Tallak resisted the urge to crack a kink in his neck as he made his way to the imposing gate of the Laroche residence. Witches truly lived in exaggerated style, didn’t they? He’d thought the Murray mansion an example of pomposity, but Juneau’s house trumped even that.

A high-curving gate of black wrought iron in a fence of the same material barricaded a property that had to be several acres. The long driveway meandered toward a villa of castle-like grandeur, lined by expertly trimmed bushes in geometrical shapes.

He curled his lip before he remembered Lydia wouldn’t show such disdain. She’d always admired the Laroche property, secretly longed for the power and wealth of the larger family.

He pressed the bell button and waited. When a buzz came over the speaker and a female voice demanded to know who he was, he rasped, “It’s me…Lydia. Let me in.”

“L-Lydia? Novak?”

“Yes. Please let me in.”

“Hold on.”

He waited some more, and a few seconds later a woman came running toward the gate. Lydia’s memories identified her as Carissa Hart, so he smiled and tried to look like someone who’d just escaped a prison cell.

Oh, wait—he didn’t even have to act for that one.

“Hi, Carissa.”

The Elder witch’s face was a study in shock. “Oh, my gods, Lydia. It’s really you. How…?”

“I’ll explain inside. Please, just let me in.”

Carissa nodded. “Of course.”

She opened the gate, and stepped back, waiting for Lydia/Tallak to walk over the line of the wards. A smart test to see if he was even able to cross the magical protection.

He stepped over the perimeter without batting an eye, the wards recognizing his aura as Lydia’s.

Carissa let out a breath and threw her arms around him. “I’m so glad you’re back. When Juneau said Merle rejected her offer of a prisoner exchange, we all feared the worst.”

Tallak raised a brow, the move invisible to Carissa, who was still hugging him. Merle rejected the prisoner exchange? Nice way to spin it.

“Well,” Tallak said, “I managed to get out just after that.” He pulled back, and they walked toward the house. “I still don’t quite believe it myself, but…Hanna Roth helped me.”

Carissa gasped at the mention of the other Elder witch. “Why?”

“She said she’s indebted to Aveline for making it possible for Sarai to escape. If Aveline hadn’t”—he added a pause and a hitch in his breath to satisfyingly convey Lydia’s grief—“made the sacrifice, Sarai would not have gotten out…and she’d never have been able to take that cure.”

He balled his hands to fists and gritted his teeth. “Aveline should have gotten that potion to turn her back.” Staying in character was so important for a convincing performance…

“I know.” A sympathetic glance from Carissa.

Sniffling delicately, he continued, “Hanna said that by helping me escape, she’d paid her family’s debt to me. I’m glad I’m out, but I know she didn’t do it for me. She only did it to soothe her own sick conscience.”

Carissa scoffed. “Of course.” Opening the front door for him, she waved him inside. “Well, no matter, the important thing is you’re back with us.”

Once inside, he was swarmed by several other witches, some of them Laroches, some from other families who apparently were camped out here. He repeated the same story to them, and they all gobbled it up like the finest dessert.

“Where’s Juneau?” he finally asked, after stuffing his face with food and enduring endless questions.

“She’s out.” Estelle, Juneau’s eldest daughter, leaned against the doorjamb to the royally overdecorated sitting room in which he currently held court. Her green eyes, same color as her mother’s, tracked his every move.

He would have to watch out for that one.

“Oh,” he said, and he didn’t even have to feign disappointment. If the head bitch was here, he could have simply killed her on the spot and taken her memories, and the whole thing could be wrapped up in a snap.

He could also have easily taken out the entire group of witches assembled here to absorb their memories and powers, but he had to swear—on the life of Basil, dammit—that he wouldn’t kill witches unless he was forced to protect himself.

Inwardly, he sneered at Merle and Hazel’s restraint. When you were at war, you took out as many of your enemies as possible. You didn’t try to dance around the inevitable by pretending to care. Kill or be killed.

Since he couldn’t outright ask where they kept Rhun—that would be idiotically suspicious—and his roundabout, careful digging hadn’t brought any results, he snuck away at the first opportunity and descended into the basement. He could at least check the cells here to make sure they could rule out this location.

The musty smell that clogged his nostrils the farther down he got nearly made him gag. Too many shitty memories associated with that odor, a quarter of a century spent shackled to a moldy stone floor. He breathed through his mouth as much as possible and silently walked from cell to cell, peering through the slits in the doors.

Plenty of creatures languishing away here. Sorry bastards.

But no sign of Rhun, the bluotezzer demon he’d seen the night he arrived on Hazel’s doorstep to claim Basil.

“Looking for someone?” Estelle’s voice, floating down the corridor.

He heard the threat behind her tone, and knew, within a split second, that she was onto him. Which was why he didn’t hesitate.

He whirled around and hit her with a combination of witch magic and fae powers, the latter a lingering gift from when he recently butchered Rose’s captors. The mix of it threw Estelle off, and she choked as water filled her throat, unable to block his fae magic—which she hadn’t seen coming.

She drowned in under a minute.

