for my sister in my mind.

You know what to do, babe. It’s not going to get any easier.

I swallowed and looked at the spirit in front of me. “You died, Becca,” I told her, as gently as I could. “I’m so sorry. But it will be okay. You don’t have to stay here.” The words sounded trite, but I couldn’t think of any other way to say it just then. “You can move on,” I repeated.

Becca looked down at her body, then gave me a reproachful look. “I’ll make sure you are put to rest,” I promised. “I’ll find your parents in Chattanooga. You can be at peace. You have my word.”

She stared at me for another moment without blinking, and even though I knew she didn’t have to lubricate her eyes anymore, it still looked eerie. Then a smile broke over her face, a shining, beatific smile that was so achingly beautiful it made me gasp and jerk out of my boundary mindset. When I checked again, Becca’s form was gone, just like the remnants I’d guided through the door.

For the first time in months, I felt the familiar rush of boundary magic, the serene high of setting something right. I wanted to cry, but I needed to save my strength. I’d made a promise to stop Odessa, and I damn well intended to keep it.

With great effort, I dragged my right arm close so I could see my watch. Three fourteen p.m. Fuck. I had been unconscious for most of the day. In just over three hours the sun would go down, and Odessa could set off another spirit bottle.

The only good news was that I felt a little stronger than I had before I’d lost consciousness. The first thing I did was roll a little so I could feel my pockets. As expected, my cell phone and sidearm were both gone. Odessa must have searched us the first time I was out, when she’d taken my necklace. If she was smart enough to do that, she was also smart enough to call the grooms and give them the day off. Maybe the night grooms too.

Tobias. Tobias was probably already looking for me. Odessa was right, though—with no reason to think I’d be at the barn, he wouldn’t risk coming here and freaking out the horses—but he’d be asking everyone questions.

Which made him a liability to Odessa.

I tried to swallow the panic and work it through. Unless she had a secret stockpile of silver bullets—unlikely, since there weren’t wolves in Atlanta—Odessa would have to lay low for now to avoid him. After sunset, though, she could ambush him with another spirit bottle. Tobias had survived the first blast because I—and my obsidian—had been between him and the worst of it, but that didn’t mean he could survive a second bomb. Especially if she caught him off-guard. And of course, Tobias was too trusting to do anything but bound right up to her the second he saw her.

Weak or not, I had to get myself out of there. I needed to warn Tobias—and Beau—about Odessa.

I eyed the infinite distance between me and the door and sighed. Odessa had slid it closed when she fled. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to push the damned thing open once I got there, but reaching it was the obvious first step.

This was really going to suck.

Flipping myself over, I began dragging myself in an army crawl toward the heavy door. Elbow forward, opposite knee forward, drag body along, rest. Other elbow forward, other knee forward, drag body along, rest. Repeat, and repeat, and repeat.

I had plenty of time to think as I crept along the floor. If Odessa got rid of me and Tobias, she could probably convince Beau we’d gone back to Colorado early. She’d clearly figured out a workaround for lying to vampires. If I’d had energy to spare, I would have smacked myself in the forehead. Odessa had smelled like alcohol the night before, and I’d just thought, oh, typical nineteen-year-old. But she’d been preparing to lie to the kind of people who could smell it.

As long as Beau didn’t suspect her, she could ambush him tonight with one of the spirit bombs. And then her silent, undetectable explosives would be out on the open market. Atlanta would be in chaos following the death of its cardinal vampire; no one would look twice at where Odessa went.

I redoubled my efforts, gritting my teeth and scraping myself along the concrete. Every now and then one of the horses would snort and stamp a hoof, which wasn’t particularly encouraging. They were probably all rooting for their mistress.

Odessa. I wasn’t without sympathy for her situation, up to a point. She’d never bought the Calhoun narrative that boundary witchblood was a curse. When Beau had saved her from that accident, she must have felt as though her birthright had been stolen along with her parents. His refusal to let her compete with Deimos had added insult to injury.

She was full of rage, with so little control over her own future—I of all people understood that. It made me wonder, not for the first time, if anger was an ingrained part of having boundary witchblood.

Or maybe, Sam’s voice said in my head, it’s an ingrained part of being female.

I was too tired to grump at her verbally, so I just grimaced and thought, Speaking of which . . . you couldn’t have warned me about her?

You know I’m not supposed to make alterations. I’m still in trouble for last time.

I blinked, absorbing that. At the cave in Wyoming, Sam had gotten a message to Valerya, who could talk to Katia the way Sam talked to me. Without Sam and Valerya, I doubted that Katia and I would have made it out of there alive.

Yeah, I guess I could see how the mysterious “they” would be pissed.

Even if they weren’t holding her back, Sam probably wouldn’t have been able to yell, don’t drink the tea! in my head. But before she’d gotten “in trouble,” she’d been able to sort of drop hints or try to get me to think about things differently. Sometimes I understood her cryptic clues and sometimes I didn’t, but maybe I’d come to rely on them a little too much. Odessa had blindsided me. That was on me.

Still, I hadn’t known Sam could be in continuous trouble over something, like a child being punished. It reminded me how little I knew about Sam’s . . . well, “situation” was the best word I could think of.

Inch by inch, I kept working my way toward the door, trying to figure out my first move once I actually got there. I was hoping that Tobias was over at Azalea Manor. When he couldn’t find me or get me to pick up my phone, he would have called Mary, his alpha. Maven and Quinn were still asleep, so she would probably tell Tobias to wait at the manor until I returned or Beau woke up for the night and could take charge. It was the only logical location.

Unfortunately, if I could reason that out, so could Odessa. She might come looking for Tobias right at twilight with another spirit bottle.

Knowing that didn’t change the fact that I was probably too weak to slide open the barn door. But if I could push it even a crack, I might be able to scream loud enough for him to hear, especially if he was wandering the grounds again.

Come on, Lex. Move.

After what seemed like twelve hours but was actually only one, I reached the door, where I was forced to collapse with my cheek resting on the concrete for several minutes. Then I sort of walked my legs around so they were in front of me, put both feet on the door, and pushed. With a loud creak, the heavy door shifted outward, waiting for someone to slide it sideways.

I began screaming.

Chapter 34

Having Tobias carry me back to the mansion was embarrassing as hell.

He’d found me at the barn door about ten minutes after I started yelling—and maybe thirty seconds before I ran out of the energy to make noise. Despite the glow of werewolf health, he looked miserable and worried—especially in the moment when he saw me through the crack in the door, lying motionless on the floor.

Tobias yanked the barn door sideways so fast that he popped it off whatever hardware kept it attached to the building. It slowly tipped to the ground with an airy fwap, and Tobias was crouching in front of me on his hands and knees. The horses must have caught his scent, because they began to whinny and snort.

“Lex! I was so worried!” He looked farther into the barn and spotted Becca. “Holy shit! Um, did you know there’s a dead lady in here too?”

I didn’t have much strength left, so I took a moment to organize my words. “Tobias, Odessa is behind everything. She poisoned me with honey.”

He gaped at me, crestfallen. “Odessa? But she seems so sweet!”

I managed not to yell at him. “Can you get me back to the manor?”

“Of course!”

He could have used the golf cart—there was still one in front of the barn from that morning—but by the time I pointed that out, he had already scooped me up and started running through the woods on the red-dirt path.

In human form, werewolves aren’t much faster than the fastest humans, but they have grace and stamina for days . . . quite literally. Tobias cradled me and sprinted at an even, steady pace, and I realized how exhausted I was again. Crawling across the concrete floor had used up everything I had. I felt my eyes drift closed at the rhythmic rocking motion.

The next time I woke up, I was lying on the sofa in Beau’s office. The lights had been dimmed, and there was an IV drip in my arm. Someone had pulled up a chair next to me, but it was empty. A bolt of fear cramped my stomach. Was I too late?

“Tobias!”

“Here!” He appeared at my side. He’d just been in the armchair nearby.

“What time is it?”

Tobias pulled out a cell phone, the light from the screen illuminating his worried face. “Six-oh-seven,” he reported. He jumped up and turned on the lamp on Beau’s desk so I’d be able to see him.

We had less than an hour before sunset. Experimentally, I tried sitting up—and was thoroughly surprised to find that it was possible. “What happened? How did I get an IV?”

“You don’t remember?” Tobias’s face creased with worry. “When we got back to the house, you told me I couldn’t take you to the hospital. You said I should get a card out of your pants pocket and call the number.”

I relaxed, letting my side rest against the back of the couch. “Dr. Latham.”

“Yup. She should be back any minute—she just went out to her car for something. I didn’t really know what to tell her, except for the honey thing, so she’s pretty confused.”

“You did great, Tobias,” I told him sincerely.

There was a quick one-two knock, and then the doctor strode into Beau’s office. Latham was wearing jeans and a silk blouse, with tiny silver hoops in her ears. She smiled as she saw me sitting up. “You’re awake, excellent. How is the atropine suiting you?”

I lifted the hand with the IV. “That’s what’s in here?”

“Indeed.” She sat down in the chair next to the couch, where she’d probably been monitoring me this whole time, and took my wrist. “Your friend here said ‘poisoned honey,’ and I connected the dots. I haven’t seen grayanotoxin poisoning myself, but I have a colleague who spent some time with Doctors Without Borders. He advised me on what to bring.”

“Thank you so much,” I said.

Latham frowned down at her watch for several seconds, then looked at me over the top of her reading glasses. “Your pulse is still elevated. You’re out of the woods, but you need to take it easy. Mad honey is no joke, and you seem to have gotten a heavy dose.”

“It was an accident,” I lied. “I used someone else’s honey to sweeten my tea.”

“Mmm-hmm.” She pursed her lips as if weighing something.

“But I’m very grateful for your help,” I added, not lying at all this time. “I’d like to compensate you for your time, of course.”

Latham waved it off. “I wasn’t working today, and frankly the chance to see grayanotoxin poisoning up close was worth the drive. And, as I said before, Mr. Calhoun is a very generous donor to the hospital.” She hesitated for a moment, then sighed. “You’re not going to tell me what’s going on here, are you?”

I tried to look contrite. “No, ma’am. But I certainly won’t be eating any more honey.” Maybe ever.

She gave a disapproving headshake, but all she said was, “I can stay until it’s time for that IV to come out.”

“That won’t be necessary,” I told her. “I can take it from here.”

She weighed me with her eyes for a long moment. “Well, since no money is being exchanged and no paperwork is being done, I suppose I can’t stop you,” she replied, with a hint of a grin. “But it might be time to return to Boulder, Miss Luther. Atlanta doesn’t seem to agree with you.”

I gave her a weary smile. “You’re telling me.”

I made Tobias watch at the window. As soon as Latham’s car vanished down the driveway, I sat up and swung my feet to the floor. I still felt weak and dizzy, but at least I had the strength to sit up and think.

“How are you feeling?” Tobias asked anxiously.

“Weak, but otherwise okay. What have I missed?”

Tobias pushed out a breath, looking . . . bewildered. “Nothing? Lots of stuff? I don’t know. I woke up at noon, and you weren’t back at the hotel. You weren’t answering your phone. And you weren’t here. I got worried.”

“Sorry I scared you,” I said. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t know what to do,” he said, his voice nearly a wail at the memory of panic. “I called everybody, but none of the vampires were awake, and no one else seemed to know anything. The only people I know here are the vampires, that witch lady, and the lady who booked my flights. But I only had her email.”

“Maya? Did you email her?”

“Yeah, and she hasn’t gotten back to me. And that was hours ago.”

“That’s strange.” Maya had always responded to my emails or texts within minutes. That in itself wasn’t proof that she was working with Odessa, though.

He shrugged. “So I searched the house, in case you were tied up somewhere, and since then I’ve just been wandering the property. I didn’t go near the barn, though, ’cause Beau told me not to.” He shifted his weight from one foot to another, looking ashamed. “I’m really sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” I assured him. “That’s exactly why she lured me out there.”

He toed the carpet. “Yeah.”

I reached into my pocket, intending to call Lily or Mary and reassure them that I was fine, but I remembered that Odessa had taken my phone. Crap. “Did you talk to anyone from home after you found me?”

Tobias nodded. “I called Mary and told her. She said she’d let the others know. She’s, um . . .” He looked profoundly uncomfortable. “She’s very glad we’re coming home tomorrow,” he said, summarizing what I’m sure was quite a long rant from the alpha werewolf.

I gave Tobias a smile, but all I said was, “It’ll definitely be good to get home.”

But first I had a promise to keep.

Tobias abruptly snapped his fingers. “Almost forgot.” He turned and sped out of the room, returning a moment later. He thrust a small brown package in my hand. “This was on the porch when I arrived.”

I tore open the paper. Inside were six gorgeous pieces of mahogany obsidian, each one nearly the quality of the one from Quinn. There was a note tucked inside, a few words scrawled on a small piece of thick card stock: All I can get at short notice. I will send a bill to Mr. Calhoun’s office manager as instructed. —Dulcinea Woods.

I grinned. Finally, some good news. “When you searched the house, did you find any string?” I asked Tobias. “Twine, yarn, anything?”

“Sure. You want me to get it?”

“Yes please.”

