Thicker Than Blood

The Twenty-Sided Sorceress: Book Six

Annie Bellet

Copyright 2015, 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, 2015

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Dedicated to all those who get knocked down, brush themselves off, and get back up again. You have a superpower that should not be underestimated.

The Twenty-Sided Sorceress series in reading order:

Justice Calling

Murder of Crows

Pack of Lies

Hunting Season

Heartache

The diner was nearly empty when I stumbled in, looking for coffee and a plate full of fat and protein to soothe my starving stomach. I was glad for the lack of people to stare at me, but the emptiness meant the waitress had no one else to pester.

“What’s your story, honey?” she asked me as she leaned a hip against my table, holding the coffee pot precariously in one hand. She was plump with wide blue eyes, and had probably been pretty before smoke and sun and the disappointment of years working in a diner in the middle of nowhere got to her.

“I used to be a sorceress,” I told her. “Until I took an arrow to the knee.”

“Sure you did,” she said with a small shake of her head, easing away from me like I was rabid. “Holler if you want a refill.”

All right, so it was a bad joke. But it was true. Only instead of an arrow, I’d burned myself out by pulling some seriously timey-wimey shit. I’d created a freaking save file in real life. Which was pretty cool. And I’d saved my friends from my psycho ex. I’d saved Alek.

Well, saved most of my friends. My every thought was haunted by that sickening puff of feathers as Junebug was shot out of the sky, and Harper streaking past me, out of reach of Iollan’s spell. I still saw Harper’s face every time I closed my eyes. I’d failed her the worst.

I shoved away those thoughts and thought instead that it was funny, almost, that in saving everyone, in resetting the entire world a few minutes back, and getting the druid to teleport us all to here and gone, I’d lost the very power that had made Samir hunt me. Not that I expected for a minute he would stop, even if I was an ex-sorceress. My wounds were healing, so I guess I was only a powerless sorceress and still not human. He’d eat my heart; it would just make less of a meal at the moment.

Because the power was gone. Poof. No more. I could reach inside me and there was nothing there but a vast empty hole. A dry well. I couldn’t have lit a candle or a match with it. Or bent one of the tarnished and chipped spoons on the table in front of me.

No magic. Not a drop. Not even mind-Tess chiding me in my brain anymore. All my ghosts were silent, though their memories still floated around in my head. They were just memories now, however, no more distinct than my own. Even my talisman, the silver d20 necklace, was damaged. Where the one had been on the die was just a pockmark now, a divot. It hung from my neck, a cold reminder that I was totally powerless.

Which really sucked. Because I wanted to find Samir and rip his fucking heart out and swallow it whole.

Literally.

Iollan’s spell had spit me out on the edge of the wilderness. I’d stumbled, too stubborn to freeze to death, until I found I-95. A trucker couple had picked me up and taken me to Boise. I was surprised they’d bothered, since I looked like death with bruises everywhere and lots of drying blood on my leg. They’d assumed most of the story and I seeded in enough details about getting away from an abusive boyfriend that they left me alone. I got to pass out somewhere warm; they got to feel like they were doing a good deed. Everybody won.

I had slept fitfully, my dreams turning to nightmares as I watched everyone I loved die over and over, Harper’s look of utter betrayal the last thing I saw before I awoke. The couple wanted to help me in Boise, but I told them I had an aunt here, and in the end they hadn’t pressed too much.

I had no aunt here, obviously, but I did have a stash. Nothing says low point in life more than breaking into your own storage unit. I had no identification, no money, and I looked like someone who had been through some serious shit. Filthy, bloody, tired as hell. So I waited for full dark and climbed a fence instead of trying to bluff my way past the gate guy, glad I had opted for a combination lock.

I had a few units like this all over the States, prepped for if or when I had to run away without taking anything with me. Much as it sucked to admit, my paranoia was saving my ass again. The unit had cash, changes of clothes, and a new identification that would let me hide while figuring out my next move. Just call me Jade fucking Bourne.

A motel room and a shower later, I’d crashed out again, risking the nightmares for more sleep in the hope that my magic would return. Morning brought nothing but the sound of cars passing on the nearby freeway. So here I sat, in a diner, alone and powerless, trying to plot my next move.

I was tempted to try to call Alek or the twins. It had been over a day since the fight. I had no idea if they were safe or together. There was a burner phone in my pocket. I gave in, trying Alek’s number. I had to know.

It went straight to voicemail. I’d half-expected that, since we’d ditched our stuff before preparing for the final battle, worried that Samir might use human technology to track us somehow. He was using mercenaries, both shifter and human, after all, and he’d used humans to keep track of me apparently, all these years in Wylde. I tried the twins and Harper’s numbers after that, fighting the tears that threatened to spill as each number went straight to voicemail. Out of desperation, I called Brie’s number, too, hoping she might have forwarded her bakery phone to a cell or something. I had no way to reach her or Ciaran, my leprechaun neighbor. They were in Ireland still, doing universe knew what. It wasn’t like they could help right now anyway. That number went to voicemail too, for the bakery. No answer from anyone. No help.

I hadn’t felt this alone in over twenty-five years.

It was safer this way. I knew that. Samir wanted me. He’d come after me. I hoped. I remembered his words, his gloating about how he’d known where I was, how this was about more than just me. What if he didn’t come after me?

I chewed my way through a plate of waffles and bacon, every bite like swallowing sand. I had to think about this logically.

We’d fought. I’d lost. Well, I’d almost won. I could have killed him, turned that pure bolt of power from the ley lines on him and taken him out.

It only would have cost me everyone I loved to do it. So I hadn’t.

What did that tell me? That I could have won. We weren’t as mismatched as it seemed. Well, if I had my magic. Samir wasn’t some all-powerful being. I could kill him.

With magic.

That stupid pesky detail kept coming back.

Break it down, I told myself. I needed magic to fight Samir. I needed to know what else he might be up to, and if he had any weaknesses. I’d learned a hard lesson fighting him, now I needed to put what I’d learned to use.

Operating under the idea that I could get my magic back was part one. I’d slept most of the last twenty-four hours, but maybe whatever I’d done would take more time to heal. Which was the bitch of it, because I didn’t have time. Samir had clearly chosen now to come after me for a reason, and he wasn’t afraid of doing big shit humans might notice. Killing the librarian witch and burning my store with the fire elemental or whatever the fuck that was had shown that as much as anything.

Alek had made it pretty clear the Council of Nine was out of the picture, some kind of infighting going on there, so even Samir threatening shifters wasn’t going to cause them to send help. I knew of no other magical source of assistance. Mostly things that went bump in the night hid from the human world, keeping to the edges. Humans outnumber us millions to one, after all, and magic had been fading from the world for a long time. As Brie had once told me, the time of gods had come and gone. Which royally sucked, because I could have really used some divine intervention right about then.

I’d ditched my allies to try to protect them. Going back was option one, I supposed. I thanked the waitress absently as she refilled my coffee. The morning was slipping away; a few diners had come and gone while I sat, lost in thought. I couldn’t go back. Not without magic. I was worse than useless to them this way.

“So go get your mojo back,” a gentle male voice said to me.

I spilled coffee all over the table as my hand jerked in surprise. Sitting across from me, where I swear there hadn’t been anyone before, was a mid-forties looking Native man with short black hair and dark eyes that held flickers of red in their depths. Not human.

“Let me get you a washcloth, honey,” the waitress said, coming over and helping me contain the coffee spill. She didn’t even look at the man or offer him anything, which was my second clue that he wasn’t normal.

I decided to say nothing about him either, in case my suspicion was accurate. “Thanks,” I said to her again. A family of four came in and saved me from having to say more.

“You done yet?” the man asked.

“Who are you? They can’t see you, can they?” I whispered, trying not to look like a crazy lady.

“Of course not. I’m not here.” He leaned back and smiled.

“Ash?” I guessed. Half guessed, because my brain provided me an image of a man who looked like him but younger, bending over my mother, Pearl. A memory that wasn’t mine.

“Good to see I didn’t breed stupid,” my biological father said. Well, the whatever-the-fuck vision or hallucination of my father said. “You asked for Deus Ex Machina; here I am.”

“Awesome,” I said, trying to wrap my brain around this. “How do I get my magic back?”

“Come see me,” he said.

I wondered if there had ever been an actually helpful vision anywhere in the history of magical shit happening or if they were all so damned cryptic.

“Great, where are you?” I asked, keeping my voice low and trying not to get openly annoyed. Though if he was in my head or whatever, he’d know I was frustrated anyway.

“You don’t know, so I can’t tell you,” he said with a sad shake of his head.

“Super fucking useful,” I muttered.

“What’s that?” the waitress asked as she passed by me again.

“Nothing,” I said quickly. “I’m good.” I waited until she walked back to the front again before leaning forward and asking, “So how do I find you?”

“If only you knew someone who knows things,” he said. I could see a little of my own face in his, though I hoped my smart-ass smile didn’t look so annoyingly smug.

“I don’t know—” I started to say, then stopped. I did know someone who knew things, someone whose job it was to accumulate knowledge. It was a long shot, sure, but looking at my options, any shot was something.

“Good,” he said. His body became translucent. “Find me, and I will show you who you are.”

“Wait,” I said but he was gone. I went and found the waitress, tipping generously when I paid.

“Hey,” I asked her before I left. “There a library near by? Where I could use a computer?”

“You can catch a bus easy enough to the one at Hillcrest, or go all the way downtown,” she said. “They don’t open until ten, though, I don’t think.”

“Thanks,” I said. I walked out into the winter sunlight with a plan. First step, find a computer and see if the Archivist had a website or phone number. Second step, question mark, question mark, question mark. Third step, magic.

Turns out, Noah Grey, Archivist and vampire, did, in fact, have a website. I had no idea what to Google, but I knew where his warehouse-slash-home was, so I ended up looking at a Street View map until it identified the building. There was a nice blue arrow with a pop-up leading to a website.

I guess you really can find anything on the internet these days.

Leaving the main library, I walked across Capitol and waited until I was in a snowy park near a museum to dial the number off the site. A woman picked up the call.

“Noah Grey, please,” I said, unsure if I should use his name or just call him by his apparent title.

“Mr. Grey is not available, may I take a message?” the pleasant voice on the other end replied.

I pressed my lips together and withheld swearing at her. “He’ll want to talk to me,” I said. I had no idea if that were true, but I could at least try.

“I’m sure he will,” she said, her tone still frustratingly smooth. “If you’ll leave your name and number, he will return your call at his earliest convenience.”

“This is Jade Crow,” I said. I rattled off the number of the burner cell, though I was sure they had it already now that I’d called him on it. “My offer is open for an hour, no more,” I added, taking a risk. “He’ll want to hear it.”

She repeated the number back, confirming, and then hung up on me. I paced the edge of the park, not knowing what else to do. Without the Archivist’s information, for which I had nothing to trade at the moment, I wasn’t sure how I’d even go about finding dear old dad. A father I hadn’t even known I had until this last year.

Worst case, I supposed, would be finding my way back to Three Feathers and asking my mother. She’d banned me from there a second time now, so I could only imagine how that reunion would go.

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now except getting my magic back, finding Samir, and finishing him. This time without my friends getting killed around me. I’d pack them into boxes and ship them to Australia to keep them safe if I had to. Samir was my problem. I should have faced him on my own.

I should have faced him years ago. This was my failure, and I was going to fix it.

My phone rang and I fumbled it on with chilled fingers.

“Hello?” I said.

“Ms. Crow,” said a cool voice on the other end. Noah Grey.

“I need your help,” I said. I gave him the barest sketch of the events of the previous week, eliding much of it. I finished with, “I have to find someone, and was hoping you would know where I could look.”

“You want to find your father,” he said. I had half expected him to know that, somehow. It was just easier to accept that there was a lot I didn’t understand about the world and just roll with it.

“Do you know where he is?” I asked.

“Yes,” Noah said. “I do. It’s complicated. Plus we have a bargain that must be struck. I do not run a charity. You will come here.”

“To Seattle?” I said, buying myself time to think. He knew where Ash was, which was great. I had nothing to trade, which was not so great. I wondered if the Archivist took IOUs and then decided I really didn’t want to owe this guy anything. Seattle was about seven to eight hours driving from Boise.

“Where are you?” he asked.

I hesitated. The Archivist was, from what Yosemite had told me, an information and magical items dealer. Forbidden knowledge, hidden things, that stuff was his specialty. His information was for sale, and I could think of one powerful dude with deep pockets who would love to know where I was.

“I am not going to sell you to Samir,” Noah said, his voice taking on a weary edge. Apparently my hesitation had spoken volumes.

“How do I know that?” I said.

“He uses my competition. I have no business dealings with him.”

“You have competition?” I asked. That did surprise me. How many people were in this business? Also, Noah hadn’t seemed like the encouraging competition kind of guy.

“I have one competitor. Who enjoys the protection of a very powerful sorcerer,” he said and I could almost picture the vampire’s angular face looking annoyed at me.

“Boise,” I said. Fuck it. I had so few options. I had to trust someone, at least for the moment.

“I’ll have a driver there within an hour. Give me an address.”

I told him the location of the main library and went back to wait. It was one of the longest hours of my life.

The driver the Archivist sent was a short, compact woman with a friendly smile and no small-talk skills. She made it clear with one-word answers and grunts that she wasn’t going to talk to me, not about herself, about Noah, anything. She asked if I wanted music, and when I said no, she went back to driving.

It was a long seven hours.

It was spitting rain in Seattle, the temperature somewhere in the fifties. We pulled up at the warehouse I’d been to before, but this time I was led through a lower side door into what appeared to be a very normal living room. The two armchairs and the single sofa were comfortable microfiber and modern in their red, grey, and white color scheme. I dropped my bag and waited for my host, trying to contain my nervousness.

Noah didn’t keep me waiting long. He glided into the room, just as eerily still and calm as last time. His eyes were flat silver, inhuman, his face angular and almost pretty. We were nearly of a height and stared at each other eye to eye.

“Ms. Crow,” he said, indicating I should sit.

“Hi,” I said. I picked a chair and sat. I was acutely aware that I was at a bigger disadvantage now than I had been last we met. I had no magic to defend myself, no Wolf, no friends. Just my charming wit and desperation. It was not a great bargaining position.

“We can skip the small talk, if you wish?” he said after a moment when I said nothing else, his lips curving in a self-aware kind of smile.

“I need to know where my father is,” I said.

“That is all you want?” he asked.

I started to say yes, but closed my mouth on the words. This felt like a situation where you are about to use a Wish in a DnD game and the GM asks if you are sure of the wording. I didn’t want to fuck this up. So I sat there and thought about what I really wanted.

“No,” I said slowly, drawing the word out into multiple syllables. “I want to know where he is. I would also like to know where Samir is, what he’s doing, and especially if my friends are safe.” There, that sounded like a good wishlist. I pressed my lips together and wondered if I should have just asked for the moon and stars while I was at it.

“Your friends? Not a very specific request.” Noah tipped his head to one side, the motion studied and precise.

“You don’t know who my friends are?” I asked. I folded my arms over my chest and glared at him. He knew, I was guessing, but was messing with me. Not cool. I realized getting angry with the one person who could potentially help me right now was stupid, but I didn’t care. They say freedom is another word for nothing left to lose for a reason, I guess.

He tipped his head back straight. “I do. I suppose I should not tease. I can do these things for you, perhaps. What will you offer in return?”

“I’ll translate whatever you want,” I said. I’d thought this over in the car. Last time he’d wanted my services as a translator, since I spoke and read literally every language ever. “I’ll give you a month of services after this whole mess is resolved.” It seemed like a lot, and I was going to have fun explaining to Alek why I was going to be living in Seattle translating Universe knew what, but this would be worth it. I hoped.

Plus, it wasn’t like I had a game store to run anymore. I swallowed that lump of pain before I thought about it too hard.

“No,” Noah said. “I cannot accept future service from someone who is planning to take on Samir.”

“Aw, what? You don’t think I can win?” I said.

“I believe you have the best chance of anyone who has ever lived,” he said with what would have been a shrug on a human, but for him was a very measured lift and fall of his shoulders, too planned and precise to look natural.

“But not enough to bet on me coming back,” I said. “Fine, what do you want?” Despair, my old friend, crept back into the house of my heart. I had nothing to give.

“A drop of your blood,” the vampire said.

Yeah, because that didn’t sound dangerous at all. Nope.

“Why?” I asked. Blood was a powerful thing magically, blood freely given even more so. I shuddered to think what this guy would want with mine.

Noah smiled, his eyes mercurial. “I believe there is a quaint human phrase about beggars and choosers.”

“Will you use it to harm me or anyone I care about?”

“No,” he said, his head shake emphatic. “I will promise that much.”

I folded my legs up under me and wrapped my arms around my knees. His offer seemed crazy good. Which worried the shit out of me.

“You’ll give me all the information I asked for, in exchange for a single drop of blood?”

“Yes and no, Ms. Crow.” He chuckled, a dry, soft sound like wind in leaves at his own rhyme. “I will do better than that. I will also give you the help you need to get what you want.”

“To kill Samir?” I asked. I rubbed my talisman, pressing my thumb over the divot.

“As a side effect, yes, I suppose so. I would not mind certain people who enjoy his protection losing it, for example.” No doubt about it; Noah Grey’s full smile was something sharp and white, and terrifying to behold.

I closed my eyes for a moment and saw Harper’s face again, her look of pain and utter betrayal as I left her behind. For her, for Wolf, for Max, for my old family. For everyone I had loved and been unable to protect. I could do a deal with the devil for them. No sweat.

“A drop of blood, then,” I said, opening my eyes.

Noah left and came back with a needle in sterile packaging and a petri dish. I almost joked that he should put on a lab coat, but decided not to push my luck. Taking the drop of blood was quick and painless. I’d been worried that open blood would make him go all psycho vamp but apparently that wasn’t a thing. He stayed utterly calm and professional the whole time.

I stuck my bleeding finger into my mouth. The pinprick wound would close in seconds, but it was instinctive.

“What would you like to know first?” he said, taking a seat again.

“You don’t have to make calls or send out imps to do your bidding or something?” I raised an eyebrow.

“I have had over eight hours, Ms. Crow. There are things I cannot yet tell you, but any information I have at this moment, I will give.”

“One, call me Jade, please. Two, how did you know what else I’d ask for? We only talked about my father.”

It was his turn to raise an eyebrow.

“Okay, point taken. Tell me about my friends.” I sighed. I supposed my questions weren’t all that unpredictable. Who knew what this guy already knew about me anyway? Probably way more than I was comfortable with.

“That will have to wait for the details,” he said, lifting a hand to stall my protest. “Someone will be here in the morning who can better answer.”

“Who?” Alek? I hoped and also didn’t hope that he was coming here. I wasn’t sure I could face him yet. He’d be so pissed at me for leaving him like that. Justifiably pissed, heh.

“The druid, Iollan. He would not tell me who was with him and our method of communication is imprecise, but he agreed to come talk to you. He must wait for dawn, however.”

Yosemite. I felt a small weight lift from me. If he was alive and safe, there was every chance the others were as well. Except Harper. Fuck. I couldn’t let my fears for her cloud what I had to do. There was nothing I could do, not now. If she was alive, she was alive. If she were dead, she was at least beyond harm. And furball would want me focused on killing Samir, I knew that much.

One big worry down. If the druid was safe, odds were good that Alek, Rosie, and the twins were as well. Maybe even Junebug and Harper. I had to cling to hope.

“What about Samir?” I asked.

“He is still around Wylde, as far as I can confirm.” Noah’s eyes narrowed and he looked almost annoyed. “I cannot confirm what he is doing there, but he has pulled in a large force of humans and shifters. I am not fond of guessing, but I believe his plans are larger than just killing you.”

I thought about the few words Samir and I had exchanged. He’d told me, as I tried to save Max, something about magic rising, about ruling, that this wasn’t just about me. He’d sounded like a crazy person, and I’d been a little distracted by my dying friend, but his words haunted me now.

“They are,” I said. “He said something about mortals and ruling, about magic rising up again.”

“I am working on discovering what he wants. The area around Wylde is strong with latent magic, as you found out. It is worrying that he is so interested in it. Unfortunately, the Hearteater is not easy to have followed. Spies around him tend to die or disappear.” Noah shook his head, the gesture the most natural and unconscious one I’d ever seen him make.

“Hearteater? Samir has, like, a title?” Of course he did. Meh.

“He is known by many names,” Noah said.

“Well, that leaves dear old bio-dad,” I said. Knowing where Samir was didn’t help me right now. I couldn’t face him without magic. Whatever he was up to was probably really bad, and I wasn’t even going to consider giving myself over to him in hope of saving my friends. I’d had that thought a few times and looked down that road, seeing only ruin. I trusted this vampire more than I would ever trust Samir.

Noah flashed his white, sharp teeth in a smile. “That is where things get complicated.”

“Go on,” I said, resting my chin on my bent knees.

“Your father is in prison.”

“Prison?”

“Oh, it gets better,” Noah said. “He is in a secret prison the government runs to lock away dangerous inhuman elements. They also lock up people and creatures they do not understand.”

“So to talk to him, I have to get him out of jail?” I thought about what Noah was saying. Also what he wasn’t saying. It didn’t sound like a prison that had visiting hours. “What is my father?”

“You are unlikely to believe me if I tell you. Also, that was not in our bargain.”

“Really?” I rolled my eyes at him. I knew I should have been more specific, but I was going to have questions, damnit. “This stems right from our bargain and might be relevant. I have to talk to him, but if he’s dangerous I kind of need to know that, don’t you think?”

“He is dangerous, though I doubt so to you,” Noah said. “He is also in the prison voluntarily. He is in the ‘do not understand’ category, and I am sure can leave anytime under his own power. The government could hardly stop him.”

From the Archivist’s smile, I knew there was so much context I was missing in what he was saying. It frustrated me, but punching my host and source of information seemed less than wise. Fun, but maybe not a good option. For now.

“Okay, wise guy, how do I get him out?”

“You don’t,” Noah said, that sharp smile back and wider than ever. He rose to his feet. “But I believe your assistants are pulling up as we speak. Shall we go meet them, and then we can discuss how to break in to this prison, yes?”

“I have assistants?” I said. This whole conversation had run away from me.

“You do now,” Noah said as he glided from the room, leaving the door open for me to trail behind, curious and utterly confused.

