Left unsupervised, I might have broken a few speed laws during that last thirty-mile stretch. Or was it forty? Fifty? Who was counting? Come dawn, I wanted to collapse in my own bed instead of a borrowed one, and I was willing to pay a few tickets to make that happen.

Grinning like a loon, I swallowed a squeal of delight when I spotted Woolly. The van whined as I gunned it up the driveway, and it groaned as it bounced to a stop in front of the garage.

“We’re here.” I reached over and shook Linus. “Wake up, lazybones.”

A faint moan escaped him, and I chewed my bottom lip while debating my options. Sleeping might be like eating for him. I had never actually seen him do either, but he must at some point. For him to be out like a light, he must be exhausted.

“I’m going to let them know we’re here.” I couldn’t sit still another minute. “I’ll be right back.”

While Linus snoozed, I ran up the stairs and embraced the nearest pillar like I was part kudzu.

Woolly shrieked with glee, her voice a smoke alarm’s piercing bleat. Beneath that, a symphony of magic burst in my head, the tempo as light and fast as a frantic heartbeat. All the curtains started flapping in her excitement, and the front door swung open, waving back and forth as she ushered me in.

“I have to wake Linus.” As far as I was concerned, the luggage could wait. “I can’t leave him out here.”

The wards solidified as I hit the lower step, and I bounced off them before my foot touched the ground.

“Woolly,” I sighed, leaning against the railing. “He’ll get a crick in his neck.”

“I thought I heard someone.” Amelie skidded into the foyer with a wide grin. “You’re home early.”

“Dirty pool,” I chided the old house, certain she had called for Amelie to lure me in without a fuss.

Amelie tackled me, almost knocking me back out onto the porch, and wrapped her arms around my waist. Over our heads the crystals in the chandelier tinkled merrily at our reunion, and the door snicked closed.

With my eyes shut tight, Amelie a familiar comfort in my arms, it was easy to forget what she had done.

Pretending nothing had changed, that things were as they always had been between us, was so much easier than holding on to the betrayal, the guilt, and the fear. But vigilance had kept me alive this long. A clean slate wasn’t given, it was earned, and Ame still had a long way to go until she won forgiveness.

“I was gone forty-eight hours,” I grunted, unable to resist slumping against her, allowing my old friend to support me for a change. “You couldn’t have been that bored.”

“Boaz told me what happened.” Hurt throbbed beneath her words, and I tensed, forgetting which what she meant. “He said there was trouble at the Faraday?”

“You could say that.” I let her drag me down onto the couch with her. “The Master is tired of waiting for a chance to make his move.” I sank into the plush cushions, so much comfier than the ones on Linus’s couch, and groaned with the simple pleasure of being in my own place, among my own things. “Turns out there’s a bounty on my head.”

“A bounty?” Amelie clung tighter. “How do we get it removed?”

“Other than surrendering me?” I tipped my head back. “No clue.”

“You’re home now.” She exhaled with relief at that. “You’re safe.”

Home.

Safe.

Two of my favorite words.

“What have I missed?” I smiled at Amelie, who vibrated with pent-up energy in need of an outlet. “Any more attacks?” I did a mental check with Woolly, who swelled with pride over her pristine wards. “Any more fainting spells?”

“No and no.” She curled up beside me, resting her elbow on a fraying cushion, and propped her chin on her palm. “Do you think those incidents were related to the bounty? Do you think hunters are responsible?”

“Seems likely.” I hadn’t had a spare moment to consider a connection until now. “They must have decided it was easier plucking me off the street than stealing me from behind the wards.”

Our trip to Atlanta might have failed on some fronts, but it had lured my enemies away from my home.

“Vampires with a direct line to the Master, or to Volkov, would have heard the news first. They could have learned how he weakened your wards last time too. Some of the dumber ones might have hoped you didn’t bother patching them yet. They might have been willing to gamble even if it gave them away.”

Enough money would tempt all kinds. Not only vampires. “Mary Alice implied there are a lot of zeroes attached.”

Amelie’s forehead wrinkled. “Who?”

“Linus’s boss at the Mad Tatter.” I grunted out his name as I remembered where I’d left him. “It’s her van we borrowed to get home.” Shoving against the squishy pillows sucking me down, I hauled myself back on my feet. “Speaking of Linus, he’s still buckled in. Poor guy slept the whole way home.”

The locks snicked into place on the front door before I got close enough to touch the knob.

“Come on,” I groaned. “I can’t leave him out there all night.”

“I wish I could help.” Amelie released a sigh. “I’d kill to walk barefoot in the grass right about now.”

A reflexive cringe hiked my shoulders up around my ears before I forced my muscles to relax.

“Poor word choice.” She drew her legs to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.

Forcing my body into calm lines, I noticed our missing guest. “What about Odette?”

With any luck, Oscar, who was also absent, was recharging his batteries and not playing in the forbidden basement.

“She left about an hour ago.” Tension strained her voice at the mention of the seer, but I was at a loss as to what could have happened between them. “One minute she was repotting the herb garden she planted for you in the kitchen, and the next her eyes glazed over.” Head down, Amelie flexed her toes like she could imagine the tickle of grass blades between them. Or like she didn’t want to meet my eyes. “When she snapped to, she muttered about being allergic to dogs and called Woolly a halfway house for broken dreamers.”

“That sounds about right.” I pressed my hand flush against the smooth door. Not so long ago, I’d had to beg her to let me out for work each night. I didn’t want to go back to that, for both our sakes. “Woolly, I’m just going to the van. It’s parked right in the driveway. I’ll take Cletus with me, and Linus is already out there. It’s going to be fine. I’ll shake him, wake him, then come back to fill you in on my weekend.”

