Callie was at the stove on the other side of the enormous kitchen, tending something in a pan. The fan wafted the smell of bacon through the air, immediately making me salivate.

On the island sat a small box wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with scratchy brown string. Colorful stamps adorned the top and sides, marring the handwritten address.

I let my hands linger on the counter while analyzing the graceful, tightly knit magic coating the surface of the package. I would have recognized Emery’s deft touch anywhere.

I’d received a total of five power stones, nearly one a month since I’d said goodbye to him. He knew how much power stones meant to me, and that I collected them, after a fashion. He also knew where I was staying. He’d not only remembered and was okay with my idiosyncrasies with the power stones (most people laughed when I mentioned that the stones had personalities), but he’d clearly checked up on me to see where I was. The packages never came with a written note—his only signature was his magic, the feel of which only made me miss him more—but at least he hadn’t forgotten about me completely.

“I was wondering—” I started.

“Hey!” Callie half spun to look behind her, her brown eyes wide. She had on a bright orange velvet sweat suit with “Queen Bee” written across the backside. “What did I tell you about sneaking around?”

“She all but sprinted in here.” Reagan filled the archway of the kitchen. “If you weren’t deaf, you would’ve heard her.”

“My hearing is just fine, thank you very much. It’s these accursed fans.” Callie turned back to the stove.

“Humor…longing…” The words spilled out of my mouth as I studied the nature of the spell, but I didn’t want to say the next word out loud. Lonely. He wasn’t happy. I could feel that hidden in the depths of the weave. He wasn’t willing to stay in one place for me, but he missed me, too.

“This is from the Rogue Natural, then?” Reagan asked, sauntering over. “Mr. Impressive Mage the magical world is talking about. He was always on Darius’s radar, but now it seems like everyone is talking about him.” She ran her hand through the air over the package, her way of feeling out the spell.

“Yes.” I chewed my lip and closed my eyes, balancing the magic around me.

“Figures.” Callie huffed. “No one ever remembers the woman that helps the hero take down the enemy.”

“The woman hasn’t been on the run for years, suddenly came back on the grid, then disappeared again. Mysterious is more interesting. Penny has to work on her marketing.” Reagan studied the package, ignoring Callie when the older mage told her to quit talking nonsense. “This spell is…wild. Unruly,” Reagan said, and I opened my eyes to see the smile curling her lips. Her eyes flashed. “It is fantastically complex. He’s got…what, three layers in here? The simplest one is obviously meant to shock any would-be thieves. The others seem…playful. Hmm.” Her brow furrowed. “I don’t even know the root of these spells. He must’ve made them up, which is exactly what I told you to do, Penny.”

She paused, and her eyes took on a keen light as she cursed softly. “See? Darius was playing me. Do you see how sneaky elder vampires are? Well I’m not so stupid as to fall into his plans, willy-nilly.”

“You bonded him, didn’t you?” Callie muttered from the stove.

“That was different,” Reagan said, her hands still over the box. “My blackened heart was involved in that one.” She surveyed me with intense eyes. “The Rogue Natural—”

“Emery.”

“Does he subscribe to your improvisational approach to magic?”

“What’s that?” Callie asked, moving two strips of bacon to a paper-towel-covered plate.

I closed my eyes, feeling the different layers of the spell that Reagan had sussed out. “He was willing to go along with it.”

“But that wasn’t his chosen approach?” Reagan asked.

“What are you girls talking about?” Callie demanded. “Reagan, do you want breakfast?”

“I always want breakfast,” Reagan said, waiting for my answer.

“You’re wanting for some lessons in etiquette,” Callie grumbled.

“His magic was wilder,” I said. “But he usually did follow spells. I was the one that created things out of the blue.”

“Well that was only because you didn’t know any spells.” Callie transferred more bacon before tucking the plate into the oven to keep it warm. She grabbed more bacon from the fridge. It was widely known that Reagan had the appetite of an NFL linebacker. How she didn’t gain any weight was beyond me. “Now that you do, Penny, you’ll be much better equipped.”

Reagan dropped her hands, a troubled look on her eyebrow-less face. “I told you, I don’t think that’s the right way to go. Even if we had all the time in the world, it seems like such a waste to turn her into a drone like everyone else. She’s different. She should celebrate that.”

“Do you think I’m a drone?” Callie half turned.

