ENRAGED

Unturned: Book Four

Rob Cornell

Table of Contents

Title Page

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Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Chapter Fifty-Six

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Books by Rob Cornell

About the Author

Copyright

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This one is for editor extraordinaire, Helene Ivie. Thank you for helping me make my stories the best they can be.

Chapter One

Three months after Sly’s Smoke Shop got trashed by a group of rioting vampires, the Detroit Ministry finally approved Sly’s claim for compensation due to a paranormal event. Believe it or not, three months was pretty good, especially since there had been a number of similar claims logged around the same time. Sly’s place wasn’t the only one the vampires wrecked.

Then there were those places owned by average citizens who didn’t have access to Ministry services because they didn’t even know the Ministry existed. The gas station across the street from the shop had blown up thanks to a good soaking by their primary merchandise. Also the vampires’ doing.

So, while the gas station remained a crumbled mess, Sly’s place was finally getting the facelift it needed, and I had the pleasure of taking part.

I stood on the top step of an aluminum ladder that wobbled a bit too much for my comfort. But I needed to reach high enough to touch up the paint on the wall where it met the ceiling. Sly had opted for a shade of sky blue that gave the room a bright and airy feel. Despite the light flurry outside, a clear stream of sunlight poured through the newly replaced plate-glass window that stretched the length of the shop.

I wasn’t a big fan of winter, but January had turned out to be pretty mild by Michigan standards. We’d only had more than a couple inches of snow fall in a single day once so far, and that had melted into the city’s gutters and drains after an almost spring-like week mid-month. More sunlight than usual, less snow, and not too many days below freezing. I could deal with that.

Of course, February was a week away, and that month could rain down winter hell. As the last month before spring, February seemed to like giving you a good blizzardy kick in the ass on its way out.

I finished my touch-up for as far as I could reach and started down the ladder, paint can in one hand, brush in the other. The ladder leaned a little too far to the left, and I could feel gravity about to dump my ass.

With a quick draw on my magical energy, I commanded the air to push the ladder right. There’d been a time when conjuring a breeze like that would throw me in the opposite direction, maybe even send me across the room. I had started working hard at using a little more finesse in my magic. So this time, the ladder tipped just far enough to keep it steady while I scurried the rest of the way down.

I turned toward Sly, who was installing rubber molding along the floor. He was crouched on his knees and bent forward. A glue gun lay on one side of him, a stack of molding strips on the other.

“This ladder sucks, you know.”

He didn’t respond. I realized he wasn’t working either. Just bent over and still, as if he’d fallen asleep with his face on the hard, bare floor—we hadn’t laid down any carpet yet.

“Sly?”

Nothing.

I set my paint can and brush on the floor, wiped my sweaty hands on my paint spattered jeans, and hurried over to him. I crouched at his side and peered down to find his cheek against the floor and his eyes closed. His gray ponytail hung down along his neck like a short, loose scarf. When he exhaled, the ends of his hair fluttered, and each breath sounded gravelly and congested.

But at least he was still breathing.

I rested a hand on his arched back. When he released a breath, I could feel the faint vibrations of fluid in his lungs.

This was so weird. He hadn’t shown any signs of being sick when we had started work that morning. Here it was noon, and it was like he’d been hit by a bad case of avian flu in the span of a few hours.

I gently nudged him. “Sly,” I said softly. Then, more loudly, “Sly? Wake up, man.”

His eyes opened but were clouded with sleepiness. He blinked a few times, then looked up at me. “I feel like shit, brother.”

“You look it.” And he did. Face washed out, skin almost gray enough to camouflage the gray stubble of his goatee. I noticed his breath smelled funny, too. Like over ripe peaches. “No offense.”

“A ton taken.”

He looked horrible, but his sense of humor remained intact. A good sign.

“What happened to you?” I asked.

Sly planted his hands against the floor and pushed himself up to a kneeling position. He swooned for a second. I grabbed his arm to help steady him. He worked his mouth as if he had a bad taste on his tongue. “Breakfast feels like it might come back up.”

“That’s an over-share.”

He rubbed one temple. “Sorry. I’m all achy and woozy. I don’t know what the hell is going on.”

“It looks like you caught a bad bug. You want me to drive you home?”

He looked down at his unfinished work. He’d only started installing the molding forty minutes ago, so he only had half of one wall done. He groaned. “I’m never going to get this place back open.”

“Tell you what. I’ll drop you home, then swing back and finish this up for you.”

“I can’t ask…” He scrunched up his face and hissed between his clenched teeth. “Forget it. Get me the hell home.”

“Can do.”

Chapter Two

Sly’s house sat in a row of similar looking suburban ranches that lined one edge of the Red Run Golf Club in Royal Oak. He had a view of a sand trap not far beyond his family room’s picture window. It was like beach front property, only without the ocean, and an occasional golf ball through the window.

I half-dragged him inside, and we stumbled like a couple of drunks down the hall into his bedroom. He flopped onto his mattress and curled up into a ball. A couple seconds later he was snoring.

I laughed to myself and wandered out to his kitchen. Today’s strange smell (his kitchen always smelled weird because he did some alchemical experimentation there) had a hint of red pepper with a dash of bubble gum. I had smelled a lot worse in there.

Before I drove back to the shop to install some rubber molding (woo-hoo, lucky me), I gave my mom a call. She was going through one of her funks, and I wanted to check up on her. The funks came and went, which said something of her strength. She had learned she killed her husband a few months ago. Didn’t matter that she had had a good reason, or that she was meant to fly off this mortal coil with him. You don’t bounce back from that kind of thing very easily. But Mom had plenty of good days mixed among the bad, especially with her new neighbor and best friend, Gladys, a white witch with a massive collection of old spell books Mom loved to pore over. I think, without Gladys, Mom’s funks would have been more permanent.

She answered the phone with fake cheer. It sounded convincing, but I knew better.

“Just seeing how you’re doing,” I said.

“I’m fine.” The cheer in her voice dropped in an instant, leaving her tone flat and annoyed.

“Have you eaten anything today?”

“You had breakfast with me, Sebastian.”

“I had breakfast. You stirred your Cheerios until they turned to mush.”

“I had a bite.”

“Even if that were true, you need more than that.”

She sighed with a little growl to it. “I had a piece of cheese and a couple slices of ham. Satisfied?”

I looked up at Sly’s cuckoo clock – which did not cuckoo. He had removed the bird and noise mechanism from because it annoyed him. I don’t know why he didn’t just get a new clock.

It was after one in the afternoon. My stomach was growling, and a bit of cheese and lunch meat wouldn’t cut it. It wouldn’t cut it for her either. “That’s all you’ve had today?”

“Please stop pestering me.”

I heard a ragged, ugly coughing come from Sly’s room. I cringed at the sound. “I’d take you out to lunch, but Sly’s got some kind of flu, and I think I should stick with him. Will you please make yourself an actual sandwich, or heat up one of those pot pies in the freezer?”

She grunted, which might have been a yes.

Sly’s coughs grew louder, more frequent, and had a bark to them that made my own chest hurt just by hearing it. I would have to trust Mom to take care of herself. I couldn’t take care of both her and Sly at the same time.

I got an abrupt goodbye out of her, then I went down the hall back to Sly’s room.

I found him on the floor.

His eyes were closed as if he were still asleep, his knees brought up toward his chest, and he coughed and coughed and coughed again, each time spritzing the light green carpeting with blood.

“Aw, shit.”

I stood there, frozen a moment with indecision. What to do? How to help? Should I call an ambulance? Or maybe a magical healer? I knew Sly had a healer he used on occasion. She had helped me once, after I got myself messed up fighting one of Detroit’s best demon hunters at the abandoned Pontiac Silverdome of all places.

I couldn’t remember the healer’s name, though. I might have never heard it, at least not while conscious. So even if Sly had her number in his phone, unless he labeled it Magical Healer Woman, I wouldn’t know which number to call. Mom probably knew someone. But, unlike hospitals, healers didn’t have emergency vehicles with sirens that parted traffic for them. I didn’t have time to find a healer and get them to Sly’s.

So, that made my decision for me.

I dialed 911, gave the operator a quick rundown of the situation. He asked if Sly had lost consciousness with a certain tone that suggested he wouldn’t send anyone otherwise. Could you cough your lungs out while unconscious?

“Sure,” I told the guy. Why not? When the paramedics show up and it turned out Sly was conscious, were they going to bitch about it? Let them.

He had me stay on the line until the ambulance arrived. It only took them a decade.

During the wait, I knelt beside him, rubbing his back, watching him cough blood, and feeling utterly helpless the whole time. I tried to think of some way to use my magic to at least ease the coughing. I could fling fire, control air, manipulate water, and occasionally do small spells to find things or see through another’s eyes. I could even make a small pile of rocks get up and dance. None of that would help.

I had to leave things to the paramedics when they finally showed up. They asked Sly questions he couldn’t answer because he couldn’t stop coughing. What’s your name? Did you ingest anything recently? Have you taken any drugs?

Part of their routine, I guess. It sounded so stupid to me. A waste of time. But they never stopped moving. While it took a decade for them to arrive, it took seconds for them to get Sly on a gurney, roll him out of the house, and tuck him away in the back of the ambulance.

I rode with him, holding his hand. He had coughed up so much blood, it was smeared across his lips.

I couldn’t help but think of vampires.

Chapter Three

Hospital waiting rooms. Didn’t matter how nice they were, they sucked and always would until the end of time. But Royal Oak General Hospital had a fairly cozy one, all things considered, including a chair that could convert to a small cot if you kicked up the foot rest and leaned the back down. I hoped I wouldn’t be staying long enough to test its comfort.

The air had a dry taste and a starchy smell. It left my mouth pasty. I couldn’t stand the feel of my own skin because of how much the arid heat dried me out.

Three other people shared the room with me. A man, woman, and a teen girl, who all resembled each other so much, they could never deny their relation. The woman and the girl had glassy eyes and furtive gazes. The man sat with stiff back, but a slack expression, gaze never so much as twitching. I didn’t know their story, and didn’t want to. I knew whatever was going on with them, that sick feeling of helplessness probably sat in each one of their bellies.

The woman caught me staring. Instead of scowling at my rudeness, she offered the saddest smile in world history, and the sickness in my own belly doubled.

Last I had seen of Sly, he had nearly quit breathing. They had whisked him away, leaving a nurse behind to tell me how to find the waiting room and promise they would keep me apprised of Sly’s condition.

I felt my phone buzz against my leg in my pocket. When I checked the number (it was Mom), I also saw the time. Somehow two hours had passed since I sat down in the waiting room. What the hell were they doing to him for so long? He had a bad flu. Right? What else could it be?

I shouldn’t have asked myself that. The default answer came quickly to mind—cancer. It was always fucking cancer. At least for average mortals. People like me and Mom, sorcerers born with natural magic, did not develop tumors of any kind. It probably had a lot to do with that inherent magic. It certainly wasn’t anything we did consciously. After all, other magical practitioners who weren’t born with their power still could end up victims of the Big C.

Sly’s mother had died of some kind of cancer; I couldn’t remember which. Wasn’t there a genetic component that would make Sly susceptible as well?

I squeezed my eyes shut. I had to stop thinking like that. Especially since—

“Sebastian, are you there?”

I had forgotten I had the phone to my ear.

I cleared my throat. “Yeah.”

“How is Sylvester doing? Better I hope.”

For a moment, I suffered a spin of vertigo. I stared at a fixed point in front of me, a spot of something on an otherwise clean wall. The spinning passed. “Worse,” I said. One word seemed plenty enough. Too much.

“Worse? What do you mean? Sebastian, what’s going on?”

“I had to call an ambulance,” I said slowly, enunciating each word because my lips felt numb and I didn’t want to slur my speech. “I’m at the hospital now. I haven’t heard anything more since we got here two hours ago.”

I heard a soft gasp through the phone. “I’m on my way.”

“Don’t, Mom. You’ve got enough to deal with.”

“What are you talking about? I’m fine.”

“Did you end up eating lunch?”

Silence. But I could practically hear her eyes roll.

“I will pack myself a sandwich before I come.”

My stomach gurgled. I hadn’t eaten anything. I didn’t want to eat anything. I felt guilty for feeling hungry. Thankfully, my rational brain parts knew how stupid that was.

“Can you bring me one, too?”

“Of course.”

About fifteen minutes later, a short, dark-skinned doctor with thinning black hair and a soul patch on his chin came into the waiting room. He wore a white coat with a gold name badge that I couldn’t read from where I sat. His gaze went from the family, then to me.

“Mr. Light?”

“Yes.”

He came over and sat next to me, offered to shake.

I took his hand. His skin felt rubbery and moist.

“I’m Doctor Prashad,” he said. “I have good news. We have managed to stabilize Mr. Petrie.”

After that, all the stuff he said flowed into a meaningless blur. He sounded like a character out of Grey’s Anatomy (not that I ever watched the show). That mundane touchstone was the only thing that kept me from shouting at him to stop babbling and go do something. Stabilize. Stabilize. What the hell did that mean?

Then Prashad ended his spiel with the doctor cliché of all doctor clichés.

“We’ll need to do more tests.”

I nodded, then tilted my head to one side and looked at Dr. Prashad as if he had slandered my best friend. “In other words, you don’t have a fucking clue what’s wrong with him?”

To his credit, Prashad didn’t so much as flinch. In fact, he gave me a thin smile. “We’ll get to the bottom of this,” he said.

At that, I shut him out of my mind. He had nothing to say that I cared about. I didn’t notice him leave, didn’t know he was gone until I felt a touch on my arm from someone sitting in the same chair. I jerked my arm away, thinking for a goofy moment it was Prashad, that he’d never left, that he refused to leave until I acknowledged how smart and amazing he was because he was a doctor, and doctors were the gods of the mortal world.

Of course, it wasn’t him. It was Mom.

I blinked at her. “When did you get here?”

“About ten minutes ago. I thought that was plenty of time to let you stare at the wall before you needed to snap out of it.”

I smelled something meaty. Ham. Mom had a plastic bag in her lap with a pair ham and Swiss sandwiches in it. My mouth watered, and that stupid guilt came back. Hunger won the fight, and in another three minutes my ham and Swiss was nothing more than crumbs down the front of my shirt.

With that out of the way, I gave Mom a more thorough look. She had her purse and tan tweed coat on the chair beside her. She wore a plain white blouse and jeans hitched up too far above her waist. Since when had she started dressing like an old lady?

I noticed her wedding ring turned around on her finger with the diamond pointed in the wrong direction. She had thinned out since October, and it had started to show in her fingers now, leaving the ring loose enough to twirl in whatever direction it felt like. And unlike mine, her sandwich only had a few bites out of it, and it lay on the bag in her lap, forgotten.

I pointed at the sandwich. “You need to eat that.”

“I’m not hungry.”

I waved a hand, not interested in having that argument at the moment.

“Have you heard anything yet?” she asked.

I filled her in on the couple sentences I had heard from the doctor.

She frowned and crossed her arms. “Damn doctors. We need Elaine.”

“Who’s Elaine?”

“Old family friend. A healer. Used to date Sylvester matter of fact. Sturdy Welsh woman. Cold, but good at what she does.”

From that description, I knew it had to be the same woman Sly had brought to heal me at the Silverdome. I had a hard time picturing her with Sly, though. Their builds couldn’t have been more different. The mechanics of their love, I thought, would have proved…difficult.

“I think I know her,” I said and explained.

“We need to get Sly out of here and over to her,” Mom said. She looked around the room as if it were a very insult to her existence. “You should have never brought him here to begin with.”

I strained to keep my voice low. We were already getting funny looks from the other family in the room. “I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t know Elaine’s number, let alone her name. And how would I know if she could make it in time? We don’t even know what’s wrong with him. He was on the floor, hacking up blood for the gods’ sake.”

Mom took a slow breath. “I’m sorry. You’re right. But the fact remains. We need to get him out of here, and I doubt they’re going to let us check him out and roll him to the car in a wheelchair.”

I pressed my hands against my face and rubbed. The day had started so nicely. That sun through the shop’s front window. The clean smell of paint. The sense of a new beginning after all the shit the three of us had been through. Now this. After facing a legion of vampires and a cadre of Ministry conspirators out to murder half of Detroit’s population, some kind of illness fucks up our chance at a reset?

Thank you fate, for that big, wet loogie in the face.

“We can’t get him out of here. He’s in ICU. He’s probably got all sorts of tubes and shit sticking out of him. Do you think we could bring Elaine to him?”

Mom spat a disdainful puff of air. “She wouldn’t step foot in this place. Besides, she wouldn’t know what materials she’d need, since we can’t tell her what’s wrong with him. Besides, do you honestly think these animals would allow Elaine to work magic on Sylvester in here?”

Wouldn’t that be a sight? “At the very least, she could check him out. Are you sure she wouldn’t come, just to do that?”

She shrugged. “All we can do is ask. But I know her feelings on doctors in general, and hospitals in particular.”

“Okay. Can you call her?”

“She doesn’t own a phone.”

“You’re joking.”

Mom leaned in close. “Healers tend to be eccentric. They all have their quirks. Elaine is a bit of a technophobe.”

Fabulous. All the more reason she wouldn’t come to the hospital, what with all the beeping machines and computers and more phones than you could count in a lifetime.

“You’ll have to visit her in person,” Mom added.

“Me? You know her. She’d be more likely to help if you asked.”

She laughed and bowed her head. “Not a chance. She doesn’t particularly like me.”

“I thought you said she was a friend.”

“Family friend. Not my friend.”

“What’s the problem between you two?”

She still had her gaze down as if had she suddenly decided that ham sandwich in her lap looked good enough to eat. But I could see her wry smile. She wasn’t looking at her lap. She was looking into her past.

“I’m the one who broke her and Sly up.”

Chapter Four

Mom gave me the short version of the story behind how she had wrecked Sly’s relationship with Elaine. She hadn’t believed that Sly really loved Elaine, but that he stayed with her because he was afraid of hurting her. She and Sly also apparently argued all the time, mostly about the alchemical trade. They had very strong and opposite views on some technical aspect of the craft.

It seemed like a petty difference to me, but I didn’t know anything about alchemy or healing. Maybe their disagreement was deeper than a simple tastes-great/less-filling debate. The more important takeaway to my mind was Sly’s continued devotion despite his own needs. That sounded a lot like the Sly I knew. His loyalty had saved my ass more than once.

In any case, Mom forced a breakup by giving Sly a sit down and grilling him until he admitted what she’d suspected. Once the truth was out in the air, he couldn’t ignore the right thing to do. So he broke it off.

And Elaine had blamed my mom ever since.

“So I shouldn’t even mention your name?” I had asked before leaving for my Mission: Impossible.

“She’ll know you’re my son, of course. So you won’t need to mention my name. But hopefully she can see past all of that. You’ll have an uphill battle, though. No doubt.”

Those not so comforting words ran through my head as I knocked on Elaine Voyle’s door.

She lived in Warren, not far from where the magical entrance to the Switch used to be—before the vampires killed the owner and the place shut down. As the only bar around Detroit that catered to those in the supernatural world, the Switch had been one of my best sources of information for the goings-on of Detroit’s paranormal community.

Those fucking vampires ruined all the good stuff.

Elaine’s house, judging from the outside, couldn’t have been more than seven-hundred square feet. The wood siding looked termite-ridden and needed a fresh coat of paint—preferably something other than the faded puke green on it now.

It was the middle of winter, but her aluminum storm door only had a screen, no glass. The inside door looked sturdy enough. But it, too, needed a paint job. I couldn’t tell if it was coral or just a really faded pink.

I recognized her the moment she opened the door and peered at me through the screen. She had a wide, full face with deep-set, bright blue eyes, like a set of crystals embedded in dough. Her skin had a freckled red tint, strongest around her cheeks. Her hair was a deep burgundy. And her body filled the entire doorway.

She wasn’t overweight, but the term “big boned” was made for women like her. She looked like she could lay me flat with a single punch from her thick-knuckled fist.

She studied me for a moment, eyes squinted.

I waited to see if she recognized me. I wanted to keep from announcing my surname in case it triggered any sour memories of my mom.

While she scrutinized me, I caught a whiff of what smelled like rich beef stew. My stomach forgot all about the ham sandwich I’d already eaten and demanded some stew like right now.

Elaine’s thin lips quirked up on one corner of her mouth. “Smells good, don’t it?”

I wondered how she knew what I was thinking. Was I drooling? I casually brushed a finger across my chin to check. Came away dry, thank goodness.

“You wouldn’t wanna eat it, love. T’aint whatcha think it is.”

Her accent puzzled me. Mom had said Elaine was Welsh, but her accent sounded like a cross between old English and a Southern drawl. Weird, right?

“It’s a potion,” I said.

“Indeedy.”

Wow. Her stuff smelled a hell of a lot better than any of Sly’s mixtures. Maybe that was the thing they had always argued about.

“So, whatcha need, Sebastian?”

I raised an eyebrow. “So you do recognize me.”

“When ya seen a man as bloody as you was, you tend to recall.” Then she surprised me by pushing open the storm door and inviting me in.

I stepped into a most glorious warmth. I hadn’t realized how cold it was outside until I came into Elaine’s house. It was nothing like the dry heat in the hospital waiting room. This had just the right bit of moisture without making me all sweaty. Between the comforting temperature and the wonderful smell coming from the back of the house, I felt like I could stay here forever. If I couldn’t convince her to come with me to the hospital, maybe she would agree to let me move in with her.

Elaine closed the door and looked me up and down with a small smile. “You’re feeling the effects, am I right?”

I stammered, not sure what she meant.

She pointed down a short hall that led into a kitchen. I could see a simmering pot on the stove and assumed that’s where the beefy smell came from.

“It’s the mixture. I’m testing it, see? Supposed to ease a troubled soul so he don’t feel a thang when ya cut into him.” She exploded into deep, full, and contagious laughter. I couldn’t have kept myself from laughing along no matter what was going on with Sly. She could have chopped off my arm, and I still would have laughed. Which explained exactly what she meant about her concoction.

She waved me close. “Tell me, love. What’re you smelling?”

“Beef stew,” I said slowly.

She slapped me on the shoulder so hard I staggered sideways. “What a good one. A fine one.”

“Why? What’s it smell like to you?”

“Ginger snaps,” she said and snapped her fingers, too.

Which, of course, I found hilarious and tore off on another laughing fit.

Her smiled faded, and she gave me a hard look, her hands on her wide hips. “Maybe I need to tone it down some.”

I pressed a fist against my mouth to stifle my laughing, ended up snorting through my nose instead.

She fluttered a hand toward a leather two-seater with a couple tears in it. It sat across from another couch the same size, but with a floral upholstery so gaudy it hurt my eyes. “Go and have a sit, love. I’ll take it off the stove.”

I sat. She hurried down the hall. A minute or two passed, and the smell began to dissipate. I was sorry for it to go, but at least I didn’t feel like I’d overdosed on nitrous oxide anymore.

I glanced around the living room. I’d seen bigger walk-in closets on HGTV. The walls were covered with paintings and embroidery with no discernible pattern. Landscapes, horses, wolves, Native Americans: all were portrayed in the paintings. The embroideries mostly consisted of religious symbols from faiths across the globe.

No shelves. No knickknacks. Not an end table or coffee table in sight. They would have overcrowded the space anyway. Once the beef stew smell cleared out, I caught a whiff of cat dander and a litter box somewhere in the house. I don’t hate cats, but I sure couldn’t imagine having one in the house. No matter what you did, you could always smell them. I supposed you’d get used to it after a while. Or maybe I was too sensitive to their particular scent. In any case, I would have made a terrible witch with a cat for a familiar.

Elaine came back, brushing her hands together as if shaking off dust. She eased down onto the couch across from me with a strained sigh. The couch springs spoinged under her weight. “So tell me, now.”

I assumed she meant me to tell her why I’d come. So I led with, “I’m in desperate need of a healer.”

She scrunched up her face. “To the hells with that. Of course ye are. That’s not what I’m askin’.”

I waited for more.

She rolled her eyes and slapped her hands onto her lap. “Sylvester. The Sly pup. How’s he behaving?”

I cringed. I didn’t want to answer. All at once, I wanted to get out of there. I didn’t want this extremely friendly woman—contrary to Mom’s description—to hear the bad news about a man she had loved. My hesitation said enough, though.

Elaine’s lips puckered. Her eyebrows drew together. “Oh, heavens. Not my Sly.”

I swallowed, nodded. “That’s why I’m here.”

She rocked forward and back, then forward once more, using momentum to help her up off the cough, grunting on the way up. She flapped her hands at me impatiently. “Let’s get on, then. Take me to him.”

I tensed. This was the tricky part. Would she agree to see him at the hospital? So far, she hadn’t lived up to Mom’s concerns. She didn’t have any issue inviting me into her home despite who my mother was. And while I didn’t see a TV anywhere—a technophobe’s worst nightmare next to the Internet, I’d guess—she did have a battery-operated clock on one wall, nearly lost among the decorations. How averse to technology could she really be?

I stood. “He’s at Royal Oak General,” I said as casually as possible. “He’s in—”

Elaine trudged across the small space between us and smacked me upside the head. “What the heavens did ye take him there for?”

She hit me pretty hard. I waited a second for the stars across my vision to twinkle out. “He was coughing up blood, barely conscious. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“You come an’ get me’s what.” She wrung her hands and paced away from me. She made a guttural groan that undulated in tone and volume. It almost sounding like a wordless chant. Then she spun around. “Can’t do it, love. They’ll kill me.”

“No one’s going to kill you. This is Sly we’re talking about. The doctors have no idea what’s wrong with him. They keep babbling about exactly nothing. But I don’t think he’s going to last long.”

She puckered her mouth so tightly her lips went white. Her nostrils flared. Her crystal eyes glared at me from their doughy caverns. “I should kill ya, love. But you don’t punish ignorance.” She looked up and laced her hands together against her heavy breast. She whispered something. A prayer or incantation maybe.

“Please,” I said.

“Hush, you,” she snapped then went back to her soft muttering. The second hand on the clock ticked fifteen times before she fell silent, unfolded her hands, and lowered her gaze to me. “He’s in the ICU?”

I nodded.

“Piss on an ant.” She pointed at me. “You’ll know better the next time.”

I held up a hand. “Scout’s honor.”

She snorted. “You ain’t nothing like a scout, my dear. But you sure are a simpleton.”

Well, that wasn’t very nice. But I took it without protest. “So you’ll come with me to the hospital?”

She squeezed her eyes shut, and a matching pair of tears rolled down each ruddy cheek. “You ain’t offered me much of a choice.”

Chapter Five

Elaine made me hold her hand from the moment we entered the hospital to the last possible second when we arrived at Sly’s room in the ICU. Any time a doctor or nurse brushed too close, Elaine would shove herself up against me, nearly knocking me over. She jumped at every bleat and beep. But, worst of all, whenever she heard a phone ring, she whined low in her throat like an injured puppy.

By the time we got to Sly, I couldn’t feel my hand, and my right foot ached from her stepping on it so many times.

But when she saw him lying in the bed with a respirator down his throat and taped to his mouth, when she looked at the digital display on the heart monitor and heard its steady but slow ping, everything else melted away from her attention.

She didn’t even seem bothered by the plastic, disinfectant, and piss smell that permeated the whole floor.

She waddled to his bedside and looked down at him, the history of her love for him written all over her face. She traced the stubble along his chin with a fingertip. She stroked his long, unkempt hair, wild across his pillow without his usual hair band holding it back away from his face.

“Oh, Sly pup.”

They had the lights dimmed in his room, but the wall the room shared with the hallway was glass all the way across, and enough of the fluorescent glare made the tears in Elaine’s eyes shimmer.

I felt a pinch in my chest. If I’d known her better, I would have gone over and given her a hug. Part of me still wanted to. At the same point, I couldn’t interrupt her moment with Sly. Sometimes you had to feel the pain alone.

I had called Mom on the way to the hospital to let her know we were coming. She had arrived first and sat in a chair tucked in a back corner. She and Elaine hadn’t so much as shared a glance. I wasn’t sure Elaine had seen Mom at all when she came in. I could read Mom’s expression, saw the same ache that I felt. None of her history with Elaine mattered right then.

After a couple minutes, Elaine took her gaze away from Sly and moved it to me. “Keep one eye at the door. I’ll be doing some things that would look a mite strange to passersby. Especially one of those white coat devils.”

I nodded.

She got to work.

She started simply enough, pulling back one of Sly’s eyelids, then the other, examining each eye with focused care. She frowned. Lines creased her brow. She shifted her position to the end of the bed and lifted the covers off of his feet. She looked pointedly to me, then nodded at the door. My cue that she was going to do whatever might look odd to one of the docs. And, yeah. It looked weird all right.

She leaned down and sniffed Sly’s feet. And not a little sniff either. In fact, it qualified as more of a snuff. She pressed her nose right against the top of first one foot, then the other. When she had her fill, she straightened and narrowed her eyes.

“Humph.”

She sidled up to the center of the bed and leaned over again, this time around where Sly’s crotch would be under the covers.

I checked the hall. A nurse in a floral print smock hurried by, but didn’t glance in. I held my breath until she passed. Then I turned back and found Elaine’s face buried into the covers, sucking in another hefty breath through her nose.

I didn’t know what to think. She was no doubt eccentric. But this? Eccentric didn’t cut it. Loony had a more truthful ring.

But she was the healer. What did I know?

I went back to keeping my eye out for any unwanted attention. I listened to Elaine sniff away, only glancing back at her to check her progress. She snuffled her way clear up to Sly’s hair, where she paused for a long moment, pressing his gray locks against her face. I had a feeling this was more personal than the rest of her check-up.

Finally, she stepped away from him. She chanced a look at Mom. Mom looked back pleadingly. Her eyes also gleamed in the hall’s cast of light. I wiped at a tickle on my cheek, and my fingertips came away wet.

A silent moment passed between the women. I felt a soft tingle of magic. The lights on the heart monitor flickered. Then the magic drew away and the monitor returned to its monotonous toning. For a second, Mom had let her emotion stir her magic. It surprised me. I didn’t think a sorceress as old and experienced as her would ever allow that. Then Elaine let free a hard sob, and I realized Mom had done it on purpose, a sort of signal of grief that Elaine sensed and seemed to accept.

She moved toward Mom. Mom stood, and they embraced.

That pinch in my heart tightened.

When they broke their hug, Elaine turned to me. She wiped her eyes with the back of her wide wrist. “I can’t help him,” she said. Another sob burst from her, and her face crumbled to misery.

My heartbeat quickened. My scalp tingled. “What are you talking about? Why can’t you?”

She wiped more tears off her red cheeks with a swipe of both hands, dragging them down her face. She visibly swallowed back another sob. “Whatever’s poisoning him ain’t the work of disease. His sickness comes from a deep place I can’t see.”

I shook my head. Denial closed in on me. I wouldn’t accept this answer. Hell, it didn’t even make any sense.

“A place you can’t see?” I asked.

I felt my voice rising out of my control. If I didn’t pull it back, I’d draw unwanted attention.

Who cares, I thought. Unleash, Sebastian!

“Or a place you can’t smell?”

She flinched.

A voice came from the doorway. “Everything all right here?”

I turned. It was Dr. Prashad. The good old useless fucking doctor who needed to run more tests. Maybe Elaine needed to run more tests, too. Another smell test. Or maybe she could lick Sly this time, get a good taste.

“Everything’s fine,” Mom said. “This is hard for us.”

Prashad studied me for a few seconds, his scrutiny making my skin crawl. I gritted my teeth until my jaw hurt so I wouldn’t say anything I might regret. Although I couldn’t think of a thing I’d say that would leave me feeling sorry. That was probably sign enough to keep my mouth shut.

He came to some decision, nodded, and moved along.

I swung back to face Elaine. “You have to do something.”

“This isn’t a thing I have skills for.” Tears turned her voice to a watery mumble. “My work heals the body. This isn’t a sickness of the body. It’s a sickness of the soul.”

Chapter Six

Sickness of the soul.

The words sent a cold shudder through me. The ugly hospital stink suddenly seemed too much to bear, like it was suffocating me, poisoning my gut until it churned.

Sickness of the soul.

With that, Elaine had said all she needed to say. I knew what was going on. Not the details or the mechanics. But when it came to Sly’s soul, I knew something Elaine did not. Sly’s soul was not complete.

Elaine crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. “You look like shit in a desert, love. What is it ya know?”

Either she was damn perceptive, or I wore my shock all over my face. Probably the latter. I couldn’t tell, though. To me, my face felt numb, except for a tingling around my mouth that made it hard for me to speak. I wondered if this was what a stroke felt like.

But after some working at it, I managed to say a few words. “Sly traded a piece.”

The combined intensity of both Mom and Elaine’s stare nearly staggered me backward like a physical force.

“A piece?” Elaine asked.

“His soul,” I croaked.

Elaine’s eyes grew so wide they didn’t look deep-set anymore, they looked ready to pop off her face. Their stark blueness shined. “Sly pup gave away a titch of his soul?” Soul came out loud and gritty.

I backed away until I bumped against a set of cabinets next to a stainless steel sink. My elbow knocked against a glass jar of tongue depressors that rattled and clinked. Elaine looked ready to deck me, and like I’d said before, she could probably knock me out with a single blow.

Instead, she turned on Sly, looked down at him with a mix of love and rage. She gripped the bed’s plastic railing meant to keep patients from rolling out. Her knuckles went white, and the railing itself wiggled as she trembled. I could see the muscles in her thick arm bulge, tightening the fabric of her sleeves against them.

“What kind of bloody muck you get yourself into, pup? I could kill you if yer weren’t dying already.”

She screwed her face up tight. It made her look like a little girl making a hard wish on a star. Then she relaxed, let go of the railing, and took a step back. She turned to me.

“Who’d he give if off to?”

Oh, man. She was not going to like my answer.

“A group of witches. He used it to barter for their help.”

The color drained from her face. “What witches?”

I looked behind me at the damn cabinets that kept me from backing away any further. Maybe I could climb into one of them before answering her question.

“Who?” she shouted.

I glanced toward the hall, half-expecting to see Prashad staring at us through the glass. He hadn’t returned. Yet.

I could see across the hall and through the glass to the room opposite. The lights were out, but I saw the empty bed well enough. Its emptiness felt like an omen.

Without looking away from the vacant bed, I answered Elaine’s question.

“The Maidens of Shadow.”

I kept my gaze averted. I didn’t want to see the rage, the horror, the pain, the…whatever I might see in her. It wasn’t like trading a piece of Sly’s soul had been my idea. In fact, I had tried to shut that shit down right then and there. But Sly had insisted. Still, the only reason he had done it was to help me. A shining example of his loyalty outweighing his own self-interest. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t brokered the trade myself. I was just as much to blame.

Turned out I should have been watching her. I didn’t see her come at me, didn’t know she was so close until her big hands circled my throat and started squeezing. I tried to take a breath, but it was like sucking through a bent straw, only more painful. My face swelled and throbbed in rhythm with my pulse. Her thumbs pressed into my trachea. I expected to hear a pop when they punctured through.

The edges of my vision went fuzzy.

“Elaine,” Mom said with firm but quiet urgency. “Let him go.”

Elaine squeezed harder. “I shoulda known all you Lights were the same. You don’t do your name a bit of justice.”

“Stop it.”

I grabbed Elaine’s wrists and tried to pulled her hands off me. I might as well have tried to lift a mountain. I would have had better luck.

She pulled me close, until our noses nearly touched. Her eyes glared into mine with a desperate madness. “Why would you let my pup do that? Why didn’t you stop him?”

It occurred to me I hadn’t told her why he had traded his slice of soul in the first place. I had assumed her attack had to do with my part of the blame. But what she was really mad about was me “letting” Sly make the trade, not because he had done it for me. If she’d known that, she would have snapped my neck already.

I tried to answer, but I never stood a chance with her grip on my throat. I creaked and croaked, my pulse quickening as my blood starved for oxygen. The thumping in my ears muffled everything. Mom said something else, but I couldn’t make out the words.

Whatever she’d said must have gotten through to Elaine. Elaine released me and turned her back to me.

I gasped. My first few full breaths burned my throat. My neck was sore. I’d probably have some bruising in the shape of her kielbasa fingers. I was glad my magic made me a fast healer. I could only imagine the looks I’d get from strangers with a pair of black and blue hand prints around my throat.

Bent over with my hands on my knees, I looked up at Mom. “What’d you say to her?”

“I told her that if anyone can make things right with those witches, you could.”

With her back still facing me, and her head bowed, Elaine said, “I’m no sorcerer. And I am no sort of fighter.” She turned slowly and lifted her eyes to meet mine. “You think you can take on the Maidens?”

Nope and no way. But I didn’t say that, of course. “I hope I won’t have to. I’m hoping they’ll listen to reason and fix this.”

Elaine’s laugh came so hard and suddenly, I jumped. But the laugh didn’t carry the mirth to support its volume. So, yeah, it made her sound a little crazy.

“Black witches don’t reason,” she said. “They spread the blackness of their hearts.”

“Well, we’ve had a history,” I said.

Which didn’t end that well, remember, dummy?

“They helped me get my memories back,” Mom said.

Elaine whirled on her. “They conjured on you?”

“They helped me, too,” I said. “They helped me take down Logan Goulet.”

Elaine looked back and forth between me and Mom, uncertain who to scold next. She picked me.

“They ain’t your friends, love. Not by any measure.”

“I know that.”

“There is only one kind of good black witch,” she said. “And that’d be a dead one.”

Chapter Seven

Whether a dead black witch was better than a living one didn’t much matter. I had to go see them, had to let them know whatever they were doing with Sly’s soul was killing him.

The Maidens of Shadow had some previous relationship with Sly. That’s how we’d gotten involved with them in the first place. I hoped, whatever the nature of that relationship, it meant they had some care about Sly’s wellbeing. I couldn’t—or didn’t want to, at least—believe they meant to harm him on purpose. Maybe it was some strange side effect from whatever kind of magic they were working. They might have no idea what was happening to Sly.

I had no illusion they would give his piece of soul back, but maybe they’d stop and use it for something else when I told them what was going on.

And I couldn’t help wondering what they were using it for.

Mom and I lived in the city now, in one of several houses in Corktown currently occupied by various members of the paranormal community. This was part of a new initiative started by the Ministry’s interim leaders—the last regime had allowed a dangerous amount of corruption go on under its nose, in case you hadn’t heard.

The Ministry was slowly turning Corktown into Detroit’s premier district for the more agreeable supernatural races and magical practitioners of various stripes. It kept us among, if not friends, like-minded acquaintances. The consolidation also made it easier to contain knowledge of the paranormal from the uninitiated. Safer that way for all parties.

While I missed my old—now burnt down—house, I loved the new place. No more hiding our magical heritage from the neighbors. The ability to speak freely about our secret world. A sense of real community that had never existed before. And to the outside world, it looked like the same old Corktown the city already knew.

I swung by the house to drop Mom off and change out of my paint-spattered jeans and into a pair of black slacks and a gray sweater. I took a moment to check my hair in the mirror. I noticed I needed a shave again. I’d gotten lazy about that lately.

I realized all this primping was a stalling tactic. I had no good plan for how to approach the Maidens. Expect to walk up to their door and knock. I didn’t have a number for them, and I doubted they had it listed. And we hadn’t parted on very good terms. I believe the words Angelica, their unofficial leader, had used included never, cross, and paths.

You don’t take not-so-subtle threats like that lightly when given by the most powerful black witch coven in the Midwest.

I stepped out onto our covered front porch. It was a small porch, but had enough room for a pair of wicker chairs and a round stool that we used as a table. The wicker was painted a clean white that matched the posts on the railing around the porch.

A cold January wind cut through me despite my long coat. The warmth I had stored up from inside vacated my body like an exorcised spirit. I jammed my hands into my pockets. I should have had gloves on, but wearing gloves wasn’t conducive to casting fire magic.

Both sides of the street were lined with houses that looked the same but different. They looked marvelous to me because I knew I didn’t have to worry about who peered out their window at me. I could just stand on my porch and think. But on the heels of that thought I noticed a dark blue two-door Honda parked on the street a few houses down. I could make out the form of someone sitting in the driver’s side, and I got a prickly feeling that the person was watching me.

All of a sudden, the car’s engine chugged to life. The driver squealed the tires, making a U-turn out of its place at the curb, and sped off down the street and out of sight around the next corner.

Okay, that was weird.