Her body slumped to the floor with a wet thud while he absorbed her memories, her magic. As high as his adrenaline was, he didn’t feel the impact of the taking right away, was able to drag her body into an open cell and lay a glamour on her to make her look like Lydia.

He closed the cell door, locked it, and with his heart still pumping fast, he texted the location of Rhun, which he’d gleaned from Estelle’s memories, to Merle. Next he took on Estelle’s shape—including her clothes—and faked her aura. He ran up the stairs to keep his blood rushing fast, slowed down only when he opened the door to the main floor.

With a soft click, he closed it behind him. Walked toward the garage.

“Hey.”

He froze. Turned slowly.

Thea, head of the Callahan family, stood in the doorway to the sitting room. “Where’s Lydia?”

He gave her Estelle’s patented don’t you worry smile. “She’s gone to lie down in the guest suite downstairs.”

Lucky to know, courtesy of Estelle’s memories, that there wasn’t just an extensive dungeon in the basement, but also a finished lower level living area complete with spare rooms.

“She’s so tired, the poor dear,” he added with an appropriately sympathetic grimace.

Thea nodded. “I bet. Well, I’ll check on her in a bit.” And with that, she turned and walked back into the sitting room.

Tallak didn’t dare breathe a sigh of relief, not when it might lower his adrenaline level enough that the pain of the memories might hit him.

Instead he thought back to the moment he slaughtered the haughty royal fae in their throne room of gilded cruelty. The remembered sensations of their blood spraying around him, their screams and their pleas ringing in his ears as he took sweet, sweet revenge were enough to keep his heart pumping wildly while he walked to the garage.

A twist of power, and he unlocked one of the cars, slid in, opened the garage door with another well-aimed flick of magic—the power of two witches, one of them an Elder, was currently at his beck-and-call, in addition the lingering magic of the fae he’d killed—and ten seconds later, he steered the car out into the driveway.

His hands and arms began to shake as he turned onto the street, the adrenaline fading, and he made it one more minute at full speed, putting several blocks between the Laroche house and himself, before the pain slammed into him. Tires screeching, he managed to stop at the side of the road without crashing the car.

While he endured the agony pouring through him like corrosive acid, a boom rocked the earth, the car, and a wave of teeth-rattling magic crashed over and through him. Pain clawing at his brain, he turned to look out over the twinkling sea of nightly Portland stretching out below the hills of the neighborhood, to the usually dark shape of Mount Hood in the distance—

—now lit up in a blazing explosion.

* * *

“I’m sorry, Merle,” Hazel said, her features gentle, “but this is in your own best interest.”

Merle glared at her from inside the bedroom—which Hazel had magically sealed to keep Merle from leaving. “I can’t believe you’re doing this.”

Elaine, who stood next to Hazel in the hall, sighed. “We wouldn’t have to if you were reasonable enough to just stay home.”

“I’m not going to twiddle my thumbs while you free Rhun!”

“You can’t use your magic.” Elaine’s eyes were hard. “We’ve been over this. If you come with us, you’ll be a liability, since you can’t actually fight at our side and we’ll have to protect you.”

Gods. She’d heard those words before, or at least similar enough. Rhun once said much the same to her when he was about to rescue Maeve while Merle was without her powers. And the command, the fucking reasonability of it chafed at her now as it had then.

Of course she understood the risk of going along, and the logic of staying out of the way when she was at human strength—or rather, weakness—and she could see where they were coming from. The problem was, the knowledge didn’t soothe the burning need to be there when the person who held her heart was freed.

What if something went wrong, and her presence could make a difference after all? What if, by staying behind, she would never see Rhun again?

Her breath got stuck in her lungs, and she choked, couldn’t breathe. “Please,” she whispered.

“Merle.” Hazel’s eyes shimmered. “Just…trust us. We’ll bring him home for you.”

“But only if we move now,” Elaine said. “If it’s true the hæmingr killed Estelle, then Juneau will have felt the link to her sever, and she’ll be alarmed something’s happening. She may move Rhun to another location.”

Lily and Alek, who’d been out for a feeding, were already on their way to join the other Elders, having been called by Hazel. Basil had gone with Tallak when the demon went his on mission earlier, to linger in the area and provide backup—and pickup—after Tallak was done. Isa, who was currently taking a shower in her and Basil’s room, was to remain here with Rose…and Merle, according to the stupidly overprotective plan of Elaine and Hazel.

The head of the Murray family sent one last sympathetic look at Merle and followed Elaine down the hall, while Merle grabbed the doorjamb and stared after them.

The wards singed her skin, and she let go, jumped back with a curse. Dammit. She kicked at the doorjamb and yelled her anger out into the quiet house, stalked over to the window—sealed with wards just like the door—and looked out. The horizon toward the east seemed…lit up somehow. An unusual orange glow. Weird, like that booming sound followed by a strange magic wave just minutes earlier. Her stomach curled with an uneasy lurch of foreboding.

The sound of a door opening. Merle turned, saw Rose peeking out of the room opposite Merle’s.

