Another day, another call from Bry’s teacher. So help me… I hated to imagine what my life would be like when the kid got to college.

And I had to leave Jezze and Berg alone at the bar once more. It wasn’t the first time and wouldn’t be the last, but the reasons were usually much more dramatic and life-threatening than “my son bit his best friend and gave him rabies.”

Okay, I didn’t know that he bit, but I was damned sure he didn’t have rabies. Mostly. I had to admit I wasn’t sure if brownies could get rabies. I’d have to ask Momma R the next time I saw her.

I tugged open the school’s main door and ducked beneath the frame as I stepped across the threshold. The wards scraped my skin, telling me the level of Midnight Lotus’ annoyance. Every teacher had the ability to modify the magical protections as needed. It meant that if someone saw a toddler racing for the exit, any one of the staff could stop them with a tweak of a spell.

It also meant they could use the protections as a passive aggressive poke at frustrating parents. When it came to Midnight Lotus and me, the level of pain I experienced mirrored her annoyance. Based on the way the tendrils of the spell dug into my flesh, I figured Lotus’ anger crept toward an eight or nine on the “Caith is a horrible parent and her child is an asshole” scale.

I stopped by the main office, spying Bry and another kid sitting at a table in a far corner playing some sort of card game. They chattered as they exchanged cards, laughs intermixed with a combination of Spanish and Brown-tongue with a dash of something else. It sorta confirmed some of my suspicion that maybe Bry was picking up other languages from other students.

If only.

When I sat down to talk with Lotus, she quickly dissuaded me of my theory.

“Your son is continuing to be uncooperative,” Lotus practically snarled at me and I bit my tongue, swallowing all of my own bitchtastic responses to her attitude. “It’s gone beyond his writing. Now he’s speaking in some… gibberish I can’t understand. I’ve told him more than once that he’s to answer questions in Brown-tongue. Or English since his Brown-tongue vocabulary is,” she peered at me of the rim of her glasses, “limited.”

Her tone told me she blamed me for his lack of education. What bit of brown-language he knew, he’d picked up from Blooming Aster—my brownie housekeeper—and other brownies in my home.

“Look,” I spread my hands, palms up, in surrender. “I don’t know where he picks this stuff up. His mind’s a sponge. He hears something once and he repeats it.”

I decided not to mention Bry’s first word and the fact that it was of the four-letter variety. I didn’t want Lotus to have an even worse impression of me. Plus, she’d probably kick Bry out on the off chance he would bring that kind of language to school.

“If you insist on exposing him to other languages, that’s your business.” The pointed frown on her face told me she wasn’t a fan of the idea, but at least she wasn’t telling me how to raise Bryony. Suggestions, I could take. Orders? Not so much. I still had a rebellious streak a few thousand miles wide and would be contrary just to piss people off.

“But he needs to learn to communicate properly in my classroom. If I can’t understand him, how am I supposed to teach him?”

She had a point. –ish. Not that I’d admit it aloud, though.

Instead, I folded my arms and raised my chin. “Maybe the problem is with you. How’s it Bry’s fault that you can’t learn this language as fast as he can?”

“I never.” Lotus sounded scandalized, hand going to her chest, and I figured if she was wearing pearls, she’d be clutching them.

I should chill out on being a bitch. Instead, I snorted. “At your age? I find that surprising.”

“Ms. Morningstar…”

I mentally winced but I wasn’t about to show weakness and take the words back. Besides, I was trying to cut down on the lying, and apologizing would be a lie, so…

“Okay, I’m not trying to be difficult,” mostly, “but I don’t know what you want from me. I’ll talk to him, but I’m not going to tell him not to be smart.” I gestured toward the other room where I could still hear Bry and the other kid speaking in some language I couldn’t understand. “Not my fault my son’s a genius.”

“It’s not a question of intelligence.” The tiny woman was still—somehow—peering down her nose at me. “It’s a question of behavior. How is he supposed to flourish in a world when he cannot grasp the simple concept of submission to authority?”

I wasn’t gonna show her some authority. I wasn’t.

I breathed deeply and let it out slowly. “Look, sometimes geniuses are eccentric…”

“Keep his eccentricities at home and teach him how to behave in my classroom,” Lotus practically snarled at me, the small brownie baring her tiny teeth at me.

Aw, how cute.

“Right. Are we done? Bryony and I are going to see one of his grandfathers today.”

Midnight Lotus pressed her lips together until they turned white and gave me a short nod. With her dismissal, I left the small office, ducking beneath the low doorjamb and heading to Bry.

I scooped him up and carried him to the car, Bryony distracted by some song he softly sang to himself. At least we didn’t have the “I want to walk, dammit” argument while still on school grounds. I buckled him into his seat, those tiny lips still mouthing words I didn’t recognize.