Maybe I was being paranoid—I was suffering that a lot lately—but it had looked like the person had realized I’d made them and bailed in a hurry. I thought of the Ministry conspirators, wondered how many might still be out there somewhere, and decided the best I could do was keep an eye out for any other strange people hanging around.

I’d come out on the porch in the first place because I had hoped the brisk air would shake some thoughts loose and drop a safe and easy way to meet up with the Maidens without getting myself turned into a toad or whatever. No such luck.

Twilight chased the blurry white glow of the sun setting beyond the cloud cast. Dusk soon. However I decided to tackle this, I wouldn’t have to go it alone.

I went back inside.

Mom sat on our couch staring at the TV.

The TV was off.

I thought about saying something to rouse her, but I figured she deserved a little space-out time. On the way home, I had told her the details about Sly’s soul exchange with the witches. I had expected her to rant, but instead she fell quiet and nodded here and there as I told her the story. At one point, she had mumbled something that sounded like, I know. I wasn’t sure what she meant, since I hadn’t told her any of it yet, worried she might blame herself for his sacrifice.

You know, like I was doing myself.

Our house had an old-school basement with cinder block walls and a rough concrete floor. We hadn’t done much with it, since it really wasn’t suitable for more than storage—including Odi’s coffin. Including Odi, for that matter.

His coffin, a black number that had lost some of its shine to the dust in the basement, lay along the back wall.

A single bulb with a pull chain illuminated the space. Cobwebs clung between the floor joists above. The dark corners were also rife with them. I kept promising Odi I’d spruce up the place, but I put I kept putting it off. I mean, what did he care what the place looked like? He was in the coffin the whole time he was down here.

I stood under the bulb and waited.

I’d timed it pretty good. Only two minutes passed before the coffin’s lid jumped once, then slowly opened, the hinges barely whispering. The inside was lined with dark blue satin. The whole casket looked way too formal for its occupant, who sat up as he pushed the lid wide.

Odi Crossman looked like an average teenager fond of dressing in the style of a decade he had hardly known in life. From the open and untucked plaid flannel, the Pearl Jam t-shirt underneath, and the jeans with ragged holes in the knees, he was a living homage to 90s grunge. Since that had been the most influential decade of my own youth, I could appreciate it.

He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and yawned hard enough to make his jaw pop.

“Yeaoh.” He pressed his hand against the side of his face and turned to me. “You hear that, dude? I’m getting all creaky already.”

Odi, however, was not your average teenager, if the coffin hadn’t tipped you off. He was a vampire, freshly minted about a year ago. He was also a sorcerer. And due to a series of complicated events, he was now my apprentice.

He was a special case, because in life, he was orphaned at a young age, and he had had no idea about the power he was born with until a handful of months ago. To complicate things, the vampire who had turned him had, like his mortal parents, abandoned him. An old vamp named Toft Kitchens had taken Odi in. But Toft was gone now, too.

I was all Odi had left.

Lucky him.

He climbed out of the coffin, smoothed his hands down over his shirt, rolled his shoulder, then shook like a wet dog. “Man, I slept good. But I’m starving.”

My wrist tingled.

Odi cringed. “Sorry, dude. That was totally rude.” He cocked his head and smiled. “But I’m a poet, and I guess I know it.”

“You’re a goof, is what you are.” I slid my coat off and pushed up my sleeve. Despite my quicker healing, I could still grow scar tissue, and I had a pair of ugly knots on the inside of my wrist from repeated puncture wounds. The tingle around the scars turned to a dull pain, my nerves anticipating what came next.

Odi wrinkled his brow. “You sure you want to keep doing this? I know the lighting’s bad down here, but you look green.”

“You have a better idea?”

See, Odi had never fed directly on a human before me. Toft had let Odi drink from him. I didn’t exactly understand why. I knew Toft kept thralls on hand to feed himself. For whatever reason, he had spared Odi from that step. I suspected it had to do with Odi’s undead youth. He probably couldn’t enthrall even the most empty-headed human, which meant, if he wanted mortal blood, he would have to take it by force. And since that was a violation of Ministry law, it could put Odi in the cross-hairs of a demon hunter.

Now if you were wondering how enthralling a human to take their blood while they were basically a mindless puppet did not break Ministry law, welcome to the subtleties of paranormal politics. As long as vamps didn’t kill their thralls, and didn’t enthrall too many at a time, the Ministry looked the other way. Also, believe it or not, some humans wanted to offer themselves to vampires. That suggested a level of psychological damage I could not comprehend—so I tried not the think about it.

When Odi didn’t offer any new options, I held out my hands in a see there gesture.

He hitched a shoulder. “Whatever, dude. It’s your blood.”

He came over and got to work. The bite was always the worst part, feeling my skin pop against his fangs like a hot dog casing. The sound of him slurping at the wound was the second worst part. The lightheadedness from blood loss didn’t bother me so much, though. It was like a mini high, and something better to focus on than the pulsating suction on my wrist.

Thankfully, he had gotten good at drinking without spilling. And, when he was done, I could press a little magic into the wound to close up the teeth marks, keeping things nice and clean. The third worst part of the whole process was his slobber glazing my skin.

I wiped my wrist off on my pants, pulled my sleeve back down, and put my coat on.

Odi took one look at the coat. “We going somewhere? Gonna teach me some new tricks out in the field?”

“Teaching later,” I said. “Witches first.”

Chapter Eight

The Maidens of Shadow lived like a group of college kids in a four-bedroom apartment across the street from Wayne State University. There used to be six of them, but one of them, Wendy, died in our confrontation with Logan Goulet. Probably why the rest of them didn’t want to see me ever again. They were all in their twenties, or at least appeared to be. Witches were good with glamours. They could have all been old hags with warts on their noses for all I knew. Whatever the truth, they blended in well among all the University students living in the Cass Corridor. A nice cover for a black witch coven.

I had decided to start with a stakeout. I had parked my newly leased Jetta at the curb a half block down from the apartment building. Odi sat in the passenger seat, but enough shadow escaped the glare of the streetlight that he could make himself invisible to the mortal eye. The kid had perfected his shadow walking to a scary degree. He could manipulate the smallest shred of darkness to hide himself.

Toft would have been proud.

Unfortunately, he was currently using this skill to annoy the hell out of me. He would flicker into sight, then flicker out again while chuckling like a bad impersonation of Beavis or Butthead—I couldn’t tell which.

I gritted my teeth while I stared at the front door of the Maidens’ apartment building, trying not to let him get a rise out of me. But I could still see him in the corner of my eye, blinking in and out of sight like a neon sign above a strip club.

Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. “Would you please stop,” I growled between my teeth.

“Fine. Spoilsport.” He materialized back into view and grinned at me. “Have to admit, that’s pretty good, right?”

“It’s pretty something.”

“So how long we gonna wait here before we go in?”

“Who said anything about going in?”

He sighed like an impatient child. “But Daaaad. I’m booooored.”

I twisted in my seat to face him. “You didn’t get the chance to meet these ladies,” I said. “Trust me. You do not want to screw with them.”

Odi narrowed his eyes and sniffed the air. “You’re afraid of them. I can smell it.”

I scowled. “Am not. I’m being cautious. You learn a bit about that before the next time you play with your fire magic.”

“Are you always going to hold that over my head? I did save your ass once.”

“You also nearly killed me and Mom.”

He spat air and rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

We sat there until after ten, but none of the Maidens had come or gone. I counted the stories up to their floor. I could see bright light coming through their bay window. Someone was up there and awake. Maybe all five of them. I would have preferred to know for sure.

“Is this where you ask me to shadow walk in there and scope out the sitch?”

I could have smacked him. I didn’t like it when he knew what I was thinking. Only this time, I had dismissed the idea as soon as I’d had it. “You can’t,” I said. “There won’t be enough shadows for you to hide once you’re in the building. And it’s an apartment. Not like you can peek into their windows from inside.”

“So I’ll turn into a bat and fly up there to peek inside.”

I gave him the stink eye.

He snickered. “What? That was funny. Could you imagine?” He flapped his elbows like a pair of wings and made an eek-eek sound. “Sucks that isn’t one of the perks. Real vampires are so lame.”

I couldn’t help notice the sag in his tone at the word vampires. He still didn’t like referring to himself like that. Actually, it had gotten worse after he lost Toft. Without an undead mentor, the kid must have felt isolated, a stranger to himself. He thought if he could make jokes about his condition, he could deny its reality somehow. But I knew he wasn’t fooling anyone, least of all himself.

We settled into silence for another twenty minutes. I had grabbed a Vanilla Bean Latte from Biggby on the way over and had since drained all twenty-four ounces. My bladder finally decided it had had enough abuse and demanded relief. I squirmed for a little while, but facts were facts…I had to pee.

I looked at the empty Biggby cup in my cup holder.

“Don’t even think about it,” Odi said.

“What?”

“I can see you doing the potty dance. And I saw the way you looked at that cup.”

“I don’t think the person without a working bladder deserves an opinion in the matter. I can’t hold it anymore.”

“And this stakeout is a waste of time. You need to find yourself a toilet, do your business, then pull up your britches and knock on those witches’ door.” He chortled against his fist. “Britches and witches. Totally a poet today.”

I smacked him on the arm, hard.

He pretended it hurt.

Then I gave in, used the bathroom of a nearby fast food joint, and drove back to the apartment. I saw Odi get out while I did, but by the time I slammed my door shut, he was already out of sight. I hadn’t even heard him close his door.

Past eleven, there wasn’t much going on. None of the usual bustle around the University. No pedestrians that I could see around this block. Time to tuck in for the night before hitting the books and taking exams the next day.

For the few eyes that might have watched me, I played it casual, strolling up to the building as if I belonged. I don’t know why I felt the need. It wasn’t like I was sneaking up on the Maidens. I had little doubt they had cast magical wards around the building and the stairs up to their apartment. Sure enough, when I entered the lobby I could feel the tingle of magic all around me. I no sooner noticed it when I heard something snap like a blown circuit.

I had already tripped a ward.

“Aw, crap,” I heard Odi say behind me.

For a second I thought he had sensed the ward go off, too. A good sign, because he hadn’t yet shown an aptitude for sensing outside magic. But when I turned around, I realized he was upset that the light in the lobby took away any shadows large enough to hide in.

He patted himself down as if looking for a lost piece of shadow he might have misplaced in one of his pockets.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “They already know we’re here.”

“We sure do.”

Angelica, with her night black hair and milk pale skin, stood on the landing of the stairs leading up to the next floor. She frowned, a comma-shaped dimple forming between her eyebrows.

“And we’re not happy about it.”

Chapter Nine

“Give me half a reason I shouldn’t hex you where you stand.”

I put up my hands like I was in a stickup. I tried not to notice she wasn’t wearing any pants, just a long, baggy t-shirt with wizard Mickey from Fantasia on it. “Whoa. I didn’t think we’d ended things that badly.”

Her lip curled, showing a glimpse of her perfect, white teeth. A little too perfect. Maybe she was wearing a glamour after all. I’d been too wrapped up in saving Mom to notice before. “Wendy died because of you,” she said, voice low and a little sweet.

“The way I remember it, a vampire killed Wendy.”

“And so you bring one here with you.” She inclined her head toward Odi. “Do you care so little about your own life to insult us like this?”

I hooked a thumb toward Odi. “Him? Oh, he’s not a real vampire. He’s just a baby.”

“I know what he is.” She glared at Odi for a couple seconds, then returned her attention to me. “Leave.”

“I need to talk to you.”

She shot her hand out, two fingers curled into a fork. Her lips started to form a word—probably from one ancient language or another.

“Whoa,” I shouted and waved my arms over my head. “Whoa, just whoa. Do you really think I’d come here if I didn’t have a good reason?”

She didn’t unfork her fingers, but she didn’t call out a hex either. “I’m sure you have a wonderful reason. Just not one I care about.”

“It’s Sly,” I said, hands still in the air—which was silly, because I didn’t need to reach for anything to pull up a ball of fire and fling it at her face. But I wanted to look as non-threatening as possible.

She hesitated. “What about him?”

“He’s sick. Very sick. Like, might die sick.”

For a second, I thought I saw something in her eyes. Recognition? Guilt? Plain worry?

She covered it quickly, though, and I wondered if I’d seen it only because I had wanted to.

“Do you even care?” I asked.

“We’re not healers,” she said. “There’s nothing we can do.”

“He’s already seen a healer. She said she can’t help because it’s a sickness of the soul.”

When I emphasized the last word, she flinched. But barely.

“Still can’t help him.” She pivoted on the landing and started up the stairs. The soles of her fuzzy pink slippers made a plastic tick with each step.

“You know you can help him. You just don’t want to.”

She paused between steps, one foot on the stair in front of her. She waited there a second, back to me, head tilted to one side as if she were listening for something. Then she said, “What’s begun cannot be undone.”

“What kind of bullshit is that?”

She started up the stairs again.

“Then I’m right,” I shouted after her. “This has to do with the piece of soul he gave you.”

She didn’t answer.

I growled, an angry vibration going through me. I charged up the stairs after her, grabbed her by the arm, and pulled her around to face me.

She’d been ready, though. When she came around, she had her forked fingers up. She whispered something, and in the next instant I found myself flying through the air, down the stairs, and onto my back on the lobby floor. The impact knocked the wind out of my lungs.

But my wits stayed sharp. I drew on my power and commanded the air. I spun a small cyclone around Angelica, and she whirled around with it. The force of the wind reached me, ruffling my hair and turning the air in the lobby frigid. I threw my hand up as if lifted her myself. The wind obeyed and lifted her off her feet. Then I clenched my fist and wrenched it toward me.

Angelica came sailing down and hit the floor beside me with a soft oof.

I changed from air to fire, setting my right hand ablaze with undulating orange. I had a more powerful blue flame I had recently learned, but I wasn’t trying to disintegrate her.

I thrust my fiery hand out till it came inches from her face.

Her eyes went wide. The flame’s glow rippled and flashed in her dark irises.

“Unless you want me to singe your eyebrows off—”

“What?” she asked with venom in her voice. “What do you think I can do? Stop a week long ritual? Convince my sisters and our mothers to waste all we have put forth because of one sick little man?”

My flaming fist tightened. A current of anger ran through me, tainting my magic. My orange flame turned blue. “Sly is not a little man. He’s bigger than your sick little coven combined. He has a big heart. A loyal soul. And if he dies because of some wicked magic you think is more important than a human life, I will bring Hellfire down on your whole coven.”

She laughed, rolling onto her side and arching her back like a giggling little girl in the midst of a tickle fight. I tried not to notice her big t-shirt rise above her waist, or the yellow lace boy shorts underneath.

That just made me even more pissed. At myself for noticing. At her for laughing and rolling around as if this were all a joke to her.

“Did you hear me?” she asked. “Our mothers are with us. Even if you could harm my sisters, and that’s a big if, you would die before you took another breath.”

Their mothers.

I had heard her, but in the heat of the moment hadn’t registered what it meant. The girls I had met were the Maidens of Shadow’s youth group. I should have suspected as much. But I’d not had a reason to wonder much about it.

Angelica’s laughter petered out. She gripped my wrist below the flame around my fist and drew it closer to her face. The flesh of one cheek began to bubble and crisp. Then melt away to reveal muscle and skull.

The smell of it was horribly sweet, like a honey baked ham.

I tried to pull back, but her grip was stronger than it should have been.

“Sebastian Light,” she said. Her voice had taken an ugly turn. She sounded like an animal. Like a demon. Like a woman with a mouth full of hell. “Your fire means nothing.”

Then she shoved my hand away, rolled onto her hands and knees, and shot to her feet. She looked down at me with a smile warped by the hole burned into her cheek. I could see the sides of some of her teeth. And the edges around the hole were as black as her hair.

“Don’t come here again.”

She turned on her heel and sauntered up the stairs.

I stayed on the floor, propped up on my elbows, until she climbed out of sight.

“Dude,” Odi said and offered me his hand to pull me up. I grabbed his hand and he easily lifted me. “That was insanely gross. Why would she do that to her face?”

“She was proving a point.”

“What point?”

“That my power means nothing.”

Chapter Ten

Back at the house, I filled Mom in on how the meeting with Angelica went. I hated doing it because the lines in her face deepened, especially around the eyes, and her pallor drained to near vampire levels by the time I finished.

We were in the living room. Mom was still in her spot on the couch. At some point, she had turned on the TV. She had one of those 24-hour news channels on with the volume down. I had no idea why. Mom had little patience for the behavior of average mortals. She always said the paranormal community had enough drama. She didn’t need to hear about shootings, lying politicians, and war.

She must have been desperate for distraction in order for her to tune into that channel.

At that moment, a car chase was going on somewhere in Los Angeles, the news chopper following the action.

I sat next to Mom. Odi chose to stand over by the TV. He usually preferred to stay on his feet, explaining that his daily coffin time made him feel cramped and restless. I’d never heard a vampire make that complaint. I chalked it up to Odi’s undead youth. I know it would take me a long time to get used to sleeping in a box, no matter how fancy the box looked from the outside.

Mom took my hand. Her skin felt especially soft and fragile. Though I think I was projecting, because I felt soft and fragile myself. Too soft to stand against a black coven. Too fragile to survive if I tried.

“What are you going to do?” Mom asked.

I bit down on my lip, my wheels spinning but only making smoke. What was I going to do? Angelica had referred to their elder witches as their mothers. Was that literal? If so, how many moms were we talking? Most of the girls didn’t look related except for the freckled twins. So…four mothers? Four elder, experienced black witches who exceeded the power of their daughters, which was already a metric ton of power.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I can’t let Sly just…” I pulled my hand free from Mom’s and clenched my fist. I imagined blue flame around that fist, and me finishing the job to Angelica’s face. Melt that bitch right down to the bones.

Mom’s tired sigh pulled me from my revenge fantasy. I relaxed my hand and patted Mom’s leg. “It’s after midnight. You should get to bed.”

She nodded absently, but didn’t move.

“Come on.” I took her hand and stood, then gave her arm a gentle tug. For a blink I flashed back to Mom’s time in the hospital in her unresponsive fugue. I could sort of direct her, get her to sip a drink, or chew a small bite of food, but otherwise she seemed barely a living person.

Mom finally stood. I took her by the arm and led her upstairs to her bedroom. Before she laid down, she searched my face with her gaze.

“What?”

“Do you really think the witches are involved?”

“I think it’s pretty obvious, especially after my visit. Why?”

She looked away. “Wishful thinking, I suppose.”

Once I had her tucked in, I went back downstairs.

Odi had his palm out with a small flame dancing at its center. A look of wonder filled his eyes as he stared at what he’d conjured.

I cleared my throat. “If you burn down my new house, I will stake you.”

He curled his fingers closed and the flame died. “Pretty good, huh?”

I had to admit, ever since a few uncontrolled blasts of fire a few months ago, he had worked hard to gain control. Though I felt a little bad. He had a lot of power for a kid so young. He could have chosen any number of magical focuses. But because he only had me as a teacher, he had naturally followed my path as an elementalist with a specialty in fire. It was a raw kind of power, flame magic. Great for demon hunting, so it had served me well. Odi, being a breed of demon himself, probably wouldn’t find much joy in that career path.

I had to do more research, get us both working on different kinds of magic, expand our horizons. Maybe Gladys, the witch next door, would let me rummage through her massive spell book collection.

I froze.

The witch next door.

“What’s wrong with you?” Odi asked. “Your mouth is hanging open.”

“Everything I know about witches I learned from books and the little experience I had with the Maidens.”

“Okay.”

“I need to know more. I need to see if they have some kind of weakness or blind spot. And we just so happen to have a witch for a neighbor.”

Odi furled his brow. “You mean Gladys? She’s a white witch, I thought.”

“She is. But she still might be able to help.”

He shrugged. “I don’t see how, but, hey, you’re the expert here.”

Expert? Not hardly. Truth was, I didn’t know if Gladys could help at all. Asking her about other witches was probably like asking an Australian in Sydney if they knew my friend living in Brisbane, as if all Aussies knew one another.

At the moment, I didn’t have any other ideas, though. Angelica had said their ritual lasted a week. That could mean I had that long before losing Sly for good. More than likely, less than that, since they had already started whatever they had planned. Going to Gladys would at least make me feel like I was doing something to help Sly.

And we were seriously running out of time.

Chapter Eleven

Since I wasn’t about to knock on Gladys’s door in the middle of the night, I spent the rest of the evening practicing magic in the basement with Odi. We worked a little with air, and I even let him work on his small flames. While the size of his fire did not impress him much, his control impressed me. I hadn’t been sure I could do it, but I’d finally made progress with him when it came to manipulating fire.

Just before dawn, Odi climbed back into his coffin, and I headed upstairs to bed. I set my alarm for noon. Not a great amount of sleep, but I wanted to see Gladys as soon as possible.

She welcomed me with a wide smile and an offer of some tea. I’d had Gladys’s tea before, and nothing could make me refuse at least one cup.

Gladys Jackson stood just over four feet, and had skin almost as black as night, which made her wonderful smile shine all the brighter. Her braided hair hung clear down to her waist, which made her seem even shorter. She often wore tie-dyed shirts and long flowing skirts, but today she wore a dark dress printed with golden flourishes. And while she looked as beautiful as ever, she also kind of reminded me of a Jawa from Star Wars. But in a good way.

She moved with the urgency of a dervish, whooshing back to her kitchen to fetch the tea.

I took a seat in an overstuffed recliner that hugged my body so that I felt like I was one with the chair. I made sure to sit here whenever I visited. I had jokingly threatened to steal it a few times.

The house had the same layout as ours, but she had made it look completely different. The drapes were made of maroon silk and hailed from India according to Gladys. Besides the most comfortable recliner known to man, the rest of the furniture had a cozy feel as well. A puffy brown couch. An oak coffee table with legs carved like elephants standing on their hind legs, holding the table up with the tops of their heads. The table’s surface wasn’t polished or lacquered, and looked like it had come straight from the tree it was carved from.

Bookshelves covered every wall, and there wasn’t a single gap between any of the tomes on them. None of them were modern books. No self-help paperbacks or glitzy bestselling hardcovers. The youngest book was probably dated at least fifty years ago. Some, with their ragged spines and frayed edges, could have gone back a thousand years—hand printed and in ancient languages both known and long forgotten.

The air smelled of must and leather.

Gladys must have had the water already boiled, because she quickly returned with a chocolate colored ceramic mug in each hand, thin metal chains dangling over the edges. She used loose leaf tea, which required these wire mesh balls instead of bags. I wasn’t a big tea guy, loose leaves or otherwise, but, like I said, I could not resist Gladys’s brew.

She handed me one of the mugs, and the steam wafted over me as I took it. The smell of honey and pine rode the steam right up into my nose as I sucked in a deep breath. Despite all the worry over Sly, my muscles instantly relaxed.

Gladys set her mug on the coffee table and took a seat on the edge of the couch. If she scooted back, the cushy cushions would swallow her small body. Then she couldn’t reach her tea.

The room had a cave-like feel, with the towering bookshelves and big furniture closing us in. A floor lamp with a soft yellow glow could have been our firelight. For a cold January afternoon, I couldn’t think of any better place to be.

“So,” Gladys said, folding her hands in her lap. “You said on the phone you needed me for some research. Hit me with it. What’s the topic?”

“Witches.”

Her eyebrows went up. “I guess I know a thing or two about that. But can you be more specific?”

I wanted to broach this delicately. I wasn’t sure how a white witch would react to my asking for information on black witches. As the labels implied, they didn’t exactly get along.

“It’s a sensitive topic.”

She smiled. “This about Casey? Cause she’s a druid, not a witch.”

Casey was the cute, single neighbor in the house on our other side. For a while, I thought about asking her out. But I wasn’t ready to date yet. Having your girlfriend betray you to a group of vampires kinda sticks with you for a bit.

I waved a hand. “No, no. This is nothing like that.”

She drew her head back and gave me a flat stare. “Well, it should be. I can feel the tension in you. When’s the last time you had an orgasm?”

I felt my face flush. “Um…” I cleared my throat. “Gladys, this is pretty serious. I’m sorry I sound so cryptic, but I’m not sure how to ask—”

“Just ask. Or have a sip of tea to stall a bit, then ask.” She picked up her own mug, sniffed in some steam, and smiled. Her content sigh sounded almost orgasmic. I wondered if she were trying to send me a message. I could have thrown the question right back at her. She lived alone. I didn’t know her age. I knew she was older, but not too old for the equipment to still work.

When I caught my thoughts running down that rabbit hole, I reigned them in and focused on my tea. I took my time with my first sip. The tea was still a little too hot to drink, but I forced myself anyway because it tasted so good. Two sips, and I couldn’t stall much longer. The look Gladys was giving me said as much.

I set my tea down, folded my hands in my lap, and went for it.

“What do you know about the Maidens of Shadow?”

I didn’t expect her to smile. But smile she did. “This reminds me of a joke I hear a lot when I tell someone I’m a white witch. People say, ‘Oh, you look like a black witch to me.’ And they laugh their little laughs. And I throw a little hex their way so the next time they take a drink it ends up shooting out their nose.”

“Doesn’t sound very white to me,” I said with a smirk.

“We’re not talking about nice witches and mean ones. This is all about the source. I’ve never bled myself or anyone else to cast a spell. Not even the smallest of animals. That kind of magic feels like a grease stain on your soul. But you can be downright friendly and still wear that stain.”

“You don’t seem worried about what I’m asking.”

“No harm in the asking. But you’re still awfully general. You can’t narrow it down?”

I looked down at the tea in my mug. Its surface reflected the light in the room, giving the liquid a silver sheen. The tea’s sweet and piney smell surrounded us now. The comfort from the drink didn’t reach the heights of whatever Elaine had mixed together when I’d gone to see her, but the magic didn’t feel too different.

“How many of them are there really?”

She frowned in thought, the lifted a shoulder. “Hard to say. I know of the six over by the university.”

“Five,” I corrected.

That won me a curious look. “I’m pretty certain it’s six.”

“It was. But they lost one a few months back.”

“Seems you know more about them than I do.”

“Not nearly enough. What do you know about their mothers?”

Gladys’s lips formed a small O. “They hail from Toledo, far as I know.”

“When they say ‘mother,’ is that literal? The witches downtown are their kids?”

“Yes. They’re a big, happy family, with only a small amount of inbreeding.”

Now there was a fun fact I could have done without. While I tried to think of what else to ask, I picked up my tea and drank some more.

Gladys, on the other hand, ignored hers. She crossed her short, pudgy arms and leveled a dark stare in my direction. As I’d suspected, she didn’t like my line of questioning. I couldn’t blame her. There was a lot not to like. But I had to know.

I cupped my mug in my hands and rested them in my lap. “How come their moms are so far south, not even in the same state?”

Gladys shrugged, arms still crossed. She looked like a miniature bouncer about to kick me out of the club. “Spread their influence? Let the girls mature on their own terms? Probably a bit of both.”

“Okay, what would you think if I told you the mothers were in town?”

She leaped to her feet, knocking the coffee table with a knee, and tipping her mug. The mesh tea ball rolled across the table while tea pooled away and dribbled onto the brown carpet. She didn’t seem to notice the mess. She gaped at me, arms lip at her sides, her chest heaving with each heavy breath. “Do you know this? Or suspect it?”

I wobbled a hand. “Somewhere in the middle. One of the Maidens suggested the whole family was conducting some kind of ritual.”

She clutched at her chest as if worried her heart might beat its way through her breastbone. The whites of her wide eyes shone bright in contrast to the color of her skin. “Why in the goddess’s name are you hanging with those girls?”

“They helped me out of a…situation. They helped a lot, actually.”

Gladys’s shook her head. “They didn’t help you. Black witches don’t help no one but themselves. What do they got?”

If she seemed ready to explode already, telling her about the piece of Sly’s soul would pop her for sure. I couldn’t hold back, though. If I wanted her help, she needed to know it all.

“A friend of mine,” I said, “traded a piece of his soul in exchange for—”

“He did what?” She staggered, lost her footing, and plopped into the couch. Sure enough, she tipped back into the cushions, and her feet came off the floor. It would have looked comical, we probably would have shared a laugh at her expense, if not for the panic in her eyes.

She struggled her way to the edge of the couch, and I waited to say more until she regained some of her composure. Once she had, she regarded me with wet, incredulous eyes. “I cannot believe you would be so stupid…” Her gaze drifted away from me to some point in space. She pressed a knuckle to her lips and hummed uh-uh. Then dropped her hand and said, “No.” Then, “No way. No, no way. This is horrible. Terrible.”

She turned her gaze back to me.

“Sebastian,” she said, voice full of breath. “This is how worlds end.”

Chapter Twelve

That sounded a wee bit melodramatic. But judging from the way Gladys trembled, and her eyes teared, and her breath wheezed, she believed it. She believed it from toes to soul.

This is how worlds end.

Melodramatic or not, a chill ran up my right leg and made my balls shrink. My stomach switched to spin cycle. Gladys’s fear was contagious.

Neither of us said anything for a while. I mean, when you’re talking about the end of the world, what else could you say once the topic hit the air?

That’s interesting. Hey, did you see that Facebook meme with that grumpy cat? No? It was hilarious. I’ll forward it to you.

The whole concept of communication seemed preposterous. What good was talking with the world on the brink?

I pulled those thoughts back. Gladys didn’t say the world was ending, just that whatever the fuck the Maidens were up to was one way a world could end. A pure hypothetical. Right?

Right?

I wanted to swallow, but I didn’t have enough spit to make it happen. A chalky bitterness coated the inside of my mouth. The spilt tea still pattered onto the carpet as it dripped off the coffee table, playing a little rhythm against the carpet’s knap. I had lost track of the tea’s comforting scent.

“Can you be more specific, Gladys?”

She closed her eyes a moment to gather herself. When she opened them, her panic was replaced by obvious anger. At me? At Sly? At the Maidens? All of us? Or maybe even herself?

“Possessing a soul can be as easy as capturing one from a dying body. It’s a simple thing, really. And black witches have collected them for ages. But the modern world makes human sacrifice a little harder. Not much, but enough to keep those who wish to coexist with the natural world from trying.”

“If it’s such an easy thing, why is this case any different?”

She held her hand up, fingers in a V. “Two reasons. One, this is the Maidens of Shadow we’re talking about here. One of the most powerful covens in the US. The most powerful anywhere near here.”

“You mean to tell me, with all that power, they’ve never performed a sacrifice?”

“Not as far as I’ve heard. They stay within the laws of both the Ministry and the average man. It’s how they can have such influence without worry of any legal repercussions.”

“They’re like tame vamps. Not exactly saints, but not outright killers either.”

“Something like that.”

“But this is just a piece of Sly’s soul.” It occurred to me that I had never asked Sly how he had sliced off only a part of his soul and traded it. “How much trouble could they cause?”

She dipped her chin and looked at me from under her brow, her expression like Are you serious?

“Fine. A lot. But doomsday? Why would they want to end the world anyway?”

“They don’t want to,” Gladys said with a big dollop of impatience. “But things go wrong. Accidents happen.”

“But they can’t end the world, for the gods’ sake. Seriously, you have to be overreacting. How do you even know what they’re doing with it?”

“I don’t. Not for sure.”

One last drop of tea splotched the carpet as the puddle had spread too thin to flow now. I wished I could smell it. I should have been able to with it spilled all over the place, and practically a full mug of it still in my hands. The only thing I did smell was the sweat that had collected under my arms, triggering my deodorant to release its cool breeze scent that reminded me of a menthol cough drop. Time to switch brands.

The room seemed darker, too. Though the afternoon sun coming through the west-facing window should have made it brighter. Even the floor lamp’s light had a dimmer feel to it.

I set my mug gently onto the coffee table and sat straight on the edge of the recliner. “I need to know what’s going on, Gladys. Tell me everything you’re thinking right now.”

“Your friend,” she said so softly I almost didn’t hear her. “Is he ill?”

The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. “How did you know that?”

“The soul of a dead man has worth,” she said. “But that of a living being? The power is nearly unlimited, so long as the soul’s host lives.”

“Even with just a small part?”

She laughed without a shred of humor. “If your friend knew how to draw off a fraction of his soul, he should have been smart enough to know he was giving away access to the whole thing. The Maidens know they have a precious treasure. In their minds, they would be fools not to use it.”

I was pretty sure Sly would have never handed over that piece if he knew what could happen to him if they used it. I hoped he didn’t know, because that was pretty damn irresponsible.

“What kind of thing would they use it for, Gladys?”

I could tell she didn’t want to say. Maybe putting it to words would make it too real for her.

“Black witches have many talents. Than can twist a mind, blacken a heart, deceive the eyes. But their heritage has always centered around one particular skill.” She pressed her lips together. Her gaze became detached, searching the room, but not finding anything to hold to.

I thought I’d have to prompt her again, but she snapped her gaze back to me and leaned forward as if to share a secret.

“They summon demons.”

Chapter Thirteen

Sly looked grayer now. His skin tone nearly matched his hair except for the dark circles, like bruises, under his eyes. The respirator hissed and clicked, and the heart monitor sang its one note song. A clear bag hung off the side of the bed, filled with dark yellow fluid. Not a healthy color. Not by a long shot.

While only the occasional nurse, doctor, or other visitor passed by in the hall, I still felt self-conscious with that glass wall leaving me exposed as I worried over my friend. Every movement I caught in the corner of my eye made me jerk my attention away from Sly to whoever dared travel along the other side of the glass.

But nobody looked in at us. We could have been invisible. Which also pissed me off. My best friend was dying in here because a coven of fucking witches were playing with his soul, and those people could just walk on by as if it all meant nothing.

I couldn’t have it both ways. But I wanted it both ways, damn it.

Fear for us while you ignore us.

They should probably fear for themselves if Gladys was right.

Demon summoning.

Why would anyone want to do that? Did it ever really end well? Not for everyone. Never for everyone. If you brought a demon into this world, you had every intention of taking lives, whether on purpose or as collateral damage. But the trick wasn’t just in the summoning. Once you had that bad boy onto the mortal plane, you had to bind that thing to you. The last thing anyone wanted was a demon on the loose exercising its free will.

After dropping the demon bomb on me, Gladys admitted the Maidens could be using Sly’s soul for something else entirely. Unfortunately, she couldn’t give me any examples of what that might be.

I hadn’t walked away from our chat with nothing, though. First, I knew that if I got the piece of Sly’s soul back, I could probably bring him out of the woods and back to his normal self. Second, I knew if I didn’t get his soul back, he was as good as dead.

I also knew that witches of the Maidens’ caliber had the skill and knowhow to summon one of the larger available demons. So if that’s what they were doing, Detroit could find itself host to something seriously ugly. But I couldn’t know what, exactly, would happen until I knew what kind of demon they planned on summoning, and what they planned to do with it.

Maybe they simply wanted some cheap demon labor to keep their apartment tidy.

How’s that for optimism?

“What do I do, brother?” I asked Sly. He didn’t have any good ideas either. “What good are you?” I laughed and wiped my eyes, but they were dry.

January had a way of blunting the edge of the early evening light. A fuzzy gray cast came through the slats between the vertical blinds across the window, making Sly looked all the more washed out. He had developed that old sweat and stagnant breath smell you get when lying in bed for too long.

The lights flickered, and the readouts on the machines flanking Sly’s bed snapped and wavered. It startled me, but I quickly wrote it off as a power surge or something.

Then I heard the screams from down the hall.

A shot of adrenaline cut through my system and stood the hairs on my arms on end.

More screams and shouts joined the first. A small quake vibrated through the floor, and a second later I tasted a rotten kind of magic. It permeated everything, made me feel like a duck caught in an oil slick.

I stood and rushed to the glass wall, peered down the hall toward the direction of the screams.

A snarl of nurses and a pair of hospital security guards ran my way. And as they ran, the lights winked out behind them as if darkness itself chased their heels.

That putrid magic thickened. It coalesced all around me. My stomach clenched to fight off the coming nausea. I did not recognize the type of magic I felt. It didn’t belong to any sorcerer. But did it really take much of a leap to guess who it did come from?

Witches, of course.

The Maidens, specifically.

And I knew with impossible certainty why they were here.

They had come to collect the rest of Sly’s soul.

Chapter Fourteen

The screamers raced by Sly’s room, and the darkness formed a tidal wave behind them, killing all the lights. The lights in the room also went out, including the colorful glow of the machines’ various readouts and blinkers. But the machines themselves continued to operate. The heart monitor still blipped. The respirator continued its Darth Vader impersonation. So we weren’t dealing with a power outage.

Just a little old fashioned black magic.

As an experiment, I raised my hand, palm up, and called on fire. An orange flame rippled up from my palm, but its light remained within the actual fire, it did not project any kind of glow. It looked more like liquid than fire.

I could still see the last of the daylight through the window. But again, the spaces between the blinds looked like painted white stripes on a black background. None of the light continued on into the room.

This was some serious shit.

With my flame still flowing from my upturned hand, I felt my way back to Sly’s bedside. I reached blindly and gripped a handful of sheets. My heart kicked up into my throat. Had they somehow taken him already? Slipped him right past me in the unnatural dark?

I patted my way up the bed and found Sly’s ankle through the covers. I swallowed my heartbeat and released a clenched breath.

I didn’t know what to expect next. Something had gotten those people screaming, and I didn’t think it was just the encroaching, impossible darkness. They had seen someone.

Something wet and heavy thumped on the floor outside the room. A second moist thump followed. Then something growled in the darkness.

Correction: They had seen something.

The demon the Maidens had summoned? Why come for Sly if they had already raised the beast? No. This couldn’t be the main event. This was only one creature set loose on the witches’ way to the big time.

The thing in the hall snuffed. I felt its breath spray me with a nasty sewage stink. I couldn’t see it, but I sensed it in the doorway. Based on the size and push of its breathing, it was something big, too. My imagination had a field day flipping through possible visuals. The thought frenzy pushed me close to mindless panic.

I closed my eyes. The only thing that changed was my fire disappearing from sight. The darkness looked exactly the same. I tried not to let it freak me out. I tried to stop all thought, taking deep breaths while listening for movement from the thing.

A heavy step, and then another. It grunted like an old man as it walked. I pictured massive legs and elephant feet. The force of its presence drew closer. A magical aura preceded it. The magic’s touch set my teeth on edge. The beast growled again. Hot air roiled toward me, and it smelled like a waterlogged open grave.

I opened my eyes. I saw my flame again, but nothing else. My other hand still held fast to Sly’s ankle. I had the idiot notion that if it took Sly, it would have to drag me along with him. I wouldn’t let go. I would not.

I drew my flaming hand back like a pitcher, then threw a fiery fastball where I thought the creature stood. If it was as large as it seemed, I could hardly miss.

The fireball burst into a shower of sparks as it impacted with something. A howl cut the darkness and sent ice through my veins.

In the next instant, something slammed into me, sending me flying backward, Sly’s ankle slipping easily from my grasp. I crashed into the blood-pressure machine—I think—and it clattered to the floor with me. I managed not to hit my head on anything, but I landed on my right arm and torqued it too far one way at the elbow. I felt the tendons rip, and pain quickly followed.

The creature made another huff sound, like an over-sized horse—and by over-sized, I meant tank-like proportions. If I ever managed to get a glimpse of this thing, I wondered if its true ugliness could live up to the horrors conjured by my imagination.

Probably.

I scrambled to my feet. I didn’t want to get too far from Sly, but I backed into the corner, my shoulder thumping into one wall before I was ready for it, startling the breath out of me. I was no good to Sly as a demon snack. Problem was, I had lost track of where his bed was, and had no clue where the beast stood in relation to it. If I tried another fireball, I risked hitting Sly.

Something knocked against something else with a hollow, plastic clunk. The beast moving around the machines. One of them crashed to the floor to join the blood pressure machine I had fallen into. The sound of the movements seemed wrong. If I could picture the scene properly, the placement of Sly’s bed, the equipment around him, the distance from the corner by the window to those things…

The beast wasn’t going for Sly.

It was coming for me.

Oh, shit.

How dumb was I? They didn’t need Sly to access his soul. Gladys had said as much. No, they didn’t need Sly himself. They needed me out of the way.

These thoughts no sooner came together when I felt a wet muzzle press against my chest, the mucus soaking through my sweater and sliming my skin underneath. Between the weight of the creature and its smell, it felt like getting bulldozed into a landfill.

It continued to push against me, crushing me into the corner until I couldn’t breathe against the pressure. I don’t know why it didn’t eat me, or at least bite me. I didn’t know anything about it. I would die without knowing what the fuck had killed me even as it pressed against me.

