Just another day in the life of a warlock.

Niall held the broken demon blade in his hand and eyed the bubbling puddle of demon blood ruining the Georgian mansion’s marble floor. The dining room was spacious, even with the shards of broken tables and chairs cluttering the floor. The abandoned junk pile of a goblin nest didn’t exactly create the welcoming feel his family normally tried for. The house around them was trashed. There were cracks in the marble, stains on the walls, fractures in the wide-tread staircase, and splintered rails along the oak banister. Many of the furnishings were also in bad shape.

It had been a long time since a supernatural attack of this magnitude and seriousness had taken place inside the family home. Euann was meticulous about security, placing protection spells around all the properties. It had taken some extremely bad luck to penetrate their barriers. In the end, the mansion was in shambles, the townsfolk were becoming too curious about magick, and Malina and Dar were back together. So all this fighting had been for nothing.

Niall should have felt exhilarated. They’d battled malevolent forces and won. They sent a demon back to hell, they rid the mansion of two very evil entities that looked like the spirits of two innocent girls, and they exorcised a heck of a lot of ghosts.

He wasn’t though. Very little exhilarated him anymore. All he felt was exhaustion.

“I’ll buy you a new demon blade,” Malina offered, though they both knew that wasn’t a possibility. One simply did not buy a demon blade from the local demon fighter store.

“Or not,” Dar inserted quickly, as he tried to joke, “no reason to arm my brother-in-law who hates me.”

Niall arched a brow. He didn’t hate Dar, but he did have a strong dislike for the fact his sister was reuniting with a demon. Life was dangerous enough without inviting it to join the family. And of course, now that Malina and her husband were reconciling, Niall was left looking like the asshole who’d tried to exorcise him.

“He doesn’t hate you,” Malina countered, clearly not realizing her brother could hear her. “Well, okay, he might, but he will come around.”

“Do ya know how hard it is to find demon steel?” Niall stopped their conversation before it became too lovey-dovey. He waved the broken hilt in the air.

“Be happy it went to save the family.” Malina sighed as she made a point of examining the house. “Ma and da are going to be so pissed when they get back. That’s what you should be worried about. Not an old weapon.”

Niall dropped the broken hilt. His sister had no idea how many times that knife had saved his life, had saved all of their lives. While she materialized designer clothes and ran off to marry demons who thought they were lost members of the rat pack, he was off fighting supernatural bad guys at the behest of the elders.

For the good of the clan.

To save the world.

To atone for his past transgressions.

Niall should have been happy the demon and the evil ghost children were back in hell, but he wasn’t. Tomorrow there would only be another demon, or banshee, or goblin, or curse, or whatever. It never stopped. In centuries, it had never stopped.

Small talk had never been his strong suit, so he quickly ended the conversation with his sister and walked out the front door. The long drive coming up the hill was the only road access in or out. Currently, cars had created a traffic jam as the locals had come to check out some unfortunate light displays during the battle. Rory and Euann would be covering up the battle with some lame excuse about power surges and old wiring. People would believe it because it was rational.

Niall avoided the people near the driveway and made his way around the side of the house. There were a few outbuildings on the property, including an old coach house from the late eighteen hundreds. His brothers planned to turn the coach house into a garage. He would have used the exterior to hide a reinforced iron bunker with a weapons cache inside. It never hurt to be prepared when danger came. However, his brothers had outvoted him on that one and the garage won.

The mansion overlooked the small town in the valley below. A stretch of forest reached out from the back, creating privacy through nature. Because of their incredibly long lifespans, the family liked to move every couple of decades to prevent people from becoming suspicious. They’d been all over America throughout the years, Niall more so than the others.

If he were forced to choose, he’d have said this Wisconsin estate was one of his favorites. It had more nature than the New York penthouses, and less humidity than the Southern homes. Including the forest and a stream, the estate had around eighty acres. Six acres were the gardens in the back. He especially enjoyed the many walking paths that wound through the area. His brother Iain and Iain’s new wife, Jane, had been tending the gardens and they were quite beautiful.

As Niall moved through the moonlight, he noticed new cracks in the foundation. A few spells would fix that right up, as well as repair all the damage done to the inside by the supernatural infestation they’d recently exorcised.

He did not want to think about where he was going, even as he knew where his footsteps would lead. There was comfort in the quiet.

A foul smell wafted on the breeze and he grimaced. There was only one thing that smelled that bad. Apparently, they had not taken care of the goblin part of their problems. The little pest would have made a rotten den somewhere in the backyard but he was too tired to hunt it down right now.

He felt his body pull the magick from the trees as he moved down a shadowed path. Nature acted like a natural fuel. Power had to come from somewhere, and although sexual pleasures could give a blast of energy, it tended to leave as fast as it came. Nature was a steady source, and being surrounded by so many trees meant they could borrow a little from the forest as a whole instead of killing a single tree. There had been times they’d almost killed off an entire forest while combating a formidable adversary. Though lately that didn’t appear to be an issue since Jane’s unique heritage made her like a battery supercharger for warlock power. And her single touch could repair damage to any plant.

The power running beneath the ground in Green Vallis’s ley lines was incredible. It made sense that their magick had been drawn here and three of his siblings had found love. Well, it made sense for two of them.

Jane’s addition to the family, he understood. Iain was in charge of replenishing nature, and Jane did that in abundance. Lydia’s marriage to Erik, he understood. She was his natural inthrall, able to absorb her husband’s power as her own. They had a deep connection that could not be broken. But Malina and a demon? That one was beyond him. The only thing he saw was his sister upsetting the order of things by creating her usual chaos with bad decisions.

Niall was not foolish enough to think he was destined for a mate. With his past, he wasn’t exactly worthy of true love. He accepted that. The things he’d done were necessary. He kept the world safe and his family protected. But a person couldn’t fight evil without getting dirty.