By the time Tobias warned me that there were vampires approaching the front door, I had four necklaces lined up on the back of the baby grand piano in the foyer. The other two were on Tobias and me.

Beau opened the front door and sauntered through with Milburn at his heels—but his polite expression dropped as he took in my appearance. “Sergeant Luther?” He frowned at the IV pole I’d dragged out to the foyer with me. “Whatever happened?”

I pushed out a breath. “You might want to sit down. I’m afraid I have bad news.”

Chapter 35

“I don’t believe it,” Beau stated. “Odessa would never do this.”

I blinked, surprised. I had just laid it all out for him, and the whole time I was speaking, I was kicking myself for not having figured her out earlier. It hadn’t occurred to me that Beau would just . . . not believe me.

But then, of course he didn’t want to think that the woman he’d raised from a child would stab him in the back.

Silently, Tobias shifted a little so he was standing closer to me. We were still in the foyer. Beau had offered to move the group to his office, but I hadn’t wanted to waste time lugging the IV around. Now, though, I wished we had moved so we would all be sitting, instead of just me.

I chose my words carefully. “You must smell that I’m telling you the truth. I have no reason to lie to you.”

“Oh, I don’t think you’re lying,” Beau replied, almost apologetically. “I simply think you’ve made a mistake.”

“Odessa poisoned me with toxic honey,” I said, losing patience. We didn’t have time for this. “She shot and killed Becca Rhodes, who is lying dead in your barn right now. Aside from trusting Odessa to begin with, where exactly did I make a mistake?”

“As I understand it, mad honey is often used as a drug by young people,” Beau answered. “Odessa has experimented with narcotics before. She must have used the wrong jar to sweeten your tea.”

I clenched my teeth. “As for the gun,” Beau went on, “she probably realized her mistake with the honey and took your weapons so you wouldn’t retaliate before she could explain. You said Becca shot first, correct?”

“Odessa admitted it to me!” I said hotly. “She said she wants to kill you because you wouldn’t let her become a boundary witch or take Deimos to the Olympics.” That felt like an oversimplification, but I wasn’t sure how else to explain it at the moment.

Beau gave a patronizing laugh. “Why on earth would she want to be cursed?”

Milburn stepped forward. Apparently he’d refused to leave town tonight, which was exactly what I would have done in his place. Now he gave the cardinal vampire a grave look. “Beau, Odessa was the one who changed the arrangements for the blood tribute on Saturday.”

That brought Beau up short. He turned his attention to the taller vampire. “Excuse me?”

“The other night at Promenade, I couldn’t figure out why the witches were brought in so early, and from the north entrance,” he said. “Their arrival is usually so discreet.” He made a little throat-clearing noise, and I understood the part he wasn’t saying. For their own safety. “It didn’t seem likely that you’d made the change just so you could parade them in front of Sergeant Luther,” Milburn added, nodding at me. Once again, they were discussing me as though I weren’t right there. “So I asked Warton about it. He said Odessa had told him you’d requested the change.”

“And you’re just telling us now?” I said in disbelief.

Milburn had the grace to look embarrassed. “With all the excitement that followed, I forgot all about it.”

Holy shit. “She set me up,” I said in wonder. “She knew from what I’d told her at lunch that it would bother me to see the blood tribute. So she set it up for me to storm out.” I turned to Beau. “Can she shoot a rifle?”

Beau only stared, looking stunned.

“Better than any human I’ve ever met,” Milburn said grimly. “Beau taught her when she was little. She learned how to shoot in the dark.”

“Your attacker . . . he was male,” Beau sputtered.

“The second attacker was male,” I corrected. “None of us ever got close to the sniper. Are there any human men who’d do anything for Odessa?”

In answer, Beau actually put out a hand and rested it on the wall, as though to reassure himself it was still there. “She’s not a witch,” he whispered. “She can’t do magic.”

I sighed. “Anyone can do certain kinds of magic. But all her friends are witches, right? if she got them together, and she had the mandragora, and that tattooing . . .” I hadn’t gotten a good look at the tattoos on the lower parts of Odessa’s fingers, but they were intricate. “Do any of the local witch clans work with tattoo magic?”

Beau swallowed hard. “Clan Calloway has dabbled in it,” he said softly. “Her friend Emmaline.”

The blonde friend. I hadn’t noticed any tattoos on her, but she’d been wearing pants and long sleeves. “Sophia said a coven could do this, and I blew right past it,” I said slowly. Simon and Lily had used the word “coven” before, but I had only a faint impression of what it meant. Sort of an alternative to a clan, I thought. We needed to talk to a witch expert. Not Tallulah, though—Whitney might be involved too.

“Oh God,” Beau said, his voice faint.

At vampire speed, Milburn went to his side and rested his hand on Beau’s shoulder, similar to how they’d stood after Warton’s death. Beau stared into the other vampire’s face as though he’d never seen it before. “I am sorry, old friend,” Milburn said gently.

Beau just shook his head, but not as though he didn’t believe me—as though he didn’t want to believe. “How could she hate me that much?” he said wonderingly.

I decided to treat this question as rhetorical.

“I don’t know, but I need to warn Vick,” Milburn said, pulling a phone from his pocket. “He wasn’t going to leave town for a few hours yet. Excuse me a moment.”

When he’d stepped into the hall, I turned back to the cardinal vampire. “Beau,” I said, with as much patience as I could, “I overheard her on the phone. She wants to make one more spirit bottle before she gets out of town. Where would she go next?”

I didn’t want to mention that she also intended to kill Beau before leaving. We could discuss it later.

“I don’t know,” Beau said. He looked numb.

“Wherever it is, it’s somewhere with plenty of the Unsettled,” I reminded him. “She’s going to destroy them if we don’t stop her.”

Beau threw up his hands. “It could be anywhere! The Unsettled have collected at locations all over Atlanta, many of which are important to me for one reason or another.” He shook his head, looking completely overwhelmed. The ground had just shifted beneath his feet, and now I was asking him to think about minutia.

“Look at it this way,” I said, trying a different direction, “of all those possibilities, she’s already chosen five places. So what do those five have in common?”

Beau shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“It’s you,” Milburn came striding back into the room, his eyes on Beau. “You were at the field hospital at Utoy Creek, remember? Your personal gear is at the History Center, and your mausoleum is at Oaklawn.”

Beau frowned, but he was clearly thinking it over. “I’d forgotten all about the hospital,” he admitted. “I was delirious at the time.”

“But when Odessa was little, we all told her the stories,” Milburn said. “She remembered.”

“Okay, so think,” I said. “Where else were you during the war?”

He gave a little headshake. “I fought in several battles before Utoy Creek. I was at Chickamauga, and Kennesaw Mountain. Cheatham Hill, I was there. The Dead Angle . . .”

He seemed to be rambling, so I looked at Milburn for translation. “The Unsettled rarely congregate at the actual battlefields,” he explained, “but once in a while, if a number of soldiers died within a small space, at a specific geographic location, it will create a pocket of the Unsettled. Like the Dead Angle.”

“What is that?” Generally speaking, a dead angle was a spot on the battlefield that couldn’t be defended. But it sounded like they were talking about a specific location.

“I wasn’t there.” Milburn looked at Beau, probably just trying to get him talking.

“A V-shaped rise on Cheatham Hill,” Beau said. He still looked distracted. “We dug earthworks, but the Yankees tried attacking head-on anyway. Scores of them were killed, but only a few of us.”

“So the Unsettled there are Union soldiers?”

Beau nodded. “And a few Rebs.”

That didn’t sound personal enough to me. “Where else have you donated artifacts?” I asked.

“A half dozen other places.”

“Beau,” I said, “she wants to hurt you. Wherever she’s going, it’s personal and meaningful to you. A place you visit.”

His face went very still, and when I followed his gaze to Milburn, the other vampire was giving him a horrified look. “Asa,” Milburn said softly. “The Garden of Heroes.”

“She wouldn’t.” But Beau didn’t sound very convinced.

“What?” I had to fight the urge to snap at them.

Milburn started to speak, but Beau gave a tiny headshake and looked at me.

“My older brother Asa is buried at the Confederate Cemetery in Marietta,” he said quietly. “He is one of the Unsettled.”

Chapter 36

Now it was my turn to be shocked. The night we’d met, Beau had said something about the Unsettled being his friends and brothers, but I hadn’t realized he meant it literally. I didn’t know what to say.

Beau’s eyes were fixed on Milburn. “You really think she’d turn him into . . . one of those devices?”

The other vampire suddenly looked like a parent whose child has asked if Santa is real. “If you’d asked me last week, I would have said there was no way she’d betray you,” he said uncomfortably. “Now I am seeing things differently.”

“We need to go see if she’s there,” I said, eyeing my IV. I felt . . . not great. Miles better than I had before, but sort of . . . sloshy inside, like I was fighting the flu. Or a hangover. And my wrist hurt like a son of a bitch.

Beau straightened up. “I’ll go. Odessa is my responsibility.”

Milburn and I exchanged a look of perfect understanding. “What exactly do you intend to do with her?” I asked, because I wasn’t Beau’s friend, and it was easier for it to come from me.

Beau looked perplexed. “Press her, of course. I don’t like doing it, but I can press her to change her thinking and stop this nonsense. I can fix this.”

I almost laughed, because I had been in this exact situation a few months earlier, when Simon had asked me to keep Morgan alive. He’d promised me the clan could control her. They could punish her.

They could fix this.

Odessa wasn’t the same kind of dangerous as Morgan Pellar, but I wasn’t about to make the same mistake again. “First of all,” I said evenly, “she’s nothing if not clever. I’m guessing she’s put some sort of protection in place to keep from being pressed. Any one of her witch friends could make a vampire bag.”

“I can remove it—”

“Second,” I went on, because I was way past caring about interrupting a cardinal vampire, “that’s just not good enough. She murdered Becca, Beau. Not to mention Warton and Hempstead. She is planning to sell explosives that no police force in the world can track.”

Beau’s eyes narrowed. “Now, look here—”

“No,” I said with some force. “No. You need to wrap your head around the fact that Odessa has murdered people. And they deserve justice.”

Beau looked ready to snarl at me, and Tobias started to move between the two of us.

Milburn laid a hand on Beau’s shoulder, though his eyes were on me. “What do you have in mind?” he asked.

This was all I’d been thinking about while we waited for them to arrive. “Odessa is human,” I said simply. “She killed a human. She can face human consequences.”

The two vampires exchanged a look. “You want her to go to prison?” Beau said incredulously.

I lifted my chin. “You’re goddamn right. She grew toxic plants to make poisoned honey. There’s evidence of premeditation all over this house, and Becca’s body is still in the barn. Call the police.”

“We can’t just—” Milburn began, but I wasn’t done.

“Press them to see the crime scene your way if you have to, but Odessa deserves to go to prison,” I broke in. “It’s the only way Becca gets justice.”

Beau was studying me. “You saw her, didn’t you?” he said, his voice low and intimate. “You saw Becca.”

Right. I’d almost forgotten about his history. I expected a shudder of fear at the memory of Becca’s spirit, but I felt . . . calm. “I made her a promise,” I told him. “So she could rest.”

Beau sighed heavily, turning his back on us, and paced a few feet away. He put his hands on his hips and stared at the ceiling for a long moment.

I looked at Milburn, who shrugged.

After a few minutes of silence, Beau turned to speak over his shoulder. “I accept your terms,” he said.

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding, and beside me I heard Tobias doing the same.

“Good,” I said, because I refused to thank him for doing the right thing. “Here’s another one: you can’t go with us.”

Beau spun on his heel. “What? Of course I’m going.”

“That’s exactly what she wants, don’t you see? She wants you worked up, emotional and blinded, so you’ll make a mistake and she can take advantage.”

“I would never—” Beau begin, looking furious, but Milburn held up a hand, and his boss fell silent.

“Perhaps we could table that particular discussion for the moment,” Milburn said, shooting me a warning look. “Let’s agree on our approach first.”

I made myself take a deep breath. “Fine. Odessa is planning to meet her friends to make another spirit bottle at midnight. I’m going to need to know more about this cemetery, but first we need a plan. We can’t just crash the party and assume there won’t be any problems.”

“We’re vampires,” Milburn said, as though I might have forgotten. He nodded at Tobias. “He’s a werewolf. We can just . . . stop them.”

I counted slowly to five in my head. “You’re underestimating her,” I said. “Again. She knows she’s busted. She’ll be expecting you, which means she’ll be ready for you. I think we have one advantage—as far as I know, I don’t think any of us mentioned the mahogany obsidians to her.” I looked at each of them in turn, but all three shook their heads. “Good. Then she may not know that we have protection from the spirit bottle. But there are only six stones, and each one will only work once.”

Beau looked ready to interrupt, but I pushed on, “More importantly, none of us here really knows what a coven of young witches from disparate backgrounds is actually capable of accomplishing.”

Beau’s eyes filled with understanding. “And we can’t ask Tallulah, because Whitney is likely helping Odessa,” he said slowly.

“Right.”

Tobias’s head jerked up, and without a word he raced toward the window next to the front door. In a blink, Milburn stood beside him, and they both stared out the window. “Who is that?” Milburn asked. Without waiting for an answer, he called back to Beau and me, “There’s a car.”