And drum up some goodwill for our new security team while I was at it.

Maybe she would agree that every ghost boy needed a dog or three?

The overhead lights dimmed as she pouted about not getting her way, but she turned the first lock. Sure, snails have moved faster, but she was working with me. That’s what counted.

In the time it took the Apollo 11 to get Neil Armstrong ready to walk on the moon, Woolly finished unlocking the door and opened it a crack for me. Huffing to wedge it wider, I sucked in my stomach and squeezed out onto the porch. From there, I tread the stairs gingerly, pausing with one foot above the ground to test the wards. When I didn’t stub my toe on hardened air again, I took a leap of faith, holding my breath in case Woolly clung at the last moment. Much to my surprise, she behaved and allowed me out of her protective sphere.

The music of her wards changed from bright and energetic to a dirge, and I smothered a laugh under my breath. Woolly was such a drama llama. Sheesh.

Back at the van, I spotted Linus, still sleeping, and my gut started twisting with a sense of wrongness.

I rapped on his window with my knuckles, but he didn’t stir. So I popped the locks, opened the door, and rested my hand on his shoulder. I half expected him to startle awake, for his tattered cloak to burst into existence, but he kept dozing.

“Linus?” I gave him a shake. “We’re home. Well, I’m home. In Savannah. At Woolly.” Nothing. “Wakey-wakey.”

Warning tingles speared down my spine, and I sucked in a breath to scream, but it was too late.

A wide palm that smelled like old pennies slapped over my mouth, while a muscular arm snaked around my waist, cinching my upper arms flush with my sides. The vampire yanked me back against his hard chest with a husky chuckle in his throat as he drawled, “Remember me?”

The familiar voice, the taunt, caused my heart to jackrabbit.

My stalkerpire, the first vampire to attempt to bring me into the Master’s fold, had returned.

All this time I had hoped—prayed—he was killed in the estate massacre.

“Volkov should have controlled you when he had the chance. A Last Seed’s ability to mesmerize necromancers is a mercy.” His breath skated across my throat, far too close to tender skin. “He could have convinced you that you were a happy couple until you started believing the lie without his influence.” The tips of his fangs raked my neck. “Now you’re going to be wide awake for what happens next.”

Twin points of agony pierced my throat, and I raged against his hand, biting down until I tasted his blood. I spat a mouthful down the front of my shirt, thanking my lack of boobs for once. With my arms free from the elbows down, I had enough movement to reach up and dip my fingers in the stain. I painted the same protective sigil I’d used against the watchmen on the back of my left hand.

Magic in the necromantic markers in his blood reacted, blasting out around me in a protective bubble, and the vampire was blown off me. Confident the ward would hold, I turned back and drew the same design on Linus’s cheek to protect him while I dealt with the vampire. As soon as Linus was as safe as I could make him, I shut his door and faced my attacker.

“You’re right about one thing.” Fury trembled in my voice. “I’m wide awake now, and I’m never going under again.”

“Big words, little girl.” He stood from a crouch, looking exactly as he had the first day he introduced himself, and he straightened as he licked his lips. “The Master is tired of waiting on you to come home.”

“What is that psycho’s deal?” I scanned the yard for signs of backup, but Taz was nowhere in sight, and I had no idea how long it would take the watchmen to arrive. “Home is here, and he’s not welcome in mine. Neither are you.”

Amusement glittered in his eyes. “You don’t remember at all, do you?”

“I remember being snatched off my porch and driven to an estate where vampires played dress-up with me like I was some kind of freaking doll. I remember being promised to Volkov like a prize mare ready for breeding, except that’s not the type of procreation he had in mind. I remember thinking one of the best days of my life was when I left that place, and him, behind me.”

“I warned him.” He tsked. “I told him you were too young when your mother ran, that necromancers don’t imprint on their elders the way vampires do, but he was convinced a hybrid would carry more vampiric traits than not. He believed you would remember your nursery, filled with all your dollies, but you didn’t. You didn’t even remember your nursemaid. It broke Lena’s heart.”

“What crazy are you spouting now?” The thunder of my pulse in my ears made hearing impossible. “I’m not a hybrid.”

“The necromancers use a much more egotistical term. I’m sure you’ve heard it bandied about by now.” His mirth swelled. “Goddess-touched, I believe is the term.”

No, no, no, no, no.

Maud would have…

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

When would I learn? Maud would have done whatever she felt would protect me. Even lie to my face.

“I see you running the calculations.” He chuckled. “You never knew your father. You barely knew your mother. The Master is all the family you’ve got left.”

“You’re lying,” I rasped. “Hybrids don’t exist. Goddess-touched necromancers are—”

“Abominations,” he informed me with a smile. “They were wiped out centuries ago. By your people. Given the chance, you think they won’t try again, starting with you?”

“The Society doesn’t waste resources.” I was one, whether I wanted to be or not.

“Your guardian died protecting your secret. Your Society murdered one of its own to get to you.”

“No.” Once I started shaking my head, I couldn’t stop denying it over and over. “It’s not possible.”

Maud had been invincible standing within Woolworth House, her magic at its apex while in her home.

And yet, she had fallen. And yet…and yet…and yet…

“You gotta learn to lie better than that if you want to survive this world.” His teeth glinted. “Your power is young, but the knowledge in your blood is ancient.”