What a messed up way to go.

My face started to throb. Lack of oxygen spun my head.

I almost let the thing crush me before I remembered I could burn the motherfucker.

I lit both hands, slapped them down on the thing’s lumpy, rubbery back, and expanded the flames, rolling them across the length of the creature. The fire expanded out about twelve feet before stopping, like a fiery tape measure.

The beast reared away from me. The line of fire down its back swayed like a serpent, the creature’s attempt to shake off the flames. But my fire didn’t quit so easily.

Using the fire line to triangulate the creature’s location, I tossed a twin set of fireballs toward where I thought its head was.

Its scream shattered the glass wall. I could hear thousands of pieces of glass rain against the tile floor out in the hall. With it came another burst of screams. I tried to imagine all those people out there, pinned down by literally impenetrable darkness, with no idea what any of it meant.

If I lived through this one, I would look forward to seeing how the Ministry smoothed this event over with the uninitiated.

I didn’t give the beast time to recover. I threw more fireballs in its direction. A couple seemed to miss and hit the floor. I tried to keep my aim low in case anyone was still out in the hall. I didn’t want to cook any civilians, thank you very much.

Most of my fireballs struck home. And I knew I was making progress when the darkness split open, then drew away like a massive, tattered cowl. A great sign, but it also meant I had to see the monster.

I had burned most of the flesh off its back. I could see the ridges of its long spine exposed. The creature as a whole looked like a cross between a lizard and a centipede. A round, long body that tapered into a thin tail. Scales all over. But an insect-like head with a hundred eyes peppering the entire front of it. A number of the eyes were burned out to hollow sockets. The rest blinked at me in unison. I couldn’t see any kind of mouth, which would explain why it didn’t eat me.

I had pictured its feet about right. It had three pairs of legs, each the circumference of a trash can. A trail of slime ran from the door to its twitching tail.

Still flaming in spots, the beast growled softly (so it had to have at least a small mouth somewhere), it blinked its eyes a couple more times, then flopped to the floor, dead, its short legs sticking out of its sides like truck tires.

I scanned the hall and didn’t see any poor witnesses to the dead monster on the floor. But with the darkness cleared, some curious souls would come soon enough. I hoped they didn’t expect me to explain.

Through all of this, Sly hadn’t stirred. The creature had knocked the bed askew on its way toward me. The tube from the respirator (now on the floor with everything else) had wrenched loose. At least the IV hung from a tall post attached to the bed itself, so that hadn’t gotten yanked out of him, too.

I squeezed past the creature, both slime and ashen flakes of burnt flesh rubbing off on me. I doubted it would come out in the wash. I doubted I wanted to even challenge the washer with trying.

I leaned over Sly and stared at his chest until I saw it rise and fall. Still breathing without the respirator. Still totally unconscious—which was probably a good thing. But his stillness disturbed me, nonetheless. If a monster ramming its way into Sly’s room didn’t so much as rouse him, I worried nothing could.

I did know one very important thing, though.

The Maidens did not give a damn about what they were doing to Sly. And they wanted to make doubly sure I did not interfere.

Someone behind me choked on a scream.

I closed my eyes and hung my head. It was gonna take some time getting out of this.

Chapter Fifteen

The Ministry extracted me before law enforcement could get their hands on me and start asking questions the Ministry didn’t want me to answer, and that the cops wouldn’t believe anyway. Even with the monstrous evidence on the floor of Sly’s room.

That didn’t mean I got out of a good grilling.

I was taken to a Ministry black site, which meant they took my sight for the duration of the trip and didn’t give it back until they had me in a small room that probably didn’t look much different than the one the regular police would have put me in. No two-way mirror or anything like that in here. Oh, and the only light came from a quartet of bright glowing orbs floating in each corner of the room.

They must have given off some heat, because the room was stifling. My sweat mixed with the monster slime that had soaked through my sweater. I smelled like a trash heap. I would need at least three showers. The sooner the better. At least the waiting gave me time to heal the broken tendons the creature had given me.

An iron door was the only entryway in the room. The walls were concrete, which made me think we were probably underground. The whole setup intimidated me like it was supposed to. I’d never had a formal Ministry debrief after a public incident. Not even after having a dragon tear apart the MGM Grand downtown while it tried to eat me. I had gotten out of there before the Ministry had arrived.

At the moment, I sat in the room alone. I waited a good hour before someone finally came through the door. The woman who entered looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her. She had a thin, stern face, and her dirty blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. She wore a sharply tailored, charcoal pantsuit. The white blouse she wore underneath practically shined. Either it was brand new or she had a line on one hell of a dry cleaner.

Unlike the standard interrogation rooms you saw on cop shows, this one had no table. I sat on a plain wooden chair made of thick, heavy wood that had a medieval feel—like I should have been gnawing on a big turkey leg. A matching chair faced me with about seven feet between them.

The woman took the empty seat, folded her hands in her lap, and looked at me with an utter lack of expression. She had three rings on the fingers of her left hand, and another on the thumb of her right. A couple had red stones. The others were plain metal bands—a gold one, an onyx one, and a silver one. Each one obviously magical.

I pegged her for a mage. They liked their magical trinkets.

“Hi,” I said. “Sorry about the mess, but that…thing didn’t give me much of a choice.”

She continued to stare at me without talking.

Some kind of interrogation technique? I didn’t know why it was necessary. The story was cut and dry. I was attacked by a demon or something, I fought back and won. Simple.

“Look, I’ve got a lot on my plate. I really hope this doesn’t take long.”

Her eyebrows went up. “What do you have on your plate?”

I would have loved to tell her. Having the Ministry swoop in and save the day with my witch problem would have made things a lot easier. But trafficking in souls—even your own—was against Ministry law. I could get Sly in a lot of trouble. What good would saving his life do if he ended up in a Ministry prison…or worse?

No. I’d save the Ministry for a last resort. Besides, after what I had just gone through three months ago with those high-ranking Ministry conspirators, I didn’t feel all that comfortable dealing with them. I was pretty certain, despite the house-cleaning going on by the Global Ministry Faction, that the Detroit Ministry still had a few bad apples among them, and those apples would not feel too friendly toward me.

“The man I was visiting at the hospital is a good friend, and he’s very ill.”

“The Ministry could assist. We have some of the best healers available.”

Oh, yeah. That’s all I needed. I had to appreciate the offer, though. Prefect St. James’s regime probably wouldn’t have bothered.

Thinking of St. James set off a light bulb.

“You’re the interim prefect,” I said. “From the GMF. Rachel Strand.”

She nodded. “And you are Sebastian Light. A rather famous fellow around Detroit.”

“What can I say? I had an interesting end of the year. My New Year’s resolution for this year is to do a whole lot of non-exciting stuff.” And, already, I was failing.

Ms. Strand must have thought the same thing. She smiled, not that it made her look any less stern. “How’s that going for you?”

I laughed. A fake laugh, but I think it sounded good. “Fine until my friend had an unwanted visitor in the hospital.”

“Do you think it was there for him?”

“No,” I said. “It specifically came after me.” It was always good to spread a little truth between lies, like a truth sandwich.

“What do you think it was after?”

“My death.”

“Why?”

“Haven’t a clue.” Another slice of lie. This sandwich could end up a triple-decker if I didn’t get out of there soon.

“Just a random attack,” Strand said slowly, as if taking notes. But she didn’t have a pen or paper, and her hands remained folded in her lap.

“Like you said. I’m a little famous. And there are people who don’t like me.”

“People within the Ministry, for example?”

She said it, not me. “Yeah.”

“Does that explain your reticence?”

Partially. So I had a chance to lay down another layer of truth. Go me. “Yes.”

She frowned. “The Detroit Ministry owes you thanks. So I’m not going to keep you. But if you need help, of any kind, please don’t hesitate to contact me directly.” She drew a business card from a pocket in her blouse, handed it over to me.

She was sharp, no doubt about it.

“I will,” I said and took the card. Of course, I wouldn’t use it, but I knew how to be polite. “Thank you.”

Chapter Sixteen

I wanted to go right back into the hospital to check on Sly, but the Ministry guardians who dropped me off at my car insisted I leave the scene to avoid further “confusion.” They had a good point. Besides, I could better spend my time figuring out what to do with those damn Maidens. I didn’t care so much that they had tried to kill me. What pissed me off most was their blatant disregard for Sly’s welfare.

I guess I should have known better than to think they would care. Despite the help they had given me, it had come at a price—a price higher than I’d first thought. These were black witches we were talking about.

Duh!

And if they could summon and bind something like that centipede-lizard thing, I wouldn’t stand a chance in a straight fight. Maybe I’d have a chance against a single one of them. After all, I didn’t need sacrifices, souls, or chicken droppings to throw down a whole lot of fire. As a group, though? They would see me coming, just like Angelica had. They would have something ready. Or they would send something else after me.

So not only did I have to approach them carefully (understatement), I had to keep moving, too. They had easily found me at the hospital. I had to be ready for another attack at any time.

I had to find a place I could hide from their magic. The new house sat too close to its neighbors to set up any heavy duty wards without frying Gladys and Casey in the process. And I worried more precise wards just wouldn’t do enough. Besides, the Maidens had to know where I lived by now.

Mom and I had to get out of there. I didn’t want to risk losing yet another house to a “paranormal event.” I’d never collect Ministry compensation a second time.

Luckily, I had an idea.

I dropped by the house to get Mom. We packed clothes, but I held off changing and taking my three showers until we got safely to our destination. I hated leaving Odi behind, but for the moment, I didn’t have a choice. I would have to come back for him after dark.

On the way to Ann Arbor, I brought Mom up to speed on the events of the day. She actually muttered like a grumpy old lady. I heard witches and demons and…the C-word!

“Ugh. Mom. Language.”

She grunted and looked out the passenger window.

Now I knew the Maidens of Shadow were a serious threat for sure. They had my mom mumbling sailor words.

The trip took us about an hour to reach the three wooded acres with the log cabin that had belonged to my grandfather, Eldred Light. It had been years since I had set foot inside, not since his funeral, which was barely two weeks after I first got my Ministry license to collect bounties on supernatural bad guys. Grandma had died two years before him. He had bequeathed the house to my parents, but other things had gotten in the way of them doing anything with it.

So it was no surprise to find some of the wood on the outside chewed up by carpenter ants and weather. A shutter on one of the front windows had vanished, probably blown into the woods during a storm. The porch creaked when Mom and I stepped onto it. I couldn’t remember if it had always done that. It felt sturdy enough, though.

Mom got the key out of a false rock mixed in with others that had once lined a flowerbed that had now gone to seed, brown, crinkled fingers that used to be stems sticking out of the frozen ground.

I expected the inside to smell musty and stale. It did a little, but even after all these years, the tiniest hint of cinnamon and ginger lingered in the air. Grandma could bake the pants off of anyone I ever knew, and she never used magic in the kitchen to help. If she had, she probably could have given Elaine a run for her money in the intoxicating foods department.

Despite the rustic cabin look on the outside, indoors the house had all the standard comforts of any home. New appliances (new seven years ago anyway), plenty of fixtures and outlets, heat and running water. A stone fireplace ruled the common area. A cold, blackened log remained within. Grandpa’s rocker was exactly where it had been the last time I was here. In fact, everything was exactly the same, untouched by anything but seven years of dust.

On the mantel sat a picture of Grandma standing on the back porch, squinting against the sun while smiling for the camera. A film of dust blurred the image. I took the photo off the mantle and wiped it clean with the sleeve of my sweater. “Your grandfather loved that picture,” Mom said behind me.

“I know.” I remembered how he would sit in his rocker and watch the picture with sad nostalgia in his moist eyes. I felt a little sad, but mostly content, relieved even. I didn’t pretend to know if there was an afterlife, but even if Grandpa hadn’t finally joined his wife in the next realm, at least he didn’t have to suffer her loss anymore. “He died with it in his hands on the back porch. You remember?”

“I do. I also remember wondering what you were doing here when you found him. You’ve still never told me.”

I laughed softly. “Asking for his advice.”

I set the picture back on the mantel and went out to grab our bags out of the back of my Jetta. While I showered and changed, Mom got to work on the wards. We were lucky. Some of the protective spells Grandpa had put on the house still hummed with power. And one of those worked as magical interference, meant to throw off tracking or vision spells. I felt confident it would keep us hidden from the Maidens.

Once we established what we already had, we went to work on setting up more spells. As usual, when it came to these kinds of things, Mom did most of the work. She had a knack for casting protective wards that I had never seen from her before. Along the way, she taught me a few things. Some of it went in one ear and out the other. Some things actually stuck. By the time she was done, I had devised a trick I couldn’t wait to test.

I ushered Mom outside and about ten yards away from the front porch. “Check this out.” I raised a hand and called on my fire. I focused hard, thinking of Sly in his hospital bed and that disgusting creature on the floor beside him. I gathered enough anger to turn my orange flame blue. Then I threw a bright blue orb of fire at the ground right in front of the steps up to the porch.

But instead of lighting the grass ablaze, the ground absorbed the flame. For an instant, a glowing blue rune marked the place where my fire had struck. Then the rune faded, and the ground looked just as it had.

Mom turned slowly toward me, lifted her eyebrows, and clapped softly. “Huzzah. A fire rune. Well done.”

“Stuff you showed me gave me the idea. Once I could see it in my head, it clicked and I knew I could do it.”

“Yes, but are we going to set it off when he head back inside?”

I gaped at her, hurt. “I told you I was listening to you. Don’t you think…”

I stopped myself when I saw the smirk crop up on her face.

“You’re a mean mom.”

She laughed. “Have to keep my boy on his toes.”

We went back inside…without exploding.

Chapter Seventeen

I lay in the bed in the spare bedroom, the sheets from the closet smelling musty from sitting folded up in a closet for seven years. Could have been worse, though.

The ceiling had a single crack that went from the door to the opposite corner of the room. It looked like a long, jagged fault that might split the entire room with a firm bump. At least, that’s how it looked in my imagination.

This was me letting my mind wander. Letting my thoughts ping senselessly against each other while I tried to think of nothing at all. I wouldn’t call it meditation, exactly, but it came close. I needed the release. Focusing on what to do about the Maidens had only given me a headache.

The headache was finally passing. But I could still feel my pulse in my temples, steady but hard. Honing in on the crack in the ceiling helped steady me, though.

I could hear Mom snoring in the master bedroom across the hall. We both had our doors open. Hers was a soft snore, almost like a kitten’s purr with a wetter tone. I couldn’t remember hearing her snore before, and we lived together. Either I was grossly unobservant, or this was a new thing for her.

Could stress make a person snore?

If so, I’d probably wake Mom with some good honks if I finally dozed. I could have used the rest. I felt tired. My eyes had that crusty, blurry feel. But my thoughts wouldn’t quiet enough to let it happen.

The mattress had a crinkly cover, as if it had showered in starch. While the old person-smelling sheets were soft, all that crinkling underneath made me squidgy every time I shifted. So I stayed as still as possible.

Ping-pong, went my thoughts. There was Sly, mouth hanging open after the respirator was torn loose. There was Fiona, standing before me, naked, right before she shifted into a tiger in front of me for the first time. There was Mom, in her wheelchair at the nursing home, facing the window in the rec room, the sun turning the ends of her hair to shining silver threads, her eyes dull and unfocused.

And, to rival all the woe-is-me thinking I was running through, there was me, first getting bitten by a vampire, then drinking the blood of another, setting in motion a series of events that would win me the moniker “the Unturned.”

This had all happened in about a four month span, but it felt to me like years in the making.

Finally, I couldn’t lay there anymore. I had to move. To act. Even if I didn’t know what to do. I would trust my subconscious, let it work out a solution, or at least a single step. Then I could take the next step. Then the next. Eventually I would end up somewhere, right?

Where? No fucking clue.

But anywhere was better than a crinkly bed that smelled of old person.

I wandered out into the kitchen. The stainless steel refrigerator had a large dent in its door. The wall separating the kitchen and living room had a pretty good patch job from a hole about the size of a person. I could see the slight bubble around parts of the patched hole’s edges from the mesh and mudding underneath the fresh paint. But I knew to look for it. No one else would probably notice.

I smiled at the memory. I’d been there when the hole was made. But that was a another story in itself.

I opened and shut cupboards, and didn’t find anything, of course. My parents had the place cleaned out around the same time they had patched the wall. All the appliances were unplugged. They had kept the electricity going, and the water came from a well, which made it easy for us to set up a temporary home here. We would need things, though, if we planned on staying for long.

I plugged in the fridge and got that going. I could make a run for some groceries later, before I picked up Odi for the night. I felt bad leaving him back at the house in Detroit, but I sure as hell couldn’t drag his coffin upstairs and load it into my little Jetta. We would have to arrange an alternate sleeping arrangement for him before the next morning.

I wrote down a shopping list in a pocket-sized spiral notebook I’d brought from home. I probably didn’t need to. Wasn’t like I was making a big trip. Some cold cuts from the deli. Bread. Milk. Toilet paper. A set of new sheets for the guest bed.

Once I had that down, I clapped my hands, brushed them together, then looked around me as if expecting applause for my amazing progress.

“Now what?”

My headache wriggled its way up the back of my skull and threatened to wrap around to my temples again.

I added ibuprofen to the shopping list. After that, I started pacing in the living room. I was moving. That’s what I’d wanted, right? All sorts of movement. And look how productive I’d become.

Floorboards in the hallway creaked. Mom came out, sweater wrapped around her, shivering. “What’s the heat set at?”

She was cold. I had sweat on my brow and felt like I had a furnace in my chest, blowing hot air into every limb.

I turned up the thermostat a couple degrees.

Another thing I could do.

When I turned away from the thermostat, I caught Mom staring at me.

“What’s going on?”

“You have to ask?”

“What do you think revving yourself up will accomplish?”

“More than sitting idle.”

She strolled to the wing backed chair facing the fireplace next to Grandpa’s rocker, sat down, and gazed into the dead fireplace. The chair had been Grandma’s favorite, and it carried memories from all the way back to my childhood. I could still see the two of them sitting side-by-side, Grandpa rocking, Grandma working a needlepoint or reading a book.

Despite everything, I smiled. I took Grandpa’s chair and rocked gently. “You want me to start a fire? I think there’s still some wood out back.”

“That would be nice, but not right now.”

“You sure?”

“I need to talk to you.”

“Okay.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment. Her posture suggested she had dozed sitting up, but her eyes remained open, and I could see the fire of thought within them. I waited for her to continue without prodding.

Finally she said, “When those witches used their magic on me, to make my memories come back, there was something I didn’t tell you.”

My skin seemed to shrink, like I’d grown out of it, and it might split down the length of my spine at any moment. I had made my peace with not trusting anyone for a while, expecting betrayal from everywhere except…well, except Sly and Mom. But here I learn she was keeping a secret from me? About the Maidens of Shadow, no less?

I forced myself to take a deep breath. I needed to give her the benefit of the doubt, give her a chance to explain her reasoning. But I still couldn’t help feel the sting.

“They were adamant I not tell you,” she said, and the sting turned to a sharp pain in the center of my back.

“You kept a secret from me because a group of black witches told you to?” My voice rose a decibel with each word. I heard it happening, but couldn’t stop myself. “Are you serious?”

“Don’t you judge me, son. Don’t you dare.”

I stood. The rocker tilted back, almost tipped, then swung back into a wild see-saw. “I can’t believe you’d keep something like that from me.”

She snapped to her feet as well, pointed a finger in my face. “Do not judge me. You don’t even know what it is. Would you like to know before you hand down your sentence?”

I pinched my lips shut. My breath poured hot from my nostrils.

Mom looked down her nose at me for a few seconds, waiting for a reply. When I kept my mouth shut, she gave a satisfied nod. “Good. Sit down.”

I kept thinking of Fiona. Why couldn’t I stop thinking about Fiona? Traitor. Breaker of hearts. My first love in a long time. My last love for who knew how long. Mom wasn’t Fiona. Mom was Mom. Family. She wouldn’t betray me. She wouldn’t.

Slowly, I eased down onto the rocker. I kept my feet planted on the floor to keep the chair steady.

Mom sat, too.

She took a deep, shaky breath. When she spoke, she looked toward the fireplace instead of me. “The ritual they performed… They…they said it would be stronger, work faster…if…”

My knuckles hurt. I looked down and found my fist clenched tightly enough to turn my whole hand white. “Faster if what?”

“If they powered it with Sly’s soul.”

I literally slipped off the edge of the rocker, dropped to my knees, and gaped at my mother with the kind of wonder you would a monster. Right then she might as well have been the centipede-lizard thing. Anything but my mother.

“Sebastian, please understand—”

“Understand?” I didn’t shout. I grinded the word out in a low growl. “Understand?”

“You don’t have to like it,” she said. “But you have to listen. Now you have to listen. You can condemn me later.”

A sulfuric taste filled my mouth as if I’d licked brimstone. I looked down at my knees on the floor. Vertigo sloshed through my skull. Made me glad I was kneeling, otherwise I probably would have fallen over. I wanted to puke, but I hadn’t eaten recently enough to cough up anything more than bile.

“After the ritual, Sly didn’t suffer any ill effects.”

I looked up at her. So fucking what? I thought, but couldn’t get my mouth working enough to say. She seemed to hear the question anyway.

“What if it isn’t the Maidens?”

I finally got the old jaw and tongue to flap and form some words. They weren’t very nice words, though.

“Are you fucking delirious? Angelica all but admitted they were using his soul for some week long ritual. What was it she said? ‘What’s begun can’t be undone.’ Or something stupid like that.”

“Yes, but—”

“And why would they send that hell beast after me if they didn’t think I was a threat to their plans?”

“Stop,” Mom shouted. “Listen.”

I shook my head. “I can’t.”

“You can,” she said with an edge I remembered from childhood. The Do as I say, or else tone she had right before grounding me. “And you will.”

I stood up. My knees ached a little from hitting the solid floor. I loomed over her. But she didn’t let that last. She rose, and while I still had three or four inches on her, she had the largest presence, her magic pulsing from her body with enough heat to raise the temp in the room a couple degrees.

I stepped back.

“I did not claim the Maidens aren’t using Sly’s soul for whatever they’re up to. And I have little doubt they sent that creature after you. That doesn’t mean Sly’s sickness is coming from the ritual.”

I grinded my fingertips into my forehead to massage out the headache gathering there. “That doesn’t make any sense. Angelica seemed to think their ritual has something to do with it. Who am I to doubt her?”

“It’s an avenue to explore. That’s all I’m suggesting. If he’s sick for some other reason, you won’t have to face the Maidens of Shadow.”

Sounded like pure… “Wishful thinking.”

Isn’t that what she had said to me before, completely out of context? Now I understood. I also understood why she had whispered I know when I had told her about Sly’s deal with the Maidens. Because she had known all along.

I turned away from her, moved to look out the back window overlooking the old covered porch. The woods started about half an acre out across a flat clearing. A light flurry had dusted the field. The flakes were small, and I hoped they stayed that way. I was pissed enough without having to trudge through snow on top of everything else.

“They used Sly’s soul for you,” I said more to myself than her.

“Yes,” she said. “They did. And I suppose I’m glad I didn’t tell you.”

“That’s great, Mom. Fantastic.”

I heard her sigh behind me. “Someone else knew about it.”

I rolled my eyes. “Of course. Everyone gets to know but me. Did you tell Gladys or something?”

“I told Sly.”

Chapter Eighteen

A part of me didn’t believe her. I thought she was trying to back off from the truth, calm me down. But when I turned away from the window, I could see in her pinched eyes she was telling the truth. It didn’t make me feel any better. The two people left in the world who I trusted had both kept a pretty major secret from me.

That left me where? With only myself to trust? Ha. I probably couldn’t even do that.

“I suppose Sly was perfectly okay with that,” I said.

She smiled. I couldn’t believe it. What could she possibly have to smile about?

“He was,” she said. “He told me he was glad he could pay once to help me twice. I felt awful, of course—”

“Then why did you let them do it?”

Her smile turned into an vicious scowl. Her fingers curled to claws at her sides. “Because I was desperate. You know that. You saw how not knowing what happened to your father chewed me apart. It was killing me, Sebastian. Those girls didn’t just save my memories, they saved my sanity.”

“So you’re fine with them using part of Sly’s soul to work magic? It doesn’t bother you at all?”

“Of course it bothers me,” she shrieked. Tears welled in her eyes. Her nostrils flared. Her clawed hands tugged at the bottom edge of her sweater as if she wanted to rip it off. “But it’s done. And the only man who has any right to be angry has already forgiven me.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And now he’s dying.”

Her damp eyes widened, flashed in the light from the simple, tulip-shaped chandelier above. An electric smell rose in the overheated room—Mom’s magic hijacked by her emotions. “You have some nerve.” Then she turned on her heel and stormed into the hall. A second later her door slammed, vibrating the walls.

Like the dog I was, I slunk away to the kitchen. I picked up my pen off the counter and went through my shopping list. I could stop by a Meijer on the way to get Odi. Anything else I needed? Something made the words on the page blur. I blinked. Tears gummed up my eyelashes.

I swiped my arm across the counter and sent the notepad flinging off the end. The pages spread in flight and fluttered like the winds of a duck shot from the sky. I tossed the pen after it. Then I slammed a fist down on the counter top. Something cracked along the outside edge of my hand. Needles of pain jabbed through my palm and up my wrist.

I raised my throbbing hand. My pinky finger looked a little crooked.

For the gods’ sake, what was wrong with me? I had alienated the one person left standing on my side. Did I want to fight a coven of black witches on my own?

What about what your mom said? Maybe it isn’t the witches.

Bull. I had to apply Occam’s razor here. Simplest explanation—the Maidens were killing Sly, nothing else.

But what if?

I hated what ifs. They only muddied otherwise clear waters.

Standing there whining about it wouldn’t do me any good, though.

Carrying my broken hand against my belly, I marched over and picked the notepad up off the floor. I scanned around for the pen, but didn’t see it. I had given it a good toss. It had probably bounced behind the furniture somewhere. No matter. I was going to add bandages and a splint to the list, but I didn’t think the thumping heartbeat of pain in my hand would let me forget those couple items.

Chapter Nineteen

I did the best I could with the splint while sitting in my car in the Meijer parking lot. I could have waited the last hour before dusk and had Odi help, but pride left me to fumble with it on my own.

I managed.

Then I leaned back my seat, tuned the radio to a classic rock station, and dozed to the sounds of Led Zeppelin, The Who, and Queen while I waited for evening to turn to night. I stayed in the parking lot because I didn’t want to sit at home to wait for another attack from the Maidens. I just hoped they hadn’t shown up anyway and messed with Odi. If that were the case, I might return to find a crater where the house used to be.

I did not want that kind of thing to become a habit.

The little bit of sleep I managed was enough to allow my magic to heal my busted pinky. I was glad I’d decided to put the splint on myself. Just because my magic can heal me more quickly while I sleep, it didn’t mean everything healed straight. I could have ended up with a funky looking finger that I would have had to rebreak to fix.

I ripped off the splint, then headed for home.

When I arrived, I found the house unscathed. I saw no sign of the witches or any other creature they may have dug out of whatever hell they’d tapped into. I had to wonder how many they could summon and bind like that, especially while working whatever huge ritual they already had going.

Seemed like a lot. Even for the Maidens of Shadow—mothers or no mothers.

I parked in the short driveway and went inside.

Odi sat in the living room watching the Cartoon Network. I didn’t recognize the show, but the cartoon characters’ behavior didn’t look kid-friendly to me.

He lounged on the couch, remote in one hand, a glass mason jar in the other. Thick, red liquid filled the mason jar halfway. My blood. We kept it refrigerated for him. Something about the nature of my vamp infected but unturned blood made it five times as potent to vampires than the average human’s. I had seen it heal the kid from some serious injuries in record time. And since we still hadn’t figured out an ethical method of feeding Odi, I let him drink my stuff for the time being.

I know. Three months sounded a little longer than the time being. I couldn’t very well send him out hunting, though, could I? And I didn’t feel comfortable having him try to enthrall a “willing” donor, even though that wasn’t against Ministry law. The Ministry gave vamps that leeway in order to keep the peace. As long as the vampires didn’t kill their donors, the Ministry looked the other way. A morally questionable compromise, but there you had it.

Besides, I didn’t think Odi could successfully enthrall even the most empty-headed human. Toft had only given the kid the basics behind enthralling, but hadn’t shown him the mechanics on how to actually do it. And I sure as hell couldn’t teach him that trick.

It occurred to me, not for the first time, that I might have to find Odi another vampire mentor. But that idea had as much appeal as letting Odi loose to feed on his own.

So, lucky him, he got my blood. No thrall necessary. Just a little guilt.

“What’s up?” he said, eyes on the TV.

When I didn’t answer, he looked over at me. His eyes narrowed. “Dude, what’s wrong?”

I didn’t know what he saw. Something about my posture maybe. Or the look on my face.

“I had a fight with my mom.”

“Oh.” His gaze drifted off. Not back to the TV. Just away, as if he were embarrassed about something. He probably didn’t want to hear about my parental issues. He’d never had a real set of parents. And now I was feeling guilty about even mentioning it.

“You ready to hit the streets?” I asked.

He nodded, wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist, and smeared blood (my blood) across his knuckles. I hadn’t noticed how deep red his lips had been until he cleared them off some.

I felt a weird twitch at the back of my brain, some primal reaction to the sight of someone drinking my blood. Apparently, evolution had a tick for that.

But what he did next twisted my stomach like a bile-soaked rag.

He licked the blood off his hand as casual as if he had popped the last bite of a meal in his mouth before standing up from the dining table. I gaped at him while he scooped the mason jar’s lid off the coffee table and screwed it back in place. Obliviously, he stood and hiked it back to the kitchen.

I heard the fridge open. The clink of glass on glass as he set it on the shelf. Then the door shut. The faucet ran for a few seconds. Finally, Odi came back into the living room and froze when he saw me.

“You look even worse. Don’t let those lame witches get you down. We’ll get them, dude. We’ll mess ‘em up.”

My face felt clammy. A bad taste filled my mouth. I had planned on picking up a burger, but I wasn’t sure I would eat for days now. When had the drinking of Sebastian Light’s blood become so mundane?

“Hey,” Odi said as he crossed over to me. He clapped me on the arm. “Chin up.”

I shook my head. There was no point complaining. I had offered my blood. He had accepted. He was living up to his end of the bargain. But I thought I was within my rights to make a request.

“Odi?”

He grinned. “Yeah.”

“Don’t ever eat in front of me again.”

His grin disappeared. “Oh. Yeah. That’s awkward. Sorry.”

Chapter Twenty

Odi kept asking me where we were going. The problem was, I didn’t know. I had the groceries in the trunk. I had my apprentice with me in the car. And I had no destination in mind. So I drove aimlessly.

Eventually, Odi got sick of bugging me. He fell silent. But only lasted five minutes.

“What happened to your hand?”

“I broke it.”

He rolled his eyes. “How?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Where’s Judith?”

“In hiding.”

He grunted. “Are you gonna tell me anything, or am I supposed to guess?”

I realized he didn’t know about the hell beast at the hospital. He’d been asleep in his coffin. I apologized and caught him up.

“Dude, those witches are—”

“Skip the poetry, kid.”

He waggled his head and mimicked me in a nasal voice. “Skip the poetry, kid. Nananana.”

“Besides, Mom has an alternate theory.” I wasn’t sure why I brought it up. I didn’t need to confuse the issue with Odi. I guess I wanted to talk it out…like I should have with Mom, instead of getting all pissy with her.

“I’m listening.”

Tired of driving, I pulled into a Taco Bell, planning to park, but curved around to the drive-thru instead. I ordered six crunchy tacos and a Dr. Pepper. Then I drove around to the front lot and parked next to a rusty minivan that looked like a hand vac on wheels.

The smell of the tacos made me forget Odi’s meal incident at the house. I tasted the first taco before it reached my mouth. I crunched through them, one after another, while Odi stared out the passenger side window, shoulders hunched a little.

“What’s wrong?” I asked through a mouthful of crunchy taco goodness.

“You don’t like me to eat in front of you? Right back at ya.”

I held up the last half of my last taco. “This bothers you?”

He hunched his shoulders more and crossed his arms across his belly. “It smells…I remember the smell. I could have gorged on those things before… But now it’s making me hungry and sick at the same time.”

Memories of what it used to be like as a human didn’t sit so far back on Odi’s timeline. I often found it strange how much human he still clung to. I found a lot of things strange about his situation, actually. The only people who typically had contact with baby vamps were other vampires. Makers tended to shelter their young until the transition from mortal to demon had jelled.

I had a unique view into the lifecycle of the undead. Weird doesn’t begin to describe it.

I finished off my last taco, my stomach swollen and gurgling, packed up the trash, and tossed it over my shoulder into the back seat. The meaty smell still hung in the air. I would have cracked the window for Odi’s sake, but that small flurry from earlier had thickened to a steady snow, the flakes fat and almost as big as fall leaves shaken from a tree. I’d be damned if I let any of that float into my car.

“So what’s this alternate theory?” he asked, finally turning to face me. His face had a pink flush to it. My blood had perked him up nicely. I suddenly didn’t feel so bad about eating those tacos in front of him.

“I didn’t get any details,” I said. “I don’t think there are details. But Mom thinks it could be something besides the Maidens making Sly sick.”

“Why would she think that?”

“Honestly, because I think she feels guilty.”

“About what?”

I drummed the beat to Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” on the steering wheel. I didn’t want to reveal Mom and Sly’s little betrayal. I was angry with her, but I didn’t want to make her look bad to Odi. “It’s complicated.”

“Ain’t it always with you?”

I cocked an eyebrow. “You’re part of my life’s complications, so don’t get glib with me, Mr. Crossman.”

He waved his hands in pretend fear. “Oooooh.”

I smiled. The kid had a knack for keeping things light. Sometimes he took it to annoying lengths, but for the most part I appreciated his levity. He kept me from getting too dark and broody.

“If we go with Mom’s theory, we’re faced with one, massive, obvious question.”

“What else is making him sick?”

“What else, or who else?”

We stared ahead out the windshield. The only thing to look at was a white concrete wall that separated the restaurant’s lot from the pawn shop next door. All I could see of the neighboring building was the roof and the “We Buy Gold” sign posted high above the shop’s entrance.

Neither of us said anything for a while.

“What about…” Odi shook his head. “No, that doesn’t make sense.”

“If we’re brainstorming,” I said, “you don’t get to hold anything back.”

He shrugged. “Someone from the Ministry? One of the dudes you pissed off?”

“Possible.” But it seemed thin. Why go after Sly? I didn’t discount the idea entirely, though.

I rummaged through my mind for other possibilities. For some damn reason Fiona popped up. She didn’t have anything to do with this.

You sure about that?

Of course I was sure. That made even less sense than…well…anything.

Fiona had plenty to answer for as it was. I didn’t need to pin any of my other troubles on her.

I tried to back away from assuming this had something to do with me. Granted, most of the attacks lately had been directed at me. Vamps, overzealous demon hunters, Ministry conspirators. Everyone hated Sebastian.

But who hated Sly?

I couldn’t picture the guy having any serious enemies. He didn’t hunt demons. He didn’t summon creatures from the beyond. All he really did was mix potions in the back room of his headshop in between selling fellow ganja smokers the paraphernalia they needed for a mellow night and a bad case of munchies.

Everyone loved Sly.

But everybody has enemies.

Even if that were the case, I didn’t know where to start looking for one. I couldn’t ask Sly. The only other person I knew close to him was his stoner nephew, Green. I guess he was as good a place to start as any.

I started the car.

Odi perked up. “You think of something?”

“We’re gonna pay Sly’s nephew a visit. See if he knows anyone who might have it in for Sly.”

“Green? Aw, dude, I love that guy.”

“Of course you do.”

Chapter Twenty-One

I swung by Sly’s to check the address book he kept by the phone, got Green’s addy, and let Google Maps do the rest. Turned out Green lived with his mom. And he lived in the basement. Why would I have expected anything less?

His mom had a condo off Hall Road in Sterling Heights, not far from Lakeside Mall. Nothing fancy, your basic four walls and a roof with two of those walls shared by your neighbors.

His mom looked like she was in her mid-thirties, but that would have meant she had Green when she was around ten. The exercise bike and yoga ball tucked in one corner of the living room suggested she worked to stay fit. I felt I could safely add ten years to come close to her actual age.

She answered the door in purple yoga pants and a tie-dyed t-shirt a couple sizes too big for her small frame. The collar hung off one tanned shoulder.

“Wow,” Odi said when she opened the door. If he’d been standing next to me instead of a step behind, I would have elbowed him in the ribs.

Green’s Mom smiled and winked at Odi.

Oh, brother.

I quickly introduced myself and Odi and asked for Green.

She guided us down into the basement, said, “Have fun, kids,” then jogged back upstairs.

I felt like I was fifteen all over again.

The condo’s small basement was finished, the walls a clean white, though some of the tiles on the drop ceiling directly above a leather sofa had yellowed. Besides the sofa, the room had a TV with three different video game systems tucked in the stand underneath. A half dozen video game controllers sat in a pile on one end of the sofa. Another couple of remotes for the TV and the stereo system lay among them as well. He had the stereo set up for surround sound, with speakers mounted in all four corners of the room.

A short hall led to what I assumed was a bathroom, but otherwise the space was a single room. Green had it set up like a studio apartment, his bed against the wall furthest from the stairs.

Green lay on his back on the bed, snoring. A joint in an ashtray on his nightstand still smoldered. The whole room reeked of marijuana. A can of cheese balls sat pinned between Green’s arm and his side. The plastic lid lay on the floor. When I moved in close, I could see his fingertips coated with fake cheese. A streak of that same cheese ran across the front of his Red Wings jersey.

There were only a few balls left in the can. I contemplated dropping one into Green’s gaping mouth. I wondered if he would eat it in his sleep.

“Wow,” Odi said for the second time, his tone entirely different this time.

“Wow is right,” I said.

Odi bent down to peer into an orange lava lamp on an end table by the couch. He tapped the glass with a finger. “Groovy, man.”

A sudden explosion of techno music thundered from above. Between frantic drum beats, I caught an insistent motivational voice common to the stars of workout videos advertised in infomercials. Then came the thump of sneakered feet hitting the floor in rhythm to the music.

Mom was doing some late night cardio.

I knew from Sly that Green’s father was out of the picture. I thought I suspected why. These two were a unique pair.

But as I looked down at Green, it struck me that he didn’t know about Sly’s condition. As far as he knew, Sly was fine and still working to rebuild the shop. Green used to work for Sly at the shop, but after getting hit hard with the paranormal reality first hand, he spent less time around Sly. Couldn’t say as I blamed him.

Now I felt bad about mentally poking fun at Green and his mom.

I gave Green a gentle shove to rouse him.

He blurted one last snore, then he opened his eyes and blinked at me standing over him. He worked his chubby mouth as if trying to speak without much control over his lips. He groaned something that might have been a couple words, but I couldn’t translate.

“Green,” I said. “You need to wake up.”

Odi stepped up beside me. Now we both looked down at Green in bed like a terminal patient on his death bed. Green seemed to get that same vibe. He scrunched up his face and scooted backward until he sat up with his back against the headboard.

“Wha…?”

“Snap out of it, dude,” Odi said.

Green turned his gaze to Odi, and his eyes went wide. “Nuh, nuh, nuh-uh. No. You’re…”

Odi waggled his eyebrows. “A vampire.” He said it with Bela Lagosi flair. “But I don’t vant to suck your bluuud.”

That didn’t seem to comfort Green one bit. I shooed Odi away then leaned toward Green. “We need your help,” I said. “It’s about Sly.”

Green squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head as if jostling the rocks out, then opened his eyes and nodded. “You know where he is?”

I felt my shoulders sag under two tons of I don’t wanna. Delivering bad news about a sick relative sucked. But I didn’t have time to pussy foot. “He’s in the hospital,” I said. “He’s damn sick.”

“Sick from what?”

“Magic.”

He rubbed hard at his mouth and groaned softly against his palm. “I had a bad feeling. I knew…” He pointed a finger at me. “This is your fault. Has to be.”

I stepped back to give him some space. “We don’t know what’s going on.”

“I don’t care. You’ve brought Uncle Sly nuthin’ but shit. All this…” He waved his hands around. “This woowoo. He doesn’t need it.”

I wrinkled my brow. “You know he’s an alchemist, right? All this woowoo,” I imitated his hand gestures, “is part of his life.”