Tobias leaned forward to look hard, and when he turned to face us, a grin was spreading over his face. He practically bounced toward the front door. “I think your witch problem is solved,” he said happily, swinging the door open and bounding outside.

Beau, Milburn, and I all exchanged a baffled look, and then I grabbed my IV pole. Refusing Beau’s proffered arm, I wheeled it toward the door, where the front doors of a dark gray sedan were just opening.

The passenger hopped out and practically skipped toward me without bothering to close the car door.

“Lily!” I cried.

She grinned, and Simon’s head appeared by the driver’s-side door. “Hey, Griffin,” Lily sang. She gave me a mock salute as she ran up the steps. “Phoenix and Flower Child, reporting for duty.”

Chapter 37

They came.

They came even though I hadn’t been able to save Hazel, and even though things had been weird between us. They came for me.

I was so overwhelmed that my eyes welled up, and I couldn’t speak as Lily enveloped me in a careful hug. “What’s with the IV?” she asked, without letting go.

“Is it from the honey?” Simon slammed his car door and followed his sister, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “We got the update when we got off the plane. I can’t believe she poisoned you with mad honey.” He sounded . . . slightly impressed.

I sniffed and let go of Lily so I could hug Simon. He wrapped his arms around me, and I breathed in his familiar smell: wool, patchouli, and chalk dust. He smelled like home.

“Good evening.” Beau’s voice rang out over my shoulder. “I would welcome you to my city, but I’m afraid I have no idea who you are.”

Right. I pulled back from Simon and swiped quickly at my eyes before gesturing to Lily. “Beau, this is Lily Pellar, the clan leader for all of Colorado’s witches, and her brother, Dr. Simon Pellar, who’s also a witch. They’re my friends.”

“Ah, I see.” Beau did the little head-bow of acknowledgment that vampires seemed to favor. Simon was busy dealing with Tobias’s very enthusiastic handshake, but Lily stepped forward.

“Hi,” she said, waving her hand and ruining any sense of formality I might have created with that introduction. “I know who you are, and I mean no disrespect, but what the fuck have you done to my best friend?” She jabbed her finger in my direction.

“Lily!” I hissed.

“Hey, that speech has come a long way since we got on the plane,” Simon said under his breath.

“Yeah, I said ‘no disrespect’ and everything,” Lily added, though her eyes were still narrowed at Beau.

Lucky for us, the vampire’s face broke into a smile. “It’s a rather fair question, I’m afraid,” he said ruefully. “Please do come inside.”

We all began filing indoors, but just inside the foyer, Beau’s pocket buzzed, and he pulled out his cell phone, glancing at the screen. Behind us, Milburn’s phone was buzzing too. Simon gave me an inquiring look, but I just shrugged.

“Excuse me a moment,” Beau said, frowning and stepping a few feet away. He touched the screen a couple of times, and tinny sounds played on his phone. It just sounded like ambient crowd noise to me, but Beau began to curse, using words that definitely hadn’t been popular in this century. He looked up and met my eyes. “You’d better come look at this,” he said soberly.

I went over to him, with Simon and Lily right beside me. Beau turned the screen around so we could see. To my surprise, it was a video on YouTube, shot with poor lighting and very little audio. It looked like a crowd milling around at a party. I didn’t understand the big deal until I recognized the Confederate uniform of one of the men, who threw back his head and laughed.

Then a few people stepped aside, and I saw the mausoleum behind him. The door was open, and two vampires were visible inside. They were wearing gray uniforms.

“Oh shit,” I said out loud.

“Someone took video of Promenade,” Beau said, sounding both angry and confused. “I don’t understand. A vampire would never do this, and we would have smelled a human or witch in our midst.”

“The camera’s not shaking,” Simon pointed out. “Or moving at all. Look.”

We all glanced back at the screen, and of course he was right. “What does that mean?” Beau asked.

“It was probably filmed automatically,” Simon replied. “Someone set up a camera to record at a certain time, or activated it remotely. They probably weren’t even at the party.”

“Odessa,” I said. It fit her . . . style, for lack of a better word. She’d used modern technology to get around the wards. She could have left the camera there anytime.

Onscreen, the two vampires in the mausoleum laughed at something one had said, and then he pulled out a small tin and removed a cigarette and a small box of matches. “Vampires can smoke?” Tobias asked with surprise.

“Of course we can,” Milburn said. “We just rarely bother. The nicotine doesn’t affect us, and it’s expensive and requires extra energy to breathe.”

Onscreen, one man lit a match and tossed it down onto the marble floor of the mausoleum. A few seconds later he tapped ashes off the cigarette with the same carelessness. I winced.

“I know that man,” Milburn said, pointing at one of the vampires smoking in the mausoleum. I couldn’t make out his features, but Milburn’s eyesight was better than mine. “That’s Richard May. He’s in his own mausoleum.”

“The public won’t know that,” Beau said grimly. “This looks wildly disrespectful.”

On the screen, Beau himself appeared, strolling along in his gray suit, with another vampire next to him, a woman in a hoop skirt. Her hand was tucked into his elbow. Beau looked cocky and sure of himself, the grand marshal of this particular parade. Warton appeared next to him, whispering a question, which Beau answered. It was obvious from their body language, and the way everyone around them deferred to Beau, that he was in charge.

The video ended with white letters on a black screen: “Party by Abner Beaumont. Major donor to” and a list of charitable organizations. I recognized the History Center and Oakland, but there were a dozen more.

“That’s not good,” Simon murmured.

“No, it is not,” Beau replied. He immediately restarted the video, letting us see the video’s title: “White Supremacists Violate Graves for the Glory of the Confederacy.” It had been posted anonymously.

Not good.

We watched the entire thing through again, all of us silent this time.

“There’s nothing on there that reveals the Old World,” Lily offered when it was over. “So that’s something.”

Warton had probably used vampire speed to move to Beau’s side, but Lily was right—you couldn’t really tell from the footage. Even Odessa wasn’t stupid enough to reveal the existence of magic online. Then she’d have all vampires gunning for her, instead of just Beau.

“How bad is this?” I asked Beau.

“It’s a PR disaster,” Beau said. “We depend on anonymity to stay in the city, given that we do not age. This shines a light. And the organizations that I patronize will not be pleased—”

As if on cue, his cell phone rang, and so did Milburn’s. The two of them exchanged a troubled look. “Perhaps we’d better take these in the office,” Beau said to his friend.

There wasn’t much I could do to help Beau put out fires, so I looked at Simon and Lily. “Let’s go out on the back porch,” I suggested. “I can fill you in, and there are couches.”

“I love couches,” Lily said seriously.

I held up my hand. “Will you help me with this first?”

Lily took out my IV, and then I made her and Simon put on the last two obsidian necklaces before leading everyone out to the porch. It was cooler outside, but not cold, and we were all dressed for it—except for Tobias, but it took a lot for werewolves to feel cold.

Once he saw that I was settled and safe, Tobias asked if he could patrol the property again. He said it was important to keep watch, but I also thought he didn’t want to sit and listen to me tell the same story again. Werewolves need to move. I waved him off, and then it was just me and the Pellars.

“Tell us everything,” Simon said, his eyes bright. I felt another rush of gratitude that the two of them were there.

“Well, there’s another type of ghost,” I began, and launched into the whole thing.

“I can’t believe this,” Lily said a little later. “Sabrina the teenage bitch and her mean-girl club are making bombs out of Civil War ghosts?”

“More or less,” I said. “Except Odessa’s not actually a witch. She’s using tattoo magic.”

I told them about the ink on Odessa’s fingers, and Lily’s face grew thoughtful. “That’s . . . actually kind of genius,” she said. “She wouldn’t be able to pull in her own magic the way we can, but if the other witches pull it into Odessa’s circle, she’d be able to manipulate it. That never occurred to me.”

I nodded. “That’s just it. Odessa is rich and entitled and manipulative, but she’s also smart. She’s spent her whole life hanging around soldiers and being physically outclassed by vampires. She thinks strategically.”

“And she’s using human tricks,” Simon pointed out. I looked at him. “The honey, the guns . . . YouTube? That’s not how the Old World handles problems. I wouldn’t have thought of any of that.”

“Me neither,” Lily admitted. “It wouldn’t even have occurred to me.”

“How do we stop her?” Simon asked.

“I have a whole bunch of questions about the magic she’s using, and I’m hoping you can help me with that,” I said carefully.

Lily and Simon exchanged one of their sibling expressions, where they seemed to telepathically decide who would speak and what they’d say. It always made me miss Sam. “And then we’re going to come with you when you go after her,” Lily said to me.

I’d been afraid of that. I had made a promise to Becca, and I didn’t trust Beau to bring Odessa to justice if I wasn’t there to keep an eye on him. But there was no reason for Simon and Lily to get involved any further.

I opened my mouth, but Lily cut me off. “Don’t even try it.”

“What?”

“Your whole ‘this isn’t your fight’ speech. I can see it on your face. Of course this is our fight.”

Beside her on the couch, Simon nodded his support. “You’d do the same for us,” he said. “Also? You look like shit, and we’re worried.”

“Lil, you’re kind of a big deal now,” I argued. “Aside from the safety issue, this could have political ramifications.”

She snorted. “Maven called me the night you got here and said if I needed to come help at any point, she would clear it politically. And if Si and I can’t handle ourselves against baby witches and one human, we don’t deserve to be in power anyway.”

“Does that go for you too?” I asked Simon.

“Nope.” He gave me a thin smile. “Maven didn’t ask me to come. Quinn did.”

I suddenly found it difficult to swallow past the lump in my throat. “It’s killing him that he’s not allowed to come,” Simon added.

It was kind of killing me too . . . hopefully not literally. At that moment I wanted nothing more than to find a quiet corner and call him, but there wasn’t time. I regarded my friends. They looked so determined, so full of life and good intentions. But they’d already lost so much. “Whenever you guys help me, you pay for it,” I said. “Does it really surprise you that I don’t want you to have to pay any more?”

Hazel Pellar’s ghost might as well have walked across the space between us, from the look on Lily’s face. “I’m going to let that go,” she said coldly, “because you’ve had a head injury and you took hallucinogens. But you need to stop acting like you’re the only person alive who gives a shit about the greater good. If those bottles go out in the world, people are going to die.”

Helplessly, I looked at Simon. “If it’s your fight, it’s our fight,” he said quietly. “That’s not going to change because we’re in a different state.”

There was a moment of awkward silence. I had to swallow hard and wipe my eyes quickly with the back of my uninjured hand. “Right then. Okay. Assuming we’re right about the location, we’ve got”—I checked my watch—“three hours before we absolutely have to leave, but I want to go as soon as possible in case Odessa moves up her timetable. What can you guys tell me about covens?”

They exchanged another one of their sibling looks. Simon was silently chosen to talk this time, which made sense. He was the teacher. “Okay, first, terminology: a clan, as you know, is a loosely connected group of witches who socialize, celebrate pagan holidays, and remain loyal and supportive to each other. In some ways clans are similar to wolf packs. Clan members may or may not be related to each other, but usually one family’s in charge.”

He paused, choosing his words carefully. “A coven is different. It’s usually a smaller group, five to thirteen witches, who actively perform spells together to accomplish a single unified goal. In theory this could be benevolent, but these days you rarely see covens get together to influence the tides to support better fishing, or the sun to promote better agriculture.”

“They get together to fuck around with dangerous magic,” Lily put in.

Simon nodded. “Boundary magic is a favorite, of course, because boundary witches are rare and death magic has that sexy sense of danger.” He gave a little eye roll. “Most of the time those covens get hooked on it, make a mistake pretty quickly, and flame out. Sometimes literally.”

“Or they don’t have access to mandragora, so they pivot and focus on getting revenge on someone’s ex or something,” Lily said.

“Exactly.”

“Are they more powerful than individual witches?” I asked.

Simon pointed at me. “Yes, and that’s just the problem. Coven members can get sort of . . .” He looked at Lily. “Would ‘toxic’ be the word?”

“More like ‘mob mentality,’” Lily said. To me, she added, “They get twisted, psychologically.”

“I don’t understand.”

Simon pursed his lips for a second. “Okay, try to think like a trades witch for a second here. Imagine you have an unhealthy obsession. Like, your ex cheated on you, and now all you can think about is revenge.”

“Um, that sounds perfectly reasonable . . .”

Simon didn’t bother to hide his smile. “Yeah, because you’d just kick the shit out of him. But not everyone can do that. Sometimes a witch gets some of her friends together and they start doing magic to hurt this guy. Small things at first—the guy gets in a fender bender, then he comes down with a rare flu. He keeps losing things. He gets fired from his job because he’s always late. It’s all manipulations from the coven. The first witch, on her own, wouldn’t be capable of spells that big, but together in a circle, they can do it.”

I nod. “Okay, I follow.”