Harper squeezes her hands into damp fists at her sides, shutting down her senses as best she can. She pretends she doesn’t hear the faint scrape of a bare foot on the loft floor, the rustle of loose hay being disturbed. Max smells nervous, something he’ll have to work on.

The faintest brush against her side and then… bells tinkle and she spins, catching Max’s boney wrist in her hands.

“You lose,” she says with a snort. “Maybe you aren’t cut out to be a thief.”

“Uncle Darragh says we got Tinker blood,” Max says. His mouth puckers into a pout and freckles stand out on his cheeks like the dots on the exclamation points of his anger.

Harper almost reminds him that he’s no blood of theirs at all, much less Uncle Darragh’s kin, but she swallows those words. They’ll just hurt him and anyway, because who cares where he came from? He’s hers now; Mom said so. Her responsibility.

“Maybe,” she says with a quick shrug that sets the bells looped over her belt to chiming again. “But you need a lot more practice if we’re to run off with the travelers and steal our way across the world.”

“You make it look so easy,” Max says, not ready to abandon his grumpy mood.

“That’s cause I’m older, faster, and prettier than you,” she says and tweaks his nose, leaping back into the hay as he dives for her.

Max tumbles down on top of her and pain radiates up her sternum. Harper gasps and tries to push him away. He rises, kicking her hard in the ribs.

“Max, stop!”

He kicks her again, his face red and distorted through her tears, hardly looking like Max at all. Again, and again, and again. Harper curls up, trying to dodge the blows. Her body won’t do more than that, her limbs leaden. Then Max is on top of her, his nails biting into her throat.

“You let me die,” he hisses, his little boy’s face melting away into a man’s as flames ignite in his eyes. “You were supposed to protect me and you let me die.”

“Max.” Harper tries to choke out his name. “Max.”

Consciousness brought only more pain to Harper. Someone all too alive and real, unlike Max, kicked her ribs one last time before standing back as she gasped and choked awake. She peeled one eye open, the other too swollen to obey. Her nose already told her at least two men were in the room, and one of them was her brother’s killer. No forgetting his scent. Not ever.

“Samir,” she said through cracked and bleeding lips.

The floor under her face was old oak boards, rough and splintered from years of use and hard cleaning. It told her only that she could be in one of a hundred old houses or cabins strewn across the edges of the Frank. The air still smelled like her familiar woods underneath the stink of men. Her arms were numb and chained behind her, but she wiggled her toes and felt them respond. Nothing was too broken. A tight collar squeezed her neck and she guessed it was chained too. No shifting into a fox for her, not right now. Chains were too tight and fox legs didn’t bend the same way. What was painful as a human could seriously damage a fox’s joints. She didn’t see much immediate chance for escape.

Not that there was much to hope for in general. She was alone, hurt, and abandoned.

But not dead yet. In her position, Harper figured she’d take what she could get.

“Harper, my dear,” Samir said. “What will I do with you?”

“Come closer,” she said, baring her teeth. Her blurred vision gave her a clear view of his boot. Maybe if he came closer she could gnaw him to death. Brilliant plan.

His boots moved across the floor toward her. Samir crouched down by Harper’s shoulder and she forced her head to turn as much as it could. Nausea and pain put dancing red dots in her vision but she wanted to look Max’s killer in the eye.

He looked clean and composed, dressed in a thick sweater and dark trousers. A small ruby-colored crystalline vial hung from a heavy gold chain, his only jewelry, looking like a cosplayer’s necklace and totally out of place against his mundane clothing. A knife, like something out of a survival catalog, rested loosely in his grip. For a moment, Harper’s brain froze, fear washing through her and shoving back the pain. Knife. Death. This was the end of the line.

Then sense kicked in. He’d brought her here, wherever here was, tied her up tightly so she couldn’t shift, and was talking to her. Whatever his stupid and totally evil plan was, her death wasn’t in the cards yet. He wanted something from her or thought he could use her.

That thought filled her with a different kind of fear. Jade and the others had left her, but Harper wasn’t crazy or dumb enough to believe they’d meant to. She’d seen the horror on Jade’s face. Some plan had gone wrong.

Harper half chuckled, half gagged on her own spit and blood at that thought. Everything had gone wrong.

“Something funny?” Samir said. His eyes narrowed into piss-colored slits. Harper refused to think about him in flattering terms like handsome or golden-eyed. He wasn’t getting an inch of her brain space that way. Not a bit.

“You,” Harper said. “How you still think you can win.”

“I’ve already won,” Samir said. He gave a slight shake of his head and his lips twisted into a smirk. “It was never a contest. I thought you’d have noticed that by now.”

“If you’ve won, why am I still alive?” She spat the woods out with as much venom, and actual blood, as she could muster, trying to spatter some on his knees. That would show the bastard. Yeah.

“You like games, yes? Think of it like chess. The pieces are still on the board, but checkmate will not occur for a few more turns. There is nothing you or anyone else can do about it, but you are all too stubborn or stupid to see the end, so the game must be played out.”

Samir grabbed Harper’s bloody tee-shirt in one hand and started cutting it off her. She tried to crawl away from his touch, but there was nowhere to go. Her arms and legs were hogtied, her neck cranked cruelly back as well. She was able to squirm an inch before the strain nearly caused her to black out.

“You going to rape me?” she asked. “How fucking stereotypical.”

“Rape you? No. I don’t fuck animals.” Samir gathered the bloody pieces of her shirt into his hand and wiped them over a gash in her stomach. White-hot pain lanced up her belly, and Harper was almost glad she couldn’t see her own body very well.

He rose to his feet, and Harper heard what sounded like her shirt remains being put into a plastic bag.

“That should be enough for a trail,” Samir said.

“We will backtrack from where we took that one,” the other man said. His voice had an accent that sounded similar to Alek’s. “We make it look good, they will follow.”

“See it done. Be ready. No mistakes this time. No one escapes. There’s no more time to waste,” Samir said, dismissing the man.

Harper forced her fogged brain into gear. Samir was going to use her bloody shirt to lead the others to her, from the sounds of it. She could draw some assumptions from that, she figured. Her friends were still alive and not being held somewhere else. They also potentially didn’t know that she was alive, and they definitely didn’t know where she was, though it seemed she was the cheese in Samir’s mousetrap.

Good thing none of my friends are mice, Harper thought. They would come for her. She knew that in the marrow of her own tired bones. They hadn’t abandoned her.

“You think they’ll fall for such an obvious trap?” she asked, fighting to turn her head and shoulders enough to see Samir again. No dice.

His boots moved away and the sharp citrus and medical smell of cleaning agents wafted through the air. Then he returned, kindly crouching down again and sitting on his heels so she could see his smug-ugly face. Smugly face, yeah. He stared down at her, rubbing her blood off his hands fastidiously with a baby wipe.

“They won’t have a choice. Jade will come for you. She always comes for those she loves.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“It’s going to get her killed.” Samir lifted one shoulder in a half shrug.

“Hasn’t yet,” Harper said.

He pressed his lips into a tight line, and she knew that she’d found at least one crack in his disgustingly competent armor.

“You like games such as chess, yeah?” Harper continued.

“I do,” Samir answered.

“Then you should kill me now,” Harper said.

“I don’t follow.”

“Zugzwang,” Harper said.

“Zugzwang? That’s what I am doing. Forcing Jade to come straight to me.” His eyes were slits again and his lips curled back from his teeth. Perhaps he thought was smiling but there was too much annoyance and frustration in his expression to fool her.

Harper forced another pained chuckle. “Maybe. But in game theory, it’s a forced move that turns a win into a loss. That’s what is happening. That’s what you are doing. Drawing the one person I know can kill you right to you.”

“Jade is no threat to me,” he said.

“Yet she’s out there, alive and kicking.” Please let her be alive and kicking, Harper added silently.

Samir sighed again. “Not for long. She’ll come for you. Or she won’t. Perhaps she will run again. It won’t matter soon anyway.”

It won’t matter soon? So it does matter now? Why? Harper’s desperate mind raced along a million paths. Got to keep him talking like a Bond villain, she decided.

“Soon? I thought you said it doesn’t matter at all.”

“It doesn’t. She doesn’t. She’s just a loose end I should have tied up years ago.” Samir rose to his feet.

“What happens soon?” Harper blurted, desperate to keep him talking. She bit the inside of her cheek and craned her head to keep him in sight.

“I become a god,” he said, rubbing his thumb along the ruby vial hanging from his neck.

Harper let her head drop. Then Samir’s boots moved away and she heard a door open and close as he left her alone in the room.

Well. Fuck.

Noah led me down a hallway and then a set of short stairs and into a part of the warehouse that looked like a loading dock. There was a huge metal door slowly rolling down and a small group of people waiting for us. The space looked too big to fit with the footprint of the warehouse and not for the first time I wondered what exactly was going on with this place. The vampire had a lot of secrets to protect; I supposed it only made sense that his place of business, and probably his home, was protected by magical as well as material means.

Around me were corrugated metal walls stretching up about twenty feet to a beamed ceiling in shadow overhead. The floor was concrete, clean and gray. Parked just inside the doors, its engine still ticking as it cooled and rain water condensed on its windshield and hood, was a giant RV. Beside it, a black motorcycle leaned on a kickstand. Arrayed in front of the vehicles were three people. No, four people. I did a double take and felt my cheeks heat up at how obvious I’d just been.

There were two women sharing a wide wheelchair, their bodies joined at the hips, with four arms but only two visible legs. They looked back at me with nearly identical half-smiles, amusement in their dark brown eyes. They looked to be in their mid-twenties, and probably Hispanic in ancestry. One had long black hair twisted up in a bun and held with rainbow hair sticks. The other had short hair cut angularly to chin length and dyed a deep green.

Beside the twins were two other people. One was a tall blonde woman who was glaring at Noah. By tall, I mean well over six feet. She could have given Alek a runoff for tallest blonde in the room. On the other side of the wheelchair, hanging back almost in the shadow of the RV was a slender man with olive skin and light brown hair cut shaggy around his face. I picked male by default, because I couldn’t tell, honestly. Something about the face said masculine, the angle of his jaw and the thickness of his brows, but I just wasn’t sure.

“Archivist,” the blonde giant said.

“This is Jade Crow, your client,” Noah said, motioning to me. “I am sure you are hungry after your long drive. We can discuss details at dinner. It should be ready now.”

“Introductions first, then dinner.” The woman looked me over, a real obvious head-to-toe kind of look, and pressed her lips together. I supposed I didn’t look like much right now.

“Very well. Jade Crow, this is Kira Kirovna, who will be helping you get to your father,” Noah said.

“Jones,” Kira said. “Kira Jones.” She glared at the vampire but she was wasting it on his wall-like exterior.

Kirovna was the female surname form of Kirov. Kira. I actually staggered back a single step.

Ice blue eyes. Check. White-blonde hair, check. Giant height, check. Overwhelming attitude of superiority and confidence? Check, check, check.

“You’re Alek’s sister,” I blurted.

She snarled, full on lips back from teeth wild animal kind of snarling. Next to Kira the green-haired twin reached out a hand as though to restrain her.

“How do you know my brother?” Her eyes went to icy slits, another facial expression I knew so well. Even if Noah hadn’t “slipped” and said her last name, I was pretty sure I’d have figured out quickly who she was.

I hesitated for a moment, staring at her, calculating my answer. Then I mentally said fuck it and told the truth. I was too damn tired to play games and I wasn’t going to let the vampire suck me into this weird social situation, whatever this was.

Vampire. Suck. Yeah, I was tired.

“I’m his mate,” I said.

She laughed. Not a nice laugh, either, though it was full-bellied and loud. She walked toward me and I held my ground. Running away from a tiger seemed like a stupid idea even though without magic watching one stalk toward me, even in human form, was unnerving.

“You are telling the truth,” she said as she towered over me. “Alek. And a human.”

“I’m not a human,” I muttered.

Kira leaned toward me almost as if she was going to kiss me and took a deep breath. “No, you certainly aren’t,” she said, twisting a bit of her hair around one gloved finger. “What are you?”

“We can discuss this over dinner,” Noah said. His tone was steel and even Kira, after glancing at him, didn’t argue, instead nodding curtly.

Turning my back on her and following Noah out of that room was nerve-racking. I figured this was going to be the best dinner party ever.

Dinner was laid out in yet another room I hadn’t seen. There was a huge table that looked like something out of a medieval war room, its dark wood scarred and shined from years of use. I don’t know what kind of food I expected, maybe a seven-course meal with complex French names, but instead we had fried chicken piled on platters, a huge bowl of mashed potatoes, and a plate of biscuits. There was enough chicken to feed an army.

Or, as it turned out, a small group of hungry shifters and one sort of ex-sorceress.

The conjoined twins wheeled up next to me at the table. The slender man took the seat across from us. Noah took the head of the table at the end away from the food, leaving the other end seat or a side seat across from the twins to Kira. She took the end of the table and pulled off her leather jacket, draping it over the chair. She was wearing a black tee-shirt underneath that said “Evil Dead” on it with a hand reaching up.

“You a fan of horror movies?” I asked her. I was going to be super amused if Alek’s sister was a nerd.

She raised an eyebrow, and went back to ignoring me in favor of stuffing her face with chicken.

The twins introduced themselves as Cora, the dark-haired one, and Alma, the green-haired one. They both had slight accents, that, plus their names, reaffirmed my assumption of Hispanic heritage.

“We’re jaguar shifters,” Cora added. “If you were curious.”

I was. I opened and then closed my mouth on a lot of questions that really were none of my business. Like, how did they shift when they were joined together? Were they two jaguars when shifted?

“I’m Jaq, with a Q,” the man across from me said. He inclined his head slightly.

In the brighter light of the dining room, I still couldn’t quite make up my mind about his gender, but I reached for chicken and decided it didn’t matter. I’d ask him later, if we had a chance to talk, what pronoun he preferred. I had a suspicion that it wouldn’t be the first time someone was unsure. I figured it was best to just approach things directly.

We ate in near silence under the watchful and, if I was reading his mostly flat expression correctly, amused eye of the vampire. If the circumstances hadn’t been so strange, my own situation so dire, and my brain so exhausted, I might have found it funny. Here I was, eating dinner with a six-foot-six giant blonde tiger and a set of twins. It was like bizarro world version of my life.

Only in this world I had no guardian, no magic, and still had a psycho ex who wanted to kill me. I felt a deep pang for all I had lost and quickly threw it into a mental black box.

Most of the food vanquished, Noah finally got down to details.

“I have brought Kira and her team here,” he said, addressing me, “to help you get to your father. I believe they are uniquely equipped for this.”

“He means insane enough to do jobs for a vampire,” Kira said. She had no trace of Alek’s Russian accent. “And I’m guessing the only people he could find on short notice.”

“Alek said you were a bounty hunter or something?” I said.

Her lip curled. She really hated hearing his name. I wondered what their falling out had been. Alek hadn’t said much, but nothing in his words about her had led me to believe it was something super serious. Of course, when you don’t talk to a sibling for a decade, I should have guessed it was serious.

“Sometimes.” Alma jumped in. “Mostly, we solve problems.”

“Jade has a problem,” Noah said. “She needs to get into a very secure facility to talk to her father.”

“Wait, we’re not breaking him out?” I asked.

“No,” the Archivist said. His toothy smile was back. “We’re breaking you in.”

“That’s what she said,” Cora stage-whispered with a giggle.

Kira shot the twins a suppressing glare. “What prison? Where?”

“It doesn’t have a name, but some call it Custer due to the location. It is in South Dakota, Harding County.”

“A prison without a name? This sounds peachy as fuck.” Kira wiped her fingers on an already greasy napkin and then folded her arms over her chest.

“It’s a secure facility for supernatural beings, run by a shadow organization inside the government. Jade’s father is in there. Not,” he said, holding up a palm in the universal shut-up-and-wait gesture, “because he did anything. But because he chose to be. He is, my source tells me, asleep, and has been for over forty years.”

“He’s been… asleep?” I looked at Noah, wondering why he hadn’t told me this earlier. “For practically my whole life?” The chicken and potatoes I’d eaten turned to lumps in my stomach.

“That is why you must go,” Noah said. “I believe he will awaken for you.”

“You believe? But you don’t know?” I pressed. Visions did a jig in my head of going through whatever mad scheme we’d have to go through to even get into this place and then ending up sitting there as humans in riot suits stormed after me while my father slept on, oblivious.

“Secure government prison for supernatural things?” Kira stood up. “No. That’s a bag of nope, tied with a nope bow, and with a big fat nope cherry on top.”

Wow, Alek’s sister really was a nerd. I was willing to bet he had no idea. In non-bizarro world, Kira and I might have been friends. I filed that into the sad thoughts file, which was overflowing lately into a sad thoughts filing cabinet.

I stood, too. It did sound insane; I didn’t blame her for thinking so at all. But… I had no choice. I stepped in front of her, which was one of the more terrifying things I’d ever done in my life.

“If you don’t help me,” I said, “There’s a better than good chance Alek will die.” Technically he already had.

She looked down at me with eyes colder than I’d ever seen Alek’s. “I don’t care,” she said, biting off the words one by one. Then she shoved me aside and stormed out the door.

Jaq rose. “I’ll talk to her,” he said, walking around the table to follow her out.

I stood there, back against the wall, breathing hard and trying not to start smashing tableware. Eventually the twins turned their chair, catching my attention, and looked at me.

“You really his mate?” Cora asked.

“Really,” I said. I missed him like hell right then, even worse than before. “What happened between them?”

“He killed a friend of ours,” Alma said after a moment and a heavy glance exchanged with her twin. Her lips pressed into a pale line.

“As Justice,” Cora added. She ran a nervous hand through her green hair, spiking it up in different directions.

I realized she meant Alek’s role. Justice. Something else he’d likely lost because of me. I started to say something like “he wouldn’t do that” but shut my mouth. Alek would, I knew. He’d have a reason, of course, and I doubted their friend had clean hands if a Justice had been sent after them, but… I knew Alek. We’d met with him accusing me of murder, after all. He would always do what he felt was right, no matter the consequences.

Noah re-entered the room before I could frame a response or another question, making me realize I’d never even seen him leave.

“Kira has agreed to stay the night and hear out my inside man in the morning,” he said. “There is a room for everyone if you want it, though she claims you will all stay in your vehicle.” The vampire’s nose wrinkled slightly as he said that, as though he could hardly imagine why anyone would choose an RV over a proper bed.

“Yeah, we’re good,” Cora said. “We can find our way back.” She and her twin took the hint and left the room.

I followed Noah again down another hallway that could have been the same or different from any of the others I’d come down. This place was a maze, which I guessed was intentional. He showed me to a small room that had a single bed and an attached bath with shower. My backpack was already there, sitting on a padded bench at the foot of the bed.

“Sleep, Jade,” he said, his voice and expression almost gentle. “I will wake you when the druid arrives.”

“What if Kira won’t help me?” I asked. I didn’t want to sleep, though my body certainly did. It was definitely in healing mode, begging me for rest even though I’d spent a lot of time sleeping the last two days. Or maybe three days? I was losing track of time. How long had everyone been out there, running and hiding, without me?

“She will,” Noah said. “She is hardly in a position to turn down what I offer her. Leave the tiger to me.” He left, closing the door behind him.

That didn’t sound ominous at all. Nope. I let it go. I took a long shower, not letting myself cry, and then changed into clean-ish clothing before lying down on the bed. Sleep took forever to find me. It brought only worry and nightmares, and no rest at all.

Harper knew she must have passed out for a while. The pain in her abdomen had faded, which hopefully meant the gash she’d felt earlier but couldn’t see had closed finally. Her head still throbbed like someone had wrapped it in a towel and beaten her with a sack of oranges, but opening her eyes to the dim light didn’t make her want to barf anymore. She knew from smell and sound that she was alone in the room. Somewhere beyond the wall at her back, she heard the cry of a chickadee.

So there were likely evergreens nearby. Harper filed that information away and twisted her neck as best she could, taking in the room now that she was alone and conscious enough to evaluate.

She was in a windowless wooden box, as far as she could tell, with a bolt screwed into the floor behind her anchoring the collar and chain around her neck. There were tiny wood shavings and lighter wood around the base of the bolt, so it was probably a new addition to the room. Biting her blood-crusted lip, Harper managed to spin a few degrees. A cheap card table stood against the wall near the door. Only one door. Her way out.

She’d read stories of foxes chewing off their limbs to escape snares, but her mouth wouldn’t reach her shoulder, so that lame plan was totally out. Harper flexed her wrists, testing the strength of the cuffs. They felt like heavy iron, and the sound that issued from them as she twisted her hands experimentally confirmed it. She lay still, heart pounding in her throat, waiting to see if anyone came to the too-loud sound of clanking chain and metal, but the house seemed eerily quiet.

Twisting her hands had opened the scabs on her wrists, renewing the sharp pains and waking up blood-starved appendages with the death of a thousand needles. Harper twisted some more, her shoulders screaming a protest she ignored and felt her hands start to slip as her skin pulled and tore. More blood. That was what she needed. Slippery beautiful blood.

They stretched and strained in the darkness, Harper quoted to herself as a distraction, channeling her inner Bess, and the hours stretched by like years. No one was coming for her by moonlight, not if she had anything to say about it. And everyone figured poetry was a useless life skill.

Her left hand came free of its cuff with a sickening, moist pop. She was able to turn fully on her side and use the sore hand to free her still-trapped right one, gouging into her own wrist until her thumb dislocated with another moist, grinding pop.

Hands. She had them now. Such as they were. Harper lost a few minutes to lying on the floor, breathing through the pain. She wanted to shift to her fox self and get away from it, but her neck and feet were still trapped. One step at a time.

Un-dislocating a thumb was not as simple as it looked in the movies. She managed to jam it back into position, but her right hand was an aching mess that didn’t want to obey her commands. Fat fucking patootie, she told it silently. She had work to do. She felt along the collar with her left hand and got lucky. It was a bolt mechanism, with a metal pin tucked through to hold it in place. Clearly Samir hadn’t expected her to be able to get her hands free and unlock herself.

She wanted to fling the stupid collar across the room, but she carefully lowered it to the floor with as little noise as she could. Her feet were still chained to the collar and cuffs, and bolted into the floor. She’d been put into a rough hog-tie, the chains intersecting and locked together at the ankles.

Unfortunately, the manacles on her ankles weren’t bolt and pin, but sported a pair of heavy iron locks keeping the chain affixed to them. Harper allowed herself exactly three deep, aching breaths of freak-out time looking at the stupid locks, then realized her fox ankles would slip right out of them now that her body wasn’t contorted into crazy positions.