Green threw a deep-browed glare Odi’s way. “Vampires? He never had anything to do with vampires before. He just mixed weird stuff up.”

“I thought you knew about the paranormal. Sly filled you in before you started working for him.”

“Yeah, but…” He shook a fat finger at Odi. “Vampires!”

“Hey, dude,” Odi said. “Chill.”

Green’s reaction wasn’t irrational. Even if someone told you about the supernatural world among us, seeing it was a whole other deal. I needed him to get over it, though. Fast.

I snapped my fingers in Green’s face to get his attention back on me. “Sly is dying,” I said. “Now, you can either whine about vampires and woowoo, or you can shut up and help us. Got it?”

Green stared at me, mouth hanging open. Then he looked down. His can of cheeseballs had tipped over and spilled a few onto the bed. He picked one up, rolled it between his cheesy fingertips, then pinched it between thumb and index finger, crushing it to cheese dust.

“What do you want?”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Odi and Green sat on the sofa. I was too wired to sit. I paced.

“You can’t think of anyone?” I asked.

Green had a joint pinched between his fingers. He stared at the burning tip with bloodshot eyes. Slowly, she shook his head. “Nah, man. Except maybe vampires.”

His vampire fixation had yet to let up. But at least he wasn’t freaking out about it anymore. I’m pretty sure the pot helped with that.

“Sly’s never had a heated argument with anyone? Hasn’t pissed anybody off? Maybe one of his customers?”

Green tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling as he sucked another hit off his joint. Odi watched him with some fascination. I thought he might want to try a toke. I wasn’t sure what kind of effect it would have on a vampire. I knew Toft used to keep himself buzzed on martinis. If alcohol worked in a vamp’s bloodstream, maybe pot would, too.

But I didn’t need a high vampire on my hands. I squinted at him and shook my head.

He held out his hands, a picture of innocence. “What?”

I had stopped pacing without realizing. My legs itched to start again. I held fast and waited on an answer from Green.

Green blew a few smoke rings, then said, “I already told you. I…” He raised his head and peered at me through the haze of smoke surrounding him. “Did you say something about a customer?”

“I did.”

He nodded slowly. “There was this dude.”

I waited. He didn’t say anything else.

“I need more than dude, Green.”

His blurry gaze floated away to some distant place over my shoulder. “Super tall guy. Super skinny. Like a walking tree. He had all these tats on his arms and up his neck. Weird symbols, most of them.”

I could think of a couple kinds of practitioners who used tattoos to fuel their magic. Weird symbols could mean runes or old religious icons. “They got in some kind of argument?”

“Yeah. Sly said something like, ‘No can do,’ or, ‘No sir,’ or maybe both. I wasn’t really paying attention. I was behind the register.”

And Green spent most of his time behind the register as high as the Goodyear Blimp during the Super Bowl. This made his info somewhat unreliable. But despite Green’s general dopiness, he wasn’t an idiot. I could probably trust the gist of his story, even if he got a few details wrong.

“Anything else you remember?”

Green started to bring his joint to his mouth and paused. “Sly took the guy in back. I heard them shouting. Yeah. I remember thinking I’d never heard Uncle Sly scream like that.”

Sly was a mellow guy, but I’d heard him angry before. I knew he could shout just fine. But scream? Not so much.

“Then the skinny guy comes flying out the back, and Sly shouts after him, ‘You make me sick.’ And the guy stops and is like, ready to punch my uncle. I thought they might actually throw down. But then the guy just stormed out.”

You make me sick.

A common phrase. But the choice of words felt significant. Or maybe I was trying to make something more out of pure coincidence.

“Did Sly say anything to you about it?”

“Naw, he went in back to fume, I think. When he came out later, it was like it never happened.”

“When was this?”

He made a distasteful face at his joint and set it in a skull shaped ashtray on the coffee table. By this point, the smell of the pot dominated the room. “Before the store got wrecked.” He turned his gaze to Odi. “By vampires.”

“How long before?”

He shrugged his meaty shoulders, blinked slowly. “Not long. No more than a week, I think.”

That was still three months ago. Not exactly recent. Still, those words stuck with me.

You make me sick.

Had the skinny guy with the tats decided to work some magic and make Sly’s metaphorical sickness real?

A buzz ran through me. I had a damn lead to follow. Maybe Mom was right. Sly hadn’t gotten sick after the Maidens used his piece of soul to help her. Maybe their current ritual was the real coincidence.

“Is there anything else you can tell me about the guy? Any idea where he’s from or how Sly knows him?”

“Nope.”

I started to take a deep breath and choked on the weed smoke. The taste of it coated my mouth and clung at the back of my sinuses. So I had to think this through with less clean air than I would have liked. I started pacing again. “Tattoos,” I said.

“Yep,” Green confirmed.

“Real skinny.”

“Super skinny. And tall.”

“And tall.”

I stopped pacing. “That’s a pretty good description.”

Green smiled with half his mouth. “Thanks.”

“Specific,” I said. I approached an idea I didn’t particularly like, but it could give me a chance to follow this lead. “Did you get any other kind of vibe from him?”

Green frowned. “Like what?”

“Did he give you the impression of someone who might have a criminal record?”

His eyes shifted from side to side as he thought it over. “He seemed pretty badass for such a skinny guy. Could have been the tats. But, yeah, I guess so.”

Odi stood, which made Green flinch as if he expected an attack. Odi rolled his eyes and turned to me. “You got something?”

“Not anything for sure. But if this guy’s a practitioner and came into some trouble with the Ministry, I know someone who can help.”

I pointed at Green. “Get your coat. We’re going for a trip.”

Green squinted at his watch. “It’s eleven o’ clock at night.”

I had gotten so used to my flipped circadian rhythm to accommodate Odi, I sometimes forgot not everybody else shared the same schedule. “We’ll grab you a few Red Bulls on the way. Come on.”

He groaned and slowly rose from the couch. “Where are we going?” he whined.

“We’re going to the police.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Besides the headquarters in the Renaissance Center, the Detroit Ministry branch had various satellite offices tucked in and around the city. Among these were law enforcement departments covering their assigned districts, staffed by Ministry guardians, the paranormal world’s police officers.

As a hunter, I had, on occasion, tapped into the guardians’ resources for help tracking bounties, especially the ones with previous charges. A rap sheet could offer a lot of clues if you knew what to look for. My particular contact worked out of the Royal Oak district on Woodward Avenue. It had been a couple years since I last hit him up, so I hoped he still worked in their investigative division. My recent experiences with the Ministry made me hesitant to try connecting with a new source in the department. I was nervous enough heading in there. For all I knew, the conspirators I had thwarted last year had eyes among the guardians. I really didn’t want those eyes on me.

The building looked like any standard office complex, flanked by a trendy thrift shop and a fitness center. It stood three stories high and had plate glass windows all the way around, tinted to hide the goings on inside. There wasn’t any sign naming the place except for the address numbers above the front entrance. A narrow drive on the fitness center’s side led to the small parking lot in back.

At close to midnight, the building looked deserted, as it should have. But I knew it was a complex glamour hiding the twenty-four hour bustle within.

We pulled into the seemingly empty lot, and I took a spot close to the back entrance. Snow covered the asphalt, so I couldn’t see the yellow lines. I took my best guess. I told Odi to stay with the car and took Green with me.

When I got out of the car, the cold air hit my lungs and made my chest ache. The freezer smell of winter made my nostrils tingle. My breath came out in thick plumes.

A couple of post lights kept the lot illuminated even after hours. The falling snow looked ethereal in the bluish phosphorescent glow. Between that and the silence, the moment had a surreal sense about it. I felt like I could have been dreaming.

I wished I was dreaming.

I led Green along the short approach to the back entrance, not really paying attention to him because my mind was on what I was going to say once we were inside.

“Holy shit,” he cried.

I spun around, ready for anything. Mostly ready for another hell beast.

Green stood with his back to me, facing the parking lot. He was looking at nothing, because the car had disappeared.

“Easy, buddy. It’s an illusion. The car’s still there.” I didn’t bother telling him there could have been half a dozen other cars parked in the same spot. His poor, pot-addled brain had enough to process without trying to grasp the impossible physics behind that tidbit.

He didn’t move, so I grabbed him by the arm and tugged him my way. His stance was as solid as he looked. He didn’t budge until he was ready to budge. Thankfully he snapped out of his awe and came along willingly.

He muttered under his breath all the way up to the third floor, which housed the Ministry Investigation Division. This district’s MID didn’t have as many guardians staffing it as those in Detroit itself. The further from the metro area you went, the thinner the guardian coverage became. Unlike normal law enforcement, the Ministry guardians didn’t need or want to cover everywhere. Anything beyond the Detroit Ministry’s direct jurisdiction didn’t much interest them.

And the Global Ministry Faction filled in the gaps when necessary.

The desk sergeant downstairs had relieved my worry that my contact could have moved on by letting me know, not only had he stuck with the Royal Oak district, he had risen to second in command of its MID.

The MID offices looked so non-magical it was kind of sad. They had long since abandoned their hooded robes and torch lit catacombs. Now they worked in a cubicle maze with desks, phones, computers, and copy machines. The air smelled of printer toner and burnt coffee. Fluorescent bulbs behind clear plastic tiles in the drop ceiling gave it all a startling sharpness that hurt my eyes.

Matt Pierce welcomed us into his office with a big smile, showing off his nicotine-stained front teeth. He shut the door behind us and ushered us into a couple of chairs in front of his desk. He wore a shirt and tie with the sleeves rolled up. His pink scalp showed through his blond crew cut. He was one of those fair-skinned guys who could go up in smoke if they spent too much time outside during the summer.

He slapped me on the back hard enough to sting. Matt liked to hit. It was his way of showing affection. “Where have you been, mate?” he said in his faded British accent as he rounded his desk and sat. “Besides foolin’ around with vamps, Mr. Unturned.”

I gave him a flat stare. “Not you, too.”

He held up his hands in surrender. “Sorry, but it’s quite a story, right?” He turned his gaze to Green. “Right?”

Green stared, lips slightly parted, breathing through his mouth. “Uhh.”

“This is Green,” I said. “He’s a witness.”

Matt raised his blond eyebrows. “You’re back on the job then? I heard you’d stopped taking contracts.”

For crying out loud, the rumor mill sure did grind in the paranormal community. “This is a special circumstance,” I said, letting him believe this was for a contract without lying to him outright. Asking for MID help for a personal matter wouldn’t have gone over so well. This, at least, gave me an air of legitimacy. “I need him to look through your mug book.”

Matt’s brow wrinkled. “What are you hunting?”

I smirked, trying for cocky. “I’d rather keep it quiet. I don’t need a bunch of other hunters chasing my leads.”

“You think I’d tell, mate? I’m hurt.”

“Just playing it safe.”

He seemed to consider that. Then nodded. “Fair enough. I’ll set you up in a room.”

He led us to a conference room with a long oval table surrounded by office chairs on wheels. Green and I took a seat. Matt asked, “What are your parameters?”

“Skinny, tall, and covered in tattoos,” I said.

“Hm. Should be easy.” He headed out, gently closing the door behind him and cutting off the whir of copiers, trill of phones, and bleep and hum of fax machines.

“What’s going on?” Green asked with a confused frown.

“If this guy you saw has a criminal record with the Ministry, he’ll have a mug shot. I’m hoping you’ll find him if you flip through the book.”

His eyebrows drew together. He did not look any less confused. “There’s only one book?”

I laughed. “You’ll see.”

Twenty minutes later, Matt came back with a leather bound book about the size of an old CPU tower. He thumped it onto the table with a humf. “Sorry it took me so long. ‘Nother chap couldn’t decide if he was looking for a woman or a banshee. Can’t he tell the fucking difference? I mean, it’s obvious, right?” He smacked Green on the shoulder. “Right?”

Green cringed. The poor bastard looked shell shocked.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Matt said. “Just let me know you’re done on the way out.” He pointed at me. “We need drinks.”

“Several,” I promised.

He slugged me in the arm and left.

Rubbing the spot he’d hit, I swiveled my chair around to face the book on the table. The leather was a deep forest green with a gold border around an otherwise blank cover. I flipped it open to a random spot in the center. Printed across the thin parchment were mug shots, six to a page. Despite the material they were printed on, the pictures looked as clear and vivid as a digital photo on a computer screen.

The pages smell like cedar.

Each photo was a full length shot. The twelve faces on the pages I had opened to all belonged to tall, skinny looking guys with various tattoos. I slid the open book over to Green.

He jerked away as if it might snap at him.

“It’s not going to hurt you,” I said. “The book is enchanted, obviously. The guardians can use certain parameters to bring up mug shots that match. It’s like a magical database without all the pesky typing.”

Green looked up from the book at me. “How deep does this rabbit hole go, Sebastian?”

I smiled. “Pretty fucking deep, my friend.”

He reached for the book, touched one of the pages, then drew his hand back. He blinked a few times, set his jaw, and nodded to himself. Then he pulled the book closer and looked at the mugs. He studied each picture with care, taking his time. When he got through the twelve, he shook his head. “None of them.”

“No big deal. Flip the page.”

“Which way?”

“Doesn’t matter. Magic, remember? You’ll get through them as you need to.”

As if he wanted to test my words, he flipped back three pages. Another set of six mugs on each page materialized like spilled ink taking a life of its own to form the pictures.

“Whoa.”

He scanned through these a little quicker than the others. Then he tucked his thumb in about a hundred pages down and flopped them over.

Twelve more mugs appeared, all of them different than the others.

Green gasped.

At first I thought he was awed by the magic, then he poked his finger at the picture on the upper right corner of the left page.

“That’s him.”

I leaned forward. Skinny and tall was right. Based on the markings on the wall behind the man, he stood almost seven feet. His thin neck, the entire surface covered with tats, looked like it could snap in a strong wind. He wore a sleeveless black t-shirt that left his narrow midriff showing. He could have bought the shirt from the kids section, yet it still hung loose on him.

I touched the bottom of the picture and a name written in neat script scrawled itself across the page.

Horton Plutskinst.

What a name.

“You’re sure?” I asked, though I could see the certainty in his eyes.

He nodded. “No doubt. That’s Tree Man.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

I reconnected with Matt and he was able to give me a last known address for Mr. Plutskinst. Green looked ready to pass out, so I took him home. He fell asleep on the drive. It took Odi threatening to suck his blood to wake Green up and send him inside.

I had Plutskinst’s address on a small sheet of notebook paper in my back pocket. It felt like it might burn a hole in my ass. I wanted to follow up right that second. But it was after midnight, and pounding on his door to wake him up and confront him directly wasn’t the approach I wanted to take.

I took Odi to my grandparents’ house and arrived about two in the morning. The snow continued to fall, thick enough now to make the roads a little wonky. My Jetta didn’t weigh all that much, so I took it slow, tacking on an extra twenty minutes to the trip.

Looking at the house, I had to admit the layer of white, the steady snowfall, and the moonlight all combined made the property look beautiful. The bare branches of the maples and oaks surrounding the edges of the acreage were lightly dusted. The cold still needled me, yet I took a moment to stand outside and appreciate it. Then, strangely for me, I decided to stay out in it.

“Let’s practice some fire magic,” I said to Odi.

He drew his head back and cocked an eyebrow. “You serious?”

I gestured toward the stretch of land behind the house. “Plenty of room.”

The smile on his face nearly killed me.

Don’t forget, that smile is on a vampire.

Why did that voice in the back of my head always try to ruin everything?

We trudged out about a hundred yards from the house and directed our casting away from it. I had Odi start with his small flame. He could call up the equivalent of a candle flame instantly now. I had a stupid grin on my face the whole time I worked with him from then on.

With concentration, he grew his flame larger and larger, until it stood a foot off his palm.

“This is magical fire,” I said. “It has the same basic properties as all fire with the significant difference that you control it. But if you lose that control, the fire acts like any other. That means it can burn you, too.”

He stared at me through his flame, its light shining in his wide eyes.

“But if you’re really good, like me…” I raised both hands and engulfed them in fire. “…you can let in just enough heat to keep your hands warm in freezing ass weather like this.”

We both laughed.

“Can I do that?” he asked.

“This?”

I held my hands out in front of me, still surrounded by fire, and turned them over and back as if displaying a magic trick instead of real magic. Then I swung them out at my sides and back in front of me. Orange light trails arched along their twin paths.

“Show off.”

I cut my power off, and the flames winked out instantly. “How does your hand feel?”

He looked down at his own flame floating barely an inch above his palm. “A little hot. But it doesn’t hurt.”

I realized I’d made an error of judgment. Odi was a vampire. He didn’t feel pain as acutely as a human. Which meant his level of comfort (or discomfort) was different from mine. I would have to take that into account, because he could end up cooking himself before he noticed how hot his fire actually burned.

“Let’s hold off on that,” I said.

“Aw.”

“Hey, you’re really catching on. You—”

“Sebastian!”

I jumped at the sound of my mom’s voice cutting through the night. I turned toward the house. She stood on the porch in her night gown, waving her hands above her head frantically.

“The hospital called,” she shouted.

And from her tone, I knew they didn’t have good news.

Chapter Twenty-Five

My heart raced as I jogged down the hall on the ICU floor. I ran by Sly’s old room. All the glass from the shattered window had been swept up. Most of the equipment inside had been removed, leaving the empty bed alone in the center. I didn’t know where they had moved him, so I ran to the nurses’ station.

“Sly Petrie,” I said, panting. I had a stitch in my side. I had taken the stairs up, too impatient to wait for the elevator. My chest ached from my hard breathing.

I must have seemed like a crazy man, but the round-faced nurse behind the desk didn’t appear the least bit phased. She’d probably seen it all on this floor—well, except for hell beasts slinking down the halls. She didn’t seem to recognize me. I wasn’t sure if she’d been on duty at the time of the incident, but if the Ministry clean-up crew had done their job right, it wouldn’t have mattered. She wouldn’t recognize me.

A hint of a sad frown touched the nurse’s face. “Dr. Prashad is waiting for you.” She directed me to the proper room, and I sprinted for it.

Prashad stood beside the bed. None of the machines bleeped or clicked. A number of their displays were dark. Sly lay motionless, his skin tone yellow, mouth hanging open and a small collection of foam in the corners. His eyelids were half open, but all I could see was the jaundice of the whites, as if his eyes had rolled back into his head.

Which they had, I knew, the moment I saw him.

My stomach twisted. My face felt tight. Tears blurred my vision.

Prashad inhaled deeply. “I’m sorry.”

I barely heard him. He didn’t exist to me. Nothing did, except for my friend. My dead friend.

My mouth split open, and a roar exploded out of my throat, rattled in my chest, burned like magma all the way up. The edges of my vision faded to red. I charged to his bedside and knocked Prashad out of the way. I clutched the plastic bed rail and shook it. I wanted to tear it loose. I could feel some give, and that made me yank even harder.

“No,” I sobbed. Thick mucus warped my voice into something I didn’t recognize. “No, no, no. Gods damn it, no!”

Prashad said something behind me. The rush of blood in my ears muffled the words. I spun on him. “Get out of here you incompetent fuck. Get out.”

His eyes widened. He staggered backwards as if I had shoved him.

“Get out!”

He shuffled sideways, then turned and hurried out.

My hands felt hot. I looked down at them. A blue glow surrounded them. Not quite fire. More like hot vapor. I felt the plastic rail soften in my grip. With one mad jerk, I yanked the rail and two chunks of it came away. I threw them aside, and they clattered away along the tile floor.

I tried to draw back the growing heat in my hands. My skin started to peel away, revealed the bone and sinew beneath. The pain only fueled my rage. If I didn’t redirect my magic, I would burn my hands to black stumps. I sucked in a deep breath, thrust the force of my power outward.

A wild gust of wind spun through the room. The machines skated away on their wheels or tipped over. A box of latex gloves on a nearby counter ripped open. Gloves scattered like rubber windswept leaves. The rush of air caught a cabinet door, flung it open, then wrenched it free at the hinges. The door sailed at the glass wall, struck it with a corner, then bounced away, leaving behind a spider web pattern in the glass.

I heard frightened shouts from down the hall.

I didn’t care. I couldn’t care.

The wind picked up speed, whirled around me like a cyclone, snatched the privacy curtain off its track in the ceiling and sent it fluttering through the air, following the wind’s current until it caught on and draped a chair.

“Sebastian.”

The voice was calm, even, but firm.

I turned toward it.

Mom stood in the doorway. The wind whipped her long gray hair across her face. Her stern eyes bore into me.

“Stop it.”

“I can’t.”

“Stop it.”

I felt like maybe I could. I only had to jam my power deep within me. Draw away the power, and the magic would die. But I didn’t want to. I wanted to tear apart this place, blow every brick apart, and swirl away all the horrible excuses for healthcare professionals up into the sky, beyond the clouds, and let them drop where they may.

I didn’t have that kind of power in me, of course. No sorcerer did. Not with their inborn magic alone. But I could still cause a serious amount of damage. I could still kill someone. As angry as I was, I didn’t want to do that.

I clenched my teeth and bared down on my power. I forced it to draw in instead of pour out. As I did, the wind slowly died, all the stuff caught in the gale dropped to the floor, and, eventually, the room fell silent.

I looked down at Sly. I had blown his covers off, revealing him in his hospital gown. His skinny legs stuck out the bottom of the gown and looked so fragile. The wind had mussed his hair and—gods, what a fool I was—turned his head away from me.

Tears streamed down my face, hot against my cheeks, the few that curled into my mouth salty.

“He’s gone, Mom. He’s gone.”

She crossed to me, wrapped an arm around me, and pressed up against my side.

We cried together. I don’t know for how long. A thousand years. The whole while I felt the pain along the backs of my hands where I had burned off my skin. I ate that pain and made sure to taste every agonizing bite. I deserved that pain.

But Sly…

Sly didn’t deserve any of this.

Chapter Twenty-Six

I felt them staring at me. At us. I wiped snot and tears off my face and turned to face them. At least half a dozen faces peered in through the glass wall, some of them whispering, others frozen in awe or horror or hate. It all looked the same to me. I was only vaguely sorry that the Ministry would have to “attend” to them again, maybe even alter their memories once more.

I had caused a lot of trouble for the hospital’s ICU.

But they had let Sly die.

Fuck them.

Mom touched Sly’s face, brushed strands of his hair off of his cheek. She choked on a sob. Her trembling vibrated through me.

“What are we going to do?” she asked. The question sounded so innocent and vulnerable. Not the voice of a centuryand a half year-old sorceress. Not the voice of my mother.

My wind had turned the air in the room frigid. My sweat cooled and felt like dried paste on my skin. My tears felt the same way. I kept thinking of tall, skinny men with tattoos. Tree Men. A Tree Man named Horton, to be specific. Along with Horton’s address, Matt had gone over his rap sheet with me. Horton had a number of charges against him, including assault by magical means. But two of the charges were for possession of illegal effigies. It appeared Horton had a thing for hurting people from afar, using a representation of his target to dole out abuse.

With that kind of skill, he could have easily caused Sly to come down with his illness…and then kill him.

I clenched my fist. The pain that caused because of my burns nearly knocked me out. My vision closed in, and my ears buzzed. If Mom hadn’t been leaning against me, I might have fallen over.

“We find the person who did this to him,” I said slowly. “And we—”

“Don’t say it.”

I grinded my teeth. “I can’t let—”

“I know. Just don’t say it.” Then she turned her gaze toward our audience in the hall.

One of them was Prashad. He looked at me with such fear, his brown skin seemed a shade lighter. I recognized his expression. I’d seen it on a number of my contracts, right before I burned them to cinders. He must have thought the rage I clearly wore on my face was meant for him.

Just like a doctor, believing he had the power of gods, that he somehow carried responsibility here.

“You are nothing,” I spat.

He flinched.

Mom squeezed my arm. “I’ll stay and take care of the details,” she said under her breath. “You go. Do what needs to be done before the Ministry gets here.”

I nodded, took one last look at Sly, then strode for the door.

The onlookers scattered like a flock of startled chickens.

No one got in my way as I stormed out of there.

No one dared.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I drove with my window down. The snow had stopped. The temperature had sunk too low for it to continue. But, even rushing into my window as I tore down the highway, the cold couldn’t counter my internal heat. I worried I might involuntarily ignite again, only this time I would flake away to ash and bones.

Dawn light stung my eyes. I had known Odi wouldn’t make the trip to the hospital and back to the Ann Arbor house before daylight. So before heading out, we had set Odi up in the guest bedroom, tacking thick quilts over the window to block out the sunlight. Odi, nervous that the quilts wouldn’t be enough, had decided to sleep under the bed.

I could have used him. Having a vampire at your side, even one as young as Odi, made for good backup. A vampire and a sorcerer in one? Better yet.

I had to swing this on my own, though. I wasn’t about to wait until dark before going after the Tree Man. I also didn’t plan on wasting time shadowing him like I had first planned. I was going the direct approach. No fucking around.

Horton Plutskinst lived in a single family home on Detroit’s east side. He had a corner house at the end of the street next door to an abandoned twin of his house with the windows boarded and a fair share of tagging all around the outside. This was one of the neighborhoods where the Ministry conspirators had wanted to turn the residents into hypnotized vamp food. An ugly thought occurred to me as I approached his front porch. If I hadn’t stopped them, Tree Man would be dead, and Sly could still be alive.

I almost…almost wished that was what had happened. But my rage had not left my core that cold. Not yet, anyway.

As I stepped onto the concrete porch, I threw my hands forward, calling on the wind, and blew his front door in, right off the hinges, and splintered some of the doorframe.

Without any loss of momentum, I marched right into a small living space cut off from an even smaller kitchen by a half wall.

There was hardly any furniture, and what furniture there was looked ready for a trash heap. A recliner missing the foot rest and a split straight down the middle of the seat, a long bubble of yellow foam sticking up from the tear. A plain wooden chair with its back broken off so it passed as more of a stool than a chair. A plank of plywood on four cinderblocks was Tree Man’s excuse for a coffee table.

What a fucking pig.

The air smelled of cooked greens and cigarette smoke. Almost every surface in the kitchen shined with a layer of grease, nothing wiped down in years from the looks of it.

I didn’t see any sign of Tree Man. Didn’t hear anything when I cocked my ear either. If this pasty-faced, skinny-assed, tat-wearing motherfucker had a real job and was gone for the day this early, I would have been amazed. More likely, I would go down the hall and find him passed out in bed. Assuming he had a bed. Maybe the roach slept on the floor.

“What the hell you doing?”

I spun around. Out on the porch a young black girl, no older than ten, stood with her arms crossed and her hip cocked. She had on a puffy pink coat and mittens with kitten faces on them. But she wasn’t wearing a hat like she should have in such cold weather. She had her hair in braids and beads that hung to her shoulders. The look in her eyes went twenty years beyond her actual age. In that way, she reminded me of Toft. But she wasn’t a vampire. She did look like she might bite, though.

“I’m looking for Horton.”

“Mm-hm.” Her breath puffed in the winter air. “You need to break his door down like that? You a cop? You look too skinny.”

“I’m no cop,” I said. “But my business with Mr. Plutskinst is private.”

“Yeah, well, he ain’t here.”

“I appreciate that. I’ll check myself, though. Just in case.”

She rolled her eyes and cocked her hip in the other direction. “I’m telling you he ain’t here, ‘cause he’s with my momma.”

I froze, processing. I didn’t want to involve any outsiders. I wasn’t planning on treating Tree Man so well. I figured I’d need to shake him pretty hard to get any straight answers—like a confession that he had killed Sly. So I needed a way to get him alone without spooking him at the same time. If he knew Sly well enough to want to kill him, he might have seen me around, too. If so, the second he saw my face, he would bolt (if he was smart).

I softened my voice as best I could. “Can you take me to him?”

She moved her gaze to the door on the floor. “I don’t think so.”

“Can you tell him I’m here waiting for him? I just want to talk.” That last sentence hurt to say. I didn’t like straight-up lying to a young lady.

“You might have to wait a while. He and Momma got a special relationship.”

Okay, that sounded weird. And maybe a little gross. “Um…”

Her skeptical frown broke into a toothy smile. She practically beamed. “You should hear them. Like a couple hippos. You know, I seen hippos at the zoo doing it. Momma tried to cover my eyes, but I seen it.” She giggled into her hand. “Yucky.”

I had no idea what to say to that.

“You know. I changed my mind. Come on. Let’s go visit the hippos.” She waved a mittened hand at me to follow, then turned and skipped off the porch and headed down the sidewalk, leaving scuffs in the snow behind her.

I stood stuck for a stunned second, then shook it off and went after her.

I jogged up to her side as she skipped along. “What’s your name, kiddo?”

“Queen Latifah.”

“Somehow I doubt that.”

She laughed. Her beads bounced around her shoulders as she skipped. “You a stranger. I don’t tell strangers my name.”

“That’s probably a good idea.” We rounded the corner at the end of the street. “Is there a reason you changed your mind about taking me to see Horton?”

“It’s gonna be funny.” She stopped all at once, and I went on a few steps before realizing. I turned to her. She had that big grin on. The cold didn’t seem to bother her a bit. Meanwhile, my ears had started to burn from the bitter air. The little girl had defused my anger with her silliness, so I didn’t have that heat to keep me from freezing anymore.

She said, “You promise to break down the door to momma’s bedroom like you did over there.” She aimed one mitten in the direction we’d come. “That’ll be the best.”

Once more, the girl left me speechless.

She narrowed her eyes. “You one of them, ain’t you.”

“One of who?”

“The special people. The magic people.”

Interesting. Seemed the girl might know a little about the paranormal. Made me wonder if her mom was a practitioner, too. Maybe she and Horton were working more than the standard magic in the bedroom. Sex could work as a powerful source of magic if you knew how to harness it.

I decided to play it straight with my new little friend.

“I’m a sorcerer.”

She smiled again. “That how you broke the door.”

“It is.”

She clapped her mittens together and did a little bounce on the balls of her sneakered feet. I noticed one of those sneakers was missing its laces. “Momma gonna be soooooo freaked.”

I crouched to her eye level. “There’s more to this than being funny, isn’t there?”

She struggled with it, but her smile faltered. That stern stare she gave me when we first met returned. She answered with a question of her own. “You don’t wanna just talk to him, do you?”

Again, I stuck with the truth. Those extra twenty years in her eyes told me she could handle it.

“No.”

“Good. ‘Cause he and Momma make weird things happen.”

“What kind of things?” I asked.

“Bad things.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

As promised, I blew down Momma’s bedroom door, but only after the little girl—still insisting I call her Queen Latifah—promised me she would stay outdoors while I did what needed to be done.

As the door flew across the room, my anger reignited, a fresh flame in my belly, and a hard pulse in my head. I charged in after the door and found Horton and Momma.

They were on the floor, surrounded by a circle of salt with a pentagram drawn in red on the dirty beige carpet. A limp, headless chicken lay in a bare corner of the room, blood spattered across the wall, and more droplets peppering the floor. Didn’t take a genius to figure out they had drawn the pentagram with the chicken’s blood.

I had a wonderful view of Horton’s skinny bare ass as he took a rather large black woman on her hands and knees from behind. They were both completely naked, except Horton still wore a pair of saggy gym socks with blue stripes around the calves. They also wore a fair amount of chicken blood painted in streaks across their bodies.

Like little Miss Latifah had said, they grunted and moaned like a pair of wild animals. Unlike her, I had never witness a pair of hippos going at it, so I couldn’t confirm that specific sound.

The pair were so wrapped up in their ritual, neither of them had flinched when the door sailed off the hinges and to the far wall, cracking the plaster before it dropped to the floor. Horton had his head thrown back as he thrust away. He chanted in Latin with the occasional name, Steve Anders, slipped in among the words. A rough translation had him calling for horrible pain to befall Steve.

Then I noticed the torn fabric clutched in Horton’s thin, knuckley hand. Probably torn from a shirt or other piece of clothing belonging to poor Steve. A long distance curse needed something personal from the target, something cherished. In this case, probably Steve’s lucky t-shirt or something.

In that moment, I had no doubt Horton—and maybe his mate there—had caused Sly’s death. That fire inside of me flowed from my stomach all the way to the ends of my toes and the tips of my fingers. I could have thrown a fireball and obliterated the two of them in a single flash. Only two things kept me from doing so.

First, the little girl. I couldn’t murder her mother while she waited just outside the house. I didn’t know if the woman had any involvement in Sly’s illness either. But it did bother the fuck out of me that she would practice this kind of black magic around her young daughter.

Second, I had to ask Horton Why? What possible thing could have angered him enough to kill Sly? I couldn’t turn him to human bacon until I got that answer from him.

Still didn’t mean I couldn’t throw around a little fire.

I started by kicking at the salt on the floor, breaking the circle.

Momma threw her head back and screamed as if I had stabbed her in her sweaty back.

Horton coughed and clawed at his throat, the breath knocked out of him. That’s what happened when you practiced black magic. Bad shit happened when you lost the protection of your circle. I didn’t get the impression from Horton’s chant that they were summoning demons, but if they had been, when I broke that circle, one or both of them would have been as good as possessed.

Horton flopped onto his side and writhed as he tried to catch his breath.

Momma rolled onto her back. Her large breasts sagged apart. A roll of flab creased her waist. She panted, but it looked like her shock of pain had already passed. She lifted her head to see me, and her eyes went wide. “What…fuck…you…doin’,” she said between rushed breaths.

I flicked the fingers of one hand open dramatically and filled my palm with deep orange fire. “You’re a sick woman doing this kind of magic around your daughter.”

Her wide gaze locked on my flame. “You…Ministry…? Hey, we just playing here. Sex stuff, ya know? Make it better.”

There was such a thing as increasing the pleasure of sex with magic, but this bitch must have thought I had donated my brain to charity if she thought I would see this for anything other than what it really was. I kind of liked the idea she thought I was Ministry. I didn’t correct her.

Horton coughed one last time and finally sucked air like a Hoover. His eyes bugged as they rolled around to see me and my fire. “Oh, shit,” he creaked.

“Hurts, huh?” I kicked him in the ribs. Not as hard as I could have, but I wasn’t gentle either. “I’m gonna hurt more than your nasty magic, though.”

Cringing in pain, he held his hands out close together, his knobby elbows sticking out at his sides like a pair of featherless chicken wings. “Hey, man. You don’t have to get all butt hurt. We wasn’t hurting no one.”

“No?” I kicked him again.

He curled up on his side, and with him naked like that, he looked like an ugly, overgrown fetus.

“My Latin ain’t great,” I said, “but I recognize a death call when I hear one.”

Momma whispered a curse under her breath.

Horton was too busy squirming in pain to say anything.

“You gonna take us in?” Momma asked.

“If you didn’t have a little girl depending on you, I’d do more than take you in.” I threw a small fire bolt just past her head.

She screamed and threw her hands in front of her face.

The bolt burst against the floor behind her and started the carpet on fire. Before the little fire got out of hand, I directed my magic toward it, grasped control, and snuffed it out.

“Get dressed and get the fuck out of here,” I said. “I need to talk to Horton here alone.”

At the sound of his name, Horton looked up from his pain position. “Why me? This was all her idea.”

“Why you son of a whore.” Momma rolled up to a sitting position then scooted on her wide, bare ass within striking distance of Horton. She started smacking him. Each slap against his bare skin sounded like a whip crack.

I wasn’t about to get in there between them. The thought of touching either one of them made my skin crawl. But I had to break it up. I wanted to get my own hits in against Horton.

I ignited my fist. “Hey!”

She stopped smacking.

He stopped cowering.

Both of them honed in on my fiery hand.

“I told you to leave,” I said to Momma.

She nodded quickly, scrambled to her feet—giving me way too much of an eyeful—grabbed a wad of clothes off the bed, and hurried out, fat rolls jiggling.

“What you want from me, hey?” Horton asked, voice cracking.

I glared down at him. I wanted to slam my flaming fist right into his mouth, make his eyeballs boil, his face slough off.

Not yet, though.

“Get some clothes on before I puke.”

He moved stiffly, wincing as he pulled on his jeans. I’d kicked him pretty good, but I thought some of his pain came from the side effects of a broken black ritual. All magic comes at a cost. The dark stuff liked payment in flesh or soul.

Like Sly’s soul.

That this fuck had poisoned.

Once Horton pulled on his t-shirt, I kicked him in the stomach, doubling him over. I gave him a shove toward the bed and he bounced onto the mattress. I gave him another kick in the ass to coax him the rest of the way onto the bed.

The bed was tucked in the corner, and Horton wormed his way along the bed into that corner, and pulled his bony knees up in front of him like a scared kid after a nightmare. “What you want, man? Just tell me what you want.”

“Sly Petrie.”

He ran a hand over his shaved head and absently streaked chicken blood across his scalp. His black eyebrows drew together. “Why the fuck would I know where that shit head is?”

“So you know him.”

“Yeah. He used to sell me good shit. This herbal mix blow your fuckin’ mind. I used it to slip into the astral plane, man.”

I thought I saw where this was headed. “What did you do on the astral plane, Horton? You try to play incubus with some poor, defenseless girls asleep in their beds?”

He pressed his thin lips so tightly together they practically disappeared. Shook his head.

His eyes told a different story. Guys like this who managed to astral project, first thing they wanted to try was to rape a girl, only they didn’t think it was rape because it wasn’t with their physical bodies. Just some harmless fun, they told themselves. And the girls got a nice dream out of it.

Only most women had nightmares instead. And they suffered all the psychological trauma of a rape victim, but they couldn’t comprehend what had happened to them. It was a sick practice, and not at all harmless like the assholes doing it tried to convince themselves.

“Sly figure out what you were doing with his mix?” I asked.

He shook his head again, mouth locked closed.

“He refused to sell to you once he knew. And that pissed you off, huh? That’s what that argument was about. That’s why Sly said you made him sick.”

Horton’s eyes glistened. His nostrils flared from his panicked breaths. He trembled.

I had him, gods damn it. I had him.

“So you decided you’d make him sick for real, huh? You already have charges for effigy possession.” I pointed at the bloody swatch of fabric Horton had dropped on the floor. “You pretty good at long distance curses? Your lady friend help you with Sly, too?”

His mouth finally broke open. “She had nothing to do with it.”

Which sounded like a confession. She didn’t have anything to do with it, but, by implication, he did. Holy hells, he had killed Sly. He’d done it, and here I was, my hand still in flames, only the center had turned sharp blue like a gas fire. I watched as that blue fed on the orange until the flame had taken on the color of the edge of twilight.

My heart pounded. Sweat greased my skin, made my shirt stick to me under my coat. A feverish heat consumed me.

Horton must have seen the rage in my eyes. He tried to squeeze himself deeper into the corner. “Look, man. I’m sorry. I just, I was pissed, man. But he’s gonna get better. No harm done.”

My eyes nearly exploded out of my skull. My pulse raced double time. I could feel it in my face. In my gut. In my soul.

“No harm done,” I rasped. “You killed him, you stupid fuck. You killed him.”

I swung my flaming fist, but the bed was in the way. My right hook missed his nose by a couple inches. Fine. I wouldn’t miss with this.

I cocked my hand over my shoulder, ready to pitch my fire right at his face. In my mind, he was already dead. Blasting his head off was merely a formality.

He pressed his fists against his eyes and curled into as tight a ball as his gangly limbs would allow.

“It wasn’t supposed to kill him,” he screamed. “There’s no way, man. It wasn’t me. I didn’t—”

The whoosh of my fire bolt drowned out his last words.

After that, all he had left were screams.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The smell of cooked flesh followed me out of the bedroom. The taste of bile sat in my mouth. My stomach felt ready to send up more at any moment. I kept seeing Horton Plutskinst’s face melting within a torrent of blue flame.

I stumbled into the living room and found Momma and Little Latifah on the couch. Momma, now dressed in a flower print blouse and a pair of navy slacks, clutched her daughter against her. The tears on little girl’s cheeks shined in the sunlight through the nearest window. She quivered in her mother’s arms. And when she saw me, she shrank away.

She looked nothing like the sassy, silly girl who had asked me to blow in her momma’s bedroom door and interrupt the hippo lovin’. Hadn’t she told me she wanted them to stop doing their bad things? And hadn’t I given her just that?

I held out a hand toward the girl. “Sweetie, I’m sorry if I scared you.”

I realized how ludicrous that sounded the moment the words left my mouth. I had killed a man in her mother’s bedroom. I had set him on fire, and he had screamed until he died. I had lost track of everything but my rage. Now I had traumatized a little girl who only wanted the bad things to stop, and I had made the bad things worse.