A buzzing started in my ears. He knew. About the magic. About the sigils in my head. About me.

“Come with me.” He held out his hand. “Let me show you who you are. Let me take you where you belong. Let me protect you from the machinations of your mother’s people.” He curled his fingers in a c’mon gesture. “Stay with them, and they will own you. Once they grasp the breadth of your power, they will control you, or they will make certain no one else can.”

“How is the Master any different?” Fury swirled hot through my blood. “You’re all the same. You all want the same thing. I would rather trust the devil I know than the one who kept me drugged and locked in a room. At least the Society grants me the illusion of freedom.”

“An illusion is all you’ve got. The Grande Dame’s son lives on your property. His wraith shadows your every move.” The truth in his words cut deep. “But by all means, keep deluding yourself.”

“Oh, Goddess,” Amelie moaned from the safety of the doorway. “Grier.”

“Don’t you dare,” I growled when she darted onto the porch. “Stay inside the wards.”

“You get inside the wards,” she screamed, clutching the railing. “Now.”

Risking a glance back at Linus, I swallowed as my heart lurched at his still form. “I can’t leave him.”

“He’s not worth—”

“I won’t abandon him,” I snarled at her then whirled on the vampire. “You’re not taking me. I won’t be caged again.”

“The Master has been patient.” His fist clenched as he lowered his arm. “He wants you to come home.”

Anger erupted from my core, whiting out my conscious mind, and a new language unfurled in my head. Sigils passed through genetic memory from others like me. How else could they be branded in my mind?

The punctures in my throat had started healing, so I scratched at the scabs to reopen them, dipping my fingers in the sluggish blood. The ward separating me from him formed a thin shield of compressed air, magicked into impenetrability. The principle was the same as what Woolly used to insulate her doorway from uninvited guests.

I didn’t stop to wonder if I could do it, if it was even possible. I simply did as those instincts dictated, let that tug in my gut guide me as I drew a sigil in the air before me, right on the shield. And then I smacked it with my open palm.

Power blasted from the sigil in a wave that knocked him to the ground. “What did you do to Linus?”

There was no graceful landing this time, no crouch or mockery. Blood poured from a gash on his forehead and smudged the corner of his mouth. “You didn’t wonder why that student attacked Linus at Strophalos?”

“He wanted Linus out of the way,” I said, and heard the hollow ring to the words as I spoke them.

The pointlessness of the attack had left a bad taste in my mouth. The assassin lacked the skills to best Linus. I had given him the element of surprise by bringing him to Reardon’s classroom with me. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have gotten close enough to Linus to scratch him, let alone skewer him with that blade of his.

A hairline scratch across Linus’s chest was all the guy managed before Linus gained the advantage.

The exchange began so suddenly and ended even faster. But had it been too quick? Too easy?

“He was an acolyte. He performed tasks for me, hoping to earn his immortality.” The vampire spat clotted blood on the grass. “He wasn’t a fighter, but he didn’t have to be. His blade was dipped in a slow-acting poison.” He struggled to his knees. “Your protector is dead. The toxin has been in his system too long. No one can save him.”

A pit opened in my gut, and rage howled through the abyss. I had to finish this, and fast, if I wanted to save Linus. I couldn’t believe the vampire, that it was hopeless. I had to try. “Where is the Master?”

The vampire cocked his head, listening. “What is that?”

The howls weren’t all rage as it turned out. Or at least they weren’t all mine.

The watchmen had arrived.

“Tell me where he is,” I bargained, “and I’ll call them off the hunt.”

I had no such power, but he didn’t need to know that.

“This isn’t over.” He pointed at me. “You can’t stay inside your wards forever.”

Lip curled up over his teeth, flashing fang at me, he ran for the trees bordering the property.

As much as my thighs twitched to pursue him, as much as I could taste the answers I would scrape off his tongue, Linus was more important.

A scaled beast with a golden ruff sped past me. Midas. Two more followed, allowing him the lead.

“Take him alive if you can,” I yelled after them, but they gave no sign they’d heard.

Blocking out Amelie’s frantic screams and the watchmen’s joyous baying, I yanked open the van’s door and did a quick examination of Linus. As a necromancer, I knew zip about healing from a medical standpoint. We were taught the signs of death so that we could encourage them in our clients to hasten their resuscitation, but not how to counteract them, and Linus was ticking off all the boxes.

Sluggish pulse. Poor color. Faint breaths.

“You’re going to have to trust me.” I gripped the front of his shirt and ripped it straight down the middle, sending buttons pinging off the dash. “I have an idea that I think might work.” With the fabric untucked from his pants, I parted the halves of his shirt to expose the planes of his inked chest and the smooth rounds of his shoulders. For this to work, I wanted the largest canvas possible. “Okay, here we go.”

Strange magic licked over my skin, and the ward surrounding me burst like a balloon punctured with a needle. A sharp point wedged between the knobs of my vertebrae, stunning me into stillness, and I sucked in a shocked breath that hissed through my teeth as that power burrowed into my blood.

“Hello, Grier.”

Careful to keep the movement slow, I dared a glance over my shoulder. “Eloise?”

“Not quite.” Her eyes were sharper, her face harder, and she mocked me from a greater height. “I’m Heloise Marchand. Her twin. And don’t get me started on the rhyming names. Our mother did it to bind us tighter than she was to her sister.” A mocking smile curved her lips. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, cousin.”

Twins?

Sloppy of me not to have dug into Eloise’s past after she appeared on my doorstep, but I had turned her on her heel and sent her packing. The skeletons in her closet were her problem. Not mine.