“Tricky question, that…” Reagan comically grimaced.

Callie huffed. “What’s your point?”

“The marks who are predictable are easy. I can gag ’em and bag ’em in my sleep. It’s the brainy ones that keep me guessing, that are incredibly risky to take down.”

“Penny doesn’t need to keep people guessing. She has power in spades,” Callie said.

“Compared to you.” Reagan held up a finger. “But she is not the most powerful magical creature in the Brink, and certainly not in the Realm. Going up against someone like Darius will get her killed if she relies on cookie-cutter spells. He’d outthink her in a heartbeat and break her neck in the next.”

“I hate these talks,” I muttered, weaving magic together.

“Even in the Brink—”

“That’s where we are now,” Callie cut in.

“I remember,” I said, coating my counter-spell over Emery’s first spell. I held it there for a moment, feeling the soft intent of his magic. Remembering his teasing, and the yield of his lips. Letting myself feel the connection to him.

“Even in the Brink,” Reagan started again, “you have naturals. Not many, no, but the Guild has a couple, last I heard. Those naturals have just as much power as Penny. And they have more books from which to pull spells, and more experience hurtling them at an enemy. If all she does is learn the way everyone else has learned, she’ll be outgunned. No, her power is in her uniqueness.”

“That’s basically what Emery always said.” I broke the spell apart, leaving the other two, which were woven tightly together.

“Who’s Emery?” Reagan asked.

“Do you have a block for a head?” Callie scowled at Reagan. “Emery is the Rogue Natural.”

“Oh right. Right, right.” Reagan nodded like that had rung a bell. Given her newly enhanced memory from bonding a vampire, she’d clearly been tuning me out earlier. “With the Guild bouncing back so incredibly quickly, it’s clear Penny doesn’t have much time. It would’ve been better had she come here directly after the Seattle skirmish.”

“She couldn’t,” Callie said in a strangely thick tone. “Not with…what was going on.”

“My trip down to… Yeah, right.”

“Where?” I asked, perking up. This was as close as they’d come to talking about their activities a few months ago. I’d been all set to come to New Orleans when an unforeseen problem had postponed my move. But no one had filled me in on the details. I’d only been told that Reagan and Darius were out of town traveling.

“It’s complicated,” Reagan said. “Anyway, with the Guild’s directive to bring in Penny and the Rogue Natural—”

“I don’t understand why you can’t remember his name,” I said.

“I can, but taunting you is great fun.” She grinned at me. I scowled back.

A manic light started glimmering in her eyes.

I tore my gaze away. It wasn’t worth an altercation.

Her sigh said I’d made the right decision.

“Marie has been monitoring Penny’s situation for Darius,” Reagan said. Marie was a middle-tiered vampire that I’d fought with when we’d broken into the Mages’ Guild compound in Seattle. Given that I hadn’t seen one hair on her beautiful head since I’d set foot in New Orleans to get trained, I had no idea how she’d been keeping tabs on me. “She’s worried enough to call Darius back into town. They have word that Guild scouts are already here, and in enough numbers to make him nervous,” she said. “But they’re in a watchful capacity at the moment. Red said he’s seen them hanging around. They don’t engage with anyone, but they’re on the ground.”

Red was a shifter that primarily hung out in the French Quarter. He’d contacted me in my first weeks, saying he was Reagan’s acquaintance and welcoming me to the city. He’d instructed me to contact him should I need anything, which I’d thought was really nice of him.

Shivers crawled up my spine. Knowing the Guild was coming was different than hearing they were already here. It felt like the door to my house had been flung open, inviting burglars inside.

“It is only a matter of time before they have more numbers than this town can handle,” Reagan went on, moving away to lean against the archway again. “The Magical Law Enforcement office has seen increased calls about magic gone wrong. Darker magic. When they show up to investigate, they can’t find any relevant evidence leading them to the perpetrator. Whoever is practicing these spells obviously knows how to skirt around the system.”

“The MLE office is filled with a bunch of desk jockeys.” Callie shook her head. “If they hired you to sort it out, you’d have the mages caught in no time.”

Reagan’s jaw clenched and her eyes flashed. “I’m supposed to lie low. You know that.”

I didn’t, but I had a hunch I wasn’t supposed to ask. Everything to do with Reagan seemed a secret, and I was met with hostility when I asked more into it.