“The problem is, this isn’t a finite goal, like trying to have good weather on X day so the crops will be ready to harvest. It’s ongoing, and eventually the coven loses control, like a fever pitch. One witch’s obsession becomes a group obsession. They do more and more powerful magic against this guy. Maybe the coven finally reaches magic that they can’t control, and it bounces back on them. Or . . .” He grimaced. “Maybe one coven member runs into this guy on the street. She’s never met him face-to-face before, but she pulls out a knife and stabs him seven times in the chest. Because the magic twisted her up with hate.”

“Um . . .” I looked back and forth between them. “That’s very specific,” I said. “Like, very specific.”

“It’s not hypothetical,” Lily said softly. “It’s a case study. And, I guess, a cautionary tale. Our mom knew the witch who led the coven, the one who actually dated the guy.”

“What happened to her?”

“She had to live with the grief of knowing she’d ruined her friend’s life, and killed a man who didn’t deserve death,” Simon answered. “She killed herself a couple of years later.”

I chewed on my lower lip for a moment, absorbing that. “If this is all common knowledge—not that specific case, but what happens to witches who do this stuff—why would anyone ever start a coven?” I asked.

“For the same reasons people always do dangerous, stupid stuff,” Simon said, with his trademark philosophical look. “Because they feel angry and powerless, and because there’s something very tempting about the forbidden.”

“Which is exactly why most clans don’t actually outlaw covens,” Lily said. “It would make them more appealing to some people.”

“And sometimes a little bit of coven magic, led by a clan leader, can be an okay thing, if it’s used to bring rain in a drought or find a lost child,” Simon added.

Lily nodded. “Good clan leaders keep an eye on their people, and if it looks like some witches are experimenting with coven stuff on their own, the clan leader has to derail it or break it up. That’s part of our job.”

Which meant Tallulah Finch had failed in hers, if her own daughter was part of a coven.

I looked back and forth between them. “There’s something you’re not saying. Why haven’t you mentioned this stuff to me before?”

“Well, first because we haven’t had a coven issue in Colorado in decades. I may complain about the system, but it’s healthy enough to keep witches away from that,” Lily answered. “And coven magic only works among trades witches, or witches with the same specialty.”

I turned my gaze to Simon. Of the two of them, he was more likely to tell me a hard truth. “Remember that story I told you when we first met, about how boundary witches raised the dead and sent them after humans during the Inquisition?”

Of course. It always came back to fucking boundary magic. “They were a coven,” I finished for him.

“Yes. That’s the most famous case of coven magic in history.”

I sighed. We’d have to unpack that later. Odessa’s meeting was still several hours off, but I felt a crushing urgency to go faster, get there sooner. Odessa was too clever for her own good. That YouTube video had been a good diversion, but I didn’t trust her not to have another one planned. “Okay, so Odessa and her friends have been doing coven magic, using the mandragora to turn the Unsettled into spirit bottles.” A new thought occurred to me. “That’s why she can’t just leave town, isn’t it? Odessa needs to do one more spell.”

“Like an addiction,” Lily said, nodding.

“Or an infection,” Simon added. “You’re right; they’re compelled to keep going.”

Which meant if we didn’t stop them tonight, Odessa wouldn’t just sell the spirit bottles she’d made already and then disappear. She’d tell herself she would, but the compulsion to keep the coven going would be there. They might leave Atlanta, but there were any number of cities in the South where they could bottle more of the Unsettled.

“I wondered why her friends agreed to meet with her tonight, now that she’s been caught,” I said, thinking out loud. “I mean, there was always a chance that I would die without alerting Beau, or we would assume Odessa had somehow done all this on her own. But you’re saying they have to continue.”

I stood up, trying to will away the woozy feeling that enveloped me. “We need to move. I want to be at that cemetery before she arrives.” Now I just needed to talk Beau into staying away.

Lily and Simon exchanged another brother-sister look, and this time Lily was elected to speak. “Lex . . . are you sure you’re up for this?” she said. “I love you, but you look like shit.”

“I can still kick Odessa’s ass,” I said pleasantly. Then I reconsidered. “But maybe we should take a few precautions.”

Chapter 38

We made a list and sent Tobias to the store. After he left, I went and knocked on Beau’s office door.

It was opened by a frazzled-looking Beau, who waved us in with the phone still glued to his ear. “No, Mr. Mayor, that won’t be necessary. I understand, sir, but I have a family emergency this evening.” He turned away, still listening.

Milburn hung up the call he was on and approached us. “Got a minute?” I said quietly. “I could use some information.”

“Sure.” He pocketed the phone and grabbed an iPad that was sitting on Beau’s desk. “Let’s go in the dining room.”

A few minutes later, Milburn was giving us a rundown on Odessa’s target, using the iPad’s map.

“The Marietta cemetery is one of the few soldier burial grounds that was operational during the war itself,” he explained as he opened the program. “Men who fell at Chickamauga and Kennesaw Mountain were buried here shortly after the battles. When the war ended, the state arranged for soldiers to be dug up from mass graves at battlefields all over the area and reinterred here.”

On the map, the area looked sort of like a pyramid with the very tip cut off. “This top part is a tiny memorial park to the state governor during the war,” Milburn said, tapping an area with what looked like a bunch of flags and a gazebo. Just below that was the Confederate Cemetery, which looked like a bunch of dotted lines. The dots, I realized, were individual gravestones. The lines weren’t straight, but curved and arced around trees and a handful of statues, plus another gazebo and what looked like a cannon.

The area just south of that, Milburn said, was a city cemetery, where many of the Confederate soldiers’ relatives were interred. It was easy to see where the soldiers’ neat, identical graves ended and the comparatively jumbled city burial ground began. The overhead view of the city cemetery had a lot of large white squares, like low fences going around a small section of the graveyard. I wondered if it was how families indicated that their graves went together.

“We can go in through the city section,” I said, pointing toward the road far below the Confederate area, where a housing development bumped up against the cemetery. “Sort of sneak up the back.”

“That would work, but you should be aware: all of this slopes downward,” Milburn said, sweeping the flat of his hand from the gazebo area down the city section. “It’s one big hill. That’s why there are these rectangular sections, to prevent erosion.”

“How many of the Unsettled are there?” I asked him.

He narrowed his eyes for a moment, thinking. “I would estimate between seven hundred and a thousand.”

“Goddess,” muttered Lily. I had told them about Sophia’s estimates on the damage potential of the spirit bottles.

“Okay, so where are the Unsettled?” I asked.

“Right here.” With one finger, Milburn traced the area that included only the dotted lines, not the gazebos or flags. It looked roughly like an uppercase letter A, only without the tiny cutout in the triangle.

“They’ll need a circle,” Lily said, stepping forward. “Covens almost always work inside circles; that’s kind of the whole point. But look, they can use the pathways and—are those gutters?”

Milburn nodded. “Brick gutters.”

“Okay, it’s uneven as hell, but they could still form a circle.”

“With what?” I asked her. “Chalk? Paint?”

“Too time-consuming.” She tapped her lower lip for a minute, thinking, then looked up at me. “You think that girl Whitney is one of Odessa’s coven members?”

I cut my eyes to Milburn, who nodded. “She’s Odessa’s closest friend by far,” he replied.

Lily asked him, “Is she a cord witch like her mother?”

“I believe so. I’ve never seen her do magic, but she wears those rope bracelets just like Tallulah does,” he said.

“Then that’s how they’ll do the ritual,” Lily declared. “Lay out a circle with some kind of rope or cord stretched along the gutters and pathways, probably hold it down with some stones.” She was still frowning, though.

“Something’s missing,” Simon mused. He looked at Lily. “The mandragora?”

“You guys burned the patch you found, but they might have had some saved from the previous rituals,” Lily said slowly. “It doesn’t seem like five or six witches would have enough power to do all of this.”

Her eyes unfocused for a minute, and then she looked at me speculatively. “You said you were unconscious after she poisoned you?”

“Yeah, for a couple of long periods,” I said. “Why?”

Lily came around the table toward me. “Take off your shirt.”

I didn’t even know how to respond to that, but she was already reaching for the hem as Simon said, “Lily!”

She glared at her brother and Milburn. “Turn around, dummies.”

Simon spun on his heel without another word, and Milburn raised his eyebrows in curiosity but followed suit. I let Lily lift up the front of my shirt, exposing my sports bra. “Not there,” she muttered, working her way behind me.

“Um, Lily, maybe if you told me what you were looking for—”

“Here!” Lily lifted the back of my shirt higher, and I shivered as her cold fingers touched the skin at the small of my back, just under my bra and above my bruise. I felt a sharp, stinging pain.

“Ow! What the hell was that?”

“She’s been cut,” Lily announced. In my ear, she murmured, “Is it okay if I let them—”

I waved a hand. “Yes, yes.” It was just the small of my back, and I had the sports bra. “What’s going on?”

“Si, come look.”

Simon and Milburn both went around and stared at whatever she’d found. “Goddammit,” Simon snapped. I craned my head, trying to look.

“There are three shallow cuts here,” Lily explained. “None of them deep enough for stitches, luckily, but they would have bled a bunch. She bled you.”

I started to reach my hand around to feel them, but thought better of it. “Should you bandage them?” Simon asked his sister.

“They’ve already scabbed over, which is why they didn’t stink to high heaven to all the vampires,” Lily replied, smoothing my shirt back down. She turned me around gently by my shoulders. “Good goddess, you must feel like garbage. Poison and blood loss? This chick does not like you.”

“Why would Odessa do that?” Milburn asked. Great question.

“For Lex’s blood.” Simon’s voice was threaded with anger. “They’re going to soak their cord in boundary-witch blood before they lay it down. Lex is powerful as shit, so it won’t just make a strong circle . . .”

“Oh crap,” I muttered, realizing where he was going with this. I knew what happened when I bled in front of remnants. I looked at Milburn. “They’re going to call even more ghosts.”

Lily was shaking her head. “Yeah, but it’s a little worse than that.”

I sighed. “Of course it is. How?”

“You said this clan is good with wards, right?”

“Yeah . . .”

Lily glanced briefly at her brother, who looked a little pale. He said, “We might not be able to break their circle without killing you.”

Chapter 39

“A cord witch who’s really skilled with wards could theoretically make it so anyone outside the coven who cuts the cord suffers,” Simon explained. “In this case, it could rebound onto you.”

“You lost me.”

Simon looked at the ceiling for a moment, trying to think through his explanation. “You said Beau destroyed the mandragora here, right? So she took your blood as a substitute for the mandragora—an ingredient for boundary magic.”

“Okay . . .”

“But if she soaks the cord in your blood and uses it to seal the circle . . . your blood may also represent you. Cutting the rope gets . . . unpredictable.”

“It’s like how most crystals won’t work with witch magic,” Lily added. “Mixing up . . . magical signals, or however you want to look at that.”

“More like mixing up intent,” Simon broke in. “But intent is important.”

I sighed. The only time I really worked with circles was when I laid ghosts, and that wasn’t particularly sophisticated. I made a circle with my blood, and when I was done using magic, I scuffed through the line. “What about when Odessa herself breaks the circle?” I asked. “Will that hurt me?”

Simon shook his head, paused, and shrugged. “If she succeeds in making the spirit bottle, then the magic energy is done, used up. If she doesn’t succeed, and she takes a scissors to the circle instead of dismantling it . . . maybe?”

Wonderful. Just great. “So we have to stop her, but then keep her from actually cutting the rope or cord or whatever.”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure we’ll even be able to get inside her circle?” I asked.

Lily was chewing on a fingernail, but Simon answered for her. “We should. By design, all circles are one-way. The border of your circle either keeps everything out, a protective circle, or keeps everything in, an inclusive circle. This coven wants to contain the Unsettled, so we should be able to go in, but we won’t be able to come out until we dismantle it, or convince one of the coven members to dismantle it.”

We’d be trapped in there. Great.

But it wasn’t like we had a whole lot of options here. Odessa needed to be stopped, tonight, and at the moment Beau was distracted. We weren’t going to get a better shot.

I looked at Milburn. “Are you able to lie to Beau?”

“Um . . .”

“Physiologically, I mean,” I said. “Is it possible?”

He gave me a tight nod. “Good,” I replied. “Then I want you to stall him.”

“Excuse me?”

I made a face. “I saw you earlier, when I said Beau shouldn’t help us hunt down Odessa. You agree with me.”

“Still—”

“She wants him dead, Milburn,” I interrupted. “She wants that more than anything, which means she’s got a plan. You know how smart she is. Stall him.”

Milburn stiffened, but gave me a nod. “I’ll do my best.”

I looked at Simon and Lily. “Let’s go.”

Outside, Tobias was just pulling up in the Pellars’ rental car. “Did you find everything?” I asked as he hopped out.

“Yep!” He pulled a face. “There are a lot of weird stores around here.”

“It’s the South.” I looked at Simon and Lily. “Let’s gear up.”

“I’m gonna run in and pee before we go,” Tobias said, and dashed toward the front door.

I thought Lily would make a joke, but instead her face smushed up for a second, and she said, “Actually . . . I am too.”

Then it was just Simon and me, in the near-dark driveway. His hands were shoved in his pockets. “Lex? I don’t think you’re well enough to—” he began, but I cut him off.

“Don’t tell me how I’m feeling, Simon. You have sisters; you should know better.” I went around the back of the car and opened the hatchback, digging into the bags from Tobias.