“Get away from my daughter,” Momma shrieked. She was in tears, too. “And get your ass outta my house.”

I blinked, saw a flash of Horton’s head caving in, and gagged. I pressed my fist against my mouth and ran.

Outside, the cold hit my hot lungs so hard I lost my breath. My chest seized. My heart seemed to stop for a second. The collection of sensations, on top of my nausea, knocked my balance out of whack. I shuffled along the sidewalk a few paces then fell to my knees on the front lawn. The frozen grass crunched under the snow. The snow itself seeped into my jeans. I shivered hard once, then bent over and threw up.

The puddle of hot bile and what remained of my last meal steamed in the snow.

I wiped my mouth with my coat sleeve and slowly cranked back to my feet. I looked back at the little girl’s house, maybe expecting to see her or her momma staring after me from the door or through a window. Only the shadows stared.

What had I done?

You killed Sly’s murderer, and he had damn well earned every last scream he managed before dying. Don’t ever forget that.

That angry voice in my mind sounded sure of itself, but I wasn’t so sure myself. As I made my way back to my car, the voice decided to argue.

How many monsters have you killed? Executed? The Ministry paid you to kill all of them. They should kiss your damn ass for getting rid of a monster like Plutskinst.

But Horton hadn’t been a demon, or vampire, or angry imp. He had been a mortal.

That doesn’t mean the Ministry wouldn’t have put a contract on him. They put one on you.

Only they had thought I was a vampire when they put a bounty on me. Humans didn’t get the same treatment as the supernatural races. The guardians dealt with them, not hunters. And the Ministry had no authority to sentence a human to death. It maybe didn’t sound fair, but, like it or not, the world belonged to the mortals, and the mortals ran the Ministry.

My angry voice couldn’t argue with that, so I made it to my car without any more internal debate.

I tilted the rearview mirror to look at my face. A crust of vomit clung to my chin. My eyes were bloodshot. I smelled like a hippo after sex by a campfire.

But how did I feel?

I didn’t feel anything.

Chapter Thirty

Mom’s new Jeep was parked in the driveway of the Ann Arbor house. I followed its tracks in the snow up to the house, cut the engine, and stared out the window at the far trees. The naked branches made me think of burnt bones. The dust of snow looked like ash.

With the engine off, the car quickly cooled. Before long I could see my breath as well as smell the vomit on it. I didn’t feel like getting out. Seemed like too much effort. The cold worked its way through my coat, numbed my hands, stung my cheeks. But I sat there. I stared at the ash and bones, and the internal image of Horton’s bubbling face as he screamed through a shroud of blue flame. Or I saw the little girl, her smile, the way she giggled into her hand, how proud she looked to catch me off guard by telling me about her momma’s special relationship with Horton.

I would have stayed in the car until I froze to the seat if Mom hadn’t come out of the house. She held her long, tan coat closed instead of bothering with the buttons. Her face pinched against the cold. A wind had picked up and it flung her hair in all directions.

I watched her approach the car, stared at her like an odd curiosity. Who is this woman coming toward me? How very strange.

She rapped her knuckles against my window. “Come inside,” she said, voice muffled by the glass and the wind.

I nodded slowly, unbuckled my belt, pulled the keys from the ignition. I moved as if I were caught in the slow motion of a nightmare where you’re trying to outrun the Thing coming after you.

The keys slipped from my fingers and clinked to the floorboard. I waved a hand—to hell with it—and left them there when I got out of the car.

Mom took my arm and we went inside together.

She had the fire going. The smell nearly wrung the last of the bile out of my stomach. The scent of flames had always comforted me. I had spent a number of days of my childhood in front of this very fireplace, watching the flames dance, casting shadows across the floor as my grandmother read to me.

That scent had never sickened me before. Sure, burning vamp flesh had a horrible stench, but it was the flesh, not the flame. Right then, though, I couldn’t even stand the look of its light.

I shuffled down the hall toward the guest bedroom. While the overcast sky deadened the sunlight outside, I didn’t expect to walk into perfect darkness. It took me a second to orient myself and remember Odi was sleeping in there. I immediately backed out and shut the door. I didn’t think I’d let any residual sunlight in through the door, and I didn’t hear a peep from Odi, so I didn’t worry about it.

I had wanted to crash out on the bed. But having Odi sleeping under the bed at the same time… Just, no.

So I couldn’t escape the fire.

I turned to head through the hall back to the living room.

Mom stood at the opposite end, arms folded, her cheeks rosy from the cold. She had pulled her hair back into a ponytail that reached past her waist. I sometimes thought of her hair as steel threads, like a kind of protective garment that shielded her from the tides of unchecked emotion. I felt weak standing before this woman of great strength.

“What happened?” she asked.

“How’d it go at the hospital?” I asked, not ready to talk about Horton the Tree Man. (Though he hadn’t burned like a tree. A man has a special way of burning. Horton had burned like a man.)

“What happened?” Mom repeated.

I leaned against the wall and rested my head on its cool surface. I felt feverish again. My body temperature didn’t know which end of the spectrum to rest at. I wondered if I was getting sick. Maybe Momma had worked some magic on me after I left. Maybe I would end up in the morgue beside Sly.

Mom waited. She would wait, not letting me out of the hall, until I told her. So I told her.

I told her about the little girl. About her momma. About the ritual I had caught her momma and Horton in. By that point in the story, I saw the light of understanding dawn in Mom’s eyes. She knew what came next, but I still had to tell her.

Afterward, neither of us said anything for a while. We kept our places at opposite ends of the hall like a pair of indecisive gunslingers at high noon. Mom broke the silence first.

“That’s terrible,” she said. “Terrible. But, Sebastian, it’s done. And I’m glad it’s done.”

“Really?” My tongue felt like concrete after a light rain, made it hard to enunciate. Maybe I’d suffered a stroke. Maybe that’s how Momma would get back at me for traumatizing her daughter. “Glad?”

She set her jaw, nodded.

I swallowed the taste of ashes. “Now what?”

Mom uncrossed her arms and came over to me. She put her hands on my shoulders and gave me a gentle shake. “We make sure Sylvester has a memorial fit for a god.”

Sly had a lot of ties in the paranormal community, some of them morally questionable—he was the one who had first connected me with Toft Kitchens and the Maidens of Shadow. He had earned a level of respect that he more than deserved. He was a man so generous, he had offered up part of his soul to help friends in need.

Who did that?

Sly. That was who.

“That’s gonna be one hell of a party,” I said.

One corner of Mom’s mouth curled up, but sadness still owned her eyes. She started to say something…

…but the lights started flickering.

The electric scent of gathering magic rolled in from all sides. Mom and I shared a glance. She felt it, too. Then I heard—or more like felt—a series of pops, like a string of firecrackers going off, each one a sign of our surrounding wards breaking down in succession. I could feel the destruction of my fire rune like a wasp sting at the back of my brain. I winced.

It took a massive amount of magic to cut through so many wards like that so easily.

I had a good idea who had arrived. Somehow, the Maidens of Shadow had found us. With their mothers visiting, the coven was a good bit stronger than I had imagined.

Not good.

Mom and I hurried down the hall. As if on cue with our entrance into the living room, a gust of wind blew down from the chimney and extinguished the fire. Logs and ash exploded out of the fireplace, carried on the unnatural gust. One shard of wood sailed across the room and embedded itself in the far wall.

The gathering magical energy crackled with intense life.

All at once, every window exploded inward. Bits of glass sprayed everywhere and ticked and rattled on the hardwood floors. Some pieces pelted against my coat. A couple small bits peppered my cheek, a warm wetness soon flowing from where they’d struck.

Adrenaline rushed through me, quickening my heartbeat, sharpening my senses. I pulled Mom close to me, tapped my power, and manipulated the air around us to form a hard shield like a glass dome. But after the windows blew in, the intruding magical crackle dissipated, leaving behind the smell of ozone.

I kept the shield up anyway.

From down in the guest room I heard Odi cry out. If the window in there had exploded, too, it was likely the quilts had ripped free as well. Good thing the kid had decided to sleep under the bed. But it meant he was trapped under there, too.

The natural wind howled through the destroyed windows, pulling in tiny crystals of ice off the snow that made the air sparkle. The cold came with it. I adjusted my shield to keep that bitter air out.

“Maidens?” Mom asked.

“I’m guessing.”

As if in answer, the front door creaked slowly open. Standing in the doorway, the wind tugging at the tail of her black leather duster, was a woman with a familiar white pallor and dark hair. She looked like she was in her mid-fifties, with a bright shine in her eyes. Her hair was cropped in a choppy version of a pageboy cut. She wore a black scarf that covered her mouth, and leather pants under the duster.

I couldn’t decide why she looked familiar until she stepped inside and pulled her scarf down. Lengthen her hair and she looked like an older version of Angelica.

I tried on a cocky smile, not sure if I had it in me at the moment. It felt close enough. “You must be Angelica’s mom.”

Chapter Thirty-One

Angelica’s mom sniffed. “I had expected something more impressive from the Unturned.”

I shrugged. “Not so sorry to disappoint.” I made a show of looking around at the mess from the busted windows and scattered firewood and ash. “What the hell was with the dramatic entrance?”

“We wanted to make sure we had your attention.”

“You had it when you sent that hell beast after me.”

“Please.” She shook her head like I had said the dumbest thing in recorded history. “That pet was no hell beast. Simply a visitor from a more…complex plane.”

“I don’t care what you call it,” I snapped. “I’ve had a really bad couple of days, and you bitches have not helped.”

Her gaze ran up and down me, then moved to Mom. “I’d heard the Lights were made of sterner stuff. The apple, it appears, rolled far from the tree.”

“Shut up, you cu—”

“Mom! Not that word again.”

Mom narrowed her eyes. “She deserves it.”

Angelica’s mom crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. “I’m surprised at the animosity. After all our daughters have done for you.”

“Let me go!” a girl screamed from outside. A second later, Angelica burst in, nearly knocking her mother off her feet. She had a duster on as well, same style as her mother’s, but brown instead of black. No scarf. Leggings instead of leather, and puffy snow boots trimmed with faux fur. A lock of her black hair formed a scythe across her pale face, which had healed perfectly from the burn she’d given herself with my fire.

Her lips peeled back from her teeth as she glared at me. “What have you done?”

Her mother turned her head to one side, addressing Angelica over her shoulder. “That’s enough.”

But Angelica ignored her and pointed a gloved finger at me. “Weeks of preparation,” she snarled. “Destroyed. How did you do it? Tell me!”

Her mother raised a hand and closed her fist.

Angelica’s eyes bugged and she clawed at her throat. Her lips worked, but she only uttered choking noises.

“Do not disrespect your mother.”

Angelica nodded quickly.

Her mother opened her fist, and Angelica drew in a deep gasp, followed by several quick, shallow breaths.

Had her mother seriously just Force-choked her own daughter? Not even Darth Vader had done that to his son. The woman had some sick ideas about appropriate disciplinary action.

“I’m sorry, Mother,” Angelica whispered.

Witch Mom turned her attention back to me. “My daughter is understandably upset by your betrayal.”

“What are you talking about? I didn’t do anything to you. And you’re lucky, too. Because if Sly’s sickness had been your doing, I would have melted you down like I did his real killer.”

Angelica gasped, but it wasn’t because of her mother’s magic. “Killer?”

Her mother closed her eyes and softly sighed. “Then we are done.” She turned and left without another word.

I snorted. “Your mom’s real sweet.”

Angelica’s gaze roved around the room. She licked her lips. “Are you sure he’s dead?” she asked while looking down at the broken glass at her feet. Then she looked up at me. “You let him die?”

“I didn’t let him anything,” I dropped the shield I was still holding around me and Mom and stepped toward Angelica. “A pissed off customer cast a curse on him, made him sick. I had a healer check him, and she told me it was a sickness of his soul.”

“And that’s why you came to us. You thought it was our doing.”

“A witch friend of mine seemed to think the same thing.” I narrowed my eyes. “Seemed you thought so, too, when I confronted you about it.”

“You had no right to question us. He gave us part of his soul fairly.”

“A piece of his soul, yes. Not his life.”

“But we didn’t kill him.” She cocked her head. With the front door still open and all the windows broken, the wind whipped through the house like a loosed spirit, a trail of sparkling snow dust blowing in its wake. “Who did?”

I shivered. I could have kept the shield up to stay warm, but I didn’t like to waste any bit of magical energy these days. I didn’t have as much as I used to.

“His name was Horton Plutskinst. Small time practitioner with a knack for long distance curses, I guess. Sly stopped selling him a certain product when he discovered the asshole was using it for astral rape.”

Angelica curled her lip and shuddered. “Filthy amateurs.” She touched her chin with her fingertips as her focus shifted to some point in the space between us. “Why murder with sickness? Why not strike him down instantly?”

“It was a personal thing. He was sending a message. Besides, I didn’t get the sense that he was that good. I caught him in the middle of a ritual using sex and chicken blood to power it. Sloppy stuff.”

Her expression showed curiosity more than the disgust I expected.

“Angelica,” her mother shouted from outside.

“I’m coming,” Angelica called back. She looked from me to Mom. “I’m sorry. We would have never knowingly hurt Sly. After your visit, I made sure our ritual had nothing to do with his condition. It did not.”

She started to turn, but I had a couple more questions.

“Hey. What did you think I did to mess up your ritual?”

She glanced nervously toward the open door, but stayed put. “His soul weakened. I thought you had somehow interfered with its connection to him. Obviously, it was because of his death. Nothing you did.”

“You still have his soul?”

She hitched a shoulder. “What’s left of it.”

And the big question of the hour. “What were you using it for?”

She pressed her lips together and glanced out the door again. “I can’t say. Besides, you wouldn’t like it.”

“Were you summoning a demon?”

“Angelica!” Her mom again.

“I have to go. If you think I could help in any way…”

“Like what?”

She shrugged.

“How about you give me his soul back?”

“Our mothers would never allow it. Besides, what would you do with it?”

Another huge gust blew through the house. I was glad I hadn’t taken my coat off yet. Ice crystals cooled my cheeks. One of my cheeks felt tacky, and I remembered the glass cutting me.

“What could I do with it?” I asked.

She gave a small smile. “I don’t think sorcerers are trained in necromancy.”

My stomach dropped. Necromancy?

She must have seen my shock. She laughed. “Necromancy isn’t all about raising corpses, Sebastian. It involves anything that comes after life. Including the release of the soul.”

“And Sly gave you a pre-release.”

“So to speak.”

Angelica suddenly jerked toward the door as if yanked by the arm. She nearly lost her balance, but shuffled quickly to stay on her feet.

Looked like mommy had lost her patience.

Angelica straightened her lips, and her nostrils flared. “I have to go.”

I didn’t want to see her mother magically rip Angelica’s arm out of her socket. I nodded.

She hesitated for a second, then left, gently closing the door on her way out.

Chapter Thirty-Two

While Mom swept up the glass, I went back to rescue Odi.

“What the screw is going on?” he cried from under the bed.

“Nothing now,” I said as I crunched through the glass on the floor. “A whole lot of nothing.”

I surveyed the damage. The quilts had ripped off the window, leaving the nails we’d used to hang them in place. One shredded corner of quilt remained pinned by one of the nails. With the wind blowing in, I doubted the quilts would stay very well even if I managed to hang them back up.

I checked my watch. Only an hour till dusk, thanks to early winter nights.

Instead of trying to rehang the quilts, I draped them over the bed so they hung to the floor like a blanket fort for Odi to hide in.

“We’ve only got a little bit till sundown. This work okay for you?”

“I guess.” He sounded put out, like I’d told him he needed to do his homework before hanging out with his friends.

If I hadn’t felt so cold, inside and out, I might have felt a little sympathy. I didn’t have any in me, though. I didn’t have much of anything. No more rage. No more guilt. I was as dark and empty as Odi’s coffin in the basement back home.

I left Odi to his makeshift blankey crypt. When I came into the living room, Mom sat on grandma’s old wingback, elbows on her knees, hands covering her face. I could see her back hitch with each sob. The broom she had started using lay on the floor in a small pile of glass. Most of the rest of window shards remained where they had first landed.

Breathing the air was like licking an icicle.

I squeezed myself in next to her and held her. My eyes watered a little and made my eyelids sticky. The wind’s moan was as cold as the wind itself. I didn’t say anything. We sat there until dark.

Odi’s footsteps creaked in the hallway. I looked up as he came in. He took in the scene with question in his eyes.

“Sly’s gone,” I said.

His mouth fell open. “Aw, no. Man, I’m so sorry.”

I nodded my thanks then gave Mom a long, final squeeze.

“Let’s go home.”

We took my Jetta, leaving the Jeep to come back for later.

On the way home, I kept thinking about the Maidens and how they still had Sly’s soul. It didn’t seem right to bury Sly without it. But I didn’t know how that worked. I mean, how could they still possess part of his soul after he had died? What happened to the portion of his soul he’d still had when he died?

Thinking about a soul in such a tangible way made my head hurt. But I had seen the glass bottle with the glowing wisp of Sly’s soul inside. It had definitely been a thing, not just a concept.

Then a wild, maybe stupid, thought struck me.

If you still had a dead man’s soul, could you put it back in him?

I was headed south on Trumbull, almost to Corktown, when I slammed on the brakes and nearly ended up with a Ford Focus in my back seat. The driver laid on his horn. I flipped him the bird and made an illegal U-turn, heading north toward Wayne State University and a certain apartment across the street where a black witch coven called the Maidens of Shadow lived.

You might have heard of them.

The sudden stop and change in direction barely roused Mom in the passenger seat. She looked up, glanced around, then leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes.

Odi, on the other hand, bounced in the back seat at the sound of the horn, then nearly tipped over as I wrenched the car around. “Whoa, dude. WTF?”

“They have his soul.”

“Yeah,” Odi said, drawing the word out.

“We can give it back.”

“Not following, hombre.”

I didn’t know why he couldn’t fucking understand me. Did vampires get wax in their ears? “His soul, gods damn it. His soul.”

I glanced at Odi in the rearview. He folded his arms and leaned back. “Whatever you say, dude.”

Never mind. He’d figure it out when we got there. Assuming the Maidens would talk to me, or even let me in.

Somehow, I would make them.

I didn’t care how. I would threaten to burn down the whole building. They would hear me. They would listen. And they would answer my damn question—

Can we give it back to him?

Chapter Thirty-Three

Like before, Angelica met me in the lobby. I had left Mom in the car with Odi to watch over her. A strange feeling, having a vamp play protector to a sorceress as powerful as Judith Light, but she was human, too. And grief could bring anyone’s guard down.

Angelica still wore her leggings, but had traded in the snow boots for a pair of fabric flats. Her teal sweater had a thick turtle neck that ran up to her jaw line. One of her eyes had the yellowish purple beginnings of a bruise. I had a good idea who had given it to her, and, despite my general feelings about all the Maidens of Shadow at the moment, I felt an extra special disgust toward Angelica’s mother.

I pointed at the incoming shiner. “Mom get a little mad at you?”

She dipped her chin, her fingertips absently touching the forming bruise. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Are all the moms still visiting?”

“There’s no point. We failed them.”

The lobby had heat pumping from a vent somewhere I couldn’t see, but it didn’t do much to keep back the cold seeping through the glass front door. I was tired of feeling cold. And I didn’t think I could have a significant conversation standing in the lobby. Who knew who might come through on their way in and out, or what they would make of talk about pieces of souls and raising the dead?

“Can we go upstairs then?”

She brushed a lock of midnight hair aside and tucked it behind her ear. “We were never supposed to see you again.”

“If I thought I could have left you girls alone, I would have. Trust me. But with Sly’s life on the line…” I planted my hands on my hips. “I would have knocked on the doors of the gods to try to help him.”

She laughed. A sweet, normal laugh you’d expect from any average twenty-something who didn’t practice black magic or have an abusive witch for a mother.

“I don’t think the gods have doors,” she said with the barest smile.

“Then I would have built the doors so I could knock on them.”

Her gaze met mine. “Sly was lucky to have you as a friend.”

“Don’t know how true that is. I sure made his life difficult these past few months.” I took a tentative step forward. My boot tocked against the tile floor, the sound echoing up the stairwell above us in an otherwise silent space. I was surprised I didn’t hear any loud music or shouting or general partying. This building, after all, catered to students attending the university across the street.

“We should talk about this in your apartment.”

She shook her head. “Can’t.”

“Listen. Sly was my best friend in the whole world. I need…” I glanced past Angelica to the stairs behind her. I didn’t hear anyone coming, but this still wasn’t the place to talk.

Angelica didn’t seemed concerned.

“His death wasn’t your fault,” she said. “That…amateur. You said he did it.” She paused. “He did admit to it before you…ended him, right?”

“He told me he was the one who got him sick.”

Angelica’s dubious look sparked a small detail to come back to mind, some things Horton had said right before I’d killed him.

I’m sorry. I just, I was pissed, man. But he’s gonna get better. No harm done.

Horton had thought Sly would get better. If he’d meant to kill him, why would he think that?

There’s no way, man. It wasn’t me. I didn’t—

Those had been his last words. Convinced to the end that Sly’s death had not been his fault.

Simple answer. He had been lying. Begging me because he didn’t want me to give what he had given.

Yet the look in Angelica’s eyes caused doubt to churn in my gut. “Something make you think it wasn’t him?” I asked.

All at once, she shuttered her expression, cutting off any sense of thought or emotion going on behind her eyes. “You need to go.”

But her trying to shut me out told me as much as I needed to know. “You and your mothers. You did have something to do with it.”

“We didn’t kill Sly,” she said, voice flat and not a damn bit convincing. “You said so yourself.”

“When I talked to Horton, to the guy who cursed Sly, he made it sound like the curse was harmless. Murder hadn’t been his intention.”

“He was lying, of course.”

I slowly shook my head. The pieces coming together tied my gut into knots.

You killed the wrong man, that wicked part of my psyche insisted. You killed the wrong man.

“Sly’s soul,” I said. “The piece you have. It was still connected to him before he died. You said so yourself. Whatever you were doing with it could have killed him.”

Angelica took a step back, the sole of her flat scuffing against the old fashioned tile floor.

“I told you, our ritual shouldn’t have hurt him.”

“Shouldn’t isn’t couldn’t.”

Her nostrils quivered. The wet glaze across her eyes betrayed the emotion she was trying to hide.

I let the possibilities spin through my mind until I came to an idea that made sense. “A man without all of his soul…” I trailed off, thinking aloud, but still watching her for any hint of a reaction to those thoughts, some sign that I was on the right track. “That made him weaker. At least when it came to a sickness of the soul, which was how Horton’s curse worked. He would have been fine if…”

Angelica took another step back, close enough to the stairs to put a foot up on the first one. “We couldn’t have known.”

“He would have been fine,” I said again, “if he’d had his entire soul. There was no way for Horton to know Sly didn’t have all of his.”

“We couldn’t have known,” Angelica shouted. Her voice echoed its way up the stairwell. The sound of a door swinging open echoed down in answer.

“Angi?” a girl’s voice called.

I looked up, but from where I stood in the lobby, I couldn’t see beyond the first flight of stairs.

“His soul was weak. Maybe your ritual made it even weaker, since there was still a connection between the piece you had and what he still had in himself. That’s what the healer told me. And you admitted the same thing when you came accusing me of doing something to break that connection.”

Angelica’s expression flattened even more. She sounded possessed when she spoke. “We are not compelled to answer to you. We are the Maidens of Shadow.”

I curled my hands into fists. The muscles around my jaw had locked. I had to forced them to move so I could speak. “You don’t feel the least bit guilty that you helped kill Sly?”

Footsteps coming from above. A set of bare feet judging from the soft whisper they made on the stairs.

“Here comes one of your sisters,” I said. “Will she give a shit? Or are all you black-hearted witches so far removed from your mortality, you might as well be demons yourselves?”

I recognized the girl who stepped around the turn in the stairs and came down behind Angelica. She was one of a pair of red-haired twins in the coven. A little thinner than what looked healthy, but with a cute, round face covered with freckles. The look in her eyes at that moment? Not so cute.

She wore a pink bathrobe open, a green sweatshirt and matching sweatpants underneath. For some reason, these girls often seemed dressed as if they’d just rolled out of bed.

“What’s going on, Angi?”

Angelica didn’t say anything.

I figured I’d fill her in. “Your little coven killed my best friend.”

Freckles came down to Angelica’s side. “He talking about Sly?”

Angelica didn’t look at her, or so much as nod. Her gaze stayed on me, eyes dull and moist.

Her coven sister sneered at me. “We had nothing to do with it. Why don’t you just leave us alone.”

“I’m not going through my whole story again,” I said. “Tell her, Angelica. Snap out of it and tell her how you helped kill Sylvester Petrie, one of the greatest men to walk this fucked up earth.”

Angelica blinked. Her faced softened. When she sighed, her body seemed to deflate. Her sister took Angelica’s hand. “What’s he talking about?”

“He’s right,” she said. “But there was no way we could know.”

Freckles looked back and forth between us as if we’d both gone insane. “Angi, you need to explain.”

After a nod, Angelica gave her sister the short version, ending with, “We couldn’t have known it would happen. But it’s true. He wouldn’t have died if he’d had his whole soul.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

I got through to Angelica. At least, I thought so. But it didn’t matter, because her sister took over the duties of stonewalling me. She put her arm around Angelica’s shoulders and turned her around. Then Freckles twisted her neck to look back at me.

“If you come here again—”

I held my right hand out at my side and lit it with blue flame. “Don’t threaten me, witch. I’m done letting you cunts intimidate me.”

A cold gust of wind blew at my back.

“Sebastian,” Mom said behind me. “Language.”

I looked over my shoulder. She and Odi both stood just inside the lobby door as it swung shut behind them. The wintry air that followed them in smelled fresh and clean. The cold didn’t bother me a bit. In fact, it invigorated me.

I turned back to Angelica and her freckled sister. Smiled. “A vampire, a sorceress, and the Unturned walk into a witches’ den. Sounds like the start of a pretty good joke.”

Freckles frowned. “You think you stand a chance against us?”

“According to Angi there, the moms have all skipped town. You girls have power, no doubt. But sorcery moves a lot faster than witchery, and the way I’m feeling, I’m willing to see how that goes.”

“For what?”

“For the soul of my friend.”

Freckles gave Angelica a gentle nudge up the stairs. “Go on. I’ll deal with them.”

Angelica stole a glance at me, then turned to her sister. “Kelly, don’t.”

“I’ll be fine.”

But Angelica only made it up three more stairs before stopping and turning back to me. “Please don’t do this,” she said to me this time.

“I want his soul,” I said flatly.

Kelly rolled her eyes and groaned with disgust. “We don’t have it, asswipe. Our mothers took it.”

A green sickness filled my stomach. My hands felt clammy. Even the one still holding my blue fire.

“What did you think you were going to do with it anyway?”

“Give it back to him,” I pushed through my clenched teeth.

“Oh, brother, you truly are an idiot.”

Odi stepped forward. “Dude, you don’t talk to him like that.”

Kelly shifted her poisoned gaze to Odi. “Or what?” She titled her head back. “You gonna try to get some of this? I dare you to try.”

A low, very vampirish growl rumbled out of Odi.

My first instinct was to tell him to hold back. But looking at that smug little freckled face of Kelly’s made me decide to let Odi growl as much as he wanted. Growl, and whatever else he might have in mind. A witch with a ripped open throat would find it difficult to utter a curse.

I also felt Mom’s magical energy swell against my back, giving me a boost of confidence. We could easily take Kelly down on her own. Angelica with her if we had to. Their ultimate power came from their combined strength. If we hit now, if we hit hard, we could wipe them out.

And still end up with nothing, dipshit.

I sure loved it when my inner voice called me names. But this time it spoke truth—except for the dipshit part. Killing five young witches wouldn’t bring Sly back, and it wouldn’t do much to convince the mothers to hand over the soul.

I clamped my mouth shut and counted back from five before I said another word.

“I want his soul,” I said slowly. “Figure out an excuse. I don’t care what. But get it back from your mothers.”

Kelly puffed her cheeks and blew, riffling her bright red bangs. Her eyes rolled. She threw her hands out at her sides. “Don’t you get it? They’re going to use it. It’s an ingredient.” She emphasized each syllable of the last word as if I might not understand.

“Use it for what?”

She shrugged. “I dunno. Not what we first had planned. It’s not powerful enough.” Her bitchy expression softened for an instant. Then her nose wrinkled and her eyebrows drew close. She nearly scalded me with her blazing stare. “Unless you plan on throwing that fire, Unturned, I suggest you get the fuck out of here.”

Mom’s magic grew closer, until she stood right at my side. Her power hummed, but the witches couldn’t sense it. It would take them some kind of spell to measure magical energy. They had no idea the mystical strength they faced in that moment.

“Ladies,” she said.

Angelica wrung her hands and nibbled at her lower lip.

Kelly sneered. “Back off old lady. Just because we helped you once, doesn’t make us girlfriends.”

Mom calmly inclined her head. “I appreciate your help. It led to closure I desperately needed.”

“Then what do you want?”

“Same thing as my son. Sylvester’s soul?”

Kelly’s gaze danced from one of us to the other, measuring up her three challengers.

My flame hand dripped with sweat. It took concentration and some extra energy to control fire for an extended duration. I had let some of my concentration go, allowing the flame’s heat to touch my hand a little too much, just like I had warned Odi about.

I readjusted my focus and directed the flame’s heat away from me again.

Kelly glanced back at Angelica.

“We should help them,” Angelica said. “It’s Sly.”

“Didn’t you hear what he said? He wants to put the soul back.”

“So what?” I asked.

“It won’t work,” Kelly said. “You can’t just shove it back into him.”

“Fine,” I said. “But there is a way, isn’t there?”

She had thin lips, and when she pressed them together, her mouth looked like a small cut across her face. I tried to read her eyes. There was more than anger there. A little fear, I thought. She didn’t want to answer.

But Angelica did.

“A good healer could do it. I don’t know how it would turn out with such a small piece.”

Kelly snapped her fingers at Angelica as if she were a naughty dog. “Shut up.”

Angelica lifted her chin. New light filled her eyes. “Excuse me, sister? Is that how you speak to an elder?”

If not for the tension in the air, I might have laughed. All those girls looked the same age to me. When they were talking elders, they couldn’t have meant much more than a handful of months, maybe a year. At the same time, it fit so well. They all acted like an extended family, and a family’s pecking order often started with the oldest child on down.

Kelly straightened her spine and pressed out her chest. She looked ready to talk back, but then Angelica tilted her head ever so slightly, the message subtle but clear. Try me, bitch.

Kelly’s shoulders slumped, but her expression remained defiant. “It still doesn’t matter. Our mothers…your mother, won’t give it back.”

“We can try to convince them.”

“Why? So these people can make a zombie out of Sly?” She shook her head. “No. You want to nag your mother about it? Fine. Leave the rest of us out of it.”

Kelly threw one last nasty glance at me, Mom, and Odi, then marched up the stairs, her bare feet slapping the tiles with each step.

Angelica looked at me. “All I can do is try,” she said. “But if the other sisters won’t back me up, I doubt our mothers will agree to hand the soul shard over.”

“Okay,” I said. “That’s all we can ask. Just try.”

And if that doesn’t work, I’ll figure out a way to take the damn soul from them.

Chapter Thirty-Five

The muscles in my neck had tensed so much, I had a full blown headache by the time we reached the house. A faint whiff of tomato soup welcomed me as I stepped into my house. Mom must have made herself some before we had to abandon the place for the Ann Arbor house. All the lights were out, but enough came through the front window for me to see. I started to reach for the light switch.

Mom came up behind me and grabbed my elbow. When I turned to her, she pressed a finger to her lips, warning in her eyes.

I froze. A spike of adrenaline slipped loose into my system. I felt my magical energy purr in response.

Odi must have caught on. He closed the door so quietly, I couldn’t hear the click when the latch engaged. Vampires are stealthy like that.

All three of us exchanged glances. The only one who looked certain of anything was Mom.

I mouthed, What?

She shook her head, pointed toward the back of the house. Then she signaled me to stay put and crept forward and into the hall feeding into the kitchen.

I didn’t like the idea of letting her go ahead while I hung back, but she knew more than I did about whatever threat she had sensed.

Odi tapped my shoulder and held out his hands in question.

I gave him a Beats me shrug. I looked around the room. Plenty of shadows. I hooked a thumb in the direction Mom had headed, then made a walking gesture with my fingers.

He got the idea. A second later he evaporated from sight, one with the shadows.

This left me alone, standing in the dark, without a damn clue.

I heard something clatter to the kitchen tiles. An instant later, a green blast of light illuminated the dark hall. I caught a glimpse of Odi’s silhouette as the flash momentarily stole the darkness from around him. The light lasted only as long as a camera flash. Odi quickly disappeared into the shadows again.

I recognized the light as Mom’s primary style of magic—pure energy that could blow holes through concrete if she wanted it to. That was cue enough for me to charge in, igniting my fist with fire, using the orange light it cast to see my way through the dark.

When I came into the kitchen, Mom stood by the kitchen counter, arms at her sides, expression totally calm. Odi had left the shadows and stood beside her. Both of them looked down at something on the kitchen floor I couldn’t see from my angle. I skirted around the counter to join them. I saw the shape of a person at their feet, but the dark hid any details.

I drew my flaming fist around like a torch and leaned forward to illuminate the person’s face.

A cold chill ran down my spine, while hot lead dropped into my gut.

I hadn’t seen her in months, but I would never forget her face.

Fiona.

She lay flat on her back, limp, with her eyes closed, but still breathing. She wore all black—boots, jeans, leather jacket, and even a stocking cap with her blond hair tucked up inside it. In other words, she looked like a burglar. But I had no idea what she would want to steal from me. I didn’t even know how she knew where I lived now. Had she been stalking me this whole time? Was this the first time she had snuck into my home? Or only one of many secret intrusions into my life?

Then I remembered that Honda parked down the street. The driver had been watching me. It had been Fiona.

What the hell?

The urge to shake her awake and assault her with questions was nearly impossible to fight.

I stormed to the nearest light switch and slapped it. A dome light on the kitchen ceiling turned on, its light harsh against my dark-adjusted eyes. I let my flame go out.

Squinting, I pointed at Mom. “Did you knock her out?”

“I did.”

I felt a sadistic little smile tweak my mouth.

“Dude,” Odi said. “What’s your ex-girlfriend doing breaking into your house?”

I knelt down at Fiona’s side and gave her a quick pat down, trying not to think of all the places I had touched her when we were together. Like the soft skin of her inner thigh, or the small swell of her breast, or the delicate curve of her neck. I felt something hard in her jeans pocket. I started to reach for her pocket, but hesitated.

Probably seeing my reluctance, Mom asked, “Do you want me to get it?”

“No. I’m good.” Then I wrenched the item out as quickly as possible.

What I found puzzled me. A small stone statue about the size of a chess piece, the carving blocky and generic. I couldn’t tell if it was supposed to be a man or woman, but it looked relatively human.

“Drop that right now,” Mom shouted.

I flipped my hand, and the statuette dropped to the floor beside Fiona’s arm. “Jeez, Mom. You nearly gave me a heart attack. What is it?”

“A totem.”

I stood. “Can you be more specific?”

“No. It could be harmless, nothing more than a luck charm. Thieves are known to use them. Luck goes a long way in avoiding discovery or finding valuables.”

“Then why did you want me to drop it so fast?”

“Because it could be cursed, too. She might have come to plant it in the house. Who knows what harm it could bring? Best to suspect the worst.”

I snorted and looked down at Fiona’s still body. “Especially coming from her.”

“So what’re you gonna do with her?” Odi asked.

Tie her up? Beat answers out of her? I could picture myself doing such things, and it made me queasy. But I couldn’t blame myself for those thoughts either. She’d earned them after betraying me to the vamps. And since those vamps had worked for the Ministry conspirators, maybe Fiona was still working with whoever was left from that group.

I had to admit, that would surprise me. In the end, she had saved my friends’ lives. The reason she had crossed me in the first place was because the vamps had taken her mother to force Fiona to do their bidding. It had burned me, though, that she hadn’t trusted me enough to tell me the truth so we could work together to free her mom.

Talk about mixed feelings. Sheesh.

So beating her was out of the question. But tying her up and demanding some answers seemed perfectly fair.

“Mom, there’s one of those orange power cords in the hall closet. Can you grab it for me?”

She nodded and left the kitchen.

“Odi, help me lift her up and sit her on one of the dining room chairs.”

Odi quirked up an eyebrow. “Interrogation time?”

“Interrogation time.”

Chapter Thirty-Six

Our dining room didn’t amount to much. The space was small, but with just me and Mom, we could tuck in a plain square table and a couple of chairs, and that suited us fine. We still didn’t have much else to clutter our home anyway. I think, after our last house burned down with all our most precious things inside, Mom and I both felt a little gun shy about gathering more things. Best not to have too much to get attached to.

With Odi’s help, I had wrapped the orange extension cord around Fiona’s arms and torso and tied it up tight. I had also wrapped her ankles with duct tape. Then wrapped her legs to the chair legs with more tape. These things might hold her temporarily, but she was a shifter, could turn herself into a tiger, and if desperate enough, she might try to shift despite the bonds. In the process she could hurt herself as easily as escape. So the more ways we pinned her body, the less likely she would try shifting.

I stood back and looked her over as if surveying a clay pot I’d just thrown. The cords held her arms at her sides. The tape looked firm enough around her legs. It was go time.

I had a glass of water on the dining table. I picked it up and dumped it over her head. I had removed her stocking cap, so the water matted down her blond hair, turning it a slightly darker shade.

Fiona’s eyes snapped open, and she shook her head like a dog climbing out of a bath. Droplets of water flung everywhere. Some of it had poured over her mouth, and she sputtered, throwing a fine spray off her lips. She blinked a few times, then looked up at me.

Her eyes widened. “Oh, shit.”

“Oh shit is right, girly,” Mom said. She stood on my right, arms crossed, all but tapping her foot like an impatient parent. “You want to tell us what you’re doing breaking into our home?”

“Or how you even know where we live now?” I added.

She looked back and forth between us, mouth open, some water dribbling off her bottom lip. “I…”

I gritted my teeth. My magic rumbled inside of me. “I told you I never wanted to see you again.”

“You weren’t supposed to see me.” She hung her head, sighed.

I didn’t know what to say. Mom and I had already asked the most important questions. I decided to let her squirm in the silence.

A round, plastic clock hung on the dining room wall. Its second hand ticked away. The steady sigh of the heater accompanied the ticks. The slow patter of water dripping onto the floorboards added a counter rhythm. The music of silence.

The Fiona I had been with had a strong will. This post-betrayal Fiona still had it. She didn’t say a word, and my impatience reached its limit.

“Hey,” I shouted. “Answer me. What are you doing here? And what’s with that?” I pointed toward the totem I had carefully set on the table, holding it through a napkin.

She lifted her chin, looked me straight in the eye. “I’m trying to help you.”

I laughed and shook my head. “Breaking into my house? Stalking me?”

“I’m not stalking you.”

I held my hands out at my sides. “What do you call it when you track down a person’s home, apparently follow them around, watch them, wait until they’re gone, then break into their house with a cursed totem?”

“It isn’t cursed. It’s blessed.”

A bad taste filled my mouth. I turned away. I couldn’t stand looking at her anymore. My collar itched around my neck. I tugged at it, but nothing eased the discomfort. With my back to Fiona, I said, “You expect me to believe anything you say?”

“You’ll believe whatever you want about me,” she said. “Even if it isn’t true.”

Up until this point, Odi had remained quiet as he leaned against the wall with his hands stuck in his pockets. He snorted. “That is so lame.”

Fiona didn’t bother responded to his judgment. “Sebastian, what are you going to do to me? Keep me tied up in your basement? This is pointless.”

I spun back to face her. “I want you to answer my questions.”

“Or what?”

“Or…” I made a fist.

Her gaze slipped to it. “Do you want to hurt me, Sebastian?”

“Yes,” I growled. “But I’m not going to.”

“Then you should let me go.”

Odi pushed off from the wall and came over. He bent at the waist to bring his eyes to her level.

She drew her head back, but she couldn’t put more than an inch more between them, and Odi pressed in on her to close the distance. Their noses only had about three finger-widths between them.

Odi’s face wavered, blurring like a reflection in a disturbed pond. His skin paled. The ridge above his eyes pushed forward. The eyes themselves flared red. Then he brought out the fangs.