“Total failfish,” she muttered.

She reached into the Veil, letting her human body slide away into warm grey mist and her fox body emerge. She remembered the pain of the bear’s teeth ripping into her flank, but enough time must have passed, because while she was sore, her body felt whole and her legs slipped easily out of the manacles. It would have taken at least two days to heal this much in the mists. Harper pushed that thought away. Worrying about her friends wouldn’t get her out of this house. One panic attack at a time was enough.

More smells and sounds flooded her senses now that Harper could think without the pain from her human self distracting her. Shifter musk, wolf and bear, lingered in the air. A slightly cooler breeze caught her attention, coming from what she’d thought was a solid wall behind her.

There was a window in the room, she discovered, but it was nailed over with a thick piece of plywood. Harper considered trying to get it loose and escape that way, but her ears picked up slight movement and the vibration of voices coming from beneath her. She’d probably pushed her luck with the chains in terms of noise. A huge piece of wood being pried off a window wouldn’t be silent.

Most of the old cabins and farmhouses around the Frank were no more than two stories, so there was that, at least. Harper slunk up to the door and pressed her nose to the crack beneath it. She smelled nothing but drying mud, faint shifter musk, and citrus cleaner fluid. No one seemed to be moving around upstairs, but she waited another full count of sixty. If there was a sentry outside the door, he’d have shifted his weight, she thought. She still heard nothing close by.

Pulling her human form back sucked balls, but she couldn’t open the door with her fox paws—not quietly, at any rate. Her right hand throbbed and wouldn’t grip the doorknob, so Harper gently turned it with her left. It was unlocked, and didn’t appear to have any wicked spells on it, either.

Praise Jeebus for hubris, I guess.

Harper eased the door open, wincing as the old hinges squealed. She hovered in the doorway, taking in a narrow view of a hallway. She was at the end of it, two rooms off to the right, one off to the left that smelled like a bathroom, a linoleum floor starting just over the threshold. Beyond the room to the left was a stairway down. She slid out of the room, trying not to touch anything and leave more of a blood trail than she had to, and carefully closed the door behind her.

Slipping back into her fox form, Harper crept down the hall, pausing every few steps to listen, nose in the air, wary of any sign of Samir or the men with him. She pressed her nose to the bottom of the first door on the right, picking up stronger musk smells. Bear shifter, probably the big white bastard who had bitten her ass. No sound though. She guessed this room was used for sleeping or something, and decided not to risk opening the door.

The second room smelled strongly of Samir. His honey-sweet, almost cold scent irritated her nose and made her growl. She stayed away from that door, guessing that he’d put some kind of ward like Jade used on his own room. That would be a bad way out.

Harper flattened herself to the floor at the top of the stairs and poked her head over. The stairwell was unlit, but enough light filtered in from the hall and the window in the bathroom to let her make out a door at the base, which was closed. Light and shadow flickered under the uneven seam of the door and a soft male laugh filtered up. Definitely people down there.

Harper backed up along the hallway to the bathroom, the one room she hadn’t explored yet. It dated the house to the 1970s with its yellow and green patterned linoleum and lime green-bath and shower combination.

But it had a half-size window over the toilet. A window with a latch. Harper took a deep breath and then pulled on her human form again. She was getting dizzy from going back and forth between injured, aching human and mostly healed fox. It was annoying. All her human form wanted to do was rest in the mist and heal itself. Not today. Biblethump.

She eased the bathroom door closed and flipped the lock, hoping if anyone came up here they would assume it was a compatriot inside and not an escaped prisoner. Gritting her teeth, she climbed up on the toilet and used both hands to force the iced-over window open. Cold air blasted her face, clearing some of the pain fog from her mind. It also reminded her she was about to jump out a second-story window in only ripped jeans and a bra. Classic.

Harper narrowed her eyes against the freezing air and the bright daylight. It was late afternoon, she guessed, the pale winter sun dipping behind the house. So she was facing west. It wasn’t much, but it was something. Immediately below her was snow piled up where it had been dumped off the roof. A few skeletal bushes dotted the snow beyond and then it was open space for a good two hundred feet until huge pine trees rose up. Harper didn’t see any movement or sentries posted here, though the chill air carried voices to her from somewhere very nearby.

Now or never, she told herself. No reason to stay. Dangerous to drop like this, but the alternative was sit here and wait for someone to find her. Terribad choices, all around. If she could get to the trees, she stood a chance.

Sure, she thought. A chance against a sorcerer and a pack of mercenary wolves and shit. Cause I’m an expert woodsman.

These were her woods, at least. She didn’t know the Frank completely, nobody could, but these woods felt familiar enough to give her hope. She doubted they were too far outside Wylde. If she could get away, she would deal with the next issue of figuring out where to go. First steps go first.

Harper sucked in a painful breath, dragged herself up into the window, and tried to lever out over the side. Her injured hand gave out from under her and she tumbled forward, headfirst, at the snow. She reached for her fox in midair, twisting even as her other body took over. Her landing would have made a cat laugh, but she slammed into the snow mostly feetfirst, the fresh powder just enough over the more packed snow to cushion her fall. The bush under it wasn’t too thrilled, branches crackling beneath the snowpack.

She lay in the snow for a moment to catch her breath and listen. Movement drew her eyes to the treeline. A huge wolf emerged from the trees and Harper’s heart stopped beating for a long moment as he seemed to look directly at her. She was a shifter fox, oversized for her animal and bright freaking red. No snow coat for her. Snow had half buried her, but she wasn’t sure it would be enough. Any minute he’d start howling. The bloody, crushing jaws of the white bear danced through her memory.

Then the wolf turned and loped to the side, moving along the edge of the woods. He hadn’t seen her. She didn’t dare cut out into the unbroken snow behind the house, however. Wolves, like many predators, liked to sight-hunt. Movement would catch his eye faster than anything she could do.

Carefully Harper let herself slip backward in the snow bank until her butt pressed up against the house. She twisted and gained better footing, her ears flicking about to catch any sign she had been noticed. Hugging the house, she slunk through the snow to peer around the corner.

The coast here was clear; the muddy, snowy ground around it was chewed up and filthy from vehicles and boots. Three SUVs were pulled up next to a long driveway. Movement in the trees beyond the cars caught her eye, and Harper picked out the shape of another wolf. His back was to her, his job clearly to watch the woods, not the camp, but she pressed herself down against the snow and shivered.

Too many sentries. She wasn’t sure how to get out of here, how to reach the woods. The snow she was in was too white, Harper realized. If she could get to the mud she would at least blend in there a little better. Keeping an eye on the sentry, she crept across terrifyingly open ground to the nearest vehicle and slunk under it, flattening herself near a tire where the shadows and dirt would hide her. The SUV one over from her hiding spot had a minor gas leak, her nose told her. Not super useful, but it might conceal her smell as she hid here.

She lay there, warm inside her thick fur, ears twitching to gather information from behind her, her eyes focused on the wolf ahead of her. The distance to the trees here was maybe a hundred and fifty feet. All open ground. Probably a field in the summer, but now it was half frozen mud and half pristine, deep snow with only a few trails marring it where the wolves had moved through on patrol. She heard low voices and people moving behind her and sank even flatter to the ground.

After a long moment, Harper made herself twist around and look the other way, though she hated turning her back on the wolf. Ahead of her now was the front of the house. It gave her no information, looking, as she’d suspected, like any one of a couple dozen ramshackle places built edging the Frank during good times and gone to let for hikers and the like in recent years if they didn’t just stand completely boarded and vacant. There was a slouching porch with two chairs on it, one occupied by a big man in a green parka. Cigar smoke wafted toward Harper, and in the slowly dying daylight she saw the cherry glow in his hand. The white bear, she thought, unconsciously baring her teeth.

There was a gravel drive that had been plowed leading into trees beyond her line of sight, and more vehicles, two big trucks and a domestic sedan, parked across the way. The trucks had big cages in their beds, heavy metal contraptions that reminded Harper of her first, and only, trip to the circus. She’d hated seeing the big cats crammed into things like that. Max had too; he’d cried and wailed the whole time until the babysitter brought them home and vowed never to do Rosie a favor again.

Thinking about Max brought the void screaming up in her mind, and she pushed down the black pit of despair. No time for that. This is was time for escaping. Then she could find the cavalry, figure out the plan, and come back to enact terrible, murdering revenge on the bastard who had killed her brother.

She refocused, picking out more details. Beyond the trucks on the far side of the house, a makeshift corral had been erected out of slivered barbwire. The corral was empty, but the gate stood open like a mouth expecting a meal. Harper shuddered again. She didn’t want to know what Samir had planned for that. Just looking at it made her sick inside.

The whir of a truck engine broke the quiet. Two more wolves loped up the road ahead of a large truck pulling an enclosed trailer. Three more men came out of the house, pulling on coats as they tramped down the drive to meet it. Harper slowly turned her head and watched as the wolf that had been on sentry behind her made a beeline for the house, his attention on the incoming vehicle and not the woods.

He passed a dozen feet from where she lurked. The coast behind her looked clear. Time to go.

Except. The truck.

What was in the truck? What if it was one of her friends or all of them? She’d been in and out of consciousness for at least a day, probably more. Enough time for Samir to spring his trap, maybe.

Harper turned back to the action at the front of the house. Curiosity was apparently going to kill the fox, too. It was probably just Samir coming back and that would make everything more dangerous. But she had to know.

The big man got up from his spot on the porch, leaving his cigar burning in a tin ashtray on the railing. Behind the truck, the trailer shook as though something inside were putting up a fight. The truck came to a stop near the house and Samir climbed out of the passenger side.

“Careful,” Samir warned his men as they converged on the trailer. “You all can look your fill later. Get the package secure in the paddock first.”

“Where’s Dal?” the big man asked, looking from Samir to the man coming around the truck from the driver’s seat.

“He did not make it,” Samir said with a casual lift of his shoulders. “He was slow.”

“Unicorns got him, but he kept them off us, did his job,” the driver added. He was a younger man with brown hair and wind-chapped skin, with a flat, cautious voice. He gave the big man a tense nod.

Unicorn. Unicorn. Oh no.

Harper watched with growing horror as two men muscled a small white body free of the trailer, half dragging him with chains hooked to a thick, silvery wire halter. The unicorn was a colt, and she was guessing born recently, though the lifespan and growth rate of unicorns wasn’t something she’d ever put skill points into. But she knew horses, and he looked maybe two months old at most. Past the initial super-awkward stage, but still small and weak. He had a nub instead of a horn and he was trying to put his teeth into anyone he could reach, snorting and neighing when they jerked his head to the side.

“Careful! I need him alive for Balor,” Samir said. “Get him to the paddock.”

The paddock on the opposite side of the house from her. Everyone was watching the struggle with the baby unicorn. Harper doubted they’d notice if she danced across the open ground to the woods naked with theme music playing.

Harper looked behind her with longing and then sighed. Whatever Samir was up to, this seemed important to him. He’d mentioned Balor, too, which rang a lot of alarms in Harper’s mind. They’d had a hell of a time shutting down the Fomorian before—what if Samir planned to open his Eye again? Or something worse. With Samir, she was willing to bet on worse. The unicorns helped safeguard the wilds. If Samir wanted one alive and trapped, there was probably nefarious, awful reasoning behind it.

Besides, in the end, it came down to WWMD. What would Max do?

He’d save the damn unicorn. She knew it in her bones.

So that’s what she was going to do. Be a big damn crazy hero.

Harper looked around, taking in her resources, and came up with a really stupid plan. Time to kick ass, and take screenshots.

I was awake long before Noah tapped on the door and led me to the sitting room with the couch and two chairs. He left me at the door with a nod.

Walking in, I saw Yosemite standing by the couch. The huge druid’s hair was tangled and his multi-colored eyes, one green, one blue, had bags under them that spoke volumes about how much rest he was getting. I hadn’t realized until I saw him how close to the precipice of losing my shit I was. Seeing him here, alive and more or less well, dragged back the memory of his death, the images of all of my friends dying.

I failed my willpower save and practically threw myself into his arms, clinging tight to his barrel chest, breathing in his scent of snow and pine.

“Jade,” he said softly, patting my back with a gentle hand. “What happened? The spell had you—why aren’t you with us? Why are you here?”

It felt like pulling to strong magnets apart to step away from him, but I managed.

“Sit,” I said. I had to decide how much to tell him. But first, I had to know the things I’d been dreading.

Yosemite sat on the couch and raised a red-gold eyebrow at me.

“Is everyone—I mean,” I said, but couldn’t get the full question out.

I already knew everyone wasn’t okay. But I wanted to keep hoping, just for a moment.

“Alek, Ezekiel, Levi, Rosie, and Junebug are safe in a grove of mine. Freyda and her surviving wolves are around as well.” The druid took a deep breath as though he would say more, but instead he held it, staring at me. With him sitting down, we almost were eye to eye.

Junebug was safe. “Junebug is okay?” I said, avoiding the nine-hundred-pound gorilla in the room. Or really, the fox. “I saw her get shot.”

“Freyda’s wolves found her, brought her to me in time for me to heal her. She’s still injured, but should recover. Shifters are strong.” His smile was faint and faded quickly, like a flash of sunlight peeking out from a storm cloud.

“And Harper?” I asked, forcing myself to say the words.

Yosemite shook his head, shadows filling his eyes. “We don’t know,” he said, letting out another long, sighing breath.

I thunked down into the chair and closed my eyes. Harper’s face was waiting for me there in the darkness behind my lids. Her green eyes wide with pain and betrayal as we left her behind. I’m so sorry, furball, I whispered to her in my head. Then what Yosemite had said sank in and my eyes popped open.

“Wait, what do you mean you don’t know?” I looked at him, trying to squash my thin hopes. He hadn’t said “she’s dead,” after all. “I saw her get shot,” I added. “I saw her being left behind, out of range of your magic.”

“I know,” he said. Yosemite stared down at his big, tattooed hands and gave a small shake of his head. “In the forest we found pieces of Harper’s shirt, covered in blood. Freyda scouted back to the grove where the fight was. Harper’s body isn’t there.”

“Samir could have her,” I whispered. I didn’t know if this was worse or better.

“He could,” Yosemite said. “Or he could have her body, though the shifters swear the blood was fresh, not days old.”

I stood up and paced the length of the small room, clenching and unclenching my fists until my fingers cramped. Harper could be alive. Alive and held hostage by my psychotic ex. Noah knew where Samir was; he’d said as much. Which meant, if Harper was alive, we could go get her.

“It’s a trap, Jade,” Yosemite said. His voice held a weariness in it that made me wonder if he’d been arguing the same thing with Alek and my friends. They wouldn’t want to leave Harper in Samir’s hands any more than I did.

“You think I don’t fucking know that?” I said, spinning around. I made a face at my own tone. “Sorry,” I muttered.

“We’re all under a lot of stress.” Yosemite managed a smile, his teeth flashing through his beard.

“I’m guessing they want to go get her?” I asked.

“Ezee and Levi, yes. Alek and I, no. Rosie, well.” He shrugged, splaying his hands. “If she wasn’t hurt and if Junebug didn’t need her, I think she’d go herself.”

Rosie would want to go get her daughter, but she was also one of the most pragmatic people I’d ever known. She wouldn’t want anyone else risking themselves.

“They can’t fight Samir,” I said. “It isn’t a matter of should or shouldn’t. They cannot.”

“I believe we learned that lesson quite well,” Yosemite said, putting a tiny bit of bite into his tone. “What are you doing here, Jade?” Leaving unspoken, of course, the whole “why the hell did you abandon everyone after making me take us away from a fight before we even found out if we could win” part of the sentence.

It was okay. I caught the subtext.

“It’s complicated,” I said by way of non-answer to buy myself a few precious seconds to think. I had no idea how much to tell him. Anything I said would probably get back to my friends, to Alek. I needed them safe.

How safe will they be going after Harper without you with them?

“Jade?” Yosemite tipped his head to one side and his eyes narrowed. “Your magic? Your aura is changed, somewhat.”

I took a deep breath. “I am going to tell you what I’m doing, at least what I can. But you have to promise me, Iollan,” I said, using his given name instead of the nickname we all called him by. “You cannot tell this to the others. Not even Alek.”

“Not even that you are alive?” He shook his head.

“You can tell them that, if you must. But not where I am, or what I’m doing. No specifics. Only that they must wait for me. They cannot go after Samir. Cannot. Samir is trying to draw me with Harper as bait, if she’s alive. That means he’ll keep her alive for now. They cannot go after her, or they’ll just become more bait. Or die. I doubt that bastard thinks he needs more than a couple pieces to hook me.”

Harper is enough. Alek would be more than enough. It wasn’t a pretty thought to consider how expendable or not your friends were. I glared at the druid, trying to beam how serious I was into his brain.

He pressed his lips together and gave another head shake. “Fine.”

I didn’t know if I believed his promise, but in the end, it didn’t matter.

“The fight with Samir didn’t go quite how you think. The short version is that I used the power of the nodes to turn back time, because we all died. Everybody. That’s when I yelled at you to get us out. Doing that, though, it burned me out.” I held up a hand to stall his questions. “That’s why I’m here. I had a vision, of a sort, and Noah is going to help me get my magic back, as well as maybe find a way to defeat Samir so that we all don’t just die again.”

“You turned back time?” Yosemite put his head in his hands.

“It’s okay if you don’t believe me,” I said. It was a big pill to swallow, even with our magical experience.

“Oh, I believe you,” he said. “But you’ve changed the world, Jade. No possibility you haven’t. Not with magic like that.”

“I don’t know about the world,” I said, rubbing my thumb over the mystery divot in my talisman. “Just the future. I hope. Now isn’t exactly the time for a debate about the long-term effects. I’m more worried about everyone being alive next week.”

“I will keep them safe,” Yosemite said, rising to his impressive seven-foot height. “But your friends are not helpless.”

“I know,” I said, mentally adding that they weren’t except against Samir. It wasn’t Yosemite’s job to protect them from my ex. It was mine. So I shut up.

“Good luck, Jade Crow.” Yosemite opened his arms.

I hugged him again. “Iollan,” I said softly as he pulled away. “If you do have tell them you saw me…” I hesitated.

“Yes?”

“Tell Alek I love him. Tell him to trust me.” I bit my lip. “Please,” I added.

“I will. Come back safe, and soon.” Yosemite walked toward the door, which opened immediately as he reached it.

Noah stood in the hall. “Our other guest is here,” he said. “And breakfast is served.”

“Iollan,” I said to the retreating druid’s back.

He stopped and turned, looking at me expectantly.

“Just, stay safe,” I muttered. There was so much more I wanted to say, but the words clogged in my throat. For a moment I almost begged him to take me back with him, but I had work to do here. My best chance seemed to lay in being away from my friends. I had to cling to the plan, such as it was.

Yosemite nodded, a sad, understanding smile crinkling the corners of his eyes. Then he walked down the hall and I followed Noah instead, heading to breakfast and an unknown future.

Harper slunk across the frozen ground back to the edge of the house, waiting for shouts of discovery or bullets or fireballs or worse. Though she doubted Samir would throw a fireball at the house. She had yet to see him pull any of the really obvious magic that Jade liked so much. He was more of the “brutally hurting people and being evil” kind of sorcerer.

With those comforting thoughts, she crept up to the porch and peeked up over the deck. Everyone was still busy with the unicorn. So far, so good. She popped up on her hind legs and snatched the still-burning cigar from the ashtray. Tobacco acid burned her sensitive tongue, reaffirming a lifelong commitment to never smoke this shit. She tucked tail and ran along the edge of the house until she felt it was safe to dart back under the cars.

No shouts or fireballs or bullets yet.

Stealth check, total success.

Harper dropped the cigar as carefully as she could onto the frozen mud. It kept smoldering. She shifted back to human, red dots swimming in her vision as her battered human body brought back all its pain, and picked up the cigar again. This part would need opposable thumbs.

On her belly, she crawled to the car with the gas leak and rolled over, suppressing a groan. There. She guessed that salt on the roads had rusted out a little of the undercarriage. The leak was tiny, but Harper intended to fix that, if her nipples didn’t freeze off first. Without fur or even a shirt, she felt the full brunt of the Idaho winter.

Once again throwing a nervous glance toward the crowd around the paddock, she laid down the cigar, propping it on a tire edge to keep it burning, tapping the ash off as she did so. The cherry was fading, so she took a quick, acrid drag of it, spitting the smoke out quickly and suppressing a cough.

Keeping her eyes on Samir and the mercenaries, she felt around for a rock and dug it out of the half-frozen mud with her less injured left hand. Then she went to work on the gas leak, rubbing the rock as quietly as possible against the rust. It felt like it took forever, but the damp smear of gas became a drip even as the unicorn was wrestled into the paddock and Samir ordered everyone out. It looked like he was doing something at the gate, which worried Harper when she risked another glance, but she shoved all worries away. Part two was her focus now. No thinking ahead. Too much danger she’d remember what a dumb idea this was.

She let the gas drip into the mud, digging a little channel for it. The fumes were the most flammable, she remembered vaguely from chemistry. Harper started to wish she’d spent less time programming games into her TI-86 and more time actually studying. Her rough plan was that the cigar would ignite the fuel and travel up the fumes to the gas tank. She had no idea what would happen then, but didn’t care as long as it created a distraction.

Go time. Harper laid the cigar next to the pool of gas and backed out from under the SUV, moving quickly under the next vehicle over. She shifted back to fox form and headed along the back edge of the house, tense and ready to go. People were leaving the paddock, Samir and the big bear man moving for the porch, sentries heading out into the snow again, back in wolf form.

For a long moment, nothing happened. She almost went back to check on her distraction, afraid there weren’t enough vapors or the cigar had burned out. Way her luck had been going, it probably had.

Come on, real life, she thought desperately, for once, just be like the movies. She just wanted one fucking break.

Shouts rang out like gospel music to her ears.

“Car’s on fire,” someone yelled.

“Grab a hose.”

“Boss, sir!”

Harper saw no one around the paddock anymore. She didn’t know how long she had, especially since she realized even as she bolted for the fence that she hadn’t thought about how a mage could probably squash a fire real quick. Hopefully he was worn out from capturing the unicorn. Even he had to have limits.

Not looking back, she darted under the fence, half waiting for her skin to fry off with a magic trap or something. The unicorn colt turned and snorted, shaking his haltered head. Betting that he wouldn’t kick her, Harper went right up to him, and then dared to look back at the house.