“I’m just saying that the MLE office isn’t the be-all-end-all when it comes to assessing magic and finding the people responsible.”

Reagan shifted and crossed her arms, exuding pent-up aggression. “Even so. We know for a fact the Guild is here. Among us. They’re sticking to the shadows and watching, for now. Reporting back. But that won’t last forever, especially if they see an easy grab. We need to get Penny trained up so she can protect herself, and the fastest way to do that is to enable her to think on her feet.”

“She can already protect herself,” Callie said, moving another batch of bacon to the plate. “No matter what the ladies of the Rum Social threw at her the other day, she handled it beautifully.” She cocked her head. “Except for those few times when she froze, but Penny worked it out eventually. Like she was born to magic.”

“She was born to magic.”

Callie huffed and batted her spatula at the air. “You know what I mean. Born to fighting. Born to this life. Just look at what happened in Seattle at the rail yard. She was a pro.”

“Except for that bit where I had to implode her spell before she killed everyone.”

“Well sure, except for that. But, as I said, we all make mistakes.”

Reagan was talking about the demon situation I’d helped her and Darius and the dual-mages with in Seattle, something I was forbidden to tell anyone about.

Reagan drummed her fingers against her arm. “But Darius seemed to think she was far more outstanding when fighting the Mages’ Guild than when fighting in the rail yard…”

“The rail yard wasn’t really a war zone,” I said, thinking back. I’d had plenty of backup and people to hold my hand. “Fighting the Mages’ Guild, on the other hand…”

“Fighting the Mages’ Guild was a clusterfuck, right?” Reagan asked.

I infused Emery’s last two spells with my own magic, feeling the same intense longing that I’d sensed in the first layer. Light and color exploded upward, sparkling and simmering through the air. The energy around me electrified and I closed my eyes with the feeling, my magical bubble stabilizing naturally for a moment. A soft feeling of joy drifted down with the filaments before the spell dissolved away.

“A little touchy-feely for my taste,” Reagan muttered, her hands out, feeling the dissipating spell.

“A punch in the mouth is a little touchy-feely for your taste,” Callie said, cracking an egg.

“She’s not wrong.” Reagan pursed her lips in agreement.

I pulled away the string and tore open the paper, finding a pink box underneath.

“Ew,” Reagan said. “Why not red? I’d much prefer a deep crimson.”

“Who is that package for, her or you?” Callie said, glancing back before cracking another egg.

“Just saying.” Reagan moved so she could watch me pull the top off the box. “Pink is highly overrated. As is yellow. I hate yellow. I don’t need a color telling me to be happy any more than I need one telling me to be soft.”

“You have problems,” Callie said.

“Again, not wrong.”

I peered in the box and my heart squished. A single power stone, about the size of my hand, lay on a bed of pastel tissue paper. Stripes of vibrant color sliced through its brown surface, turning an ordinary stone extraordinary. The stone couldn’t wait to get out of the box and be shown around its new home, very happy-go-lucky for a power stone.

“I know what would help with your wards,” Reagan said, sitting at the island in anticipation of Callie getting her plate ready. “A night sleeping at Darius’s French Quarter house. That would scare the bejeezus out of you. Oh!” she snapped. “And what about trips to the bad parts of town? You need to get more street-wise. Maybe it would also help if I exposed you to some serious spells to get the juices of creativity flowing. I have a couple books you’re probably nearly ready for.”

“She is not ready for those books, Reagan Somerset,” Callie said. “It hasn’t even been a year since she turned all those witches into zombies. Not that I’m blaming you, dear.” Callie gave me a grimace that was probably supposed to be a smile. Years of scowling had clearly frozen her face. “Any idiot that would make a potion without knowing what it does, while letting a complete novice with more power than sense lead, deserves what they get.”

“Wow. Don’t hold back for her sake,” Reagan said with a laugh.

“If you gave her that book, she’d end up accidentally killing someone,” Callie said, turning with a plate heaped with food. She set it in front of Reagan. “Honestly, she has come a long way, even in the last couple of weeks. Just you wait and see.”

“We need to fast-track her training. And if there is one thing I know all about, it’s fast-tracking training.” Reagan eyed me. “I hear she’s great at creating spells when she fears for her life. Let’s put that to the test.”