Magic to the Bone

The Twenty-Sided Sorceress: Book Seven

Annie Bellet

Copyright 2016, Annie Bellet

All rights reserved. Published by Doomed Muse Press.

This novel is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and incidents described in this publication are used fictitiously, or are entirely fictional.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except by an authorized retailer, or with written permission of the publisher. Inquiries may be addressed via email to doomedmuse.press@gmail.com.

Cover designed by Ravven (www.ravven.com)

Formatting by Polgarus Studio (www.polgarusstudio.com)

Electronic edition, 2016

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Dedicated to Jeff: 1969-2001

You made me the nerd I am today. You were the best brother anyone could ask for.

I miss you like hell.

The Twenty-Sided Sorceress series in reading order:

Justice Calling

Murder of Crows

Pack of Lies

Hunting Season

Heartache

Thicker Than Blood

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Alek

Chapter Three

Harper

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Harper

Chapter Twelve

Harper

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Also by Annie Bellet

About the Author

I decided somewhere around day two that if I ever wrote an autobiography, I’d title that fucker Leveling Up Is Hard to Do.

Throughout my whole life my answer to pretty much any problem had been to either run away, or throw a lot of fireballs at it and then run away. I was done running. So that left fireballs. When all you have is a hammer, so the saying goes, every problem looks like a nail.

Not having magic was proving to be the Gojira of nails, and I was all out of hammer.

My father Ash’s solution so far had been rest, food, and enough meditation and “focus practice” to turn me into a monk. Finally, after a week of curbing my urge to start smashing furniture with my bare, utterly nonmagical hands in frustration, he conceded that his current method was not getting results.

“You are blocked,” he said. “Not burned out, as I thought.”

“Okay, great. How do we unblock me?” I asked. “And if you say meditating more, I swear I’m gonna start punching logs,” I added through gritted teeth.

We were seated on the knotted-rag carpet in front of the huge stone hearth, the fire popping and crackling behind an iron screen. Ash smiled at me, the expression putting deeper lines into his mid-forties-looking face, the red flecks in his black eyes dancing. He tipped his head back, contemplated the log cabin’s ceiling, and tugged on one of his braids in a gesture I was growing far too familiar with.

He didn’t speak for a long moment, but I’d learned to let him be. There was no rushing Ash into working through his thoughts out loud and using his words.

“No,” he said eventually. His gaze dropped back to mine. “Is there something you’ve forgotten?”

I knew he was musing from his tone, not really asking the question, but my frustration wouldn’t let me shut my mouth.

“That’s like the TSA asking if anyone has put something into your luggage without your knowledge,” I muttered. There was likely a ton I had forgotten in my life, but the important bits all seemed to be there. Samir trying to kill me. Samir destroying my life over and over. The people I’d lost because of him. Their names and faces were a litany in my mind, a list that had started with my first real family and ended with Harper. A list I would never let grow. Not a chance.

There was only one name left to add to the list of the dead, and it started with “Sa” and ended with “that fucking ass-wipe bastard who will die horribly-mir.” I rubbed my thumb over the divot in my twenty-sided die talisman. I’d picked up that habit since the mark was a reminder of my failure.

“Indeed,” Ash said softly, dragging me out of my murderous thoughts. I wondered what he had read in my face, for his eyes were sad though his expression was still contemplative. He unfolded his long legs and rose. “I have to go get something.”

“I’m guessing not something in the cabin?”

“No, and while I’m gone you must not leave the cabin. Under any circumstances.” Ash fixed me with a deadly serious gaze, tension in his shoulders. Like he knew that saying those words was putting candy in front of a starving toddler.

“Great,” I said. “Why don’t you also say ‘I’ll be right back’ too?” I guessed he didn’t watch a lot of horror movies while he was locked up in the secret government prison for magical critters.

“I mean it, Jade,” he said.

“I know. I won’t. I’ve read enough fairytales, thanks.” I smiled. I wasn’t lying, either, about the reading fairytales or the no intention of going outside. I figured when a dragon tells you not to do something, the wise response is to under no circumstances do that thing.

“Wait for me,” he said. Then he opened the door, without even putting on shoes or a coat, and disappeared into the darkness as the door slammed shut behind him, the latch turning itself.

I flopped back onto the carpet. He’d been gone ten seconds and the silence was already starting to wreck me. I made myself get up and go to the table. There was a box there with a deck of cards in it. They were old, no numbers on them. Ash had said he picked them up in Prussia and while he might have been fucking with me, something about how he said it and the look of the cards made me believe him. I wondered if he knew there was no Prussia anymore, but he’d only been incarcerated for about forty years, so I hadn’t said anything.

I didn’t know how long my father would be gone. Left alone with only my thoughts, sorrow and anger threatened to wage war in my heart, and despair prodded at my mental defenses like a bored velociraptor. My choices were to brood, meditate some more, or play solitaire.

I played solitaire. I didn’t even cheat. Much.

Ash didn’t come back for a very long time. I slept twice, but without windows I had no idea of the passage of time. I drank water from the sink when I was thirsty and made short work of the bread and cheese he’d left in a basket on the table. The weirdest part about being in the Veil pocket, whatever that was, was that while I got tired and thirsty and hungry, I didn’t ever have to pee. I wondered if I was going to explode when I finally got back to Earth.

These were the deep thoughts I was pondering by the second “day” of Ash’s disappearance. It was so damn tempting to go outside, but I resisted. Barely. I started to contemplate what I’d do if he didn’t come back, but the truth was, I had no idea.

Living in a limbo land without magic, locked into a log cabin and wholly dependent on someone else for everything was stupidly terrifying. Maybe one of the most nerve-racking things I’ve endured in my life. Which is saying a lot, considering I had been a homeless nonwhite teenage girl living on the streets of New York in the eighties. But even then, I’d had magic as a fallback, knowing I could and would fry the shit out of anyone who fucked with me.

Here I had nothing but time to dwell and brood.

Ash returned before I did anything truly stupid, like open the door. I didn’t know if I’d ever been happier to see anyone in my life.

He came through the door with a grocery bag in one hand and a soccer-ball-sized leather pouch in the other. He set both bags down on the table.

“Took you long enough,” I said. There was too much relief in my voice for the words to be as reproving as I meant them.

“You listened to me,” Ash said. “Good.”

“You said not to leave. I stayed.” I gathered up the cards from the carpet in front of me and put them back into their box as a crazy thought dawned on me. “This wasn’t some kind of stupid test, was it?” Was I supposed to go outside?

“No,” Ash said. “I had to leave the Veil. It wasn’t safe without me here keeping this pocket isolated and stable.”

“Why didn’t you just explain that before you left?” I made a face at him.

He lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “I did.”

I started to argue, then shut my mouth. There wasn’t a point.

“So,” I said instead, eager for something that wasn’t solitaire and brooding, “what’s in the bag?”

The grocery bag had food, shockingly enough. Despite my raging curiosity about the mysteriously plain leather pouch, I managed to sit quietly enough and eat the sandwich Ash had brought for me. He even knew I liked root beer. It was endearing, if a little creepy.

We finished, putting the wrappers back into the bag. I wondered what trash service in the Veil was like, but resisted saying that out loud also. I might’ve not had my magic back, but I was gaining über levels in shutting up and patience. Life skills. Really. I watched silently as Ash opened the leather bag. I didn’t know what I’d hoped for, but a small silver cup, a vial of green liquid, and a bunch of assorted roots wasn’t exactly exciting.

“Wazzat?” I asked. “Looks like spell ingredients, I suppose?”

“I’m a dragon, not a witch,” Ash said with a half-smile. “But you aren’t far off. I’m going to make tea. Then you will drink it.”

“Tea? Your solution is tea?” I crossed my arms and swallowed a nervous chuckle.

“It’s more like poison. If you were human or even shifter, it would kill you.” Ash pulled out a small folding knife, unfolded it, and started shaving slivers off the various roots and into the silver cup.

“You are going to poison me?” There was no holding back my incredulous laugh now. “That’s…” I trailed off. Maybe it was brilliant. If my body had to fight off the poison, maybe it would unblock my magic while it did so. For a moment I was totally on board with this crazy plan, but then reality crashed in.

“Wait,” I said. “That’s not going to work. Remember Lucy? She damn near bit me in half. If that didn’t wake up my magic to help me heal, I don’t think poison will do it.” His snake-shaped Guardian had nearly killed me and I was still magicless.

Ash’s dark brows knitted together and then he chuckled. “No, not poisoning you so that you’ll heal, though I can see why you thought that. This tea pulls the inside to the outside.”

That sounded really disgusting. I pictured my skin turning inside out and my guts prolapsing. He laughed outright at my look of horror.

“Inside, in a metaphysical sense,” he added as he went back to his work. “It should, if it works, show you what has been lost and give a path to get it back.”

I pushed aside thoughts of being turned inside out and focused on what he was saying. Finding my lost magic was good. But… wait a minute.

“Seriously?” I said. “Like, seriously?”

“What?” Ash asked, looking up from his concoction.

“My dragon-mentor secret father is mixing up a poison drug to send his Native American sorceress daughter on a fucking vision quest.” I leaned back in my chair and pressed my lips together.

“Perhaps you’ll meet your spirit animal,” Ash said.

I made a face at him, but something about those specific words bothered me. Spirit animal. For a moment, I almost remembered something, but it flitted away from my active thoughts before I could catch it, leaving a weirdly aching emptiness behind. Perhaps Ash was right. Perhaps I had somehow forgotten or lost something essential to myself, to my magic. I decided to shut up and let him work.

When it was done steeping, the poison tea looked like sunshine in a cup. It also smelled like overripe bananas and sadness. I really, really, really didn’t want to put that in my mouth.

Too bad I didn’t have a choice. It was time to suck it up and be an adult. And sometimes that meant doing things because they had to get done. Like taxes and standing in line at the DMV.

So I adulted the fuck up and lifted the cup of poison. “Sláinte mhaith,” I said with a grimace. Then I drank it down.

Worst. Shot. Ever.

“Do I get a chaser?” I gasped, eyes watering as my throat burned enough that I wondered how flames didn’t accompany the words out of my mouth.

“Best not to drink anything else with it, sorry.” Ash caught my elbow as I stumbled sideways.

The room was tipping, though I knew in some corner of my brain that it was me falling. The rug looked nice, a swirl of sky blue and grass green knotted into the cheerful yellows. It looked nice, but it was sure coming at my face really fast.

My father caught me before I bruised the rug. I lay in his arms in agony. Inside my head weird images formed. It seemed as if a flaming Zerg army was spawning inside me and swarming through my limbs. Just when I was ready to cede the whole planet formerly known as Jade to the Queen of Blades, the swarm leapt into a Nydus worm and my mind cleared.

My belly was still on fire, but it was at “shouldn’t have left the seeds in that jalapeño” levels instead of “I just inhaled a field of ghost pepper” levels. I struggled to sit up, and Ash let me.

“I saw a vision of a computer game,” I said. “I don’t think this is working.”

“Hold on to whatever you saw, no matter how strange,” Ash said. “Come with me.”

He helped me up. My legs were rubber but not on fire, so I managed to stand without leaning too heavily on him. I followed him to the cabin door.

It was broad daylight outside. The white sun hung at zenith and the sky was perfectly azure. Golden grass waved in the never-ending breeze. More of my head fog cleared in the fresh air and I sucked down a breath full of summer warmth and the scent of ripe hay.

“Ah, well,” Ash said. “I thought I felt a change. Perhaps not.”

“Um,” I said. “What about that?” I pointed to the left of the cabin.

For the last week, the landscape had always been unbroken rolling hills of grass, as far as my eye could see. Now there was a big bare patch with a mounded lump of earth in the middle only steps away from the cabin. I walked toward it. The mound had an opening, like a burial barrow or a giant ant nest. Not quite a Nydus and I was nothing but glad about that.

“What about what?” Ash said. Curiosity gleamed in his eyes.

I described what I saw and he nodded, back in contemplative dragon mentor mode.

“Let me guess,” I said. “I’m supposed to go in there?”

Ash shrugged, but I was already moving. The poison had brought me to this place. The key to unblocking my magic and defeating Samir could be down there. If I wanted to save my friends, if I wanted to ever be with Alek again, to be safe and happy again…

No choice. Not really.

I walked forward and let the earth swallow me.

Two steps in, I fell down the rabbit hole. Well, maybe less a rabbit hole than dropping into freefall in a moist, nearly airless tunnel. I stretched my fingertips out but couldn’t find walls. This was going to be the worst quest ever if I ended up a pancake at the bottom. Worst in many ways, not least of which was that I wouldn’t die.

Anyone who says flying is just like falling but without the sudden stop at the end has never fallen very far or flown much, that’s all I’m saying.

There was no sudden stop. One moment I was falling and trying to distract my fear-soaked brain with remembering what the terminal velocity for a human was. The next, I was on my hands and knees in a rough-hewn tunnel. The ground was rocky with a thick layer of coarse dust over it. Dust and musty air tickled my nose. A soft blue glow emanated from around me like an aura. I looked down and realized I wasn’t on my hands and knees after all.

I had no hands. Just paws. Huge black paws that were glowing pale blue. They were almost like a wolf’s paws, but as I raised one to examine it, sitting back on my haunches for balance, I realized I had retractable claws. Some kind of panther then? I wasn’t sure. Twisting my head revealed a long, furry body that ended in a very long tail that was definitely catlike. If my fur hadn’t been black, I would have guessed snow leopard based on that tail. Weird.

Guess I’d found my spirit animal after all. Un-fucking-believable.

The tunnel stretched out ahead and behind me, so I arbitrarily chose the direction I’d been facing as the one to go in. I was on a quest, after all. No lollygagging.

The tunnel split into three, all descending. It reminded me of a mine shaft, though there were no tracks, just thick dust and rock beneath my paws. The dream version of a mine shaft, perhaps. I froze as I heard footsteps coming from the middle corridor. There was nowhere to hide, so I moved into the opening of one of the side tunnels. Not that anyone coming could fail to miss the huge glowing panther-cat thing.

Two teenage boys in dirty jeans and flannel shirts picked their way to the intersection, both holding flashlights. The yellow light glinted off their black ponytails and their wide, nervous eyes. I recognized them as they stopped at the crossroads and turned. John and Connor. My cousins.

I hadn’t thought about them since I was dealing with Not Afraid. I had no idea why they would be here now. They had nothing to do with my magic or the loss of it. What the frak had been in that cup?

They scented the air and John pointed to the way I’d come. “That way,” he said.

“We’re supposed to collapse the tunnel,” Connor said. He rubbed his free hand on his jeans and looked back the way they had come.

“She’s got no light,” John said. “She’s got no nose for this. No way she gets out. This place is rotten, but it could take us forever to collapse it. We’ll just close up the front, okay? I mean, what if we brought it down on ourselves?” He peered up at the wooden supports.

“Sky Heart said—” Connor started to say.

“He ain’t here. He won’t know. We did what he said. She won’t make it out of here. Come on, before we lose the light.”

Sky Heart. At the sound of my grandfather’s name, I growled. I couldn’t help it. Neither one of them seemed to be able to see me, but at the growl they both whipped their heads around, eyes searching the corridors. They still couldn’t see me, I realized, as their eyes passed over me, unfocused and terrified.

“Okay, let’s go.” Connor led the way, and they disappeared into the damp darkness.

Sky Heart had killed a lot of people, most of them children. I wondered whom he had told them to abandon here, and why. His preferred method had been to throw them off a cliff if they didn’t become crow shifters. Was this the past? My cousins had looked early teens, which meant I was still living at Three Feathers among the People. I’d be just a little kid at this point.

That thought poked at the weird, empty space I’d sensed earlier while Ash was brewing his magic potion. Again I couldn’t grasp it. But this was what I was shown, so it must be important.

I went down the path my cousins had taken. I wanted to see whom they had left, though I was beginning to suspect I knew. But I couldn’t remember. I reached for other memories of my childhood. My mother singing. The smell of the kitchen on baking day. How the quilt on my bed had a bright purple satin patch that I loved to stroke over and over, until I’d worn a hole in it. I’d cried until Mom had patched it with another piece, and Jasper, the man I’d thought was my father, had told her she spoiled me.

So, at least there was that. I remembered childhood, including the worse parts that came later. Including never fitting in, never being quite like everyone else.

The shaft grew tighter and closer, the air so stale that my lungs labored to draw enough in to support my huge body. It branched again, going down and down, and I followed pure instinct now. This was very like a bad dream, and I trusted that every road would lead wherever it wanted me to go. There was no way out but through.

Eventually I heard a child sobbing. I followed that noise through the all-encompassing dark and found a little girl. Blood ran from a cut on her head, matting her dark, filthy hair. She sat curled against the wall, her arms wrapped around skinny knees. Her brown eyes were puffy from tears. One shoe was untied. She couldn’t have been older than four or five.

But I knew that she was four. I knew because some of that empty space filled in.

I was in the mine near Three Feathers. That little girl was me, Jade Crow, age four. I remembered now my cousins leading me down, teasing me that I was afraid of the dark, that I was too little to come on such a grand adventure. I remembered those hours stuck in the darkness, all alone and sure I was going to stay here forever.

I couldn’t remember how I got out. That piece of memory eluded me, as impossible to grab as a handful of cloud.

Baby Jade stopped sobbing and stared at me in shock. She could see me; that was very clear. She hiccupped and curled tighter as though her knobby knees would shield her from the giant cat beast. I crouched down, putting my belly on the cold floor, and tried to look as unthreatening as possible. Carefully I slunk toward her on my belly, stretching out my head. A soft whine escaped my throat.

She held still, watching me with eyes that seemed to glow as they reflected the blue light radiating from my body. Just before I reached her, the ground between us split open, a seam of pure silver running like a river, dividing us. My paw touched it and the universe opened to me.

It was only a moment, a terrifying, awesome, overwhelming glimmer of vast understanding. The world turned from solid and known to an undulating tapestry. Threads were woven into pictures too vast to grasp from my all-too-limited perspective. I saw what my time-reversing spell had done; the damage it had caused radiated out from a single knot. Threads broken, threads rewoven, threads knotted and tangled. I couldn’t even begin to comprehend how to undo what I had done.

But there was one silver and purple thread that hung broken and caught my eye as it sparked like live wires. It was broken away from the knot of my time spell, and some deep gut feeling told me this wasn’t my doing. The ends were frayed and stretched toward each other like fingers. Two lost halves searching for their mate in the darkness.

I held my head still mere inches from her legs and stared up into baby Jade’s tearstained face. I held my breath. I couldn’t touch her. She had to choose.

Baby Jade slowly unwound her arms from her legs. Then she stretched out her hand, closing the gap as she dug her fingers into my fur.

“Hello, nice wolf,” she said.

The ends of the threads found each other. Strands joined to strands and we were made whole.

I stepped out into the bright sunlight and faced Ash with a shit-eating grin. I’d never felt better. I must not have been gone very long, despite what it had felt like inside the mine shafts, because the sun was still at zenith.

“You found what you needed,” he said, his tone certain.

“I found my spirit animal after all,” I said.

Wolf was back with me, inside me now, a part of me as she’d never been before. I felt her in my mind, waiting patiently inside a silver circle, guarding Tess and all the hearts I’d consumed, keeping my ghosts at bay, protecting me as she’d been doing all along. Magic coursed through my veins, infusing every cell of my being. I felt whole, remade, stronger, better, faster, all that jazz.

I felt so powerful it scared me a little.

“You have a Guardian,” Ash said. “Interesting.”

The plains were back to where they had been, the barrow gone as soon as I left its entrance. We retreated to the cabin’s shade and I tried to explain what I’d seen. I stumbled over the tapestry images.

“Somehow I forgot Wolf,” I said. “I mean, Samir destroyed her when he killed Max, and she was just gone, but I could still remember she was missing. Then, I’m not sure when, I couldn’t anymore. It was like she was gone gone.”

“He broke her connection to you; he didn’t destroy her. The Undying can’t die, or they’d be very poorly named,” Ash said with a forced chuckle. “You pushed the connection farther away when you turned back the universe.”

“So why did finding her give me my power back?”

“It made you whole, though I think seeing the Patterns had as much to do with that as finding your Guardian again.”

Patterns? I filed that away for about five minutes from now. First questions come first.

“What is she? Why do I have her?” I poked at Wolf in my mind, but she was as unforthcoming as ever, merely lifting her big head and staring me down with unblinking, star-filled eyes. Still, I wanted to weep with joy that she was back.

Ash shrugged. “Not even a dragon can explain the gods, or their Undying, I’m afraid. You’d have to ask them.”

“I wish this all made more sense,” I muttered.

“It’s magic,” Ash said. “If it made sense we’d call it science.”

“Touché.”

“The good news is that now I can show you how to use your power more effectively.” Ash smiled at me. “After we have tea.”

“Can I turn into a dragon now?” I already knew how to use magic, damnit. I wanted to get to the fun stuff. I still didn’t feel particularly dragon-y. I just felt like me, except all leveled up in strength.

“You have to walk before you fly,” Ash said. He shook his head. “First I must teach you more control. Then we’ll see how you handle the dragon.”

“I just want to kill Samir.”

“Jade.” Ash’s tone turned serious. “Trust me a little longer.”

I made a big show of sighing loudly and rolling my eyes at him like the super-mature kid I am, but I nodded. He’d helped me get my magic back, just as he’d promised. I was impatient and worried about my friends, but hopefully in their world I’d been gone only a couple of days. The druid had said they were hiding out and safe enough.

Trust. Right. That thing I was working on. Well, practice makes perfect.

“After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water,” I said.

Days turned into weeks. Over three of them, now. It snowed and snowed some more, making it easier to avoid Samir’s mercenaries in some ways, but rougher on Alek’s ragtag band. He was used to the cold, used to living in woods and snow and surviving on what he could hunt. The rest of them besides the druid? Not so much.

He scouted Samir’s home base as dawn tinged the grey sky the color of raw meat. Alek was at home here in the silence and the patterned shadows of black and white. His coat blended into the landscape, his stripes breaking up the visual field. His big paws trod lightly and easily through the snow. Alek could almost imagine he were home, wandering the Siberian forests of his youth, about to be ambushed by his siblings at any moment.

Unfortunately, the only ambush he could expect here would be by shifters, wolves, or bears, mercenaries hired by Samir to guard him while he prepared to raise Balor from the dead. Once Samir did that, it was unlikely anyone could stop him. All the evil sorcerer had to do was eat Balor’s heart, and all the dead Celtic sorcerer’s power would go to Samir, effectively rendering him a god.

Samir needed a unicorn to accomplish the spell, according to the druid and what Harper had told them from her time in captivity. Yosemite was keeping the unicorns as safe as he could, and Alek, with the help of Harper, Ezee, and Levi, was trying to keep close tabs on Samir’s comings and goings.