Simon followed me. “Hey.” He touched my arm, and I turned to face him. My friend looked worried.

“I’m fine, Simon. I mean, I don’t feel great, but I can do this.”

“I would never say that you can’t,” he said in a low voice. “But I’m going to ask you if you should.” He took one step closer to me, his hand rising to my cheek, though he stopped short of touching the bruise there. “You’re hurt.”

“It’s nothing—”

He just cocked an eyebrow. “You’re hurt where we can’t see it, Lex.”

That brought me up short. “What did Quinn say to you?” I demanded.

Simon ignored the question. “A thousand ghosts, packed into a small space. What happens if you lose your shit?”

I inched closer to him, so we were toe to toe. “Don’t. Push. Me.”

I thought he would shout at me—I would almost welcome it, because I was a lot less scared of arguing with Simon than I was of facing the Unsettled. But he slowly reached his hand up and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, his thumb grazing my cheek. “He told me you would say that,” he said softly. “He said you would get mad and yell at me. He made me promise I would try anyway.”

My breath stopped.

“He loves you so much,” Simon told me, and there was the tiniest hitch in his voice.

Then I got it.

Simon loved me too.

I opened my mouth, and Simon shook his head hard. “Don’t say it,” he mumbled, looking away from me. “If you say it, then it’s real.”

“Simon . . .” I didn’t know what to do. I had known forever that there was a certain attraction between us, an undercurrent we didn’t talk about, but this was different. “Why?” I blurted. “You’re not . . .”

He gave me a tiny, sad smile. “I’m not what? A vampire? A badass?”

“Broken,” I whispered.

His eyes widened. “You think—”

Behind him, the front door swung open, and Lily and Tobias started through the doorway, Lily turning her head to say something to the werewolf.

Simon shook his head, suddenly very interested in studying the tree line. “It’ll pass,” he said in a low voice, so only I would hear. “Quinn’s my best friend. He’s a vampire, and you’re going to live forever; it’s perfect.”

“I’m not going to live forever,” I said weakly, swiping my eyes with the heel of my hand. “I die all the time.”

He let out a chuff of laughter, and Lily and Tobias were coming down the stairs. “But not tonight, okay?” Simon said seriously. “I promised Quinn.”

I nodded.

“What are you guys talking about?” Lily asked, closing the distance between us.

“Just going over the plan,” Simon told her, and he turned away from me.

Simon drove, with Lily navigating with her phone. Tobias and I sat in the back seat, where he was cheerfully regaling me with his adventure at the army surplus store. I was so preoccupied that I barely listened. With the new obsidian protecting me from psychic assault, I wasn’t paying attention to the remnants outside the car. My thoughts spun around Simon and Odessa and Becca, and my mother’s bloodstone. I felt unmoored without it.

“Lex,” Lily said eventually. I looked up at the sound of warning in her voice.

“What?” I asked, but I heard the thunder even before she pointed at the sky. A few seconds later a bolt of lightning lit up the night.

“Hell of a coincidence,” I muttered, looking at the weather.

“I don’t think it is,” Lily said.

“The coven did this?” Tobias said in a near-squeak. “They can control the weather?”

“Control, no. But if a storm was nearby, or the pressure was building for a storm tomorrow, they could have nudged it along.”

“Shit.”

“So we have to crawl through a Civil War cemetery, at night, during a storm?” Tobias said in a small voice.

I took a deep breath. My body felt like garbage and my mind was twisted into knots, but Tobias needed me to sound in charge. “We do, buddy. Sorry about that. If it helps, though, I can promise no ghosts are going to get you.” I turned my head to smile at him. “I won’t let ’em.”

He reached over, and I took his hand and squeezed it. Come on, Lex, I told myself.

By the time we arrived at the bottom of the city cemetery, a light, misting rain had started to fall, punctuated with lightning.

I did some more cursing.

There was a new-looking housing development right at the base of the hill, so close that the gravestones were practically in the backyard of the first line of houses. Weird for them, but good for us—we parked on the street a half block from the graveyard. I checked the time on my newest disposable phone. It was only a few minutes after ten, and plenty of the houses still had lights on. I was hoping that alone would dissuade Odessa from starting her little ritual anytime soon, but then I saw the fog creeping down the hill, brought on by the change in temperature. Or hell, by a portable fog machine, for all I knew. Odessa was making sure no one would look too closely at anything happening in the older section of the cemetery tonight. Great.

At least we were in the right place.

We crossed the street that formed the border between the houses and the fence around the city cemetery, with Lily on my left and Tobias on my right. Simon was slightly behind us. Nothing was moving on the border street, though we could hear the cars from the connecting streets on either side. “Is your guy—” Lily murmured to me, but at that exact moment a shadow stepped forward. A low growl ripped from Tobias’s throat, but he didn’t say anything.

“Evening,” Cole said quietly, tipping his fedora at me. He’d been leaning on the chain-link fence right in front of a big tree, practically invisible from the opposite side of the road.

“Hi.” I didn’t introduce my friends. I figured Cole wouldn’t want me spreading his name around.

“Y’all look ready for war,” the vampire said, surveying us.

“Yeah, but one thing is missing,” I replied, and he stepped forward and handed me a small, cheap duffel bag, which I accepted without verifying its contents. The bag was properly heavy, and anyway, I trusted Cole.

“Did you bring the bolt cutters?” I asked, trying to squint toward the fence.

“Yes, ma’am,” Cole drawled. “I already cut the padlock.” He pointed along the fence to the nearest gate, which he’d left closed. “Go in there.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I owe you one.”

He heard the seriousness in my voice, and his eyebrows lifted. “For real?”

I nodded. “You’ve gone above and beyond.”

“Yeah, well.” Cole scratched the back of his neck. “Rich white kids messing with boundary magic isn’t good for anyone, especially vampires. But I appreciate the marker.”

“You want to come with us?” I asked, a smile at the corners of my lips.

He shook his head. “I wouldn’t mind seeing you work, but them kids put some kind of barrier up around the whole cemetery. I can’t go in.”

I glanced at Lily, who nodded. We’d expected Odessa to use some sort of vampire warding to keep Beau away, but I’d hoped it would be limited to the Confederate Cemetery. Instead, she’d put a massive protective circle around a smaller inclusive circle. “Can you undo it?” I asked Lily.

She shrugged. “Yes, but it would take a couple of hours to pick it apart.”

I shook my head and turned back to Cole. “Did you see anything up at the top of the hill?” I asked.

“I can’t see inside, either,” he said with a frown. “Some kind of fog blocking my view, though I don’t know if that’s for vampires or if it’s natural.” Vampires might have supernatural sight and hearing, but they didn’t have X-ray vision through fog.

“All right. Thank you,” I said to Cole. “For everything.”

He touched his hat again, “I’ll remember that marker,” he said, and disappeared back into the shadows.

I looked at my friends. “Let’s go in.”

Once we were inside the city cemetery, the fun really got started.

We split into two teams: Lily and Tobias, Simon and me. I would have preferred to stay with Lily after the awkwardness between Simon and me earlier, but since she’d become clan leader, Lily was the stronger witch, and it only made sense to pair her with someone who had no spell ability.

I’d been a little concerned that the warding would keep Tobias out too, but he made it through the gate without any problem. Odessa and her coven probably hadn’t had enough time to adjust their ward for werewolves.

Simon and I took the west, or left, side of the cemetery, while Lily and Tobias went east. From where we stood at the bottom of the hill, this cemetery seemed a world away from the stately park atmosphere of Oakland. It was simple and functional, but with a wide variety of headstone styles. There were lampposts inside the grounds, so the four of us would have to try to avoid the pools of light around them.

I nodded at Simon, and the two of us crouched down and began to climb.

It was easy to stay in the shadows, given the number of wide trees and huge headstones, but it was a lot harder to watch your footing when you couldn’t see your feet. The rain had graduated from a light mist to a heavy mist, and I lost sight of Lily and Tobias pretty quickly.

A few minutes in, I let Simon move ahead of me and lead, if for no other reason than so he’d stop whispering, “Are you okay?” from just over my shoulder. We tried to stay as low as possible, which sometimes meant dropping into a crouch and sometimes crawling on our bellies. I often had to decide between using my painful left wrist or maneuvering on all threes instead of all fours. Neither choice worked out well.

All of us were dressed in jeans or thick canvas, but it took only about three minutes until Simon and I were covered in mud. It took even less time for my body to start aching. I still felt weak and tired, but for the moment I had enough energy to keep going, and that was all I cared about.

The city cemetery wasn’t that big, but moving through it seemed to take forever. As the rain continued the water ran downhill, and climbing got harder. The white squares I’d seen on the satellite images were low concrete fences, but in person I could see that they probably had as much to do with controlling the hill erosion as with keeping graves together. Whatever their purpose, they were easy to trip over. We often had to move laterally around an obstacle or steep slope before we could continue up. Simon, I noticed, took pains to avoid going directly over someone’s grave, if possible. I didn’t have any qualms about it—I knew better than anyone that the soul didn’t linger in the body—but I couldn’t begrudge him the superstition.

On the aerial map, the only visible demarcation between the city cemetery and the Confederate Cemetery had been a patchy line of trees, but now it was pretty easy to guess that the exact border was where the fog seemed to thicken in a curved line, as though contained under a bell jar. It didn’t quite meet the tree line, so we’d need to cross a small open area to enter the fog. I tapped Simon’s ankle as we took cover behind the last tree before the clearing. He turned, waiting for me to come along beside him. I whispered, “How are they keeping the fog like that?”

“It’s being held inside the circle,” he murmured, in that Simon way where there was a little appreciation in his tone.

“I don’t hear anything.” I meant that literally—there was no sound coming from up ahead.

“Damn,” Simon said admiringly. “They’re containing the sound in the inclusive circle too. That’s a hell of a complex ward.”

“As I understand it, this is basically all Tallulah Finch does,” I said, breathing hard. “Apparently her daughter has been paying attention.”

I stared at the last stretch of open ground separating us from the line of fog. Someone standing just inside the fog might be able to see out, and if they had firearms, we wouldn’t be able to defend ourselves. The words “dead angle” popped into my head, but I pushed them away.

“You ready for this?” Simon asked me. I knew he was trying to give me one more chance to beg off, to say I felt like shit. I did, but it didn’t matter. We had a plan, and I was part of it.

“Let’s go.”

Simon and I belly-crawled as quickly as possible across the open area, side by side, with a little space between us to make us smaller targets. As we got close, I saw the brick gutter Milburn had told us about—basically two horizontal rows of bricks, dipping down in the middle to form a trough for water. There was no actual water flowing—the misting rain hadn’t provided enough precipitation yet—but there was something at the bottom of the gutter: a line of very thin, dark paracord with a reddish tint, just as Lily and Simon had thought. Anger bubbled up in me. I hated that Odessa had used my blood, not to mention my mother’s bloodstone, in her plan.

At least we weren’t being shot at. Careful not to disturb it, we climbed over the cord and entered the fog.

Chapter 40

As with many military operations, it took about four minutes for the plan to go straight to hell.

On the inside of Odessa’s circle, the fog was even denser, although it mainly collected low to the ground, at about knee level. I could see a little ways in front of us, but no one was close enough to be visible at the moment.

I’m not sure it mattered whether the fog was there, though, because I couldn’t see anything through the Unsettled.

Beau had tried to prepare me, but I’d still thought of the Unsettled as tightly packed remnants. I hadn’t expected seeing them would affect me any differently than traveling through the older parts of Atlanta. The moment Simon and I landed on the other side of the fog, though, I knew I’d made a mistake.

Hundreds of ghostly eyes immediately slid toward us—both of us. They almost all wore tattered gray wool uniforms like the ones at the Atlanta History Center, though a handful of them were in officers’ clothes, and a few were missing a uniform shirt or boots, as though they’d been caught unaware. Still, all of them were bright and well-defined enough for me to count their whiskers, if I’d wanted. They were more faded than humans, but they looked so much more real than the remnants I was used to. I could see sweat- and bloodstains on their clothes, smudges of dirt on their skin, yellowed teeth and dirty fingernails. I understood now why Beau had trouble estimating their numbers: they didn’t quite blur together, but they were packed so tightly that it was hard to see any single man’s edges.

And they just . . . stared down at us, where we crouched on the grass. I’d never seen ghosts like this. They weren’t caught in their moment of death, or in a loop reliving their last few seconds of life. And they didn’t come at me the way wraiths usually did. Their lips didn’t move; they weren’t trying to speak to us. They just watched, and after only a few seconds, the intensity of that gaze began to feel oppressive. What was it Holly had said? That’s the common denominator. You all have this . . . intensity.

Ghosts of battle, indeed. Beau had said the Unsettled are important because they cause a miasma of horror at the idea of war. If Simon and I weren’t wearing the obsidians, would we be feeling a powerful sense of dread and grief?

I was curious, but not enough to take off the obsidian.

Simon touched my shoulder, pulling me out of the reverie. He tilted his head forward, and I realized he was listening to the sounds of Odessa’s coven.