Well, until now.

Learning Mom had a twin should have jogged my memory that fraternal twins run in families.

Heloise’s smugness forced out one burning question. “How did she beat the wards?”

Woolly would have never allowed Eloise in if she had treacherous thoughts in her head.

“Vain, aren’t you?” She clicked her tongue. “With Maud as a mother figure, I expected as much.”

Maud’s blood, and my sweat and tears, had seeded the foundation for those wards, so yes, I was proud of them. I had constructed them to protect me, to keep Woolly safe, and it was a blow to my ego to learn I had failed us both. Again.

“Ellie has no idea I’m here,” she said when I didn’t rise to her bait. “That’s how she beat your wards. Ignorance. Or innocence. Depending on how charitable you’re feeling. That house read no ill intent from her, so it allowed her entrance.”

“She left that first night, didn’t she?” I thought back on it. “You were the one waiting for me at Mallow. You had done your research and knew where to find me.” I hissed out a curse. “The grape. Eloise is the one who’s engaged. That’s why you weren’t wearing the ring.”

Heels or flats could have explained away the difference in their heights, but the rest was all on me.

“An oversight, I admit.” Her lips flattened. “I had to gamble you wouldn’t notice. Or, if you did, that you wouldn’t feel it was your place to ask.”

Society training did have that effect on people. Polite to a fault up until the moment they buried a hatchet in your back. “What’s your angle?”

“I was Eloise’s first stop after she overheard the conversation between Grandmother and Madame Lecomte. I encouraged her to track you down, to make contact. An infamous relative fostered by one of the most famous necromancers of all time. How could she resist?” Her smile was wrong on Eloise’s gentler face. “I wanted an in with you, a reason why you might accept an invitation if I asked you out for coffee. I could have cold-called you, but you struck me as a cautious person, and I was proven right by the wards on your home. That’s why separating you from Woolworth House was paramount.”

“You’re the one who attacked the wards?”

A shrug rolled through her shoulders. “I jabbed them a little to see what makes them tick.”

All of a sudden, the random images Woolly had shown me made more sense. A fallen branch, from my family tree. A starburst, like the giant ring on Eloise’s finger. Two peas, these had shared the same pod.

“You followed us to Atlanta.” That explained why the issues stopped after we left.

“I thought your disappearance might be more open to interpretation if you got lost in the city,” she admitted, “but I underestimated how badly your grandfather wants you returned to the fold.”

The Master was…my grandfather?

A scream of denial welled in my throat, but I swallowed it down.

No time to dwell on what this meant. I could melt down in the safety of my bedroom later.

Replaying how everything that could go wrong on the trip had, I gritted my teeth, fury igniting in my blood. “The accident?”

Cruz had been adamant about a woman being responsible, but Ernestine had been the instigator between the two vampires, and I assumed that meant she had been the driver. I assumed wrong.

“I admit, it was rather impulsive of me, but the vampires were too close for comfort.” A growl entered her voice. “They still beat me to you. Though I can hardly complain given the outcome. The potentate of Atlanta was prepared to raze his own city to protect you. I find that quite interesting.”

The mention of Linus had me tasting bile. I had to buy us more time, but his was running out, and the odds of a rescue were looking slimmer by the minute. “You orchestrated the infiltration at the Faraday.”

Finally, the escalation in violence made sense. Even impatient, the Master wanted me unharmed. Clearly, the Marchands weren’t as particular about the shape I arrived in.

“It was easy with inside help.” Her smile was pure delight. “Meiko sends her regards, by the way.”

That backstabbing little beast. “He will never forgive her for this.”

“I know that, and you know that, but…” Heloise twitched her shoulders. “Meiko thinks in straight lines. Cat logic, if you will. Linus is her person, and she refuses to share him. Much like a cat knocking a glass off the counter because it can, she determined you were an obstacle to her happiness and removed you.”

Cat logic had failed her. The Faraday operated by its own rules, and she had broken the golden one.

“You executed your trap well,” I admitted. Isolating the weakest link, she used Meiko’s petty jealousy and vanity to achieve her own ends. “I can admire that, but you hurt one of my friends in the process. That I won’t forgive.”

“I don’t need your forgiveness,” she scoffed. “You will return home with me and take your place among the Marchands. Your mother was disowned. You are simply a recording error in need of correction.”

The scope of Dame Marchand’s foresight in forming this loophole made me warier than ever of that side of my family. Before they had been a nebulous nonentity. Now… They had declared themselves my enemies.

“Grandmother is strict,” she said, digging the metal into my spine, “but she won’t punish you as long as you cooperate.”

A shiver coasted down my arms as a new possibility surfaced, one that filled in a few of the cracks spiderwebbing over my heart.

Neck aching from cranking my head around, I looked to Linus for a heartbeat, let myself watch the rise and fall of his chest. “How did you nullify my wards?”

“An artifact from the family vault made by the last goddess-touched necromancer from our bloodline, more than seven hundred years ago.”

A family trait. I swallowed. This was a legacy that originated in my mother’s blood. It explained how she knew to run when she fell pregnant with me. It might also explain why she accepted the disownment rather than turn me over to her mother.

The Marchands owned a goddess-touched artifact. What else might they have in their arsenal? What knowledge might they possess about my condition? Did they know how to sever the thread binding me to Amelie? And would they ever share that information with me without shackling me to their will first?

“Let me save him,” I bargained. “Let me heal Linus, and I’ll go with you.”