“Hey, kiddo, Tempmomma only speaks English, Dem, and some rusty Italian, okay? Cut me some slack and stick to something I know.” I had a few older, dead European dialects tucked in my head somewhere, but they hadn’t been used in centuries. I’d mostly forgotten them myself. Except the curse words. I always seemed to remember those…

“Are we going home now?” His high-pitched little voice was accompanied by a smile.

I returned his grin, glad he was speaking English and not possessed by an ageless demon spirit or something. After the glowing writing, I’d been concerned, but it was also Bry. He could just be a magical savant or something. I mean, sure, he was a brownie, but he also had the gift of hellfire from Uncle Luc. My son would be one badass, super short, mofo. I hoped these oddities were nothing more than early signs of his badassery.

Along with a good dose of rebellion against the strict authoritarian rule of his fascist brownie teacher.

“Nope,” I shook my head. “We’re gonna go see Grandpa Alrick.”

His face brightened, eyes wide and mouth split in a big smile while he bounced in his car seat. “Yay! Xbox!”

I snorted and backed away, nudging the door closed before going to the driver’s side and climbing behind the wheel. Papa Al began Bryony’s Xbox education early, before he could even hold the controller. It surprised me that he kept up with modern tech like video games. Mortals always said old dogs couldn’t learn new tricks. Papa Al always told me the idiom didn’t mention old werewolves. He could never wait to get his paws on the latest game console, cell phone, or TV as soon as it was released.

On the way to my father’s, traffic slowed to a crawl. Had I mentioned how much I hated tourist season? Not that Orlando traffic was good any time of the year, but at least during the theme parks’ downtime, the traffic was tolerable.

After sitting in traffic for about ten minutes, car crawling forward, I found the source of the jam. Cars weren’t lined up to hop on I-4. They were all trying to cram their vehicles into the parking lot of some new church I’d never seen before. Considering Orlando was my town, I wasn’t sure when it’d been built. Or how I hadn’t known about its existence. It was like it’d sprung up overnight when I was pretty sure there’d been a movie theater in that spot three weeks ago. Maybe they’d simply bought the theater and converted it to a church? Sermons complete with stadium seating, stale popcorn, and refillable drinks.

And people lined up at the door, the queue stretching the full length of the front and around the building’s corner. I’m all for humans who worship On High and everything, but I’d never seen churches rocking a velvet rope. And on a weekday? There were a few people by the door with bright, loosely flowing robes and shaved heads. The type of wackos that could be seen on TV when the police were invading yet another cult.

(Cults that were blamed on Uncle Luc way too often.)

I checked the movement of the car in front of me, splitting my attention between not rear-ending someone and the weirdness nearby.

“What the hell is that place?” I squinted, trying to see the insignia above the temple door that could tell me what religion had moved into my city. But instead of a cross or Star of David, there was a weird symbol. A symbol that looked a lot like the stuff Bryony had been writing lately. Because of course. “What does that symbol mean?” I muttered.

“Lucia.” That little voice had me freezing in place for a split second.

I slowly turned in my seat and stared at my kid, a chill running up my spine. “What did you say, sweetheart?”

He pointed at the building, tiny finger extended. “Lucia.”

I shifted my attention, following the direction of his arm. “Fuck.”

I wasted no time getting the hell outta that place. I hit the gas and rolled up onto the shoulder, using the sidewalk instead of waiting for the road to clear. I swung an illegal U-turn and headed the wrong way up a one-way street. I whipped down back roads and cut through communities, putting distance between us and that church. The hairs on the back of my neck still stood on end, goosebumps coating my arms. The tires squealed on my next turn, and I held the wheel in a stiff, white-knuckled grip, hands steady even though I shook inside.

It could have been a coincidence, right? The name Lucia was common, wasn’t it? I swallowed hard. It could be and yet… it might not. I knew too many divine and damned figures that liked to pull strings from behind the scenes and Lucia was…

I pulled into Papa Al’s driveway, a few of his sentry wolves keeping pace with my car—sniffing and identifying me—before trotting back into the forest that lined the path. If my suspicions were correct, he should probably double that number, bump up his protections.

I tossed the car into park and climbed out, grabbing an anxious Bryony before he lit his car seat on fire and let himself out. Don’t laugh. It’d happened.

More than once.

I followed him inside, those short legs racing up the steps and through the front door. I walked in just as Papa Al swung Bry up into the air, tossing my kid high before catching him in his strong arms. I remembered doing that with him when I was younger—before worries and life landed on my shoulders.

“Grandpapa! Can we play the bang-bang game?”