Black smoke billowed up, from burning tires Harper guessed, and metal screeched and whined as the SUV went up in flames almost good enough for a Vin Diesel movie. Burning debris smashed into the cars next to it. Nobody was near Harper or even looking this direction.

Harper shifted to human and murmured softly at the unicorn to hold still. To her surprise, he pressed his soft nose into her palm, trusting. She doubted he’d been born when they’d saved the unicorns a few months ago, but maybe his parents had passed on word that Harper and her folk were good. Or maybe he was smart enough to recognize any port in a storm.

The colt was pure white, but this close Harper saw that his hair was blackened as though singed under the silver wire of the halter. New step one: removing that. It was constructed like a rope halter, a single thick strand that was looped around his nose and over the ears, all held with a knot under the chin. She took a deep breath and started pulling on the knot.

Her fingers burned as though she’d grabbed a handful of hot coals, but Harper mentally added it to the list of physical suckitude and kept working the knot. It came free all at once and the halter fell away to the ground.

The colt snorted and turned, making for the fence. Harper looked at the gate, saw the thick, intricately woven silver chain on it, and past it the mass of people slowly containing the fire as Samir played director from the porch. Seeing all that, she quickly went over to the unicorn. The fence hadn’t stopped her from going under and the unicorn was pretty small, so she had vague hope she could lift the wires or lift him over.

The barbed wire was looped to fence posts and looked standard feed-store issue, but had a small modification as she examined it more closely. More of the silver wire was braided through it. Her burning hands didn’t want to grab it again, but she was this fucking close to freedom and wasn’t about to let acidic pain stop her now. Harper reached for the bottom strand.

The unicorn jumped the fence, popping into the air as though he had wings and landing on the other side in a tiny puff of snow. He looked back at her with another snort as though to ask what she was doing still in there.

“You’re welcome,” she muttered. Then she was fox again, slipping her body under the fence.

“No! Stop them!” A terrible shout rang across the open field as Harper charged through the snow after the colt. Her luck had run out.

The colt ran across the top of the snow like an elf straight out of Lord of the Rings. Harper floundered along behind him in the deepening snow, struggling to get to the trees. We make it out of this, I’m naming you Legolas, she silently told the baby unicorn.

A wolf charged her from the right, barreling through the snow. She barked warning at the unicorn, mentally willing him to keep going, to get to the trees. He was a lot faster than she. If she saved him plus stuck it to Samir in doing so, it was all worth it.

The first bullet zipped over her head close enough she felt as much as heard it miss her. The second hit her in the ass, tumbling her forward. Then the wolf was on her. Harper snapped at him, catching his foreleg, but got only a mouthful of fur. His jaws closed on her back, tearing white-hot gashes across her barely healed flank. She was big for a fox, but he was huge for a wolf. His powerful jaws lifted her right out of the snow and he shook her like a rat.

Her last thought as snow and sunlight turned to pain and darkness was that she should have been born a tiger.

Breakfast was in the same room where we’d had dinner. Apples, bananas, bacon, hard-boiled eggs, and Old Fashioned donuts were piled on the table this time. From the depleted platter of bacon, it looked like everyone else had gotten a head start on me.

I was relieved to see Kira and her crew. If they were still here, hopefully it meant they would help.

The other person at the table surprised me. He was a Hispanic male in his mid-thirties, with short brown hair and deceptively sleepy brown eyes. His suit was different from the last one I’d seen Agent Salazar wearing, but it had the same kind of understated tailored cut. I’d last seen him in Wylde, after walking naked out of a fire that had destroyed my game store.

“Salazar,” I said, taking a seat next across from him. “We meet again.”

He was seated where I had been the night before, next to the twins. Kira had the head of the table again. I glanced at Jaq as I sat, nodding a greeting.

“The Archivist told you I was coming?” he said. “You don’t seem surprised.”

“He didn’t,” I said, grabbing a donut and an egg. “But you being a special agent of some unspecified secret agency, combined with us needing information about a secret government prison, I just can’t find it in me to feel shock right now.” Which was true. I’d been surprised for about half a second seeing him there, but logic had quickly draw the lines for me.

“I hear you want to break into Custer,” he said. “Because you haven’t done enough crazy shit.”

“I need to talk to one of the inmates,” I said, unsure how much Noah had filled him in. “It could be the key to defeating Samir.” I knew I was overstating things. I had no idea what would happen when I met my father for real. I don’t always make life-or-death decisions that impact everyone I love, but when I do, I go off vague ancestral vision memory thingies.

“Don’t hurt yourself with the convincing,” Alma said. She and her twin giggled.

I glared at them, glad my twins didn’t giggle at least, though their smart-ass qualities seemed similar enough to put on a real cage match against each other.

“Jade doesn’t need to convince me,” Salazar said. “Things are changing, have been for a while. My time with the NOS is nearly over.”

“NOS?” I asked around a mouthful of donut.

“My agency. Not Otherwise Specified. Our government does love their acronyms,” Salazar said. He blew on his cup of coffee.

“So you’ll help us break in?” I said. Ideas were already whirling around in my head. “You have codes or clearance or whatever?”

“Ooh, maybe he could take you in as a prisoner!” Alma said.

“Or pretend you are some kind of government inspector,” Cora chimed in.

“I do have clearance, but stop whatever you are thinking,” he said. “You all have seen too many spy movies. Spy movies always forget one thing.”

“Paperwork,” Jaq said with a chagrined smile.

“Paperwork,” Salazar confirmed. “It would take weeks to process a new prisoner in. There are holding facilities all over the States where people and such are evaluated before transfer. Almost no one is sent directly to Custer. And before you ask, no, I can’t fake the paperwork.”

“Before you ask me, neither can I,” Noah said from the other end of the table. He’d been so still I had forgotten he was there for a moment. Pesky vampires and their lack of breathing and noise-making.

“So we can’t walk in the front door,” Kira said. “Obviously, or we wouldn’t be needed.”

The twins made faces at her. I felt a pang of longing. These people were friends, Kira had her crew with her. I was alone, in a room of near strangers. No history, no camaraderie.

Whose fault is that, exactly? the traitorous voice of reason whispered in my head. I mentally slapped tape over her mouth.

“I can get in myself,” Salazar said. “Though it will likely come back on me and I’ll have to burn this identity.”

“You mean your name isn’t Salazar?” I asked. I cracked an egg against the table and started peeling it onto my plate. I was hungrier than I had felt in days. Maybe because I knew that my friends were safe, for the moment, and that if I could get my magic back, I might even have a chance at saving Harper, too. Hope can really work up an appetite.

“It is, but I was placed in the NOS by the Council of Nine. The government doesn’t like to hire shifters and supernaturals directly. Only on a contract basis. The Council pulled some powerful strings so I could keep track of Custer and the NOS. I reported to them.” His shrug was careful, belying the tension in his body.

“To them, and to the Archivist,” Kira said. She had her ice-blue lazer beam gaze focused on him.

“The Council knows, I’m sure,” Salazar said, returning her look with bland acceptance. “As long as I reported to them too, they didn’t care.”

“Why do you keep using the past tense?” Alma asked.

“After I help you, I’m out. It’s complicated.”

“Need-to-know-basis?” I asked, though I had a pretty good guess why he wasn’t going to report to the Nine anymore. Alek’s words about the Council being dissolved ghosted through my brain.

“That’s right,” he said, throwing me a small smile that told me he’d guessed that I knew.

It was like a word puzzle. He knew that I knew and now I knew that he knew that I knew… Fuck it. I preferred puzzles that gave me levels.

“Why do you need us, then?” Kira asked, directing her question down the table to Noah. “Can’t secret agent man here walk in, open the cell that has the guy we want, and then walk him out again?”

“He could, though getting out with a prisoner would be complicated, I imagine. But we are not breaking Ash out. We must get Jade inside,” Noah said. “Her father is in there voluntarily.”

“Well, he’s locked up,” Salazar said in a mildly defensive tone. “But he doesn’t wake up much. Just eats and sleeps, and occasionally binge-watches television before passing out for another few months. Nobody knows what he is. He just walked in about forty years ago, or so the stories go, anyway. Asked for a room. Killed a guard when they told him it was a prison and he couldn’t have one. So they locked him right up. He’s never been a problem since, not in all the years I’ve been in NOS.”

“What does he look like?” I asked. It wasn’t relevant really, but this was my father, my biological one at least. Curiosity nudged out sense.

“Who cares?” Kira said. “Fine, he won’t walk out, and I assume you can’t carry him out. How do we get in?”

I really wanted to tell her to go fuck herself, but I needed her, rudeness and all.

“I can open a secret hatch, a side door. It’s an emergency exit. Here.” Salazar shoved his plate to the side. “Let me show you the layout.”

We all started moving dishes down the table toward Noah, clearing a spot in front of Salazar so he could unfold a piece of paper he pulled from an inner pocket in his suitcoat. On the paper was a rough sketch of something shaped like an infinity sign.

“This is Custer,” he said, tapping a finger on the figure eight. “Whole thing is underground. It’s almost like a Möbius strip, which I’m going to assume I don’t have to explain.” He waited for us to nod or glare at him, depending, before continuing, “The front is here, at the crossing of the sides. It is actually two levels, this loop being on top, the other the lower level. Lower level is the more dangerous one.”

“Let me guess,” I muttered. “That’s where we have to be?” It would be with my luck, lately.

“No, that’s the good news,” Salazar said. He wasn’t smiling, which worried me. “Upper level, here on the bend where it starts to straighten? That’s where you want to get to. And here…” He indicated the middle of the upper bend. “This is where the hatch I can open for you is.”

“So we creep up to the side, you open the door, we go get the guy, easy peasy?” Alma asked. I shared her skepticism.

“What are all those little dots?” Cora leaned forward to examine the paper more closely.

“Those are why we need you,” Noah said from directly behind me.

I barely flinched. Really. Except my knee hit the table hard enough to leave a bruise and jump the cutlery around. Damn quiet vampires.

“Those are magical landmines, more or less. They trigger nasty things, most of which I don’t know about, not specifically. It is hard to sort what is Agency legend and what’s reality, and I can’t ask too many questions. Rumors are the traps trigger magical creatures that attack whatever steps on them. Or they just might be like regular mines and explode.” Salazar spread his hands and gave us an apologetic smile.

“Why would they build an escape hatch into a deathtrap?” Kira said.

“The hatch leads to the helipad. No one is supposed to just walk across the field.”

“It’s open ground?” Jaq asked.

“Yes. About twenty acres are kept clear. I haven’t even gotten to the best part.” Salazar picked up his coffee, took a big drink, and set it down, looking from Kira to me. “There’s an invisible magic fence around the whole place except the road in. Maybe more than one fence—the water-cooler stories vary from one to three fences.”

“If it is magic,” I said, thinking things over, “it is most likely three. Three is a common and powerful number.”

“There are one or three invisible fences. There are invisible magical landmines, or possibly just straight-up normal landmines. The whole facility is underground, and this time of year, under snow. We’ll have to cross open ground in full view to deliver the package, over dangers we can’t even see,” Kira summed up, ticking off the problems on her fingers.

“Hey,” I said. “I’m not a package.” The way she’d kept ignoring me, and her rudeness, was starting to grate.

“Did your magic come back while you got your beauty sleep?” she asked, her voice as icy as her eyes.

“No, but…” I said. I stopped talking, because I had nothing to add after the but.

“Can you shoot?”

“Not if you want me to hit what I aim at,” I muttered. Now I knew how a deflating balloon felt.

“Fight hand to hand?”

I shook my head. Alek had been teaching me some stuff, but I had no illusions about my skills versus anything deadly.

“Detect landmines? See invisible fences? Fly a helicopter?”

“Kira,” Alma and Jaq said at the same time.

“Kira, come on,” Cora echoed.

“She has no practical skills; that’s why we are here. I won’t have a normal fucking up my team. Tell me what you can contribute, or get out and let the grown-ups plan.” Kira glared at me.

I opened my mouth to say a lot of words that began with the letters F and C, but Salazar cut me off.

“None of you can fly a helicopter in. They’d see you coming and shoot it down without questions.” He gave me a sympathetic look.

“Fine, genius,” I said, standing up. I’d had enough. “You figure out a plan, since that’s what you’re being paid to do.” I stormed out of the room, brushing past Noah.

I didn’t know where the hallway led, but I tried to return to my room. I needed to think. I needed to breathe. I really, really needed not to cry in front of that bitch. Or start trying to punch her. As she’d just pointed out, I wasn’t a match for most humans, much less a giant tiger shifter. Punching would just end in tears. Mine, probably.

The door I opened wasn’t to my room. Instead I found myself in the library I’d first been in months and lifetimes ago with Yosemite, when we had traded Samir’s dagger for the druidic book. Tall shelves lined the room, stretching up into the shadows. Lamplight bathed the room in a cozy golden glow, adding to the mysterious atmosphere. It gleamed off leather spines and gold-leaf titles. This was as good a room as any for a sulk, I decided, and shut the door.

Kira’s words had hurt because I had to acknowledge, much as my smarting pride didn’t wish me to, that she was right. Not that I couldn’t think strategically, of course. I was a gamer, I’d planned more imagined assaults and break-ins of facilities and castles and dungeons and whatever than most people. But those were all imaginary.

I didn’t know Kira. I didn’t know her team. I had no clue what the resources available looked like. I couldn’t fight. I couldn’t protect us with magic. It was worse than that, however.

Samir was still in Wylde. He potentially had Harper captive; doing Universe knew what to her. My friends, Alek… they were all out there in the wilderness, licking wounds, hiding from a mess I’d made, from an evil I was responsible for bringing into their lives. I couldn’t go to them either, because what could I offer? My best hope for saving them was to find my father, get my magic back, and then go kick some ass.

Kira had more or less said I was useless. Sitting here alone in the library, I could grudgingly admit that maybe I was. I half-expected Noah to come after me, but he left me alone to wallow. It felt totally shitty to be sidelined like this, no matter how much truth was in it or how dangerous it might be for me to try to get too involved. There was probably a life lesson in there somewhere, but I was speeding along the Sulk Highway to Pityville so fast I didn’t want to detour down Introspection Lane.

There was only so much sulking I could handle. I was in a library, after all. I walked slowly around the room, gently touching titles, thrilled that I could still read the spines. I hadn’t lost my wicked-cool ability to read any language. I had seen a red book last time I was here, with a dragon on it. I went hunting for that but another title caught my eye almost immediately. It was new leather, black with gold stitching, standing out among the other books for its thickness and its shiny newness.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. I’d never read it, opting to watch the miniseries instead. I’d been impressed with the magic system and meant to read the book, but I’d had so little time the last year for reading. Gaming was my first love anyway, right after trying not to get killed by my ex.

I thumbed it open. It was special edition, signed by the author. Made sense, I supposed, though I wondered how Noah had it in here among thousands of far more archaic books. Maybe it had been mis-shelved and there was a fantasy section around somewhere.

If only I had a couple magicians to imbue me with all of English magic right about now.

I should have been born a wizard, I guess. But I was sorcerer to my core. I’d even learned to control my magic through D&D spells the way a sorcerer would, not learning them by the book, but taking the essence of the listed spell and practicing with my will, bending my magic to do my bidding without ingredients and incantations, or study. Prestidigitation had been my favorite. It was fun to say, too, a good word to work into random sentences. It was a wonder I hadn’t been more popular at parties. Using something like Ray of Frost would have made me way cooler, but probably raised too many questions.

I took the novel back to one of the padded benches and sat down. I figured someone could come find me if or when they got a solid plan. Meanwhile, I could read and cool off and hopefully Kira and I would stop wanting to kill each other. Who knew? Maybe I’d learn a thing or three from Jonathan Strange.

I started to smile at the thought and my cheeks froze in mid-pull. My heart started to thud into my ribs. I almost face-palmed for realsies.

I didn’t have magic. That didn’t mean I couldn’t do magic.

People, normal humans and witches and whatever, they did magic all the time. Well, not all the time, it took rituals and knowledge, and discipline and a non-fake spell to go on, but… magic wasn’t just the providence of sorcerers. We were just better at it.

I dropped the book onto the bench and started for the door. Then stopped. I had a lot of suspicions about this warehouse and its owner. Time to test one of them.

“Noah Grey,” I said, trying not to yell. I didn’t think I needed to speak too loudly.

Suspicions were confirmed when he walked through the door not thirty seconds later.

“Yes?” he said. His angular face carried a half-amused, half-curious expression.

“Do you have spell books?” I said. “Real ones, not like fake New Age bullshit.”

The vampire tilted his head to one side and raised both eyebrows.

“Okay,” I said. I started thinking as quickly as my excitement would allow. “Stupid question I guess. I need spells. Ones that deal with seeing invisibility, also some simple stuff, too, so I can test and see if this will even work.”

He studied me for a moment and I wondered if he’d start demanding another drop of blood or something. I was willing to give it. Anything to be of use, anything to do magic again, even if it wasn’t exactly the same.

“Wait here,” he said. He left as silently as he’d entered.

Fuck yeah. Allowing a small fist pump, I grinned. I was about to gain my first level of wizard. We’ll see who is useless now, bitch.

Harper wasn’t unconscious long, unfortunately. She came to, still a fox, with Samir looming over her. The moment her eyes opened, he kicked her.

“Stupid fucking animal,” he spat, lifting his boot again.

She didn’t hesitate, despite her ribs letting her know they were going on strike and her hip screaming its death scene.

Harper sprang as soon as she had a leg under her, shifting to human in mid leap and slamming into the surprised Samir. She went for his throat with her hands and teeth, uncaring this was her weaker human body. Human teeth could still rip and tear, and she was still shifter, still strong.

Samir slammed his elbow into her ribs, knocking the wind from her laboring lungs. His hand snapped up and closed on her throat, barely keeping her teeth from his neck. Her hands closed on his jacket, and for a moment, they struggled before he threw her backward into the snow, her strength waning.

She curled on the snow around her aching ribs, spitting blood and wheezing. Samir made a fist, and crackling energy, barely visible in the fading daylight, formed around his hand.

“That’s right, motherfucker,” Harper snarled. “Kill me. Kill me, pickledick. Fry me. Do it.”

Dying had been, like, plan zed, but she hurt so much she found she didn’t care. The unicorn was free. If she was dead, the pain would stop. Samir wouldn’t be able to hurt her anymore or use her to hurt anyone she loved.

“No,” he said. “Stupid bitch. You are going to live and watch your friends come and die here, one by one.” He kicked her again but she twisted and took the worst of it on her thigh muscle. “Get the cage,” he told one of the men.

Harper allowed herself the tiniest feeling of relief. Not dead. Not yet. She clutched her hands to her chest as one of the mercenaries grabbed her legs and started dragging her back to the house. She started reciting Pi in her head to keep herself conscious. It was back to plan C.

Plan C was in her hands. Literally. Harper closed her fist tighter around the ruby vial she’d taken off Samir’s neck in their struggle. She mentally thanked Uncle Darragh and his lessons with the bells.

Still alive. Almost kicking.

Samir didn’t take chances this time. No more chains. He had two of his men bring a heavy cage up to the room she’d been in before and they stuffed her into it. It locked with a thick chain through bars and a welded loop on the top, nowhere near the slits at the front. No way for someone inside to reach and pick the lock.

Harper let herself pass out once inside the cage, after tucking her tiny prize into her jeans pocket. She heard Samir giving instructions that someone was to remain in the room with her at all times before exhaustion and injury pulled her back into the dark.

She didn’t know how long she was out, but the pains had faded somewhat and the room was full dark when she awoke. A guard, the young-looking, flat-expressioned brown-haired man who had come back with Samir and the unicorn, leaned against the wall near the door, flipping a coin. Could have put his picture next to the dictionary definition of boredom. A different guard than before. Time was definitely slipping away from her.

Her friends would come for her. Hopefully they wouldn’t be totally stupid and walk right into an obvious trap, but Harper didn’t feel much like waiting around to be rescued. She was no kitten and she’d get her own damn self out of this tree. Somehow.

“My mouth tastes like ass,” she said, opening conversation. “Water?” She didn’t see any around him, not even a cup or a bottle, but maybe she could get him to leave and get her some.

“No,” he said.

“No? Just no?” she asked, licking her chapped lips. She really did want water.

He shrugged and slipped the coin into his pocket.

Harper tried a different plan.

“You’re stuck in here with me,” she said. She awkwardly tried to pull down her filthy bra strap, exposing an equally filthy, and bruised, breast. “We could pass the time more pleasantly.”

It was a Hail Mary to end all Hail Marys, she recognized, but figured at worst he would say no again.

“Not into rape,” he said with another shrug, his voice still calm and flat.

“Not rape if I’m willing,” Harper said, pressing her cheek to the bars. This always worked way better in the movies. She needed a makeup crew. And a nap. And a hidden gun.

I watch way too many movies, she thought, still trying to look even marginally appealing. She mostly felt utterly pathetic.

“Technically,” he said, moving away from the wall and walking toward her, “it’s still rape. I have total power over you in an illegal situation. You can’t consent.”

“Great,” Harper muttered, dragging her bra strap back up into a position that didn’t push too hard on her bruises. “What are you, a fucking lawyer?”

“No,” he said, his mouth twitching in the barest hint of a smile. “I’m not a rapist.”

Harper leaned back against the side of the cage and drew her legs up. She couldn’t reach the lock. This guy wasn’t going to fall for stupid movie tricks. She’d have to wait for another opening. Maybe his replacement wouldn’t have qualms and would only see a helpless female.

“Besides,” her guard said after a long moment. He bent down in front the cage, out of reach. “You’re just trying to get me to unlock this thing for you so you can try to escape again.”

“Now you’re fucking Sherlock Holmes.” She closed her eyes. “Aren’t you people worried about the Council of Nine sending a Justice after you?” she asked finally, trying one last line.

“No,” he said, his tone so sure she opened her eyes and looked at him again. “Lots of us have been operating for years without trouble. Long as you don’t do certain things, nobody cares. The Nine aren’t quite the all-powerful gods some think.”

“You going to explain that?” Harper glared at him. She was learning the hard way that he was right. The shit that had gone down with the rogue wolf Justice and the Alpha of Alphas mess had shown that. Plus whatever weird stuff was going on with Alek.

“No,” he said.

Harper sighed. She was bone tired, hurting, and out of ideas. Maybe the next guard would be a lot more stupid. A nap sounded like the only real plan left to her.