“We don’t have time.” Heloise searched the darkened yard. “Your pets will return soon enough.”

“You can’t let him die.” My voice went hoarse. “Please.”

A gunshot pierced the night, and the sharp pressure at my spine vanished.

I whirled as my cousin collapsed on the grass, her mouth gaping in mute surprise. A red dot smudged her left temple, but the right side of her face was missing.

Heart pounding in my ears, I searched for the shooter and found Taz limping toward me, dragging one leg, leaving a trail of blood shimmering wetly on the grass behind her.

“Sorry I’m late,” she grunted. “I was tracking the vamp when I triggered a circle.” Her eyes blazed when they fell on Heloise’s crumpled form, a wildness in them screaming she wished the deathblow had been dealt by her hands and not her weapon. “I would have still been trapped if she hadn’t also shot me in the thigh and left me to bleed out. Took a while, but the blood erased her sigils, and the ward fell.”

The parallels between what happened to her tonight and her brother’s fate so long ago made me heartsick. Heloise had been family—blood—and she was a monster.

One halting step was all I managed before figures dressed in black fatigues bled from the shadows.

The cavalry had arrived, and the Elite sentinels swarming the night were armed to the teeth.

No familiar platinum-blond head towered over them. No chocolate-caramel eyes sought mine. No Boaz materialized to lead the charge.

“Freeze,” the man in front barked at her, clearly not recognizing Taz, a mistake that might prove deadly. For him. “Put your gun down.”

“Fair warning,” Taz growled, lowering her weapon. “Shoot me, and I’ll shoot back.”

With Taz disarmed, he set his sights on me. “Step away from the van, ma’am.”

A split-second decision had me putting my thin acting skills to the test. Dropping to my knees beside the body, I feigned shock. “My cousin.” As I bent to check Heloise’s pulse, I leaned over her corpse, using the motion for cover as I pried the goddess-touched artifact from her clenched fist. There was no time for an examination before secreting it away, but I got the impression of age-worn wood with a tapered end. “She’s dead.”

“Step away from the body,” he barked. “Move away from the van.”

Wiping my bone-dry cheeks with a hand I trembled for effect, I did as I was ordered, turning just enough to hide the movement as I slipped the artifact in my pocket.

Sadly, my theatrics had exposed Linus, and the sentinel bristled in response, his finger on the trigger.

“Sir,” he boomed, “I’m going to have to ask you to exit the vehicle.”

“Are you serious? He’s unconscious. He can’t exit the vehicle. He can barely breathe.” Huffing out a laugh that bordered on deranged, I reached up and scratched the scabs at my throat until fresh blood trickled down my neck, then wet my fingers. “I don’t have time for this.”

“Ma’am,” the Elite tried again. “We got a call—”

“Let me tell you who you can call.” I stepped aside and gave them a good, long look at who reclined in the seat. “This is Linus Lawson, Scion Lawson. Dial up the Grande Dame and ask her how she feels about her niece being held at gunpoint while her only son and heir dies from poisoning.”

The man lowered his weapon, his cheeks paling as the blood drained from them.

“Note to self,” I muttered. “Name-dropping is the new Kevlar.”

With two fingers, I drew a double-lined healing rune that stretched from Linus’s collarbones to his navel. Bright crimson whirls smeared over the art covering his torso. Eyes crushed shut, I listened to that inner voice and followed its instructions to the letter. Instinct guided me, calling for more blood, more pain, more sacrifice to bring him back.

Please, bring him back.

I sent up a prayer to Hecate as I closed the final loop with a flourish.

Magic, rich and potent, coated him from head to toe in a shimmering veil of incandescence. His entire length jolted hard once, and then again, and then again.

The spell was working as a defibrillator, jump-starting his heart with magic.

The sheen beading his forehead gave me hope the poison was being expelled.

“Come on,” I chanted. “Come on.”

One last blast illuminated his skin before the glow seeped into his pores. In the stillness that followed, the impossibly long seconds where nothing happened and I was certain I had failed him, his eyelids started twitching in what appeared to be restless sleep.

A kinder woman might have given him a moment to recover. I was not that woman.

“Linus.” I grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. “Wake up. Let me see your eyes.”

Cletus materialized in the driver seat, almost giving me a heart attack.

Well, that explained why the wraith had been absent. Linus had been so close to death their bond must have faded until he did too.

“Can you hear me?” I rechecked his pulse. Steady. His lungs were expanding fully, so that was good. But was it enough? “Linus?”

“In all the…stories,” he rasped, eyes slitting open, “the prince…is awakened…with a kiss.”

“Linus Andreas Lawson, are you flirting with me? Maybe I zapped you too hard.” I pinned him in his seat while his limbs spasmed. “Besides, you’ve got it wrong. It’s the princess who gets kissed. Didn’t your mother ever read you storybooks when you were a kid?”

“No.” His teeth started chattering. “What…happened?”

“The vampire who helped Volkov kidnap me got an acolyte into Strophalos. The guy who cut you used a poisoned blade. Since I’m an idiot, I didn’t realize you weren’t sleeping and left you out here until you almost died.”

“Not your…fault.”

That’s not how it felt. “I ditched you to go say hello to my house.”

Heavy footfalls yanked my attention to a commotion across the yard.

A second unit, more heavily armed than this one, jogged in from the direction the watchmen had gone. Two men peeled off toward the driveway with a mangled body strung between them. The others melded into the group facing us down, and a man stepped from the middle of them.

“What the hell happened to that vampire?”