Whenever I saw Odi drop his glamour I got a cold tingle over my scalp. He didn’t do it often, which was another reason why I found it so easy to forget (deny) his true nature. He was a vampire, through and through.

“Do you want me to enthrall her?” Odi asked.

“Um…” I wrinkled my brow. “Do you even know how to do that?”

He shrugged. “I’m a vampire, right?”

“Did Toft ever show you how?”

“Nope.” He moved his face even closer to Fiona’s.

Her lips peeled back and she sucked a quick breath through her teeth, her look of disgust priceless. “Get your corpse breath out of my face.”

Odi smirked. I’d not seen him revel in his vampireness. He looked ready to nosh on her throat at any second.

“Maybe you should back off,” I said.

“It won’t hurt to try.”

Fiona’s eyes rolled in my direction. “No. Don’t.”

I crossed my arms. “Why not? You afraid what you might tell me?”

“I’m afraid he’ll scramble my brains.”

“Hmm. I didn’t even know that was a risk.”

“Me neither,” Odi said.

“Boys,” Mom said. “Shit or get off the pot.”

I stepped back, let my arms relax at my sides. “Go for it, Odi. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Fiona squirmed against her bonds and squeezed her eyes shut. “Get him out of my face.”

“Not a chance,” I said.

Odi frowned. “Hey, open your eyes. You gotta look at me.” Then, under his breath, “I think.”

“This is pointless, Sebastian. Your pet vampire doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing.”

“First off,” I said, “he isn’t a pet. He’s my friend. Secondly, I believe in supporting my friends in their professional development.” I slapped Odi on the back. “Go to it, my friend.”

He threw me a smile that looked positively hideous with his fangs out and his eyes glowing red. I also caught a whiff of his breath. I had to admit, Fiona was right about that. It did smell a little corpse-like.

After a firm nod, Odi returned his attention to Fiona. He placed his hands on either side of her head to hold her still. She fought against him, but he had vampire strength on his side.

“Fiona,” he whispered. “Open your eyes.”

“Get bent, jerk.”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s a new phrase for you.”

“Please,” she said, “get him off of me.”

“Are you going to tell me what you want? Why you were parked outside my house, watching me? Why you broke into my house with this totem?”

“Anything I say, you won’t believe.”

“Then I guess I’ll let Odi enthrall it out of you.”

She puckered her lips as if she’d bit something sour.

“Fiona,” Odi repeated softly. “Open your eyes for me.”

Fiona continued to resist, but after a few seconds, her eyes opened.

Odi’s lips peeled away from his fangs in a shark-like grin. “There you go. Hi, there.”

“Hi,” Fiona said in a tiny voice.

“How are you feeling?”

Her eyelids fluttered. “Sleepy.”

Odi lowered his hands from her head, and she titled her head slightly to one side as if ready to fall asleep.

“Stay with me,” Odi said. I could hear the excitement in his voice even as he fought to keep it even and coaxing. “Tell me why you broke into Sebastian’s house.”

Her brow furrowed. Her gaze drifted into a spacy figure eight over Odi’s head. “I don’t…I don’t think I should say.”

“Of course you should. You can tell me. I’m your friend.”

“My friend?”

“Yeah.”

“No.” She shook her head. Then again, more vigorously. “You aren’t my friend.”

Odi gently took her chin in one hand and directed her gaze back to him. “I am your friend. You are my thrall.”

I raised my eyebrows. Had to say, the kid seemed to know what he was doing. I supposed vamps had to have some instincts for what they could do. But I was surprised at how easily he seemed to pick it up, especially as such a young vampire. I would have thought the best he could do was thrall a rabbit or something.

“I am your thrall,” Fiona said.

Odi laughed and looked over his shoulder at me. “Dude, it’s like a Jedi mind trick.”

He no sooner said it when Fiona jerked as if waking up from an accidental nap. A new, hard focus formed in her eyes. Odi had looked away and dropped his thrall faster than he’d started it.

I didn’t have a chance to say anything before he turned back to her.

She spit in his face.

Odi staggered backward, wiping his face with his flannel sleeve. “Oh, gross. What the hell?”

Fiona looked at me. “I can’t believe, after all you’ve been through with vamps, you’d stand there and let him do that to me.”

I speared a finger in her direction. “Don’t you even. I wouldn’t have had half the trouble with those vamps if you hadn’t been working with them the whole time.”

Odi was still sputtering and dabbing his face with his sleeve. The noise was kind of annoying. “Odi. Quit it already.”

His glamour reformed, leaving him looking like an average teen again. He wrinkled his noise and pointed at Fiona. “She spit on me. That’s so disgusting.”

Fiona rolled her eyes. “This coming from a blood drinker.”

Odi puffed out his chest. “Hey. I’ll enthrall you again and make you—”

“Odi Crossman, you hush,” Mom shouted. I’d forgotten she was standing there. “We’re wasting energy here. Just let her give us her explanation.”

“Thank you, Judith,” Fiona said.

“You hush, too. Or I’ll knock you out again.”

Fiona sighed and hung her head.

“You think we can trust a damn thing she says?” I asked.

“Probably not,” she said. “But her story might hold a grain of truth that we can then exploit.”

“Just give me another chance,” Odi said. “I’ll get her to talk.”

“I’m sorry, Odi,” Mom said with sincere regret. “But your thrall is too fragile. You know that.”

He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Fine.” I kicked the chair to get Fiona’s attention.

She snapped her gaze up to me.

“Just tell me. I won’t let you go until you give me some story.”

“I said you won’t—”

“It doesn’t matter if I believe it. Tell me.”

Fiona looked over at the totem on the table. She took a deep breath, then let it ease out. Her wet hair clung to her cheeks. Her black shirt’s damp collar stuck to her skin. She looked like she had just come home from a heavy workout at the gym. She never went to the gym, though. Her naturally enhanced shifter’s metabolism kept her lean and trim all on its own.

I started to think about what that lean and trim form looked like naked. It was a sight I had never gotten tired of. My heart pinched. I wanted those days back. I wanted to erase the memory of her betrayal and go back to the way things were. Instead, I had to interrogate her after she broke into my house.

“I told you I’m trying to help you, and it’s true,” she said.

I resisted the urge to argue. Let her get it out. I could tell her how full of shit she was all in one go at the end. More efficient that way.

“The totem is blessed by a trio of Buddhist monks based in New York City. They sell them online.”

“Seriously?” Odi asked. “Dude, you really can find anything on the internet.”

“What do you think I need help with?” I asked.

“With Sly,” she said. “He’s sick, right?”

A rattler came to life in my stomach with a slither and buzz. She’d been following me closer than I figured if she knew about Sly. But not close enough to learn he’d died in the hospital. I wondered if she had magical help in stalking me. Probably, but nothing too fancy like a vision or tracking spell. Fiona had picked up some tips from her herbalist mother, but she didn’t come close to qualifying as a real practitioner.

Maybe she ordered some spells online, too. Who frickin’ knew these days?

I decided to keep my cards close. “What do you think you know about Sly?”

“Not much. Just that you rushed him to the hospital. And you’ve visited a few times.” She paused. “And something strange went down at the hospital that required Ministry attention.”

Damn, she had stayed close. The idea gave me a paranoid itch between my shoulder blades after the fact.

Odi strolled back to the wall and leaned against it. “Wow.” He hooked his thumbs into his pockets. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you could shadow walk. How long have you been stalking him?”

She gave Odi a flat stare. “I wasn’t stalking him.”

“Yes you were,” Mom said. “Whether you want to admit it or not.”

Fiona shook her head, flustered. “Can we just agree to disagree on the terminology?”

I glanced at the clock. Midnight. Roughly lunch time for me on my Odi schedule, and my stomach reminded me with a grumble. I was surprised I could even think about food with how sick Fiona’s presence made me. Sick and, at the same time, longing.

I backed up so I could see both Mom and Odi on either side of me.. “Can you guys give us a moment?”

Odi bounced off the wall. “Alone?”

“Yes,” I said. “Alone.”

Neither one of them looked like they liked the idea, but they only argued with sidelong glances and disappointed frowns on their way out. Once I heard their footsteps in the front room, I grabbed the other chair from under the dining table, parked it in front of Fiona, and sat down across from her as if sitting down to work a Ouija board, knees only inches apart.

“I seem to recall another instance where you were tied up like this.”

Her mouth formed a straight line. “This where you get all nice with me, walk down memory lane, pretend everything is okay?”

“Why would I do that?”

She shrugged. “This is an interrogation, right?”

I exhaled through my nose, shifted in my seat, and stared into her eyes. “I’m not going to be nice to you. Don’t worry. And nothing is okay between us. But memory lane? I hopped on that bus the moment I saw you sprawled out on my kitchen floor, and now the driver won’t let me off.”

Her expression softened. “I’ve been following you for a while.”

“Why?”

“Because I was looking for a…a way in. A chance to make things right.”

“Never happen.”

“I can’t believe that.” Her arm jerked, and she cursed under her breath. I got the feeling she had meant to reach for me. “Sebastian, I love you. That was real.”

“Pretty sure you said that already. Pretty sure I said I believe you. But if you really think stalking—”

“I’m not—”

I shot my hand up like a traffic cop and lit that sucker with bright blue flame.

Fiona flinched. The blue light shined in her eyes. She stared at it, trembling. “What is that?”

“New trick,” I said. “In a weird way, I can thank you for helping teach it to me. That night with Goulet, I learned to tap my emotions like I can tap my magic. Pretty scary what you can cast when you mix the two.”

“Are you going to burn me?”

“I want to.” I extinguished the fire and dropped my hand in my lap. “But I won’t.” I leaned forward. “Unless you start talking about your love again. I won’t be held responsible for my actions if you bring that shit up.”

I looked for the hurt in her eyes, but she hid it if there was any to see.

“How did you plan on helping Sly?” I nodded toward the totem. “What was that supposed to do?”

“Bring luck,” she said. “Nothing super special.”

“Well, Sly’s luck ran out before you got here.”

Her lips parted, and she let loose a small gasp. “He’s dead?”

My throat felt like it was closing up. I nodded.

“Sebastian, I don’t know what happened, but you have to believe me. I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

I found it strange she assumed I would blame her. I guess she had a good idea how much I had come to resent her. I cleared my throat. “Don’t flatter yourself. I know it wasn’t you.”

She exhaled a relieved sigh. “Do you believe me about everything else?”

“You mean about this?” I scooped the totem off the table and held it up in front of me. I turned it around in my fingers, studying all the statuette’s sides. Then I looked up at her. “Or is there something more?”

She hesitated a second. I knew she wanted to get into her reasons for stalking me, or “helping” me, or whatever she thought she was doing, and how she was doing it all for love, and yada yada yada. But, apparently, she thought I really might burn her if she did. (Not sure what that said about me.)

“No,” she said. “Nothing else.”

“Okay,” I said. “I believe you.”

I held the totem with both hands, pinching its head between my right fingers, and its legs with my left. Whatever kind of stone it was made from felt like it had some give, like chalk. When I tried to bend the statuette, it snapped cleanly in half. I noticed a small spark of magic come from it, then disappear, the blessing destroyed.

I tossed the two pieces onto the table where they rattled like dice.

“But I don’t want your fucking help.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

After I told her I would kill her if I saw her again, I let Fiona go. Odi and Mom didn’t like the idea, but when faced with reality—”How long can we keep her captive?”—we all knew it was best to focus on the real problem.

The Maidens of Shadow’s Moms.

Or the Maiden Mothers of Shadow.

Mother Maidens of Shadow?

Whatever. We had a coven of black witch mommies to deal with. Unfortunately, we had to wait on Angelica for any news before we could act. We still had a few hours of night left, but I didn’t feel up to practicing magic with Odi. From the looks of him, I don’t think Odi was in the mood for a lesson, either. Mom looked gaunt, and she stared off into space a lot.

We needed rest, probably food.

Odi needed to feed, too. I could tell by his pale, flaky skin, like a peeling sun burn without the flaming red.

I told him to hit the fridge, then took Mom out to the living room. The ceiling fan had three separate lights, the shades shaped like flowers. One of the bulbs zapped out when I pulled the chain to turn them on. The remaining bulbs cast a lopsided light in the room without the third doing its part.

One corner looked like the dark side of the moon. Mom chose to sit in an arm chair in that shadowed corner.

I took the sofa.

I heard the fridge open in the kitchen, then the clink of the metal lid to the mason jar as Odi set it aside on the counter. I could picture him lifting the jar to his lips, tilting his head back, and drinking down my blood.

A shudder ran through me.

Somehow, Mom knew exactly what had gone through my mind.

“How long do you plan on doing that?”

I played dumb, hoping she might drop the subject. “Doing what?”

“Feeding him your blood.”

No such luck.

I stared out the front window. The nearest streetlight sat half a block down, but enough moonlight illuminated the outside so I could see the cars parked along the curbs on either side of the street. A particular dark compact car caught my attention. For a second I thought I saw someone sitting in it. Then I realized the car was a Ford, not a Honda, and only a shadow sat behind the wheel.

Despite my (admittedly hollow) threat, I figured I’d probably see Fiona again. I would have to do some hard thinking before then. If this stalking shit kept up, I might have to go to the Ministry, get the paranormal world’s version of a restraining order. Magic worked so much better than a plain old court order.

I didn’t really want it to come to that. I wanted to forget the whole thing. The good and the bad. It would have been easier that way.

“Well?” Mom prompted.

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t think—”

I swiped a hand through the air. “I know what you think, Mom. Do you really want to argue about this now?”

She hung her head. The shadows covered her face like a cowl. “No.”

“Good,” I said. “We need a meal. What are you in the mood for?”

“Nothing.”

“Me either, but we have to eat.”

“Whatever you want. You decide.”

I stood, planning to check the fridge, then nixed that plan as I realized Odi was still in there drinking a part of me. And even if he was done, facing him right after one of his meals felt like running into someone I’d had a one night stand with, awkward and a little shameful.

“I’ll order Chinese.”

After we ate, Mom settled in at the dining room table and dealt herself a game of solitaire. Odi streamed The Matrix on the TV. I tried to read a Lawrence Block mystery, but found myself reading the same page twenty-eight times. When dawn came, I nearly burst into song. Time to get some sleep.

Odi went downstairs to his coffin. Mom and I went up to our rooms.

I think I started dreaming before my head hit the pillow.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

A tiny trill woke me up. Took me a second, as I fumbled my way out of sleep, before I realized it was my ring tone. I sat up in bed and looked around me, eyes crusty with sleep, a streak of drool across one cheek.

My room had as much decor as the sparse dining room. Only the essentials. My full-sized bed, an IKEA dresser and night stand, a slowly growing wardrobe in the closet, and a laundry basket in the corner I was using as a hamper. Judging from the smell in the room, I needed to do some laundry.

I blinked away the last bits of sleepiness and scooped my cell off the nightstand. I didn’t know the number, but I hoped it was Angelica.

“Hello?” At least, that’s what I’d meant to say. It came out more like “Heyo” with a phleghmy garble.

“Did I wake you?” Angelica said with too much saccharine in her tone. “It’s after three. You’re worse than some of my sisters.”

I had the shades drawn, but enough afternoon light snuck around the edges that I had to squint when I looked toward the windows. I cleared my throat. “I’m on vamp time these days.”

“How nice for you.” She paused a moment. Seemed a long moment. I was about to check if the call had dropped when she finally spoke. “I have news. But it won’t be the kind you want to hear.”

I felt what little hope I’d been nurturing evaporate. I ran my hand over my bed head. “Why should I expect anything else?”

“Not all is lost. But there will be…steps.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed. “Look, I literally just woke up. You’ll have to turn down the cryptic for a minute. M’kay?”

“My mother wants to meet with you.”

“All right. So she didn’t say no.”

“She didn’t say yes.”

“If she’s not interested in dealing, why would she want a meeting?”

“That’s the part you’re too sleepy to grasp, I think. She wants to deal. But are you ready to deal with her?”

I’d been up, what? Ninety seconds? It wasn’t fair I had to make these kinds of decisions before I even had my teeth brushed. But, in the end, it was a simple question with a simple answer. If I wanted to help Sly, it was the only answer.

“Yes.”

“All right, then get a pen and some paper. You will need to follow these instructions precisely.”

“What are we talking here? Can’t you just give me an address?”

“I told you,” she said. “There will be steps.”

Chapter Forty

Step one was simple enough.

Come alone.

Step two was not too unusual.

Go to Ford Field and stand outside Gate A.

From there, Angelica said step three would be self-explanatory.

I took her word for it.

Mom was still asleep, so I left her a note. She would probably be miffed that I took off without waking her, but going alone had been a condition of the meeting, so it was better she not be up to argue with me about that.

I had to use a parking deck across from the stadium. Street parking was a big no go at that time of day, creeping close to rush hour. I stood outside of the stadium’s entrance labeled Gate A as Angelica had instructed. The afternoon sun had a clear shot, no overcast, and had melted away the little bit of snow we had gotten. If not for the biting air, I could have convinced myself it was spring looking up at the sky.

Kitty corner from where I stood in front of Ford Field, home of the Detroit Lions, sat Comerica Park, the Tigers’ ball field. A massive screen faced out from the ballpark, currently blazing an ad for Ford Motor Company. A pair of striped tiger statues stood along the top of the screen on opposite sides, each frozen in mid-prowl. From street level they almost looked real.

The smell of grilled meat and savory grease wafted over from the Elwood Bar and Grill directly across the street from me. Because of the abrupt timeline Angelica had given me, I hadn’t had a chance to eat. My stomach growled, and my mouth watered.

I didn’t have to suffer the glorious scent long. A limo quickly pulled up to the curb in front of me, tinted windows all around. They must have been watching for me to arrive. The driver came out, his barrel chest ready to bust the buttons of his dress shirt. His tie hung too short because most of it had to wrap around his thick neck.

Without a word, he opened the back door for me.

I hesitated. The last time I got into a limo it had belonged to the mastermind of the Ministry conspirators, a man who had tricked me into trusting him, despite the trust issues Fiona had left me with.

The driver cleared his throat in a menacing way. At least, that’s how I interpreted it.

I raised my hands. “I’m going.”

When I slid in, I expected to find Angelica’s mother. But nope. Looked like I was riding solo.

A confused vertigo came over me when the driver climbed in behind me. He had a cloth clutched in one hand. No. Not a cloth. A black hood, which he yanked over my head. The hood had a drawstring, and he jerked it tight enough around my neck that I began to hear my pulse thump in my head.

“I can barely breathe,” I said.

“Barely is good enough.” He tied the drawstring at my throat. A second later, the door slammed shut.

I scrabbled at the knot with my fingers, but I couldn’t dig in enough to loosen it. The driver must have been a damn sailor in a former life.

Thankfully, the hood smelled clean, but I felt certain I was going to suffocate every time the fabric got sucked against my gasping mouth. The new age music the driver listened to the whole time didn’t help. He kept the partition between the back and front open as if he wanted to torture me with the noise. Lucky for me, I made the thirty or forty minute trip without dying. But if I heard another electronic xylophone any time soon, I’d tear my ears off.

When the engine quit, the music finally did as well. Sweet mercy!

I heard the partition whirr up behind my head, then the muffled sound of the driver’s door opening and shutting.

I waited for him to come back and let me out, too. Instead, I sat in the hood’s darkness for at least another ten minutes. At least the wait was silent.

Finally, the back door opened and let in a gust of winter air. What little filtered through the hood felt wonderful against my hot cheeks. I listened as someone entered the limo. Then I felt the seat shift as that someone sat next to me.

The door slammed shut, blocking out the wind.

“Hello?” I asked. “Can you take this thing off me?”

I heard a distinct snick that took me only a second to recognize.

Switchblade.

“Relax,” my companion, a woman, said. She tugged at the knot and cut off the blood flow to my brain. Then the knot snapped loose.

I grabbed the top of the hood and whisked it off my head. I tossed it to the floor of the limo and turned toward the woman with the switchblade.

Again, I was struck by her uncanny resemblance to her daughter. She looked too young to have birthed Angelica. Witches weren’t born with magic like sorcerers. Which meant they aged like any mortal, unlike sorcerers. And it would take more than plastic surgery to maintain her authentic youth. She used magic, no doubt, and using magic to stay young usually meant that extra life force came from someone else.

I tried not to think about it.

She wore her black duster again, along with a skirt and knee high black leather boots. The skin on her legs was the same pale shade as her face. They looked like they’d feel soft and smooth.

I tried not to think about that, either.

“Mr. Light,” she said. “You are persistent.”

“Did you bring it?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Bring what?”

“You damn well know what. Sly’s soul. Why else are we here?”

“I did not bring it,” she said. “It isn’t mine to give.”

I groaned. “What are you talking about?”

“It belongs to all the Maidens. And my children and sisters are loathe to part with it. These days, it’s hard to acquire a soul. Even a dead man’s.”

“Then I have to ask, again. Why are we here?”

“I had an idea,” she said. I noticed her breath smelled of mint. “When I proposed the idea to my coven, they nearly laughed at me. Nearly, but they know better. Still, I could see the amused doubt in their eyes. They don’t believe you will cooperate.”

“I wouldn’t be here otherwise,” I said. “If there’s even the slightest chance that piece of soul can bring Sly back, then I need it. What do you want?”

“Hm.” She turned away and looked out her window. But there was nothing to see except for a plain brick wall. I glanced out my side and found a similar view. We were in an alley somewhere, but I’d be damned if I knew where. Which, I guess, was the whole idea.

“Will you please just tell me what you want?”

She turned her gaze back to me. “I’m almost afraid to. I can see the rage in your eyes. It simmers in you almost as much as the fire I hear you so easily wield. I’ve always hated sorcerers. They take their magic for granted. They don’t have to earn it. Witches on the other hand…” She ran the tip of her tongue across the length of her upper lip. “We have to make sacrifices.”

I laughed. It sounded as hollow as it felt. “The sacrifices you make are never your own.”

She drew back as if offended. “I’ve spilled my own blood many times for my dark goddess. Don’t pretend to know us. A witch is more than what you learn in your sorcerer school books.”

“I don’t care. I’m here for only one reason, and so far I’m not impressed.”

She sighed and settled against the seatback. “Are you certain you wish to hear my offer?”

“Jeez, lady, how bad can it be?” Sometimes I say dumb things. If I hadn’t known it already, her laughed confirmed it…that was one of those stupid things.

“It’s quite simple, actually. An even trade. One shard of a soul for another.”

My mouth hung open. My brain took a quick vacation, as if someone had bashed the side of my skull with a bat, and I had to recover before I could say any more.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” My voice cracked like I was reliving puberty.

“I have a sense of humor,” she said. “I’m not using it now.”

I rubbed my chest. It felt a little hollow in there at the moment. “To be clear,” I said slowly, “you want to trade Sly’s piece of soul for a slice of my own?”

Her smile barely showed. She leaned so close, I thought she meant to nibble on my ear. “Precisely.”

Despite the stifling air in the limo, her minty breath could have come straight from outside. I shivered at its touch.

I glanced at my watch. I had woken up roughly two hours ago. I hadn’t eaten. I hadn’t even stopped for some morning coffee. But here I sat, making a deal with a black witch, with my soul on the line.

Just another day in the life of Sebastian Light.

Chapter Forty-One

I wiped at the side of my face, smearing sweat down through my stubble. An oily taste coated my tongue, and no matter how many times I swallowed, it wouldn’t go away. Mint was supposed to settle a stomach, but her breath made mine uneasy. Her small smile seemed to mock me while she waited for my answer.

There was only one sane answer to give, but it was one of the hardest things I’d had to say till this point in my life.

“No.”

Obvious disappointment filled her eyes. She shook her head. “So my sisters were right.”

I wanted to grab her by the lapels of her duster and shake her. “Do you even understand what you’re asking?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then you know it isn’t a fair trade. If I hand over the smallest bit of my soul, it would give you access to a permanent source of magic. Like a battery than never dies.”

“That is the appeal.”

I chewed on the inside of my cheek while I tried to gather my thoughts. There had to be something else I could give. But what else did I have? All of the artifacts and enchanted items Mom and Dad had collected over their decades as Ministry scholars had been destroyed in the fire. The only thing that had survived was my father’s old pocket watch, and that didn’t have any inherent power anymore.

“Is there something you’d like me to steal?” I asked.

She drew her eyebrows together, but the lines in her forehead remained youthfully shallow. “I’m sorry?”

“I once retrieved a powerful artifact from a dragon’s den. I could get something for you and your sisters.”

“Kuan-Yin Chern had to leave Detroit because of that fiasco. His treasure is no longer here to plunder.”

I thumped my fist against the door. “I meant something like that. I’ll gank whatever you want. There’s got to be something you guys want.”

“There are many things we want.” She reached over, unbuttoned the top button of my coat, and slipped her hand in to press against my chest. “We especially want what’s in here.”

Her touch sent a chill from the top of my spine clear down into my crotch. My skin under her hand tingled. Sadly, it wasn’t magic affecting me. Just the guy downstairs taking command. Which was why I didn’t do the right thing and pull her hand out from under my coat.

“That’s off limits.” My damn voice quivered.

Get a fucking grip, Sebastian.

“What about Sly? His soul is ours because he wanted to help you. He probably would have survived that little curse if his soul had been intact.”

I knocked her hand away. “Don’t play me, bitch.”

She held up her hands. “Okay. But I had to try. You understand.” She smoothed her hands over her skirt. “I’ll have my driver take you back. The hood won’t be necessary this time.”

She reached for her door.

If I let her open it, let her get out, I let any chance of saving Sly leave with her.

And she knew that, damn it. She was counting on that.

I grabbed her arm. “Wait.”

Her small smile grew a little wider.

“What were you trying to do with Sly’s soul?” I asked.

“That isn’t your business.”

“But with him gone, you can’t do it now?”

She pursed her lips and studied me a moment.

My heart felt squeezed, as if it had to strain to beat.

“Correct,” she said. “The vitality of a soul from a living being is quite exceptional. As you’ve already figured out, with your friend still alive, a piece of his soul was almost as powerful as the whole thing. The metaphysical details are complicated and boring. But you get the idea.”

“And with my soul, you probably don’t need weeks to prepare, and a whole week to perform the ritual.”

Now her smile opened up to show teeth. “Oh, no. With your soul we could finish tomorrow.”

The glee in her voice made my skin crawl. Anything that got a black witch that excited couldn’t be good.

But what did any of this matter? I wasn’t going hand over any bit of my soul. Was I? Was a deep part of me really considering it?

She rested a hand on mine. “You know, we were never formally introduced. My name is Annabelle.”

The hand she touched prickled. I slipped it away. “Annabelle and Angelica. What perfect mom and daughter names. Though I have to say, Annabelle doesn’t sound very witchy.”

“I’m more than just a witch, Sebastian.” She scooted closer to me. “I’m a woman.”

“You play the femme fatale pretty good.”

Her gaze slide down me. “Seems to be working.”

I squirmed in my seat and raised my leg to block her view. “We’re off the subject.”

“Yes,” she hissed. “We are.”

“I can’t give you my soul.”

“But you want to. For Sly.”

I tried to swallow, but a lump jammed up my throat. I didn’t know what to say next. She wasn’t wrong. I felt responsible for Sly’s death and desperately wanted him back. Imagining the hole in my life without him hurt like a heart attack.

“It’s okay, Sebastian. We don’t need much. You’ll never notice it’s gone.”

“What will you do with it?”

“A girl can’t share all her secrets.”

“You haven’t shared a damn thing.”

She rested a hand on my thigh and gently squeezed. “I can share. I’m good at sharing.”

I clenched my teeth and tried not to notice the hot pulse up my leg. “You can’t even give me a little hint? Something that would make me feel better about the whole deal?”

She hit me with a Get real look. “Nothing I say would make you feel better.”

“Then I…”

You can’t. You cannot. No way. Don’t do it.

But what about Sly?

He would never want you to do this.

I hadn’t wanted him to do the exact same thing, but he had anyway.

This is DIFFERENT!

“Oh, my,” Annabelle said. “I can see the war inside you.” She slid her hand a little higher on my thigh.

That shit scrambled my brain. I had a hard enough time thinking straight without her all touchy-feely on me. Reluctantly, I lifted her hand and placed it in her own lap.

She sighed. Her minty breath lingered in the air. “I’ve never had a sorcerer before.”

“I thought you hated sorcerers.”

“Hate never stopped me from making love.”

“Well, it ain’t gonna happen, so back the fuck off.”

She laced her fingers together, straightened her back, and sat primly like a dutiful wife from the ‘50s. She made a terrible June Cleaver.

“As you wish,” she said. “But I can’t spend much more time here. I need an answer. Do you want to trade, or not?”

No!

“What would I need to do?”

“It’s a simple process. And, believe it or not, it won’t hurt a bit.”

Did it really matter what they did with it?

Then I heard Gladys’s voice loud and clear in my mind.

This is how worlds end.

Wasn’t that kinda melodramatic?

I stopped my thoughts short, realizing I was desperately trying to talk myself into this horrible deal. But the whole argument came down to one question—

Bring back Sly, or leave him dead?

I owed him so much. So damn much.

“Fine,” I said. I cleared my throat, trying to break loose the cement block in there. “We’ll trade.”

Annabelle smiled wide. “Fabulous.”

“But you better be careful what you use it for,” I said with gravel in my voice. “If you put this city or any of its people in danger, I will come after every one of you black bitches.”

Her smile never faltered. “Oh, I’m sure.” She winked. Then she rapped her knuckles on the partition.

The engine started up immediately, and the limo pulled out of the alley. The second we were clear, I knew exactly where we were. The limo pulled out onto Cass Avenue. I coasted by WSU’s School of Nursing building, then turned left onto Ferry Street and stopped in front of the Maidens’ apartment. We’d been right around the corner the whole time.

I felt like a complete tool. “What was the point of all the subterfuge?”

“I thought it might soften you up.” She gave me another salacious up and down gaze. “Turns out I needed to do the opposite.”

She laughed as she got out.

This better bring you back, Sly. And you damn well better appreciate it if it does.

I got out behind her. The limo pulled away, and I followed Annabelle into the apartment building.

Chapter Forty-Two

I shuffled into my house a couple hours past dusk. I felt tired, a little light-headed, but otherwise Annabelle hadn’t lied about the procedure—having some of my soul extracted hadn’t hurt a lick.

I clasped a clear bottle with a cork stopper. Inside, a ghostly light swirled like a wisp of glowing smoke—Sly’s soul.

The lights were out. I snapped on the wall switch just inside the door. The two lights still working on the ceiling fan cut most of the dark, but still left that eerie slice of shadow the third bulb would have lit up. The Lawrence Block book I had tried to read before bed lay where I left it on the coffee table. As did the TV remote. For some reason those items sharpened the empty silence in the house for me, like a pair of abandoned vehicles on the side of a desert highway.

“Mom?” I called. “Odi?”

No answer. Not that I had expected one. I could tell by the quality of the silence, no one was home.

My grip on the bottle tightened.

I wandered down the hall and into the dining room, flipping on lights as I went. I found a note on a yellow sheet of paper written in a feminine script—but not Mom’s.

I set Sly’s trapped soul on the table, gently, as if handling a live grenade. Then I read the note.

Dear, Sebastian,

Please don’t be angry. I have taken Judith and Odi to a safe place. I will contact you soon with their whereabouts and what we hope to accomplish. I’m sorry I’ve lied to you…again. But I hope you will understand when I explain it all to you.

With Love,

Fiona

I crumpled the page into my fist and growled at the air. I threw the note across the room, but the wad of paper didn’t have the heft I wanted. So I picked up one of the chairs at the table, held it over my head, then hurled it at the wall. Both the chair and the drywall cracked on impact. One of the chair’s legs hit the wall just right to poke a clean round hole the same diameter as a silver dollar. Another leg broke a rougher hole that resembled Louisiana.

The seatback broke free and sailed off in one direction while the rest of the chair clattered straight to the floor.

“Gods damn it!” My shout buzzed in the corners of the small room.

Still not satisfied by the destruction I’d already meted out, I swung around and punched the wall.

My fist crashed through, and when I yanked it out, blue flame surrounded it. I was lucky I hadn’t set the wall on fire, though at that moment I didn’t care. What was one more destroyed house when the people you cared about kept getting hurt?

I extinguished the fire. Turned one way, then the other, raking my hands through my hair while I couldn’t figure out which direction to go.

Then I stopped a second, pivoted, and charged around the table to where the note had landed. I scooped it up and uncrumpled it, smoothed it out on the table’s surface. Fiona had touched this. Some trace of her might have remained on it. Not much, definitely not enough for a vision spell, but maybe I could put together a tracking spell.

I remembered watching my grandfather put one together for me once. I’d been practicing subtle magic more often lately. I had to try. I damn well wasn’t going to wait for Fiona to contact me.

I glanced around me, stumped for a minute. Did I even have things around the house I could use for a tracking spell?

The kitchen. Always a good place to start for any homemade spell cooking.

I carried the note with me around the counter that separated the dining room and kitchen, placed it on the counter, then started digging through drawers. Silverware. Hand towels and dish rags. But mostly empty. Part of our forced minimalism. I found the usual cleaning stuff under the sink. A couple of pots and pans in another cabinet. A few glasses and plastic tumblers. Six large plates and four small. Three coffee mugs.

We had a shallow pantry, the size of a small closet with shelves behind an accordion door. I pulled the door too hard and popped it out of the top track. I shoved it aside and let it dangle.

Baking soda. Sugar. Flour. Canned milk. A loaf of whole wheat bread. Two boxes of Cheerios.

If I wanted to make breakfast, I was golden. But none of it looked like spell ingredients to me. Mom might have seen it differently. Or any other practitioner with experience in small magic.

I threw my hands up and stepped back from the pantry.

I could check the fridge, but I knew there wasn’t much more in there besides some milk, eggs, lunch meat, and a jar of my blood.

“Fuck,” I shouted. I spun around to face the counter where I’d left the note. “Fuck.” I pounded my fist on the note as if Fiona might feel it wherever she was.

I felt it—a jab of pain through my fist and up the side of my arm.

I winced and cradled my arm while glaring at the note as if the slip of yellow paper had attacked me instead of the other way around. The pain forced a pause in my chaotic search. In that break, the thinking part of my brain had a chance to catch up, and it had some good questions.

How had Fiona overpowered a vampire and a powerful sorceress and kidnapped them without any sign of a struggle? The situation reminded me of the last time someone had taken Mom. But Odi hadn’t been there. Fiona had, and she’d been in on it. That would make this the second time that shifty shifter bitch had taken Mom against her will.

What the fuck was wrong with her?

Odi may have been a baby vamp, but he had strength and vampire tricks he knew how to use. And a few sorcerer tricks, too. I couldn’t see how Fiona could have—

Wait a second.

What had the note said?

I will contact you soon with their whereabouts and what we hope to accomplish.

Who the fuck was we?

A sick twist in my gut staggered me. I leaned against the counter and took deep breaths, trying not to puke.

The remaining Ministry conspirators. The only thing that made sense. And Fiona was still working with them.

How many times would I let these bastards play me?

I slid along the counter, rounded it, and stumbled into the hall. I leaned against the wall while I walked to the front room. Something smelled funny. I realized the smell came from me. Sweat and bad breath. My mouth tasted like spoiled milk.

I reached the couch without throwing up. I plopped down and focused on my breathing until I felt confident I wouldn’t toss my cookies. Then I dug out my phone.

Who did I have to call?

The usual suspects were either dead or missing. No Toft Kitchens. No Sly. No Mom or Odi. What a pathetically small pool of reliable friends. (Well, calling Toft a friend stretched the word’s definition a little too thin.)

I supposed I could go to Gladys or Elaine. Maybe Gladys could cook up a tracking spell.

Do you really want to bring someone else into your Circle of Doom?

I did not. Those close to me either betrayed me, died, or disappeared. I couldn’t do that to poor Gladys.

So what, then?

Wait?

I tossed my phone onto the couch cushion next to me and pressed my face into my hands. With my eyes covered, the room seemed to tilt. For a moment I thought I’d get dumped right off the couch. I stayed put, though. I could do that much. What an amazing feat, right? I could sit without falling over. Mom would have been so proud.

My ping-pong thoughts hit on another idea.

I could go to the Ministry. Rachel Strand specifically. She had offered help without asking too many questions. She had seemed sincere, maybe even honest. I wouldn’t take that for granted, but it helped. It also helped that she was GMF and not local. It put her out of the ring of conspirators. And her offer to contact her directly instead of through regular channels suggested she understood my difficult position.

It meant bringing another person into my Circle of Doom. But you didn’t get into the GMF without serious juice. I had little doubt she could take care of herself just fine.

As far as trusting her?

At this point, I didn’t have a lot of options.

I headed up to my room where I had placed her card on my dresser along with some loose change. I was glad I hadn’t thrown it away out of hand. I guess part of me knew better than to cut off that avenue. See? I wasn’t always an idiot.

I examined the card. It only had her name and a phone number printed in plain black with a Times New Roman font, as if she’d printed these herself from her home computer.

I took a deep breath, told myself this was the right (the only) thing to do.

Then I dialed her number.

Chapter Forty-Three

I had Rachel Strand—Prefect Strand for the time being—meet me at a Starbucks downtown. It was the most innocuous place I could think of off the top of my head. I took a seat at a tiny two-top in back, unfortunately close to the bathroom where I could smell bleach and industrial strength soap with only a smidge of urine under it all.

With only an hour before closing time, the café didn’t have many patrons. The soft lighting soothed me, but not a whole lot. The baristas had a lot to say to each other. Mostly celebrity gossip or bad jokes.

For the sake of appearances, I had ordered a small house blend, then let it cool, untouched, in front of me.

While I waited, I kept thinking about the glass bottle holding the last bit of Sly’s soul. I had pried loose a floorboard in my bedroom and nestled the bottle underneath it. No one besides the Maidens knew I had it, but I still couldn’t drop the worry that someone might steal it and leave me truly fucked. But I couldn’t carry it around with me, either.

Not just worry about losing it weighed on me, though. I itched to try bringing Sly back with it. The Maidens had suggested sources to check to research possible rituals that could put the soul back into his body. They assured me their own method would not appeal to my “sensibilities.”

Doing that research should have been my primary focus. But, no. Fiona had to once again step into my life and give it a good spin. Not for the first time, I imagined killing her—only this time it felt real, not like some hollow fantasy.

Rachel arrived a little more than ten minutes after I sat down, but it had felt like an hour. I had started tapping out the rhythm to a Red Hot Chili Peppers song on the table—and earned an annoyed glare from a guy behind a laptop the next table over.

I slapped my hand flat when I saw Rachel enter the cafe.

Her gaze went directly to me, as if she had known exactly where I sat. She wore a light blue blouse with a darker blue skirt. Instead of heels, she wore a pair of hiking boots with a trace of crusted mud around the soles. An odd fashion statement if ever I’d seen one. Several necklaces hung around her neck made of a variety of beads and stones. She had her rings, too. A silver bracelet on one wrist, another bracelet adorned with charms. I wondered what other goodies she carried in the handbag tucked under her arm.

To the average onlooker, she looked like a woman obsessed with accessories. To me, she looked like a heavily armed mage. Guess who was right?

She also wasn’t wearing a coat, which, during a Michigan winter, made her look flat insane.

Her beads and charms rattled as she took the chair opposite mine. Her expression revealed nothing about what was going through her head. Before I could get a word in, she leaned forward and said, “I know why you called me.”

I hadn’t given her so much as a hint when I’d called. Simply insisted on a meeting, which she had easily agreed to.

“And how would you know that?”

“Because I am somewhat responsible for your trouble.”

I noticed the guy with the laptop glancing our way, no longer annoyed, but intrigued. He saw I’d caught him and jerked his gaze back to his computer.

I returned my own attention to Rachel. “I think you’re mistaken.”

Expression still flat, as if nothing meant anything to her, she fiddled with her charm bracelet. For a panicked second, I thought she was going to cast something. When I didn’t sense any gathering magic, I realized her fiddling was probably a nervous habit. She may have looked outwardly unconcerned, but this little tell of hers said otherwise.

“I assume,” she said, “you are worried for the safety of your mother and your vampire companion.”

I about dropped through the floor. A hot prickle streaked up my back. I thought about Fiona’s note. I thought about the we she’d mentioned.

Dear gods, did the conspiracy reach all the way up to the Global Ministry Faction? That didn’t make any sense. Markus and his cadre of sociopaths had plans for Detroit. Why would the GMF care about the Motor City? It’s not like we were New York, or Los Angeles, or even Chicago.