“You could ask nicely,” the guard said after a long moment, his smile sly and big enough to flash a hint of teeth.

“What?” Harper eyed him, feeling like she’d lost some key context. Maybe she’d passed out again without knowing it and missed a whole chunk of conversation? More likely he was messing with her.

“You want out of the cage?” he asked.

“Is that a trick question?” she asked back.

“No, but I suppose it is an obvious one. I could let you go. I don’t think you’d get very far though.” His eyes were a shade lighter brown than his hair; his smell was clean and woodsy, tinged with the scent of wolf. A hint of weariness in his gaze made Harper guess that he was a lot older than he looked.

“You could let me worry about that,” Harper said. Her heart sped up. He was fucking with her. She tried to remember that.

“Of course, if I let you go, I’ll be held responsible. The boss isn’t a very forgiving man, nor, I think, is our employer.” He sat back on his heels, his tone still conversational, but that sly look was getting more obvious by the second.

“Escape with me?” Harper suggested. This bastard was a real sadist, she decided. He was hurting her with the only thing she really wanted, damaging her with hope.

“No. I like my job, and I like living. You fuck up in this business, you get retired with flowers and an unmarked grave.” He shook his head. “But maybe I can get someone else to let you out. After that, whatever happens isn’t my problem. We catch you, we kill you, understand?”

It’s a trap, it’s a fucking trap, stop even thinking about this, her brain screamed at her. She shoved away the voice of reason. None of her choices were good, so she was going to choose the one that dangled freedom.

Harper licked her lips again. “Why would you help me?”

“I know who you are,” he said. “You’re XHarperX, right? I watched you win the StormMasters Cup. When you transfused a baneling?”

StarCraft. He was talking about a live stage tournament she’d won at the big Master Gamer’s League convention what felt like an entire lifetime ago. Before she’d known her friend Jade was running for her life. Before Samir.

“You’re a gamer?” she whispered, starting to believe, starting to really hope.

“We are legion,” he said with a solemn nod. “I’d hate to see you die here without at least a fighting chance.”

He glanced at the door and added, “And maybe being killed escaping is better. A better death than what that sorcerer plans for you.”

“What do I have to do?” Harper said.

“Play along,” he said. He rose and went to the door.

She heard him call out for someone, and another man, this one slightly shorter, only an inch or two taller than Harper herself, entered. The new man was packing a big, obvious gun on his hip and had a big knife sticking out of his combat boots. He looked like he wished he were Rambo. Harper sniffed the air, trying to determine his animal, but his scent was human through and through.

Fighting chance, that was what the gamer guard had promised. Human was better than shifter. Injured as she was, she’d have a hard time overpowering a flea, but damned if she wouldn’t rather tackle a human rather than a wolf or bear any day.

“Girl has to shit,” Gamer Guy said with a disinterested shrug. “I want coffee. She’s your problem for the moment.”

“What you want me to do? Get her a bucket?” Human Guy whined, glaring over at Harper.

Gamer Guy handed him a key. “Take her to the bathroom, let her shit, lock her back up.”

“Why me?”

“Because I said so,” Gamer Guy said. He put a little growl into his voice, standing up taller and Harper sensed the wolf in him.

Human Guy apparently did also. “What if she tries something? We’re not supposed to let her out.”

“You scared of an injured little girl?”

“I really gotta go, please,” Harper chimed in.

“I ain’t scared. Just let her shit in her cage. Who cares?” Human Guy took the key and made a face.

“You’ll care when it stinks up everything and you have to spend the next twelve hours locked in here with her.” Gamer Guy went to the door.

Human Guy had already thought of that, apparently, because he was moving to the cage. “Least stand at the stairs in case she does something stupid?”

“No problem,” Gamer Guy said. He gave a slight nod to Harper behind Human guy’s back. His message was clear. Up to her now.

She faked being weak and hurt, which wasn’t that difficult or faked, as she unfolded herself from the cage and staggered to her feet. She clutched her gut and groaned, hoping she wasn’t hamming it up too hard.

Human Guy grabbed her upper arm, making her hiss in pain as his fingers dug into bruised flesh. He dragged her out the door and toward the bathroom she’d escaped from who knew how many hours before. She staggered some more, leaning heavily, and managed to spit up a little blood, letting it run down her chin.

“Jesus,” Human Guy muttered. He shoved her into the bathroom.

“Door?” she asked.

“Fat chance,” he said, and waved an arm at the toilet. “Go.”

“At least turn around?” She made big eyes at him, trying to look as weak and waifish as possible.

He looked around the sparsely decorated bathroom as though checking to see if she had a giant sword hidden in the wallpaper or something, and then turned around with a sigh, his body blocking the doorway.

Harper put the toilet seat down and took quick stock of her options. The toilet was as old as the cabin, heavy porcelain stained with time and use. It had chipped in some parts, showing what looked like iron underneath.

One chance. That was all she’d have.

Time’s up, let’s do this, she told herself.

She pulled the top of the toilet tank off and sprang at Human Guy, swinging the heavy porcelain and iron lid into the back of his head. He went down with a sickening thud.

The hallway beyond him was clear. No sign of Gamer Guy. She figured he was downstairs getting his alibi cup of coffee.

Ignoring the intense protest of her body, Harper dragged the human into the bathroom and closed the door. She took a risk and ran a little water in the sink, ignoring her reflection as she shoveled a handful into her mouth. The water was the best she’d ever tasted.

She bent and felt a thready pulse in Human Guy’s throat. Harper hesitated for a moment. She thought about using his knife, but realized all that blood would tip off the shifters in the house, giving things away too soon. She picked up the heavy lid again instead, and this time pushed it down onto his neck. He never woke up and barely even twitched. In the back of her mind, she knew Max would be frowning, but he was dead and not here. Things would never be the same and she couldn’t afford to be weak. Not ever again.

Besides, as she’d once told Jade, some people needed killing. This meant one less asshole coming after her and her friends.

Harper hit the light and went back to her old friend the window. It wasn’t quite dark outside; the horizon had the grayish tinge of false dawn about it. Dark enough that she might get away, she thought. She shoved the window open and had seriously painful déjà vu as she pushed herself out and landed on her old friend the snowy bush.

With another prayer to whatever benevolent forces might be listening, Harper shifted. Agony tore through her ass and hip. Bullet wounds took longer than a few hours to heal, apparently. She compartmentalized the shit out of this pain, too. Her human form would be too damned slow and too damned cold.

No wolves moved in the trees that she could see. Time to go.

Harper bolted through the faint path she saw toward where the sentries had been patrolling earlier, taking the faster route instead of the stealthier one. She wasn’t sure her hip was up to wading in untouched snow. She was almost to the trees, their dark branches reaching out like old friends, when she heard yelling behind her and then the howl of a wolf.

No looking back. Harper went for the trees. She left the snow with a leap, darting into bare brush at the edge of the woods. She had no idea where she was going and once in the darkness of the forest she could see almost nothing more than a few feet from her face. She ran on instinct, desperation, and adrenaline.

The first wolf caught her in the side with a leap she saw just in time to roll away from. Blinding agony ripped through her hip and back as her wounds reopened. She spun and snarled at the circling wolf. A second joined it, its form a darker shadow, circling away from the first, surrounding her.

Harper resolved to go down fighting. Gamer Guy was right, she figured. Better to die this way than be used as bait. She also had the fleeting but satisfying thought that if she died in fox form, Samir’s stupid ruby vial, whatever it was, would be lost to the Veil inside her human jeans pocket forever.

I’d like to live, she thought, even as she resigned herself to being ripped apart. I wanted to see him die. I’m sorry, Max. I’ll explain when I see you. Soon.

She crouched, eyes watering from the pain, and snarled a final time.

The dark wolf sprang at her but never made it. Soft white light filled the woods around them and a blur of silver hit the wolf, throwing it into a tree where it collapsed and didn’t rise. The blur resolved itself into a unicorn.

Lir. Harper recognized this one. Jade had saved its life after the evil sorcerer Clyde tried to kill off the unicorns with Fomorian hounds. She knew as sure as gravity it was the same one.

The first wolf snarled and tried to go for a hamstring. He took a horn in his ribs as the unicorn spun, again a blur of speed and deadly power. The wolf limped back, side gushing blood, and howled. Answering howls filled the woods, echoing.

Lir turned to Harper and bent his foreleg, dropping into a kind of strange bow. Harper took the hint and shifted to human, stumbling toward him. His mane was strong under her bruised and acid-burned fingers, his fur thicker and softer than a chinchilla’s. She climbed onto his back with the grace of a sack of onions and he sprang away through the woods as the howling grew nearer.

Harper clung on as they ran. Branches that should have slapped her silly seemed to pull away from her at the last second, and she swore the trees were shifting out of the way. Glancing back, the woods were thick and dark behind them, looking impassable for something as large as a unicorn.

“I love magic,” Harper murmured. Her grip was failing her, her mind trying to run away to a nice dark place where there wasn’t so much pain. The unicorn had the smoothest gait of anything she’d ever ridden, but there was still enough up and down movement to make her want to vomit as she felt every bruise, every bullet hole, and every cut she’d ever gotten in her life, in either body.

Lir seemed to know where he was going, so Harper turned her entire waning attention to staying on his back. She was riding a unicorn. Max would have shit himself with jealousy. They crossed a stream as daylight turned the woods from black to grey and white. They reached a clearing where a massive oak stretched welcoming branches toward the weak winter sun, and the unicorn stopped abruptly. Harper lost her grip and slid from his back. She lay where she’d fallen, unsure she’d ever be able to rise again. The snow felt soothing on her skin.

A huge white tiger emerged from the woods and turned into a tall blond Viking-looking dude as he ran toward her.

Alek. Harper was sure she’d never been so excited to see anyone in her life. He was alive. Then the druid, Yosemite, his flame-red hair curling around his face and his eyes bright with green flame, emerged from the woods behind Alek and bowed to the unicorn.

“Wolves. Samir,” she said, trying to get her brain and her mouth to coordinate into a proper warning. “Chasing us.”

“Harper, shh,” Alek said, pulling her into his arms as carefully as he could. “You are safe now. I have you.”

She looked up at him, his eyes pale as the winter sky, his cheeks lined with worry and white-blond stubble. He was absolutely the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen in her life.

“Now I know how Jade always feels,” she murmured as she passed the fuck out.

Noah brought me three books and a bonafide scroll. He also gave me a notepad and a box of pens and pencils.

“These are reproductions, so don’t worry about touching the pages, no matter how old they seem,” Noah said.

“Thank you,” I said, taking the books and putting them onto the desk.

“Good luck,” he said. Then he left with a half-smile playing around his lips.

I tried not to think about what that meant. Either he approved of what I was trying to do, or he thought I was crazy and was just handing over things to keep me from picking more fights with Kira. Like giving the rowdy kid a coloring book and some crayons to distract her.

Only my crayons could maybe do magic. I shrugged off worrying about the vampire’s motivations and got to work at the small desk.

One of the books was a thick tome bound with red leather and closed with three brass clasps. It looked like a proper spell book, so I started with it first. It was written in Latin, with some of the spells in older languages, variants of Coptic and Greek. I turned the pages carefully, almost wishing I had gloves, despite what the Archivist had said. The spells in this book were complex, rituals for harvest or dealing with spirits, though I found two that might help us see the invisible. Both required a full moon and specially prepared garments. I set that book aside.

My wizarding was off to grand start. Sorcery was so much easier. This material components and casting time stuff was bullshit.

The next book I picked up was a slender volume with the title Triewe Lacnunga. A grammatically suspect Anglo-Saxon title that meant roughly “True Remedies.” I was guessing the title had come after the book itself, though the text was mostly in Anglo-Saxon, with a few of the spells in Latin. I paged through the book quickly. These spells were far simpler, mostly based in herbs with basic invocations. Tearing up a piece of notepaper, I made bookmarks and marked off a couple promising spells. One was very simple, dealing with making light, and I figured I could use it as a practice spell. I had no clue if I could make magic work even with real spells, after all. Going from zero to seeing invisibility was probably a mistake.

Not that I had time to give myself a true crash course in working this kind of magic. Even with spells and ingredients and everything else right, I was pretty sure it took witches and other human magic users years or more to be able to master gathering power and executing these spells. It had taken a full coven just to flood my shop with bugs, for example. My only hope was that since I was used to bending power to my will, and totally comfortable with the idea of magic itself, that I could skip the whole “years of study” thing.

I didn’t have years. My friends didn’t have years. We might not even have days.

The third book had a stitched binding and carved wood panels for its case, painted with blue and red knot work. It was in this book I found a seeing-invisible-things spell that wasn’t too complex. I started writing down a wish list of ingredients and components. The spell wouldn’t last long; it would go for the length of time a candle burned or be broken at full sunset, whichever came first. The candle part was super unspecific. What candle? There wasn’t one involved in the spell. Fan-fucking-tastic.

I opened the ivory scroll case just because. I was pretty sure I was going to use the Celtic invisibility-seeing spell, but come on. Scroll case. Had to be opened just to satisfy my curiosity.

The scroll inside was made of white leather, scraped thin but still soft and flexible. It was beautifully illuminated with bright patterns in red, purple, and gold around the edges. The incantation was simple enough, and in more or less modern English. I murmured the words aloud, not quite saying all of them. There was a rhythm in the phrases, a cadence that I could feel forming an arcane pattern. Definitely real magic here.

I wrote down the ingredients listed on the scroll in the short paragraph of instruction before the spell proper. This one also would be broken at sunset and had to be cast in daylight under an open sky, and would apparently only work under said sky. I was pretty sure open sky meant just not indoors, but the scroll wasn’t exactly super specific.

“Noah,” I said aloud. “I have a shopping list for you.”

He opened the door less than a minute later.

“What time is it?” I asked him.

“Just past ten,” he said, taking the list I handed him.

“Can you get this stuff for me? And I need somewhere to try out the practice spell.” I put on my best “don’t kill me” smile.

Noah’s silver eyes narrowed as he glanced over my list and he sighed, the hush of air leaving his mouth totally incongruous with the whole not-breathing thing.

“Come with me,” he said.

I ended up in the large loading dock and garage area, with an audience. Noah brought me the things I needed to try the simple light spell. He was followed by Kira, the twins, Jaq, and Salazar.

The ingredients, I wanted. The others I could have lived without. I was too stubborn to order them to leave, so I took my things and the spell book and set up away from the RV.

“What is she doing?” Cora asked as I drew a rough circle with a piece of natural chalk.

“Casting a spell?” Alma answered, her voice pitching up at the end into a question.

“She’s figuring out if she can do magic, so that I can maybe find a way for us to see invisible shit,” I said. I was proud of myself. I’d only sounded annoyed, not homicidal.

“Could be useful,” Kira said, grudgingly. She ruined it by adding, “If you can actually do it.”

“Stand back,” I said, glaring at the peanut gallery. Odds were the worst that could happen was nothing at all, but if I had to deal with an audience, they could at least not be crowding me.

I finished the circle and got the four red candles, placing them at compass points. The spell didn’t specify if the points had to be actual compass points, so I just tried to make them equidistant. I lit the candles with a strike-anywhere match after stepping into the circle. In the middle of the circle were a gourd and three bowls of herbs and spices. Cinnamon, clove, and dried basil.

“She casting a spell or making pie?” Kira muttered.

I continued ignoring her and picked up the wooden Athame, a ceremonial kind of knife that had a thin maple blade and ebony handle. Then I sat cross-legged in the center and started murmuring the incantation. Going clockwise, or sunward as the spell called it, I sprinkled the dull blade with cinnamon, then clove, then basil. Uttering the words of the spell, focusing all my will and not just a little desperate hope into it, I plunged the knife into the gourd. I lifted the blade out in a smooth motion and gripped it in my left hand, saying the final word of the spell.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then the candles extinguished themselves and my fingers uncurled of their own volition. I dropped the knife, holding my left hand aloft. In my palm, floating over my skin, was a small ball of white light.

The difference between this magic and what I was used to was impossible to explain. Like the difference between being cold and holding an icecube. There was no rush of power in me, no euphoria like I felt when working my own magic. Just a weightless ball of light and a grim satisfaction that I’d made something work.

“Cantrip, achieved,” I said, risking a look at my audience. I was afraid to move. The light wouldn’t last outside of the circle anyway, if my interpretation of the spell was correct.

Alma and Cora clapped. Jaq and Salazar were smiling. Noah stood in shadow near the door, his face unreadable from this distance. Kira gave me a slight nod, like a fencing opponent acknowledging a touch point.

Not so useless after all. Feeling better than I had in days, I got slowly to my feet and closed my hand, extinguishing the ball of light.

“Can I come back to the big table now?” I asked.

“Hey,” I said to Jaq, since we were bringing up the rear of the group heading back to the war room.

He turned and looked at me, his bland face expectant.

“Uh, so, do you have a preferred pronoun?” I asked. Yeah, that had sounded more polite and way less awkward in my head.

He chuckled. “He and him is fine. I find it easier to be male in this world, most of the time,” Jaq said. “But thank you for asking. Most people just assign whichever they are more comfortable with.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled. At least that was out of the way. He’d smoothed it over and made me feel less like an ass. I appreciated that.

Breakfast dishes had been cleared away, but there was fresh coffee at one end of the table. I grabbed a mug, adding milk and sugar to make it palatable.

“Want a little coffee with your sugar?” Cora asked. She and her twin giggled.

“All right,” Kira said, calling the meeting to a semblance of order before I could respond. “So, Jade, you can make us see the invisible fence? What about the mines or traps or whatever?”

“I probably can,” I said as I took my seat by Jaq. While I wanted to be useful and look competent, overselling my new wizard powers could get us all killed. Pride cometh before the fall and all that jazz.

“If I can see the fence,” Jaq said, “I can nullify the magic.”

I gave him an appraising look, wondering not for the first time what exactly this mild guy was. I’d asked enough awkward questions for one day, however, and in the end it was probably none of my business.

“Can you do that to the mines, if this spell lets us see them?” Alma asked.

“I assume touching them would set them off?” Jaq looked at Salazar, who nodded. “Then no. We could try, but likely they would trigger before I was able to destroy the magic.”

“If we can see them, we can walk around them,” Kira said.

“What about guards and cameras and stuff?” I asked.

Kira sighed and the twins giggled. From their looks, I guessed this stuff had been covered. Too freaking bad. I hadn’t been here.

“No cameras,” Salazar said. He smiled at me and gave a slight nod, as if to reinforce that he didn’t mind going over it again and was on my side. “The government would have to pay someone to watch them. With the magic and the nature of this place, nobody is that worried about people coming in. Which works to our advantage, fortunately. There are external guards, but they are on stationed at the main entrance tunnel and garage, which is here.” He tapped his drawing a short distance away from the twist in the building. “If you’re careful, no one will be looking this way, and the building creates a hill, so there isn’t line of sight from the main entrance.”

“Speaking of magic,” I said, trying to order my thoughts. “Who put these protections in place? Is there a coven or resident magic user we need to worry about?” For all I knew, they had a sorcerer on staff. That would make things even more dangerous.

“No, nobody in the building,” Salazar said. He shifted his weight in his seat and met my gaze with an uncomfortable grimace. “It was done by a sorcerer, on contract.”

“Samir,” I said. I recalled what Salazar had said at the scene of Peggy’s murder a few days before. Had it only been days? A week, maybe. It felt like a lifetime. I started to wonder if the order to cover up the supernatural nature of the crime and get out of town had been because of whom Samir was friends with. “He’s got friends in high places, I suppose,” I added.

“I wouldn’t call them friends, but he’s greased a lot of palms over the years.” Salazar picked up his coffee mug and swirled it around, his lips pressed into a tight line.

“At least he’s otherwise occupied,” I said. With trying to kill me and my friends. I left that part unsaid.

“Best to go in near dusk, though,” Salazar said after a moment of silence.

“The spell won’t last past dark,” I said.

“It’s not that far from where we can set up to the hatch,” Cora said. “If we can see where to go, even at a very slow walk, we should be able to get inside within twenty to thirty minutes, at most.”

“If she can see the mines and the fence, Jade could walk herself in, maybe?” Alma said.

“No.” Kira looked at me, then at Jaq. “She needs Jaq to nullify the fence, or fences. There might be more than one, remember? And since neither of them can fight, at the least I’m going with them as contingency.”

“No plan survives engagement with the enemy,” Alma said. “We’re going, too.”

“You are?” I pictured them wheeling across a minefield before remembering they were shifters. I had the grace to blush. “Sorry,” I muttered.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Cora said, smiling.

“We might look like two wheelchair-bound, joined-at-the-literal-hip cripples, but with our powers combined, we kick serious ass.” Alma grinned and high-fived her twin.

“You two kick virtual ass also,” Kira said. Her whole expression softened when she looked at them, making her appear almost human. It was hard to dislike someone who clearly cared so much about her people, but I kept right on trying.

“By day, we’re white-hat hacking mavens,” Alma said.

“But by night, we become a Mayan jaguar goddess!” Cora laughed.

“You’re Mayan?” Salazar asked, eyebrows raised.

“Well, a couple generations back. We were raised in Las Vegas,” Alma said.

“Mayan sounds cooler than kids from Nevada,” Cora said.

“So we have a rough plan, then,” Kira said. “How long will the spell take to cast?”

I took a sip of my coffee and thought about which spell to use. The scroll one was elegant and fairly simple, though the ingredient list was longer. The one in the book was more complex verbally, but with a shorter list of things. I wasn’t sure about either or even which I wanted to try yet, so I gave it my best guess.

“Not long, I don’t think. Ten minutes at most?”

“Can you cast it here first?” she asked.

“No,” I said. I’d thought about this already. “There are two spells that might work, but both have time limits on them that aren’t clear. Sunset is pretty clear, but there’s stuff about the length of time it takes a candle to burn down, and one spell only works outside, I think. To be safe, I should do the magic as close to the time we’ll need it as possible.”

“All right.” She sat back, wheels clearly spinning in her mind behind her icy eyes. “Here’s the plan. We’ll drive up behind the prison. Salazar said there is an old logging access road that can get us within a mile. We’ll hike closer, do the spell there, and then head in. Salazar will meet us at the hatch. Once there, the alarms go off, yes?” She looked at Salazar.

“Yes, alarms, guards, the works. The place is guarded by a few NOS agents, but mostly contracted shifters.” Salazar added that last part looking at me, so I assumed he’d been over that and was saying it for my benefit.