Stomach roiling over the carnage, I didn’t register the speaker’s identity at first. When I did, a new type of sickness uncoiled through me, and I almost wished I had kept my focus on the maimed vampire.

Boaz might have looked good enough to eat, but he acted mad enough to spit nails.

“Security…team,” Linus panted. “Don’t harm…the…pack.”

“The pack?” Boaz flexed his bloodied hands at his sides. “There are no warg packs in Savannah.”

“They’re not wargs.” And I was under no obligation to tell them more than that. Boaz maybe. This gaggle of gun-toting zealots with itchy trigger fingers, not so much. “I appreciate the assistance, but your presence isn’t necessary.” I folded my arms across my chest. “I’ve got things handled here. You can run along back to wherever you’ve actually been the last few weeks.”

A slow whistle rose from the back of the crowd, and I spotted Becky wincing like she wished a hole would open up and swallow Boaz before I buried him in front of his men. When she noticed me, she waggled her fingers in a weak hello, but I was done playing nice.

“You heard the lady,” he called over the murmurs. “Clear out.”

Neither of us budged until the yard was empty except for the three of us, and I was pretty sure Linus had fallen back asleep. Actual sleep this time.

“Amelie called.” He glared down at Heloise’s corpse like what would happen next was all its fault.

“I handled it.” Sparing a final glance at my cousin, I amended, “I was handling it.”

“This—” he pointed a shaking finger at her remains, “—will start a blood feud. The Marchands will come for you, and this time the gloves will be off.”

“Funny,” I murmured, riveted on the hand still curled as if to hold an artifact she no longer possessed, “I don’t see any gloves.”

Dame Marchand’s interest in acquiring me had lit a torch within my heart. Maybe my parents had loved one another. Maybe they had both fought to keep me. Maybe the accident that claimed Mom’s life wasn’t so accidental. And if that were true, then how had my dad died?

“You could have been killed,” he rumbled.

“Yeah, you’re right.” I was done tiptoeing around the truth. “And there wouldn’t have been a damn thing you could do about it. Not even from across town.”

Calling him out had Boaz flinching. Hard. “How did you find out I was in Savannah? Amelie?”

Now it was my turn to flinch. “Amelie knew you were still in town, and she didn’t tell me.” The confirmation stung. “That’s why she’s got you on speed dial.”

“Don’t blame her.” He cast the house a lingering frown, searching the windows. No doubt for his sister’s silhouette. “I made her promise.”

“Why would you do that?” I voiced the conclusion I’d come to in Atlanta. “If the Grande Dame issued a gag order for you, you couldn’t have told Amelie. Since you obviously did, that means you decided to withhold that information. You both chose to keep this from me.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Are we together or not?” That’s what hurt most. The wondering. “I thought we were trying. I thought that meant something.”

“It did.”

Past tense.

That sick clench in my gut twisted. “Are you breaking up with me?”

Judging by the look on his face, I wondered if he had already, but I missed the memo.

“This is so fucked-up.” He stared at the ground. “The one time I want to stay with a girl, and…”

If this was the end, I wasn’t going to make it easy. I was going to make him spell it out. “And?”

“I can’t,” he rasped.

“Can’t or won’t?” I kept my chin from hitting my chest by sheer force of will. “I thought you were all in.”

For as long as it lasts.

“The deal changed.”

“When? And why wasn’t I told?” The way my palm itched, I didn’t trust myself to get closer without slapping him. “Is that what the secret phone calls have been about? Is that why you haven’t spoken to me unless I initiated contact?”

“Amelie put my family in a tight spot,” he said quietly. “We have one chance to dig ourselves out of the hole with the Pritchard name intact.”

An automatic step back bumped my hip against the van door. “You wouldn’t.”

He bowed his head. “I don’t have a choice.”

“Macon—” No, I wouldn’t throw his little brother under the bus. After counting to ten, I tried again. “You don’t care about reputation. You never have. You’ve spent your entire life cultivating an image, and newsflash—it’s not one of the dutiful son.”

“I hated being boxed in.” His head jerked up, eyes blazing. “I hated being told what my life would be and who I would spend it with. How many kids I would sire and how much money I was required to add to the family coffers before lining up a successor.” Muscle bulged in his jaw. “I wanted out, so I acted out. I tossed my good name in the mud and then I rolled around on it.”

A slow burn started behind my eyes. “You told me I would be the one to make choices to preserve my line, my home, and my legacy.”

“I also said you might not have a choice in the matter,” he bit back.

At the time, the comment wedged beneath my skin like a splinter. “Did you mean it as advice for me, or as a reminder for yourself?”

“You’re Dame Woolworth. That means you have the power. Whoever you marry will give up their last name and take yours. Whoever you wed will give up their family and become yours. Whoever I marry will take my name and my place. She will become the Pritchard heir. She will inherit my family, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.”

“You could say no.”

“You still don’t get it.” He threw up his hands. “I’ve been groomed all my life, not to take control of the family, but to be a guiding influence for the wife I would one day acquire. She’s a business decision, Grier. She’s three big, fat checkmarks in the columns that matter most to my parents.”

Tears veiled my eyes, and I couldn’t see him through them, but I would be damned if I let them fall.

“She’s an only child with a small family to support. She can afford to give up her name to take mine. She’s the best hope we’ve got of coming out the other side of this scandal.”

“What’s her name?” I noticed I was rubbing the skin over my heart and dropped my hand. “You haven’t spoken it once.”

“Does it matter to you?” His bitter laughter almost choked him. “As long as she shows up to the Lyceum on time, it doesn’t to me.”