“I’m not a mind reader,” Rachel said, “but I can read the obvious questions in your eyes.” She noticed herself playing with her charms and pressed her hand flat against the table to stop it. “First of all, no, I have no connection to those who have abused their Ministry status for ill gains. Secondly, your mother and vampire are safe, unharmed, and willing guests.”

I narrowed my eyes. I could not make any sense of this. “Why not say that in the note?” I asked. “And what the hell does Fiona Templeman have to do with any of this?”

That dude was peeking over the top of his computer again.

I stood, went over to him, slapped his laptop closed, then picked it up and shoved it against his chest.

He instinctively wrapped his arms around the computer as if it was a precious child.

“Time to find a new place to sit,” I said.

He opened his mouth as if to object. Before he could, though, I conjured up a breeze more chilly than the winter night and ruffled his hair with it.

He shivered and twisted in his seat to check the front door, even though the breeze had clearly come from the opposite direction. He swung his gaze back to me, pressed his lips together, and nodded. I had freaked him out just enough to motivate him. He would probably wonder where that icy breeze had come from for a long time to come.

He tucked his laptop into a leather shoulder bag, stood, grabbed his coat off the back of his chair, then left the café altogether before he had his coat half on.

I sat back down across from Rachel. “I hate eavesdroppers.”

I wasn’t sure, but I thought she almost smiled. “To answer your questions, we wanted the note to remain as general as possible. The reason for collecting Judith and Odi needed to stay in house.”

“In whose house?”

“That’s a question I cannot answer here, even after your chasing away that nosy young man.”

“What can you answer?”

“That Ms. Templeman is not your enemy, for one.”

I shook my head and crossed my arms. “That’s a tough sell.”

“I understand that. And there’s no reason for you to take my word for it.”

The sound of a barista grinding out an espresso jangled my nerves. I had wandered into some parallel world where nothing made sense. I expected all the clocks of the world to start melting and dangling from trees. A whisper could have startled me.

“You’ll have to forgive my vagueness. I can’t say much more. But if you come with me, everything will be explained.”

“Why should I trust you?”

She raised her eyebrows. “You called me, remember?”

I grinned. “Oh, you’re good. You knew I would call you. Or counted on it, at least.”

“Listen, Mr. Light. Your suspicions of a grand conspiracy are warranted. But you are not a target. Not by my people.”

That last bit amused and worried me at the same time. “If not by you, then who?”

“I think you know the answer to that.”

I took a deep breath. I smelled mostly coffee with only a bit of bathroom. “The conspirators.”

She inclined her head.

“So I haven’t been paranoid?”

She leaned forward. Her beaded necklaces clattered against the table. “Come with me.”

My gut told me to go for it. What did I have to lose? Well, except for my life. Even if it were some kind of elaborate trap, it could bring me to wherever they were holding Mom and Odi. I didn’t have any chance of saving them if I couldn’t find them.

“Okay,” I said. “Take me to your leader.”

She laughed, her face suddenly full of expression, as if she had removed a mask. “I am the leader, Mr. Light.”

Chapter Forty-Four

Unlike Annabelle, Rachel didn’t throw me into the back of a limo and pull a hood over my head. She told me to follow her car in my own. As I pulled in behind her nondescript black sedan, my curiosity itched like a mother. I couldn’t fathom what would come next. This whole deal still felt like I’d stepped into Salvador Dali-land.

We took the Chrysler Freeway clear up into Auburn Hills. At nearly ten o’ clock at night, traffic was light and we made it in under forty minutes. The wind had picked up and buffeted against my car as I followed her through one turn and another, making our way through the suburbs. I didn’t know the area well. If they really ended up letting me leave with Mom and Odi, I would need to GPS my way back home.

Eventually we pulled into a lumber yard, of all places. A single story main office building with an orange shingled roof sat out front, but we pulled around back on a narrow drive that threaded its way between stacks of lumber of various measures. As we approached a large shed at the back of the yard, the shed’s air hanger-sized door slid open. In the cast of Rachel’s headlights I spotted someone in a hooded parka standing by the entrance. The hood obscured their face, so I couldn’t tell anything about them except that their stance had a protective sense to it, as if the person were a guard at the door.

We passed the sentry into almost perfect darkness. If not for our headlights, we might have driven right into the bright yellow Hummer parked a handful of car lengths in.

Rachel came to a stop right at the Hummer’s back bumper. Her brake lights flared, then she cut her engine and shut off her headlights.

I braked, but didn’t put my car in park. The squeal of the door as it rolled shut behind me reverberated in the darkness. My headlights, so close behind Rachel’s sedan, didn’t illuminate much more than her license plate. A New York plate, I noticed for the first time. I’d been too wrapped up in anticipation to notice before.

I jumped as something rapped against my passenger side window. In the backsplash from my headlights, I could see the parka guard standing there with one glove pulled off, presumably for the purpose of knocking. The guard drew back her hood and peered in at me. The woman looked a little older than my mom, but I had no way of knowing if she actually was older than my mom, since Mom was one-hundred and forty-two, not really in her sixties. The perks of being a sorceress.

“Cut the engine,” the woman said, voice muffled by the window.

I put the car in park, cut the engine.

“And the lights.”

I turned off the headlights. Now I couldn’t see a thing. Not the woman. Not the interior of my car. Not even my hand as I waved it in front of my face. For a few seconds, sound seemed as absent as the light. I could hear my own breathing, but nothing else. Then I felt magical energy slough over me like a tidal wave. It stole my breath. The power seemed to stop every organ, cause every cell in my body to freeze for an instant.

A bass note hummed in my ears, increased in volume as each dark moment that passed.

Then the world dropped out from under me. I couldn’t feel my seat, couldn’t grasp the steering wheel. Couldn’t even feel myself. Everything was gone. I was suspended in nothingness.

Sudden light seared my vision and forced me to clench my eyes closed. A few moments passed before I felt my body again. I found myself standing. A warm breeze brushed my cheeks and ruffled my hair. I heard chirping birds. Smelled mossy earth. More warmth came down at me from above. I recognized its feel. Sunlight.

Eventually, my eyes adjusted to the brightness. I blinked a few times and looked around me.

I stood in a forest clearing. Sure enough, the heat from above came from the sun. Knee high grass stretched in an uneven circle to the surrounding trees—tall redwoods that could have been hundreds of years old. I’d never actually seen redwoods in life, just in pictures and films. All of it smelled wonderful and natural.

Rachel stood about the same distance from me as she’d been while we sat in our cars. She had her head tilted back, bathing her face in the sunlight with a wide smile. The ground was spongy from a recent rain, and suddenly Rachel’s hiking boots made perfect sense. She took a long, deep breath, then exhaled with a satisfied haaaa. “Isn’t this so much nicer than January in Michigan?”

No doubt, it was. I had already started sweating under my heavy coat. “It helps if you actually dress for the weather,” I said.

“I work from here most of the time, so I don’t like to drag a coat around.”

“Makes sense, I guess.” I pulled off my coat and draped it over one arm. “Speaking of which. Where is here?”

She turned her face away from the sun and, still smiling, squinted at me. “I could tell you that. But then I’d have to disintegrate you.”

I humphed. “One of those baubles of yours can disintegrate someone?”

She rolled some beads on one of the necklaces between her fingers. “I’ve got all sorts of skills, Mr. Light.”

“It’s Sebastian. If you’re luring me into a trap, I’d prefer we were on a first name basis.”

Her smile positively beamed. I couldn’t figure out how such an expressive woman could put on such a bland face when it came down to serious business.

“Of course, Sebastian.”

I took another moment to survey the beautiful surroundings. I assumed the shed at the lumber yard was a much, much larger version of the door to the Switch, which provided a portal between planes, like crawling through the holes in a block of Swiss cheese. I’d never seen one of such massive scale. It was like the freight elevator of interdimensional travel.

“So where are Odi and my mother? Hiking in the woods?”

She pointed toward a narrow break in the trees. “We need to follow that path. I hope those boots of yours are comfy, because we have about a thirty minute walk.”

“Why would you have this elaborate travel system and have it plop you down so far away from your actual destination?”

“The GMF travel in style, but we aren’t stupid. Precautions. We have many.”

I gestured ahead. “Lead the way.”

The heat had a nasty humid streak. Even in the shade of the trees, I felt wet and sticky. I was half-tempted to leave my coat hanging from a tree and pick it up on the way back out—assuming I would make it back out. I was tired of lugging the thing, but I wasn’t going to put it on, no matter how much easier it would have been to carry. I muscled through. It was the only winter coat I owned.

According to my watch, the thirty-minute hike took forty minutes. I didn’t complain. I was too busy looking in awe at the structure before us.

The collection of buildings looked like a natural extension of the surrounding forest. The architecture wrapped around the trees while some branches speared through the structures as if part of the construction. The octagonal buildings sat on various levels, and most of them looked to be connected by wide pillars or tube-shaped walkways. A lot of glass walls further allowed the tiered structures to blend with their surroundings instead of obscuring the beauty.

I couldn’t possibly guess their collective square footage, but the…what? Tree house? The whole thing went up pretty high and encompassed at least a hundred of the massive redwoods.

This looked like one sweet place to work.

“I can see your tonsils,” Rachel said.

I clapped my mouth shut and managed to pull my gaze away from this architectural masterpiece. Rachel’s smile looked vibrant in the sun streaming through the natural canopy of the trees. Her lips glistened. A sheen of sweat made her complexion glow. And when I realized where my thoughts were headed, I reigned them in fast.

I was starting to think I had a thing for women of power. First the head of a black witch coven, now a lead officer of the GMF. Of course, the two women couldn’t otherwise have been more different.

“What is that look for?” Rachel asked.

I shook off my random contemplation of my love life and brought myself back to the present. “What look? There’s no look.”

She lifted an eyebrow and did not appear the least bit convinced.

“This place,” I said, waving at the forest complex. “What a place.”

Behold my rhetorical mastery! I could talk good.

Rachel turned to face the complex. I noticed a bead of sweat roll down the length of her neck. “We’re very proud of what we’ve built here. We had a team of druids on hand the entire time to make sure our symbiotic relationship with the forest put none of it in danger. Now, through a mix of magic and engineering, our jewel of the Ministry actually helps the forest thrive.”

“The jewel of the Ministry. Is that its official title?”

She shook her head. “We call it Greenhome. It’s much nicer than the stone castle that used to hold the Ministry Seat.”

My brain zapped. “Wait a second. This is…the Seat?”

“It is.”

“Whoa.” I looked up at the complex with a new pair of eyes. Knowing that this place was basically the headquarters to the entire Ministry everywhere… I almost caught a bug in my mouth from hanging my mouth so wide.

Then a thought struck me. “My Mom and Odi? They’re here?”

Rachel inclined her head.

It shocked the hell out of me that they would let a vampire into the Ministry Seat. I got a little nudge of panic. “There’s a lot of windows in this place.”

She laughed. “Your vampire is quite safe. This place isn’t all in the sky.” She nodded toward the ground.

Well, of course this place would have a subterranean level. What super-secret headquarters didn’t?

I felt sparks going off in my skull. A giddy lightness rose through me. I didn’t forget all the things I had yet to deal with—bringing Sly back, figuring out what Rachel Strand wanted with me and Mom, worrying about what the Maidens of Shadow were going to do with my soul. But I did get a slight reprieve. Not any old sorcerer got to visit the Ministry Seat. I had stepped into a whole new level of the paranormal world. This was greater than visiting royalty. This was the greatest honor anyone in existence could have.

It would really suck if I’d only come here to die.

“So,” I said, “now that you have me here, are you going to kill me?”

She put her fists on her hips and shook her head. “Do you have any idea the magical energy required to travel here? If I wanted you dead, I would have left you behind.”

She dropped her hands to her sides and crunched through the underbrush to me. I swear I could feel her body heat from ten feet away, let alone the mere two she put between us.

“It’s quite the opposite,” she said. “I need you alive and well, Sebastian Light. Because I need your help.”

Chapter Forty-Five

“My help?”

I looked around me as if my surroundings would melt into the muddled visions of a dream. But the thick smell of pine and earth was too real. The humidity and the sweat under my arms and across my back, making my shirt stick to me—all too vivid for a dream.

Maybe I’d been drugged and was hallucinating. Or hit with some kind of spell.

“Your thoughts must be racing,” Rachel said. “Questions upon questions. We can discuss it all inside where it’s much cooler.” She smirked. “In both senses of the word.”

“Um.” I cleared my throat. “Before we do, can you at least answer one now?”

“Certainly.”

“Is this real?”

She laughed. I liked the sound of it, throaty and honest. “It’s all real. But, of course, if it weren’t, would you really expect me to tell you the truth?”

Now it was my turn to laugh. “Touché.”

She led the way to a dome-shaped building wrapped around the base of one of the trees. Soft soil was the only path out of the brush on the approach to the front door. Through the dome’s glass walls I could see the base of the redwood in the structure’s center. The floor looked like it was made of polished wood, as did all the window frames. Two glass hallways, one on each side, led to other flanking structures.

I could see a pair of robed men just inside the nearly invisible glass doors. They both wore hoods that hung low, just above their eyes. One had a thick, chestnut beard. The other had the barest wisp of gray hanging from his chin.

The glass doors automatically slid open as we approached, and slid closed behind us once we were inside. The change in temperature sent a shiver through me. My sweat started evaporate almost instantly.

The men bowed slightly, but otherwise said nothing as we passed.

Rachel led me through a series of corridors, some glass, some made of the same slick wood as the floor in the domed entry. Everything smelled like wood and earth, even the glass corridors. Eventually, we came to a set of stone steps that stopped at a pair of closed wooden doors with brass handles.

Rachel shrugged one shoulder. “The lower levels are more like the old castle. Maybe someday I can give you the tour in the upper levels.”

Did she sound flirty? Or was that my imagination? Either way, I was all about her taking me on a tour. “Sounds great.”

Her closed smile looked a little mischievous. Didn’t it?

No. I decided I was reading into things. No way a Ministry officer so high in the ranks would flirt with little ol’ me.

As promised, the lower level beyond the wooden doors looked like an old castle. Stone walls. Stone floor. Stone statues carved out at regular intervals down the main hall. Some were proud goblins from a bygone era when goblins had aspired to more than the low-level grifters they were today. Others resembled old-school wizards brandishing wands or staffs.

You didn’t see too many wizards anymore. Their style of magic took a great deal of brains to manage. Kids these days found that kind of cerebral business too much work to bother with. Better to just enchant some shit, or read incantations of out a musty old book if they absolutely had to.

Between the statues, stone pedestals carried white magical flame to illuminate the way. The air smelled like moss and mortar and carried a frigid dampness that made me glad I’d kept my coat.

We went through a couple more sets of doors and another set of stairs before we came to the end of a hall with a rather modern steel door and a keypad beside it. It looked strange in the wavering light of the magic flames.

“What is with these lower levels?” I asked. “The few rooms we passed didn’t look occupied with much more than dust, webs, and old wooden furniture.”

Rachel punched a series of buttons on the keypad. “Everyone prefers the upstairs for obvious reasons. This part was built more out of nostalgia than anything. A few members of the committee responsible for the organization and construction of Greenhome thought some residents would prefer more familiar surroundings.”

“They meant all the old people.”

She hit one last button on the keypad and something clunked behind the metal door. A second later the doors hissed open into wall pockets on either side.

“Elders, yes,” Rachel said. “Of course, they were dead wrong. The Elders took up shop in some of the highest tiers.” She waved me through the door. “Let's have a friendly reunion.”

Chapter Forty-Six

We stepped out of medieval times and back to the modern era. A steel-walled corridor stretched out from the entry to a T at the end. Closed metal doors painted off-white lined the way at uneven intervals. I felt an electric hum buzz through the floor under my soles. I sensed some massive energy source deeper below us that had the flavor of magic, but also something more…artificial.

Rachel must have picked up my thoughts from my look. “What you feel is the Greenhome core. It’s essentially a nuclear generator contained and augmented by magical energy. It would take a million years for us to deplete it.”

I opened my mouth, but she held up a hand.

“And before you ask, it’s perfectly stable. The magic keeps it perpetually between dimensions. If anything goes awry, the core gets ejected into the other dimension.”

“I hope there aren’t any residents over there.”

“There are,” she deadpanned. “But they are not the kinds of things whose deaths we would mourn.”

I’d had a short run-in with a hellhound. If the things she was talking about were anything like that beast, then, hell yeah, nuke ‘em all.

She touched my back for an instant, sending electric ripples through me. “Let’s go.” Then she went ahead.

I tried not to admire the view as much as my devious libido so desperately wanted. My gaze did linger a moment on the curve of her calves, somehow made more attractive by her hiking boots. I know. Maybe I’d gone too long without sex. Hiking boots as fetish? I was sure I could find something like that on the internet. Not that I planned on looking it up. I doubted they’d look as good on anyone else.

We went all the way down the corridor to the T and made a right. More non-descript doors, many of them with keypads or card swipes beside them. We passed a glassed-in room, vacant at the moment. A scarlet circle with a pentacle inside was painted on the floor. A shelf of old books stood against the far wall. An empty wire cage bedded with straw sat on the floor in the corner.

I couldn’t help thinking back to our fight against Goulet and his well-dressed yes-men (or yes-vamps, really). The Maidens had drawn a similar circle and had slaughtered a pig in a cage not unlike the one in the corner.

“Sebastian?”

I had stopped walking without realizing. Rachel looked back at me and studied my face. Then her gaze went to the room with the pentacle. She frowned. “It isn’t our preferred form of magic. But even dark witches can help keep the world safe.”

I knew firsthand that was true.

I also knew they could do exactly the opposite. Especially if they had a piece of a sorcerer’s soul to help them along.

“Are you okay?” Rachel asked. “You look pale. Does this bother you so much?”

I shook my head and waved. “Nah. I’m good.”

She tilted her head toward the direction we’d been headed. “Come on. Just around the corner here.”

For a second I had the crazy idea she was leading me to a gas chamber or a pack of rabid werewolves. But that didn’t make any sense. Not at this point. But if not a trip to my doom, then what, besides maybe Odi and Mom, would I find just around the corner here? Why had Rachel Strand taken me all this way? She had said she needed my help. Yet they had a massive complex populated by some of the greatest minds in the magical world—even some black witches, apparently. What the hell could I possibly have to offer?

True to her word, Rachel stopped in front of a door only a dozen or so steps around the corner. The door looked like all the others. I had no idea what to expect on the other side. Some kind of cold laboratory wouldn’t have surprised me. Mom strapped down to a cold steel operating table flashed across my mind’s eye. I wondered how long one person could live with such paranoia before succumbing to madness? Some days, insanity seemed right around the corner for me.

Rachel tapped in another code into the keypad beside the door. The door clicked, and Rachel led the way inside.

Chapter Forty-Seven

No laboratory, no operating tables, nothing like that. Instead we walked into what looked like a massive hotel suite. The common room could have held our little Corktown house inside it. High vaulted ceiling held by beams made of the same kind of wood as the halls upstairs.

Either side of the room had its own curving staircase that led to a loft area, and off the sides of the lofts, ornate doors carved with woodland creatures and trees and ribboned designs. I assumed those led to separate bedrooms. But who knew? Maybe there was a sauna or a hot tub up there. Or both.

The warm smell of freshly baked bread filled the place and soothed my jangled nerves for the first time in…forever. I could practically taste a crusty bite from the scent alone.

The center of the room was sectioned off by a set of curved sofas on either side like parentheses. A couple more arm chairs huddled close by. An oval coffee table sat at the center, again made from the same wood as everything else.

I found Mom sitting in one of the armchairs. She had a book in her lap, but she had her gaze up as I entered.

“Wow,” I said. “No wonder you ditched me.”

Mom smiled. “It wasn’t a planned thing, Sebastian.”

I shrugged. I still felt a little, I don’t know…excluded, I guess.

Mom shut her book, stood, and came over to me. We hugged. When we pulled apart, I looked around. The walls were adorned with oil paintings depicting various kinds of fae, mostly fairies, satyr, and beautiful, ghostly women in robes of white that shimmered so vividly, I could squint a little and believe the light was real.

“Where’s Odi?” I asked.

“He’s sleeping upstairs,” Mom said. “They even provided him a coffin.”

I pivoted to face Rachel, who stood just inside the now closed door. She held her hands clasped behind her back, and all that expressive smiling she’d shown on our way here had vanished. She once again wore her impassive, impervious expression. Her business face.

Which meant we were probably about to get down to business.

“Please, have a seat,” she said formally.

Mom took me by the elbow, and we walked over to one of the sofas and sat together.

Rachel joined us, but stayed on her feet.

That bread aroma continued to hang in the air. I turned to Mom. “Is there a bakery in here or something?”

Mom patted my hand. “I’ll show you around later. You need to listen to Ms. Strand now.”

“Okay,” I said. “Fire away.”

Rachel raised a finger. “Just a moment. We have one more coming.”

As if the mere words had summoned her, Fiona came out from the door of a side room under the staircase. She wore a pair of brown cargo pants and a long-sleeved top that fit snugly. She had her blond hair in a ponytail that hung only an inch or so past the nape of her neck. Not even all those pockets in her pants could hide her trim figure. She only stood about five-four, but she moved with a feline grace that made her look taller. I remembered the figure, but the gait was something new.

Her gaze flitted to me, then slipped away as she lifted her chin and looked straight ahead. She took up position beside Rachel, arms slack at her sides, gaze still seemingly directed at nothing.

Rachel looked to me. “I know this must be awkward for you. I’m familiar with your shared history with Ms. Templeman. I ask you to put whatever feelings you have about that history aside for now.”

I narrowed my eyes, staring at Fiona even though she refused to look at me. “Why should I?”

“Because the stability of the Ministry depends on it.”

That shifted my angry glare into a brow-wrinkled WTF? look at Rachel. “You’re going to have to explain that one.”

“The conspiracy you uncovered back in October had more faces behind it than those you came up against. Others still linger in the ranks, from top to bottom.”

I half sighed, half groaned. “I’d worried as much. How many are we talking?”

Despite her all business face, Rachel let a short laugh slip. “We haven’t a clue. I’ve had GMF guardians poking around, but we have only found two we can prove beyond doubt were involved.”

“I assume you’ve interrogated them by now. What have they told you?”

“Not much. Vague generalities. Unfortunately, both of them died before we could learn more.”

My heart squeezed. I flashed back to the room for the black witches. “You killed them in the process of interrogating them?”

Rachel rolled her eyes. “Not hardly. We discovered sigils carved into their skulls. They only required a spark of magic to activate them. We found them with their skulls literally empty. Their brains seemed to have evaporated.”

I cringed. That was some sick magic right there. “Suicide. That’s like those spies with a fake molar full of cyanide. How did you get anything out of them first?”

“They weren’t sorcerers. They didn’t have their own magic. They apparently had managed to draw energy from one of their interrogators.”

I crossed my arms and leaned back on the sofa. The cushions felt a little stiff, favoring form over function. “What does any of this have to do with me?” I nodded at Fiona. “Or her?”

“I’m putting together a task force to seek and eliminate the traitors. You would have carte blanche on how to deal with them…or with finding them. Your experience—and Ms. Templeman’s—with these foes could help a great deal.”

“I don’t know anything more about them than what they had planned and who I had to kill to stop them. I don’t know how much more help I could be. And honestly?” I pointed at Fiona. “I don’t think you should trust a thing that comes out of her mouth. She could still be in on it.”

Fiona’s lip curled. “Do you really believe that? Don’t you think I want to atone? You know why I helped them. I didn’t do it by choice.”

I stood. “I am prepared to do anything to save someone I love…except betray the others I love. You had a choice.”

“Fine. You’re right. I could have—should have—done things differently. But I made the right decision in the end. I turned against those bloodsucking freaks, and I lost my mother because of it. So fuck you and your high and mighty bull shit. Get over it. There’s something more important going on here.”

I opened and closed my mouth, thinking I had a comeback that never ended up tripping off my tongue.

Rachel cleared her throat. “I’m glad we worked through that.”

“I haven’t worked through anything,” I snapped.

“Very well, then. Let’s change the subject for a moment. Let me explain to you the stakes here.” She gestured toward the couch, inviting (or demanding) I sit.

I hesitated a second. I didn’t want to do anything anybody else wanted me to do. I wanted to rebel against everything. I didn’t even want to breathe. To hell with what my body wanted from me. I would do my own damn thing. But, obviously, I had to breathe. And I went ahead and sat, too, but only because Rachel had taken so much trouble getting me here. I’d hear her out, then I would tell her no.

“You know,” I said as I sat, “the Ministry already hired me once. Didn’t last long, though.”

“This isn’t the same thing.”

The temp had been perfectly comfortable when I’d entered the suite, but now I felt feverish. I shrugged my coat off, folded it in half, and set it on the couch next to me.

“I liken these traitors to termites,” Rachel went on. “They’re so small, any single one seems utterly benign. But with enough of them chewing through the walls, the foundation, the supports, eventually the house will crumble and fall.”

“But are these termites even eating anymore? The whole crux of their plan is impossible now. Isn’t it more a matter of your pride weaseling these asswipes out?”

Rachel’s expression hardened. “Do you think I would have brought you, the Unturned, into the Ministry Seat for the sake of pride? Do you think I would have invited Ms. Templeman, known for conspiring with vampires, if all I wanted was to weasel out a few asswipes?”

I gritted my teeth while I let that Unturned remark roll off my back. “The Ministry has done a lot of things over the years I don’t get. No offense, but I really can’t see the point of this.”

“Only because you haven’t let me finish.”

I felt myself getting antsy. I kept seeing Fiona in my periphery no matter how much I tried to focus on Rachel. They stood too close. And why was that traitorous shifter standing there like a military lackey? Sit the fuck down, bitch.

I swallowed. “Please,” I said. “Finish.”

Rachel clasped her hands behind her back again. “We have reason to believe they have aligned themselves with a powerful outside force in an effort to enact a coup. And not just any coup. Apparently, according to the nervous rantings of one of our former captives, they have designs on taking over the GMF. I’m not clear on motives, but I imagine their failure in Detroit has made them a little…”

“Butt hurt?”

She snorted. “Something like that.”

All right. This was more serious than I thought. But was a global coup really something the conspirators could pull off? How many of them were there? How much power could they possibly wield against the whole gods damned Ministry?

“You said they’ve aligned with an outside force. Who are we talking here? More vampires?”

“No.” Rachel visibly swallowed. Her gaze went from Mom to Fiona, and back to me. “I haven’t shared this part yet. You must be certain not to underestimate their power.”

“Just tell us.”

“Right.” She nodded quickly. “From what intel we could gather, the traitors have enlisted the help of the Maidens of Shadow.”

Oh, fuck.

Chapter Forty-Eight

All the air went out of my lungs. My gut felt like it had taken a bullet. A ringing grew in my ears. And a mantra kept echoing in my head.

You stupid son of a bitch.

You stupid son of a bitch.

You stupid son of a bitch.

What had I done?

Well, it looked like I had handed over an easy-peasy way for the Maidens of Shadow to assist in the overthrow of the Ministry.

You stupid son of a bitch.

But what was I going to do about it? I couldn’t cop to it. The Ministry forbids trading in souls. (Although, if they had a black witch on retainer, they really didn’t have much moral ground to stand on.) Still, this wasn’t any old soul. It was the soul of a sorcerer, and whatever the Maidens planned to do with it, I would be pretty stupid to think it didn’t have something to do with their new relationship.

I could only imagine what was in it for them.

I had this information, though. Something Rachel needed to know so she could fully understand what they were up against.

“Sebastian?”

Rachel studied me, her head tilted.

I gave a tight smile. I probably looked like the Joker with how pasted on it felt.

“Do you see the serious nature of our situation now?”

I cleared my throat. “Oh, yeah.”

“We’ve had dealings with the Maidens,” Mom said, and I wanted to shrink down and slip between the couch cushions. “In fact, they helped us. Twice.”

Rachel raised an eyebrow, her focus still on me. “Is that so?”

With that stupid smile still on my face, I nodded. “Yep.”

The light in the room seemed especially bright. A large crystal chandelier like you’d find in an old rich person’s mansion loomed above us. It hadn’t seemed so bright when we first arrived.

“What was the nature of your dealings?” Rachel asked.

Mom started telling the story, which was good, because I didn’t think I could form a full sentence at the moment.

My skin crawled. I wanted out of there. I couldn’t be a part of this. I had to get my soul back from the Maidens before they destroyed the only infrastructure the magical world possessed. The Ministry kept the line between the natural and the supernatural taut, forced law on otherwise lawless creatures, protected not only those aware of its presence, but so, so many who didn’t have a clue.

A coup from these losers could destabilize that balance. Gods help the entire human race if it did.

Mom must have given the quick version, because everyone was staring at me, even Fiona, as if I’d fallen asleep in class. I blinked, bobbled my head up and down. “That’s about it.”

Mom gave me a sidelong glance. Rachel furled her brow. Fiona looked like she felt sorry for me.

“Sebastian,” Mom prodded. “Tell her about Sly.”

“You mean, you didn’t?”

“My heavens, son, what’s wrong with your ears?”

I held up my hands. “Sorry, sorry. This is all a lot to take in. Especially…well, especially because of my recent dealings with the Maidens.”

“Which were?” Rachel asked.

Sorry, Sly, I thought. I’ve gotta spill the beans. Don’t hate me when you come back to life.

“In order to get the Maidens to help us,” I said, “my friend Sly Petrie traded them a piece of his soul.”

Rachel’s eyes went wide. Her lips parted as if she meant to gasp, but nothing came out.

I followed up quickly. “You have to understand. We were in a rough spot. We couldn’t quite trust the Ministry. And it’s a good thing, in retrospect, that we didn’t. He just wanted to help get my mom back from those vamps. He’s been a friend of the family for a long time.”

Rachel regained her composure, smoothed her skirt down along her hips, and drew her shoulders back. “We’ll worry about how to handle your friend later.”

“There’s nothing to handle. He’s dead.”

“Oh.”

Now Fiona’s eyes widened. “Oh, no. Sebastian…”

“Forget it,” I said with more venom than I’d intended. Not that I was sorry for it.

Fiona stepped back as if pulling herself out of the line of my verbal fire.

“Were the Maidens responsible for his death?” Rachel asked.

“Indirectly,” I said. “He probably would have survived if he’d had all of his soul.”

Rachel’s jaw bulged from clenching her teeth. Her nostrils flared as she took a few deep breaths. “These woman are a menace,” she said evenly. “You should have never bargained with them.”

“Trust me. I know it. Boy, do I.”

Mom gave me a questioning look. I ignored it. She didn’t know what I’d done, or even that I’d gotten Sly’s soul back. I would break all that to her far, far away from the Ministry Seat and one of its top officers, thank you very much.

A weird silence fell between us. So much had been thrown out there, I think we all needed a second to process. This was probably my last chance to fess up about trading my soul, too. I kept it to myself much longer, the cover up would end up…well, not worse than the crime, but really bad.

Maybe I could spin the truth to get enough of it out there without totally buying myself a ride on the Ministry prison transport.

“There’s something else.”

All three women turned to me. The weight of their gazes seemed to push me down. I felt shorter. And that damn chandelier was making my eyes hurt.

“Do you remember that attack at Royal Oak General? The incident that brought you and I together in the first place?”

Rachel nodded. “How could I forget?”

“That creature was the work of the Maidens.”

“Why would they attack you?”

“Well, I got the impression they were, um…using Sly’s soul for something not so good. So I confronted them about it. I think they wanted to scare me enough to leave them alone. Or kill me. They might have wanted that.”

Rachel crossed her arms and cocked her hip. The stance made me think of that poor little girl who stood outside while I melted the head of her mom’s boyfriend. My stomach did a little tumble.

“What made you suspect them?”

Crap. I had led her exactly down the path I had wanted to avoid. Before I could think up a lie, Mom told the truth. Well, a half-truth, thank the gods.

“Sly grew sick,” she said. “It was obvious his condition was related to their possession of his soul.”

“So,” Rachel said, drawing out the word while she put together the next thought. “Are they responsible for his death or not?”

“They are,” Mom said so firmly even I believed her for a second.

Rachel seemed to accept the answer, giving a short nod.

Mom had just saved me from having to tell Rachel about murdering Horton the Tree Man.

Best mom ever.

“We certainly have a lot to deal with,” Rachel said. “And now that we have it all out there, I need to know where you stand Sebastian. Will you join us? Help us save the Ministry?”

As much as I hated becoming a Ministry insider, how could I refuse a question like that? She might as well have asked, Do you want to sit on your lazy ass or save the world?

“I’m in.”

Save the world it is!

Chapter Forty-Nine

At nightfall, I got the chance to fill Odi in on all the fun he’d missed. I found him in one of the upper rooms in the suite. They had furnished him with a smooth, steel casket that kind of looked like a torpedo with a flat bottom. As I gave him the details, I heard a lot of “whoa” and “aw, dude” and “no way, man.” I kept the story the same as how I gave it to Rachel. Once we got back home, I could tell Mom and Odi the real deal.

Couldn’t wait for that fun time. I was sure to get a real positive response. Heh.

Once I had Odi up to speed, the five of us—me, Odi, Mom, Rachel, and Fiona—met back at the center of the common room. It had become our unofficial little command center.

Rachel and Fiona sat on one couch together, while I had my peeps sitting on either side of me on the other couch. It kind of felt like a quiz show—the Light team versus the…whatever they wanted to be. It still irked me how easily Rachel had accepted Fiona into the fold, but I suspected they had spent a good deal more time together before I came into the picture.

I noticed Odi giving Fiona a dirty look.

I patted his shoulder. Good apprentice.

After we all settled in, Rachel folded her hands in her lap and scanned each of us. “This is an odd crew,” she said. “No doubt about it. But we’re working toward a greater good here. We need to keep that in mind.”

I felt Fiona’s gaze on me, and I made a point not to meet it.

“Before we can even begin to smoke out the Ministry traitors, we need to deal with the threat at hand. According to Sebastian, the Maidens of Shadow are preparing a complicated ritual of some kind.”

Powered by my soul, you’re welcome very much.

“That’s all we know, however. The good news is, we do know where they are, and they have no reason to suspect we’ve caught wind of their involvement with the coup. A concentrated strike could end their plans before they begin.”

I cleared my throat. “We don’t know where all of them are. The young ladies on Ferry Street only represent a little more than half of the coven.”

Rachel drew back. “What are you talking about? I don’t have any information like that.”

“Those girls have moms,” I said. “And I’ve dealt with one of them in person.” I put the brakes on my mouth. I had once again opened myself up to some awkward questions.

Mom slowly turned to me. “You have?”

“Just a small conversation,” I blurted. “Enough to guess they’re probably more powerful than the younger Maidens we already know.”

“Fantabulous,” Odi said.

“I know the mothers were visiting their daughters, trying to put this ritual together. But I got the impression they weren’t staying with them.”

Rachel massaged one of her temples with her fingertips. “This keeps getting better.” Despite her being in business mode, I saw a glimpse of her more expressive self. Only not the bright, smiling side. She looked ready to chew the legs off one of the nearby chairs.

After a couple breaths, she recovered. “But you think the mothers are necessary for the ritual?”

“Yes.”

“Then we’ll have to wait.”

Odi scrunched up his nose. “Wait for what?”

But I already knew what she meant, so I answered for her. “Until after they’ve begun the ritual.”

Chapter Fifty

Home never felt so good. The moment I stepped into the house, I made a beeline for the sofa and plopped down. I slouched, exhaustion deflating me like a blow-up sorcerer. Between all the verbal maneuvering to keep my secret from Rachel, the energy I burned ignoring Fiona, the hike back to the clearing, and the wild magical ride back to the lumber yard in Auburn Hills, I had tapped myself dry.

Didn’t help I hadn’t slept in who knew how long.

We had orders from Rachel—rest up, then start surveillance on the Maidens until they showed signs of starting up their mysterious ritual. Based on what Rachel knew, she figured it would take some time. But I knew better. With my soul they could have already begun.

We didn’t have time to rest, no matter how much I wanted to. Besides, I owed Mom and Odi an uncomfortable conversation, telling them the few tiny details I’d left out while at Greenhome.

Mom slumped beside me.

Odi paced, stealing glances my way. It took my tired brain a moment to realize he was hungry. We must have been out of the stuff in the fridge. I so did not want the kid chewing on my arm right then. Not that I really ever wanted to do it. But definitely not tonight.

He would just have to wait.

“Guys,” I grunted. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

Mom let loose one really long sigh. “I don’t think I want to hear it.”

I lolled my head her way, my cheek resting against the back of the sofa. “You don’t even know what it is.”

“I raised you, son. You’re using your bad news voice.”

“It’s not all bad news. Promise.”

She didn’t look comforted. “Then give me the good news first.”

I smiled the way you do when you’re drunk, where your face feels all numb and your head doesn’t quite feel attached, but you bobble along just smiling and smiling.

“I got Sly’s soul back.”

“What?”

“How?”

Mom and Odi spoke at the same time. A mouthful of coffee beans wouldn’t have snapped Mom out of her cloudy fatigue like this news had. She grasped my arm. “Why didn’t you say so at Greenhome? If they don’t have his soul, they can’t do the ritual. We’ll have plenty of time to stop them before the find another.”

“Aaaaand, that’s the bad news.”

Mom stared at me a long while, her expression unreadable. Odi hopped from one foot to the other like a kid waiting for his whack at the birthday piñata.

Slowly, Mom reached out to me and rested her hand on my chest. Her eyes bloomed wide. Her voice rasped. “You didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?” Odi asked.

I closed my eyes. I couldn’t stand to see the mix of horror and disappointment on my mom’s face. “It was stupid. I know.”

“Do you know how much power you handed over to them?”

“Yes.”

“They could be…”

“Yes,” I said again, answering her unvoiced fear. “We don’t have time to snoop around like Rachel wants. We have to go after them now.”

“No, Sebastian. No. We can’t do this without Rachel’s support.”

I opened my eyes. “Do you want to be the one to turn me in? You think Rachel was pissed about Sly trading his soul, what do you think she’s going to do if she hears that I traded mine?”

“Aw, shit, dude,” Odi said, catching up. “You did not.”

“Enough,” I shouted. “I’ll make excuses and offer apologies later. Right now we have to figure out how to tackle this.”

“We have to bring Rachel in, Sebastian. Especially now.” Mom gripped my wrist and squeezed. “I know the consequences for you could be dire. But if the Maidens complete whatever ritual they are doing to help the traitors, it could ruin the world.”

This is how worlds end, Gladys had said.

I did not need this shit.

I chewed on my lip and thought it all through. If we called on Rachel so soon, red flags would go up. But I could still shimmy around the truth. Yes, the Maidens had found a more powerful soul to expedite their ritual. But Rachel didn’t need to know it was mine.

An idea started to come together. It was an ugly idea. Possibly a stupid idea. But if I could bring in the cavalry without implicating myself in a crime that could lead to my execution, it seemed like the best idea we had.

I forced myself to sit up straight. My tired muscles protested with stiff throbs of pain. “I have a plan.”

Odi went suddenly still. “I already don’t like the sound of this. You reek of fear, dude.”

“It’s not fear. It’s stress. There’s a difference.”

“Whatever.”

I swatted the air as if shooing away a fly. “Just shut up and listen.”

Mom sat up as well, then she tucked her legs up under her. “We’re listening,” she said. “Right, Odi?”

Odi hung his head. “Yeah.”

“Step one,” I said when I was sure I had their attention. “We go in alone.”

Chapter Fifty-One

I kept circling the block until a spot at the curb across the street from the Maidens of Shadow’s apartment opened up. I swung in before someone else could steal it, put the car in park, and killed the engine. The heater had warmed the air on the way over, but the moment it turned off the winter night chill seeped in. The sweat under my arms began to cool. I tugged the collar of my coat closed to trap as much body heat as I could.

But I didn’t plan on sitting here long.

“Lights are on,” Mom said. She sat in the passenger seat with her tan coat buttoned as high as it would go. She had put her long gray hair up into a bun.

“So they’re home.”

“But are the mothers there?”

I reached across Mom’s lap to flip open the glove box and took out my .45. I ejected the magazine, checked the load, then slapped it back in place and racked one into the chamber. Thankfully, I could use regular bullets for this job. Silver rounds were so damn expensive.

In fact, I took a quick moment to appreciate that I wasn’t tangling with vampires for once.

