Reagan stopped near the archway leading into the kitchen, dressed in a new set of leathers. She pointed at me. “Don’t go anywhere.”

I wasn’t sure where she thought I would go. I didn’t have a car, was mostly afraid of the extremely rough neighborhood in which she lived, and was utterly exhausted from the intensive spell work and physical training (a.k.a. getting beaten up) we’d just finished.

It had been this way for the last three days. We made spells, discussed the feelings of the spells, talked about when it would be best to use the spells, and then engaged in physical combat, after which I limped to the couch and collapsed in exhaustion.

Oh yeah, and there were daily, or sometimes twice-daily, calls from Callie, who kept checking in to make sure I was still alive. That was what she said, anyway. Since each call devolved into a rant about my being stripped from her house without any notice, I had a feeling she was just venting.

Regardless of her anger, she never asked for me to come back. Instead, she asked to be passed on to Reagan to get a rundown of what we’d done that day. She was monitoring me from afar.

I could read the writing on the wall: she agreed with the others. No matter how much she blustered and blew about it, she thought I was better off with Reagan. Whether that was because of the training, my safety, or the giant mess that had unfolded at Darius’s house, I couldn’t say, but she was worried about the magical climate to trust the vampire’s decree.

For better or worse, I was stuck with Reagan.

And actually, despite the pounding I got every day, it was working out surprisingly well. She never told me something was right or wrong. She didn’t even point out how someone else might have done it.

In spell work and fighting, I was really coming along. In just three days, I had progressed much further than in all that time with Callie and Dizzy. But that was in terms of reading spells and duplicating them. When it came to making them up on the fly—in a controlled, precise manner—or pairing a spell with a situation, I was still freezing up.

At this rate, when the Guild came calling, I didn’t have any faith I’d be able to beat them back.

I sighed heavily and fell into the couch, immediately regretting it. My butt hurt from the multiples times I’d fallen on it in the last hour. “Where are you going again?”

“I have a friend who knows a guy who said the Magical Law Enforcement office might need some help bringing in a banshee. With Darius preoccupied, it’s the perfect time for me to do a little contract work.” She waved her hand nonchalantly, a gesture she often used to make light of doing something very wrong. “It’ll be a super-easy case. Nothing to worry about. I’ll just help out real quick and that’s it. No reason to mention it at all.” She paused and lowered her voice. “Do you hear what I’m saying?”

“That you’ll beat me bloody if I go telling anyone, yeah.” I glanced at the clock. “It’s two in the morning. Who is working now? Not that I’m complaining about my practice session being over.”

“The magical community keeps different hours. Don’t worry; you’ll get used to it. But this isn’t the actual job, just a little information gathering. I want to know exactly what’s going on before I make the captain hire me. There’s no way I want Darius on my case about doing something stupid. And that’s the problem with boyfriends—they’re always on your ass about jeopardizing your future and committing yourself to an eternity of servitude.”

“Uh-huh.” Now that I was temporarily living with her, I’d decided it was in my best interest to ignore her crazy life. I rubbed my eyes. “Well, he can’t really talk, can he? What with the ongoing Ja situation and all.”

Ja was going to live, though we didn’t yet know if that was good or bad. Darius had started hitting the books really hard to determine how badly he’d messed up by making me entice her back into vampire politics (I totally blamed him for the whole debacle). Until he knew more, we were in the dark.

Not that it mattered. Reagan assured me that it was a vampire problem, and it was best to let them duke it out themselves. With Ja thinking rationally again, I was in no danger.

Or so they said. I planned to stay as far away from her as possible, just in case.

Reagan put up a fist. “I knew you’d see it my way.”

Before I could bail myself out of that sinking ship, she was striding through the front door.

“Right.” I stared after her in the sudden silence.

I was alone, really alone, for the first time in what was probably a very long time.

Wasn’t that something? I hadn’t been alone much in my life. My mother had always been hanging around, peering over my shoulder. After moving, Callie and Dizzy had always been home, not peering over my shoulder so much as wanting my company. And Veronica—

Veronica!