The bang-bang game? I quirked an eyebrow at Papa Al and my father narrowed his eyes in response. He only ever did that when he’d been caught. He always got a good bluster going so no one would realize he was in the wrong.

They’d all agreed, until Bry learned how to control his hellfire, he wouldn’t get involved in violent games—video or otherwise. No one wanted to lose an Xbox controller—or a house—to hellfire.

Then my dad’s expression changed, his head tilting to the side, expression transforming to suspicion… and concern. “In a few minutes, my boy. Why don’t you go into the other room and get it set up, huh?”

The moment Bry was released, he ran off, racing into the den and leaving me alone with my father.

Now, I could bitch about the game thing or talk about—

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Something’s wrong.”

Not bitching about the game thing yet. Right.

“I don’t know for sure,” I hedged. I didn’t know anything but the twisting and knotting in my gut. “But I’ve got an inkling about something.”

“What?” The word was a sharp snap. This was the High Wolf of North America getting all alpha and pissy when he suspected his pup was in danger.

“Remember Lucia?”

Papa Al snorted and nodded. He’d been there last year when the demon Silaran had attempted to snatch half the souls in Orlando. He’d been attempting to build up enough power to overthrow Uncle Luc.

And Lucia? Well, she was the demon’s mortal lover. At the time, she hadn’t shown her face, but her brother had been all up in Silaran’s shit—using dark magic to lure humans and tweeners into damnation. Of course, her absence could be explained away with her whole suicide thing, but whatever.

Now, Silaran was back in Hell—where he belonged—Lucia’s brother was dead and Lucia’s soul had allegedly been swept out of Silaran’s reach.

Except now there was a “Lucia” who’d opened a church in Orlando? I didn’t believe in coincidences all that much.

So, if I didn’t believe in coincidences, that meant Lucia and Silaran were planning something—big.

I told Papa Al about the temple and Bry’s recent behavior, nerves poking and prodding me. The wolf was being a total bitch, too. Growling and pacing because of the threat to our pup.

“Do you think he’s being controlled in some way?” His voice remained low.

“I don’t know.” I stared at where Bryony had disappeared, the thumps and crashes of his movements echoing off the walls. “But Silaran tried to use Bry against me. I imagine it’d be right up Lucia’s alley, too. It could be possible he’s picking up the language from other kids. If some of their parents are going to this temple and picking it up there, he could have learned it from them.”

“Or someone is getting into his head.” Papa Al growled, his tanned skin rippling with hints of dark fur. The wolf in him was very protective of his pack. Even though Bry wasn’t a wolf, or even blood relative, he was still my son. Papa Al would protect him with his own life if necessary.

“I have Jezze looking into the language. I’ll head to the bar and talk to her, update her on this temple. We’ll see what she can discover.”

“I’ll send a pack with you.”

And he would. Literally, he’d send a pack of wolves with me, but I didn’t need fifty werewolves following me to Hell’s Chapel.

At the moment.

“Just keep an eye on Bry for me? And don’t let him wander around without supervision.”

“Do you think he’s in danger?” More growling, more fur.

“Last time Silaran moved on Orlando he tried to lure Bry through his portals to Hell. I’d rather not risk that happening again.” Silaran held a teensy grudge against our family. Uncle Luc sent Lucia, upon her death, to a circle of Hell where Silaran couldn’t reach her. And then my mom and I sorta sent Silaran back to Hell all together.

Which put two Morningstar haters in the same place at the same time. Getting someone out of the deepest circles took some serious magic, but Silaran was a serious demon. Had he broken his evil girlfriend out? Sent her to the tween to fuck with me some more?

I hoped not, but my gut was telling me yes.

I said good-bye to my kid, giving him a hug and ruffling his hair. He just gave me an absent wave, his eyes trained on the violence on the screen while the guns went bang-bang. I didn’t know how much longer his hints of innocence would last. Between the aging of a brownie child and the amount of hell he’d already been through in his life…

But I was going to protect him for as long as possible and hopefully he could continue living a safe, carefree existence. Where his biggest worry was whether he could match his grandfather’s Xbox skills.

I headed back to the bar, skin itching, hair still standing on end. Something was going on. Period. Full stop. I didn’t know what, but my wolf had its scent. The animal knew it hunted something—someone—who touched our pup. Maybe not physically, but their taint still affected my son.

Unfortunately, I didn’t know where my prey might be hiding. Lucia wouldn’t be dumb enough to actually be at the temple, and as satisfying as it might be to rip the clergy into tiny pieces, I couldn’t dive into the “everyone dies” pool just yet.

For now, I just had to hope that I could get to the bottom of things before the situation got out of hand. I had to learn what I could and put a stop to their plans before it was too late.