In my head I guess I’d expected some sort of chanting, maybe in Latin, but it sounded like more of a call-and-response thing, with one strong voice shouting and several others answering. The strong voice was Odessa’s, and it was coming from our twelve o’clock. Some of the language was English, and there seemed to be a hodgepodge of other languages. I ignored it.

We’d managed to arrive before the coven finished their spell, but I had no idea how much time we had. Simon started to move toward Odessa, but I grabbed his arm, forcing him to a stop and giving him a little push so he lay down flat. I’d heard the footsteps moving toward us just in time. I put my mouth right next to Simon’s ear. “Hold still.”

Whoever was walking toward us made no effort to be quiet, his heavy steps deliberate on the damp grass. As the footsteps got closer, I could see that it was a young man about Odessa’s age, with linebacker shoulders and an expensive-looking haircut. He had a rifle on a strap across his chest, his head swiveling back and forth in the fog. He held the rifle in a loose but careful grip, and I figured he knew how to use it.

Simon and I got as flat as possible, knowing he wouldn’t be able to see us if we stayed low in the fog. He passed within inches of stepping on Simon’s hand, but went by without detecting us.

I waited until he was past, then nodded at Simon and leaped up.

The guy was huge, but whatever he’d been told about tonight, he had not expected a woman to jump onto his back and put a forearm against his windpipe. He dropped the rifle and staggered for a moment, just trying to catch his balance. By the time he started to flail his arms at me, he was too panicked to actually aim. Not a fighter.

Then Simon appeared with a rag soaked in chloroform. I moved my forearm, Simon pressed the cloth forward, and the kid gasped in a deep breath. It was over in less than a minute.

Cole, we had learned, could get anything. With really short notice too.

I couldn’t really see the kid’s features, but we got his hands zip-tied behind his back and put more zip ties on his ankles, mostly by feel. A piece of duct tape went over his mouth. I unloaded the rifle and threw the ammunition back toward the city cemetery. I had the Sig Sauer, and it was too difficult to shoot a rifle with my wrist brace.

“You okay?” Simon whispered, and I realized I was listing to the side a little.

I straightened up and nodded, trying not to pant. I felt more or less like I’d just tried to run ten miles after the flu. “Let’s keep moving.”

The plan we’d discussed was for Lily and Tobias to begin disabling the other coven members, while Simon and I went straight for Odessa. We’d take care of anyone in our way as needed. In theory, if one team succeeded and the other didn’t, we’d still break up their operation tonight.

But when we’d been making plans back at Beau’s, I hadn’t known how much climbing through the city cemetery would tire me, and none of us had known about the fog or the mud. I was glad we’d been able to take down this one guy, but I didn’t know if I could do it again, especially if I wanted to retain enough energy to punch Odessa. And I really, really did.

Simon and I went about more three steps before he tripped on one of the Confederate gravestones, and I had to grab the back of his shirt so he wouldn’t fall right on top of the line of them. These were the ones that had looked like dotted lines from the air: only about a foot high and eight inches across. They were low enough that it was nearly impossible to see them below the heavy part of the fog, and easy to bang your toes or ankle on. I motioned for Simon to get low. Staying below the heavy fog seemed like the best idea anyway.

We inched forward through the tombstones, and to my surprise, the Unsettled moved aside to make room for us. They seemed uninterested in touching us, but extra-special interested in staring at us. At first I worried the path they were clearing for us would show Odessa exactly where we were, but then I remembered that Odessa couldn’t actually see the Unsettled. She was counting on Beau’s word that they were there.

Without speaking, I took the lead, picking my way through the fog on all fours—well, all threes—toward the sound of Odessa’s voice. I figured the farther in we got, the better. The guards were patrolling the perimeter of the blood circle, and the coven members wouldn’t want to shoot toward their own people. If we stayed low, we were practically invisible to the coven. I really wanted to draw the Sig Sauer—if Odessa had brought armed guards, I had to assume everyone was armed—but I needed my right hand to crawl.

Working around the gravestones, we practically slithered through the cemetery. We were moving nearly blind, so Simon often touched my ankle to keep track of where I was. If we lost each other in this fog, friendly fire was going to be a serious concern. I was already worried about hitting Lily or Tobias by mistake. Tobias would be fine against a lead bullet, but Lily was another matter.

When we were halfway to Odessa’s voice, I could pick out other voices as they called their responses to her. We’d expected a total of five witches, but if I was at the center of the clock and Odessa at twelve, she was getting responses at two, four, six, eight, and ten. That was six, plus at least one young man playing guard—although if it were me, I would have brought four, one for every side of the cemetery. So between seven and ten people, a lot more than we’d expected.

Odessa was obviously the leader for the magic, so I was hoping if I could take her down quickly and without fuss, the others might turn and run, leaving us to hand-deliver Odessa to the police.

But that’s not what happened.

I estimated we were about fifteen feet away from Odessa when a commotion started up at my four o’clock—in the direction of where Tobias and Lily would have entered the cemetery. There were some indistinguishable shouts, a yelp of pain, and then two small lightning bolts lit up the sky . . . only these weren’t lightning at all, but Lily electrocuting someone with magic. Screams started up from that direction, and then I heard the first gunshots.

Chapter 41

We’d talked about this: if one team got caught before the other, the team that was still loose would make their best move on their target. I jumped—okay, staggered—to my feet, with Simon right behind me, and we hurried toward Odessa’s voice, doing our best not to trip on the gravestones. No matter how fast we moved, the Unsettled seemed to flow out of our way like water. It didn’t look quick so much as smooth and eerie.

When we got a little closer, I could see Odessa above the heads of the Unsettled. She was standing on top of something, probably one of the many bench-shaped monuments. She had an umbrella in one hand and an open hardcover book in the other, with the book tilted toward a nearby lamppost.

Her voice had broken off when the gunshots started, and now she saw us rushing toward her. I raised the Sig Sauer. “Odessa, come down,” I yelled. “You’re done.”

The girl threw her head back and laughed, paying no attention to the skirmish happening to the east. She closed the book on her finger and tossed her hair over her shoulder, her eyes blazing at me. “So you did survive. I wondered.” Looking at Simon, she batted her eyes. “Hello, I haven’t had the pleasure—”

Simon threw a catapult spell at her. It succeeded only in knocking the book and umbrella out of her hands. Odessa frowned as the misting rain began to darken her hair. “Rude.”

“She’s wearing a witch bag,” I said out of the side of my mouth to Simon.

“Worth a shot,” he muttered.

We were six feet in front of her now, and the Unsettled had parted enough for me to see the empty glass bottle on the ground in front of Odessa, with a cork stopper next to it. I paused, the gun pointed at her head. “It’s over, Odessa. Come down so I don’t have to shoot you.”

Moving slowly, Odessa put her hands in the air, grinning at me. “I’m not armed,” she said. “Don’t shoot.”

But she still had something in her hand—something that had been hidden underneath the book. “What is that?” I demanded.

“Oh, this?” Her voice was all innocence, but when she brought her hand forward, I recognized the device. I’d seen them in Iraq. “I think it’s called a dead man’s switch. My friend Peter hooked it up for me.”

I narrowed my eyes. She wasn’t wearing an explosive vest under her formfitting raincoat; I was pretty sure about that. “What happens if you let go?” I started sidling forward, as though I were just trying to hear her better.

Odessa gave a careless shrug. “Then the spirit bottles I planted all over the city all go off at once. I couldn’t sneak one onto Beau’s property, thanks to your stupid werewolf prowling around—that’s close enough right there,” she said sharply, and I stopped moving. “Anyway. I have one at each of the three news stations that will be reporting on the video of Promenade, plus one at the mayor’s home.”

All the people who were questioning Beau at that moment. “You’re setting him up,” I said.

“Of course I am. If I can’t kill him right now, I can make it incredibly difficult for him to stay in Atlanta. Beau might be able to mind-fuck a few city officials or cops, but not the entire city at once. He’ll have to run.”

“What about your buyers?” I asked. “You’ll be all out of product.”

She laughed again. “Oh, we can always make more. And”—she checked her watch—“that’s enough stalling. Take the shot.”

She said it in a normal voice, but there was a sharp pop from the small patch of trees to my left, and Simon did something quick with his hands. Because of the sporadic streetlights, the fog, and the misting rain, you could actually just make out the invisible shield as the first bullet hit it.

“Again,” Odessa said impatiently, and shots came at us from three sides. She was using coms. I held very still, allowing Simon to create a column of shield around the two of us. It absorbed, rather than deflected, the bullets. The shooting stopped after a few seconds, and I could just make out the bullets dropping to the ground.

“Argh!” Odessa looked annoyed for the first time that night. “Who the fuck is this?” she demanded, glowering at Simon.

“You’re not the only one with witch friends,” I said. From the direction of the first shots, there was a strangled scream that was definitely not either Lily or Tobias. It gave me an idea.

“Come on, Simon,” I said, lowering the sidearm. “Let’s help pick off some of those baby witches.” Deliberately, I turned my back on Odessa, and I’d been right—it pissed her off. She jumped down from the bench and moved a few steps toward us. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” she cried. “I will drop this.”

“Oh, I’m not doing anything to you,” I called over my shoulder. I pretended I was scanning the darkness for her friends. Between the fog and the Unsettled, though, I couldn’t see more than six feet in any direction. I added, “I’m just going to kill some of your buddies.”

“If you hurt them, I’ll—”

I paused, turned. “You’ll what? Kill some humans I don’t know?” I shook my head. “My job is to stop you from bottling the Unsettled, not to save the mayor. I don’t even know his name. You can let go of that if you really want to.” I paused, pretending to think. “Although, if it were me, I’d hang on to it for when Beau gets past your flimsy wards.”

“Oh, the anti-vampire thing?” Simon asked innocently. “We took that down when we got here. Beau will be here any minute.”

Yeah, he’d definitely been hanging out with Quinn too much. We were both bluffing, but I stole a glance back at Odessa, who’d gone pale. She’d bought it.

It was nice being able to lie to someone.

“Oh, before Beau gets here to kill you, though,” I told her, turning to face her again, “I want my bloodstone.”

Her hand went up to touch her shirt above the rain jacket. I could see the leather cord peeking out from her collar, and her face went . . . protective. Stubborn. The bloodstone had been helping her, and she wasn’t going to give it up.

She squared her shoulders and gave me a nasty look. “We’ll have to do this again sometime,” she said.

Still moving slowly, she touched her ear, and I heard her say, “Go to plan C. Locations one through four.”

Simon and I exchanged a wary glance. There was a muffled thwump sound like an explosion deep in the earth, just off to my left. The ground gave a tiny shake, but not enough for either Simon or I to even stumble.

For a moment I thought she’d set off one of the spirit bottles, but no, she’d said they were hidden around the city. I opened my mouth to suggest that Odessa had missed us, when a great wave of the Unsettled began screaming.

To me it was loud enough to shatter glass, and it just kept going, an endless shriek of despair and desolation. I dropped to my knees, putting the Sig Sauer down so I could cover my ears with my hands. Above me I saw Odessa’s lips move again, and there was another thwump and the screaming doubled, coming from all sides now. It sounded more supernatural than human, like banshees were dying all around me. I fought the instinct to squeeze my eyes shut and curl up in a defensive ball.

Simon crouched down next to me, looking confused. His lips were moving—probably asking me what was wrong—but he couldn’t hear the screaming any more than he could see the Unsettled. I looked back at Odessa, who had scooped up the book and started running.

“She’s destroying their bones,” I shouted over the din that only I could hear. “They’re being . . . unmoored, or something. You have to stop her!”

Simon straightened up again, looking around him. His lips moved again, but before I could figure out what he was saying, a red dot appeared on his chest. I struggled to stand, but I didn’t make it a single step before something seemed to pluck at his jacket and Simon went down.

Chapter 42

Out-of-the-box thinking.

I’d thought I understood what Simon and Lily had meant about Malcolm doing the unexpected, but it was more complicated than that. The problem wasn’t that he—and Odessa, and the witch in Reno—always did what you least expected. It was that they mixed the expected and the unexpected, so you never really knew where you stood. Like combining underground explosives with a sniper rifle.

Simon went down hard on his back with a whoooosh sound as the air was flattened out of his lungs. I had to force myself to drop my hands—the Unsettled were still screaming, but covering my ears didn’t seem to be doing anything to help anyway—and crawl over to pull up his shirt. He nodded at me, panting a little. I saw, rather than heard, him say, “Vest caught it.”

I had forced everyone to wear them, even Tobias. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Odessa had found a way to get silver bullets.

The red dot appeared again, this time on the ground in front of me, moving toward Simon’s head, and without thinking I grabbed a fistful of his shirt with my right hand and threw myself on him, using my momentum to roll us both sideways toward the nearest tree. “Move!” I shouted, remembering only belatedly that no one could hear the screaming but me. Simon half crawled, half dragged himself behind the thick tree trunk, as another bullet smacked harmlessly into the ground where we’d just been. As fast as we’d just moved, the Unsettled had moved with us, still screaming.

I hadn’t been able to find my gun in the fog and move Simon at the same time, so now I was unarmed. No, wait, that wasn’t true. I had a shredder stake in one forearm holster, and Cole had found a folding knife that fit in the other.