I’d talked to her as much as Callie since the night at Darius’s house, but I hadn’t been able to see her. It was starting to wear on me. And truth be told, I was a little worried about her. The last time I’d moved locations in order to hide from the Guild, she’d been taken hostage. I didn’t want something like that to happen again.

After painfully hefting myself off the couch, I waddled my sore butt to my room and grabbed my phone. One missed call from Callie. No 9-1-1 text, though, so she probably just wanted another crack at the day’s rant.

“Hello?” Veronica answered in a sleepy voice.

“Oh my—I am so sorry, Ronnie! I completely forgot normal people are asleep right now. Forget I called. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“No, it’s fine.” I heard her shifting. “What’s up? What are you doing?”

“Are you sure? It’s nothing important.”

“No, it’s fine. What are you up to? Did you do your training and everything?”

I told her about a breakthrough on a recent spell, and also about how much my punch was improving. I could even, almost, occasionally deflect Reagan’s punch or kick. Sometimes.

“That’s great. But how are you supposed to fight when you’re using your hands to do magic?”

“Right. I’ve asked that so many times it isn’t funny. But Reagan is convinced that knowing my body, and feeling less physically helpless, will improve my confidence.”

“Oh. Well that’s true enough.”

“Yeah,” I said miserably, finding the couch again. “That’s the conclusion I came to, too. Unfortunately.”

“So now what are you doing?”

“Sitting on the couch. Reagan went out for something. I’ve got the rest of the night off.”

“She…went out?” Alarm crept into Veronica’s voice. “Where did she go? Did she go far?”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

More shifting, and the rest of the tiredness seeped out of Veronica’s voice. “Callie and Dizzy are a bit on edge these last couple days. First they were pissed that you weren’t headed back to their house, especially after what went down at Darius’s, but yesterday John was hanging around, asking about you. We all know he’s smitten, right?”

“He just wants a powerful dual-mage partner.”

“Well, right. For him, that counts as smitten. He’s a douche. Anyway, he was hanging around, and then Mary Bell came over out of the blue. She wondered where you were, too, and spent the rest of the time giving John the side-eye.”

Tingles crawled up my spine. “Dizzy told me Mary Bell has had a somewhat foggy past.”

“I know,” Veronica said in a heavy voice. “Callie filled me in. She was doing human sacrifices at one point!”

I curled up and hugged my knees to my chest. I had liked the old mage’s approach to magic…theoretically…but murder was categorically wrong.

“They wanted to try and sacrifice a vampire, so her and her dual-mage guy tried to capture one. Well, her dual-mage guy got killed. That was when she changed her ways. Callie said it was the heartbreak that did it, not a return to morality.”

“Goodness,” I breathed out. “And yet Callie has this chick hanging around?”

“She’s powerful. Callie is keeping an eye on her, or so she says. I really think they all like to keep tabs on one another. I wouldn’t say they’re friends.”

“Well with a past like that…”

“Right. And then…” She let her words trail away, and I knew she was conflicted about telling me something.

“What?” I prodded.

“Well…Dizzy says it was nothing, but you know how he is? Everything is nothing until he’s knee deep in blood.”

“That’s not…” I blinked, trying to match up our different takes on his personality. Maybe I’d just spent too much time around blood lately.

“But I don’t know. Lately there’s been more people around this neighborhood than normal. And, I mean, no, they don’t seem particularly suspicious, but I get the feeling they are watching me. Like, when I go around fixing the grammar on signs, I always feel eyes on me, you know?”

I nodded, forgetting we weren’t speaking face to face and she couldn’t see my silent cues.

“And then last night,” she went on, “I glanced out my window because I thought I heard something bang, and I could swear a person slipped into Dizzy’s shed. I could swear it, Penny. Dizzy says he has a good warden or something on it, and that the warden or whatever was fine in the morning, but…” She sighed forcefully. “I don’t know. Maybe magically it doesn’t make sense, but I know what I saw.”