He touched his bruised eye. It was tender, but nothing he couldn’t handle. He was baffled as to what had set Charlotte off and caused her to take a swing at him, but it was no more than he deserved.

The wind whistled through the tree limbs, singing an eerie song. He automatically looked to the sky, his warlock senses on alert. A twig snapped and he turned sharply toward the noise.

“I thought I’d find ya out here.” Aunt Cait appeared from the shadows to block his path. She looked prim and proper in her skirt and silk blouse. Pearls hung from her ears and neck like a badge of feminine pride, and her heels did not belong on the rocky path. “There is nothing to be gained by staring at statues.”

“I’m not going to the statue,” he lied. “It has been a long night in a series of long nights. I am refueling my magick.”

“Ya were going to the statue to dwell on the past,” she scoffed. “Ya forget, laddie, I helped to raise ya. I can read ya like a book.”

“Is there something ya need, Cait? I thought ya were looking after Charlotte.” Niall was not in the mood for family drama.

“There is something unwell in that one,” Cait said.

“Of course there is. I was told to erase her memories,” Niall answered, his tone heavy. “If ya would have let me force her out of town when I asked, none of this would be happening.”

“We can’t leave her unsupervised,” Cait warned him. Her voice sounded the same as it had when she’d scolded him as a young boy.

“Oh, aye, ’cause we’re all doing such a splendid job of protecting her—Euann and Rory petrified the poor girl; Erik and Malina had a magick fight in front of her before Erik shifted into cat form and called upon a tornado to attack her inside Lydia’s house; she was forced by enchanted townsfolk to drink a potion and suck the power out of Iain, which left her partially insane—and that was just within our first months of being here. Shall I go on?”

“Don’t take that tone with me,” Cait warned. “Erik was under a love spell and couldn’t help his actions. We saved Charlotte from those townsfolk and pulled the magick out of her. Don’t forget, they nearly killed Iain. And a petrifying spell, really? They were all drinking, and it was my understanding she woke up with a hangover and didn’t recall a thing. Ya act like we don’t care about the poor girl. We have been doing all we can to keep her from falling over the edge into the dark place.”

Niall did not need to be reminded of any of that. He knew the memories he’d taken from her, saw the things she’d been through, felt them as she’d felt them. All he wanted was to run from what he felt when he was near Charlotte, but his family kept shoving him back in her direction.

“Run for ya lives!” Raibeart burst from the trees, barreling naked down the path with his hands in the air. He had a tiny claw mark on his backside. “Gremains stole my knickers.”

Niall stiffened, and watched to see if any small creatures chased his uncle. After several moments, he lowered his guard. “I’m not chasing after—”

A small, knobby creature squealed and leapt out of the darkness. Niall stepped in front of Cait to protect her. The gremlin-like creature wore a pair of bright pink bikini briefs around his neck like a scarf. He gurgled some threat as he darted around Cait and Niall and continued after Raibeart.

“Please don’t make me chase after my uncle’s rogue underwear,” Niall said.

Cait chuckled and patted his shoulder. “Ah, leave them. It’s good that Raibeart made a friend. We have bigger things to worry about.”

“Why are ya here, Cait?” Niall listened for the sound of more gremains in the forest. “I’ve done my duty. The mansion is safe. Malina has made her choice. There is nothing left for me tonight.”

“Charlotte,” Cait stated. “She has questions.”

“Then answer her,” Niall said. “I’m the last person she wants to see.”

“She heard more than she should have tonight,” Cait insisted.

Niall felt the anger rising inside of him, but he held it down. “I’m not going to take more from her. She’s having seizures. We’ve already done too much.”

“We didn’t have a choice. After she absorbed Iain’s magick, she would have gone insane if we had not taken action. The risk of exposure is too great. If she realizes that she…” His aunt closed her eyes. “I’m trying to fix it, but if any of the others realize what remains in her…”

Niall placed a hand on her shoulder. “I will take care of it. Where is she?”

Cait averted her gaze. “Your apartment.”

Niall leaned over to make her face him. “What happened? Why did ya leave her alone?”

Cait made a weak noise. “She was asking a lot of questions, so I might have cast a small petrifying spell.”

Niall loved his family, but there were times he wanted to cast a bubble spell over them to keep them locked up and out of mischief.

“And ya want me to take care of it?” It wasn’t really a question as he already knew the answer. Of course they wanted him to deal with it. The whistling wind picked back up.

“Listen to that. Something is not happy,” Cait mused, looking up at the trees.

“Aye, it didn’t want to see Raibeart’s naked arse any more than I did,” Niall muttered.

“That sounds like a wraith. It was probably drawn to the house with the other ghosts when Malina’s luck demon found a way through our protection spells.” Cait fingered her pearl necklace. “We need to take care of it.”

His aunt might have said “we” but Niall knew where the responsibility would land. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. In no particular order: clear out stinky goblin den, make sure no ghosts were still hiding in the mansion, hunt gremains before they took apart the whole town brick by brick, track down a demon blade, exorcise a wraith, ensure he didn’t have to kill Malina’s husband a second time, and fix Charlotte’s apartment because he’d apparently been failing as a landlord.

Damn Dar and his dose of bad luck.

Then there was Charlotte herself. She didn’t belong on his list of chores as she wasn’t simply a chore. He needed to protect her.

“There is something different about Charlotte tonight,” Cait said, getting the conversation back on track. “I have done all I can for her, but Euann said the luck demon touched her. If it was bad luck, I’m guessing she’d be dead by now. But I cannot predict what his brand of good luck will do to the spells we’ve been casting to help her.”

Niall thought about the statue. His guilt would not be taking him there this night.