It wasn’t easy, despite his comfort in these woods. Samir didn’t have wards up, that they could tell, so there was some advantage there. Yosemite theorized that Samir needed to conserve power for the spell. Just having ingredients wasn’t enough; one had to have the raw ability and strength to make it happen.

The mercenaries were the real problem. Most were shifters. The ones that weren’t were still well armed and stayed in vehicles or around the house. Nobody moved out alone. Alek had narrowly avoided hunting parties multiple times. Sentry wolves prowled the perimeter as well and while Alek had been tempted a time or two with killing them off, his less frustrated and more rational side had prevailed. If they started thinning Samir’s forces, he’d bring more and might start actively hunting them in force, instead of the small parties he’d been sending.

So many risks. So little action. It was taking its toll. Alek swallowed a growl and pushed forward through the snow.

He got near where a patrolling wolf would likely pass and settled himself low to watch, blending into the background as though he were a statue carved of snow and shadow. In the dark coniferous branches above him, birds flitted and made their morning greetings. Within minutes, the tenor of the woodsong changed and he felt the approach of the wolf. Alek was upwind, the nearly imperceptible breeze blowing the wolf’s scent into his face.

Again he withheld his instinct and desire to spring, and allowed the wolf to pass. It was one of the younger, smaller ones, a rangy beast with a red-brown coat. Alek waited until the wolf was long gone, then moved inside the perimeter to take up a spot on the very edge of the woods where he could see the farmhouse and clearing.

There was little movement at this time of morning. He counted the cars and saw there were six, plus the burned-out one that was Harper’s handiwork. The air held the scents of human and shifter; traces of coffee and cigar smoke lingered as well. No strange activity. Samir appeared to be in a holding pattern, though he was definitely up to things.

Junebug was keeping watch on Wylde as best she could, volunteering because an owl could get around and go unnoticed more than any of them. Alek had argued they all had to assume that Samir had given descriptions of each of them to his men, so it wasn’t safe to venture into town in human form, and their animal halves would stand out more than a little.

Wylde was quiet, from Junebug’s reports. Too quiet, in many ways. After the murder of the witches—Samir had gotten to five of the thirteen, as far as they could tell—and the burning of Jade’s building, everyone was either taking a winter vacation or hiding inside in fear, human and shifter alike. Dark SUVs came and went from some houses at odd hours; strange men openly carrying guns and dressed in paramilitary attire abounded. Junebug hadn’t seen Sheriff Lee in two weeks, either, and the last report from Freyda had been over a week ago, as she had to keep her head down also, her pack decimated in Samir’s first attack. Human law enforcement was suspiciously thin on the ground as well, given the recent crimes. Somehow Samir had Wylde isolated, even from a human response. He had thrown out the rule book on keeping the supernatural quiet from humanity, it appeared, and that boded very ill indeed for everyone.

It was small consolation to Alek that Samir clearly didn’t have what he wanted yet.

No Jade.

Alek could admit to himself that was what he truly looked for on these scouting missions. If Samir had her, Alek liked to believe he would have be able to tell. The way Samir had acted before meant he would flaunt her, try to use her as bait. That was Alek’s guess and his grim hope. Samir wanted to destroy Jade, to kill everything she loved before taking her down. For all the evil sorcerer had told Harper that he had bigger plans, Jade was still enough of a priority that Samir had risked his plan to try to draw them in. Samir had kept Harper alive, and it had cost him two of the three ingredients he needed to raise Balor.

Jade was Samir’s weakness. Alek was sure of it.

She was Alek’s weakness as well. And his strength. Without her, they had no hope of truly defeating Samir. Without her, he had no hope period. He protected her friends, he tried to present a strong front and lead them, but inside he roared inside his empty, lonely heart.

Alek settled his head on his paws and controlled his breathing so the mist of warm air wouldn’t give him away. He would wait for Jade. They must wait.

He loved her. She loved him. She would return. These were facts of the universe, and he used them like claws to tear down the tide of frustration and despair threatening to swamp his weary heart.

Sunlight broke through the cloud cover and glinted off the silver paddock fencing. Movement there drew Alek’s eyes. There was something inside the paddock. He lifted his head and drew a deep breath, sorting the scents again.

He couldn’t scent it, but he saw the white shape move again. Unicorn. Light gleamed off its coat as it came to the side of the paddock nearest his hiding place. His eyesight was sharp, but it was still far away. He didn’t recognize it as one of the unicorns supposedly safe with Yosemite, but that didn’t mean much at this distance. A big white horse with a horn was pretty unmistakable.

There was no denying what he saw.

Alek slunk back into the woods, picking up speed as he moved away from Samir’s base. He had to find the druid and the others. Samir had a unicorn.

I’m sorry, kitten, he whispered to Jade in his mind. Our time is nearly up. Come home.

Worried about the unicorn, Alek wasn’t as careful as he usually was. He sprinted away from the clearing and nearly ran right into the patrolling wolf.

The wolf sprang back before Alek could react, and growled, hackles raised. It shouldn’t have been here, as this was not its normal path, but Alek had no time to worry about that. The time for hiding was over if Samir had what he needed for that spell. This wolf had to die.

Alek leapt for the wolf, intending to snap its neck before it could raise a cry and bring any others. He was lucky the wolf was as surprised to see him as he was to run into it, for it was only snarling and not running. Stupid wolf. Dead wolf.

A red shape streaked out from the dark underbrush and threw itself between Alek and his prey. A fox, one that turned into a girl even as he twisted to avoid crushing Harper.

“Alek, don’t,” she said, panting. Her green eyes were wide, her skin sweaty, and her hair matted to her head.

Alek growled. What was she thinking? She was supposed to be farther behind him, watching his retreat to make sure he wasn’t followed. Not nearly on top of him like this. And definitely not stopping him from preventing this wolf from bringing all its buddies to the fray.

Harper turned to the wolf, giving her back to Alek. He growled and moved sideways, ready to strike.

“Shift,” Harper said to the wolf.

To Alek’s shock, the wolf obeyed. A thin young man wearing cargo pants and a black tee-shirt crouched warily in the snow, his brown eyes darting from Harper to Alek and back again.

“This is the guy who saved me,” Harper said quietly, her gaze still fixed on the wolf shifter. “I owe him.”

“You should both get far away from here,” the wolf shifter whispered, glancing behind him and then again at Alek. Fear thinned his voice and turned his scent sour. He was terrified, but not of Alek or Harper.

Alek crouched, unable to decide if he should shift. He had questions for this man, but they were still in patrol range of the clearing, and if this wolf had doubled back, who knew what the others might be up to now that they had a unicorn to guard? They were close enough that shifter hearing might pick up sounds of a fight or even of normal voices.

“Go,” Harper hissed. “Go, and we’re even. You understand?”

“Got it,” the wolf said.

Alek made his decision. He shifted, shivering in the blast of cold as his fur left him and was replaced with a wholly inadequate wool sweater.

“Wait,” he said, as softly as he could. “The unicorn?”

The wolf licked his lips and shook his head. “You don’t want to get involved. Get out. This ain’t a fight anybody can win, believe me.”

“Unicorn?” Harper said, more loudly than she should have.

Alek winced and brought a finger to his lips. She mouthed “sorry” at him.

“Go,” the wolf said, as though he had any say in the matter and it were their life he was sparing.

Which, Alek thought, was fair enough at this point. The wolf shifter could have raised the alarm, but was choosing not to. The less charitable voice inside whispered that it was because the moment the wolf called for help, he must know that Alek would kill him.

Alek nodded and reached for his tiger again. Warm fur enveloped him. He knew what he needed to know now. The wolf’s response had confirmed what Alek thought he’d seen. Samir had a unicorn. The wolf’s fear made it very likely the ritual was at hand. He jerked his head at Harper and she shifted, following him away from the clearing. They took a winding path back to their own camp, careful to leave as little trail as they could.

Alek looked up at the steel and smoke sky, and sent another silent call for his mate. Time was up. Soon, all too soon, it would be too late for Jade to save them.

I thought that I’d been training to take on Samir before, working with Alek and my friends to get stronger, gain more control of my magic. I’d thought wrong. Compared to Ash’s training, what I’d been doing before was more like a toddler waving a piece of grass around pretending it was a sword.

Ash made me use my magic. Dawn till dark and often into the night. But it wasn’t just the use of magic; it was the thinking he made me do behind it. We spent as much time talking as we did with him trying to think up new ways to throw magic at me.

“You have patterns you are comfortable with,” Ash said. “Things you fall back on, things that come more easily to you.”

“Is that bad?” I asked. I was too predictable, apparently. I leaned back in the grass and looked up at the moonless sky. There was a seductive peace to this place that I fought in my mind. I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t tarry. I had to learn what I must and get back to my friends.

“It is, and it isn’t. Think of it like riding a horse. The more you do it, the less you have to think about the parts, about how to stay on the horse, how to communicate where to go.”

“Muscle memory,” I said. “That’s good, right?”

Ash chuckled. “It is, and it isn’t.”

“Gee, thanks.” I sat up and glared at him.

“It makes some things your go-to plan, and lets you do them quickly. It also means you are predictable. I know that no matter what I do, you will likely use a shield to ward off an attack and then try an offensive that is built on raw power, lightning or fire.”

“That’s not fair,” I said. “I’ve been trying different things. I nearly knocked you out of the sky with that cyclone I made.”

“Except you were too focused on it, so it made you slow. Practice it a hundred more times, and perhaps you can do it when the pressure is on.”

That spell had taken a lot out of me, especially multitasking to keep my defenses up and manipulate time around me in small ways to speed my body and reactions. I was glad that I could still do that, that I still had Tess’s memories to guide me. No more full on time travel, though. She’d been right about that. I felt way more powerful than I ever had, but I wasn’t stupid enough to try that shit again.

Though I would do it again in a heartbeat if it meant stopping Samir from killing everyone. Again.

Hopefully it would never come to that.

“I don’t have time. Besides, when do I get to turn into a dragon? Then I can just eat him.” I grinned.

“You can’t,” Ash said.

“I can’t be a dragon?” I hoped I was misunderstanding him. He’d said I was a dragon. He’d said I could transform when I was ready. I felt pretty fucking ready.

“You can choose a dragon form here in the Veil,” Ash said, holding up a hand to stop my further protest. “But out there, in the mortal world, you will not be able to transform.”

“You were planning to tell me that when?” Okay. No dragon form. Damn. There went my brilliant plan of eating Samir, heart and all.

Ash sighed. His dark eyes glinted in the light shining out from the open cabin door. He was quiet for a long moment, something I was growing used to. My father liked to think things through. I’d learned not to interrupt. There was no point in being impatient with Ash. It was about as useful as wishing the tide would come in more quickly.

“I tell you things as you need them,” Ash said. “Focus. You have what you are good at. You are not unique in this.”

I started to ask what that meant and then closed my mouth. I had things I fell back on, things I did because they came more naturally. Shielding, throwing more elemental magic around, pulling ideas from the D&D spellbook and morphing them into my own thing. I was not a creature of finesse or subtlety, not like…

“D’oh!” I said. “Right. Samir has his habits, too.” I knew this, of course; I just hadn’t really thought it through. It was how I’d almost beaten him the first time. Using his weaknesses, his predictable desire to personally destroy me to get close to him.

I could have killed him then, even as my heart beat in his hand. It just would have cost everyone I loved. Too heavy a coin.

Saving them had still cost me too much. Steve. Max. Harper.

“Fight Samir,” Ash said gently. “Not yourself. What is he good at? What will he fall back to when the pressure is on him?”

I closed my eyes and made myself face my memories and all the sneaky emotional demons lurking there.

“He likes to make things,” I said. “He’s very good at objects, putting power into things. He uses people and his vast wealth, too. He doesn’t like to fight head-on unless he’s utterly sure of victory.”

“And when he is left no choice? When he fights face to face?”

I bit my lip as I wrapped my arms around my knees. In my mind, Wolf roused and growled, pacing the silver circle around my deepest memories.

“Exploding stones, weapons. That dagger, the Alpha and Omega, was originally his, though he only had one half, thank the Universe. He’ll always fight with back-up and weapons. He doesn’t believe in the concept of a fair fight.” I opened my eyes and looked at my father.

“We’ll practice your defense against objects, then.” Ash nodded to himself. “You’ll have to try to anticipate what he’ll do, where to get to him, perhaps remove his allies.”

I couldn’t decide if the tightness in my throat was from wanting to laugh or to cry.

“Fat chance,” I muttered. “He’s always one step ahead, at the least. Why can’t you come with me? He wouldn’t be able to predict you.”

I’d asked that question already, and I knew that Ash’s response wouldn’t change. But damn it would be so much easier with his help.

“Kiddo, you know I can’t. I’ve interfered enough. I shouldn’t even been in the mortal world. Every moment I spend there with my full power weakens the Seal.”

“I know, I know. Magic apocalypse bad. It still sucks. I don’t know if I can play his game, if I can beat him when he’s the one always calling all the shots.”

“Don’t like the game? Change the rules,” Ash said with a loose-shouldered shrug. “Be predictable, until you aren’t.”

“Know what would be unpredictable?” I said with a sly smile. “Turning into a fucking dragon.”

Ash laughed. “Irrepressible kid. Ain’t going to happen, not with the Seals in place, which is a damn good thing. But perhaps you are ready to pick a form here, and perhaps we can figure out a way for you to incorporate some of its strengths into your abilities outside the Veil.”

“Squee!” I said, jumping to my feet.

“Squee? Who says that?” Ash shook his head.

“Me, so focus. How do I turn into a dragon?” I was so ready I couldn’t even come up with a simile in my head for how ready I was.

“You have to pick a form first. Solidify it in your mind. Once you turn, you’ll only ever have the shape you pick, and your human one, of course.”

“Can it be any dragon?” Images flashed through my head, from Disney-style Maleficent to Ash’s own more Asian take, and everything between. I knew dragons. Like any proper nerd, I was obsessed with dragons.

“Doesn’t even have to be a dragon, if you really want something else. The more complex, the more difficult the transformation, however.”

“Wait, I could be like a wolf or a tiger or something?” I tipped my head sideways and made a face at him. “Where’s the point in that?”

“Dragon is a concept. A word given to our kind by mortals. It has no more meaning than why we call apples apples or think the sky is blue,” Ash said.

I held up a hand to forestall another long conversation on the nature of magic and what Ash called the Pattern. Apparently that was what I’d glimpsed in my poison-vision, or at least, from how Ash explained it, what my mind had interpreted the data to mean, because what I’d seen was the very foundation of the entire universe and the magic coursing through it.

That magic-theory stuff made my head hurt. I couldn’t do anything with it, in the end, except the magic-using part. But thinking about it as a tapestry wasn’t useful. I preferred to stick with my feeling of magic, the sensation that it was more like water or electricity pulsing through my veins. I was no weaver. I couldn’t even knit.

“So you chose your dragon form?” I asked.

“No,” Ash said. “I was born that way. I took the form of my mother, as you took the form of your mother.”

Oh. That actually made some kind of sense. It was weird to think of him as having a mother. Weird to think I had a grandmother who was a dragon. I wanted to ask about her, but pushed the questions aside. Knowing about extended family wouldn’t help me defeat Samir.

“So this,” I said, waving my hand up and down to indicate his current human shape, “That’s the form you chose, the way I have to choose my alternate shape?”

“Yes. I look much like the first human I met who didn’t run from me in fear. He told great jokes and was very wise. Human form seemed useful in many ways, and I liked humans more than most of our kind. So when I chose a form, I modeled myself after him.”

“Good thing you didn’t get fascinated by a sheep, eh?”

“Funny,” he said. “It’s late. You should rest.”

“Take the bed for once,” I said. “I’m gonna grab a blanket and come back out here.” I had to think, and I wanted the dark and the quiet.

Ash, being Ash, seemed to understand this without needing clarification. I grabbed a blanket and went a little distance from the cabin. It wasn’t cold in this place, but the warmth of the blanket was still comforting and it kept the grass from poking me in the butt.

So I wouldn’t be able to transform outside the Veil. That was pretty disappointing. I’d gone my whole life so far without being anything but me, so I guessed I could get over it.

Still. I wanted to pick a form. To come fully into whatever I really was. I lay back in the grass and thought about my favorite dragon-y things.

Prismatic dragons were pretty boss. I mean, I could be epic level at this point, right? When adding a template, why go half-assed about it? But I didn’t really want to be a European type dragon. They seemed clunky, plus I was kind of not European. By that logic though, I wasn’t Asian either. But I had precedent for that, since my father had a more snakelike form. With that cool wolf-type head.

I definitely wanted something like that. Or… I laughed.

I could be a dragon-cat. Wolves, tigers… I loved those creatures. But with scales. I tried to imagine the look on Alek’s face if I turned into a winged, scaly tiger in front of him. Longing twisted in my heart. I missed his face, the scruff of his beard, the winter sky reflected in his pale eyes. He’d never see my dragon self.

Except he kind of had. I remembered what he said after I’d stopped the bomb and saved the alphas. He’d seen a dragon in that fire. We hadn’t talked about it after, about what kind of dragon it had been or what it had looked like. Did his perception matter? I wasn’t sure. It probably didn’t. Ash would likely tell me that Alek had seen what his brain could interpret, just as I had in the poison-vision.

My dragon body would be mine. Mine to decide. So why not a scaled, winged cat thing? I loved big cats; I loved purple and silver; I loved flying. Retractable claws seemed useful. I didn’t need to gesture or anything to cast spells so paws wouldn’t be an issue, and I would totally make sure I could breathe fire or something. That was important.

Not a tiger. Tigers were overdone. Also not exactly American. I wanted a dragon form that was part of me, part of where I was born, who I was. Lynx, maybe? But with a long tail. A tail seemed useful.

I realized that I could pretty much have just visualized Wolf, put a more catlike head on her, and stuck wings on, and been at nearly the place I was already. Maybe my subconscious was telling me something. Except definitely more scales. Definitely black, silver, and purple.

I was up most of the night visualizing my dragon self, putting details into the image in my mind. I hoped I hadn’t complicated it so much that I’d end up looking like a Dr. Seuss character instead of a badass.

Ash brought me bread slathered in honey and a cup of tea. We watched the sun rise together in silence.

“Ready?” he asked finally.

“I’m scared I’ll fuck this up and look crazy,” I admitted.

Ash laughed and stood up. He unbuttoned his shirt, revealing abs that rivaled Alek’s. That fact that he was my father made it super awkward.

“You think I visualized this human body exactly? I didn’t care about muscles or even symmetry or being attractive to the humans. You build the picture as the base, your magic will take care of the rest. That’s why it is best to keep things simple. Let the power flow. Let the pattern fit where it wants to go.”

“Got it,” I said. “You can put your shirt back on.”

He did, hiding a smile as he looked down at the buttons.

“Take the image of what you want. Fix it in your mind until there is nothing else, until it feels as real as the grass under your feet, as the air coming in and going out of your lungs. Then let the magic flow and don’t fight it.”

Sounded simple enough. Which scared me. Simple and magic meant disaster sometimes, in my experience.

I walked some distance away from Ash and closed my eyes. I pushed away everything, every worry, every aching muscle. In my head I pictured my lynx dragon. Head like a cat’s, but with scales. Ears tufted with soft black fur. Whiskers, because they seemed useful. Big black wings with deep purple scales, and a long, scaly tail that ended in its own tuft of fur. A compact, strong body with purple-and-silver-tipped scales shimmering along its length. Perfect scales, armor against anything that might try to hurt me. I built my dragon to be fast, strong, and to keep me safe.

Air in, air out. Just me and the dragon. I pulled on my magic, letting it spill through me unchecked. I was caught up in the onslaught, filled until I felt I would burst. I waited to burst, to transform, but the magic swelled and then ebbed.

Nothing. I opened my eyes and turned to look back at Ash. I had failed.

Except my gaze met a scaled back and a large pair of folded black wings. And Ash seemed much smaller than he had before. I twisted fully around and reared back, looking down at myself. Paws! Retractable claws and purple paws. I unfurled my wings with barely a thought and beat them. Magic swelled through me again and I soared into the air. I didn’t need the wings to fly, but after a couple of scary dives, I found a way to use them to help stabilize and change direction with greater agility. My tail helped with that also, just like I’d envisioned. I turned huge circles above Ash, my keen eyes making out his shit-eating grin as he watched me soar and spin.

I raised my head to the heavens and opened my jaw, roaring purple flames out into the sky. Screw that weak human body, I thought. I wanted to stay this way and never turn back. Nothing could touch me, not up here, not with my armor. I would be safe forever.

Safe, but alone.

Reality reasserted itself and pulled me back toward the field and Ash. I couldn’t soar forever. Not if I wanted to save my friends. I saw my choices laid out before me like the Pattern that Ash spoke of. I could stay in the Veil, stay a dragon-cat, be safe from the Samirs of the world.

Or I could go back to the imperfect Jade, the me I was born with instead of the me I’d chosen.

I dropped heavily to the ground and let instinct put me back into my body. Tears stung my eyes as I became human again. It was hard to let go, but I had shit to do and an evil ex to kill. I couldn’t fight him as a dragon, so I had to resume my training as a human.

Some things are simple after all.

“I thought I’d have to go up and drag you back down in a few days,” Ash said. “You could spend more time in your other form if you want.” He was still half smiling, but his eyes looked sad.

“I can’t,” I said. “It’s glorious, but I can’t fight Samir like that. Besides, pretty sure that form would suck at videogames,” I added, trying to smile.

“True,” Ash said. “You chose a beautiful dragon-cat thing, though. It’s very you. I’m so proud.” He reached out like he was going to ruffle my hair and I stepped out of range.

“Ack, no. Don’t get all weepy parental on me now. We gotta get back to you trying to kill me the way Samir will.”

“As you wish,” Ash said.

I followed him back to the cabin, wondering if the prison he’d been in had The Princess Bride on Netflix, too.

Days and nights blended into each other. Ash made exploding stones explode at me. He even made a rope that cut. On one of his shopping trips he brought back a duffel bag full of guns. I resisted asking where those had come from. Probably safer not to know.

He shot at me. He attacked me with magic. He turned invisible and made me practice sensing spells and my otherworldly awareness techniques, or whatever the hell I was supposed to be developing. He drilled me in the use of the magic dagger, as well, which was kind of awesome. The Alpha and Omega would turn into a sword at my command, light and responsive in my hand. We never fought directly with it, though. Too much risk, since it was supposed to be able to kill anything.

Not a sorcerer, however. Ash was fairly sure of that. “I’d have a hell of a time regenerating from whatever it did, I imagine,” he said when I asked. “It would most likely destroy everything but my heart’s essence.”

“So if I stab Samir with it, I’ll still have to eat his heart?” I looked at the dagger resting in its sheath. I had to admit that as much as I wanted to kill him deader than dead, I wasn’t looking forward to giving his memories a permanent home in my brain. At least now that I was whole, I didn’t have ghosts like mind-Tess lurking anymore. I didn’t even want to think about what a horror show it would be to have Samir living on as a strong presence in my thoughts. Ick.