“Oh, hey,” Merle said. “Sorry if my yelling scared you. I’m having kind of a bad night…”

Rose opened the door wider, her dark brows drawing together over eyes identical to Lily’s—something that still baffled Merle for a second every time she saw them—as she studied the entrance to the bedroom where Merle was trapped.

She asked something in Fae, but Merle shook her head.

“I don’t know what you’re saying, sorry.”

Rose stepped out into the hall, crossed the space and raised a hand to the invisible wall of the wards. She gasped when she apparently felt the magic.

Forehead scrunched in lines, she enunciated the word carefully. “Locked?”

Merle nodded. “Yes. I can’t get out.” She heaved a sigh. “I know it’s for the best to stay here, but—dammit—I need to go and find Rhun.”

Rose hadn’t withdrawn her hand from the wards, her eyes darkening. White lines formed around her mouth, and her aura pulsed. Her hand began to glow.

“Whoa.” Merle backed up several steps. “Are you—”

The entire wall exploded. Merle jumped behind the bed for cover just as splintered wood flew toward her and embedded in the opposite wall. Coughing from the dust, Merle lowered her arms from over her head and peered out from behind the bed.

Rose stood in the hall, eyes wide, mouth open and half covered by her hand. The wards were gone.

“Well,” Merle said, scrambling to her feet and walking over to her. “You didn’t know you could do that either, huh?”

“Did I just hear an explosion?” Basil came running down the hall.

Apparently he and Tallak had just made it back home. His father trailed behind him.

Tallak didn’t look any the worse for wear, and Merle exhaled a sigh of relief.

At least Basil’s dad made it out okay. If something had happened to him because she asked him to walk into the lion’s den—or snake pit, more like—she would have never forgiven herself. Yes, in that moment in the basement she basically demanded he help them, but in the time he was gone, nausea boiled in her gut every time she worried he might not come back.

Basil had only just found him. To lose him now…

“I’m glad you’re okay,” she said to Tallak.

He gave her a hard look. “You owe me.”

“I know.” She nodded, swallowed.

At that moment, the door to Basil and Isa’s room farther down the hall opened, and the female fae darted out, fully dressed, knives strapped to her body, her dark hair wet from her shower. She brandished a dagger in one hand, a short sword in another. Scanning the hall with her slate-gray eyes, she relaxed when she assessed the scene.

“What was that noise?” she demanded. “Is everyone all right?”

“Yes,” both Basil and Merle replied at the same time

Baz walked over to his mate and drew her close for a quick kiss.

“Then why,” Isa said with raised brows, leaning around Baz, “is that wall gone?”

Merle rubbed a hand over her face and filled them in. When she finished, Basil’s mouth was a flat line, his expression grim.

He, too, knew what it was like to be excluded from action because he wasn’t strong enough, knew how much it chafed to be regarded as a liability. Before he found out he was half fae, half demon and claimed his powers, he had to fight not to be coddled. When Lily was kidnapped, and Merle, Hazel, and Rhun went to get her back, Hazel only allowed Basil to come along after Merle put her foot down and vouched for him.

“So your sister took down the wards,” Merle said with a nod of thanks to Rose, who was glancing back and forth among them.

Isa said several sentences in Fae, apparently explaining the situation, and Rose raised her brows, her mouth forming an O.

“Right. Okay.” Merle blew out a breath, put her hands on her hips. “I’ll make a call and then I’ll go over there. You in, Baz?”

“Sure.” He flexed his fingers with a grin. “I’ve been meaning to get out my bow and do some shooting again.” Turning to Isa, he raised his brows in question.

“I promised Hazel I’d stay and look after Rose,” Isa said grudgingly. “I don’t like the idea of not going with you, but—”

“I’ll have his back.”

They all turned to Tallak, who stood with his arms crossed, leaning against the wall.

“Dad, you don’t have to. You’ve already risked enough.”

“You’re going,” Tallak said.

“Yeah.”

“So I’m coming, too.” His tone brooked no argument.

Basil nodded, his throat muscles working as he swallowed. “Thanks.”

“I’ll be right back,” Merle said and walked into one of the other bedrooms, pulling her cell phone out and dialing.

“Hello, gorgeous.” Bahram’s voice, rich and seductive as dark chocolate, stroked her senses over the phone line. It wasn’t even anything he did—just the general effect of his incubus nature.

“Hey,” Merle said. “Remember when I recently told you I might ask you for help in getting Rhun out?”

“That was yesterday, darling. Of course I remember.”

“Right. Anyway. It’s time. Can you bring your irresistible incubusness over to the Baldwins’ house? That’s where they’re keeping him.”

“And you would like me to…charm them, is that right?”

“Well, yeah.” She waved her free hand, even though he couldn’t see it. “You know, just target Juneau’s witches with your powers and make them all hot’n’bothered for you until they forget their own names.”

“Hm,” he purred. “You’re giving me free rein to seduce some witches? It will be my pleasure.”

“Hey—knock them out, not up. Got it?”

His laugh was like an acoustic manifestation of bliss between the sheets. “I’ll do my very best.”