“I could probably take down a ward, then put the same ward back up.” I chewed my lip. “But there aren’t a lot of people with enough power to do that to one of the dual-mages’ spells, I don’t think.”

“Right. That’s what he said. But…”

“Well, keep your eyes out. If you saw one, you’ll probably see more. Information can be just as important as spell work.” Reagan had said that to me once, and it seemed to fit my life pretty well lately.

“Yeah,” Veronica said, letting go of the thread of the conversation. “Well, anyway, Callie and Dizzy are certain you’re in the safest place. Especially because they said you put some sort of warning or something on Reagan’s house.”

“Ward. The same thing Dizzy had on the shed.”

“Ah.”

“I have to physically bring people into Reagan’s house, or they can give a blood offering.”

“Gross. Really? Isn’t that dark magic stuff?”

“It’s like giving a DNA offering, basically. A way of getting foolproof ID.”

“Oh. Okay, then. So yeah, you should stay there.”

“Does anyone know where I am?”

“No. Callie and Dizzy won’t say—she gets hostile about people asking—and I try to make myself scarce when they come around. Which has been more frequently lately. They were impressed by the warehouse thing. Word has spread that you are a bona fide natural.”

“The failed practice session, you mean?”

She started laughing. “The ones with all the power know you can do better, and the ones without it think you’re fabulous. I don’t know heads or tails about magic, but I’m getting a pretty good idea about the mage social structure at this point. Because here I am, stuck in the middle, breaking the magical rules because I’m a normal human who is privy to this stuff.”

“So Dizzy and Callie have been filling you in?”

“Yeah. I think I am actually getting your lessons. They really did want to teach someone. You know what’s funny?” She shifted again. “I’m editing this paranormal book right now that is depicting vampires completely inaccurately. I want to do up notes about each point that’s incorrect, but the author thinks she’s writing fiction. So I can’t say anything. She’d think I was crazy.” She paused and then mumbled, probably to herself, “I think I have to stop editing that genre. It’ll drive me bonkers.”

A knock sounded at the door.

I hopped up, then regretted it the moment my body screamed in protest. “Oh, that’s the nightly maid crew. I gotta go.”

“You are so lucky,” she said before we said our farewells.

I was so lucky, that was true. Somewhere along the line, Darius had paid people to “plague” Reagan, as she called it. They looked after her place, stocked her fridge, cooked food, and cleaned up. Now that I was living here, I got the same benefits.

She was worried about an intrusion of privacy. I thought she was crazy. Having people look after us was awesome. As far as I was concerned, if they wanted to do my chores, they could snoop as much as they wanted.

“Come in,” I called, staying where I was for the moment.

The door swung open and a head slowly came into view. His eyes darted around the house, probably looking for Reagan, who would try to torment him in some way, before landing on me. And there they stayed, wary.

His body slowly followed his head. Hair styled just so and a face beautiful enough to make angels sing, the maid was surely a vampire. His graceful movements only confirmed it. And based on his nervousness, he’d clearly heard about the other night.

“You’re good.” I threw up my hands in surrender, and his eyes blink-flinched. Had I thrown magic, I totally would’ve had him. “Oh, sorry. I just meant that I won’t do any magic. You can come in. Worry-free.”

And this was what working with Reagan had done to me—think about every situation as a possible life-ending event. Yesterday’s vamp had been greeted by my bug zapper. What would happen when someone went to hug me? Would I sucker-punch them?

The vampire nodded and scooted to the kitchen with his bag of groceries. He didn’t even want to be in the same room as me.

There went my hope of having vampire friends. If I’d ever had one.

I thought about texting my mother, just to check in, but I’d probably wake her up. That would guarantee me a call and a serious tongue lashing. Best to wait until tomorrow and claim forgetfulness for not doing it today.

I stopped near the edge of the living room, deciding which way to go. My room was obviously the no-brainer choice, but if I did that, I’d end up falling asleep. As good as that sounded, I’d wake up early (by Reagan’s standards), and tomorrow would be a long day.