I trained. I slept. I ate. I fought. Sometimes, just for a little while, I turned into my dragon-cat form and flew, letting it all fall away for a precious, stolen moment.

“It’s time,” I said one night. I had been putting off saying so, but I could tell that Ash knew. I’d never be totally prepared. “I have to get back to my friends. Time is passing. Even days could be the difference between them surviving or not.”

“Sit down, Jade,” Ash said. He motioned to the rug in front of the fire.

His tone was deadly serious, and it scared me enough that I sat without making any smart-ass comment about not being a dog. He sat as well, crossing his legs and resting his hands on his knees. His mostly unlined face looked harsher, older somehow.

“There’s one final thing I have to explain to you,” he said, meeting my gaze with troubled eyes.

“You are freaking me out,” I said. “Just say it.” My stomach churned like it was full of acid and bees.

“You cannot, under any circumstances, kill Samir.”

“The fuck you say?” I fisted my hands on my knees and glared at Ash. “I’m killing him. What the fuck has all this been for if not that?”

“You must defeat him, I agree. But you cannot swallow his heart. Destroy him with the Alpha and Omega, trap his heart in a container—anything but eat it.” Ash leaned forward, emphasizing his words with a curt gesture.

“Why?” I asked. Killing Samir was the entire focus of my existence at the moment. This made zero sense.

“Two thousand years ago, a Seal cracked, leaking magic back into the world in greater and greater quantity. I believe that crack was caused by Samir. His pattern is tied to the Seal. If he is destroyed, it could break the Seal, which could be enough to nullify the Oath entirely. Magic would overflow the world, the time of humans would be over, and the gods and demons and all the creatures of magic could return.”

That sounded pretty bad, sure. Yet… there was a lot of uncertainty in what Ash was saying, despite his deadly serious tone.

“You are saying ‘could’ a lot,” I pointed out. “So you aren’t sure?”

Ash took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “I am not sure. I am sure enough, however, that I will not let you go without your promise, Jade. Destroy him, but do not kill him.”

“What, you want some magical oath from me?” I got to my feet and paced away from him. I wanted to punch something. Samir had to die. I didn’t want to end the world, though. It seemed too stupid and yet so fucking fitting of the RNG of my life that something I wanted would have consequences like this. Never lucky.

“No,” Ash said. “Your word will suffice.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said. I folded my arms across my chest and shook my head as he started to speak again. “That’s the best you are going to get.”

Ash stared up into my face and nodded slowly. “Don’t think too long,” he said.

I knew what he’d seen in my expression. I trusted him. I trusted the vision I’d seen on my hunt for my magic. I knew all too well the long-reaching and terrible consequences of fucking with super-powerful magic. I’d made the mistake once, though for a damn good cause. If a magic apocalypse could be avoided, I would do what I must.

I walked out into the night and drew a deep breath of fresh air. I would leave in the morning, though it was probably silly to delay. I wanted one more night to marshal my thoughts and get ready to return to the real world.

Not killing Samir? Would destruction of his corporeal form and keeping his heart locked up in a box like the one he’d made for Clyde, his apprentice, to stuff me into be enough?

Not for Harper. I could hear her angry words in my memory, her white-hot determination on getting revenge for Max. And I almost felt relief along with the pang of deep loss. She was dead, and I’d never forgive myself for leaving her behind like that.

But if she were alive, she’d never forgive me if I didn’t kill Samir.

“Sorry, furball,” I whispered into the darkness. “I hope you will understand, if you are watching from some afterlife. I’m so sorry.” I scrubbed the tears from my cheeks and went back inside to make my father a promise I wasn’t sure I could keep.

Harper crouched under the dubious cover of a stunted fir tree and watched the muddy, frozen dirt road that led away from Samir’s base of operations. She’d argued for a position closer to the house, but with Junebug’s return, she’d lost that position to the far stealthier owl. Watch their movements, wait for an opportunity to perhaps sneak in. That was the brilliant plan—or really, compromise—they’d arrived at.

At least they were doing something. Yosemite had argued with Harper that they had to free the unicorn, though the druid had confirmed it wasn’t one of the unicorns in the Frank’s usual group. Ezee, Levi, and even Harper’s mom thought it was a terrible plan to go back to the farmhouse. Harper could grudgingly admit they had a point. Nothing good had happened to her in that place, and it was crawling with mercenaries they didn’t have the firepower or numbers to fight head-on.

Not to mention that bastard Samir. He alone was enough to make anyone think twice about attacking.

“He doesn’t have the dragon blood, right? So the unicorn is captured, but safe,” Ezee had argued.

“We don’t know what he has or doesn’t have. He found another unicorn. What? You scared of a little fight?” Harper wanted to fight something, someone. Do something. Weeks of lurking in the woods, watching and waiting, wasn’t getting her any closer to avenging Max. They were a mere annoyance, and barely that, in Samir’s side. Not even a thorn. More like a tiny splinter.

“There might be alternate things he could use to raise Balor,” Yosemite had interjected, stepping physically between Ezee and Harper. “I am not good with the language yet, but my book has some passages that might say more.”

“Which we could read if Jade were here,” Levi had said softly.

“Our knight in magic armor isn’t here, and I don’t see her riding up anytime soon,” Harper shot back. “There’s just us.”

“She is right,” Alek had said, surprising Harper most of all. “We cannot wait while Samir becomes a god. We will watch them more closely, but we have to be more careful. Junebug said they are more active in town, no? So we wait. If Samir leaves, perhaps with cover of darkness we can get the unicorn out.”

There had been more arguing, but it was clear nobody had their heart in refusing. As scared and tired as they all were, Harper realized, they were all feeling the same frustration of inaction. Wylde was under siege in a quiet, deadly way, and nobody was stepping up to save their home. It was up to them.

Engine noise rumbled in the distance. Harper pressed herself as flat as her fox body would go. One of Samir’s SUVs appeared after an agonizing minute, followed by two more, and both of the trucks with the huge cages in their beds. Harper tried to remember how many vehicles the mercenaries had in total. Five? Six? This was most of his forces moving out. No horse trailer, so it was likely the unicorn was still in the paddock.

She stayed hidden until the vehicles had rounded the bend and turned onto the road heading into Wylde. Then she counted to one hundred, lifting her nose and tasting the air. No smell of wolf or man, only mud, pine needles, and the lingering traces of exhaust fumes. All was quiet.

“He’s definitely gone,” Junebug said. “He was in the second vehicle. He’s not hard to pick out; all the others seem to kowtow to him. Even though I can’t see faces from that distance, I can read the body language.”

“See? He’s gone. Only one car remains. Most of them are gone. This is go time.” Harper paced through the snow, kicking up chunks with her boots. By Junebug’s count, there couldn’t be more than a half dozen of the mercenaries left to guard the unicorn. They’d never have a better chance.

“I don’t like it,” Ezee said.

“Me either,” Levi echoed. “Harper, think about it,” he added as she glared at the twins. “He has his prize, something that you took from him, and he just goes off to do whatever in town, leaving barely anyone there to guard? This has trap written all over it in letters fifty feet high.”

“Perhaps,” Junebug said. She laid a hand on Levi’s arm. “But he did something first to the paddock with the unicorn. It’s not just fencing now, but a dome. The silver wire almost looks like chain link. Even if we got the halter off, the unicorn wouldn’t be able to jump out.”

“And why make it so much harder and more protected, with magic, no less, if it is a trap?” Harper added. She folded her arms across her chest. Levi had a point, but some risks had to be taken. Thwarting Samir’s plans was the next best thing to killing his ass. She could do one, even if she lacked the power to do the other. Harper refused to be helpless.

“We do not know how soon they will return,” Ezee said.

“Which is why we go now,” Harper said. “We have to do something. Alek?”

She looked at the big tiger shifter. The former Justice had his head bowed, his pale blue eyes fixed on some unseen point in the middle distance.

“I will go,” Alek said. “Harper is right. If there is a chance to stop him, we must take it.”

“There’s more trouble with this plan,” Yosemite said. “If you go now, I cannot come with you.”

Harper glared at the druid. “Why?”

“The confluence,” Ezee said, comprehension dawning on his face.

“Oh, shit,” Harper said. Yosemite had mentioned that he might have a chance of reaching into Faerie and contacting Brie and Ciaran, but he had to wait for a special day and time. Magic was too stupidly complicated. Harper wished spell-caster types could button-mash in real life. It would solve so many problems.

“At dusk. It may be my only chance for a while. If I could let them know what is going on, perhaps they can come home more quickly.”

“There will be, what, one or two on patrol? Maybe four in the house?” Levi asked. His expression gave Harper hope. He was thinking, planning. He’d come with them.

Of course he would. Alek had spoken. They still followed what he said, even she herself did for the most part. He was the alpha, in the end, Justice or not. Harper figured now would be a poor time to start resenting that. She was exhausted, that was all. Tired and full of hate for the one man she had zero chance of killing. Feels bad, man.

No time for riding the pity train to Sad Town. Harper gave herself a mental shake as Alek started outlining the plan.

Junebug would watch the road in and be prepared to try to signal if the cars were returning. Harper and Alek would go in from the west, killing the sentry there and using the fact that there were few windows on the rear of the farmhouse as cover for getting across the open ground. Ezee and Levi would hunt down the sentry on the other side and be prepared to run in as a distraction if Harper and Alek needed it. Rose was going to stay behind with Yosemite in his grove and keep guard. Harper was happy about that last, though she knew her mother wasn’t.

“This isn’t the time for heroics,” her mom told her, pulling Harper into a hug.

“I have to go. I know how to get that wire off,” Harper said, squeezing her mother back until she felt like her arms would pop.

Not that there was much trick to it. Grab hold, ignore the horrible burn, pull. Harper wasn’t about to share that detail yet. She wanted to be in the thick of things. Alek was huge and tough and shit, but he couldn’t be allowed to have all the fun. Or take on all the danger. Harper prayed that Samir hadn’t put any serious whammy on the fencing.

Torch that bridge when you are over it, she told herself.

Harper pulled away from her mom and smiled in what she hoped was a brave way. Then she reached for her fox and shifted, following the giant white tiger into the woods.

Round two, motherfucker, she thought. She was going to be a damn thorn, not a splinter, if she had any say at all.

The sentry wolf was walking his normal route. It wasn’t Gamer Guy, as Harper had nicknamed her reluctant benefactor. She felt thin relief at that as she looked at his corpse. This wolf hadn’t stood a chance against Alek, not when Alek was hunting and ready. The tiger had snapped the wolf’s neck to where it hung at a sickening angle even in death. There was barely any blood, just a tinge of its scent on the air. That was good. It wouldn’t give them away.

Harper was used to activity in the clearing around the farmhouse. Dusk was falling, the tired winter sun sinking behind black spears of pine and fir. Her breath puffed out from her nose as the air chilled to below freezing. The snow had started to form a thin crust, and crunched beneath her paws. The sound was faint, something unlikely to be heard from the house, but it still made Harper jumpy. Nothing moved in the clearing except the dimly seen white form inside the wire dome.

Junebug had reported correctly. What had been a paddock made of silvered barbed wire was now a cage of the stuff, the silver wiring glowing faintly where it curved upward and formed a latticelike dome. There were still gaps in the fencing, especially between the bottom wire and the snow-covered ground. Harper could get in the same way she had before, just going underneath it. Tiger-Alek wouldn’t fit.

To get the halter off, she would have to shift. After that, she had no plan.

Didn’t matter. No plan survives contact with the enemy, she told herself. Harper would do what a gamer did best; improvise and try not to die. Life, on Hardcore mode, she thought with a twinge of bleak humor. No do-overs. No save files.

Harper hung back at the edge of the woods, waiting with Alek while he took in the silent scene. Just one SUV left. A few lights in the windows, though the bathroom window she had escaped out of, twice, was dark. She met Alek’s gaze and he gave a soft huffling grunt.

They moved in a line, small red fox and giant white tiger, crossing the open ground between the woods and the house with low, quick strides. Alek held himself back for her, Harper knew, letting her stay on his tail, using his bulk to clear the snow. They were going to leave a hell of a trail, but it didn’t matter. There was no hiding they had been here now, not with a dead wolf behind them.

She wondered if Ezee and Levi were all right, but immediately pushed that worry from her mind. They had their job to do and they would do it. The brothers would look out for each other, and Levi’s wolverine was more than a match for a wolf, even a shifter wolf.

Harper reached the edge of the house behind Alek. Still no noise, no movement. She smelled nothing out of the ordinary, but not many ordinary smells either. Snow, mud, Alek’s tiger scent. Fainter smell of wolf and human. And horse. Which was odd, because unicorns didn’t smell like horses exactly. Without waiting for Alek, Harper slid around the side of the house. No one was on the porch. No sounds of movement from inside.

Alek slunk out into the open ground by the paddock, his huge white form obscenely visible against the muddy, churned-up ground. Harper watched as he circled the house. He seemed like he was just asking to be shot at, but nobody tried.

The house appeared abandoned. Alek snarled, moving back to Harper where she crouched beside the porch.

Okay, she admitted to herself. It’s maybe a trap. But there was still a unicorn. She could see the white body moving inside the paddock. She couldn’t see if it had a horn from here. She had to get closer.

Ignoring Alek’s warning snarl, Harper ran for the paddock. She was almost to the fence, ready to duck beneath it, when she heard a woman yell out, “It’s a trap, stop!”

Harper froze. It was a voice she recognized, a voice that she had started to despair of ever hearing again. Jade had returned.

“So I just have to click my heels together and think of home?” I looked at Ash with as much skepticism as I could muster given that I was a dragon, in a pocket of unreality, talking to another dragon. Still, teleportation seemed kind of dangerous to me.

But… I wanted to be back with Alek and my friends. I wanted to know they were all right. I wasn’t sure I was ready to face Samir again. I wasn’t sure I’d ever feel ready. I guess part of being a big damn hero is that you do things anyway, no matter how scared you feel.

“Visualize a place you know well. It will be the quickest way back,” Ash said.

We were standing in the open field by the cabin. I looked around and sighed. It would be so simple to stay, to put things off another week or two. Time wasn’t passing much outside here, or so Ash said. Would another week mean the difference between winning and losing? I had no way to know.

“Everywhere I knew is gone,” I said. My shop was burned. The Henhouse B&B was burned. I had no idea if Alek had his trailer with him or where it would be. Had he left Wylde? If my friends were smart, they would have gotten the hell out of there. But no, the druid had said they were hiding out in the River of No Return wilderness. “If they are in the woods, how will I find them?” I vocalized my worries.

“You could try going to a person and not a place, but it is less accurate.” Ash folded his arms across his chest, his red-flecked eyes fixed on my face.

“Why can’t you just drop me off in Wylde?” I asked. He’d explained why he couldn’t come with me; that he had to stay in the Veil and become guardian to the cracked Seal again. Him being fully in the real world would be one dragon too many, apparently.

“Holding this pocket has been tiring enough,” Ash said. He shook his head. “The Seal weakens. I cannot leave the Veil again. I’ve played chicken enough with the Oath for one lifetime, I think.”

It was interesting to have my very existence referred to as playing chicken, but I let it go. Things were tense now that I was leaving. He’d accepted my promise not to kill Samir, but I had a suspicion that Ash was perfectly aware how thin that promise was, and that if push came to dying horribly, I’d break it in a heartbeat.

A person. Not a place.

“I can do this,” I muttered. “Good-bye, Ash. Thank you,” I added. He didn’t offer a hug and I didn’t ask. Ash nodded at me and smiled. I decided to pretend his smile was less sad than it looked.

There was only one person I wanted to be with if I got right to the core of it all. I closed my eyes and let all awareness of the field and my father slip away. Instead I pictured Alek. Tall, strong, ice-blue eyes, soft, pale skin, lips curving in a smirk that said he could see through all my bullshit. My tiger, my rock, my mate. I let my magic flow through me and focused all my will on being with Alek, on feeling his arms curling around me again, on the wild, musky scent of him.

Then I clicked my heels, because why not.

“There’s no place like home,” I whispered.

Turned out there was no place like home. There was fucking cold air, shitloads of snow, and my damn friends about to get themselves killed.

I popped out of the Veil and ended up standing on the roof of an SUV in the middle of a big clearing. There was snow everywhere and my thin flannel shirt felt like nothing against the below-freezing air. I gasped for breath and squinted to look around in the dimming light. I barely had a moment to register that Harper was here and alive. The damn fox was about to get herself killed. Samir’s magic coated this place like sugar on Frosted Flakes. It was writhing all around a paddock formed of silvered barbed wire, and radiated out in a spiral from there. I couldn’t tell what the spell would do once triggered, but I couldn’t imagine it was anything good.

There was a two-story farmhouse to my right with a huge white tiger crouched by the porch. Alek. Alive, for the moment. His blue eyes met mine and I held up my hands in a stay-put gesture.

“It’s a trap, stop!” I called out to both of them. How the hell Harper hadn’t triggered it yet I didn’t know, but I could puzzle that out later. Provided later wasn’t too late, of course.

The fox turned and looked at me. Her mouth opened and then shut. It was almost comical except for the dire circumstances. I gave her a thumbs-up. Fox-Harper didn’t move, staying frozen in place. Tiger-Alek shifted to human, but also stayed where he was.

“Jade,” he called out. “What is it?”

I rubbed my thumb over my talisman, using my newfound skills to examine Samir’s spell. His power smelled honey sweet and sickened me. I forced myself to remain calm. Destructive magic. Coming into the area hadn’t triggered it. The spiral looked like a whirlpool of power, pulling in toward the center. It encompassed the house, the paddock, even the area I was in.

“Jade?”

I turned my head as Ezee shouted from across the field, his voice another balm on my worried soul. He and Levi stood at the edge of the clearing, just outside the spell’s range.

“Stay back,” I yelled to them. “Stay at the tree line.” The last thing I needed was for two more of us to be caught in this.

“What about the unicorn?” Levi yelled. “We’re here for it.”

I looked back at the dome of glowing wires over the paddock. For a moment I saw the white horse, but something about it seemed off. Samir’s magic colored it as well. I summoned more of my power into myself and really stared. The unicorn seemed to melt away, leaving a grotesque construction of silver wires, a white horse hide, and chunks of carved wood behind. The spiral of magic was anchored at the center, buried inside the construct.

“It’s an illusion,” I said. I had a feeling that touching that thing would have caused the spell to trigger, but I doubted that was the only way to set this off. It was too elaborate, thrown too wide across the clearing.

Alek cursed in Russian. Fox-Harper started to move away from the paddock back toward Alek, being careful to stay in her old tracks, and the spell shivered in response, the honey-thick magic rising. The magic clung to her fur, outlining her in a glow apparently only I could see.

“Harper, no,” I called out. “Don’t move.”

Her movement had confirmed my second assumption. The spell was a trap with multiple triggers. It was open right now, waiting for one of those trapped within to try to leave it.

I looked down at my own legs and feet. The car wasn’t covered in magic. The spell was focused along the ground. I followed the spiral and began to pick out small points of concentrated power. As Ash had said, Samir was going with his comfort zone. He’d anchored the spell along the arms of the spiral with ensorcelled stones. I hadn’t touched the ground, so I wasn’t caught in the spell yet. The spell was designed for people who had to be in contact with the earth.

I didn’t think I could dispel it without triggering it. That left getting Alek and Harper out quickly. Samir was predictable in that he would probably have rigged the effect to be some kind of explosion. He liked explosions. Messier and showier, the better. Plus if this trap was designed to catch my friends, he would have made sure it would do lots of damage. No guarantee of killing a shifter otherwise.

I shoved away that thoroughly unpleasant thought.

“Okay,” I called out. “I have an idea. Ezee, Levi, back out of here. Like way, way back.”

They must have picked up on how deadly serious I was, because they disappeared into the trees with little more than a worried look in our direction.

“What do you need?” Alek asked me.

“For you and Harper to hold really still. This might feel weird. Harper, I think it is safe for you to shift.” It would be easier to do what I wanted if everyone was human since we might need to hold on to each other.

Harper shifted to human but stayed in place.

“Holding still, got it,” she said.

“I’m going to yank you guys to me and then fly us out of here. When you get within reach, grab a hold of each other. This might be kind of explosive. Ready?” I pulled on my magic, letting it sing in my veins. I’d been training for weeks. This was just two little spells at once, with the two people I loved most in the world’s lives on the line. No biggie.

“Ready,” Alek said.

“Let’s do this,” Harper said.

Throwing my arms wide, I snapped out two long coils of power and wrapped them around Alek and Harper. In my mind I drew the shield, summoning it around me as I yanked them into the air and across the field. I was already rising, towing them along like action heroes being dragged into a rescue helicopter. Only instead of a helicopter, they just had a giant glowing sphere of shield magic. I hoped it was up to the task.

Alek’s hand closed on my forearm first, warm and solid. Then Harper slammed into us as Samir’s magic reacted and his spiral unwound in a spectacular burst. I slammed my shields closed and let the wave of Samir’s magic throw us into the air like a punted soccer ball. Wind streamed past my face, whipping my hair free from its braid. I leaned into Alek and held on to my spell, pouring everything into the shield.

Then we were free from the explosion, sailing high above the trees. I opened my eyes and looked down with tear-blurred vision. Below us the clearing was blackened and cratered. The house was gone. It looked like a meteor had hit, the trees around all bent and broken in a circle leaning away from the point of impact. There was no fire, just destruction. I hoped the twins had gotten far enough away from the edge.

I let go of the shield and wrapped us in magic so we wouldn’t plummet to our deaths. I’d never flown with someone else clinging to me, much less two someones, but I managed a more or less graceful descent toward what looked like another clearing. Open ground seemed better than trying for a forest landing.

We crashed less than gracefully into the snow, Alek twisting at the last moment and catching me so I landed more on him than anything else. We just lay like that, Harper next to me, her hand still gripping my arm, my body sprawled half over Alek, and caught our breaths.

Alek’s arms came up around me and squeezed me hard enough that I had to squeak in protest. Then his mouth was on mine, and for a moment I forgot everything. This was what I had fought for. This was what I had missed, had craved.

“You two want to get a room?” Harper’s voice pulled me back to reality.

I let go of Alek and turned to look at her. She was sitting up in the snow. Whole. Healthy. She looked tired and her eyes had dark circles below them, but she wasn’t looking at me with that haunting glare of utter betrayal. I ignored a twinge of guilt. I didn’t have to tell her about not being able to kill Samir yet.

“I thought you were dead,” I said as I crawled off Alek and wrapped my arms around her.

She hugged me back, burying her head in my neck. “I ain’t so easy to kill,” she said. Her words were flippant though her tone was anything but.

“I’m sorry, furball,” I whispered into her snow-caked hair.

“Jade!”

I let go of Harper reluctantly and looked up to see Ezee and Levi stumbling through the snow toward us.

“When you said way, way back, you meant it,” Levi said with a grimace. His coat was torn across his chest and fresh blood stained the ripped material.