Pulling out the knife, I snapped it open, but what was I going to do with it? While Simon could put up his shield thing to protect me, I couldn’t chase Odessa down, not with the screaming. I needed to make the screaming stop.

I was desperate, so I did the first thing that came to mind: I slashed the back of my left arm. I’m not sure what I expected would happen, but as the blood welled up and began to spill down my arm, the screaming closest to me abruptly cut off.

The men crowded tighter around me, their eyes alight with hunger.

“Lex!” I got the impression that Simon had been yelling at me for a while. I risked looking away from the Unsettled long enough to glance at him. He was holding a cell phone to his ear. “Lily and Tobias took down three of them, two witches and another guard. Two more definitely ran away from the group, but that leaves two witches plus Odessa on the run. What are you doing?”

We both looked at the line of blood dripping off my arm, and then I glanced up at the Unsettled. They didn’t look like they wanted to eat me, the way wraiths do. I’m not sure how to describe the look, exactly, other than that they seemed to want orders. No, it was so much more eager and intense than that. They were desperate for orders.

“I’m getting my bloodstone back,” I mumbled.

“What?” Simon asked.

I raised my voice. “I’m going to try something. Don’t let anybody shoot me. And don’t freak out.”

He had a response to that, of course, but I tuned him out as I straightened my arm and began to walk through the Unsettled. This time, they didn’t move aside. They allowed me to pass my outstretched arm through them at chest height, and as my blood touched each man, he closed his eyes briefly and began to glow. Well, glow more, I guess. It was as though they’d been frozen, and I’d thawed them out, only the thaw stretched behind the men I’d specifically touched, passing from one interconnected soldier to the next.

I kept going until all the men close enough for me to see had that glow. Behind me, I heard Simon gasp.

“That girl, the one who was standing on the bench,” I said to the Unsettled. “She’s the one who destroyed your bones. She’s been trapping your friends and turning them into weapons. Now she’s trying to run. Stop her.”

I expected them to hesitate, or maybe silently confer with one another. But almost instantly, the tide of ghosts flowed away from me, in the same direction as Odessa had run. They didn’t seem to be running, but each individual moved faster than I ever had at my best time.

“What the fuck just happened?” Simon’s voice was shrill, and I turned to face him. “Who were those guys? Were they—”

“The Unsettled, yes.” I staggered after them, slipping on the muddy ground. “You’re on shield duty. Come on.”

I couldn’t see Odessa through the glowing ghosts, so I just tramped off after them, with Simon close behind me. He was avoiding getting too close to the Unsettled. He was seeing them for the first time, and it was understandably unnerving.

One of the men, short and broad-shouldered with a neatly trimmed beard and some kind of officer’s insignia, hung back slightly, keeping pace next to us. The officer seemed to glow more than the others, and he was paying rapt attention to every move I made. He looked vaguely familiar, but I didn’t have time to figure it out. We made eye contact, and I gave him a nod, wishing I could get his name. They hadn’t put names on uniforms during the Civil War.

When Simon and I reached the far edge of the circle, it took me a second to figure out what I was seeing. It looked like Odessa had crouched near the brick gutter to open the circle, but she’d fallen back on her butt, the book on the ground next to her. Now she was staring up in terror at the rows of glowing men who’d wedged themselves between her and the exit. They weren’t physically threatening her, but she couldn’t even get to the gutter without going through two rows of them.

Odessa must have heard Simon and me approach, because she mumbled something we couldn’t hear, and then Whitney Finch and the blonde girl—Emmaline—were running toward us. Simon turned around, holding up his hands to create the shield again. “You got them?” I said to Simon over my shoulder.

“Yes.” His voice was terse, but calm. “Do your thing.”

I tuned out what was happening behind me and focused my attention on Odessa, stepping sideways so I could see her face.

“Get them away from me!” she cried, slapping one hand ineffectually against the grass. Her hair was plastered to her head now, and mud had smeared on her raincoat where she’d probably fallen down. She still held the dead man’s switch, but she looked terrified and petulant. I almost felt sorry for her . . . except no, no I didn’t.

“Give me my bloodstone,” I said. “Carefully.”

Her expression soured, but Odessa grabbed the bloodstone and yanked it over her head, her hair rippling as the leather cord swung free. She tossed it to me in an underhand throw, and I caught it easily with my right hand. I put it on, ignoring the damp and tucking it under my shirt. I immediately felt better.

“Now get them away!” Odessa yelled.

“I can’t do that.” I was still moving, easing my way closer to her, but she was too focused on the Unsettled to notice. “Not until you disable that trigger.”

Odessa looked at the switch in her hand as though it had just appeared there. “That’s my only leverage,” she whined. “If I give it up, Beau’s gonna kill me.”

“He’s not going to kill you,” I said. “He’s going to turn you over to the police.”

She finally took her eyes off the Unsettled to stare at me, completely dumbfounded. “The police? Why?”

That pissed me off. “Because you murdered an innocent human. One who was trying to protect you.”

“Oh. Her.” Odessa tossed her hair out of her eyes, and for a moment the confident, manipulative young woman returned. “I’ll hire the best lawyer money can buy. Whatever shitty evidence you think you have—”

“No, you’re going to take a plea deal,” I said calmly. I was only a few feet away now. “And then you’re going to serve your time.”

There was some shouting behind me, but when I took a quick glance, it seemed like Simon was holding his own. Emmaline was down on the ground, and Whitney appeared to be playing an elaborate game of cat’s cradle with a piece of rope in her hands. She looked frustrated.

“Why would I do that?” said Odessa, and I turned back to face her.

“Because if you don’t, I’m going to let these guys eat you.” I gestured to the Unsettled. I hadn’t really realized they were following the conversation, but at my words, the men closest to Odessa grinned happily, displaying crooked, rotten teeth. I didn’t think they were corporeal enough to touch anyone, but they sure knew how to play along. “And if you change your mind later—”

“What, you’ll kill me?” She had a little of her former sneer back now.

“You’re goddamn right. I will kill you, and I will take your life force and put it into Becca’s body. Because she was worth ten of you, and you murdered her as an afterthought.”

I was bluffing about killing her—at least, I was pretty sure I was bluffing—but this kid had heard stories about the curse of boundary magic her whole life. I was not above using that.

Something on my face made Odessa’s sneer fade away, replaced by horror. “You wouldn’t do that.”

I laughed and lifted my chin. “I’m a boundary witch, Odessa. I’m the monster that vampires are afraid of. Of course I would.” I held out my hand. “Give me the trigger. Do not even think about setting it off.”

She held it out. “I put rubber bands on it,” she admitted. “You don’t have to actually keep squeezing it.”

I took the switch carefully, but she was right—two thick black rubber bands secured the trigger to the handle. Goddamn, she was smart. This whole thing had been such a waste.

While I was putting the switch in my pocket, though, Odessa turned around, mumbling something I couldn’t hear, and stretched her arm through the rows of Unsettled, slamming her tattooed fingers down on the bloody cord.

There was an audible pop as the circle broke.

Chapter 43

Odessa hadn’t cut the rope; she’d done something to dismantle the circle. So I didn’t die—but she could run.

I started forward, but Odessa grabbed the book and exploded to her feet like an Olympic sprinter, jumping over the brick gutter and onto the asphalt path dividing the Confederate Cemetery from the memorial park. I expected her to keep going past the flags, but she immediately veered right, her feet pounding along the path forming the edge of the cemetery. She was going to try to lose us in the streets.

The Unsettled gave me alarmed looks, and I understood—the circle may have been broken, but they couldn’t follow her outside the cemetery.

But I could. I yelled something to Simon over my shoulder, but any response was swallowed up by the rain and fog. I sprinted after Odessa, holding my injured left hand tight against my chest.

She wasn’t particularly fast—her muscles were clearly suited more to riding horses than running, because she went chugging along with terrible form, elbows clutched in close to her body. Then again, I wasn’t in any shape to judge. I was a practiced runner, but I’d lost a lot of blood and been poisoned . . . and that was before crawling up a muddy hill through gravestones.

For the first twenty seconds I kept up with her, but then I began to flag. I fumbled at my pocket, looking for my cell phone, but I’d managed to lose it during the muddy climb, or maybe when I rolled Simon away from the sniper. I cursed and focused on keeping my eyes on Odessa ahead of me. Maybe Simon—or, even better, Tobias—would come after me and take over the chase.

As she neared a corner, Odessa lifted her wrist to check her watch, then abruptly switched directions, turning left to run north. She clearly had a destination in mind, which worried me even before I heard the whistle and saw the tracks running north–south along the eastern side of the cemetery.

She was going for the fucking train. Goddammit, I hated this kid.

I did my best to put on another burst of speed, fuming to myself. Of course she’d had an escape plan. But if Odessa made it to the train and I didn’t, I might never be able to stop her. She had the book; she had the tattoos. She could start a coven somewhere else and keep making spirit bottles. She could keep selling spirit bottles.

I could not let that happen.

I wished for my gun, or for one of the rifles the other witches had brought to the cemetery. Hell, in that moment I would have settled for a fricking boomerang. Since I didn’t have any of that, though, I just kept plodding along, losing ground, until the train came into sight up ahead.

It looked old-fashioned and was moving relatively slowly, but still a lot faster than I was going to be able to run. Odessa had increased her lead on me, and I knew with terrible certainty that I wasn’t going to be able to catch up in time. Already my body was slowing down, and I recognized the traitorous fatigue spreading through me. I was out of power. It was over.

I didn’t stop, but my running slowed to a jog, and then I was just sort of stumbling along. Odessa was nearly a block ahead of me, twelve feet away from the train car.

She was just altering her angle so she could make a grab for the ladder—when Tobias burst out of the shadows. He hit her in a bone-crushing tackle that would have done any college football player proud.

Odessa let out a squeak and the two of them went tumbling, coming to a stop inches away from the metal rails. I allowed my flagging body to stop too, watching to make sure they both landed uninjured. I couldn’t make it to them, though—my legs suddenly stopped working, and I made a half-assed attempt to get my hands up before I toppled to the ground.

I never actually hit the asphalt, though, because Milburn caught me. I couldn’t even tell what direction he’d come from, but he was suddenly there. If nothing else, I’d succeeded in chasing Odessa out of the circle that kept vampires out.

I mumbled something at Milburn, and he lifted my right arm and draped it across his shoulders, supporting me around the waist with his left arm. Ahead of us, Tobias had bounced to his feet, and a dazed-looking Odessa was trying to haul herself up, one hand holding the back of her head. When she was at last upright, it was to find Beau standing two inches in front of her, arms crossed over his chest. I couldn’t see his face from where I was, but I didn’t imagine it was friendly.

Odessa, unsurprisingly, burst into tears.

She threw her arms around the vampire. “Uncle Beau, I’m so, so sorry,” she sobbed, burying her face in his shirt. “Whitney said all these things, and I just got so caught up, and—and—”

“Shut up, Odessa,” Beau said, and in his voice was a bone-deep weariness that was somehow also terrifying. “You killed two of my brothers, murdered an innocent human, and destroyed countless of the Unsettled. You have disgraced me in every way possible, and broken my heart to boot. At least have the decency to take ownership of your choices. I’d like to think you’re capable of that much maturity.”

Milburn and I were limping along—okay, he was basically supporting all my weight so we could join the others—and I was close enough to see Odessa sniffle a couple of times, then straighten, tossing her head to clear away the wet hair. The devastated teenager was gone, and this Odessa regarded Beau with cool eyes. “What happens now?” she said, her tone ice cold.

“We’re going to the police station,” Beau said, “where you will turn yourself in for the murder of Becca Rhodes.”

She snorted. “So you’re, what, putting me in time-out to think about what I’ve done? I’ll get out, you know. And I’ll go back to making spirit bottles, and the first one I make will have your name on it.” She tilted her head for a moment. “Hell, if the prison is haunted, I could just—”

“Beau,” I called. “Take off her witch bag.”

He raised his eyebrows at me, and a moment of understanding passed between us as he made the decision to trust me. He tucked two fingers in the back of Odessa’s shirt and deftly pulled out a small leather bag on a cord, dropping it onto the ground.

It was almost too easy. My body was tired, but I dropped effortlessly into my boundary magic mindset, where Odessa’s life force glowed bright and blue. I reached out a hand, imagining ghostly fingers extending from my own. I cupped that blue spirit in my hands and gave it the slightest jerk.

Odessa gasped, her body going stiff, and for just a second I was sorely tempted to finish the job. I could yank the life force out of her and pull it into me. I could take that magic for myself and use it to do anything, hurt anyone, stop my enemies from—

“That’s enough,” Milburn’s voice said softly, and I forced myself to let go, to drop my boundary mindset. It was hard, harder than I was comfortable with. But I did it.

When I could see normally again, Odessa was on her hands and knees, staring at me with huge eyes as she struggled for breath. Beau stood over her, unmoving. I wondered what this was costing him.

After a moment he reached down and pulled Odessa to her feet. “I’ve already spoken to Tallulah Finch, right after I finished cleaning up the mess you made with that video,” he told her. “Your accomplices are in the process of turning on you in exchange for clemency.” He glanced at me and added, “When I can get a specialist here, their magic will be bound forever. They will be allowed to live human lives.”