“Jade heads to her father, we head toward the entrance, hopefully drawing attention with us. After that, we leave, and Jade, you’re on your own.” Kira gave me a look that spoke volumes about her opinion on my chances of success.

“How do I get into the cell?” I asked Salazar, ignoring Kira.

“I’ll get you a passkey. It’s a room, technically, not a barred cell. I would tell you the number right now, but I have to look up the exact one in the system. Doing so will flag me, but fortunately bureaucracy being what it is, I won’t be questioned until long after we’ve escaped.”

“We could try to hack in now and find out,” Cora said. She cracked her knuckles.

“Internal system. No way to hack from the ouside,” Salazar said.

“Damn,” Alma said.

“How are you guys going to get out?” I asked.

“In a blaze of teeth and glory!” Cora said. They both started giggling again.

“We’ll worry about that,” Kira said with a quelling look at the twins. “You just do whatever you have to do. The Archivist says your father will get you out.”

“He will, if Jade can convince him to help her,” Noah said from his post against the wall near the door.

“Okay, final question,” I said after I’d drained the last of my coffee. “How do we get there? Isn’t South Dakota, like, a day of driving away? Also, covered in winter?”

“Leave that to me,” Jaq said.

“We can drive there in less than four hours,” Kira said. She smiled at me, all teeth.

“How, exactly?” I set my coffee mug down and raised an eyebrow at her.

“Magic,” she said.

I took another shower and gathered my few things. This was it. All the worrying and planning was more or less over. In a few hours, I’d have answers. At least, I hoped.

Someone knocked on the door as I was getting dressed. I finished tugging on a clean-ish long-sleeved shirt and called out for whoever it was to come in. It was the Archivist, which surprised me. He hadn’t been the knocking type up until now. Maybe he’d known I hadn’t been fully clothed yet, which sort of defeated the politeness of his knock, since I couldn’t think of an explanation for how he’d know I was half naked that wasn’t more awkward than walking in on me.

“They ready?” I asked Noah as he entered.

“Yes,” he said. He closed the door behind him and stood with his hands behind his back, almost like I imagined a formal butler would stand. “There is a box of the things you asked for in the vehicle, along with the book and the scroll. I’d like those back, by the way.”

“I don’t plan on taking them with me. I’ll leave them in the RV and tell Kira to return them. Good enough?”

“That will do,” he said. He brought his hands out from behind his back, revealing a sheathed dagger in them. “This is yours.”

“I meant like a pocket knife or something,” I said, not understanding. My ingredient and spell component list hadn’t had a dagger on it.

Then I looked more closely at the knife, taking it in my hand. I nearly dropped it when I realized what it was. Samir’s dagger, only somewhat changed.

“I traded this to you,” I said. “Why are you giving it back?” He didn’t seem like the charity type.

“I have a feeling you might need it,” he said cryptically. “These are blades of prophecy, which you might find useful.”

“Blades of prophecy? That sounds not at all ominous,” I muttered. I pulled the dagger from its sheath. It was changed from when I’d had it. The blade was silver on one side now, black on the other. Marks ran down the blade, runes and symbols in a myriad of languages, the least ancient of which was Greek. Alpha and Omega. Each symbol pretty much meant the same thing. Beginning and end.

“The blade is joined together again. It will not leave you like before. Be careful with it. It is a knife of ending. It can kill almost anything.” Noah’s gaze was so intense it made me uncomfortable.

“Almost anything?” I peered at it. Looked like a knife to me. It had acted pretty strangely when I’d had it, though. I had no problem believing it was magical. “What would happen if I were to stab Samir with it?”

“I have no idea,” Noah said. “I do not like guessing, but I imagine it would destroy his flesh, at the least.”

“Leaving his heart?” I guessed. Guessing was like my middle name lately. “So, again, why you giving this to me?”

“Prophecies,” Noah said with a smile. “We’ll call it a hunch.”

“I thought you didn’t like guesses?”

“Instinct is not the same as supposition,” he said with one of his deliberate, creepy shrugs.

“Fine,” I said, re-sheathing the blade. “But can you hand it to me again, and this time say, ‘It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this’?”

“No,” the vampire said, his smile disappearing. “Follow me.”

“Everyone’s a critic,” I muttered as I shoved the dagger into my backpack and followed him out.

“There are a few rules of van club,” Jaq said. He stood in the doorway between the driver’s section of the RV and the living room section.

“Rule one: you don’t talk about van club?” I guessed.

It got me a giggle from the twins at least. They were seated on a narrow couch to one side, canes leaning between their legs. Apparently they could walk, but Cora had told me they preferred the chair due to their twisted hips. Kira, Salazar, and I were crammed on another bench behind in a narrow table.

“Sure,” Jaq said. “Actual rules. Don’t come up here or bother me while I’m driving, for any reason. You are spurting blood out your neck, there’s a first-aid kit in the bathroom. Any reason. I mean it. Next rule: do not open the windows or pull back the curtains until I tell you it is safe to do so. Do not try to exit the vehicle. If you hear something weird outside, ignore the shit out of it. Clear?”

“Crystal,” I said. “What is going to happen, exactly?”

“I’m going to drive,” Jaq said. “The roads I’m taking aren’t really meant for mortals, so we go fast and hope nothing notices.”

“What if something notices?” I had an image of Cthulhu in my head the way he was talking. Waking old ones or whatever. There was definitely a vast amount about this world I had no knowledge of. It made me feel very small.

“We die,” he said. “But don’t worry; I’ve never had that happen. I’m good at what I do.”

“Let’s go,” Kira said. “We are on a clock, after all.”

All the curtains were closed and Jaq went into the front, shutting a sliding door behind him.

“I’m going to grab a nap, if that’s all right?” Salazar said to Kira.

“We’ll show you to a bunk,” Cora said. The twins heaved themselves up, leaning heavily on their canes. “Then we’re gonna sleep too, I think. It’s easier to make this kind of trip if you aren’t awake.”

That left Kira and I sitting in silence at the table. The engine started and we rolled out of the garage. Kira pulled out a gun and started taking it apart, her message that she wasn’t interested in small talk loud and clear.

I moved to the couch and tried to close my eyes. All my worries were waiting there for me. Could I work the spell? Was Harper still alive? Would Alek ever forgive me for abandoning them? Sleep was so not a thing I was going to be able to do. I opened my eyes again as the RV went over what felt like a speedbump. The road noise died, leaving behind only engine sounds as though the tires were no longer on a hard surface. It was eerie.

Kira was bent over her gun, wiping down parts carefully with a soft cloth before fitting them back together again. She looked so much like Alek in that moment. I swallowed around the lump in my throat. She looked up at me and raised an eyebrow.

“So,” I said. I couldn’t talk about Alek—that seemed like a hot button from hell for her—so I went with the only other topic we had in common. “What kind of games do you play?”

“What makes you think I play games?” she said.

“Your tee-shirt? Things you’ve said? It’s pretty obvious.” I fought not to glare at her. She made it damn hard to crack her icy exterior.

Kira looked down at herself. She was wearing black cargo pants and a grey teeshirt that said “Frag the Weak” on it.

“Counterstrike,” she said. “Though I play other things, especially any kind of horror game. You?” she added in a tone that made me think she might actually want an answer. Maybe the ice was cracking.

“RPGs mostly. You’re good with guns, I bet, like…” I stopped. Shit. It was too damn tough not to mention Alek. I missed him like hell.

“Like my brother?” she said. She slammed the clip home in the gun.

“Sorry,” I said. “The twins said he executed a friend of yours? As Justice?” Fuck it. If we were going to talk about him, I figured we could talk about all of it.

“He didn’t tell you?” Kira put the gun into a holster and set it aside, which made me feel marginally less nervous.

“No. He doesn’t talk about family much.” I shook my head.

“My friend’s daughter was slain by a group of human scum. We shifters don’t have children often, or easily.”

I nodded, not daring to interrupt.

“We were hunting them down, but my friend got to them first. He went a little mad—understandably, mind you,” she went on. “He killed the three men who had taken his child, but he went further than that. He killed their families.” She looked down at her hands on the table and took a deep breath. “It was bad, I know. But he was so lost in hurt and grief. Human law enforcement was up in arms about the killings and it was going to be tough to keep it quiet. I think that’s why the Council sent a Justice.”

“Alek,” I said. Damn.

“He passed judgment, as he does. It didn’t matter that the humans had wronged Daniel first. The only sentence he knows how to deliver is death. He executed Daniel right in front of me. I wasn’t strong enough to stop him. We haven’t spoken since.” Her mouth pressed into a tight pink line and her eyes were cold enough to slow global warming.

I tried to think of anything to say, but my brain came up with dust kittens and platitudes.

“So,” Kira said after an awkward, tense moment. She unclenched her fists. “He still have a stick up his ass?”

“Guess how we met?” I said. “He walked into my game shop and accused me of murder.” My laugh was more nerves than humor.

Her face cracked in a smile and she shook her head. In a blink the ice seemed to melt and I saw care and longing in her eyes, emotions I recognized easily. She might be angry with Alek for what he had done, but it was crystal clear in that moment that Kira also still loved him and missed her brother.

“Sounds like Aleksei,” she said. “And now you are mated.”

“We worked it out,” I said. I tried for a safer topic. “Why don’t you have an accent? He does.”

“Because I don’t want one, so I worked hard to lose it,” Kira said. “I’m a six-foot-three muscular woman with a short temper. Getting work is already a bitch. Being a giant Russian as well? Not really something that would put my very American clients at ease.”

“Murica,” I said.

“Fuck yeah,” she finished.

“I know that the Archivist is paying you, but I really do appreciate you all risking your lives to help me,” I said. We were on more solid ground now and I felt like the tension was fading. A truce had at least been called.

“It’s what we do,” she said. Then she tilted her head to one side in a very feline gesture. “Why isn’t Aleksei here with you? He’s almost as good a shot as I am, and his tiger is stronger. My brother has his faults, but leaving his mate to face danger doesn’t seem his style.”

Did I say solid ground? I meant hot lava. Awesomesauce.

“I left him. Without magic I can’t protect him and I’ve got a giant target on my back. It’s me that Samir wants to kill, in the end.” I folded my arms across my chest.

“So you don’t trust my brother?” she said.

“I trust him. I just don’t want him hurt.” I pulled my legs up, wrapping my arms around them. It was a super-defensive posture, but I didn’t care.

“Not enough to let him make his own decision about risks?”

We were definitely back in “I want to punch Kira” land.

“I watched him die,” I said. It felt weird to say it aloud. I’d told Yosemite the bare details, but nothing specific. There hadn’t been time even if I’d wanted to. “I was barely able to bring him back. I can’t go through that again. I’ll do anything to keep him safe.”

“So your feelings matter more than his?” Kira said with an infuriatingly smug look on her face.

“You don’t care about your friends? Want to keep them safe? Would you deliberately put them in danger if you knew it might kill them?” I said instead of answering directly. I could fight fire with fire.

“Yes,” she said. “I am right now.”

Oh. There was that. She was really good at deflating me. “You don’t worry?”

“Of course I worry. I’m not a sociopath. But I trust them. Jaq, Cora, Alma… all of them are capable and intelligent people. They understand the risks of what we do and they can take care of themselves, and of each other. We watch each other’s backs; use our strengths to make the group better as a whole. That’s what a team is about, no? If I don’t trust them, let them do what they can, it’ll distract me. As worrying about me would distract them. It would make us all weaker.”

She had a point. I let it sink in, growing more uncomfortable as I thought it over. Had I been stifling my team, minimizing what they could do? I’d been trying to protect everyone.

“I let them help,” I said, as much to myself as to her. “And they all died.”

“They aren’t dead now,” she said.

“Because I brought them back,” I said.

Kira raised an eyebrow at that and looked almost impressed. “So you protected them.” She leaned forward and laid her palms flat on the table. “I am a tiger, Jade. We’re as lone hunter as it gets in many ways. But I’ve learned the hard way over the years that everyone needs friends. We all have weaknesses. True friends are never a weakness.”

I sighed. “Thanks,” I said after a moment. “You’ve given me a lot to think about, I guess.” I didn’t want to think about it. I wanted to keep doing whatever I felt was right, but I wasn’t so pigheaded that I couldn’t feel the truth in her words. They stung because they were hitting their marks.

“Don’t mention it,” she said, and pulled out another gun to resume her cleaning weapons and ignoring me routine.

I dragged the box with the spell books and supplies out from under the bench and set a bamboo calligraphy brush and a folder of rice paper on the table.

“Can I borrow a knife?” I asked Kira as I sat down next to her. The RV was moving, but there was no road shake. We might as well have been floating for all I could tell. I tried not to think about it too hard.

“What do you want it for?” she asked, squinting at my supplies.

Oh, you know. To cut myself so I can use the blood to write ancient Japanese spells I sort of remember that I learned from an assassin whose heart I snacked on. Probably not something I should say in my out-loud voice. Nope.

“Magic stuff,” I said.

The look on her face when I sliced open my arm and let my blood drip into the ink stone was worth it. I had no idea if the exploding papers I was trying to make would work. Haruki, the assassin whose power and memories I’d absorbed, had studied his whole life, using discipline and techniques drilled into him through intense practice to master this kind of magic. I was going to use incomplete memories and desperate prayers to reproduce it. It probably wouldn’t work, but it kept my mind off the trip and what lay ahead. That was good enough for me.

Alek stared up at the darkening winter sky. The trees were wrong, the air a little too warm at only just below freezing, but for a moment the scent of snow and wet pine brought him back to his childhood roaming the Siberian forests. A slight breeze ruffled his thick fur. Night came on quickly in winter; the setting sun had left a gash of color in the sky, turning the edge of the trees to jagged wounds.

His ears flicked around, his nose keeping watch as well. He had no desire to fight Samir right now, not without Jade, but part of him wanted a wolf or three to find them. He needed to sink his teeth into something and feel like he was doing anything at all to help.

Even Harper had rescued herself, the crazy fox. She’d fallen off the unicorn half dead, covered in filth and blood from an unknown number of injuries. Yosemite said she needed rest but that he was sure she’d live. It was a morale boost they all needed, and hopefully she’d have information. Alek had worried that Samir had Jade, at least until they found Harper’s bloody shirt, laid out as obvious bait leading back toward Wylde. There’d been a big argument about following the trail despite them all being sure it was a trap. Rosie had said the trail led in the direction of a couple of old farms.

Then Yosemite had been called away, disappearing the day before while they scouted out and tried to figure out if Harper was alive or not. Another argument ensued. Alek was damn tired of arguing. Rosie was distraught, Junebug still healing from being shot. They were all scared and exhausted.

They were all looking to him. And he couldn’t find it in himself to admit he had no idea what to do. His whole life, he’d relied on the guidance of the Nine. On visions and purpose given to him. Before he had felt this was the One True Path, hadn’t questioned anything.

The world, his world, had changed. Or perhaps, he thought ruefully, he’d finally just started to see it for what it really was.

Yosemite was back, though refusing to answer questions. It didn’t matter. Alek knew he’d gone to see Jade. He’d smelled her on the druid’s jacket. For a moment, he’d wanted to punch information out of the bigger man, but sense won out. If the druid wasn’t saying something, he likely had a reason.

Besides, it was a comfort just to know Jade was alive and, for the moment, he guessed, safe enough. If she was staying away from them, she had her reasons. Stupid, overprotective, Jade Crow brand-of-special-logic reasons.

He huffled out a breath and watched steam rise in the chill air. Trust. It was all he had.

He heard Yosemite before the druid reached him though the big man made little noise even walking through snow.

“Harper’s awake,” Yosemite said.

Finally. Alek turned and followed the druid back into the camp. Druidic magic had woven a thick-branched dome around everyone, which kept the worst of the cold out and the snow off. They had no fire, but Freyda and the few survivors in her pack had brought them sleeping bags, food, and a small gas camp stove, so there was coffee and warm food at least. She’d left then, going deep into the wilderness to search for Soft Paw. Reinforcements.

Not that they’d do much good without Jade. Nobody could kill a sorcerer except a sorcerer. Alek wouldn’t allow himself to think about how badly they’d lost the last fight. They would regroup, plan, and find a way. The only alternatives were terrible. Run. Or die.

He preferred fight. Always fight.

Everyone was huddled around Harper. Her face was still bruised, but at least it was clean now, and someone had found her a sweater. Her green eyes were brighter and less sunken than before. She even managed a smile as he entered the camp and shifted back to human.

Ezee made room and Alek seated himself on a sleeping bag in the circle of friends.

“Tell us everything,” he said, since someone had to say things like that and everyone was looking at him.

She did, piecing together parts they had already guessed, like the trap with her bloody shirt, and explaining about saving the unicorn foal.

“You escaped twice? That’s badass,” Levi said, giving Harper a mock fistbump.

“I know, right?” she said with a weak grin. “Think they’ll get ScarJo to play me in the movie?”

“Tell me again the part about Balor,” Yosemite said, cutting the banter short.

Alek glanced at the druid and didn’t like what he saw. The man’s eyebrows were pulled into a single worried line, his ruddy cheeks pale, and fear scent wafted off him, putting Alek’s teeth on edge.

“There wasn’t much, sorry. He said they needed Legolas, the colt, for Balor. That was I think the only time I heard the name, but I remembered it because of what happened before,” Harper said.

“What is that look, Yosemite?” Ezee asked softly. All the shifters could smell the druid’s fear, see his tension. “That’s the ‘oh shit, I just remembered something really bad’ look, isn’t it?”

“Is he going to open the Eye again?” Alek asked, trying to piece it all together. They’d dealt with Balor’s Eye before. They could do it again. The unicorns were safe this time, at least. For the moment. Alek shoved the dark thoughts away.

Yosemite stood and paced the short length of the camp. He stared into the twisted branches, breathing slowly and deeply. Then he turned back. His face looked haunted now, cast in shadow since he’d walked away from the single electric lamp.

“There’s a legend. It’s truly legend, mind you, but it is written in the book and was told to me by my master when I was young. Balor is not truly dead, that’s why his Eye is still dangerous. He could be raised back to life. It takes three impossible things, however.”

Alek couldn’t suppress his growing sense of dread as Ezee asked softly, “What three things?”

Yosemite closed his eyes and recited, with a cadence that suggested tales around campfires in the long ago and far away, “The first feather of the Phoenix. The last drop of blood from a dragon’s heart. The final breath of a unicorn.” He opened his eyes. “If he took the unicorn for that, we should assume he knows a way to collect or already possesses the other ingredients.”

“Shit,” Ezee said, echoing what they were all thinking. “He said he was going to become a god, right? So he raises Balor, eats his heart, and presto, godhood?”

“This is seriously the suck,” Levi said.

“Wait,” Harper said. “That’s awesome.” She slid a hand into her sleeping bag and pulled out a small red vial. “Think this is dragon blood?”

Yosemite crossed quickly to her and took it. “Perhaps. Where did you get this?”

“I stole it off Samir’s neck. It seemed like he was attached to it, kept touching it all the time like a creeper. I figured if he liked it, I wanted to take it away.”

“Is it like the One Ring? Or can we burn it or something?” Levi asked.

“It can be destroyed,” Yosemite said, still holding the ruby-colored vial as though it might bite him.

“Destroy it,” Alek said. He rose to his feet. “We cannot let him raise Balor.” If Samir ate the heart, he’d be well beyond Jade’s power to destroy. Alek refused to consider that he already might be.

They risked a small fire just outside camp and burned the vial. The flames turned purple and roared upward for a breath before smoldering down. Only cracked smoky glass remained. They buried the coals and covered it over with snow and rocks.

“What do we do now?” Rosie asked once everyone had gathered. She had been very quiet the last few days, but her color was better now that her daughter was back. Alek felt for her. She’d buried one child already this winter, and nearly collapsed in fear and relief when he’d brought the other back to her. But she was strong, holding together, making sure everyone was warm and fed, keeping busy and refusing to whine or openly worry. The woman was a rock. He prayed she wouldn’t crack. They needed her.

“We can’t kill Samir,” Junebug said softly. Levi reached over and squeezed her hand.

“Jade can,” Ezee said.

“Jade’s not here,” Harper pointed out, her mouth going into a tight, angry line. “Where even is she?”

“She’s safe,” Yosemite said. Every head turned to him. “I saw her yesterday.”

“Thanks for sharing with the group?” Ezee said with a glare.

“She asked me not to, I’m sorry. She’s…” He hesitated and sighed. “She told me she knows what she needs to do to beat Samir. It requires doing something else, getting a secret weapon or maybe someone who can help? She wouldn’t give me details, said it would just put us all in danger.”

Alek bit his lip, repressing the urge to demand more answers. Trust her. It was becoming his new mantra. He wanted to go to Jade, find his mate, kiss or shake some sense into her beautiful, stubborn head. He looked around the group, seeing their hopeful, exhausted faces. They needed him more than Jade, as much as it hurt his heart to admit. So he stayed silent.

“That’s Jade,” Harper muttered. “I wish she’d let us help. We’re going to anyway.”

“We are?” Rosie asked. “How exactly? We have you back, sweetheart. We should get out of these woods. Find somewhere to hide.”

“What if Samir raises Balor?” Alek said, shaking his head. Rosie’s plan was likely the safer one, the sane one, but Alek already knew the druid wouldn’t leave the woods, not with Samir hunting the unicorns. “We can hide well enough in the woods. We’re shifters and there are tens of thousands of acres here.”

“I won’t leave the unicorns, and they won’t leave the Frank. If Balor is involved, the unicorns will try to fight and stop the pollution of their woods. They can’t help themselves; it is what they are here to do,” Yosemite said, confirming Alek’s thoughts.

“We can’t kill Samir,” Harper said. She held up a hand as Levi started to interrupt her. “But we can fuck up his plans. Look what I did all on my own.” She managed a grin that had a lot of teeth in it. “Plus, if we do somehow get him pinned, we can seriously damage him. String him up and serve his heart to Jade on a platter.”

“I agree,” Alek said. He almost chuckled at how surprised everyone looked. “He found this dragon heart blood once. He might be able to get more. We have to prevent him from completing his plan.”

“And buy time for Jade,” Ezee added, nodding slowly.

“I’m in,” Junebug said, glaring at Levi as he turned to her and tried to protest. “This is about more than just us. Jade is trying to protect us. If that bastard eats Balor’s heart, he’ll gain too much power, and who will protect her then?”

Rosie looked at her daughter’s angry, determined face. “I am in as well.”

“Levi?” Ezee said, meeting his twin’s eyes.