“Are you all right?” I got to my feet. The snow coating my shirt was starting to melt and I was getting colder and colder by the second.

“Just a scratch from some branches I didn’t dodge,” Levi said.

Ezee stopped a couple of feet from me. He, too, looked tired. They all did. Tired and more careworn than I’d ever seen them. I had a sudden and uncomfortable suspicion that more time had passed than I realized, or than Ash had said would. I hoped Ash had merely been wrong and not lying to me.

“So, what did I miss? What happened to you guys?” I said with an only half-forced smile.

“Mercenaries,” Ezee said, returning my smile, his white teeth flashing brightly in the dimming light. “What happened to you?”

“Training montage,” I said. “Is everyone else safe?”

“Mom is back at camp guarding Yosemite while he tries to contact Brie and Ciaran. Junebug is keeping an eye on the road. We should probably find her. I can’t imagine she missed the giant explosion.”

Junebug was alive? The last thing I remembered was her being shot. Relief was truly a tangible thing when it was this strong. I hadn’t realized how deeply I’d buried all my worries about my friends until just now. I felt like someone had removed a thousand pounds of iron from off my shoulders.

“Good, gang’s all here,” I said.

“Except Max,” Harper said behind me.

I had no response to that.

“Let’s get back to camp before Jade freezes, yes?” Alek said. He pulled off his jacket and draped it over my shoulders.

“Don’t you need this?” I asked, trying to be polite even as I shoved my wet arms into the warm sleeves.

“I have fur,” Alek said.

Good point. I pulled his oversized coat around me and felt marginally better.

My friends shifted to their animal forms and led the way. I followed Alek’s tiger, my brain already working out how to tell my story. I owed them all a lot of explanations. They deserved the truth from me, about everything.

I watched Harper’s red fox shape disappear into the gloom, and despaired. I was so damn glad she was alive, and so damn dreading having to tell her that I couldn’t kill the man responsible for murdering her brother.

All I could hope for was that somehow she would understand.

I had a feeling asking Harper understand we had to let Samir live would be a lot like asking the sun to rise in the west.

Levi peeled off to go collect Junebug. I followed Alek to their camp. It was cold, slow going through the woods, and the sight of the camp was a welcome thing indeed.

Iollan, the druid, must have made the camp. It was a tangle of branches and vines that didn’t look native to the area grown into a domed structure that was covered in snow. The snow proved insulating, for the inside of the dome was far warmer than the outside. There were sleeping bags on rough pallets made of branches and a small camp stove, along with some electric lanterns. It was rough, but cozy.

The best part of arriving at camp was seeing Rose. Harper’s mother came out of the dome and wrapped her wiry arms around me. I let myself indulge in her hug, wrapping my arms around her and holding on for a long time. It was nice to feel missed, to feel a little mothered as well.

“It’s good to see you,” Rose said. Her face had more lines in it than I remembered. Her eyes were shadowed with grief and determination. She was alive and vibrant and strong, and I was glad to see that.

Turning back time had been worth it, I knew then, in a deeper way than I had realized. Having Harper alive, sinking down onto a sleeping bag next to Alek as everyone gathered around, I looked at my friends and felt a strange satisfaction, a warm sense of belonging. If only I’d been able to save Max and Steve.

I shoved that thought away. I was here. Everyone was whole and alive. I looked around.

“Wait, where’s Iollan?” I asked, not seeing the huge druid.

“He was in here, contacting Ciaran and Brie,” Rosie said. “Then he came out to where I was keeping watch, said he had to check on something, and walked into a tree before I could get a word out.”

“Typical,” Ezee muttered.

I glanced at my friend, wondering if there was trouble in paradise. I knew his relationship with the druid was complicated. As Ezee had told me, they came from different worlds. A cosmopolitanish coyote shifter who loved his fine wines, modern-day comforts, and being professorial versus the big druid who loved the wilds and looked like he hadn’t seen a tailor or a razor in three hundred years.

“He can handle himself,” I said. I dreaded my next question, but it had to be asked. “How long have I been gone?”

“You don’t know?” Harper asked.

I shook my head.

“Little over three weeks.” Levi was crouched in front of the camp stove’s dubious warmth, heating a pot of water for what I hoped would be tea.

Three weeks? Shit. That was longer than I thought.

“So what’s been happening?” I asked.

“Where were you?” Harper said at the same time.

There was an awkward silence as we stared at each other.

“You first?” I said lamely. I needed a little more time to figure out what to say and how to say it. There was so much. For them it had been three weeks. For me, it had been months. I felt so much had changed. I was changed.

“Samir captured me after you left,” Harper said with a shrug that looked far too casual. “I escaped, but I figured out his plan first. Oh, and I rescued a unicorn.”

Of course she did. I smiled and shook my head. “What’s his plan? Besides apparently killing us all?”

Harper looked at Alek, who slid his arm around me.

“We think Samir is going to resurrect Balor, then eat his heart,” Alek said.

“He wants to become a god,” Ezee said.

“Fucktoast on a stick,” I muttered. “Will that work?”

“Yosemite thinks it is possible, yeah,” Harper said. “Samir seemed very convinced, too.”

I wanted to ask her more about her captivity, but I was afraid. It was partially my fault she had ended up like that. I kind of didn’t want to know what had happened. I had enough guilt clogging my brain. I vowed to ask later, maybe after that bastard was dead as fuck. Or at least destroyed. Thinking about him hurting Harper, I was on the fence again about killing him. If the dagger didn’t work, I wouldn’t have a choice. He had to be destroyed.

Before he turned into a god. Because why would life take it easy on me? Ha.

“He needs a unicorn?” I asked, thinking of the illusion at the farmhouse.

“Last tear from a unicorn, last feather of a phoenix, last drop of blood from a dragon, I guess,” Ezee said. “Harper also stole what we think was dragon blood and we destroyed it.”

“Phoenix feather? Like in Final Fantasy?” I asked. Last drop of blood from a dragon sounded pretty bad, considering I’d just brought him myself. I had no intention of giving him my last drop of blood. Or any drops.

I was glad it was the last drop, because Noah the vampire had taken some of my blood. I hated the idea of him helping Samir at all, but I didn’t trust the Archivist and wouldn’t put it past him. However, the blood he had was hardly my last. It wasn’t even the last blood I’d shed.

“Yeah, I guess. Magic is weird,” Harper said.

Levi dipped out a cup of boiling water and dropped a tea bag into it. He repeated this until the water was low, then dumped the final amount into the final cup. There weren’t enough to go around, so he and Junebug shared. I watched him hand the cups around and accepted mine gratefully. It helped thaw my hands. This was how they’d been living for weeks.

I had amazing friends. I was going to get maudlin if I wasn’t careful.

Tea handed out, everyone sat around in the circle of sleeping bags and looked at me. They were waiting for an explanation.

I leaned into Alek’s warmth. I’d taken off his coat when we sat down, but now I wished I still had its bulk so I could hide in it. No. No more hiding. Time for the truth. Or at least most of it.

“This is going to sound kind of crazy,” I warned them.

“Jade, seriously? We’re a bunch of shapeshifters and a sorceress camped out in the wilderness in a shelter grown by a druid, all because your evil ex-boyfriend is trying to raise an ancient god so he can eat its heart and attain phenomenal cosmic power.” Harper folded her arms across her chest and made a face at me as she finished speaking.

“Okay, good point,” I said. Right. Out with it all. “I set up the contingency with Iollan before the fight with Samir in case we were in over our heads. I didn’t tell you guys because I knew you’d probably be pissed about the idea of running away.”

“Damn right,” Harper muttered. “So you ran before things even got going. Who wouldn’t be pissed about that?”

“Let Jade speak,” Rose said, touching Harper’s arm gently. She and Harper were seated directly across from me.

I toyed with my mug for a moment, not wanting to meet Harper’s eye. There was nothing for it but to keep going, as Rose said, and hope they understood. Hope they even believed me.

“That’s what you remember,” I said as I looked up and met Harper’s angry green gaze. “But that isn’t how it went down. We did fight.” I held her gaze while I recounted the events, trying to maintain clinical distance from my memories. “Junebug got shot out of the air. Then Samir hit Iollan with a spell and ripped out his throat. Alek took a spell meant for me. It ripped his chest open. A giant bear killed Ezee and Levi. Everyone was dead or dying. Even me.”

I stopped and took a deep breath, looking upward at the tangle of branches.

“Samir ripped out my heart,” I said. I had told Ash all this, but it still wasn’t easy to say aloud. “He had it in his hand. I still had the ley line magic. So I did the only thing I could think to do. I turned back time.”

I looked around at their faces. Ezee had his head tipped to the side, considering. Levi and Junebug were holding hands, both of them looking at me with raised eyebrows. Rose nodded, seeming to accept this. Harper shook her head but the gesture was more contemplative than negating. I turned my head and looked at Alek. His ice-blue eyes looked down into mine and he nodded slowly.

“That makes sense,” he said, his voice soft.

“It does?” Ezee asked.

“The Council of Nine told me once that if I stayed with Jade, I would die. I saw myself with a mortal wound in my chest. So yes, this thing makes sense.”

“That’s why you told Iollan to get us out?” Harper said, half question, half statement. She looked like she was working something out in her head. “That’s why you couldn’t do anything. You had used too much magic already.”

I didn’t tell her that I’d had Iollan getting them all out before I turned back the clock. Better she didn’t know that little detail.

“It was worse than that,” I said. She’d given me the perfect opening to explain why I’d been gone so long. “I only turned back time a couple minutes, but it totally wrecked me. It burned out my magic. I couldn’t use any magic at all. I couldn’t even feel it.”

“That is why you left?” Alek said. I loved him for the lack of reproach in his words. I had hurt him, I knew, but he was able to comprehend why. Alek would never judge me too harshly for having to make tough calls and tougher decisions.

“I needed to get my magic back,” I said. I filled them in on the rough details, though I savored the look on their faces when I mentioned I’d met Alek’s sister.

“Kira?” Alek said. His eyes narrowed to slits. “She is still angry?”

“Yeah,” I said. I figured I’d ask him about what he’d done, why he had killed her friend, and hear his side of the story, but not until later. Much later, at this rate. We had way bigger problems. “She helped me, though. We broke my biological father out of prison. Then I followed him to a magical pocket of time and space and he helped me get my magic back.” I hand waved the Veil and explaining it. There just wasn’t time, and I wasn’t even sure I knew exactly where we had been or what was happening.

“So you are stronger, faster, better?” Levi said with a grin.

“Oh, it’s better than that.” I took a deep breath and smiled slowly. Then I told them the rest.

Being back with my friends, sitting next to my lover, and knowing everyone was safe? Worth everything.

Getting to tell my friends that I was a freaking dragon? Priceless.

In the excitement and explanations that followed, I conveniently forgot to mention the whole “can’t kill Samir or else magic apocalypse” thing. Whoops.

Yosemite still hadn’t returned by the time we were all figuring out sleeping arrangements. It worried all of us, but as I’d told Ezee, the druid knew these woods and could take care of himself.

I was worried, too, that Samir had set a trap at the farmhouse he’d been using as a base. Junebug offered to fly into Wylde and scout around, but while her owl self didn’t mind the darkness, with the druid missing it felt unsafe. I was bothered that Freyda and her wolves were missing as well. They had gone to find Softpaw, apparently, but even so, that was over a week past now. Between that and whatever Samir was up to with all the mercenaries in town, things looked not great for the good guys.

But I was back. I was here and ready to fight. It wouldn’t go the same as before. I wouldn’t let it. Nor would I shut out my friends or refuse to let them help. They had done more these last few weeks to delay and threaten Samir’s plans than I had, after all. I had learned the value of trust and I wasn’t going to fuck up again.

At least, I wasn’t going to fuck up in the same way. No plan survives contact with the enemy, after all.

I pulled on Alek’s coat and went outside with him to take first watch. We wanted to be alone, and while it was cold, it was better than nothing.

“Moon is full,” I said as he wrapped his arms around me. I leaned back into his warmth and looked up past his face at the sky. The moon sailed through a sea of stars, not a cloud in sight. It made the snow-covered trees around us into a softer world of glitter and shadow.

“Not quite,” Alek said, dropping into Russian. His voice rumbled in his chest and into my back. “Tomorrow night.”

“You going werewolf on me now?” I said with a laugh.

“At home, in the forests, sometimes the moon is all I would have for light. I know it well.”

“I’m sorry I left you,” I said softly. “I had to.”

“I know,” he said. “You fight your way. I am just glad you came back to me, Jade Crow.” He tucked his head down beside mine, pressing his cheek against my cheek. I breathed in the warm musk of him, summer sunlight and vanilla spice. He was everything good in the world packaged up just for me.

“If I hadn’t come back right when I did, you would have died. Harper would have died. Maybe the twins, too,” I murmured. I hated to even think about it.

“But you did come back,” Alek said. “What worries me is that Samir left, as though he knew we would come. That trap was for us, I think.”

I felt as disturbed and confused as Alek sounded. It wasn’t quite a Samir thing to do. My ex seemed overly attached to the idea of wrecking my life and killing my friends as a way of tearing me apart before he killed me himself. For him to leave a trap he didn’t even know would get sprung meant things were in motion, meant he likely had to move on with his other plans.

It meant we were running out of time. Time’s up, let’s do this went through my mind. Only Samir would damn well be Leeroy.

“Whatever he is doing, it is soon,” Alek added, echoing my thoughts.

“I won’t run again,” I said. “It ends. Tomorrow I’m going to track him down.”

“Alone?” Alek said, his voice a murmur of damp fog over my skin.

“No,” I said. “Not alone.”

I twisted around and hugged myself into his warmth, pressing my face to his chest. I had turned back time for this moment, for all the moments I would have after this. I could kill Samir to keep them safe. To help remove the shadows and pain from Harper’s eyes. To alleviate my own guilt. For Max and Tess and Steve and Todd and Sophie and Kayla and Ji-Hoon.

The people I loved who had died because of Samir was a list that was burned into my heart. I wouldn’t add to it. Not ever again.

Even if that meant breaking the Seal and letting magic back into the world. If it came down to a choice between that and letting those I loved die?

I would choose Samir’s death. Every. Damn. Time.

“It’s like living in your own freezer,” Levi said brightly as he dragged a side of bacon out of the snow piled up behind the druid’s grove.

“Complete with lack of showers,” Harper said as she brushed off a round of wood to sit on.

The day was clear, if cold, so we were gathered around outside. Rose had brought the camp stove out and was making coffee. I wasn’t normally a coffee person, but I’d been outvoted and drinking battery acid was small payment to see my friends smiling, alive and well enough. Junebug and Ezee had gone to look around. The druid wasn’t back yet, which had us all worried. I’d made them promise to stay away from Samir’s former camp and to stay away from town.

Once I was fed, I was going to Wylde myself. No more hiding. It was time to be the hunter. I rubbed at my talisman, feeling the divot in the silver. It was a constant reminder of what I had almost lost.

“You smell like sunshine and flowers,” Levi told Harper. “Like… azaleas!”

“You smell like old bacon,” she said.

“That’s why Junebug loves me.”

“She’s a vegetarian.”

“Both of you stop or we won’t have any bacon. Bring that here,” Rose said, cutting them off before it could end in fists flying and someone being tossed in the snow.

Bacon was soon sizzling, making my stomach growl almost as loud as Alek’s. I held my metal plate in anticipation, breathing in the hot scent of cooking fat.

The screech of an owl broke the relative peace of the clearing. Junebug’s huge white owl form swept down into the grove. She shifted even as she landed, dropping into a superhero landing pose in the snow at the edge of the cleared space around the dome.

“Jade, come, please,” she cried out. Her hands had blood on them.

I dropped my plate and ran toward her. “What is it? Ezee?”

“No, Yosemite,” she said. “I think he’s dying.”

We ran. Junebug flew ahead of us, dodging trees. I used my magic to push myself up and stay light on the snow, running like freaking Legolas to keep up with the shadow of wings ahead of me. Alek had shifted to tiger and stayed even with us. Levi and Harper were dark streaks of speed in among the underbrush and evergreen boughs.

Not too far from the camp we came to a huge spreading oak. A druid’s tree if ever there was one. It reminded me of the one in the first camp, in Iollan’s first grove where the fight had gone so poorly. This wasn’t the same place—however, it was deeper into the wilderness and the ground beneath the oak was piled with rocks that, strangely, had no snow on them.

Iollan lay prone under the oak, half propped on its giant roots. Blood spilled out his mouth with every agonizing breath, turning his red beard almost black. Ezee knelt beside his lover, pressing what had been his own shirt onto a wound I couldn’t see on Iollan’s chest. Ezee looked up at me with wild black eyes as I ran toward them.

“Save him,” he commanded.

It was Max all over again. Time blurred for me and I saw Harper’s face instead of Ezee’s, her green eyes screaming at me to save her brother. I had failed Max.

I’m a sorceress, not a doctor, I wanted to say. But no. It didn’t matter. I would not fail again.

I knelt next to the druid. He was cold to the touch, but still breathing. His eyes were closed but his pupils were responsive to light when I pried one open. That was good, right?

“Move the shirt,” I said. “I have to see the wound.”

Ezee complied, spawning a fresh gush of blood as he removed the pressure. Blood pulsed from three neat holes in Iollan’s broad chest. They looked like such tiny openings, but clearly they went deep. His swirling blue tattoos glowed faintly.

“Do the wounds go through?” I asked.

“No,” Ezee said. “I checked beneath him when I got here. The bullets must be still inside. But he’s not healing.”

“He’s unconscious,” I pointed out. “Can he heal like that?”

Ezee gave me a helpless look and shook his head. He didn’t know.

With the amount of blood he was losing, I was surprised Iollan was still alive. But he was cold, which I recalled might be a good thing. Didn’t paramedics have a saying that someone isn’t dead until they are warm and dead? I summoned magic and used it the way I had with Alek when he was poisoned. I tried to look inside. Maybe I could see the bullets and somehow coax them out. Magical surgery. First time for everything.

I found three small, round metal objects. They looked like dark obstructions to my magic. Iollan’s magic was fighting them. I felt his power as a foreign thing, twisting in his body like vines pushing through bricks in a time-lapse video. His magic wasn’t around the bullets; they existed in a strange void inside him, sending out a pulse of rusty-feeling magic themselves. No, not magic, more like anti-magic. The druidic magic was unfamiliar to my powers and it tried to fight me, too. His magic shoved on mine, driving the tendrils I’d extended into the wounds out.

“There’re bullets in him. They are like musket balls or something,” I said. “His magic doesn’t want me poking around. I think the bullets are magic— or impeding his magic?”

“Cold iron,” Ezee said instantly, nodding. “Get them out?” He laid a hand on Iollan’s forehead. “His breathing is getting worse. Now, Jade.”

I closed my eyes. The druidic power didn’t want me there, but fuck it. I was stronger than it. I sent tendrils of power back into his body, using his wounds as my openings both physically and metaphysically. The vines writhed and twisted, growing thorns and attacking my magic, but I sheared through them.

“Careful,” Ezee said as Iollan moaned in pain.

I gritted my teeth. There was no choice but to cause more pain. Two of the balls had taken fairly straight courses into his body and lodged next to bone. The third, however, had bounced around and was buried far off course in muscles that were likely his diaphragm or something. I wished I’d paid more attention to those crazy anatomy charts in health class back in high school. That was a long-ass time ago, so it probably wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

Grabbing the first iron ball, I yanked on it, visualizing my magic as though it were surgeon’s tools instead of raw power. It popped clear of the wound with a gross sucking sound. I let it drop and reached for the second. That one came out more easily as the druidic magic inside him changed its course and began flooding the now iron-free wound.

The third one had no clear channel to pull it through. I wrapped my power around it but wasn’t sure how to draw it out. Iollan’s insides were a mess of blood, and even using magical X-ray vision, I wasn’t sure how to do this without more damage. The ball wasn’t that far away from the surface. Just a layer of fat and muscle stood in its way. No organs or bone blocking it.

“The way out is through,” I muttered. Praying to whatever powers might protect a druid, I yanked hard on the ball and ripped it straight out of him in a gush of warm blood that spilled over my hands where they rested on his chest.

“Goddamnit, Jade,” Ezee said.

I opened my eyes. “The iron is out,” I said. “Sorry.”

Ezee pressed his shirt back to the wound as I moved my fingers. “It’s still bleeding.”

“I’m not a healer,” I said. “His magic is working on him now. Anything I try to do to stop the bleeding might make it worse. His power and mine don’t play very nicely.”

“Move your hands, Ezekiel,” Alek said from behind me.

I rocked back on my heels and looked up. Alek had a giant snowball in his arms.

Ezee moved and Alek started packing snow around the druid’s chest.

“Is making him cold a good idea?” Harper asked.

“It’ll slow the bleeding.” Levi came up behind his twin and laid a hand on Ezee’s shoulder.

Alek packed the druid around with a pile of fresh snow. The snow turned pink but not red. I wiped my bloody hands off in more snow as best I could.

“It’s working,” Ezee said softly.

I came back under the tree and saw that his magic had kicked in fully. Thick green vines sprouted from the frozen earth, shoving aside rock and dirt as they unfurled and wrapped Iollan in their grip. Within a minute he was covered from chin to ankle in thick greenery. His rough breathing slowed and no more blood sprayed from his mouth. His features relaxed into sleep.

There was nothing to do but wait. So we found seats on the rocks and waited to see if the druid would live.

Iollan opened his eyes after an interminable couple of hours. The vines slid away from him, leaving bloody but unbroken skin behind. His tattoos were just faded blue ink again, the animal patterns and dots and knotwork no longer glowing. His ruined shirt hung off his shoulders as he sat upright.

“I thought you were dying,” Ezee said. He took the druid’s hand and pressed the back of it to his lips.

“Not so easy to kill,” Iollan said as he laid a huge hand along Ezee’s cheek. “How did you get the iron out?”

“Jade did it with her magic,” Ezee said.

“Hi,” I said with an awkward wave as I came to stand by his feet. “I’m back.”

“Who shot you?” Ezee asked, not taking his eyes off Iollan’s tired face.

“Mercenaries. I’ll explain but I’m freezing.” He shivered—for effect, most likely, but he did look chilled.

“Can you walk?” I asked.

“Only one way to know,” he said.

Iollan got to his feet with Ezee’s help. It turned out he could walk, but it was slow going. I used my magic to wrap us in warmth. Maybe I’d call this spell Mordenkainen’s Space Heater? I was burning power like it was going out of style. Fighting Samir might have to wait a day or three for me to sleep and freshen up, but it was worth it to keep my friends alive.

Junebug had flown back to camp to warn Rose what was happening, then flown back to us to wait. She went ahead again and there was a sleeping bag for Iollan to fall into. Coffee, camp toast, and reheated bacon waited for the rest of us.

“I need to talk to Jade alone,” Iollan said.

Ezee made a face at that and Harper started to protest. Alek shut them all down with a soft growl. I was going to have to learn that trick.