“This is why you were pushing me away.” The radio silence was a precursor to this. “Were you going to tell me before I heard it from someone else? Before rings were exchanged?”

“Yes.” His fists tightened at his sides. “I’m not that cruel.”

“You got engaged behind my back. How is that not cruel?”

To think I had wanted a surprise in the romance department. Well, it didn’t get more shocking than this.

“Our situation is complicated.”

It hit me then, what he wasn’t saying. “You’ve known about this for a while.” It was the only thing that made sense, the only reason he wasn’t tearing everything down around him. He’d had time to get used to the idea, to make peace with it. “But you worried how I would take the news because of Amelie. You strung me along so I wouldn’t boot her to the curb when I found out.”

“You’re all she’s got right now.”

“What? Your darling wife won’t look kindly on her sister-in-law?”

“Amelie is part of the deal.”

Part of the deal. A deal. Not a marriage.

What a proper scion he was turning out to be. His mother must be so proud.

“She’s been disowned,” I rasped, shaking my head. “That can’t be undone.”

“I can’t give her back her name, but I can give her a place, a home, access to her inheritance.”

“Your mother—”

“Will no longer be Matron Pritchard.” His jaw set. “If I step up, she steps down. That’s my price.”

My lips parted, but nothing passed them.

“The best thing for the family is to distance ourselves from the atrocities that occurred during her tenure as matron.” How formal he sounded when he spoke, how practiced, as if reciting a speech. “The candidates they selected for me to choose from were desperate. Who else would marry into our line after this scandal? The former Matron Pritchard knew she had to act fast to mitigate the damage.”

“Amelie will still be ostracized.” Putting a roof over her head and money in her pockets wouldn’t change that.

Quiet stretched long between us, the silence filled with things unsaid that could never be spoken between an engaged man and his…

Girlfriend? Friend? Neighbor? No, I was nothing to him now.

“I read the family histories for all the applicants,” he began.

“Oh goodie.” I clapped for him. “You and your new family should have tons to bond over then.”

“The Whitaker matriarch died three months ago, and the title of Matron Whitaker fell to her eldest daughter. She’s aware of our circumstances, and…” He wet his lips. “She lost her younger sister last year. Fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome kept her confined to the family home. She hadn’t been seen in public since she was a child.” His throat bobbed when he swallowed. “She was two years older than Amelie.”

While I pitied them such loss with one breath, I resented them with the next. But what he implied… It was an elegant solution. One that never would have crossed my mind. “She’s willing to let your sister masquerade as hers?”

“To provide for the family she has left, yes.”

“This only works if Amelie doesn’t stay in Savannah. People will recognize her. A new name won’t fix that.” The dybbuk scandal was big news thanks to my involvement, and the debacle too recent for the tittle-tattlers to forget. “You’re sending her away?”

“We think it’s for the best.”

We. Already they were a we.

Already the pair was working together, solving their problems like…a team.

Blurred vision kept me from seeing his expression. “Get off my lawn.”

“Grier,” he pleaded, coming toward me. “You’ve got to believe this isn’t what I wanted for us.”

Us. There was no room for us in we.

“Go.” I shoved him. “Leave.” He barely rocked back on his heels. “You’re not welcome here.”

“Grier,” he whispered.

“No.” I made a fist the way Taz had taught me, and I socked him in the jaw. Something in my hand popped, a knuckle cracking, but I was primed to go again when cool hands landed on my shoulders. I angled my head, catching sight of Linus behind me, and my bottom lip trembled. “He’s engaged.”

The cold fury banked in his ebony gaze as he stared at Boaz should have made me afraid for him. Instead it made me grateful to have Linus by my side. “You’re a fool, and you will regret breaking her heart for the rest of your long life.”

I’ll make sure of it.

Unsure if that last part had been spoken out loud or implied, it still flung open the floodgates. Stupid tears spilled hot and fast over my cheeks. Linus was an auburn blur, his touch the only real thing in this world.

This time, I let Boaz watch. Damn if I was going to hide one ounce of the pain he had caused for his sake. Forget pride. Let him see. Let him live with this. Let him fall asleep tonight and dream about my splotchy face, my tears, my misery.

The shirt I called Old Grier tore, and I split down the middle with it.

A chorus of growls rose in response to my anguish, and the watchmen prowled over to stand with me. Lethe and Midas flanked me, the former nuzzling my hand, while Hood stalked Boaz until he backed away.

“Goodbye, Boaz.” I glanced down at the watchmen. “Escort him off the property, please.” I brushed my fingers down Lethe’s nape. “Allow the Elite to claim my cousin’s body, and then I want them gone.”

With eager barks, they embraced their orders.

“You need to sit down before you fall down,” I warned Linus, looping an arm around his waist to balance him, happy to fuss over him rather than linger over Boaz’s announcement. “Should I call your mother?”

He offered me a weak smile. “Tomorrow.”

Considering I had hidden the car accident from my family, I could hardly complain if he kept his in the dark too.

“I heard about Meiko,” he murmured. “You were right. I should have taken her in hand long before this. It’s my fault she felt entitled to make a move against you.”

“This wasn’t your fault.” I worried my bottom lip between my teeth, wondering if it made him feel any better or if guilt would still cling to his bones as it did to mine. “She made the decision to compromise the Faraday. Not you.”

And she would pay for it in blood.

