“So now will you come in the house?” I asked, after stealing another kiss.

His lips curled under mine. “Okay.”

“Well, don’t let me twist your arm or anything.” I stopped by the ward and turned. “Do you have something sharp?”

“Just take me through for now. That way, you can change your mind.”

“Do you want a knuckle sandwich?”

His smile boosted his handsomeness to absurd proportions. “No, thank you.” He took my hand and the air buzzed around us. “Lead me through, Turdswallop.”

“For once, I agree with the vampire on this one,” we heard as he closed the door behind him. It was Callie. “Do you know what a sad day it is when I’m forced to side with a vampire?”

“A very sad day,” Reagan said. “One for the record books.”

“Hurry,” I mouthed, pulling Emery behind me. My tiptoeing wasn’t as smooth as I would’ve liked—pulling Emery anywhere was not an easy task, and my feet thudded through the hallway.

I caught a quick glimpse of Dizzy looking up at me from the kitchen table. Thankfully, I couldn’t see Callie, but I hurried faster so as not to press our luck.

“What was that?” Callie asked after Emery went by. “Was that them? Penny, come in here this instant. You’ve gone off the rail, girl.”

I ducked into my room, pulled Emery after me, shut the door, and locked it. “That won’t keep Reagan out, but she seems to be on my side on this one, so we’re probably good.” I released his hand and crossed to the sliding glass door. After opening it, I motioned him on.

“Is this the only way into the backyard?”

I paused on the back porch, waiting for him. “Crap. No. But again, Reagan is on my side…for now…so I think we’re good. Oh, wait!” I dodged around him, heading back into my room, and collected the spell books I’d been studying. Back outside, I motioned for him to take a seat in one of the two folding chairs.

“These have seen better days,” Emery said, pinching the top of the chair and wiggling it.

“It looks rough, but it’ll hold. Here.” I handed him the most advanced book. “That one has the ward in it. It’s the— Yeah, the bookmarked one.”

I settled back, watching him read through the spell. Little streams of magic rose and twirled around him before settling back down—Emery was subconsciously grabbing what he would need to create the weave before releasing it. He closed the book and looked at me, his eyes shadowed by the overhang.

“You’ve progressed at an unbelievable rate,” he finally said.

“I could always read spells pretty well. Including the zombie one, unfortunately.”

“This”—he tapped the book—“is not the ward that surrounds this house. It is a pale representation of the weave I see. I can’t even call it a ward, because it’s so much more than that. If the Guild had knowledge of spells like this and how to make them, we’d be screwed.”

I shrugged, trying to hide my delight at his praise. “Reagan helped.”

He shifted, leaning forward a little on his chair. “You said that, but you both keep insisting she isn’t a mage. I don’t understand how she could help with a ward.”

“I can’t really talk about her magic. It’s a secret for some reason, and while I don’t know much beyond that, she wants to keep it that way.”

Silence lingered for a moment, and then he nodded. “Okay. As long as you are comfortable with her and this setup…”

“She’s my best bet. Callie, Dizzy, and Darius all agree.”

“That was before you left your stronghold and got yourself into trouble.”

I held up a finger. “To be fair, that wasn’t my fault. That was my temperamental third eye. I mean…” I made a wishy-washy motion with my hand. “Getting me there was my temperamental third eye’s fault. I felt weird about her leaving alone, so something told me I had to help. Once I was there, running away from Reagan was my bad, sure. But in the—”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait.” He laughed, shaking his head. “This isn’t funny—”

“Literally nothing I just said was funny.”

“—because the Guild could’ve made a grab for you tonight—”

“Reagan would’ve stepped in, I’m pretty sure. She’s super fast. She bonded to Darius, did you know that?”

“But…what? Oh, yes, I heard that earlier. It is…surprising information. Darius isn’t the type of vampire to bond, even with a prized asset. There must be more to it. Which I will try to figure out on my own.” He paused, like he was waiting for my approval.

“When you find out, tell me,” I said.

He chuckled again. He never seemed to know when I was being serious. Which, actually, was all the time. I just had the curse of being unintentionally funny, I guess.

“Fair enough. But let’s start from the very beginning, shall we? Tell me everything.”

“You mean from the part with the witches, or from the banshee?”

His eyes widened and he stiffened. “She let you go after a banshee? Never mind. We’ll get there. I meant, start at the beginning. The morning you woke up after I left Seattle.”

A rush of warmth ran through me. I hadn’t been a woman scorned after all. The idiot had honestly been trying to do what he thought was best for me. Clearly he shouldn’t be trusted to make such decisions in the future, because he was really, really bad at it, but the fact that his heart was in the right place eased the tightness in my shoulders.

I led him through the last six months, stopping occasionally to give more information, stopping other times for his misplaced guffaws, and speeding through the bit about Callie and Dizzy’s training.

Surprisingly, he didn’t ask many questions about the old vampire, Ja. He was on the same page as everyone else—it was a vampire problem. We should steer clear and let Darius figure it out.

“So you felt connected with the witches?” he asked after I talked about my jaunt into the cemetery.

“Yes. Sharing magic with them. It helped me find balance when I was working with Reagan.”

“Reagan knows a lot about spells and mages, then, huh?”

I opened my mouth to answer before I caught on. I narrowed my eyes at him and he gave me a guilty smile.

“Sorry,” he said. “That was sneaky. Anyway, so you think mages can form circles, like witches?”

I shrugged. “I don’t see why not. Maybe at a certain point the power would get too strong, but a few of them should be able to work together.”

“If they all trusted each other.” He tapped the spell book in his lap. “And that’s why you went with Reagan to banish the banshee?”

“Okay, well, no one mentioned the whole banishing part.” I told him all that had happened as the night stretched toward the morning.

“You…captured…a banshee,” he said, like he was pulling each word out of a trunk and examining it. That was the way he generally processed my oddest magical experiences. “Umhm.”

“Yeah. In, like, a magical cage.”

“You captured…a banshee—a banshee…in a magical cage. Mhm.”

“Reagan didn’t think it was all that odd.”

“Reagan…didn’t think—”

I laughed and kicked his chair. “Would you stop? This isn’t odd, trust me.”

“Using an untrained, unpredictable natural as bait, then watching a banshee chase her around the lawn, isn’t odd? I guess you’re going to tell me that it isn’t anything special that you trapped one of the most fearsome creatures on the death circuit in a type of spell I’ve never heard of? Oh. Well, now I know.”

“Clearly this is why Reagan and I work as a team. Because I don’t know any better, and she’s cracked.”

“I think that is exactly why it works, yes. Can she share magic with you?”

“No, she—” I flung my finger out at him. “Cheater!”

He gave me a delighted laugh and stood. “Come on, Turdswallop. It’s late and we have a long few days ahead of us.”

“Why is that?” I let him pull me, then pushed my way into his arms.

“Because you’ve found a new training buddy. And I’m not nearly so naive.”

At the time, I thought he was talking about me. I had no idea he planned on setting traps for Reagan in the hopes of solving her riddle.