“They will hear whatever we say anyway,” I said to the druid. Shifters had fantastic senses, after all.

“Not inside my hut.” He waved his hand at the dome of vines and branches above us.

Everyone filed out, Alek leaving last, as though to make sure they actually left us alone.

“Wait,” I said. “Alek should stay.” I didn’t know what the druid had to say, but I didn’t want to hear it alone. I had a feeling it wasn’t good news.

There was a protest from Harper outside that fortunately my weaker sorceress senses couldn’t hear clearly. Alek looked to Iollan and the big druid nodded.

Alek dropped the thick piece of canvas covering the opening and then touched his hand to the vines. Silvery light flickered out over the whole of the structure.

“Secondary measure,” he said with a shrug.

I sank down beside Iollan and sipped at the brown acidic water everyone else called coffee.

“Samir?” I said.

“I talked to Brie and Ciaran,” Iollan began, not confirming but not denying my assumption. “They cannot return yet. The Fey are waiting. Did everyone tell you what Samir is up to?”

“Raising Balor? Yeah,” I said. “So far as we know, right?”

“It’s confirmed. Samir bought information from some of the Fey. He made his plans known in exchange, at least the gist of them. They want him to succeed, so they are keeping Brie and Ciaran away. They tried to get their oath they wouldn’t interfere, but of course neither would give it.” Iollan lay back against the shelter wall, pulling the sleeping bag up over his chest and wrapping his arms around himself. He was giant and broad, taller than Alek by half a foot, but he seemed reduced now, crumpled and a little broken.

“Fuck me sideways with a chainsaw,” I muttered.

“That would be uncomfortable,” Alek said.

I started to say that was the point but caught the gleam in his eye. I loved that he could even begin to joke at a time like this. We’d be perfect for each other right up to the end.

“It gets worse,” Iollan said. “But first, Brie made me promise to make you promise not to kill Samir.”

“Et tu, Brute?” I said.

“She cannot kill Samir?” Alek said. His gaze traveled from me to Iollan and back. “You knew?”

“Ash said the same thing. If I eat Samir’s heart, it could apparently bring about some kind of magical apocalypse.” I made a “cheers” gesture with my coffee mug and swallowed the bitter brew down. “But it’s cool. I have a crazy plan to stab him with my magic knife and destroy him that way without killing him.”

The plan sounded just as silly aloud here as it had talking to my father about it. Awesomesauce.

“Good,” Iollan said. “If he raises Balor, however, it will not matter. He eats the heart, he could potentially break the Seal anyway.”

“And the Fey want this?” I asked. I set down my mug and rubbed at the hilt of the Alpha and Omega where it hung, securely strapped to my ankle.

“They believe it will revive their lords, allow them to return and rule as they should. That magic flooding the world will bring the return of the Tuath Dé.”

“Right. So we don’t have Ciaran or Brie’s help.” I took a deep breath. They had been missing in action for a while. I hadn’t been counting on them, but it sure would have been nice to have a little goddess and leprechaun backup when facing down my nemesis.

“It’s worse,” Iollan said with a grimace.

“How worse?” Alek asked. He slid his hand over my forearm and squeezed. That small gesture reminded me of his strength. I was not alone.

“Balor’s head has been taken by Samir last night,” the druid said. “That’s what I went to check on after I spoke with Brie. We took away the unicorn and destroyed the dragon blood. But there are apparently other ways to raise Balor. Like a sacrifice.”

“If he’s taken the head, he could be anywhere.” I put my hand over Alek’s and burrowed my fingers between his. We were fucked. I couldn’t track him magically. There had to be some way to find him. He couldn’t have gotten too far in a single night.

Except, you know, magic. It made a lot of things possible.

“He’ll be near Wylde,” Iollan said with a firm nod that set his matted curls bouncing. “Why was Balor’s head here of all places in the world? Think about why you came to this place, as well.”

“Ley lines,” I said. “This place is crazy with magic.”

“Not just the lines,” Alek said softly.

No, not just the lines. I had come here to hide a leaf in a forest. Wylde, Idaho was the shifter capital of North America. Not just shifters, either. Witches, a few Fey, probably other supernatural people that I didn’t even know about who had kept their heads down.

“How big a sacrifice?” I asked, not wanting to know the answer.

“Bigger the better. The more powerful the beings sacrificed, the better the chance of the spell working and bringing Balor fully back to life.”

“The witches?” I asked.

They seemed a likely source, being easier to grab than shifters. Witches couldn’t defend themselves with tooth and claw. After Samir ate Peggy the librarian’s heart, they were supposed to have gotten out of town, but I didn’t know if they had.

“We forgot to tell you,” Alek said with a deep sigh. “The witches might be dead. Samir got to at least half of them.”

I let out a long and varied string of every swear word I knew in Arabic, Russian, French, and Japanese. I probably made some up, but those were the most satisfying languages I could think to curse in. I ran out of breath before I could move on to Dutch.

“It gets even worse,” Iollan said as I paused for air.

“Worse than Samir having all the knowledge and memory of women who were embedded in the very fabric of life in Wylde?” I said. Those women had been school principals, day care workers, science teachers, bar owners, librarians—basically tapped into everything in Wylde. They would likely know who was human and who wasn’t. They’d thought I was a hedge witch, a solo practitioner, and left me alone until it became clear I wasn’t.

That they had spied on me for Samir didn’t matter. Peggy had been a bitch to me, but I understood her motivations, her fears. Samir was not a man anyone with an ounce of self-preservation said no to.

“Balor can only be resurrected under the full moon of Mac Tíre.” Iollan closed his eyes.

“Mock…” Alek tried to repeat the Irish word and looked at me questioningly.

“It’s a word for wolf,” I said. “When is this wolf moon supposed to happen?” I hardly had to ask. My stomach felt like someone had transportered a hive of bees into it, and the bees were angry. Tonight was a full moon. Never lucky.

“Tonight,” Iollan said, confirming my suspicion.

I let go of Alek’s hand and wrapped my arms around myself as I rocked back on my heels. We were super fucked, but worrying about that wasn’t solving the problem.

“Okay. Samir is going to raise Balor tonight?”

Iollan nodded at my words.

“He’s going to need a huge sacrifice. So he’ll need supernaturals. He has to get those from Wylde, probably. I imagine they won’t come quietly.” I chewed the inside my lip. I tasted coffee and anger.

“He has cages,” Alek said. He looked frustrated, as though he were only now seeing something that should have been obvious to him before. “In his trucks. Big cages. Harper was worried when she first saw them because she thought they might have been used to capture us, as well.”

“He’s going to capture shifters,” I said. “How many does he need?” I asked Iollan, looking back at the druid’s exhausted face.

“I don’t know. There was little time to ask Brie questions, and I am not sure even she knows. The Fey are not happy with her right now. They believe she should be on the side of bringing magic back fully into the world. It would free her.” Iollan added that last part in Irish as he glanced at Alek. Alek didn’t know that Brie was actually three Irish goddesses crammed into one feisty package.

Secrets upon secrets. I was sick of it all. And yet…

“We can’t tell Harper or the others that I am not going to kill Samir,” I said. I wasn’t sure that I could not kill him. If it came down to him or me, I was going to eat his heart and deal with the consequences.

“All right,” Alek said. His ice-blue eyes searched mine and he nodded slowly. He would keep my secrets. He was good like that. I imagined he also understood how pissed off Harper would be if she knew. We needed her focused.

She might find out later, but I’d deal with that then. Hopefully much later.

Right. Back to the “what we know” game.

“We should bring in the others,” I said. “We’ll just leave out a few details, yeah?”

Alek fetched everyone and I sketched out what we knew.

“So we have until moonrise to find Samir and stop him?” Levi asked.

“Why move Balor’s head?” Ezee asked.

“Yes to the first,” Iollan said. “I think because he needs to be close to the sacrifice. The spell is not simple. It will take a ritual and lots of power. Druidic magic is as much about timing and ritual as it is about raw power. He is trying to do things our way, so he is somewhat bound by our rules.”

That was the small bit of luck we had. What Samir was attempting wasn’t something that could be strong-armed with raw power. He wouldn’t have gone through all these preparations and risked so much if it were. Sorcery alone couldn’t raise Balor.

But sorcery could stop Samir.

“We’ll go to Wylde,” I said. I stood up and looked around the group. Their mouths were hanging open, with the exception of Alek’s. “What?”

“You said ‘we,’” Harper said. “You aren’t going to argue it is too dangerous and we should stay here?”

“Nope,” I said, enjoying her baffled look. “I’m probably going to need help. More hands make light work and all that jazz.”

“Are you a pod person? What have you done with Jade?” Harper squinted at me and held up her fingers in a crude cross.

“Okay. You give me shit, I will leave you behind,” I said, smiling to take the bite from my words.

“No chance of that. I’m going. I’m going to watch that motherfucker die.” Harper’s smile slid into a snarl.

“I am, too,” Levi said, standing up.

Ezee looked at Iollan and then at his twin, clearly torn between staying with his injured lover and going with his brother.

“Go, Ezekiel. I will be safe enough here.” Iollan smiled at Ezee. “I need to sleep in the earth again soon. I am sorry I cannot help more,” he added, looking at me.

“Rest,” I said. “We got this.” I sounded pretty confident. Go me. The druid had risked his life to confirm that Balor had been moved, and he had gotten us the information we needed about the ritual. More backup and more information would have been nice, but he had already done so much.

“I will stay and guard him,” Rose said.

“You don’t want to see justice done for Max?” Harper said. She folded her arms over her chest and glared down at her mother.

“Revenge is not justice,” Rose murmured, shaking her head sadly. “And I am no fighter. Go, sweetheart. You are not a child anymore and I cannot make you stay here and safe with me. We must make our own peace now, in our own way.”

Harper looked like she might cry for a moment, her green eyes suspiciously bright, but she gave a curt nod and turned back to me.

“I will stay also,” Junebug said. “I can keep watch better here. An owl is not much use in a straight-up fight. Getting shot once was enough for me in a lifetime.”

Levi wrapped his arms around his wife. They made a pair, her with her hippy braids and hair longer than mine, him with his mohawk and myriad piercings, her skin pale against Levi’s, dark and light twined together. I wondered if Alek and I looked that complete when we embraced.

“All right,” I said, fighting my own urge to shed a tear or three. “Let’s go storm the castle.”

Nobody followed up the quote. Serious eyes focused on me and one by one everyone nodded.

I had my posse, such as we were. A coyote, a tiger, a wolverine, and a fox. There was a bar joke in this somewhere.

Now we just had to find out where exactly this castle was. And do it by moonrise. Just another day in the life.

Let’s go end this, I thought, as I followed my furred friends outside. It was the last midnight and we were going into the woods.

Deep winter in Wylde was never a crazy busy time. The students at Juniper College were gone, and most people were at the ski places or staying in more hunting-friendly counties for the holidays. By the time we escaped the woods, slowed down by me being on foot, and went to where Levi had hidden his Jeep, it was later than I liked. Moonrise would come just near sunset, and this deep in winter sunset came damned early. We drove into town, ready for anything.

Quiet greeted us. Eerie emptiness. I wasn’t sure what day it was, but everything looked nearly deserted. The courthouse had no cars in front of it, not even one of the deputy or sheriff’s vehicles. The road had been plowed since the last snowfall, but no one was driving. The lights were on at the gas station and I thought I saw someone moving inside the small convenience store attached, but nobody was filling up.

“Where to?” Levi asked me, his dark eyes flicking to mine in the rearview mirror.

“Vivian’s,” I said. Nobody was trying to stop us from driving through town, so I figured we might as well start with the vet. She would know what was happening, if anything was.

I failed my will save and ended up staring as we drove past my burned out comic store. Pwned looked even more dead and forlorn after a few weeks of snow fall. The snow couldn’t entirely cover the blackened beams and caved-in walls. The building looked like a monster that had been slain, robbed for parts, and left to rot. Alek’s arm tightened around my shoulders as we drove by. Someone had put up caution tape and a plastic fence, but the snow had nearly covered it, rendering it useless. No repairs had been started on the partially burned buildings to either side. Their windows were dark, closed signs prominent.

Wylde, Idaho had become a ghost town in the short time I’d been gone.

“Where are the cops? Why isn’t anyone repairing things? Why isn’t anyone even out on the road?” I wondered aloud.

“Everyone is terrified because of the murders. We were getting press, there were talks of the FBI getting involved, and then it just stopped. Nobody is covering it anymore. It’s like Area 51 or something.” Harper peered out the window, her breath fogging the glass as she spoke.

Remembering what Detective Wise and Agent Salazar had said about not wanting to be involved in sorcerer stuff, plus knowing that our own government had hired Samir to build them a magical prison, I had a feeling it was more like the government had shut down all word getting out and decided to let Wylde and her supernatural beings handle their own mess. Easier to let a bunch of nonhumans disappear or die than explain to the world that hey, by the way, magic is real and there’s a lot of people who can turn into giant scary animals.

Nothing sent the message that we were truly on our own with Samir louder and clearer than the dead silence of the empty town.

“At least there’s none of those heavily armed men in black that Junebug reported,” Ezee said.

“Don’t jinx us,” Levi muttered.

We pulled up at Vivian Lake’s big Victorian office slash house without seeing a soul. There were lights on in the houses around her office, but her own home was dark except for one window on the bottom floor that I thought must be her office if my memory of the layout was any good. She lived above her workplace, the way I had before mine got destroyed.

We exited the car cautiously. I sensed no magic around, but I let Alek go ahead up to the door. It was dark in the office and the closed sign was turned to face outward, but the door was unlocked.

Inside the office was a wreck. Someone had tried to tidy up slightly, but the cracked front counter, the jumble of paperwork that had been hastily re-stacked, and a broken lamp shoved into a waste basket were all signs that this place had been the scene of a fight. My heart felt like it was going to break my ribs and nervous snakes twisted in my belly as I pulled up magic, ready for anything. Nothing good had happened here.

“I smell blood,” Alek murmured, his voice barely audible. “It’s not fresh,” he added. He had his gun out as he moved expertly through the office, waving at us to stay back behind him.

“I’ll watch the front,” Levi whispered.

I watched Alek’s back as he went down the hall past the exam rooms and toward the office where the light shone under the door.

The door opened and a stocky Asian woman holding a gun appeared around the side. For a moment she and Alek stared at each other, then both lowered their weapons.

“Rachel,” I said. Wylde’s sheriff, Rachel Lee, was still alive and still here. Relief crawled over me.

“Jade, Alek, thank God,” Rachel said. She holstered her gun and waved us back.

Levi stayed watching the front, nodding to me when I looked a question at him.

“I’ll be able to hear whatever you say from here if you leave the door open,” he said.

Vivian’s office was in better shape than her front reception area. Whatever fight had happened hadn’t reached here. Harper, Ezee, Alek, and I crowded in. Vivian was nowhere to be seen, and the sinking feeling started again in my belly.

“Where’s Dr. Lake?” Harper asked before I could.

“They took her,” Rachel said. She folded her arms across her chest and I realized she wasn’t in uniform. No badge, just a gun strapped on over a thick sweater and jeans. I remembered vaguely there had been talk about suspending her, but it felt like a lifetime ago.

“Who took her? How?” Ezee said.

“Samir,” I answered, guessing. He wanted sacrifices, and Vivian was well known as a shifter to the other supernaturals. I clenched my hands into fists.

“Yeah, him and those humans he has working for him. They’ve hit quite a few of the shifter families. They even captured the Alpha. Used her unconscious body as bait right in the middle of the damn road to grab a few others. Then they took the kids, even the ones not yet gone through the change, right out of school yesterday. Fucking coordinated.” Rachel spat the words out. Her face was lined, her eyes angry and hard.

“How?” I repeated Ezee’s question. Shifters, even kids, weren’t easy prey. Taking Freyda, the Alpha of alphas, would have been damn near impossible. At least taking her alive would. “And why isn’t anyone out there?” I added, waving a hand at the window. “Kids got kidnapped and nobody is doing anything?”

“The humans are hiding or have fled. Shifters that tried to flee got grabbed, like they were watching for that. They have tranq darts fit to maim an elephant that have to have some kind of magic going on. Get hit with one, and a shifter falls over like they’re dead, except they aren’t. I barely got away when they came for me at the station.”

“Why aren’t people leaving Wylde?” Alek cut in.

“There was a roadblock up on both sides going into and out of town until last night. Guess they got what they wanted. State cops are pretending Wylde doesn’t exist, my damn deputy disappeared, and I’m suspended. We’ve been abandoned. Fucking humans.” Rachel’s eyes glittered, and I was glad she wasn’t still holding her gun.

I understood her rage. The human world not knowing about the supernatural world usually worked in our favor, but it had downsides. It was painfully clear that as far as the human Powers That Be were concerned, our mess was ours. I wondered if they would feel the same way if Samir achieved godhood.

Of course, if the Seal was broken and magic flooded the world again, and all the gods walked the Earth, every human on the planet was in for the rudest awakening ever. Sheer numbers wouldn’t matter a whit against actual immortals.

“Fine,” Harper said. “So we’re abandoned. It doesn’t matter. We’re going to go fuck that bastard’s shit up. Where did they take the kids and Dr. Lake?”

“I don’t know,” Rachel said. “We’re meeting up at Mikhail’s trailer park, those few of us left. I came to grab some first-aid supplies here, but then we’re going to track them down. They left town in trucks heading toward Juniper.”

“Could they be there?” I asked, looking at Ezee.

“No students are allowed to stay over winter break, but there’s some security and janitorial staff on, plus a few professors usually around catching up on work,” he said. He shook his head. “So, maybe?”

I stepped forward and leaned a hip on Vivian’s desk. Something was teasing at my brain, something Rachel had said. I was missing an important detail and needed to work it out quickly. My instincts were screaming at me. I rubbed my fingers over the bridge of my nose and squeezed my eyes shut, thinking.

Samir knew about the shifters. He knew about the college and he knew about Wylde. Because of the witches.

“You dealt with Peggy and her coven a lot?” I asked Rachel, opening my eyes.

She tipped her head to the side at my apparent non-sequitur but nodded. “Sure. She helped me keep some things quiet from time to time, deal with nonshifter supes on occasion.”

“Meeting up at Mikhail’s, was that a normal plan? Or something you made up just now on the fly?” I said. Things were falling into place in my head, pieces fitting together to form a horrible picture.

“That’s the plan in general. We’d often meet up there if we needed to talk about things on neutral ground. When the kids were taken, that’s how the remaining shifters knew to come here. Not that there are many of us left. The Pearsons, Kameron, couple of others, plus Mikhail and his younger son.”

“So Peggy knew about meeting up there,” I said.

From the corner of my eye I saw horrified looks pass across Ezee and Harper’s faces as they figured out what I was getting at.

“Yes,” Rachel said, a line forming between her eyebrows.

“So Samir knows,” Alek said softly. “How long since you left there?”

“A few hours. I wanted to check on people now that the roadblock is down, see who might be around. Oh, shit.” Rachel grabbed up a duffel bag that had been hidden behind Vivian’s desk. “Shit,” she repeated.

“Come on,” I said. “We’ve got to get to Mikhail and Sons right fucking now.”

Maybe Samir had all the shifters he needed. Maybe he wouldn’t bother going after them.

Maybe Firefly would be revived with a full second season.

Yeah. I wasn’t going to bet on any of those things either.

Alek and I piled into Rachel’s SUV. Levi, Ezee, and Harper took Levi’s Jeep and followed us. No traffic meant no one to slow us down. Just the slick roads, but Rachel and Levi had both grown up driving in these kinds of conditions and handled their vehicles like they were racing on a dry track in perfect weather.

“Guess we won’t get a speeding ticket,” I joked as I clung to Alek’s arm with one hand and braced myself against the dash with the other.

“I’ll cite myself later,” Rachel said with a teeth-baring grin.

“Just make sure to let Levi off with a warning. I don’t think his license can handle more tickets.” I returned her smile.

Mikhail’s RV park was on the very edge of town directly off the main road leading into Wylde from the southeast. In non-winter months it was a scenic, lovely spot for a park. Bear Creek flowed past it in a jumbled rush of boulder-filled rapids and the park had permanent structures for grilling and picnics, also including a laundry room, a huge river rock-lined hot tub, and showers. Mikhail lived in a two story log cabin with his younger son, Vasili. The older son drove trucks most of the year. I couldn’t remember his name. In winter the park was mostly shut down, the stalls empty, the campsites snowed under.

It wasn’t empty now. The snow on the drive was churned up and ridged from many vehicles using it recently. We headed straight down the long driveway. Two big trucks with cages in their beds were pulled up in a haphazard wedge formation in the big RV turnaround area in front of the main cabin. Men in black-and-white patterned fatigues scrambled around a big flatbed trailer hooked up to one of the trucks. A huge, unconscious—or dead—brown bear was strapped down to the bed and another lay in a heap of ropes and cables at the foot of the trailer.

I feared we were too late. Except they were still here. These bastards were going to regret that.

We didn’t go for subtlety or stealth. Rachel yanked hard on the steering wheel and brought her SUV sideways to partially block off the driveway. She was out of the car with her gun drawn before we’d even stopped skidding.

Levi took her cue and pulled his Jeep to a quick stop behind us, keeping the SUV as cover. That was all I had time to see as I lurched sideways out of the truck behind Alek.

The mercenaries started shouting and bringing guns up. Alek and I had come out on the wrong side of the truck if we wanted cover, but I had shields up instantly, blocking fire for us both. The snow under my feet was dirty, and spattered with red. We weren’t the first to fight here.

“Body armor,” Rachel yelled from behind the truck where she had smartly grabbed cover.

“Drop it,” Alek told me. I let the shield go for a bare second, and Alek took the nearest man down with two rapid shots to the head. My ears rang and I gritted my teeth. Guns were freaking loud when fired this close to my damn head. A dart bounced off my shield as I summoned it back into existence just in time. Rachel had said they were tranqing the shifters. These guys were in for a rude awakening now.

Another went down as Rachel shot his legs out from under him. That still left about six men, who were all wising up and going for cover.

A bullet slammed into my shield, the force rocking me back on my heels. I skidded in the snow and nearly fell backward as my foot hit a chunk of ice. They were wising up in other ways. Damn. Bullets, not darts. Alek put a steadying hand on my shoulder, keeping himself behind me and the shield.

The mercenaries scrambled back, getting behind the truck and trailer. Shooting at them now meant risking the bears. I heard Rachel cursing behind the SUV as another spatter of gunfire shot bounded off my shield and clipped her vehicle. I hoped she wasn’t hit. The mercenaries were shooting over the truck beds, spraying and praying. They had the advantage of more guns and better cover.

An advantage I was going to take away from them.

“I’ll keep my shield up,” I said to Alek, hoping my voice was quiet, since my ears were still hating me from the shots he’d fired. “We’re gonna go take their cover away.”

“Ready,” Alek said. He squeezed my shoulder and stepped up just behind me.