While there was no love lost between Meiko and me, Heloise had led her astray. My cousin had as much as admitted to manipulating her, knowing the jealous nekomata might appear human, but her instincts were animalistic. So was her reasoning. That didn’t excuse Meiko, but if I spoke on her behalf, it might keep the watchmen from killing her outright.

“Not my fault,” he echoed. “I enjoy saying those words more than hearing them.”

Huffing out a laugh, I murmured, “I bet.”

“Hearing them, even when they’re meant well, doesn’t change anything, does it?”

“Nothing absolves the guilt, but it tells me I’m not alone.” I gave him a gentle squeeze. “You’re not alone, either.”

With his arm slung around my shoulders, I managed to get him to the carriage house. He fumbled the door open, and we sidled in together. As weak as he was, I decided on a mattress over the couch and aimed us toward his bedroom. Once he sat, my knees buckled, and I sank onto the floor in a heap.

“I’m sorry,” Linus said, and it encompassed my entire world and all of its fractures.

Fresh tears plinked on the hardwood, the puddle growing beneath me. “I don’t want to see her.”

“Amelie,” he said, but it wasn’t a question.

“She lied to me.” A watery laugh escaped me then, because it shouldn’t surprise me. Nothing she did ought to shock me anymore. “This hurts worse than the dybbuk.” How pathetic was it that I would take a near-death experience over heartbreak? “She always said she would choose me. That if Boaz and I happened, and then we didn’t happen, she said she would pick me over him.”

A grunt reached my ears as Linus slid onto the planks beside me. He was dragging a blanket behind him, and he wrapped me up tight, insulating me against his cold. I slumped against his chest when he opened his arms, and I cried until I got hiccups, until my snot had washed away his healing runes, until I lost my voice and figured it was a good thing because I had run out of things to say that didn’t boil down to it hurts.

The jagged mass twisting in my chest cut worse than Atramentous, worse than Volkov, almost worse than losing Maud. I kept looking down, thinking I ought to be bleeding to death, but the wounds he had inflicted were invisible, and I was only leaking through my eyes.

With exquisite gentleness, Linus gripped the wrist on my sore hand and turned it palm up. He must have fetched his pen from his pocket. He bit off the cap and held it between his teeth as he drew a healing sigil to fix what I had broken punching Boaz.

“Is there a rune that fixes a broken heart?” I murmured against his shoulder.

Cool lips pressed against my temple. “No.”

“Figures the one time I would be willing to take an out, there’s not one.”

“He’s going to regret you for the rest of his life.”

The urge to wish that miserable future on him was too strong, so I kept my mouth shut.

“I ought to tell Woolly, but I don’t want to do it over the phone, and I don’t feel up to it tonight.” Bitterness swirled through me, draining through the pit of my soul. “She really does love him. This is going to break her heart.”

“Take my bed,” he offered. “I can sleep on the couch.”

“I’ve kicked you out of enough beds.” It’s not like where I started the night mattered much considering where I always ended them. “I’ll take the couch.” I unfurled the cover then helped him up and back in bed. “I won’t be sleeping much as it is.”

Linus shut his bruised eyes before his head hit the pillow, and I stood there for a long time, watching him sleep. Once I convinced myself he wasn’t going to kick the bucket if I turned my back on him, I pulled the sheet up to his chin. A down comforter stretched across the foot of the bed, and I tucked it around him. Recalling his soft admission from weeks earlier, that he got cold, I added the plush gray duvet he had wrapped me in to his layers.

Backing from the room, I left the door cracked behind me so I could listen to him breathe.

Alone in the living room, I couldn’t silence the noise in my head.

Boaz was engaged. My Boaz. Engaged.

No, not mine. Not really. Not if he allowed this to happen.

The sun rose while I sat there, hands folded in my lap, head hanging loose on my neck.

I didn’t know what to do with myself, how a world without Boaz looked, and I didn’t want to see.

When the phone rang, I didn’t want to answer, but a sixth sense prodded me not to let this call pass.

“Ma coccinelle,” Odette sighed. “Today the sea churns with the salt of your tears.”

Odette was the closest thing left I had to a mother, and hearing her voice unlocked a fresh wellspring of tears that flowed down my cheeks while I curled around my phone on the couch.

“I warned him he stood at a crossroads,” she said sadly. “Had he chosen well, he would have had his heart’s desire: freedom to live as his own man, power to enact change, love that transcends centuries. But he chose poorly, and he has lost that which matters most to him: himself.”

“It hurts,” I said thickly, voice catching. “It’s never… Him choosing someone over me never hurt this much before.”

I had plenty of experience in losing Boaz to other women. This latest ought to be yet another speed bump that jarred me to my senses. For a little while. Before I set my sights on him again. But not this time. The break felt…

“Marriage within the Society is forever.” Odette sounded pained to remind me. “That ache you feel is a true ending, bébé. He can no longer cast his net wide then drag home to you when his arms tire. He has tangled with a whale, and she will drag him out to sea.”

The mental picture of him hurtling toward the Atlantic like a water skier behind a speedboat almost made me laugh. But I was scared if I started that I wouldn’t stop until the tears came again. They would masquerade as happy tears and hide behind my smile, but I would know the truth.

Singing me to sleep was off the table. Odette was no songbird. So, I asked for a different favor instead.

“Tell me a story,” I murmured, eyes drifting shut, “about you and Maud and Mom.”

Warmed by the ray of sunlight slanted over my shoulder, I listened to her retell the story of the time she convinced them to go sailing in the middle of a hurricane. Curled on the couch, her voice in one ear and Linus’s breath in the other, I tumbled into fitful sleep.