“So, to clarify this plan,” Levi said. “We’re going to run around the woods playing keep-away with unicorns, from a bunch of shifter mercenaries and a super-powerful sorcerer. Who, by the way, we can’t kill, and who totally kicked all our asses, like, seven ways from Sunday. We’re going to do this while buying time for our own sorceress, wherever she is and whatever she’s doing there, to come back with a person or weapon or cookies of death or whatever, in the hope she saves the day?”

There was silence for a moment. Alek swallowed a chuckle and took a deep breath.

“Yes,” he said.

“That about sums it up,” Ezee said.

“Fuck it, I’m in,” Levi said. “You all realize this makes Jade into Goku, right?”

“Goku?” Alek asked. He was certain this was a videogame reference or something he wasn’t getting. That feeling was familiar and strangely comforting. Things might be dire, but at least he was among friends.

“It’s a show. Where people spend a lot of time holding off bad guys waiting for the hero to power up and defeat them.” Harper did laugh now, wincing as though it hurt to do so.

“Next time, on Running Around the Woods Beating Up Samir!” Ezee was grinning now as well.

“We have a plan, then,” Alek said, suppressing his annoyance. He hoped they would all live long enough he that could get in on the joke. Someday.

“Yep. We keep the unicorns safe and wait for Jade,” Levi said.

“And hope she brings all seven Dragon Balls with her,” Harper added softly.

Alek rose and left the camp, shifting to tiger and moving silently into the dark woods. The druid followed him.

“I’m sorry,” he told Alek as they stood, giant and tiger, side by side. “I wasn’t sure how you’d react.”

Alek shifted to human so he could speak. “I knew,” he said. “I smelled her on you.”

“You still said nothing?”

“If you did not tell me, I assumed you had reason, and I guessed that reason was Jade being stubborn.”

“She is that.” Yosemite chuckled, the sound like dry leaves rustling in an autumn wind. “She told me that you would find out and to give you a message.”

Alek stayed silent, watching the druid’s face in the starlight.

“She said to tell you she loves you, and to trust her.”

Shifting back to tiger, Alek padded away, deeper into the woods.

Be safe, love, he silently told the stars. Come back to us, and we will fight, side by side.

The journey through whatever crazy magic shortcut we were taking went by without event. I felt us hit the logging road, the tires making noise again and the RV shaking as it jounced along.

The air was freezing cold as we emerged into a quiet, snow-covered copse of trees. After checking to make sure the magic dagger was securely tied by its sheath to my waist, I zipped up my hoodie over it. I wished I had thought to ask Noah for a proper winter coat. At least I couldn’t actually freeze to death.

Alma and Cora jumped out of the RV in their jaguar form, answering my earlier speculation about how they would shift. Single jaguar. I wondered how that worked, mentally. Did they share a brain when shifted? Questions for another time, if we made it through this alive and I ever saw them again. Sobering thought. I was so good at those. I’d never seen a jaguar outside of a zoo. The twin’s form was spotted, not the black kind, and their shoulder came up to my waist. They bounded off into the snow, looking back at us like an expectant puppy.

“We call them Ladies in this form,” Jaq said, walking up beside me. He looked exhausted, sweat matting his hair to his forehead, and his olive skin had a pale cast to it.

“Good to know,” I said. “You okay?”

“It was a long drive,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”

“Let’s cast the spell here so we don’t have to drag this box up to the prison,” Kira said. She’d pulled on her leather jacket, but was standing with it open as she finished strapping on her arsenal. I counted three handguns and at least five knives.

“I’ll go on ahead,” Salazar said. “Make sure I’m in position when you get there.”

“How will you get in?” I asked.

“I called in a favor,” he said. “There’s a car waiting for me down the road. I have clearance to enter Custer. It won’t be a problem. Good luck. See you soon.”

Salazar walked out from under the trees and shifted into a huge golden eagle. With powerful flaps of his wings, he took off into the clear, cold air and flew away. Remembering how awesome flying had been, I envied the hell out of him. Life had been so much easier with real magic involved. It was like that song. You don’t know what you have until it’s gone.

“Spell?” Kira said, looking at me.

I turned and went to get my box.

“I’m going to do this on myself first,” I explained as I got out the ingredients and spread them on a tarp that Jaq had found for me from the RV. “I don’t know exactly how it is going to work.”

“How will we know if it has worked?” Kira asked.

I held up a small velvet bag. “I’ll be able to see this.”

“It’s a bag.” She looked skeptical.

“With an invisible ring in it,” I said, grinning. Thank you, Archivist. He really was the guy who had everything. “I got us covered.”

Cora and Alma, or, I guess, Ladies, bounded back over to us and sat in the snow, watching me closely with green-gold eyes.

I unrolled the scroll and set it where I could read it. Then I took a quart bowl and carefully measured out pinches of poppy seed, dried sword fern, a ball of spidersilk, and three woolen fibers from a black ram. Finally I added a drop of camphor oil. Murmuring the words of the spell, I picked up a pestle made of amber and started grinding the ingredients together.

“My friends of the shadows,” I invoked. “Of mist and of moonlight, you who are seldom seen. Be with me now.” Keeping up the litany, I divided the paste into two portion and carefully painted over my closed eyelids. I finished the last words of the spell and opened my eyes.

“Houston,” I said. “I think we have a problem.”

Where there should have been trees and snow and an RV, there was nothing. Just pale, almost grayish light.

“What do you see?” Kira said from somewhere beside me.

“Nothing,” I said. “Like, actually nothing.”

“What about this?” she asked, her voice very close now.

I turned my head toward it and saw a glowing ring floating in the air.

“Okay, I see the ring. I just can’t see anything else. At all.” Magic. It is not for beginners.

I heard Jaq laugh and then it cut off. I could imagine Kira glaring at him. The ring disappeared and I assumed she’d put it back in the bag.

“So we’ll be able to see the fence at least. And maybe these magical mines.” I could almost hear her thoughts grinding away, her tactical brain looking for ways to make this an advantage.

“Who is this we, white woman?” I muttered, my own thoughts spinning around. “I can’t cast the spell on anyone else. I didn’t exactly memorize it, and these things aren’t kind to imprecise casting. At best nothing would happen.”

“Klaatu verata necktie?” Kira said with a snort. I was glad she was amused at least.

“Yeah, kind of like that.” Fuck my life. I stared around at the nothingness. “I might be able to get into the RV and dispel it. It says it only works under the open sky.”

“No,” Kira said. “This is fine. I can make this work. We don’t want us blind anyway, or we won’t be able to see the entrance, or any threats coming at us. You’ll just have to guide us in, tell us where the fence is.”

She was right beside me. I felt the warmth coming off her body. It was amazing how much I noticed now that my sight was missing. I just had to channel my inner Daredevil. No problem.

“Okay,” I said, carefully rising to my feet. There wasn’t much choice. We had to go with what we had. “Um, how do I walk through the woods to the minefield? I can’t see the trees. Or the ground.”

A fuzzy head bumped against my palm and the tarp crackled as Ladies stepped up beside me.

“No worries,” Kira said, taking my hand in her own. Her skin was calloused and warm, her hand dwarfing mine. “We’ve got you.”

I don’t know how long we walked through the woods. I could smell the snow, hear it crunching under my hiking boots. Felt the wet and cold soaking into my socks. Visually, though? My world was a grey-tinged white screen. I walked with one hand clutching Kira’s arm and the other resting on the jaguar-twin’s head. It was like one of those trust exercises you have to do in school, only a lot scarier.

Three parallel, silvery lines appeared ahead of me. I was so excited to see something that it took a second for my brain to catch up.

“Stop,” I said, tugging on Kira’s arm. “I see the fence.”

“We’re not out of the woods yet, though I think I see the field ahead. How far is it?” Kira halted beside me, her voice coming from above my right shoulder.

“I’m not sure. I can’t see the ground. This is really disorienting,” I said.

I squinted, as though somehow that would help. The fence was three silver wire-looking lines. There were faint shadowed posts at intervals of about six feet, if my eyes weren’t lying to me.

“There are three wire-like lines,” I continued. “One at my knees, one at just above my waist, one probably about eye level with Kira.”

“Everyone get in a line just behind Jade,” Kira said. “I’ll walk slightly behind you as well, keep you from hitting a tree. It’s clear directly in front of you, so try to walk straight. Stop before you hit the fence, obviously.”

“Obviously,” I muttered.

Kira moved behind me, her hand gripping my elbow, her body a warm comfort at my back. I remembered what she’d said in the RV about having each other’s backs, but also trusting each other that we could do what we needed to do. They were strangers to me and I to them, but here we were. Risking. Trusting.

I guess I had taken that detour into Life-lesson-ville.

Agonizingly slowly, we made our way toward the invisible fence. Up close the wires were thick ropes of energy hanging in the air that hummed audibly and glowed bright enough to put dots in my vision. I wished for my magic, wondering what kind of spell this was and how it had been done. Even without being able to touch it magically, I could see Samir’s handiwork in this. He loved crafting shit. I shuddered and came to a stop with the fence about a foot away.

“It’s about a foot away from me,” I said. “I could touch it, but I really don’t want to.”

“We’re at the edge of the trees,” Kira said for my benefit. “There’s a big open field that rises up to a hill in the middle. Can’t really see from here, but I think the helipad is on that. Do you see anything else?”

“No, the fence is glowing pretty brightly. If there are mines, they might be under snow, or ground. I can’t see the ring when it is in the bag, for example.” I realized I probably should have thought of this before. “I can hear it though, can you? The fence is humming. Like bees.”

“No,” Kira said.

“I can’t hear it either,” Jaq said. He had come up beside me. “Jade, I want you to crouch down so you are eye level with the bottom strand. Put your hand out so that it is within in an inch or so. Hold there and I’ll see what I can do. Don’t touch it.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” I said. I did as he instructed, crouching down and holding out my hand.

I heard Jaq crunching forward in the snow and then the hum intensified for a moment before the strand snapped and disappeared.

“I think that worked,” I said.

“It did. We can see it now. It’s just broken wire on the ground,” Kira said.

“Stand up and do the same with the middle,” Jaq said.

We repeated this for the middle and top strands. The grey world I was in grew darker again as the fence died. I peered into what I thought was ahead of me and picked up very faint traces of light in a direction that might have been down. As I said. Disorienting as fuck.

“Nothing is coming to kill us and I don’t hear any alarms, so we’re probably good,” Kira said.

“I think I see the mines or traps or whatever they are. And I think I’ll hear them as we get near. We’re going to have to do this really slowly.” I took a deep breath.

“We can’t be too slow,” Kira said. “Not to rush you or anything, but the sun is setting. It’s going to get dark and your spell will break, yes?”

“FML,” I muttered.

“Do you see another fence?” Jaq asked.

“No,” I said. “I think if there was one, given how far off I saw this one from, I’d see it. How far is the crest of the hill from us now?”

“Three hundred feet? Like a football pitch.”

“We call it soccer and fields in ’Murica,” I said.

“You call it wrong,” Kira said. “If there are no more fences, Jaq, you should go to the RV. We’ll need you more there than here.”

“All right,” he said, reluctance obvious in his voice. “Good luck, Jade.”

“You too,” I said. “And thank you.”

I listened to him crunch away through the snow. After a moment Kira spoke again.

“Okay, like before. We line up. Ladies, step only where Jade steps. Fortunately, with this snow, we’ll be able to see that pretty clearly.”

“Time’s up,” I said as much to myself as to them. “Let’s do this.”

“At least we had chicken,” Kira murmured behind me, making me smile.

I might blow us all up or even worse by missing a mine, but at least I’d die among nerds. It was something. I took the first step forward through where the fence had been.

“Am I facing toward the top of the hill?” I asked.

“You are good to go,” Kira said. I felt cold air on my ears as my hood was pulled down, and then tug on my braid. I realized it was her hand. “Is this okay? You don’t have a belt I can grab.”

“Yeah, just don’t yank.” I could deal with cold ears. My hair was loosely braided, so it covered the tips at least. I wondered what Alek would think of the situation. Me, walking blindly through a minefield with his sister holding my hair like a leash, and a giant jaguar following in my footsteps. I hoped he was safe, but I couldn’t think about him now. No distractions.

Whatever magic was in the mines was strong enough that I could see it with my spelled eyes. It glowed and hummed like the fence.

“Okay, there’s sort of a grid pattern, but it’s hard to make out since I can only see the ones near me,” I said. “The circles are about six to eight inches across and some of these are only a few feet apart, so I’ll try to step right between. Don’t weave behind me. This could get really hairy.”

At least I could see my own feet. That would have made shit really exciting. I had no idea why I could see myself when I wasn’t invisible, but that’s the thing with magic. It makes its own rules.

Step by step, heel to toe, I walked across the field. The mines hummed in warning as we moved around them, their silvery glow muffled, like LEDs stuffed in a pillowcase. Sweat beaded on my forehead and ran down my spine from the tension only to freeze in the winter air. The mines seemed to stretch into forever, new ones appearing ahead no matter how many I walked past.

“Adjust left if you can,” Kira said. Her own tension radiated enough to feel, tangible heat prickling the back of my neck.

“There’s a big cluster that way, but I think I can get through them.”

I shifted to the left. Another few steps and it felt like we were definitely traveling uphill. My thighs burned and the snow had gotten deeper, making the lights dimmer and soaking my jeans to the knees.

“Not too much further,” Kira said soothingly. “Relax. We’re doing great.”

She really shouldn’t have said that.

My foot caught something beneath the snow and I stumbled forward. Kira jerked on my braid, pulling me back but it was too late. I overbalanced and did a full sideways sprawl into deep, icy snow.

Right onto a humming, glowing mine.

It didn’t explode. The light extinguished with a hiss.

“I just fell on one,” I said, trying not to panic as I climbed to my feet. “What’s happening?” Obviously I hadn’t exploded.

“Nothing,” Kira said, her voice tight with worry.

The jaguar snarled.

“Strike that,” Kira said. I heard a scraping noise and then the crack of a gun going off.

“What do I do?” I said. My voice came out in a shriek and I made myself take a deep breath. I couldn’t see shit except for the other mines around us.

“Come back toward my voice,” Kira said.

I walked the couple steps back until she put a hand on my shoulder.

“What is it? What did you shoot?” There. My voice was way less panicked. Kinda.

Ladies snarled again, very close to me now.

“Zombies, I think.” Kira’s gun went off again, two shots this time, in quick succession. My ears started ringing. “Climbing out of the ground. We need to go. Fast.”

“Which way?” I said. All I saw was mines, but from the glow, I thought I could tell which way was uphill. Not well enough to trust it.

Kira grabbed my arm and turned me in what I guessed was the right direction. “Fast zombies, seriously. Go.”

I went far more quickly than I was comfortable with, but fighting undead wasn’t an option for me. I tried to navigate the remaining mines without stepping into any lighted circles, praying to the Universe that my friends could keep up and follow my path. Gunfire rang out just behind me, shot after shot. An animal screamed, though more in anger than pain.

Gasping for air, my thighs burning, I passed through the last ring of lights and felt the ground flatten out.

“Clear ahead of me,” I called back.

Something slammed into my side, knocking me over. I curled instinctively and kicked out, my boots connecting with something hard that shrieked on impact. Gunfire, this time sounding like it came from ahead of me, cut through the air.

Hands grabbed my shoulders, and before I could react, I was being dragged across the snow and then pulled upright. Icy crystals caught in my hoodie and slid down the back of my neck. I tried to punch upward.

“Jade.” Salazar’s voice came from above me. “It’s me, come on.”

“I can’t see,” I said. “Get me inside.” I hoped that would break the spell.

Salazar picked me up as though I weighed nothing and carried me for a few terrifying strides. Then he set me down, pushing me to my knees.

“Just in front of you is the opening. There’s a ladder on the left.”

I flailed out with my hands as I heard him clear a gun and start shooting again. My fingers met a metal rim and I scrabbled around until felt the first rung. Closing my eyes, I crawled into the hole and started climbing down.

When I opened my eyes, I could see.

The hatch opened into a small room with copper walls. There was a single closed door at one end that looked like something I’d seen in submarine movies, with a big lever handle. I moved quickly out of the way of the ladder as Kira came sliding down like a total badass, her feet on the sides instead of the rungs.

“Jump,” she called up to someone.

The jaguar came next, the twins diving in head first and landing with a heavy thud as they shoved off the ladder with their back feet.

“Sal,” she yelled up.

More gunfire and then he was there, sliding down the ladder much the same way Kira had.

“Button,” he said, gasping. “Close the hatch.”

I looked around wildly and saw a panel near the door with the lever. It had two buttons on it that both looked exactly alike. I dashed toward it and hit the top one.

The hatch started to slide shut with a grinding protest. Something ugly and misshapen, its form backlit by the grey sky, stuck its head in. Kira shot it right between the glowing red eyes and it reared back. The hatch stopped grinding and slid shut with a clang.

“Holy fucking shit,” Kira said.

“Nice shooting,” Salazar said. He leaned against the ladder, still panting, his gun dangling in his hand.

“I’ve spent lot of hours playing Left 4 Dead.” Kira grinned. “Never thought it would translate to real-life zombie killing though.”

“Alarms are going, we have to move,” Salazar said. He pulled a white keycard from his suit pocket and held it out to me. “This is yours. The room you want is in the blue section, number forty-two. Can you remember that?”

“Life, the universe, and everything, blue. Got it,” I said, talking the card. My hands were shaking, my fingers numb with cold and buzzing with adrenaline. I was soaked from my spill into the snow and starting to feel the cold.

“God that’s a horrible sound,” Kira muttered. She checked the clip in her gun and nodded to Salazar.

“I don’t hear anything,” I said.

“Alarms are pitched for the shifters that patrol the corridors. Come on.” Salazar moved past me and opened the door.

The door opened into a wide hallway that stretched to the left and right, curving away. The wall had a green stripe painted on it. From Salazar’s diagram, I had pictured a single hall running in an infinity sign. This corridor was wide, but had other openings in it, hallways that led off to wherever. It was more like a strand of DNA, I guessed, than a real figure eight.

“Jade, this will lead you to the blue corridor. Go right, then hang left when it turns. Find the hallway opening with the blue stripe. Good luck.”

“Thank you,” I said. I hesitated, looking at the three of them.

A shout rang down the hallway and I heard boots slamming down on metal.

“Take care of my brother,” Kira said, giving me a somber nod. “Time to go make some noise.”

They took off running to the left. I turned my back on them and started up the hallway to the right. I unzipped my wet hoodie and pulled out my dagger. I had no idea how to use it, but it seemed like a better option than the possibly-not-exploding spell notes I had folded in my jean’s pocket. I was quite sure the blood ink had been damaged by me face-planting into the hill. My clothing was soaked. Small consolation that the spell probably would have failed. No sour grapes here, nope.

The blade was warm and pulsed in my fingers. Its weight was comforting, though I knew that must be magic or psychosomatic illusion. I had no idea how to use a knife, not really. A few lessons with Alek did not a master make. Being able to see again was also comforting. I hadn’t quite realized until was over how nerve-destroyingly awful being blind like that had been.

I turned the corner. The hallway I was in bent in a wide turn, continuing left. The roof and walls were the same copper-looking metal the room had been, but the floor was made of metal grating, like the kind you see on a footbridge. Faint blue light glowed up from under the grates. I tried not to wonder too much about it. No time. Three halls opened off it to the left. I sprinted down the corridor, looking at each side passage as I went by. First one was red. No go. The second was painted a dark purple.

Boots on metal rang out ahead of me. Putting on the last bit of speed I had, I bolted for the third hall. The paint was blue, the color of sky and hope and everything good. At least at that moment.

I hung a hard left and started looked at the doors. Salazar was right: they weren’t cells, but rooms like in a hotel, complete with a keycard reader on them. Only with a bulletproof glass window in each door. A Stephen King type of super-creepy hotel.

This hall stretched on forever, it seemed, though the light was dim here, making it difficult to read the numbers. Thirty-two. Thirty-three. On and on. I heard a shout somewhere behind me but didn’t dare to glance back.

Forty-two. I reached the door and shoved the card into its slot, swiping it so quickly I got an error and a red light for my trouble. I did glance down the hall and saw a large wolflike creature glide past the opening to the green corridor. It didn’t seem to see me. I swiped again, more carefully.

The light flicked to green and the door slid open like a barn door on a track inside the thick wall. I dived into the room and pulled it shut behind me, dropping down below the level of the window as it closed.

My heart in my throat and my lungs threatening to go on strike, I leaned against the cool metal and looked around. The room was about ten feet by ten feet, with a toilet and sink in one corner opposite me. On the right was a television bolted into the metal wall. A bed stretched along the left wall with a small side table bolted to the floor next to it.

The only light in the room was from a soft yellow bulb above my head. There was enough to of it to illuminate the figure asleep in the bed. I crawled to the side and stood up, still pressed against the wall, hoping I was out of sight in anyone looked in. I doubted they’d be searching the rooms, but I had used a card. They might notice this door had been opened.

No idea how much time I had. I took a deep breath, and went to wake up my father.

He was half covered in a grey blanket, one arm thrown over his graying head, the other propped on an ample belly. He looked old, tired, and dead to the world. His hair was iron grey, cut short like it had been in the diner. His face was brown and lined. He looked seventy, at least, and fat, very fat. I guessed his weight at three hundred pounds or more. So very different from my vision. A small bubble of spit grew and popped from his half-open lips as I approached the foot of the bed. He smelled like musty old grass. It reminded me of the smell in a hayloft that hasn’t been swept enough.

I took a deep breath and sheathed my dagger. No point waking him up with a knife out. Might give entirely the wrong idea. Then I reached down and shook his leg.

“Must be new,” he mumbled, not even opening his eyes. “Leave the tray on the table.”

“I’m not here to feed you,” I said. “You have to wake up.”

“I’m tired, girl. Go away.” He rolled over, pulling the blanket up to his chin.

In all my mental imaginings and rehearsals of this scene, I’d never pictured it going anything like this.

“I’m not a girl, I’m your damn daughter. I need your help.” I reached down and shook his leg again.

“Don’t have a daughter,” he mumbled.

“Oh for fucks sake,” I said, trying to keep my voice down but totally failing. We didn’t have time for this shit. For all I knrw, Salazar and Kira and the twins were out there getting shot or ripped to pieces and I was in here arguing with a half-asleep idiot.