I poured more magic into my shield. I had to fight Samir today, but conserving too much magic now might get us all killed. I couldn’t afford to take a bullet or ten. My magic was much stronger than it had ever been, but I knew the limit was still out there. I compromised, using the shield but not trying to do a second spell. I still wasn’t the world’s strongest at multi-casting.

We walked forward step by step. I braced against the shocks of bullets slamming into the wall of my shields. Purple sparks blossomed and fell away on impact, my magic slipping in to fill any cracks. The mercenaries were the ones swearing now. I heard the crackle of a radio. Were they calling for help? Not good.

One tried to make a break for the cabin, and Rachel took him out. He sprawled, blood spattering the snow. Two others jumped up behind the giant bear, crouching to fire at us again, still using the poor creature, which I assumed was Mikhail himself, as cover. The bear’s sides rose and fell and from this close his heavy breathing was audible even to my injured eardrums.

“Go now,” I said in Russian, hoping only Alek would understand me.

We were almost to the trailer; my knees would touch it in another step. I dropped the shield and Alek sprang to the bed, his speed and height allowing him to fire down directly over the bear and into the men.

Ignoring the protest of my leg muscles, I jumped also, using magic to push myself much farther into the air. From this vantage I saw two more men scrabbling back in the snow, bringing assault rifles to bear on Alek.

“No you don’t,” I yelled. Lightning crackled from my fingers as I zotted them.

Body armor was apparently shit against magical attack. They fell back screaming in the snow.

The remaining man went for the cab of the truck and made it before Alek could get over the bear and try to stop him. I dropped to the ground and ran to the side, reaching out with magic for the door of the truck.

The engine kicked in and he floored it, running the truck straight at Rachel’s SUV.

Not today, motherfucker. I didn’t even think, just threw magic in a force wave from my hands, all my mind focused on bricking that engine beyond usefulness or recognition.

The truck slammed forward and to the right. Metal screamed as the trailer bed went with it, chains snapping. From the corner of my eye I saw Alek running backward in the snow to avoid the flipping trailer. The truck crumpled like a soda can and smashed through a tree and into a bigger tree.

I grabbed at the trailer with my magic, pulling it back toward me. My muscles screamed in protest and spikes of pain slashed into my head. I hadn’t practiced moving large objects that often. The trailer rolled up on its side and then bounced back down, rolling to a jerking stop. The bear was still strapped to it, unconscious but safe.

Silence reigned for a long moment as I hunched over, breathing in deep, painful breaths of cold air.

“Jade? You okay?” Harper called out.

“I’m okay,” I said, looking up.

Alek was checking on the downed men, moving guns away from their hands, checking for signs of life. They looked pretty dead to me; even the ones I’d electrocuted were still and silent now. Blood spattered the snow and ice chunks, not all of it fresh. The snow lumped over the picnic tables made them look like white coffins as I scanned the area for any other threats or signs of life.

“Lee is hit,” Ezee said, loping up to us.

“Shit.” I followed him around the SUV.

Rachel was on the ground but still conscious. She smiled grimly up at me.

“Leg gave out, sorry,” she said, waving a hand at her blood-soaked pant leg.

“Let’s get you inside,” I said, nodding at Levi and Ezee. They could carry her, no problem. Go go shifter superstrength.

“Where are the others?” she asked with a wince as Levi lifted her himself, careful of her leg.

Harper had pulled the duffel bag of medical supplies out and held up a bag of gauze pads.

“Inside,” I said to Harper. To Rachel I said, “I don’t know. Just two bears; I think Mikhail and Vasili. Maybe the others are hiding?”

All that blood and the churned up ice and snow around the drive said they were long taken, but I figured that speculation could wait until Rachel was inside and safe.

“They are breathing, but will not wake,” Alek said to me as we passed him.

“Any of the bad guys alive enough to talk?” I asked.

Alek shook his head. “I will check truck,” he said, starting toward the truck I’d smashed.

I seriously doubted that guy was even in one piece, but it couldn’t hurt to confirm. Damnit. Having someone alive to question would have been good. The guy Rachel leg-shot had ended up in the path of the truck and trailer. He was pedestrian pancake now. Everyone else had taken magic to the heart or bullets to the brain. We were a little too efficient.

Searching my heart, I tried to feel something other than relief that these guys were down. We’d just killed a bunch of humans. Nope. Nothing. Maybe tomorrow I’d feel remorse. Somehow I doubted it. They were capturing my friends, citizens of my damn town, for my evil ex-boyfriend to use in a sacrifice. Choices had consequences. They had made their choice. I was their consequence.

A part of me hated Samir even more for making this my reality.

I walked to the edge of the turnaround. From here the burble of the creek sang up through the snowy trees. Snow dusted the rocks down the slope like powdered sugar. Looking this direction, it was like the carnage behind me had never happened. Out there in the woods, life went on. Despite men with guns. Despite sorcerers and shifters and vendettas and ambitions.

It was a world I barely remembered and wasn’t sure I’d ever return to.

Harper’s footsteps pulled me back to my world.

“Nobody inside. Levi’s putting pressure on the wound but the bleeding is already slowing. Normal bullets, I guess,” she said. “What should we do about the bears?”

“Unstrap Mikhail. I don’t know that we can or should move them, but I hate having them in the open like this.” I remembered the man swearing at the radio, the crackle of a reply I hadn’t quite caught. “There are more of them somewhere, and I think one got a call out.”

“Shitballs.” Harper summed up the situation eloquently.

I looked up at the flat blue sky. The sun was sinking already.

“We’re running out of time,” I murmured.

Alek made his way around the trailer toward us. Then he froze, his gaze on the woods to our left. He had his gun back out before I could blink, but didn’t fire.

Turning, I saw a rangy red-brown wolf lope out of the trees. It dropped its head and then flopped down, baring its belly. In a blink, it became a man. He was thin and plain in appearance, wearing a grey sweater and tan cargo pants. He was unarmed, his hands up in the air as he lay there in submissive position like a roach that had been flipped over. I called up my magic and searched for signs of a spell or Samir on him. I sensed nothing, no trace of Samir’s sickly sweet power.

“Goddamnit,” Harper muttered beside me. “Not him again.”

“Him again?” I asked, giving Harper a sideways glance.

“I just came to talk,” the wolf shifter said. “I think we can help each other.”

“I would rather shoot you,” Alek said, though he didn’t. Yet.

“He works for Samir,” Harper explained. “But he did help me escape.”

“You trust him?” I didn’t take my eyes off the prone man again, but I caught her nod and half shrug in my peripheral vision.

The wolf shifter looked from him to Harper and me, resting his gaze on me. He licked his lips in a quick, nervous flick of his tongue.

“That would be the biggest mistake you’ll ever make,” he said.

He sounded utterly confident for an unarmed guy lying in the snow.

“Let’s hear him out,” I said. At the least he was someone alive to question. Best case? He was going to be the key to unlocking Samir’s doom.

The office had a front desk area that was just a standing case full of candy and other snacks. Beyond that was a good-size room with a rustic carved wood coffee table and a random assortment of chairs and cushioned benches that looked as though they’d been collected from the side of the road at various times in history, which they probably had. Rachel was sprawled on the floor, propped against one of the benches, holding a thick gauze pad to her leg. Ezee was standing over her, and Levi came down a set of steps at the back of the waiting room as we entered.

“Nobody here,” Levi said. He sent a curious look at our guest. “Who’s he?”

“You got a name?” I asked the wolf shifter as we arrayed ourselves in an uncomfortable semicircle among the chairs. Alek kept his gun in his hand and stayed between the wolf and the door. Nobody sat.

“Cal,” the wolf shifter said. “Those guys took the other shifters who were here. You missed them by half an hour. These were staying to try to load the bears up.”

“Who are you?” Rachel said through gritted teeth. “Why weren’t you helping?”

“’Cause he’s one of Samir’s,” Harper said. She folded her arms over her chest and pressed her lips together.

“I helped you escape the sorcerer,” Cal said.

“He did?” Ezee and I said at the same time.

“Nominally. We’re even for that now. I got a feeling you were using me to clean up someone you didn’t like anyway.” Harper glared at him.

“Clean up?” I looked between them. Clearly I had missed something in her explanation of how she escaped Samir.

“She killed one of the other mercs. Crushed his throat with a toilet lid.” Cal raised an eyebrow at her as if to say “good luck explaining that.”

“Badass,” Levi said, drawing out the vowels in the word to form a half whistle.

Harper shifted her weight from foot to foot, betraying her nervousness. Her eyes flicked to mine and I made sure to smile. None of us were clear of blood on our hands. I wasn’t going to judge.

“You were part of the group capturing shifters?” Rachel said. Her lip curled in disgust.

I felt the same disgust. Shifters capturing shifters for sacrifice was shitty as hell. Doing it for a sorcerer must have been the worst kind of sacrilege in Rachel’s, and probably everyone else’s, minds.

“No,” Cal said. “Our group is guarding the sorc. We’re not dealing with the shifter stuff or town. I overheard them on the radios doing a last-minute grab at Samir’s request, so I came to see what was up. I couldn’t stick around where I was. I got a horrible feeling we’re not going make it through this one.”

“You are not,” Alek said. His voice was winter ice and bitter winds. It was the voice a rabbit hears in its mind just before the eagle drops from the sky.

I glanced at him, but his beautiful face was unreadable.

“Radios? I saw some on the guys out there. Can we use them to track what they are doing?” Levi started toward the door.

“No good,” Cal said with a swift shake of his head. “One of these guys squawked for help. They’ll have changed the channel to an alt now they haven’t heard back. They might monitor this channel for communications, but they won’t use it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “You know where Samir is and where the shifters are being kept. So spill it and I’ll keep the tiger from killing you.”

Cal gave me a bitter, tight smile. “No,” he said. “I need to know things first.”

“Like hell you do,” Harper said, starting toward him with her murderface on.

“We should try the diplomatic chat option before hitting the kill button.” I put out my arm, stopping her. “What do you want, Cal?”

He looked me over with an obvious up-and-down sweep of his eyes, assessing. He was a predator, through and through. In some ways, he reminded me of a shorter, brown-haired, less-dramatic-looking Alek.

“You’re a gamer, too,” he said after he finished his assessment.

“Talk,” Alek said with a soft growl.

“I want you to save my boss,” Cal said. “I think he’s under some kind of spell.”

“The big white bear?” I guessed, thinking back to the fight that happened in the alternate timeline.

“Vollan,” Cal said with a nod. “Been running with him a long time. He’s a damn good boss. Keeps us safe, gets us paid. This job, well, it ain’t usual. We’ve taken people before, held ’em for ransom, that kind of thing. Taking other shifters? We don’t usually do that.”

“You took my brother,” Harper said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“The kid? Yeah. Nobody was supposed to die. After that, couple of us tried to talk to the boss. Tried to say how the job wasn’t what we’d expected. Arenson had point on that; he’d always been good with the boss, had his ear. Vollan shut him down. Then he left him on patrol after we all pulled out. When we asked where he was, boss just said he wasn’t coming back.”

“The two wolves?” Levi asked. “That whole camp was rigged to blow with magic, you know.”

Cal seemed to sag in place, his shoulders dipping. “So he is gone. Szabo too?”

“Both,” Alek said, his voice still ice.

“Fuck,” Cal said. His brown eyes met mine. “That isn’t how Vollan is. He doesn’t do this. We don’t work with humans, either, or other merc groups. Capturing girls, bringing in kids to get killed, all this, it’s shit. Total shit.”

“Okay, so your boss took a shitty job. Walk away.” I still didn’t see how this was my problem. I wanted his information, but I didn’t know what he wanted yet. If his own people hadn’t been able to change this Vollan’s mind, I didn’t see how I could.

“No, I’m not explaining it right,” Cal said. He threw his hands up and then squeezed his fingers into fists as though he’d crush the air around him. “I think my boss is under a spell,” he said. “I think he’s being mind-controlled.”

“Is that possible?” Ezee asked me.

I searched my memories as quickly as I could. Tess seemed to have no idea if Samir could do that or not. I had no idea. But Samir had been around a long time.

“It’s not impossible,” I said finally. “I need more information. What makes you think it is a spell?”

“How he acts, what he does. Like he’s angry but he can’t take it out in the right way. After Harper got away, Vollan called me out and we walked the perimeter. I thought he knew I’d helped her, but he didn’t say shit. Finally he just looked at me and nodded with this strange look in his eye. I don’t even know how to explain it. Like desperation. Like he wanted to speak but just flat couldn’t.” Cal took a half step toward me, desperation in his own eyes. Alek growled again and he stopped moving.

“If this was a D&D game, I’d think it was a geas,” Ezee said.

I glanced at Ezee and he shrugged. He was right. It did sound like some kind of control thing. Maybe. If Cal wasn’t just crazy. But this guy had helped Harper escape; she didn’t deny that. He was here now and he knew where Samir was and what he was planning.

“Geese?” Cal said, his eyes flicking between us.

“Ge-as,” I repeated. It was magic so outside my own experience and utility that I had to take a moment to wrap my head around how I’d even do something like that. But Samir… he would. I could see it. A spell like that would take a lot of power to maintain, since magic often weakened with distance. Unless…

“Does Vollan have something he wears all the time? Something he never takes off, ever?” Samir loved objects, I knew. He was good at making them.

Cal’s eyes lit up. “His dog tags. He fought in the Second World War Talks about it all the time. How he was out there killing Nazis. He never takes those things off.”

“Samir could have anchored a spell to those, maybe. It’s not guaranteed, just a guess,” I added.

“It makes sense,” Cal said, clearly latching on to whatever hope he could.

I almost felt sorry for him. He was a killer who had helped Samir wreck my life and kill my friends, but in some ways he was also a victim of Samir’s evil machinations. And he really did seem to want to help his boss. He was here risking his life to try to do that. Loyalty like that, I understood and kind of admired.

“Great, that’s solved—where is Samir and where are the shifters?” Harper said.

“Can you break the spell?” Cal asked me, ignoring Harper.

“Maybe,” I said. I’d seen that question coming from a mile away. “Killing Samir, which I’m going to do anyway, will break it. So you are going to get what you want no matter what.”

Cal shook his head. “Not good enough. You have to break the spell first. You help me, save Vollan, I will help you.”

“No,” Alek said. “There is no time for this.” He pointedly glanced out the window. The sun was dropping behind the trees. He was right.

“Do you know what Samir is going to do?” I asked Cal. “He’s going to raise an Irish god from the dead, then eat the heart and become a god himself. So sorry, but our quest is, like, a million times more important. We only have until moonrise. So quit fucking around and tell us what we need to know. Once Samir is gone, your boss will be free anyway.”

“No,” Cal said again. “I know he’s doing some ritual. He knows that you will try to stop him. He’s got my whole pack arranged around him with high-powered rifles. You think you all can fight through that?”

“I’m a sorceress,” I said, trying to imitate Alek’s cold confidence. “You think a few guns are going to stop me?”

“What if those guns were on your side? Or at least gone?” Cal said. He dropped his chin and folded his arms. He was stubborn and brave; I’d give him that. “You free my boss, I know he’ll get us out. Or even help you. He won’t be too well disposed to Samir. Boss doesn’t like anyone calling his shots. And you are going to need help.” He cast his gaze over our admittedly ragtag group.

“One of those guys outside called for help,” Levi reminded us. “Are they going to come here?”

Cal shrugged. “I doubt it. They might send a few guys, but as you said, shit is going down soon. They’ll assume their guys are gone. I haven’t seen much loyalty in that crowd.” He looked like he wanted to spit, his lip curling at the thought of the human mercenaries.

Everyone was looking at me. Ezee and Levi had mirrored looks of speculation and interest. Harper looked torn between believing Cal and killing him. Alek looked very much on the side of killing him. I turned my head to fully meet Rachel’s gaze, and she gave a little shrug and nodded down at her leg. She wasn’t going with us regardless.

“He telling the truth?” I asked Alek baldly.

“He is,” Alek said. “To his knowledge.”

“He’s not bespelled,” I said. “I checked him when he first showed up.”

“Please, this will work for us both,” Cal said.

“Fine,” I said. He had a point. I didn’t really need Alek’s Justice senses to tell me he was genuinely concerned about his boss. “To break the spell I have to be with your boss. I can’t do it from here.”

“Okay,” Cal said. He reached slowly down and drew a small flip phone out of his cargo pants pocket. “I’ll call him. I think I can get him to meet us. I don’t know if he’ll come alone, but he might if I word it right. I think he wants help and I think he knows I suspect something. He still trusts me.”

“Where is Samir?” I asked. “You’ve got my promise we’ll help. Time to hold up your end.”

“Juniper College,” he said, confirming our speculations. “They got the shifters and some others locked up in a church-looking building. Samir is down on some kind of sports field, it’s all surrounded by trees which is why he has us watching his back. Human mercs are in charge of the shifters.”

“Student Commons,” Ezee said. “It’s a converted chapel. Stone building, only two ways in or out. Narrow, high windows with steel wire to keep birds off the stained glass. It’s practically a fortress. We always joked if zombies attacked, we’d hole up there.”

“Well, shit,” Harper said, echoing my thoughts.

“One problem at a time,” I said. “Call your boss. Let’s get ourselves over to Juniper, or as close as we can get, and then figure out a plan.”

“I’m staying here to guard Mikhail and Vasili,” Rachel said. “Not much use anyway until this heals. I should shift.”

“You gonna be okay here alone?” Levi asked.

“You will need all the help you can get at the college,” Rachel said. “I’ll be fine. Bears will wake up, then we’ll try to get to you if we can. There’s a couple of rifles, a shotgun, and a spare Glock in my car, if you want them.”

I bent over and shook her hand. “Thank you, Sheriff,” I said. “Good luck.”

“You too, Jade, you too,” Rachel said. Then she shifted, turning from stocky human to a black-furred wolf.

We walked outside, Rachel limping behind us. She flopped on the welcome mat outside the door. Ezee left the cabin open so she’d have easy cover if shit went down. The bears were still enjoying their forced beauty sleep in the snow and on the trailer. The sun was setting. Moonrise would follow soon after. I stared at Cal’s back as he opened his phone and dialed a number, hoping I wasn’t making a horrible mistake.

Harper sat on Ezee’s lap in the front seat. Alek and I wedged Cal between us in the back. There was no way to be comfortable or to not come in contact with each other, so we sucked it up and squished in.

Alek tried to interrogate Cal more while we drove toward Juniper, but the merc was silent, just shaking his head every time Alek growled a question. After a few minutes, Alek gave up.

I sat there gripping the arm on the door for balance and to keep minimal contact with Cal. I tried not to panic about how quickly things were happening now. Vollan would meet Cal at the bottom of the college drive where there was a turnaround and a small gatehouse. Cal couldn’t be sure the other mercenaries, the human ones, wouldn’t be there, but he said Vollan had confirmed that everyone was busy at the moment.

I had a short car ride to figure out my new problem. How to break a geas or a control spell or whatever it was. If this were a game of D&D, it would have be simple enough. Cast Wish or Miracle or Remove Curse. Though that last one wouldn’t work. I was pretty sure Samir was still levels higher than I was, even with my new dragon subclass. I smiled to myself, almost wishing I could share these thoughts with Harper and the twins. They were silent, focusing on their own inner demons and desires, I imagined. So I stayed quiet, too.

This was no game. There was no simple answer. Or was there? Remove the tags. Nullify the magic. Samir would have some kind of protection on the dog tags. A compulsion not to remove them, perhaps, or a spell that would trigger or cause horrible pain if anyone tried. He’d put necklaces on both myself and Tess that had things like that involved. Samir wasn’t likely to change his MO for no good reason. Why fuck with what had worked for who knew how many centuries?

Tess. I almost face-palmed. I’d brute-forced my own necklace off. But Tess had removed hers with a much more elegant bit of magic. I had her memories, her powers. There was a chance I could use the same magic to remove Vollan’s tags. The danger was that Samir might feel his spell falling apart, but there was nothing I could think of to negate that. It didn’t matter if he knew I was coming for him or not, in the end. I was going to come for him anyway.

Plan in place, I closed my eyes and sifted through Tess’s memory, matching it up with my own. I’d witnessed the magic; now I just had to study how to recreate it.

We arrived too soon. I climbed out of the Jeep, not at all confident. I was just going to have to fake it until I made it. Levi pulled the Jeep off to the side. Vollan was nowhere in sight. The drive was plowed, the turnaround clear with snow piled on the sides like walls. The road turned and was forested with ancient oaks and some transplanted, stumpy-looking juniper that gave the college its name.

“He’s going to see us and bolt,” I said. “I really think we should hide, put the Jeep up the road or something.” It was an objection I’d raised back at the RV park.

“No, he won’t,” Cal said.

“He is already here,” Alek said softly as he moved up beside me.

A huge white bear emerged from the woods, moving with speed and silence I would not have thought possible. He paused after he leapt the snow wall, head down, looking at Cal and then at us.

Then he shifted, becoming a big man with a shock of silver-threaded black hair. He was wearing a green parka. A gun appeared in his hand like magic. I hadn’t even seen him move.

“Cal,” he said. “You all right?” His eyes flicked to Alek, who had a gun out now also.

Shifter speed. I was never going to get used to it.

Magic coursed through me with a thought. They weren’t the only ones who could be quick. I wrapped my power around Vollan in ropes, not pulling tight until I had him mummified. Then I squeezed with my mind, jerking him off his feet and down. His arms flattened to his sides and he hit the icy pavement hard, trying to kick free of my magic.

“Don’t fight her,” Cal said. “Please, trust me.”

Vollan started cursing and promising to do terrible things to Cal’s mother.

I had no idea if there was anyone close enough to hear him. We had to get the second part of the plan rolling, and now. Levi and Ezee grabbed rifles out of the back of the Jeep and fanned out, keeping an eye on the road leading up to the college. Alek and Cal moved quickly to Vollan, pinning him with their bodies. I was going to need to let my “hold person” spell go in order to get that necklace off without killing him. I wasn’t dumb enough to multitask magic I hadn’t practiced or performed before.

Vollan quit swearing and glared at me as I dug his dog tags out of his parka. Samir’s magic dripped from them like the sickly honey it smelled of. It mingled with the cigar-smoke stench clinging to the bear shifter and turned my stomach. My guess had been right.

“It’s the tags,” I said to Cal and Alek. “Hold him.” I released the spell.

Vollan didn’t do more than token-struggle. He also didn’t shift. I had a feeling maybe Cal was right. Looking into Vollan’s pale eyes, I saw a man who was trapped and couldn’t help himself. He had to fight us, because I bet the spell was making him fight, but he could skirt around really fighting it.

I gripped the tags, swallowing bile at the feel of Samir’s magic. Consolation prize was that this would hopefully be the last day of my life I’d ever have to deal with it.

If it wasn’t just the last day of my life, period.