Not that the most powerful black witch coven in the Midwest was any better. Probably worse.

Following my lead, Mom reached down and took up her shotgun from the floorboard at her feet. She pumped the slide, and that universally frightening chuck-chuck rang through the car.

“You’re supposed to do that right before you shoot,” Odi said. “More dramatic.”

Mom twisted to look at him over her seatback. “I’ll take a quick kill over a dramatic one. I like my life too much to pretend I’m a badass.”

“Wow, Momma Light, you don’t need to pretend.”

Mom smiled. “Momma Light, huh? I could get used to that.”

This coming from the woman who always warned me how dangerous Odi might become. But Odi had a way of charming you. You couldn’t help but love the dope.

“So, um, this plan,” Odi said. “We just run in and start wrecking the place?”

“We attack,” I said, “as hard as we can. Then we run away like little fraidy cats.”

“And what’s the point of this again?”

“Two things. First, we can force ourselves a peek at what they’re doing. Second, when we fall back, we call Rachel to let her know they’ve already started the ritual.”

“What if they haven’t?”

“As long as the mothers are there, it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to wait around for them to start. By then it will be too late. All Rachel needs to know is that it’s begun. She doesn’t need to know why we found out so quickly.”

Mom shook her head. “It seems like an odd risk to take. Why not call them now?”

“And tell them what? We don’t know what’s going on in there. If we ask for help now, she’s going to want to know what the hurry is. That leads to the whole reason we’re jumping the gun in the first place. And that means telling her they have some of my soul. And then they lock me up and set an execution date.”

“Pfft. After all you’ve done for this city, dude?” Odi flipped the bird. “Fuck ‘em.”

“The Ministry’s funny about their laws, kid. They expect us to follow them.”

We sat a couple minutes more, silent as we collected the pieces of our courage and put them into place like psychic armor. My nerves buzzed. I took a deep breath and sucked in the smell of gun oil. “Ready?”

Neither of them answered. I turned away from the driver side window to check on them.

Mom stared hard at me. “You sure about this?”

“Of course not.”

Odi chuckled. “Is he ever?”

We climbed out of the car together and regrouped across the street. Mom scanned the sidewalk to either side of us. “No wards I can sense out here.”

“They’ve got them in the lobby for sure,” I said.

“There are other people living here. Do we really want to shoot up the place and risk innocents?”

Part of me didn’t care. These witches had pulled one over on me. I wanted my damn soul back. But that was only a small, angry part of me who wasn’t in control at the moment. “Magic first. Guns only at close range and with a sure shot.”

“Magic for me, too?” Odi asked.

I took a deep breath, not believing what I was about to say, but saying it anyway. “Aren’t you hungry?”

His jaw swung open. “Are you…you want me to feed on them?”

“Don’t they deserve it, after what they did to Sly?”

“But I’ve never…” He fluttered a hand. “You know.”

I tucked my gun into my waistband and took Odi by the shoulders. “You’re a vampire,” I said and gave him a gentle shake. “Tonight you need to act like one.”

“But I…” His wide eyes shone in the streetlight. “I don’t want to.”

“Sebastian,” Mom said. “I’m standing outside with a shotgun in my hands. We should do this if we’re gonna do it.”

I let go of Odi and looked him straight in the eye. “If you can’t feed on them, how vicious do you think you can get?”

“I’m not worried about killing the bitches, dude. I just don’t want…” He worked his mouth as if he’d bit into something sour.

“Fine,” I said. “Then don’t bite their throats, just rip them out with your hands.”

“That I can do.”

I nodded, drew my .45. “When we hit the lobby, I don’t know how they’ll react to our presence. Last time, they just sent Angelica down to talk to me. Might go a little differently this time.”

I led the way to the front door.

“Be ready for anything.”

Chapter Fifty-Two

We entered the lobby just as a young guy holding his phone connected to the ear buds he wore came down the stairs. He was messing with his phone, so he didn’t see us at first. He had his music up so loud I could hear it through his ear buds. Something with a speedy snare and crunchy guitar.

The three of us came to a stop. My gun had a chrome finish that shined in the lobby’s light. Mom’s shotgun was a sleek black that shimmered like wet eel skin. Good thing Odi hadn’t vamped out yet. When this guy finally looked up at where he was going, I could tell by his look he nearly wet his pants. A vampire would have put him over the top, and I didn’t want the poor dude to ruin his skinny jeans.

He froze. He shuffled a step back. The music chittered away in his ears. His lips moved, but if he meant to speak, he didn’t form any coherent words, just a low uuuuuuuh that only stopped when he ran out of breath. Then he hiccupped.

“See,” Odi said. “Now would have been a great time to pump that shotgun.”

“Don’t be mean,” Mom replied.

I smiled at the guy and waved. “Just props,” I shouted so he could hear me over his speed metal or whatever it was he was listening to. “We’re drama students.”

The guy’s wide gaze roved to Mom.

“She’s a non-traditional student. Pretty common these days.”

Odi chortled.

I don’t know if the guy bought the story, but he turned around and scurried up the stairs, his hurried footsteps echoing all the way up and out of earshot.

After he vacated, I listened for any other footfalls coming down the stairway. If I reached out my senses, I could feel the hum of magical wards around us, but I couldn’t tell if we’d tripped any. I hated to wait much longer, considering our brandishing unregistered guns and all while standing in a well-lit public space. I didn’t want to rush in, either. Not yet, at least. My hope had been they’d send one or two down and we could pick them off before charging up for the rest.

After a minute with still no sign of any of them, I had to accept that no one was coming.

“Now what?” Mom asked.

“They have to know we’re here, right?”

Mom pursed her lips and thought a second. “Could be they’re distracted.”

“By what?” But the moment the question left my mouth the answer smacked me in the face. “The ritual.”

She nodded.

Odi looked up at the ceiling as if he could see the Maidens up in their apartment. “Does that mean we’re too late?”

I felt a smirk tug my cheek. “It could mean we’re right on time.”

Chapter Fifty-Three

I conjured a gust of wind and blew the Maidens’ door in. Splinters of wood sprayed as the doorframe exploded. The corner of the door punctured a pizza slice-sized hole in the plaster across the hall, then bounced and tumbled sideways before landing on the floor with a hollow chunk and the jangle of loose hinges.

I had my gun in my right hand. I lit my left with blue flame billowing around my fist. The narrow entryway forced us to charge in single file. I took the lead with Odi right behind, Mom covering our backs. I knew the layout of their apartment, so I made an immediate left, heading for their front living room. I came to a halt two steps into the room. A light on the ceiling and a couple floor lamps lit up the space, but no one was in there.

A sick twist in my gut accompanied a cold panic that we had missed them, or that they’d gone elsewhere to complete their ritual. Or maybe they’d already completed it, and whatever horrible thing they’d conjured was now in motion, setting off the Ministry coup.

Then I heard chanting echoing down the hallway behind me. And caught the smell of burning sage, along with some black, greasy stink underneath. A primal instinct recognized it as the smell of cooked flesh. Corpse flesh, judging from the scent’s qualities.

I spun around. Odi and Mom had already turned toward the sound. Mom clutched the shotgun tightly enough to turn her knuckles white. I came up beside Odi and watched as he peeled back his lips. His fangs slid down, stubby little points compared to older vamps. His skin grayed and rippled, and his eyes glowed a deep red.

I could see toward the end of the hall where it broke open to the kitchen. The chanting clearly came from in there, but the witches themselves were out of my line of sight.

No one rushed down the hall to meet us. They just kept on chanting, seemingly oblivious. Their collective consciousness could have been on another plane, for all I knew. But I couldn’t believe they wouldn’t have somehow protected themselves while they were so vulnerable.

I no sooner thought that when I heard a wet growl come from behind the first door on the left that led into one of the bedrooms. A watchdog? What good would it do locked up in the bedroom?

The door creaked open inward. The light inside cast a shadow against the hallway’s hardwood floor. A big shadow.

The growl turned into a gritty chuckle. “Lunch is served.”

Out came a wolf standing on two legs. But not a wolf. A fucking werewolf. He had to duck to come through the doorway. Three-inch claws on his toes scrabbled across the floorboards. Claws twice as long protruded from his fingertips. His fur was a deep black with patches of tan, and it covered him from head to toe. A line of thick tan fur ran over his head like a mohawk between his twitching wolf ears.

Werewolves were technically shifters, but they differed from others by the nature of their form. Unlike most shifters, these beasts didn’t turn into the whole animal, but rather a monstrous hybrid of the two. They were the deadliest kind of shifter you’d never want to meet.

As a group, me, Mom, and Odi shuffled backward, kicking through the debris left from the broken door.

The wolf cocked his head as if wondering why we didn’t want to cuddle with him. I could smell his wet dog breath when he huffed and puffed, ready to blow our asses down. Then he peeled his lips back and chuckled again, the sound like bone through a wood chipper. “I smell two vampires,” the wolf growled, “but see only one.” His sharp eyes turned to me. “You’re not natural. Makes me wonder how you’ll taste.”

Mom’s shotgun boomed and set my ears ringing. Buckshot ripped open the wolf’s belly. Black blood and scraps of fur sprayed the wall.

The wolf staggered back two steps, but kept his feet. He looked down at his ravaged abdomen. The flesh began to stitch itself together with a sizzling sound. Then he looked up at Mom and took a swipe at her.

She had anticipated the strike. She threw up a hand. Shimmering green light wrapped around her. When the wolf’s claws hit the light, green sparks flew, and his hand bounced away. He threw his head back and howled while cradling his arm against his chest. Mom’s shield had sheared off three of his claws’ six inches.

But they quickly began growing back.

I kicked myself for not having any silver bullets. I made a pact that if I survived, I would never load a gun with anything but silver.

While the wolf was stunned, we fell back into the living room. We split apart. Mom going to the right, me to the left, each of us rounding the couch in the center of the room to put us between us and the wolf.

But Odi tripped on his own heels and landed on his ass. He scampered backward on his hands and heels as the werewolf recovered and stomped his way into the living room. His massive form filled the entryway.

The beast looked down at Odi and laughed, sounding as if he’d swallowed a chainsaw.

The smell of sage and burning dead meat billowed into the room as the chanting grew louder. The witches’ voices came clear, but I couldn’t make out any particular words. Not any in English at least.

The wolf charged in and grabbed Odi by the lapels of his flannel shirt. He lifted Odi off his feet and brought the kid’s face right up to his snout. The wolf snorted through his glistening nose. “Lucky you, I don’t eat undead.” The wolf shifted his grip so he had one hand around Odi’s throat, then he raised his free hand, poised to rake his claws across Odi’s face.

I still had my fire going, but I didn’t have a clear shot. All I could do was stand frozen in the moment, my gut twisted and throat closing.

Odi screamed despite the wolf’s grip around his neck—a bat screech through a megaphone. The wolf flinched and his ears flattened back against his head. Then Odi’s entire fucking body ignited in wild orange flames. The fire quickly caught the wolf’s fur around the wrist of the hand he held Odi with. Then the orange blaze ran up the length of the wolf’s arm.

The wolf threw his head back and bayed, releasing Odi in the process.

Odi dropped to his knees and the flames around him snuffed out. Shreds of the flannel on his back and the t-shirt underneath had burned away. Blisters rose and popped on the exposed skin. The rest of him looked unscathed. And I couldn’t believe it. That massive expression of fire magic and he’d only singed himself. Kid was learning, faster than I could have anticipated.

The wolf flailed his arm around, only managing to stoke the fire and make it spread up the side of his face. He stumbled sideways into the wall and crunched in the plaster with his shoulder.

While he struggled, I ran forward, grabbed Odi by the arm, and pulled him back behind the couch with me and Mom. Not the greatest cover, but at least it put some kind of obstacle in the wolf’s way.

Mom pumped her shotgun (chuck-chuck) and squeezed off another shot. This one ripped off the side of his face yet to catch fire.

Amazingly, the wolf staggered but still did not fall. Then he got smart and began beating at the flames with a hand, tamping them down, putting them out.

The smell of his burning fur added a sickening gray note to the stink from the kitchen.

I bared down and swallowed the bile burning its way up the back of my throat. Now was not the time to get sick.

While he had nearly managed to kill the fire burning up along one side of him, I tossed a fire bolt of my own and nailed him square in the chest. Again, his fur caught fire. But he stayed composed this time and beat down the flames before they could spread.

I raised my gun and let loose six rounds. Three of them went wide and punched holes in the plaster. Two of them thumped into his smoking breast, and the third got lucky and hit him in the eye.

His head snapped back. He uttered a slobbery growl as he threw himself backward into the hallway. He took a couple retreating steps, then collapsed. On impact, the floor shook. I heard screams from the apartment below. The police would come soon. But if all that stood between us and the Maidens was this werewolf, I wasn’t about to run. We could end this now, without having to bring Rachel in.

The witches had screwed up, let themselves get cocky, thinking they were untouchable simply because they were the Maidens of Shadow.

Big fucking whoop.

I shucked off my coat, tucked my gun into my waistband at the small of my back, and lit both hands with the blue stuff. With a totally smug smile, I skirted out from behind the couch and stalked toward the wolf.

He lay still, smoking, but breathing. When I got close enough, I could see his burns healing. Both the seared side and the buckshot riddled side of his face bubbled and hissed as they reconstructed themselves. He began to stir.

“Heal from this, asshole.”

I hurled two blue fire bolts, one from each hand, at him. They streaked through the air like comets. And right when they should have hit, they evaporated with a tiny fizz.

Movement further down the hall caught my eye. I snapped my gaze up and saw Annabelle sauntering toward me. She wore an open robe that didn’t cover much of her naked body underneath. Her belly was smeared with something red, something I assumed was blood. She shook her head and tsked.

“Oh, you cute little sorcerer. Time to stop playing with the doggie.”

She held her hands up then thrust them outward as if pushing me from a distance. Which is pretty much what she did.

A shockwave of magical energy struck me like a semi going one-fifty down a straight highway. I flew off my feet, sailed clear across the living room, and smashed through the large bay window into the open air three stories above the street.

Chapter Fifty-Four

My senses swirled like paint dumped into water. The exhaust smell ofthe outside air. The cold wind rippling my clothes as I dropped in an arc toward the pavement below. The tinkling sound of flinging glass around me. My stomach dropping as I fell. The stimulus crowded out any chance of a clear thought.

Except for one.

I was going to hit the street, and the impact would break me to pieces, maybe even kill me, depending on how I landed.

But instincts didn’t require thought. My lifetime as a sorcerer had taught me many ways to protect myself. I drew on my magic and commanded the air. I turned the wind upward and tripled its force. I could have done more, but while I felt like I was falling in slow motion, I really only had seconds before I went splat.

My redirected wind slowed my descent, but couldn’t stop it. I still hit the pavement hard. I landed on my left arm and heard it crunch under my own weight. Pain zapped through my shoulder and straight to my heart. Something screamed in the night, its voice echoing down Ferry Street.

Glass rained down, some shards caught in the last whirl of my wind and glinting in the streetlight as the wind whisked them away.

It wasn’t until I lay on my back, bruised and less broken than I could have been, that I realized that scream came from me. I could feel the rawness it had left in my throat.

“Oh my God,” someone shouted.

I groaned while pain pulsed through me in time to my heartbeat. The light of the city washed out any sign of stars in the sky.

Mom stuck her head out of the window I had blasted through and looked down at me. “Sebastian?”

I tried to tell her to get out of there, but my landing had knocked the breath out of me, and all I did was wheeze.

“Someone call 911.” The frightened voice came from beyond the dark edges of my vision.

Something seemed to yank Mom back into the apartment. I heard her shriek. A loud crash. Then the howl of a wolf.

Footsteps crunched in the glass nearby.

I rolled up onto my knees, still gasping for breath, then raised the fist of my unbroken right arm and set it alight, ready to turn whoever approached into their own funeral pyre.

A dark-skinned teen in a North Face parka shuffled to a halt on the street a half-dozen feet from me. His gaze went to my flaming hand, and he scrambled backward, slipped on the glass, and dropped to a seated position. “Your…your hand.”

I opened my hand, released the magic in the flame, and it went out.

“Sorry,” I pushed out behind a strained breath.

The kid twisted around into a sprinter’s pose and took off without any need for a starter pistol.

More crashing and howling came from the Maidens’ apartment above. I glanced up, feeling useless down here, not knowing what was happening up there. My left arm dangled at my side. The agony of the fractured bone (or bones) seemed to reach clear down to my toes. But adrenaline took the edge off just enough.

I stood, wincing from lacerations across my knees from the glass shards.

Green light flashed three times in quick succession in the Maidens’ apartment. Mom, still fighting.

Spurred by this, I braced my broken arm against my side and ran into the building.

Angelica stood naked in the lobby, sigils freshly carved into her skin from ankles to wrists. The cuts still had red lines of blood in them, but none were oozing, and any blood that had run from them had been wiped clean.

Her eyes were solid black.

She opened her mouth impossibly wide, and a swarm of yellow jackets flew out from the depths of her throat. The wasps buzzed in an angry cloud toward me.

I waved a hand through the air as if wiping a chalkboard clean and painted the air in front of me with flames.

The whole swarm mindlessly tried to buzz their way through the screen of fire and were incinerated for the effort. When the last of their number were charred to nothing, I let the flames dissipate. But the warmth they had brought to my face stayed in my skin.

I smiled. “That’s pretty gross. You ought to watch what you eat.”

Angelica’s lips peeled back. She threw a hand out toward me, fingers clawed, then swung her arm wide.

I felt an invisible force grip me around the torso and hurl me aside. I bounced off the lobby wall and dropped to the floor. My broken arm screamed with pain. I gritted my teeth to fight the pain back as the edges of my vision closed in. This left me vulnerable long enough for Angelica to repeat her trick.

This time I flew in the other direction, crashed into the wall on the lobby’s opposite side, and slammed onto my back. The air gushed out of my lungs. I tried to suck in a breath but only croaked like a dying bull frog. The pain in my broken arm had reached such a height that my nerves didn’t have the capacity to feel it. I was shocked into numbness.

If I didn’t turn this fight around, that numbness would become permanent.

I gathered my power and called on the air. This time, I hardened the air around me right before Angelica magically tossed me across the lobby a third time. But with my air shield, the impact didn’t rattle my body. It did leave a big dent in the plaster, though.

I landed on my sliced up knees, smearing blood on the floor tiles.

The protection the shield provided gave me enough time to straighten out my senses for a counter attack. I released the shield and redirected my magic once more into fire. I could only draw fire to my good hand, so I would only have one shot before Angelica could hit me again with her magic.

I went straight for the blue flame, using my pain, my fear, and my worry for Mom and Odi to cook up one hell of a fireball. I launched it at Angelica and had enough time to watch her eyes go wide before the flame blasted into her and threw her off her feet.

She landed on the stairs. I heard bones break upon her landing, and my blue fire chewed away at her so quickly, Angelica’s chest cavity caved in before my eyes. Her limbs twitched and shook while the fire continued to char away her flesh. A few seconds later, she fell still.

I swiped a hand through the air and killed the flames so that they wouldn’t spread when they’d finished with her.

Then my shock cracked and let the pain back in.

I threw my head back. My scream echoed in the stairwell. As my vision closed in, I felt myself falling, falling, falling…but I landed on something soft, warm, and lined with orange fur with black stripes. I felt the vibrations of a deep purr.

I had landed on a tiger.

Chapter Fifty-Five

This sounded crazy, but the tiger smelled like Fiona.

As I hung draped over her back, slowly losing consciousness, I laughed. My life was so totally absurd. Then I heard the distant, muffled sound of a wolf howling.

I clenched my teeth and willed myself to stay awake. I concentrated my power on suffocating the pain cutting through all sorts of places on my body, but mostly from my broken arm. Driving back that much pain exceeded my normal abilities. Tamping down a broken finger, sprained ankle, a deep cut, even a dislocated joint, I could manage for a while. But only one wound at a time. Numbing several wounds like the ones I had sustained all at once? That was a healer’s domain, and I sure as shit was no healer.

I could feel the excessive amount of energy needed to sustain my magical morphine sluice out of me, and I suspected what remained wasn’t more than a shallow puddle.

When I finally pushed back the pain enough to bear, I slid off of Fiona and backed away from her. My legs wobbled like a pair of crooked stilts. I shambled to the stairs so I could use the railing to hold myself up. The smell coming from Angelica lodged in my throat as if I’d tried to swallow an anaconda, and the anaconda’s head sloshed around in my stomach. I had to pinch my lips closed to keep from puking.

Fiona sauntered over to me, the fur on her back undulating as she approached. She nuzzled against my thigh.

I didn’t have the coordination to shirk away. Her touch felt like poison to me.

She must have sensed as much because she backed off.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

Of course, in tiger form, she couldn’t answer me. She didn’t have to. Someone answered for her.

“We’re backup, you idiot.”

Rachel marched through the front door. A maroon robe flowed around her as the wind whooshed in behind her. A half dozen necklaces and medallions hung around her neck. They clicked and clinked while she moved. Her hands barely poked out from her robe’s wide sleeves, but I could see a ring or two on every finger, including her thumbs.

She jerked to a halt at the sight of Angelica on the stairs. The crater in the witch’s chest still smoldered. Rachel’s wild gaze turned to me. “What the hell is going on here?”

I grimaced as I tested my legs without the railing. I managed to stand, but walking still seemed dicey. “Couldn’t wait,” I said. “They already had the ritual in play.”

“And you didn’t think to call us before charging in? You might have some kind of death wish, Sebastian, but how could you put your mother in danger like this?”

I narrowed my eyes. “How do you know she’s here?”

Rachel’s gaze flitted to Fiona. She didn’t need to say a word.

“You were still having me followed?” I pointed at the tiger. “By her?”

Rachel had that cold, hard expression going. Her stare was as chilly as the wind blowing in from outside. “And with good reason, as it turns out.” She cut a flat hand through the air. “Enough of this. What is the situation?”

“Werewolf upstairs. And one of the mothers either not participating in the ritual, or…”

I glanced at Angelica with all those sigils carved into her skin. She hadn’t been participating either.

Could they have already finished?

Rachel read the question in my eyes. She whirled around and strode outside.

Fiona cocked her tiger head at me.

“Shut up,” I said, and followed Rachel on unsteady legs. “Where are you going?”

I found her in the street along with six others. A couple men were dressed like Rachel, in robes and adorned with all kinds of magical bling. Three others, two women and a man, wore street clothes and looked like anyone who might have wandered over from the gathering lookie-loos, only they exuded a massive hum of magical energy. Sorcerers.

The sixth one, a man almost seven feet tall, wore bib overalls with dirt stains on the knees and a rumpled red cotton shirt underneath. A long wisp of white hair stuck up from his head like one of those troll dolls. He had a craggy face and lips so thin they almost didn’t exist. He carried a gnarled staff with some kind of blue crystal embedded at its top.

I pegged him for a wizard. If so, those thin lips of his could speak some of the most ancient and secret words this planet had ever heard.

As far as backup went, I could not complain.

I looked up at the Maidens’ front window. The curtains flapped in the wind. But I didn’t see any more flashes of green. The only sounds I could make out were the awed mutterings among the gathering crowd and the sigh of traffic over on Cass Avenue.

The silence from above turned my blood cold.

“We need to get up there.”

The tall wizard looked down at me as if he had found me on the bottom of his shoe. “And do what?” His voice was deep and watery.

Rachel grabbed my arm (my good arm, thankfully) and wrenched me around to face her. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“I can tell you my Mom and Odi are up there and it’s too damn quiet.”

“Don’t screw with me, Sebastian. What is really going on here? How are they so far ahead on this?”

I clenched my teeth. At this point, I couldn’t hide it anymore. She needed to know what we were truly up against.

“Short version,” I said. “I traded with the Maidens to get my friend’s soul back.”

Despite her stoic face, her eyes showed her anger. “Traded what?”

“I think you know what.”

Her expression broke into a full on angry display—lips peeled back, eyes fierce, hands in fists. “You idiot!”

“I know.”

“I’ll see you executed for this.”

“Fine,” I said. “But can we go up there and help my mom and Odi first?”

Her angry gaze rose to the Maidens’ shattered front window. Then she looked back at me, pointed a finger in my face. “Whatever happens up there is on you. You have—”

A quick crack rang out as if we stood in the middle of a thundercloud. An instant later, a shockwave of magical energy burst out from the apartment building. It struck me hard enough to stagger me and set my ears ringing.

Startled cries came from the surrounding crowd.

Outside of the nudge and the sound, the magic didn’t seem to have any noticeable effect. Then I watched as Rachel’s eyes rolled into the back of her head, and she collapsed to the ground.

Behind me I heard more bodies thump to the concrete. I turned around. Almost the entire magical crew Rachel had brought with her lay on the pavement. Only the two robed mages remained standing.

“What the fuck?” I whispered.

I dropped to Rachel’s side and gently shook her. Her body moved too easily. She rolled onto her back. Her eyes remained rolled back. I could only see the whites. My gut clenched. I reached for her neck, felt for a pulse.

None.

“My gods, what have they done?”

I shot back to my feet. A fresh dose of adrenaline had pushed some strength back into my legs. I turned to the mages. They both were crouched beside one of the fallen, feeling for pulses, their expressions telling me what I had already guessed.

One of the mages looked up at me with horror in his eyes. “They’re all dead.”

Chapter Fifty-Six

I didn’t have time to think too hard on why the spell hadn’t killed the rest of, or any of the gawkers for that matter. I had a theory, but I tucked it aside for now. I only had one concern. Get to Odi. Get to Mom.

I charged for the building and had to stop when Fiona stepped into the doorway, blocking it.

“Get out of the way. My mom is stuck up there.”

Her tiger’s gaze moved to the fallen behind me. She uttered a low growl.

“Move!”

She backed out of my way, and I bolted for the stairs. I leapt over Angelica’s corpse and took the stairs two at a time. When I reached the Maidens’ floor, I braced my broken arm at my side. I had to shift power away from what I was using to fight my pain. Agony lanced through my arm, but now I could draw blue fire into my hand.

I raced into the apartment, reckless but uncaring. I glanced in both directions and found the werewolf on the floor, his head ripped off except for a hunk of flesh on one side of his neck. I could see the top of his spine protruding, separated from the brain stem. That wolf would never get up again.

I hopped over the wolf and ran into the living room.

Odi knelt on the floor, his face streaked with blood, one of his eyes missing, a small bunch of tendons dangling from the socket onto his cheek.

My mother lay before him, her head cradled in his lap, her body still. Too still.

“No. Nonono.”

I extinguished my fire and hurried over, dropped to my knees opposite Odi. I touched Mom’s face. It felt cold. Blood soaked her blouse, all of it pouring from the shard of wood protruding from her chest.

“Mom. Mom. Please.” I shook her, but she didn’t respond.

“Sebastian,” Odi said, voice thick. “She’s—”

“No!”

I touched her neck like I had touched Rachel’s only moments before. And I felt the same thing.

Nothing.

Creaky laughter came from behind me.

I looked over my shoulder.

Annabelle sat propped against the wall. She had one hand pressed against a hole in her stomach, the edges burnt and blackened. I recognized Mom’s handy work.

My jaw ached from grinding my teeth. I stood slowly, went to Annabelle, loomed over her.

“She got you, bitch.”

“Yeah,” she croaked, smiling. “She’s one hardcore sorcerer. Good thing the kid broke one of the chairs. That piece of wood sure came in handy.”

The edges of my vision turned red. I heard my blood rushing in my ears. I put out a foot and shoved the toe of my boot into the hole in her belly.

She slammed the back of her head against the wall and screamed. Then her eyes flared. A flash of red lit up a pentacle hung around her neck. She held out one hand like a claw and swept it aside.

The next thing I knew, I was flying sideways until I bounced against the wall. I hit the shoulder that I had landed on outside. Pain cut through the magic I’d been using to keep the agony at bay. I dropped to the floor, the breath blasted out of my lungs. I gasped for air, looking up to see Annabelle on her feet.

Odi had moved Mom off his lap and started for Annabelle. She threw her head back and laughed, then jammed her hand out in a fist. That red light gleamed through her necklace again. Odi flew straight back out the shattered window. I heard a collective gasp from the onlookers outside, then the hard crunch of a body hitting pavement.

I growled like an animal and got to my feet. My left arm hung limp at my side. The pain crackled like glass embedded in my muscle. I felt it. But at the same time, I didn’t.

Annabelle peeled her lips back in a grim smile. Blood stained her teeth and turned her lips a deep red. She was bleeding from the inside. I didn’t care if she was a Maiden of Shadow or not. She was hurt. This evened the odds. I would take that bitch out if it was the last thing I ever did.

She seemed to read the thoughts in my eyes. She shook her head. “You really think you can take on—”

I flung a ball of blue flame at her.

Her eyes went wide. She managed to raise her hand, palm out toward the incoming blast. A flicker of red light touched her necklace. But not enough, not fast enough. The fire hit her and spun her around in a clumsy pirouette. She fell to the floor, one side of her in flames. She lay on her back, and despite the flesh on her arm blackening and peeling away, she arched her back and cackled again.

I glanced at Mom. A part of me thought maybe, just maybe I’d been wrong. That she would sit up, maybe give that bitch Annabelle another blast of her own magic. But Mom lay as still as ever. And that shard of wood in her chest stuck out like an insult directed straight at me.

I growled through my clenched teeth and turned back to Annabelle.

Her laugh had ripped apart and started to sound more like a scream. My fire had spread. Some of her black hair had caught fire. Her sleeve was totally gone now, and I could see bone in the charred hollows along her arm. Despite all of this, she rolled over and got to her knees.

“No,” I said and stalked toward her. I used my power to kill my own flames. Smoke wafted off her blistering skin. The smell turned my stomach. I grabbed her by her burnt arm and hauled her to her feet.

She cried out in pain. When she tried to pull away, I tightened my grip, sinking my fingers into her softened, puckering flesh. She cried out again and went limp.

But I held her up long enough to throw her up against the wall and pinned her there with my forearm against her chest.

As her screams faded to a whimper, I realized something obvious that I’d been too angered to notice at first. None of Annabelle’s coven buddies had come to save her.

“Where are the rest of you?”

Annabelle blinked drunkenly. The corner of her mouth quirked. “Long gone. Off to enjoy the spoils of their victory.”

“What did you do?”

“What we were hired to do.” Blood gurgled from her mouth, making her voice stuffy and liquid. “We murdered every top ranking member of your precious Ministry. It was a spell to behold. You should have seen how brightly your soul burned right before we unleashed the curse.”

My stomach felt like it had dropped to the floor. I backed away, shaking my head. “You couldn’t have. That…all of them? That’s impossible.”

Annabelle’s little smirk curled up to a full, bloody smile. “Not if you have the proper ingredients. Just a little bit of something from each target. Our new friends supplied all we needed. The rest was up to us. And it turned out so much easier, thanks to you.”

A little bit of something from each target. Just like that little scrap of clothing Horton had held during the ritual I had interrupted, only on a horrifyingly larger scale.

My emotions tore loose from what little control remained. The wind through the shattered window suddenly blew harder, swirling into the room, fluttering a Pink Floyd poster on the wall, then ripping it loose, gaining speed, making the furniture wobble. The couch tipped over. The broken chair Annabelle had killed Mom with, a flimsy old wooden thing, flew across the room and broke apart into even smaller pieces.
What wasn’t burnt away of Annabelle’s short black hair rippled in the breeze. And it blew that smug smile off her face.

She held up a hand to keep the wind out of her eyes.

My body grew incredibly warm, beyond any natural fever. I felt the heat continue to gather around me. Then blue flame enveloped me from head to toe.

I stepped forward and grabbed Annabelle around the throat. She screamed as my fiery touch burned through her.

Then I smashed my body against hers, pinning her to the wall while the flame surrounded us both. Only she didn’t have control over its heat like I did. The blue flame burned so hot, her fleshed melted away like wax. I could feel it sloughing over my arms, oozing into my shirt and pants. I embraced her until there was nothing left but a charred skeleton.

It took a great deal of effort to let go of my fire. It took no effort at all to throw her skeleton down and stomp it to blackened bits, kicking up dust that smelled of coal.

A hand touched my back.

I stopped crushing what was left of Annabelle and spun around.

Fiona stood there in human form, naked. Tears streaked her face. She reached out to touch me.

I pulled back. “Get away from me.”

She didn’t push the issue. She nodded and backed off.

I went back to Mom and knelt at her side. I pulled her head into my lap. All the pain and weariness attacking my body faded away. I stroked her cheek and tried to say something, but my voice cracked into a sob.

Hurried footsteps rushed into the room.

Odi came to a halt and looked around at the scene. He blanched at the sight of the crumbled black bits that used to be Annabelle. “Is that…?”

“Yes,” Fiona whispered. “And good riddance.”

I returned my focus to Mom. My throat closed. Tears blurred my vision. I hadn’t had her back long enough. I had just gotten her back. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be!

But no matter how long I looked down at her, reality never changed. She was gone. This time for good.

Chapter Fifty-Seven

What remained of the Ministry did not have the organization necessary to cover up paranormal events like usual. I carried my Mom away from the ruins of our battle with the Maidens of Shadow, leaving behind a mess law enforcement and even the people who had seen it go down first hand would never be able to explain.

I didn’t care.

Stuff like that wasn’t my problem.

After burying Mom in a small cemetery at the edge of the city that catered to those in our world, I spent one day locked up in my house, spending most of that time staring at the bottle that held Sly’s soul. I’d had his body released to the same cemetery that had taken care of Mom. They had ways of covering for paranormal contingencies. Like erasing all records of Sly’s death. Or, per my instructions, magically preserving his body instead of burying it.

Turned out Elaine knew a way to imbue a soul to a host body, and since this host body was the one who rightfully owned the soul, Gladys the white witch agreed to help.

They refused to let me in on the ritual. Too much negative energy, they claimed. And they weren’t wrong.

I waited at home, expecting them to call me with the results. I expected the conversation not to go well. I expected the ritual not to work. But I’d fucked things up too much in my effort to bring Sly back not to at least try.

I waited seven hours without a phone call.

Then I heard a knock at my door.

I took my time answering. The only reason they hadn’t called was because they wanted to let me down easy in person.

When I opened the door, I broke into a breath-stealing series of sobs.

Sly stood on my doorstep. His clothes were all wrong. He had on a pair of gray sweatpants and matching sweatshirt under a puffy parka with a fur-lined hood. The lines in his face looked deeper than I remembered. Fatigue clouded his eyes. But what could I expect from someone newly arisen from death?

“Hey, brother.”

I grabbed him by the lapels of his parka and pulled him into a hug. Cold wind blew in through the open door. I didn’t care. I cried like a baby, my face stuffed against his shoulder. To his credit, Sly kept his arms around me until I was ready to let go.

I brewed some coffee for us and we sat on the couch in the living room. I could tell he had questions, a lot of them, but he showed more patience than I deserved and waited until I had pulled myself together.

Then I told him everything, starting with him getting sick while we were fixing up his shop and all the way through to the showdown with the Maidens.

He kept quiet and let me tell it without a single interruption.

When I was done, he sat quietly, coffee mug cupped in his hands. He gazed out the front window. It had started snowing that morning, and a good three inches blanketed the ground by now.

“I’m not sure what to say.” His face was pinched. “That’s a lot to take in.”

“I know.”

“I’m gonna…gonna need some time.” He set his mug on the coffee table and stood. He grabbed his parka and threw it on.

I set my own mug aside and stood. “Where are you going?”

He seemed to think it over a minute. “I’m going to visit Judith’s grave,” he said. “Then I’m going to go home and get high. I’ll probably have a good cry. I’ll binge watch some stupid sitcom on Netflix. After that? I don’t know.”

“Sly, I…”

He waved a dismissive hand. “Just need some time. Probably best you keep your distance for a while.”

“Sly, don’t. I’m all alone here.”

“You’ve got Odi. The Unturned and his vampire side-kick can go tear shit up. Just leave me out of it.”

“Are you angry with me?”

He shook his head and didn’t answer. He zipped up his parka and headed for the door.

“I never meant for any of this to happen,” I said. The words left a greasy taste in my mouth.

He stood at the door, his back to me. “I’m sure, brother. But it did. You ended up trading your mom’s life for mine.”

“No,” I said. “That’s not—”

“What you meant to do. I know. But it’s how it ended up.”

He opened the door. A gust of bitter wind blew in a dusting of snow. He slipped out and shut the door behind him.

I was left with silence, except for the howl of the wind as it buffeted the house.

Chapter Fifty-Eight

I stood at my mother’s grave site. The earth was still turned, a lump of soil over one of the greatest women to ever grace this world. And here I was, the most unworthy son.

I knelt beside her gravestone and touched its cool surface. I had tried my best with the engraving above her name. I was no poet.

“Here lies a loving mother, a devoted wife, and a bright Light in a dark world.”

Tears welled in my eyes as my fingers slid along the smooth stone. My throat was swollen with a sob I didn’t want to let loose. I had shed so many tears over the past week it hurt to cry, burned my eyes and ached in my chest.

“I will make this right,” I whispered. “I will find them.”

The words sounded so hollow. So what if I found the remaining Maidens of Shadow? What would I accomplish? Would killing them bring Mom back?

No.

But it would slake the rage that burned in me hotter than any fire I’d ever conjured. It would bring justice where justice seldom reached. I would ignite a pyre for the witches. The flames would provide a new light for the one this dark world had lost.

I sensed a presence behind me. It was after dark, so I had a feeling I knew who had joined me.

I stood and turned.

Odi had his hands jammed in the pockets of his jeans. His wounds had fully healed. His eye had even grown back.

He didn’t have a coat on. Just his flannel, which fluttered in the chilly January wind. Vampires didn’t get cold.

I had on my wool pea coat, but I had left it unbuttoned. The wind didn’t bother me either. I had so much anger inside of me, I could have melted the snow on the ground.

“Hey,” he said.

I swallowed the knot in my throat. “Hey. Did you run all the way here?”

He shrugged. “I run pretty fast. A perk of being a vampire.” His gaze searched me for a second. “I heard you, you know. What you said to her.”

I looked back at Mom’s grave. “Yeah, so?”

“So, I want to help you. I want to find them, too.”

I studied him, wondering what he thought he was saying. Did he understand what I meant to do? Or did he think I only meant to retrieve my soul? Because at that point I couldn’t have given a damn about my soul.

“What happens now,” I said, “could get… No. Will get ugly. Vicious.”

He nodded. “Fine.”

“You don’t have to do this. I can take care of it on my own.”

“No, you can’t. And even if you could, I don’t care. Your mom was good to me. She didn’t…didn’t hold my condition against me. Not when it counted.”

I took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. My breath steamed in the cold air. “I’m going to kill them, Odi. Maybe fast. Maybe slow. But either way, I plan on being brutal.”

He raised his chin. “Good.”

“Okay.” I turned back to the grave and kneeled. I pressed my hand against her gravestone again. “We’ll find them. We’ll do what’s right.”

Then I rose to my feet again, turned to Odi, and tilted my head toward my car parked on the blacktopped road that wound its way through the cemetery. “We start looking tonight,” I said. “And we don’t stop until they are all gone.”

~~~~

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Keep an eye out for Consumed: Unturned Book Five, coming soon!

Books by Rob Cornell

The Lockman Chronicles

Darker Things (The Lockman Chronicles #1)

Dark Legion (The Lockman Chronicles #2)

Darkest Hour (The Lockman Chronicles #3)

Darkness Returns (The Lockman Chronicles #4)

Darkening Dawn (The Lockman Chronicles #5)

Unturned

Branded (Unturned #1)

Crossed (Unturned #2)

Deceived (Unturned #3)

Enraged (Unturned #4)

Visit Rob Cornell’s website at robcornellbooks.com

About the Author

Rob Cornell is the author of The Lockman Chronicles, a five-book urban fantasy series featuring ex-government agent and monster hunter, Craig Lockman. He is also the author of Branded, the first book in a new series about Detroit sorcerer, Sebastian Light. Raised on a steady diet of Star Wars, He-Man, G.I. Joe, and Transformers, Rob has always spent much of his time wandering the halls of his imagination, conjuring stories. Nowadays, he writes them down like a responsible adult. He lives in rural Southeast Michigan with his family.

Published by Paradox Publications

Copyright © 2017 by Rob Cornell

All rights reserved.

Cover Design by Beth Flumignan

Cover Art Copyright © feedough

Cover Vectors Designed by Freepik (Ring on Fire, Golden Light Effect, Blurred Lights)

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