“Ash,” I tried again. “Get up. I am your daughter. My name is Jade Crow. I am the daughter of Pearl Crow, who you fucked like almost fifty years ago.” I gave his leg a very hard shake and dug my fingers in.

“Pearl?” He opened his eyes and finally looked at me. His eyes were dark brown with none of the red flecks I’d seen in the diner. “I remember her. Beautiful woman. Oh, how she could sing.”

My mom can sing? I tried to remember if she ever had. I shoved the thought away. Not the time for reminiscing.

“Yes. You slept with her. She got pregnant with me. I’m your kid.”

He squinted at me and heaved himself into a sitting position. “No. Unlikely I’d even have a child. Anyway, my kid would be a sorcerer. I don’t sense any magic on you.”

That stung. I had hoped that whatever had happened, it was just a matter of time until my power came back on its own. Hopefully this guy was wrong.

“I time-traveled,” I said, going with the truth, as crazy as it sounded. “It burned out my power. That’s why I need you. You showed up in a diner a few days ago and told me to come find you.”

Okay. That definitely sounded insane. Great.

“Come here,” he said. Intelligence glinted in his eyes and he looked far more awake.

I walked around the bed and crouched down. “I don’t want to be seen from the door,” I explained. “I kind of broke in here and they are looking for me.”

He chuckled. “I broke in here, too, I think. A long time ago.”

Ash held out his hand and I took the hint, placing mine in it.

“If you are really a sorcerer,” he said, “this will probably hurt.”

His hand closed tightly on mine before I could respond and pain sliced into my head at my temples. The world went black and I squeezed my eyes shut. I wanted to pull away or start punching him or something, but I made myself hold still. Whatever he was doing, I had to hope it would confirm who I was. He was my ticket out of here, after all. He was the golden ticket to everything, in the end.

So I breathed through the intense pain and silently recited the litany against fear from Dune.

Then, as quickly as it had come, the pain was gone, leaving me gasping. I opened my eyes to see Ash staring at me and smiling.

“Shit on a stick,” he said, his voice taking on a slight drawl. “You really are my kid. Kind of fucked yourself up good, didn’t you?”

Maybe I’d inherited my potty mouth. That thought almost got me to smile. No time for smiling. Right.

“Yeah, I did. Can we get out of here and discuss it somewhere else?” I glanced back at the door as I heard boots and someone yelling something down the hallway. Whatever was happening out there, they still seemed to be looking for me.

“How are we going to get out?” Ash asked.

“What? You are supposed to get us out. You can do that,” I said. I stood up and glared down at him, willing him to start being more useful.

“Who told you that, exactly?” He pushed the blanket off his legs. He was wearing a vast tee-shirt that said “Beer is Good!” on it and a pair of red sweatpants. His feet were bare.

“A vampire,” I said. “He helped me break in here. It’s complicated.”

“You listened to a vampire?” Ash shook his head and chuckled again. “Guess I better get you out. I’d like more sleep, but I suppose time is of the essence etc etc and so on?”

“Very,” I said, glancing at the door again.

“Help me up,” he said.

He swung his tree-trunk legs over and I grabbed his hands, pulling him to his feet. He closed his eyes as he reached his arms overhead in a long stretch. I struggled not to growl with impatience as his joints popped and crackled.

“Up it is,” he said after a moment, opening his eyes and looking at me again. “I’ll just have to carry you, I reckon. Get on my back and hold on tight.”

I did as he said, using the bed to boost myself up. He was just about six feet tall but with shoulders like an ox, broader than Alek’s or Yosemite’s. I wrapped my legs around his middle as best I could and clung to his thick neck. The wet hay smell was a lot stronger now.

He took a big breath, his ribs expanding enough that I feared my legs would unclamp. Then he threw his arms upward again. A wide circular portal opened directly above us, revealing a clear and star-filled night sky. With a wild yell, my father leapt into the air, flying upward like a superhero, taking me up, up, and away.

The sky we flew up into wasn’t a South Dakota sky. Looking below, I saw lights as though we were passing over a town, not the dark forest and receding prison I had expected. The air was freezing and we flew so quickly I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I felt my tears turning to ice on my cheeks and put my entire remaining energy into staying on Ash’s back.

We flew long enough that after a while I figured falling off and dying might not be so awful. I’d be warm again or at least not care about the hypothermia and frostbite that was surely setting in. As though sensing my suicidal thoughts, Ash dropped out of the sky at the same terrifying speed at which he’d flow up into it.

He landed in a field that was blissfully clear of snow. I had no idea how far we had come or where we were. I guessed still Northern Hemisphere, because the air, while not the biting cold from before, was still winter. I spied the Big Dipper in the sky as I lay on my back and tried to learn how to breathe again.

“I think my limbs fell off,” I muttered. I felt the tingling pain in my feet as blood started to circulate again. I risked wiggling a toe.

“Bullshit,” Ash said. He stood beside me. He held up his hand and white light coalesced around his fingers, illuminating the area. “No kid of mine is going to die of a little cold air.”

“That was freezing,” I said. I pulled my hoodie sleeves down over my icy hands and started rubbing them together vigorously. “Where are we?”

“Oregon. About ten miles from the ocean. Now, where did I put it?” He started walking in a spiral out from where we’d landed.

Oregon. Not so far then, at least, from Wylde and my friends. I sat up, wondering what part of the Oregon coast. It stretched for over three hundred miles, if I remembered correctly.

“Ah, here it is. I’ll leave you the light,” he said. Ash fixed the glowing sphere into the air.

I remembered keenly when magic had been so simple for me and sighed.

“Wait,” I said, as his words sank into my frozen and exhausted brain. “Leave me?”

“Back in a jiffy.” He laughed and sank into the ground, disappearing from view before I could get another word out.

Yep. This had gone exactly how I imagined. Not.

I stood up and walked to where he’d left the glowing sphere. I jogged in place to warm up, re-zipping my hoodie after checking that my dagger was still in place. Noah had been right about it, apparently. Now that it was joined with its other half, it had abandoned its former habit of falling out of wherever I put it and trying to get left behind.

The ground shook. Then it shook again, harder, tumbling me off my feet. I crawled to my knees and reached under my hoodie for the dagger hilt.

A huge snake uncoiled from the ground. Its eyes glowed with infernal red light and its scales were gold and silver, patterned like a diamondback rattler.

“Ash?” I said, not knowing what to make of this thing. Had he somehow transformed?

The snake reared back and flaps like a cobra’s opened on its neck as it hissed at me, a tongue flickering out. Its fangs were as long as my body. It was like a dire-cobra crossed with a late night SyFy movie creature.

I drew the dagger, keeping my eye on the hissing snake as I got to my feet. It was pitifully short and small in my hand. Why couldn’t Noah have given me a spear of prophecy instead?

Even as I thought this, the dagger glowed blue and elongated, transforming into a sword. Not a pole-arm, but slightly better.

“Thanks, totally not creepy knife,” I muttered.

The snake coiled and struck. I threw myself to the side and slashed with the sword, my tired body remembering Alek’s combat lessons.

I wished I had my magic so badly it hurt almost as much as coming down on my ankle wrong. Which I did, like a total boss. I felt something pop and my leg gave out.

I rolled and dragged myself up to my good leg, putting as little weight onto the other as I could manage. The snake hissed and circled. I turned in place, waving the glowing sword in front of me.

“Back, shoo, go away,” I yelled at it. “Bad snake.”

At least I was about to get eaten without any witnesses to my terrible one-sided “I’m about to die” banter.

The snake struck again, its scales grazing me as I leapt to the side. I lashed out with the sword but the serpent was too quick and dodged my wild swing. It slithered away beyond the circle of light.

Staying on my feet sucked, but I managed. I turned slowly, my eyes searching the shadows beyond for any sign of movement, any flash of gold or silver or glowing red eyes. The night was deadly still.

“Ash,” I yelled. “Ash, damnit, help me.”

Of course, I was still working on the desperate assumption that Ash wasn’t the snake. My father was clearly a powerful sorcerer, so who knew what he could turn into. This was not my night. This hadn’t really been my week. Or my year.

Eyes flickered like ruby stars in the night, warning me. The snake rushed me again, rearing back and striking down. I was already moving, limping sideways as I tried again to slice the fucker with my sword. No dice. The snake recoiled quickly. At least it seemed afraid of my glowing blade. That was something.

Not afraid enough to stop trying to eat me. No luck there.

I kept staggering out of the way, my movements getting more painful and sluggish. My arm felt like I’d been swinging a lead bar, though the sword probably weighed only a couple pounds. I wasn’t going to win this fight. There was no sign of my father. I was alone and I was going to die here, on this random fucking hill somewhere only miles from the Oregon coast.

Die. I reeled from another dodge and fixated on that word. I wasn’t able to use magic, but I’d been healing just fine. I’d been able to read the books in Noah’s library, too.

I was still a motherfucking sorceress.

I couldn’t die. The only way to kill me was to be a sorcerer and eat my heart. As long as this thing wasn’t my father in some kind of mega-evil snake form, I was probably safe from the whole death thing.

New tactic time. I clenched my jaw, gritting my teeth. This was going to hurt.

“Hope you are right about this blade,” I muttered as I stood and waited for the snake to strike again.

It did, predictably. This time I didn’t dodge. I let its jaws close around me, one giant fang jabbing and slicing right through my abdomen. It lifted me into the air and shook me as though to knock me loose from its fang.

I clung to my sword like the lifeline it was and stabbed that hell serpent right in its stupid face.

The snake convulsed, throwing me free of its mouth. I landed hard on the grass and stayed there, in far too much pain to want to move. From my sideways position, I watched the serpent writhe and twist.

Then, with a last terrible convulsion, it dropped into a gold and silver heap, unmoving.

I closed my eyes and let the sword fall from my hand. I knew I should do something about the gaping hole in my guts that was currently gushing blood, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. It would heal or it wouldn’t. At least my blood was warm.

“Lucy!” A man’s voice lifted me out of the dark fog of pain. “Shucks, I forgot about her.”

“Lucy can’t come to the phone right now,” I babbled. “She’s dead.”

“I see that,” Ash said. His face swam into my red-flecked vision. He looked different, but my pain-addled mind wouldn’t tell me what had changed. “You really should stop getting hurt like this.”

“Go fuck yourself,” I said. His face started to double, his eyes crossing, and the stars over his head grew brighter.

Ash laughed. He picked up my sword and looked it over. “Behave,” he said as it started to glow more brightly. The sword dimmed and turned back into a dagger. He slid it into the sheath at my waist.

“Let’s get you somewhere and take a look at this cut, hmm?” He lifted me up.

Darkness swirled over my eyes. I reached for unconsciousness like I would greet the embrace of a long-lost friend. Here I was again, being carried away from a fight by a man. Same bat time. Same bat station. Nothing changes.

“Alek,” I whispered. His hands were on my cheek, warm and familiar. I tried to reach for him, but the dream faded away before I could even grasp its memory. Instead, memory of my fight with the snake flooded back into my head. There was a bed under me and while my belly still felt like it was on fire, the flames were at least dying down. Wherever I was, I was warm and not dead. It’s the little things in life, I was learning.

“Normally I’d be insulted to be called another man’s name,” Ash said from somewhere beside me. “But I have a feeling this is somebody special.”

I opened my eyes and blinked against the yellow light. When they adjusted and focused, I saw I was in a one-room log cabin. A fire crackled cheerfully in a huge stone hearth, lending the air a cozy wood-smoke scent. Ash sat on a hewn wood chair next to my bed. My dagger was in its sheath on a table just beyond him, resting next to an iron teakettle. I looked down at myself. The wound was under a flannel shirt. A Navaho-style blanket covered my legs.

“Hi,” I said, looking back at Ash.

He looked like he had in my vision, only now his hair was long and pulled into two braids. His face was only slightly lined, looking forties instead of seventies, and his skin had lost is dull brown tone, looking more reddish and healthy. Red flecks burned in his eyes.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Like I got bit by a giant fucking snake,” I said. “What was that? Where did you go?”

“That was Lucy. I forgot I left her to guard my heart.”

“Your heart?” I blinked at him.

“I had to go get it, so I could remember. So I could be whole. Can’t help my kid if I can barely remember I have one, am I right?” He grinned at me.

“You didn’t know you had one,” I pointed out.

“Of course I did. I knew about you the moment your cells started splitting inside your mom.”

“That’s creepy,” I muttered. More loudly I asked, “If you knew about me, why didn’t you ever come see me? I didn’t know about you.”

“I was bending the rules just being here. You were safe enough where you were. I knew you’d need me later, though. So I buried my heart to keep inside the Oath and went somewhere safe to take a nap. The part of me that knew about you wasn’t able to travel with me. But see? It all worked out.” He shrugged and patted my shoulder gently.

“I think I hate you a little,” I said, too tired and hurt to keep from saying stupid things aloud.

“Fair enough,” he said. He rose and went to the table. He flipped over a small ceramic cup and poured an amber liquid into it.

“What are these rules? What oath? What are you?” I asked. I tried to sit up as he came back over and handed me the cup. My abs, which still had a hole in them from what I could tell, protested with a sharp stab of white-hot pain. Lying down was good. I decided to do that some more.

“We’ll get to that,” he said. “You need to heal. When you wake up, come outside.”

“I don’t have time to heal,” I said. I sniffed the tea. It seemed safe enough, some kind of chamomile and mint medley. Taking a sip, I looked at my father. “I have to regain my magic,” I said. “People I love are depending on it. They don’t have time for me to rest.”

“They have time,” Ash said. His face grew fuzzy. He took the cup from me as my eyes closed of their own volition.

“Drug me?” I slurred.

“Good night, Jade,” he said. It was the last thing I heard before my dreams reclaimed me.

I awoke feeling more rested than I had in weeks. I was alone in the cabin. Sunlight shone in through two windows set high in the far wall. I unbuttoned the flannel shirt. My belly had a nasty puckered scar on it, but the flesh was fading from pink to brown. When I moved, I felt no pain. My ankle took my weight without protest.

My shoes were by the single door. I tugged them on, lacing them quickly. Ash had said to come outside and find him when I awoke. I had no idea how long I’d slept, but I feared it had been more than a single night, judging by how much my wounds had healed. Who knew what danger Alek and my friends were in or how close Samir was to finding and hurting them.

Who knew if Harper’s time had run out?

I thought about Kira’s words as I finished tying my shoes and stood up. Trust. Yeah, that. My friends weren’t helpless. They were shifters, strong and powerful. And they were gamers. Intelligent, used to thinking on their feet. They’d come through the latest Samir shit with me, at my side nearly every step. They had home territory advantage and a freaking druid protecting them.

Alek was one of the smartest people I’d ever met. Great with a gun, a brilliant fighter, and the most powerful shifter I’d ever seen. He’d protected me as many times as I had saved his ass.

Trust. I could do that. For a little while. They needed me, yes. But Ash had been right. They needed me whole and strong. They needed the sorceress. And they needed me to trust that they could handle shit, trust that they could help.

Amazing how much clearer things looked when I’d had a good night of sleep, eh?

I took a deep breath and opened the door.

Beyond the cabin was a meadow. Golden grass, as though it was high summer, stretched as far as my eye could see. A white sun burned high above in a painfully blue sky. I walked out into the meadow, turning in a circle, looking for Ash.

Then, in the distance, some of the golden grass detached itself. A huge serpent-like creature rose up. No, not a serpent. A dragon. I held my ground as it approached, undulating through the grass.

“Morning,” its voice boomed, its tone reminiscent of Ash’s.

“Ash?” I said.

“In the flesh,” he said. The dragon chuckled, the sound rippling over me like a physical force. His breath smelled like fresh-baked bread.

I stared up at him. He was more of an Asian-style dragon than a European one. His body was long and almost serpent-like, but with a thick mane that rippled in the breeze and ran the whole extent of his thirty-or-forty-foot spine. He had spindly arms with three clawed fingers and a clawed thumb. I saw no legs because of the length of the grass, but he had haunches, so I guessed he had some down his length, hidden from my view.

His head was wide, with a long jaw somewhat like a wolf’s. Long tendrils trailed off his chin like a segmented beard. His forward-facing eyes glinted, dark as a night sky but with flecks of ruby fire in them instead of stars.

“You’re a freaking dragon,” I said.

“Indeed.” He grinned at me, which was unnerving given the amount of teeth he had. “I figured I’d just show you. Most people don’t believe in dragons anymore.”

I just nodded, still staring up at him. Then it hit me.

The bomb that the rogue Justice Eva had set. Alek saying he’d seen a dragon in the flames. The feeling of total strength and ingrained knowledge that fire wouldn’t hurt me when I’d fought the elemental destroying my game store.

“I’m a half-dragon?” I said softly. I was going to have to add a new template to my character sheet.

“No, don’t be ridiculous,” Ash said. He snorted, intensifying the fresh bread smell in the air.

“Oh,” I said. I looked at my feet, embarrassed that I’d assumed.

“There’s no half about it,” he added. “You are completely dragon.”

“Um.” I looked back up at him. “I can’t turn into a dragon. I think I could have noticed.”

“Your powers have been locked away. I had to do it when you were a baby. It is technically breaking the Oath for me to have a child.”

“What oath? You keep mentioning this.” I dug my foot into the grass. “Can we sit? Staring up at you is kind of painful. The sun is really bright.”

“Oh, sorry,” Ash said. In a blink he was human again. He dropped down into the grass and sat cross-legged.

I joined him, resting my hands on my knees.

“Story time,” Ash said. “I’ll make this as brief as I can. Many thousands of years ago, magic was at its peak. Gods and creatures that are now legend, like dragons, roamed the Earth. It was pretty much a sucky time for humanity, however. Deities meddling in their lives all the time. Things with teeth and claws and magic roaming around murdering them for food or sport. Not a good era to be born mortal.”

I thought about the myths I’d studied in school. I could see his point. The gods had been real dicks in most of those stories.

“Okay,” I said.

“So many of us banded together. A group of gods and other immortals. We created the Oath and sealed away the demons and those gods and their ilk who stood against us. Humanity’s time was rising, magic shrinking. We knew it was time to follow our ancestors and go into the lands beyond the stars.”

“So you just left?” I said. “But not all of you. What about shifters and the fey, things like that?” I also thought about Brie, who was really like six goddesses sharing a single body.

“Not all the gods left. Some stayed to diminish, to guard the world from what magic was left to it. Many of the fey folk retreated to their own kingdoms, though some also stayed. They were not bound by the Oath, being lesser creatures. Same with the shifter folk. They were even rarer before than they are now.”

“You stayed,” I said. It was half a question, half a statement.

“No,” Ash said. “I left, choosing to guard a seal and made a life in the Veil. But two thousand or so years ago now the seal that I watched over in the otherworld cracked open, and I came through, curious what had done it.”

“And?” I said. I leaned forward, wrapped up in story time.

He shook his head with a sigh. “I don’t know. But magic has been creeping back into the world drip by drip.”

“So you had a kid?” I prompted. “On purpose?”

“There are prophecies older than I am,” he said, smiling at me. His smile was sad somehow, and did not touch his dark, red-flecked eyes. “Some speak of a child born outside the Oath to a dragon and a crow.”

Prophecies? About me? Um, yeah. Do not want.

“Let me guess, I’ll bring balance to the Force?” I said, making a face at him.

“Not exactly, Jade Skywalker.” He rolled his eyes, making a face right back at me. “It’s unclear what this child will do, since clarity and prophecy are antithetical to each other, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity.”

“Wait, you’ve seen Star Wars? I thought you were asleep in prison for like forty years?”

He raised his hands in a “what can you do” gesture and said, “They had Netflix.”

Maybe nerd was genetic. I couldn’t resist a smile.

“So,” he said after a moment. Story time was apparently over, though I had a lot of questions. Questions that would have to wait. “What’s your story?”

I took a deep breath. I’d come so far for his help. He deserved the truth, all of it, if he wanted.

“Where should I start?” I asked.

“At the beginning. Childhood should be early enough, I think.”

I thought about that for a minute and gathered my memories along with my courage. Then I told him everything, spilling my guts and leaving out pretty much nothing. I had a suspicion that he knew at least some of it already.

The sun was dropping to the other side of the sky by the time I finished.

“That’s where things stand. My friends are hiding out in the wilderness. My best friend is probably being tortured or has been killed by my evil ex, and I’m totally without magic.” I flexed my fingers, letting blood flow back into them. Apparently I’d been making tight fists through the last part of my tale. My hands hurt almost as much as my heart.

“Then I had better start training you,” Ash said. “I will show you how to unlock your dragon side. When you do that, your magic should return stronger than it has ever been.”

“How long will that take?” I looked up at the sky, wondering how long I’d been away from my friends already.

“If you are a quick study, maybe two months? Just unlocking your power won’t be enough if you can’t control it properly. It would be far too dangerous to unleash an immature dragon on the world.”

“Two months?” I jumped to my feet. “Fuck no. I can’t take two months. I don’t have that kind of time. Two days might make the difference between my friends living and dying. It could already be too damn late.”

“Where do you think you are?” Ash rose gracefully to his feet.

“Not in Kansas anymore?” I said, still upset. I looked around, suspecting a trick question. “Or Oregon? It doesn’t feel like winter here.”

“You aren’t anywhere, not really. We’re in a pocket of the Veil. This isn’t Earth, kiddo. Time won’t pass outside at the same pace as in here. Minutes out there will feel like hours or even days here.”

I looked around again. Golden grass stretching toward a deep blue horizon, the breeze sending a shivering and unending wave through it.

“Seriously? What you are saying is that I’m in Narnia, basically,” I said. My heart stopped trying to punch its way through my chest and I unclenched my fists.

Ash threw back his head and laughed.

“More like the magical equivalent of The Matrix,” he said, his face split by a huge grin.

“You’re going to teach me to dodge bullets?” I said.

“When I’m done, you won’t have to,” he answered, not quite nailing the quote.

I let it pass, figuring he’d seen it a while ago and probably while half asleep. I’d been shot enough to realize never getting shot again was a pretty sweet plan.

“All right,” I said. I spun in a slow circle, taking in this place. Grass, sun, sky, cabin. Dragon.

I turned back to Ash and nodded. “I’m your grasshopper. Show me your dragony ways.”

Samir, you have no idea the pain and destruction coming your way, I promised silently. I will crush your face with my scaly might. Just wait, you bastard. Just you fucking wait.

But my final, much happier thought as I followed my father through the door and into his cabin was that my friends were never going to believe this. I smiled.

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 Magic to the Bone, the exciting seventh 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

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