With that happy thought, I closed my eyes. I gathered my magic and thought of Tess, of her magic, clear and cold and precise. The air around us grew thick, the world holding its breath as I messed, only a little, with time itself. Then I hummed a soft note as I opened my eyes and yanked on the dog tags.

The chain and tags slid clear of Vollan’s neck, the chain moving straight through his flesh as though it weren’t there at all. For a moment Tess was there in my mind, a ghost of a smile on her ruby-red lips. She nodded to me, pleased, before she faded away into the silver circle that Wolf had constructed inside my head to hold my ghosts at bay.

I threw the tags into the snow beyond us as I stood up. They sank away into the white wet, the feel of Samir’s power fading as the snow engulfed them.

“I am free,” Vollan said with awe in his voice. “I can’t hear him anymore.” He looked at Cal, and a wild grin broke out on his face.

Alek looked at me and I nodded. He released Vollan and backed up, his hand casually resting on the gun at his waist.

“Good to have you back, Boss,” Cal said, offering Vollan a hand up.

“How did you know?” Vollan asked.

“Talk later,” Alek said. “We upheld bargain. Your turn.”

“Bargain?” Vollan looked at Alek and then to Cal.

“We free you, you help us stop Samir,” I said. “What’s his plan? Where is he now?”

“That the deal you made, son?” Vollan said to Cal as he bent and retrieved his gun.

Alek growled, but the big bear just made a sour face at him. “I ain’t gonna shoot you,” he said. “Just not leaving my weapon on the ground.”

“Yeah,” Cal said. “That’s the deal I made. We shouldn’t be here, Boss. This isn’t our thing.”

“All right.” Vollan ran a hand through his hair, making it stand up in the growing chill. “Sorcerer is up that way, in that field tucked down at the bottom of campus. Not that far if you go through the woods. The humans are up doing something around that church. I think they are going to blow the place up. Lot of shifters been taken up there in cages. We ain’t been a part of that.”

“Blow the place up?” Harper said, moving toward us. Behind her I saw Ezee and Levi exchange a worried look.

“I smelled some things, like Semtex, maybe. I never did much with demolitions, but you don’t really forget the smells,” Vollan answered her.

That made sense in a sick way. Samir liked explosions. He had blown up things before. Like my adoptive family. At a school, no less. Maybe time really was a flat circle like that character in True Detective had said.

“Could you bring down the building with that? Enough to kill shifters? He needs a sacrifice,” Harper said.

“He could if he augments it with magic, I suppose,” I said. Not a happy thought. He’d used a regular-old-dynamite-type bomb before, but also had exploding stones placed at intervals to magnify the blast. The school had burned for days. My nails dug into my palms hard enough to hurt. Freyda, her pack, Vivian—all of them were locked up in that chapel. Not again. Not fucking again.

“Worse than that,” Ezee said, exchanging another worried look with Levi. “There’s an old boiler room and some steam tunnels that run right under the Commons. I ran a Spycraft game set here once, before Jade’s time. We used blueprints and figured out you could drop half the school in on itself if you put enough explosives in those tunnels. Put them right under the chapel? Boom. No more chapel.”

I’d been in those tunnels with Ezee before. An evil warlock had been using them for his lair. It was true; nothing good happened to gamers in steam tunnels.

“We stop Samir, the bomb won’t go off, right?” Harper said.

“Humans are in charge of the bomb,” Vollan said. “I don’t know what their orders are, but given where they put their trailers? I’d say they are expecting the center to go. Samir seems the type to build in contingencies, too.”

“He is,” I said. I rubbed the bridge of my nose. We were fucked.

“I know a way into those tunnels,” Ezee said. “What if we got to the bomb—could we disarm it?”

“This isn’t a spy movie,” Levi said.

“Yes, I could,” Cal said. “It’s what I did for the army.”

“You waited until now to say that? Seriously?” Harper glared at him.

“Dramatic reveal,” he said with a half-smile.

I couldn’t decide if I wanted to shake his hand or punch him. He was almost likeable, for a stone-cold killer.

“I kind of hate you,” Harper muttered.

Cal just shrugged.

I looked up at the sky. It wasn’t dark yet, but we could count the daylight left in terms of minutes, not hours.

“Can you get your men away from Samir? Or at least get me through the line?” I asked Vollan.

“Maybe,” he said. “I can get you through to the sorcerer. We’ve got orders not to shoot you until he gives the signal anyway. That’s why I came out of the trees when I saw Cal wasn’t alone. I remembered you. The little part of my head that was still mine hoped you could help.”

“Glad you were right,” I said. “Can you stop them from shooting?” Last thing I wanted to worry about was dodging bullets and shielding myself from gunfire while trying to fight Samir also. It warmed my heart that my ex was scared enough to give orders to shoot me if he needed it, though. He wasn’t as confident as he appeared. That or he was just a deck-stacking asshole. Probably a little from column A and a little from column B.

“If you give me enough time to get around to their positions,” he said.

“I can stall Samir,” I said, hoping I wasn’t full of shit. I could certainly distract him, at least.

“What about the bomb?” Harper asked.

“You guys are going to have to handle that,” I said, turning to her. “Think you can get Cal into those tunnels? Show him where the room is?”

“Zomg, you are letting us help?” Harper leaned forward and squinted at me. “Pod person, I’m sure of it.”

“Maybe I learned that friendship is magic,” I said. “Don’t push it. Don’t do anything stupid and do not get yourself killed. I’ll raise you from the dead and kill you again if you do. Promise.”

“I go with Jade,” Alek said in a tone that shut up any argument I had.

“I face Samir alone,” I said. “Nonnegotiable, Alek.”

“Ah, there’s our girl,” Harper said.

We hashed out a quick plan that was likely suicide. But we were gamers. Rushing into certain death hoping we could win was pretty much par for the course for us. I was putting my friends’ lives in the hands of a mercenary who had helped kidnap Max and Rosie. Who had also helped free Harper. I was putting my and Alek’s safety in the hands of a bear who had, in another timeline, killed two of my friends.

Desperation breeds strange bedfellows. With quick hugs all around, I followed Alek and Vollan into the woods. It was endgame. The boss fight loomed, and no matter how unready I felt, there was no turning back. Not this time. Not ever again.

In fox form, Harper ran along behind Cal, Levi, and Ezee. Cal and Levi stayed in human form, carrying the guns. Ezee was in his coyote shape, running slightly ahead, scouting for them. As they got to the edge of the first set of dorms, they had to slow down.

Three big RVs were parked in the lower lot, barely visible as they ran through the trees toward the center. A dozen men were clustered around the Campus Security building, but they were definitely human. None of them even glanced their way, though a shifter probably could have heard or smelled them coming. The wind was not in Harper and her friends’ favor.

Ezee skirted the brick dorm building. The Student Commons lay in the center of everything, like the circle at the heart of a wheel. Ezee had explained there were two ways to get the old boiler room below it. One was through the Commons itself, but that had been sealed off when the renovations were done to convert the chapel into what it was today. The other entrance was in the Math and Science building to the right of the Commons, dead ahead of them now.

Campus was dead quiet once they snuck past the men around the security office. When she glanced that way, she saw the Commons’ main doors were locked with a web of silver wire. Harper shivered as she ran, and it had nothing to do with the snow. Samir’s magic was sealing the door, she was sure of it. Not a good sign.

Three men sporting automatic weapons and wearing body armor emerged from the Sciences building. She’d been so focused on what was beside and behind that Harper didn’t see them until they were shouting and raising their guns.

Cal dropped one of them with a headshot worthy of any zombie killer. The shot rang out like a clarion call in the silence. Harper dove into the deeper snow off the path. Ezee charged ahead as Levi dropped the rifles he’d been holding and drew a pistol. A bullet whizzed by Harper’s ear.

More shouting. More gunfire. All three of the men ahead of them were down. Harper charged past them and into the building, shifting to human as soon as her feet hit the tiled floor.

Cal took up the rear and yanked the door shut behind them.

“We’ve got seconds. Let’s go,” he said. He wasn’t even breathing hard, the bastard.

Harper reminded herself that he was on their side and shoved away her annoyance and anger. She followed Ezee, who had also shifted to human, down the hall and then down a narrow set of stairs.

Harper stayed on his heels as they crashed through a fire door and into an even narrower hallway. Ezee stopped abruptly and threw her to the side as a bullet clipped his arm, spraying her face with warm blood. The gunshot sound was booming and disorienting in the narrow space. More shots from behind them rang out and Harper twisted, shifting back to fox to lower her profile.

The fire door banged shut, cutting her off from Levi as he and Cal turned to fire up the stairs. Ezee went down beside her, shifting as he fell. No shots came at them. Down the hallway, Harper saw the silhouetted figure of a man. He was messing with something in his hands. His gun? She didn’t care.

Harper threw aside her fear and charged down the hall at the gunman. His gun had jammed. He threw it at her and tried to pull something from his belt but she was too fast. Harper remembered body armor so she went for his throat, letting her animal instincts guide her. Her teeth sank home, blood filling her mouth, flesh squelching and crunching in her jaws. It was disgusting but she ripped and tore, thinking only of survival.

Ezee barreled past them, leaping over them both as Harper took her prey down to the ground. He grabbed her by her scruff and dragged her forward with him, still running. Harper didn’t fight, but got her legs underneath her and scrambled beside him. Ezee was shouting. Shouting a word over and over.

Blood rushed in her ears, and they still rang from the gunfire but Harper made out what he was saying.

Grenade.

The gunman hadn’t thrown his jammed gun at her. He’d thrown a grenade.

The explosion rocked the world, or so it felt like. Chunks of concrete rained down and the ceiling groaned. A wave of force threw Harper and Ezee down, knocking the air from Harper’s lungs. There was a secondary crash and then all she heard was ringing, like an alarm someone had forgotten to shut off.

She reached into the mist and found her human form, shifting away from the injured, unhappy fox.

“Harper, you okay?” Ezee whispered. Or shouted. She couldn’t tell. His face was caked with cement dust.

“Biblethump,” she said.

“Thank God,” he said. He helped her to her feet.

Feet. She still had them. Small mercies. Her human body had been safe from the blast, so she bet that she looked ridiculously clean compared to Ezee. Harper turned to look behind them and saw only a pile of rubble. Complete cave-in. The blast had shoved the body of the gunman down the hallway with them. He lay in a dusty, crumpled heap. She could still taste his blood.

Harper swallowed the bile that rose at that thought. Nope. Big fat cup of nope. She wasn’t going to barf. They had to figure shit out.

Her ears were healing, the ringing retreating. She looked at Ezee.

“How do we get out of here?” she asked.

“That’s the bad news,” he said, brushing ineffectually at his coat. “That was the only way in or out.”

“Where’s the boiler room?”

“That way,” Ezee said.

Harper started walking. Her heart was still beating. She could mostly breathe. She felt strangely numb, and wondered if that was shock. They found the boiler room right where Ezee thought it was, about thirty feet farther down. There were no other gunmen in their way. They seemed to be completely alone down here.

“Least there are no more bad guys,” Ezee said from behind her. “We can’t get out, but nobody can come down here either. Hope Levi is okay,” he added, almost too softly for her to hear.

Pushing through the metal door into the boiler room, Harper groaned.

“Never lucky,” she muttered. “Great. We’re locked in with a freaking bomb.”

The old lower field wasn’t used much except by the Ultimate Frisbee team. It was tucked down into the woods surrounding Juniper and a bit of walk down a hill from the main part of campus. The woods around it were kept clear of invasive species and brush, but otherwise left to grow wild. Vollan was in his bear form, but he pointed with his muzzle in the direction of the field, his silent intent clear.

I was to go that way. He and Alek would go along the perimeter and alert his men to the change in plan.

I leaned into Alek’s chest and he curled his arms around me. We didn’t risk words, just stood for an all-too-brief moment.

“I love you,” I mouthed to him as we pulled apart finally.

Alek smiled and mouthed “Good” back to me.

There was nothing more to say. He shifted to tiger, and then he and the huge white bear disappeared into the trees, moving quickly and quietly, Alek’s black-and-white tiger blending into the shadows.

I turned and made my way to the edge of the field. Magic and adrenaline flowed through me, washing away my fear and my fatigue. This was it. The last midnight. The boss fight.

First would come the talking in the hopes I could distract him so he didn’t blow up my friends.

Yeah. Some things never change.

I felt his power in the form of a ward on the field before I stepped out of the trees. The field was pristine with snow, except for a huge charred circle burned into it. Samir stood at the center of the circle, his honey-sweet power rippling around him. A stone box carved with ornate patterns I couldn’t quite make out at this distance lay to one side of him. Balor’s head, I assumed. Samir was prepared for the ritual, waiting for moonrise.

Moon wasn’t up yet. I walked out of the trees, ready to shield myself and hoping nobody shot me in the back. I’d been shot enough for one lifetime.

Samir didn’t seem surprised to see me. He stood silently watching me approach. When I reached the edge of the circle, he held up one hand. I stopped, mostly of my own volition. I wasn’t ready to provoke him yet, so there was little harm in doing what he wanted. For the moment.

He was dressed more like a man attending a nice dinner than someone preparing a winter ritual. He had on dark grey pinstripe slacks and a maroon sweater. Samir’s only concession to the snow and cold were a very functional-looking pair of black boots. Not a hair was out of place and his face still looked thirty, handsome and unlined.

His golden eyes were wary, tiny creases giving away a hint of strain. I might have been imagining that part. Wishful thinking is a powerful thing.

One thing was painfully clear to me. I was not ready for this. I didn’t know if I’d ever be ready. My heartbeat slowed. My fingers tingled with more than the chill of the air. I tried to think up something clever or snarky to open with, but my mind wouldn’t obey.

“Jade,” Samir said. “I had a feeling you would come.”

“What? Miss you trying to do something this stupid? Never,” I said.

“Stupid?” His golden eyes narrowed slightly.

“Raising Balor? A god of blight and other bad shit? You think he’s going to stand here while you eat his heart?” Keep him talking, I thought. Let’s go.

“No, I don’t intend to let him stand at all. This circle isn’t just for resurrection.” Samir motioned to the black circle and I saw there were other patterns cut into it, burned down into the bare and blackened earth. Looking at them made my brain hurt.

“The Fey are letting you do this because they think the gods will return. You won’t be the baddest thing out there anymore,” I said, playing one of my trump cards. I doubted that Samir cared, but I was willing to say just about anything to keep him talking.

“You always were too clever,” he said. “I underestimated you, Jade. I don’t do that often.”

I snorted. “Really? You might want to reexamine your track record.”

His eyes were slits now, his mouth tight. Samir definitely didn’t like me laughing at him.

“Raising Balor will not break the Seal,” he said. “But it will weaken it. More magic in the world is a good thing. The humans and other animals have ruled too long. We used to be revered, not hunted and hiding in the shadows.” So, he knew about the Seal. And didn’t care. Not a surprise there.

“What if I smudge this line?” I asked, poking a toe forward at the black line.

“It’s representational. The magic is in place. The lines were just there as a guide. Mess with it all you want.” Samir shrugged, too casually. His eyes flicked over my head.

I worried he had noticed some kind of movement in the woods, and then I realized that the moon would be rising in the direction he looked. He was keeping track of the time. Which meant I was running out of it. Samir would want to end me before he had to do his ritual.

“Moon up yet?” I asked, not wanting to turn and look. I knew it wasn’t. Not quite. The sky was still too light. The sunset made the woods behind Samir look like they were on fire.

“You will know when it is,” Samir said. “We’ll be celebrating with a bang.”

“The bomb you have under the Student Commons?” I said. His eyebrows went up. He hadn’t realized I knew. “I don’t think so.” It felt so damn good to be able to surprise him.

His cloying magic rippled out from him in the direction of the college center. To my dragon-enhanced mage-vision it looked like a thick cord running up the hill. Until he awakened it, I hadn’t noticed it among all the other magic stacked up around us. His line to the sacrifice. I was going to have to snip that somehow.

But not yet. No telling what effect that would have. I decided to wait on that as a last resort. Seeing magic was apparently a dragon thing, not a sorcerer thing. It was a big advantage that I had. Samir could probably detect magic. He’d dodged my spells easily enough in the past, but I bet he had to use concentration to do it. I had for the most part, until my dragon-self had fully integrated. Now I just saw magic if I looked for it.

“I’m surprised you are here, then,” Samir said. “Not up there, trying to save them. Going to let them all die just like before?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “I’m going to stop you.” Keep him talking, and nobody explodes. Time was running out like sand through my fingers. I hoped that Vollan and Alek were ready. I hoped that Cal had made it to the bomb.

Samir laughed, the sound chilling me far worse than the icy air. His magic coalesced around him, and I knew time wasn’t just running out… it was gone.

The grenade had collapsed a section of the tunnel just inside the doorway. It must have found some kind of old structural weakness to cause this much damage, Harper thought. She scrabbled at the debris, pulling bits of stone and twisted rebar away. There was no telling how thick the cave-in was or if the stairs behind the door were safe. If Levi was safe.

She pushed that thought away. No point worrying about him when she had no way to know. At least nobody was shooting at them anymore.

“This is like that scene at the end of Cabin in the Woods,” Ezee said. He had stripped off his coat and was working beside her.

“What? Waiting around for the world to explode?” Harper made a face at him in the dim light. She’d been relatively clean before, but digging in rock debris had fixed that.

“I guess I’m the fool and you are the virgin,” Ezee said, pulling free another chunk of concrete. More dust and rock slid into place in the dent he’d just created.

“Hey now,” Harper protested. “How do you know it isn’t the other way around? I’m pretty funny. I have antics.”

“Honey,” Ezee said, his dark eyes glinting in the light filtering out from the boiler room, “I am no virgin.”

“Neither am I,” Harper said.

“When’s the last time you had sex?”

“Whoa now. Just because the Sahara is a desert doesn’t mean it never rains there.” Harper gave up on her section and walked a few steps down the hall. The dead mercenary was still heaped there. It was a testament to how much rock dust must have been in the corridor that she couldn’t really smell the blood anymore.

She nudged his body with her foot. They were going to die here because of this asshole. It was totally unfair.

“It’s all fun and games until someone throws a grenade,” she said, punctuating her words with a hard kick to the corpse’s stomach.

A rectangular piece of plastic shot free of the body and spun into the corridor.

Harper looked at Ezee. “Radio,” they said at the same time. She kicked herself for not remembering one of the first rules of adventuring. Always loot the corpse.

Harper snatched it up. Ezee followed her down the hall to the boiler room as she brought it into the light for examination.

The radio seemed intact. A red light blinked on it.

“How do we call for help?” Harper asked. “This thing has numbers on it. Must be the channels?”

“It’s the bad-guy radio,” Ezee said. “They’ll be monitoring the signal. Is it even working? We haven’t heard it.”

“Volume was all the way down,” Harper said, twisting the nob. “What are the odds that Levi or Cal are near a corpse?”

“And not buried under that rubble?” Ezee said, his face grim.

He’d clearly been trying not to dwell on his own fears for Levi. Harper empathized with that.

“Worth a try,” Harper said. She clicked the side button to talk. “Leviticus,” she yelled into it. “This is Fox paging Leviticus, over.”

Levi hated his full name as much as she hated hers. Hopefully if he were alive and could hear the bad guys’ radios, he’d find a way to answer.

The radio crackled almost immediately, making Harper flinch, as she still had it near her face with the volume all the way up.

“Azalea,” a voice said. It wasn’t Levi’s, but Cal’s. “Channel not clear.”

“He didn’t say ‘over’ yet,” Harper said as Ezee tried to grab for the radio.

“I don’t think anyone actually talks like that,” Ezee said.

“I’m a condemned woman,” Harper said, motioning toward the bomb she was trying not to look at. “Don’t ruin my paramilitary dreams.”

“Ask him if Levi is okay,” Ezee said.

“He called me Azalea. I’m sure Levi is fine. But he said channel not clear.”

“We’re on the bad guys’ channel. See those numbers? We have to change somehow, but if you say a number to switch to, they can just switch to listen in or jam it or something.”

“Not if we use code,” Harper said, her mind racing. She studied the numbers and then clicked the button. “Zerg cheese, I repeat go to Zerg cheese,” she said into the radio.

“Zerg cheese?” Ezee raised an eyebrow.

“Cal is a gamer. He plays Zerg. He’ll know.” Harper clicked the dial over to the channel, praying she was right and that this worked.

“Six pool,” the radio said. “Funny.”

“Is Levi okay?” Harper asked, relief flooding through her. He’d understood the channel change.

“I’m okay. We’re pinned down but safe enough,” Levi’s voice came through the radio. “You guys?”

Ezee fist-pumped and muttered a prayer of thanks to the ceiling.

“Ezee is here with me. We’re good. Except this bomb.”

“Um, Harper?” Ezee said, looking at the bomb.

There was what looked like a circuit board on top of a pile of orange-putty bricks. The board had a line of lights. Lights that had been dark except for a single red one earlier. Now they were green and blinking on and off in a line.

“The bomb just started blinking,” Harper told Cal.

“Describe it,” Cal said. “And describe where you are, what tools you might have.”

Harper took a deep breath and looked around the room, then back at the bomb.

“Red bricks, maybe twenty of them all wrapped in gold wire? It’s just a block in the center of the room, on the floor. There are wires from a circuit board thing going into the bricks. Two sets of wires with metal at the brick parts. Not much else here. A sink. Some folding chairs. No tools.”

“I’ll check the corpse,” Ezee said, heading out the door.

“You ever played that game where you disarm a bomb while the other person has the manual?”

“I suck at that game,” Harper said.

“You’re one of the best pro gamers I’ve ever seen,” Cal said. “You got this. Tell me about the bomb.”

“The bricks look like C-4, but they are orange. Oh, there’s a weird crystal taped to the side, too. Looks like smoky quartz or something?”

“Do the bricks have numbers on them?”

“No, writing. Not English.”

“Cyrillic,” Ezee said, coming back into the room. He had a flak jacket and the gunman’s belt with him. “Leatherman,” he added, holding up the belt. “So we got tools.”

“Cyrillic,” Harper repeated to Cal.

“How many red wires?” Cal asked.

Harper moved closer to the bomb. She bent and examined the wires. They were all white.

“No red wires,” she said, hoping that wasn’t bad.

“No red wires,” Cal repeated. Then there was silence over the radio for what felt like eternity.

Sweat trickled down the back of Harper’s neck, itching in the cement dust and hair stuck there. She was no bomb expert and this was no game. Deep breath, she told herself. Don’t panic.

“There are two spots the wires go into the C-4?” Cal said, the radio crackling.

“Yes.”

“Hand the radio to Ezee,” Cal said. “You are going to need both hands.”

Harper looked at Ezee. He put down his loot and took the radio, giving her a quick thumbs-up.

“You kill us, at least we don’t die alone,” he said with a forced grin.

Harper bared her teeth at him.

Ezee clicked the radio on. “Go ahead; she’s ready,” he said.

“Okay. Harper. Put both hands on the wires where they join the metal pins.”