So it was either sit in the backyard with the dummy I’d tried to kill on multiple occasions, or on a porch chair looking over a sea of remembered loss.

The vampire glanced over his shoulder at me, his eyes tight and body language nervous. It occurred to me that I was standing in the middle of open space, staring off in the distance—in his direction. He probably thought I was staring directly at him, with crazy eyes and an unhinged personality. The poor guy was clearly wondering if he would make it out of the house un-dead.

“Thanks for ironing, by the way,” I said to lighten things up. “I mean…if you were the one who did it.”

“Of course.” His formal bow turned into another wary stare. When I didn’t say anything further, he scooted into the pantry, where I couldn’t see him.

Grimacing, because that hadn’t gone well, I let myself out the front door and took one of the chairs facing the cemetery across the street. I glanced up at the light, considering whether I should flick it on. It would look creepy sitting here in the dark. I was still within the bounds of the ward, which covered the whole house and backyard, so I was safe even in the light.

Then again, I was looking over a cemetery. Creepy fit in.

The moist chill covered me like a blanket, the neighborhood quiet and subdued, which made sense, given the late hour.

I thought over what Veronica had said. Callie and Dizzy were nervous, which was more telling than all of the visitors who’d come bearing questions. They didn’t rely on their intuition much, from what I could tell, but it was still there, working away below the surface. Their subconscious minds would be processing body language, tone changes, and anything out of the ordinary, feeding the information to their brains on the sly.

They thought something was amiss. And I’d learned to pay attention to that sort of thing.

Movement caught my eye. A grizzled-looking older man clad in black drifted out of the cemetery entrance across the street. Dark clothes hung off his bony frame. He stared at me as he peeled off to the side and stood in front of the wall.

A thrill ran through me as I wondered who he could be. A drug dealer sounded about right, with his rough look and the hours he kept.

Then again, would Reagan put up with that kind of thing across from her house?

I doubted it.

So then what? A thief, maybe? A guy casing houses?

Whatever he was, I knew what he was not. He was certainly not a mage. He didn’t have the satchel, for one, or the pompous strut that said he was somebody. Even Callie and Dizzy, lovely people, had a certain lift to their shoulders and height to their chins.

This character stooped, and not because he was trying to be sneaky, but because he didn’t want to be noticed.

I knew that posture well.

I watched him…watching me.

The scene should’ve been awkward, yet as I stared, and he stared back, I didn’t want to look away. I wanted to see if he did something fantastical that identified him as a magical person of some kind.

And strangely…it seemed like he was waiting for the same thing.

A car rolled by at the end of the street, the engine clunking badly.

The man’s head turned slightly, catching the motion, but it immediately snapped back, like he expected to catch me sprinting away.

That was when I felt something drift toward me along the air currents. It felt…welcoming, almost. A come-hither sort of invitation.

Wisps of colorful magic wafted up over the walls of the cemetery, curling into the air. Light and playful. They fizzled out at a certain distance before more, stronger streams of magic blossomed.

The man near the cemetery didn’t turn around. He didn’t so much as glance up at the sky. If I didn’t know better, and I really didn’t, I would say he couldn’t feel the magic going on behind him.

Unable to help myself, I leaned forward and pointed. “Do you feel that?”

He didn’t start, or jerk, or do any of the things I would have expected from a stranger with whom I’d engaged in an impromptu stare-off. He merely shifted one shoulder toward the cemetery.

“No,” he said. “Is it bad or good?”

I frowned at him. I’d expected him to say “yes,” or ask “what?” Instead, he’d asked about the danger level of something he could neither see nor feel. That spoke of a magical creature. Or…maybe just the sketchiness of the neighborhood.

“It’s good, I think. Done by people.” I braced my elbows on my knees. “Am I allowed to ask what you are?”

“Yes. Am I allowed to ask what you are?”

“Um…that depends.”