I nodded. I knew witches well enough to understand how serious that was. And I didn’t think any of them had been involved in Becca’s death. It was a fair punishment.

“They’ve given us the location of your remaining spirit bottles,” he continued to Odessa. “And no one in Georgia will ever help you with magic again. The moment you’re released from prison, in twenty or thirty years, those tattoos are coming off. You’re done. And if you’re not, I will let Lex have you.”

Odessa flinched, and Beau looked at me. “Is all that acceptable to you?”

“Yes. But, Beau . . . she destroyed the bodies at the cemetery. I fed the Unsettled a bit of my blood, but I think they’re going to fade.”

His already heavy expression seemed to sink further into worry. “I’d consider it a great kindness if you went back and did anything you can for them,” Beau replied. I nodded. “I will take my niece to the police station.”

“I’ll do it,” Milburn volunteered. “You should go see about Asa.”

I thought maybe Milburn was also a little worried that Odessa could talk Beau out of turning her in. It was a neat solution.

“Thank you, Erasmus.”

The other vampire nodded and slowly released me. I immediately had trouble keeping myself upright, but Tobias ducked under my shoulder and wrapped his arms around me like a hug. “Thanks,” I whispered, glad it was him and not Beau.

Before Milburn could speed away with her, I said, “Odessa?”

She glanced over, her face sullen. “Don’t forget what I said,” I reminded her. “If you don’t do your time, I will come for you. You have my word on that.”

Odessa gave Beau a shocked look, but he shrugged, doing his best to appear uncaring. He didn’t know how I’d threatened Odessa, but he trusted that it was justified. I appreciated that.

Beau gave Odessa a last, aggrieved look and turned to me. “I’ll go on ahead to the Unsettled,” he said, and vanished backward into the shadows.

Milburn dragged Odessa off in the other direction, toward where they’d probably parked. Feeling just how much of my weight needed to be supported, Tobias looked worried. “Lex! Are you okay?”

“To be completely honest . . . no,” I told him. “But that was a great tackle.”

He brightened, adjusting my arm over his shoulders and taking hold of my waist in his no-boundaries, Tobias way. I didn’t mind. “Thanks! I tried to land on the bottom ’cause I figured if anyone was gonna hurt her, you’d want to do it yourself.”

I wanted to laugh, but I was too weak to do more than smile at him. We began our slog back to the Confederate section.

“And, oh my God, Lily was awesome,” Tobias added, as though he’d made a mental note to tell me, and was thrilled that he’d remembered. “Like, these baby witches were all in her face, and she zapped them, and then one of them tried to shoot her, but I knocked him down—”

“Maybe you could tell me later,” I mumbled, trying not to completely deflate him.

“I could pick you up,” he offered.

“Don’t you dare.” I wanted to finish this night on my own two feet. Literally.

We hadn’t run as far as I’d thought, so it didn’t take long to get back to the asphalt path separating the memorial flag area from the cemetery. I’d expected Beau to be standing there waiting, but instead I found Simon with Emmaline. Her wrists and ankles had been zip-tied, and she was sitting on the ground pouting. I didn’t have the breath for questions, so I raised my eyebrows at Simon. “My new friend here helped me break the outer circle,” he explained, “so Beau could get in.”

I nodded, ignoring the sullen young woman, and we kept going. With both circles now broken, the fog had cleared away, and for the first time I could see more of the grounds. The Unsettled were crowded in the nearest corner, up a tiny set of stairs. Beau stood in their midst, staring at them as they stared at him. The glow of life I’d lent the Unsettled had already begun to dissipate, and some of them had faded well beyond the way they’d looked when I’d first seen them. Odessa had destroyed their bones. They didn’t have enough to hold on to anymore.

“Let go of me,” I told Tobias after he got me up the steps. The werewolf released his grip on me, and I reached for his elbow instead. Tobias let me hang much of my weight on his arm, and I hobbled across the brick gutter so I was once again surrounded by ghosts.

I searched their faces until I spotted the officer, the one who’d seemed particularly interested in me earlier. He hovered near Beau, but as I caught his eye, he flowed toward me. He was shorter and broader, but now that they were next to each other, I could see the resemblance. This was Beau’s brother, Asa. Of course—he’d seemed more alert because he had boundary blood.

I took a deep breath. I wasn’t sure how much the Unsettled could recognize about what was happening, so I said, “Many of the bodies underground have been destroyed, which is why so many of you are getting fainter. I can’t tell you what will happen after you fade from here. Maybe you’ll all wander on to another place, or maybe you’ll just stop . . . being. I don’t know. But I do know that there’s another option.”

Asa nodded to show me that he followed. Behind him, Beau sort of bristled, but I ignored it. This wasn’t about him. “I can send you home,” I said softly. “To where you should have gone when you died, wherever that is. I can open a door for you.”

I didn’t look at Beau, because he’d told me to do what I could for these men, and this was it. The officer looked around at his fellow soldiers for a moment, and then he turned and mouthed a word to me.

Home.

With tears in my eyes, I opened the door for them.

Epilogue

As the airplane finally touched down, I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer of thanks to whoever might be listening. Even in first class, my claustrophobia had started to get the better of me, and I wanted to be clearheaded for my arrival in Atlanta.

It had been two months since I’d returned home to Colorado. My cast was off—despite what felt like my best efforts, it had still been a pretty simple break by the time I got it casted in Boulder—and I was more or less back to full strength.

In more ways than one. My nightmares about the cave in Wyoming had faded some since I’d sent the Unsettled home. The nightmares weren’t completely gone, and I still had the Iraq dreams sometimes, but for the first time in months, I was sleeping through the night more often than not.

My friends were doing well too. Kicking ass in Atlanta had helped Lily find some of her footing as a leader back home. Tobias was more attached to me than ever, to the point that Mary occasionally grumbled about his loyalty. Katia had asked me to come over twice to help her rearrange the furniture, but she finally seemed happy with her apartment. Charlie had turned five and decided that her future career was to be a clothing designer for dinosaurs. I didn’t know if she meant clothes for some mythical living dinosaurs or the skeletal dinosaur fossils at the Museum of Nature & Science, but I thought it was more fun not to ask.

Simon and I were avoiding each other more than we had since I’d first met him, but we both seemed at peace with it. In a way, it was nice to have his feelings out in the open, so we could acknowledge them and move on.

And then there was Quinn. My being away, and him not being able to help, had hurt him more than I’d realized, but the way his eyes lit up when I told him about Holly was a gift I will remember for the rest of my life. However long it might be.

“She’s okay,” he said with great relief.

“I think she might be better than that,” I told him. “I think she might be great. She’s going to be a world-class cop.”

He had beamed so hard with pride that I half expected his shirt to tear open like the Incredible Hulk’s.

Which left Maven. My boss had been thrilled with Beau’s feedback about my “performance,” and he’d mailed me a pretty massive check that I still didn’t know what to do with. The two of them were talking several times a week now about the parliament, and with Beau on board, three other vampires had agreed to parliament leadership.

Most important to me personally, Beau had kept his word. I’d followed the newspapers online, and Odessa had taken a plea deal and was serving twenty-five years to life for Becca’s murder. Considering her other crimes, I would have been happier with life in prison, but I viewed it as an acceptable arrangement. Beau and his people had found all the other spirit bottles Odessa had made, and Beau was delighted to discover that if they were simply opened at night, rather than broken, the Unsettled returned to their usual locations. They hadn’t come back to his home or the History Center—those must have been the bottles Odessa had used to kill Warton and Hempstead—but they were back everywhere else, with the exception of the Marietta Confederate Cemetery, where I’d sent them through the doorway to the other side.

And now, with all that mess finally cleaned up, I was on my way back to Atlanta—not for business, but to deliver a gift. The logistics had required a lot of work, especially for Scarlett and her partners, but Maven felt it was worth it, and I had to agree.

Milburn was waiting for me at the airport—no sunglasses for him—and as I walked up, he actually smiled and reached out his hand for me to shake. “Good evening, Miss Lex,” he said. “May I take your bag?”

“Sure.” I tossed him the duffel. “Have you heard from the driver?”

“I have. We’re to meet her at the mouth of Beau’s driveway.”

I waved. “Lead on.”

Vick, the other surviving Horseman, was waiting at the curb with Beau’s Lincoln. When the three of us were settled inside and pleasantries had been exchanged, I turned my eyes away from the remnants outside and asked how Beau was doing.

The horsemen exchanged a glance. “As well as can be expected,” Milburn said finally. “The local community lost a lot of confidence in him after what happened with Odessa, but Beau has promised them to restart Promenade next month at a different location. We may be able to return to Oakland in a year or two. I wouldn’t say that’s completely pacified them, but things are settling down. They were actually impressed that he used the human police to punish Odessa,” he added, tipping an imaginary hat at me.

“Cool. But how is Beau doing?”

Vick was the one to answer. “He’s sad. He misses her. He even sold off all the horses—I think it was just too hard to look at them. He writes her letters, but she hasn’t responded yet. He’s been in—” He glanced at Milburn, as if looking for a word. “Doldrums?”

“A funk,” Milburn supplied.

I nodded. “I hope this will help.”

Milburn hesitated for a moment, then asked quietly, “How was the funeral?”

“Sad,” I said honestly. I had flown to Chattanooga only a week after I’d gotten home, just a quick trip for Becca’s funeral. “Her mom told me a mysterious benefactor had paid for all the arrangements. Beau?”

Milburn nodded. “He insisted.”

“It was a nice gesture.”

We were quiet for the rest of the ride.

As promised, the driver, a witch of fiftyish with short dark hair, was waiting in her truck, parked on the road just before the turnoff. We waved as Vick made the turn, and she started the truck and followed us in.

Beau must have heard the wheels on his driveway, because he was coming out the front door before Vick had the car in park. He looked . . . well, vampires don’t drop weight or get bags under their eyes like humans do under stress, but as he strode toward us, something about the city’s cardinal vampire seemed . . . diminished. Faded.

The truck bumped to a stop behind us, and the driver jumped out and began doing something at the back of her trailer. She was wearing jeans and cowboy boots, sweating in the Atlanta humidity. I had thought March was warm in Atlanta, but May was so much worse.

Beau’s eyes went wide when he saw me. “Miss Lex? It’s lovely to see you, my dear, but whatever brings you back to Atlanta?”

Next to me, Vick and Milburn weren’t doing a very good job of hiding their grins. “A gift,” I told Beau, “from Maven. In honor of your new relationship.”

Hands in his pockets, Beau climbed down the stairs and came over to us, looking puzzled. I saw his nostrils flare, and he tilted his head. “A horse? You know I can’t—”

“This isn’t just a horse,” I interrupted. I stepped back—way back—as the small woman helped a massive black stallion out of the trailer.

When I say “black,” I mean every single inch of him looked as though it’d been dipped in ink. He was at least the size of a Clydesdale, easily three thousand pounds, and covered in hide that looked more like pebbled armor than fur.

Beau muttered something that sounded like, “Consarn and thunderation,” but his eyes were shining.

“What is he?” asked Vick, whose eyes were as big as dinner plates.

“He’s a hellhest,” I said simply. “Apparently, a bunch of them were . . . um . . . confiscated last year in LA from some really bad people.”

The driver, who introduced herself as Paloma, had clipped a lead on his halter, and she now led him toward Beau, who instinctively took a step backward so the horse wouldn’t freak out.

“Don’t worry about that, Mr. Calhoun,” Paloma said with a smile. The horse snorted and stamped a foot as though stretching from the long ride but didn’t seem the least bit concerned about being surrounded by vampires. Beau’s jaw dropped as Paloma led the horse right up so they were face to face.

“This is Shoemaker,” Paloma said, holding out the reins so Beau would reflexively take them. “He’s a grouchy bastard and he picks fights with other horses, but he has no problem with vampires.”

Beau’s fingers closed around the reins, but he simply stood there, awestruck. Shoemaker gave a little snort and nosed at Beau’s shirt, looking for treats. Beau’s hand rose, almost unconsciously, to stroke the pebbled muscles of the hellhest’s neck. “How . . . how is this possible?” he stammered. His gaze turned to me, eyes full of the bubbling wonder of someone who’d thought he’d seen all the world had to offer and been proven wrong.

“Eh, I happen to know someone,” I replied, grinning. “I guess I just figured it was time you met the right horse.”

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to all of you who’ve come with me on Lex’s journey. Thank you to Heather Dryer for helping me with Atlanta research, and my awesome Patreon supporters for following my adventures and encouraging me when writing got rough. This was a particularly difficult book because of the Civil War research involved, and I fell down quite a few rabbit holes before figuring out what I really needed. I may have come out slightly dazed and muddled. Any resulting mistakes in research are mine.

Thank you to Angela Polidori for her always-excellent editing help, Elizabeth Kraft for the cover photo, and the team at 47North for helping me put out another book I can be proud of.

About the Author

Photo © 2017 Elizabeth Kraft

Melissa F. Olson is the author of numerous Old World novels and stories, as well as the novella Nightshades and its two sequels. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband, two kids, two dogs, and two jittery chinchillas. Read more about her work and life at www.MelissaFOlson.com.