Harper did so and nodded to Ezee.

“Done,” Ezee said.

“Now, on the count of three, I want you to pull. Smooth and fast, got it?”

“Got it.”

Harper felt the wires under her fingertips, felt the cool metal pins and their slightly rough edges. Time seemed to slow. Just her breath easing out and the sound of Cal counting down from three over the radio.

Three. Two. One.

She pulled. The long metal bits slid out of the C-4, leaving Harper crouched in front of the bomb with two probe-like things attached to wires in her hands. She looked at Ezee and raised her eyebrows. The circuit board was still blinking green.

“She did it,” Ezee said. “Circuit board is still blinking.”

“Good,” Cal said. “She said there’s a sink? Take it to the sink.”

“Okay,” Harper said. She kept hold of the pins as Ezee helped cut the tape off the sides of the board. They walked it together to the sink and put it carefully down. Harper set the pins down carefully, too.

“It’s in the sink,” she said, taking the radio back from Ezee.

“Turn on the water?” Cal said.

Ezee and Harper shared a look. They had no idea if the water worked.

“Here goes nothing,” Ezee muttered. He twisted the tap.

Water choked and spat and then flowed out in a brownish rush. It smelled heavily of metal and rust, but it splashed down onto the electronics. The lights blinked on and then something popped and sizzled. Water plus electronics when powered was bad. Harper could put that together.

“It’s wet. Lights aren’t on anymore.” She left the water running.

“Congrats, you just disarmed your first bomb.” Cal’s voice was full of laughter.

“Wait, what? That was it?” Harper glared at the radio. “What about the explosives?”

“This isn’t the movies,” Cal said. “C-4 is very stable. Without the blasting caps and electric trigger, you could light it on fire and cook dinner with it and it wouldn’t blow up.”

“What about the crystal?” Ezee asked.

Harper repeated that question.

“Probably magic,” Cal said, sounding more serious. “Secondary trigger? Amplifier? That isn’t my area.”

“Let’s remove it,” Ezee said. “We can wrap it in the flak jacket and put it at the end of the hall.”

“Better than leaving it,” Harper agreed. She relayed the plan to Cal and Levi.

At the far end of the hall was a set of doors that were long sealed, the tunnel beyond bricked up and closed off. It was weird to think that only feet above her head was a room full of shifters awaiting their fate. In the end, she and Ezee dragged the body down there, too, piling it on top of the flak-jacket-wrapped crystal.

Nothing exploded.

“Can you guys come help dig us out? What’s going on up there?” Harper asked Cal as she slumped to the floor, leaning against the cool wall in relief.

“We’re on an upper floor, pinned down. They have retreated a bit though. We’re going to try getting out and finding some more guns. Levi is a crack shot,” Cal added.

“Of course he’s a crack shot,” Ezee muttered. “Raised on a rez in Idaho. Geez.”

Harper grinned at him and shook her head.

“We’ll be here,” she told Cal.

Ezee and Harper stared at each other for a moment and then both sighed.

“So, you wanna go keep digging? Or sit here and stare at a bomb while we talk about my sex life some more?” Harper asked.

“Digging sounds great.”

Gunfire crackled through the rising gloom, coming from up the hill. My friends must have gotten to the mercenaries. Time was definitely short.

Samir stopped laughing and looked toward the noise. He gave a small shake of his head.

“So you chose to come here, to stop me,” he said. “Stupid girl.”

Calm slid over me. This was it. It was time.

“See,” I said, gathering my magic into an invisible shield. I took a deliberate step into the circle, smudging the black line as I went. “You are older than I am, more powerful, way more tricky, but there’s something you just super suck at.”

“What is that?” Samir tipped his head to the side, watching my slow advance with narrowed eyes.

“Making friends,” I said. We were less than twenty feet apart now. It would have to be close enough. I threw up my shield, making it purple and sparkly and visible as hell.

Bullets zinged by me. Three bounced off Samir’s own protections, but the fourth found an angle he hadn’t shielded quickly enough. It cut a deep furrow into his arm, blood spraying in a mist in its path.

“Traitors,” Samir hissed. He wasn’t bleeding as much as I’d hoped, but he was definitely hurt. Score one for the good guys.

“Traitors?” I said. I threw an exploratory bolt of lightning at him. He bounced it away with a gesture. “Forced loyalty isn’t loyalty. Not hard to betray someone coercing you. Maybe you should have tried not being an evil motherfucker.”

A golden lash of power whipped toward me. I sprang back, barely keeping my feet on the uneven ground. His magic fizzled on my shield.

“Live long enough, Jade, you’ll learn that everyone betrays everyone eventually,” he snarled.

“I almost pity the lonely, sucking black hole inside you,” I said with a grunt as he whipped more power at me.

Samir changed his attack, throwing magic into the ground at my feet. Stones rose around me, burning with honey-sick power. I poured magic into my shield and charged at him. The stones burst, forming a thick, burning mist. I couldn’t see him anymore. One moment there was field and snow and Samir’s angry face, the next just burning fog.

I thrust my left hand out, my right gripping my talisman, and sent a wave of force to part the fog, calling up wind to disperse it.

Samir had moved. I barely dodged the golden whip of power snaking in from my left.

For a second my concentration wavered and my shield weakened. The burning fog coated my left hand, my skin blackening and blistering instantly.

Choking back a scream, I grabbed my shield around me again, running to my right, bringing the whirlwind to bear on the fog. It dissipated in time for me to dodge another whip.

“Running out of time,” I gasped at Samir, hoping to distract him. I was defending myself, more or less. But I wasn’t able to attack. Without offense, I couldn’t end this fight. I’d expended too much magic in the last two days, or maybe never had enough in the first place. I needed an edge, or I was going to lose and fast.

The moon was rising. I saw a sliver of it over the trees beyond Samir.

He turned his head, and I threw the power in my shield at him in a slam attack.

Tricks. Samir was so good at them. My shield rammed through his illusion as the real Samir jumped me from the right, materializing out of thin air. Only my dragon sense of his magic warned me.

I twisted and threw myself sideways, rolling on the hard ground. Burning golden power, reinforced with actual physical chains he’d thrown, wrapped around my legs instead of my body, as he’d intended. I slashed at it with my own magic, forming purple blades as extensions of my hands, cutting through his power. He yanked, dragging me along the ground toward him. The chain attached to my left leg wasn’t fully cut. I felt my femur bend, then snap.

Pain shot through me and I caught the wave with my magic, forcing myself not to feel it, cocooning the injury in power. I tried to stand, but my leg wouldn’t hold me.

I was losing. All the magic in the world wasn’t going to save me. He was too powerful.

Powerful. But predictable. I heard Ash’s voice in my head again. Samir was on his A game, working with the things in his comfort zone. Why wouldn’t he? They had never failed him.

He’d approach me, just as he was now, moving slowly toward me, gathering his power to him. He would want to gloat, to savor the moment he took my heart. I let my shoulders slump and pulled my own magic in close. It wasn’t that tough to look like I was defeated. I almost was.

Come a little closer, bastard. I let my right hand slip to the hilt of the Alpha and Omega but didn’t draw it. I didn’t want the motion to catch his attention. Not yet. I wasn’t the using weapons type, which Samir knew. This surprise was best saved for the last moment.

“You could have been amazing,” Samir said. “You should have stayed with me.”

“Until you ate me,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Perhaps I would have kept you,” Samir said with a half shrug. His eyes darted to the sky. “Ready to feel your friends die?” he asked. He released power, and the line up the hill became visible again.

“Not today,” I said. I released the knife hilt and slammed my good hand into the ground. I pictured my magic like a huge scythe and threw it toward the glowing umbilical cord of power. My magic met his and cut clean through it, burning away Samir’s gold with purple vengeance.

I slumped for real as the power faded. It had taken more than I thought to cut the cord.

Samir swore and advanced the last feet to me, caution gone.

“Stupid, meddling bitch,” he said. He grabbed me too fast for me to react.

My muscles were lead, my magic a whisper in my veins, my left leg screaming in pain. It was like my nightmare unfolding all over again. Another snowy field. Another dusk. Another moon.

Samir’s hand formed claws as he lifted me up. I tried to push him off with my bad hand and get to my knife with the good one. My ankle was too far away, my body bent unnaturally upward by Samir’s strength.

His sweater had pushed back and the angry scar, a wound that wouldn’t quite heal, showed on his forearm.

Wolf had done that.

Wolf, whom he had been afraid of.

Wolf, whom I had found and rejoined with.

I brought my good leg up hard, going for his balls or his abs or whatever I could connect with. Samir plunged his clawed hand into my chest even as the knife hilt touched my fingertips.

Now.

Wolf flowed out of her silver circle in my mind and manifested. She slammed into Samir from the side, hard enough that he lost his grip and his fingers slid out of me with a sucking sound that was worse than the pain.

“No,” he said, his face a death mask of hatred and horror as he stared at her.

I drew the Alpha and Omega and threw myself forward, my legs refusing to hold me. Samir and I ended up in an embrace as he caught me instinctually. The dagger slid into his chest, up through the soft tissue beneath his ribs.

We were eye to eye, close enough to kiss, his arms around me, half kneeling in the snow.

“Did I ever tell you the story of the scorpion and the frog?” he murmured.

I had no idea what he was trying to say. It didn’t matter.

I was all out of fucks to give.

I twisted the Alpha and Omega and shoved it up, straight into his evil heart.

Samir didn’t die so much as explode in a puff of glittering golden dust. Without him to hold me up, I fell forward into the snow. My bad hand caught my fall and I cried out, my own voice rough in my ears.

My hair had come out of its braid and fell around me in a curtain. Something red and glowing caught my eye on the ground in the shade of my hair. It was a tiny gem, no bigger than maybe half a carat, ruby or garnet in color.

Samir’s last drop of heart’s blood. It glinted in my palm as I lifted it with my blackened fingers. A trace of his power lingered on in it, the red depth shining gold for a second as I studied it. I touched the blade of the Alpha and Omega to it and the glow died.

All I had to do to end him for good was to swallow this little thing. Such a small drop of blood. It would be good-bye, Samir.

And hello all Samir’s power. His memories. Also… hello magic apocalypse.

I licked my lips and shook my head. Nope. I wanted him dead, but the consequences were too great. At least like this he couldn’t hurt anyone. If I could keep the heart stone safe. I wasn’t leaving it here.

Wolf bonked my good shoulder with her bony head and I looked up into her starry-night eyes. A thought formed in my mind as though it were mine, but I knew it was hers.

I dropped the dagger and lifted my talisman, turning the twenty-sided die until the one showed. Or where the one should be. Now it was just a pock-mark. A divot about the right size to slot in a tiny gem. I rested the die on my bad hand and picked up the heart stone.

“Here goes nothing,” I said to Wolf. I dropped the gem into the divot.

Silver light flashed, bright enough that I closed my eyes and still saw stars. When my lids were dark again, I opened my eyes. The gem was sealed into the metal as though it had been forged that way. I picked at it with a broken nail and found it glued tight. Samir’s heart wasn’t going anywhere. I resolved to make sure I touched it with the dagger at least once a day, but this was a solution I could live with for the moment.

Wolf bonked me again and then faded away, resuming her place inside my mind.

“Jade,” Alek called to me.

He was making his way across the field. He had not a scratch on him, from what I could see. I didn’t want to think about how tough it must have been for him to stand and watch me almost lose. I didn’t want to think about what he would have done if I had fallen.

From up the hill I heard more gunfire and hoped that was a good thing.

“My leg is broken,” I said to Alek as he got near. “Help?”

“He is destroyed?” Alek said, kneeling down beside me and feeling me over gently for other injuries.

“He’s gone, but I didn’t eat him,” I said. “No apocalypse.”

The wounds on my chest were already closing. My blistered arm looked worse than it felt now. It was mostly the leg. As Alek lifted me, I could almost hear the sections of bone grinding against each other. I pushed what magic I had left at it, trying to dull the pain. It took it down to a six on a scale of one to “kill me now.”

“Vollan?” I asked.

“Heading up to take care of the mercenaries.”

“Well. We won,” I said, leaning my cheek on his chest. “Let’s go find the others.”

“I should take you away from here,” Alek said.

“No. They might need a mage up top.” I glared up at him.

“I said ‘should,’ not would,” Alek murmured.

My glare turned in to a grin. “Giddyup,” I said.

It was a sign of how relieved he was for me to be alive that he didn’t even growl.

Vollan’s crew made swift work of the remaining human mercenaries. Levi and Cal had apparently already decimated them, forming a two-man army of doom. Harper and Ezee had disarmed the bomb, but were trapped below the Commons.

Samir’s magic still clung to the doors, so I ended up being needed after all. Wolf and I managed to cut through the silver wires. I was going to need to sleep for a week after this.

Freyda emerged first, her face thin and tired. Vivian followed and started immediately coordinating the full rescue after giving me a quick once-over and assuring Alek I’d live. The shifters were in bad shape—some of them had been locked up for days without food or water; some were still injured from their capture—but nobody had died. I sat propped in a chair Levi had dragged out of a building and watched them file out to freedom. There were more shifters in Wylde than even I’d realized. Children, too.

Many of them thanked Alek and I; some were crying. I sat awkwardly and tried to smile.

I had saved them. It was enough.

It took hours to dig Harper and Ezee out, but they were in decent shape and made it to Levi’s house with the rest of us while Alek took off into the woods to tell Yosemite, Rose, and Junebug that we’d won.

Mikhail offered Alek and I the use of an RV on his property until my place was rebuilt. I told him we’d think about it. Rachel was up at the state offices, giving the higher-ups some serious hell. She was confident she’d be reinstated. Vollan and his people had taken care of disappearing the bodies at the RV park and up at Juniper. I figured the less questions asked, the better. The Dean at Juniper was an owl shifter and had been one of the people locked up. She was handling the explanations to the returning faculty and students.

Brie and Ciaran were free from the Fey. They called from the Dublin airport. I realized I hadn’t told them that they had no home to come back to, but I figured another day wouldn’t hurt until I faced that reality.

Rose left the day after the fight with Samir. She was going to go see family, she said. She’d been up late talking to Harper, but I hadn’t heard the conversation. Her eyes were still full of grief as she hugged me.

“I’ll be back in the spring,” she said. “Rebuild the Henhouse. I just need some time.”

“Take all the time you need,” I said, hugging her back as best I could. I was still not great at standing, so she was bent over me. Seated hugs are always awkward.

Alek and I shared Levi’s guest bed, Alek’s feet hanging over the end. My leg ached and I couldn’t sleep. The clock said five. It was still dark out.

I pushed Alek’s heavy arm off me and slid of out bed, wincing as I put my left foot down. I limped from the room, closing the door behind me as quietly as I could. Making my way to the kitchen I saw a duffel bag sitting by the back door.

The door opened, light shining in from the rear porch, and Harper stood there, her green eyes wide like a deer in headlights.

“You leaving?” I whispered, aware of Ezee sleeping on the couch in the living room behind us.

“Come on,” Harper said. She picked up her bag and I followed her out into the freezing predawn morning.

She had an old Honda pulled up there, trunk open. Harper tossed the bag in and came back up to the porch.

“I’m taking off for a while,” she said.

I wrapped my arms around myself, shivering.

“How long?”

“I don’t know.” Harper didn’t look at me, staring off into the middle distance, seeing things I could only guess at. “I’ve been meaning to do some more tournaments, go to more cons. I can’t stay here, Jade. I just can’t.”

“Everywhere you look, you see Max,” I guessed. I knew that feeling. That grief.

“Everywhere,” she whispered. She stepped up beside me on my good side and slid a warm arm around my waist. “Does it go away?”

I wrapped my arm over her shoulder and pulled in her closer. “Kind of. It gets easier to bear. With time.”

“I see him. I keep expecting him to come through the door or phone me asking for a ride some-place. I hear his voice in my head. Everywhere I look, I remember Max. There’s no part of Wylde that isn’t also part of him.”

“Oh, furball,” I murmured, turning to pull her into a full hug. My arm twinged and my leg complained, but I ignored them. Fuck pain. This was more important.

“Thank you,” she said, pulling back a little so she could look into my face. “For killing that bastard. I’m just sorry I missed it.”

Guilt clogged my throat. I resisted the urge to rub my talisman, to feel the heart gem still embedded there. I hadn’t told her the truth, only that Samir was destroyed. I had let her assume he was dead.

A dark voice inside my head whispered that maybe Samir was right. Maybe in the end we did always betray the ones we loved.

“You’ll always have a place at the table,” I told her instead.

“Say good-bye to the twins for me? I don’t meant to sneak away, but I can’t stand the thought of long good-byes. I’ll e-mail and Skype and stuff.” She sniffled, her eyes bright with tears.

“Of course,” I said, squeezing her into another hug. “Good luck, have fun.”

I stood in the freezing morning air and watched my best friend drive away. I watched until long after her brake lights had disappeared. Then I went back into the house and tucked my freezing feet against Alek’s legs. He pulled me in closer and didn’t even complain.

My leg healed within a couple of days. My heart took a little longer. I was bone tired after the fight and all the aftermath of seeing everyone home safe and sound and a million rounds of explanations. It was hard to accept that after all these years of running, it was over. No more Samir. No more hiding. The weather turned wet and then warm. I finally got the city to approve my permits and began the fight with the insurance company over my building.

The day was sunny and warm enough that I only had a hoodie on as I sat on a folding chair across the street from where my store had stood. I wasn’t great with power tools, so I was leaving the demo and cleanup to Levi and Junebug. They were directing the construction crew I’d hired like pros. Ezee was trying to drive a tractor and scoop up debris.

Trying being the operative word there. Levi hung off the side of the Caterpillar yelling instructions as Ezee jerked the tractor around in fits and starts. I had been laughing all morning so hard my face hurt. Alek went to get us some lunch with a shake of his head.

“There’s my favorite sorceress,” a lilting Irish voice said.

I was out of my chair and wrapped up in a hug before I could even register Ciaran’s presence. The leprechaun was wearing his usual red jacket with gold buttons. After he let me go, Brie stepped in and gave me a quick hug as well. She had her red hair in two braids pinned around her head, but looked odd without her apron. No bakery though, so no apron. Which was all my fault.

“You came. Thank you,” I said. They’d taken the news of Brie’s bakery and Ciaran’s curios shop with a shrug and the Irish equivalent of “shit happens.” Still, I hadn’t been sure they would come today and talk to me about the new plans.

“As I said, I totally understand if you guys want to scoop up another location. This is going to take months. But I’m hoping you’ll want to stay. I’m going to make the building way better.” I smiled at them, sweeping my arm in a grand gesture at the pile of burned wood and rubble across the street. It was going to take every penny I had saved over the years, plus whatever insurance would get me, but it would be worth it.

“Rent somewhere else? No,” Brie said. “Don’t be silly.”

“We’ve got a proposition for you,” Ciaran said, grinning at my obvious relief.

“Oh?” I motioned toward the stack of folding chairs we’d borrowed from the sewing shop behind us. “You guys want to sit?”

Ciaran and Brie shook their heads, but they were still smiling like they’d eaten canaries or something.

“We want to be partners. Help you out with the building. Go in for thirds.”

“That’s not going to be cheap,” I said. In my surprise, I forgot little details like manners and politeness.

Ciaran laughed. “I’m a leprechaun,” he said with a wink.

“You got a pot of gold hiding in a rainbow?” I made a face at him, not exactly enjoying being the butt of a joke they weren’t letting me in on.

Ciaran leaned in toward me and flicked his fingers by my ear. He pulled his hand back and a gold coin appeared there. When he held it out to me, I took it. It was heavy, solid. One side was stamped with a shamrock, the other with a triskelion similar to the mark that he, Brie, and Iollan all had tattooed.

“There’s more of that, whatever you need,” Ciaran said.

“Thanks,” I said. “Is Iollan still out in the Frank?”

Brie nodded. “He’s finishing up the new safeguards on Balor’s head.”

“Good,” I said. I had no idea where the three of them had relocated the head to and I was glad of that. The druid had argued that nobody should know except him, but he had needed Brie and Ciaran’s help. That stone box wasn’t light, even for a giant to carry.

“I’ve got a meeting set up with Perkins tomorrow at two, to hammer out some paperwork and details. Will that work for you?” Brie asked me.

“Yeah, sure, of course,” I stammered. “I’ll be there.”

“Great, see you tomorrow,” she said. She and Ciaran walked away, waving to Levi as he leapt free of the Caterpillar.

I stood and watched them go, the coin still in my hand.

“Sandwich for your thoughts?” Alek said. I hadn’t heard him approach, but I rarely did.

I turned to him and accepted the meatball sub, but I dropped it into the chair beside me and instead held up the gold coin.

“Ciaran and Brie want to go in on the building,” I said.

Alek put his own sandwich down.

“Good,” he said, looking not the least surprised.

“They tell you?”

“No, but it makes sense.”

Alek stepped up to me and pulled me into an embrace. He’d barely let me out of his sight, much less his arms, since the fight with Samir. It was the most obvious sign I had that he had been terrified for me. I twisted in his arms to face the street and leaned back into his strength.

“Think Harper will ever come back?” I said softly as I watched Ezee chasing Levi around the tractor, trying to whack his twin with a baseball cap.

“Yes,” Alek said. His voice was a deep rumble that vibrated in his chest, almost like a purr.

“You sound so confident,” I muttered. “How do you know?”

“This is her home,” he said. “You are her family. This is where she belongs. Her heart will draw her back when she is ready.”

I watched my friends laughing in the rubble of my shop and took a deep breath of air that held the promise of spring. Then I lifted my chin, tilting my head back until I could see the golden stubble on Alek’s own chin. He tipped his head down and pressed his lips to my forehead.

And thinking about it, I understood his confidence. He was right. Alek usually was.

He was my family. This was my home.

I closed my eyes and let him hold me. For the first time in a very, very long time, I was at peace.

If you want to be notified when Annie Bellet’s next novel or collection is released, please sign up for the mailing list by going to: http://tinyurl.com/anniebellet Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time. Want to find more Twenty-Sided Sorceress books? Go here http://overactive.wordpress.com/twenty-sided-sorceress/ for links and more information.

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Look for Dungeon Crawl, the exciting eighth book in The Twenty-sided Sorceress series.

Coming in 2016.

Also by Annie Bellet:

The Gryphonpike Chronicles:

Witch Hunt

Twice Drowned Dragon

A Stone’s Throw

Dead of Knight

The Barrows (Omnibus Vol.1)

Chwedl Duology:

A Heart in Sun and Shadow

The Raven King

Pyrrh Considerable Crimes Division Series:

Avarice

Wrath

Hunger

Short Story Collections:

Till Human Voices Wake Us

Dusk and Shiver

Forgotten Tigers and Other Stories

About the Author:

Annie Bellet lives and writes in the Pacific NW. She is the USA Today bestselling author of the Gryphonpike Chronicles and the Twenty-Sided Sorceress series. Follow her at her website at www.anniebellet.com