Joy and light and radiance flowered in my middle as I continued to watch the colorful display in the cemetery. Nature danced and sang and asked to be pulled into spells. I closed my eyes so I could savor the delightful feeling of it.

This—this was what I loved about magic.

“I’m human,” he said. “But…” He looked around before slowly crossing the street at an angle, heading for the neighbor’s house on my right. Once outside, he turned to face the street again. “I know what goes on in that house. Mostly.”

“Which house? This house?”

“Yes. Reagan and I are friendly. I know her…friends.”

The way he said friends left no doubt he knew they were vampires, or at least not human. It seemed the rule of not allowing humans to know about the magical world wasn’t followed as closely as I’d been led to believe.

“I watch over things,” the man said, his gruff voice low as he scanned the street. “I make sure all is calm in the neighborhood. You’re new here. Reagan hasn’t mentioned you.”

“Oh.” Magic drifted into the organized mass above me and my fingers longed to weave spells to add to the glory of whatever was happening in the cemetery. “I’m kind of…”

I stopped myself.

Great, Penny, nearly tell a creepy stranger that you’re hiding out.

He nodded like he’d heard my thought. “You’re in a good place,” he said. “A safe place. She has things pretty well tied down.”

“Right, yeah.” I frowned at him again, wondering how much he knew about Reagan. And if he’d be willing to fill me in.

“Are you…of her kind?” he asked.

“I don’t even know what her kind is, honestly,” I said without thinking, feeling a strong pull toward the cemetery. Almost like, if I didn’t show up, I’d miss out on a truly startling awakening. “I am of a magical kind, though you’re not supposed to know that.”

“I hear you loud and clear.” He touched a gnarled finger to his nose. “What did you say you felt over there?”

I stood, impatient, and rapped on the banister softly. “Wholeness. Unity. Nature. Everything that is good and right with the world. It’s really hard to explain—”

“That must be the Ladies of the Light. They’re the nice witches. We’ve got some bad ones that come through here, trying to call Satan and what not. I don’t mess with them. Reagan or No Good Mikey always chase them out. But if it’s the Ladies of the Light, they won’t hurt anything. They come here every so often to call the corners. They don’t get too loud or anything.” The man’s head turned toward the left and he looked down the sidewalk.

When he didn’t look away, I followed his gaze. A large, slope-shouldered man, thick from head to toe, ambled down the street looking at his phone. I straightened and stepped closer to the house, not trusting the sheer size of the guy. He looked like he could do some damage.

“Don’t worry about him, he’s a resident,” the creepy guy said. “Keep your mouth shut about what you are, though. He doesn’t know about any of that.”

A human…warning me not to talk about magic…to another human. What a strange neighborhood. Then again, Reagan chose to live here—of course it was strange.

“Hey, Smokey,” the newcomer said as he got close. Seeing me, he startled, his body jerking, and his phone sailed out of his hands. He grabbed for it, hitting it with a finger and then the back of his hand. It struck the ground with a hard plastic cack.

This man had no problem with swearing.

Phone back in his possession, he looked over the screen to make sure there were no cracks before finally straightening up and looking at me a second time. He exhaled in relief, one foot on the street and one foot on the sidewalk, leaning away from the house. “Oh, thank God. You don’t look like no serial killer.”

“She’s Reagan’s friend,” Smokey said.

“She’s on Reagan’s front porch. They better be friends, or this lady here would find herself in a bad situation.” The newcomer slipped his phone into his pocket. “Who’re you?” he asked me.

“I said, she’s—”

“I know she’s Reagan’s friend,” the newcomer said, palming his chest. “I heard that. What I’m asking is, what’s her name?”

“You should make yourself clearer,” Smokey said.

“You should mind your business,” the newcomer shot back. He raised his eyebrows at me. “What’s your name?”

“Penny,” I said before I could stop myself. I wasn’t used to hiding my identity in normal—well, normal-ish—settings. “But don’t blab that around.”

The man took a step back, all the way into the street now, and showed me his palms. He looked incredulous. “Do I look crazy to you? I’m not about to go talkin’ about Reagan’s business. I got enough problems.”

Smokey nodded in approval.

“I’m Jerome, but people call me Mince,” phone guy said. He crossed the threshold of the property and stepped onto the lawn, clearly coming forward to shake my hand.

“No, no, you—” I said as Smokey stuck out a hand in warning.

Mince’s fingertips hit the invisible barrier at the edge of the porch, far enough back that a regular Joe wouldn’t reach it unless he was trespassing. A flare of light preceded a loud zinging noise. Mince’s body rocketed backward, hitting the sidewalk before rolling into the street.

“Oh my God, are you okay?” I asked, coming around the banister of the porch and stopping at the top of the steps. I didn’t want to break the barrier in case he was pissed.

“Huuuuuugh.” Mince shook like he’d just been fried with electricity. Which, magically speaking, he had been. “Huuuuughnga.”

“I can’t… I don’t know what you’re saying,” I said apologetically.

“Hung nafunga. Uuuuugh.” He convulsed to his side and then rolled over onto his stomach before lying there for a moment.

“Should you help him up?” I asked Smokey.

“Reagan told everyone to stay off her lawn. He shoulda known better,” Smokey said without remorse.

“I mean…” I looked down at the little manicured patch of grass, the only one on the block. “Grass is made to be walked on.”

“When it comes to Reagan, you do what she says, or you get an awful surprise. Mince just got an awful surprise. He should’ve known better.”

Mince stiffly pushed up to his hands and knees, groaning. “She…looks…innocent. Uuuugh.”

“The most dangerous ones always do.” Smokey glanced in the other direction as the sound of a car going too fast barreled down the street. “The best assassins are the sexy, manicured ones, aren’t they? You shouldn’t let appearances deceive you.”

Mince looked over his shoulder at Smokey, his face a mask of anger. “Ain’t no…ass-ass-ins ’round…here.” A tremor shook him.

“How do you know? Do you know everyone?” Smokey asked.

Head shaking, Mince painfully got to his feet. He gave me a glance from beneath lowered brows.

“Sorry,” I said.

His body convulsed before he stiffly strode away, muttering to himself.

“I really was going to warn you,” I called after him.

“Don’t worry about him,” Smokey said, still non-plussed. “He forgot himself for a moment. That was his fault, not yours. He knows better.”

“Maybe this wa— Um. This…security device is a little too strong.”

“Forgive me for saying, but you don’t seem like the type to hang around here. And Reagan doesn’t seem like the type to have roommates. So if you’re here, there’s a reason for it. And that probably means you need strong protection. Don’t go second-guessing yourself.”

“Yeah, well…” I couldn’t really argue with that.

I blew out a breath, still feeling that tug of magic calling to me from the cemetery. Promising me something I’d been missing.

“How bad of an idea would it be just to run over there really quick, do you think?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t do that, Miss Penny. Not if you’re in need of protection.” Smokey moved to the edge of the steps. “You have no idea what has been seen in that cemetery. Human and magical both. There are bad people that roam through there.”

“But you said the Ladies of the Light—”

“They aren’t bad, no, but they might be set upon at any moment by a swarm of birds that turn into hideous monsters. Or a black magic coven that kills small animals. Or a thug wanting a cheap fix or some dough. You never know.”

I paused at the end of the steps, debating. He was certainly right. It was a cemetery, for criminy sakes. Anyone who was up to no good would head to a cemetery. That was true of any city in any town across the world. This one, smack in the middle of Reagan’s weird neighborhood, in particular. Smokey was right: there could be any number of really nasty things hanging around.

And then there was the most obvious threat, the Mages’ Guild, lying in wait for me to cross the threshold keeping me safe.

I turned back and looked at the house, a sanctuary if ever there was one. All the while, my temperamental third eye buzzed, begging me to walk across that street and see what was there.

My temperamental third eye had gotten me into a lot of trouble in the past.

But it hadn’t always been wrong…

I was walking before I could talk myself out of it.