Later in the day, after going home and falling face-first into my bed for a much too brief nap, I summoned the will to take a shower. When a firm knock landed on the door, it was afternoon and I was standing in my bedroom, wrapped in a faded pink towel wet from my shower, staring out the window at the trees swaying softly in the billowing fog. Fatigue clung to me, muddying my thoughts and making me obscenely slow.

“Door,” Daisy shouted from her bedroom. She and Mordecai had kept the same schedule as me, but instead of visiting a warehouse in an empty part of town, they’d sat at home and worried. By the time I’d gotten home, they’d been too wiped out to do much besides go back to bed.

“I’m in a towel. You go get it,” I hollered, wondering why Frank didn’t announce who it was. Maybe he’d taken off. He had seemed awfully leery of Bria. Maybe he sensed she could slap him into a new body, which would make him confront his demise. It couldn’t be a nice thought, knowing that the only way to properly come back to the world of the living was in someone else’s previously discarded skin.

“You’re in a towel with your door open?” Mordecai asked disapprovingly.

“I was going to close it. Give me a break.”

“Your shower ended ten minutes ago,” he said.

“Yes, time keeper, thanks for the update.” I slammed the door.

“Jeez.” Daisy’s voice was muffled through the thin walls. “What crawled up her butt?”

“She doesn’t know what she’s doing with the Demigod’s mom,” Mordecai answered. “I think it is stressing her out.”

“Does she need to take it out on us?”

“Do you need to be so loud through the paper-thin walls?” I shouted.

Their voices cut off and I figured they were getting the door. I dropped my towel and pulled out some jeans and the nicest blouse I had, a scoop-neck with pastel splotches in a lovely deep purple. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, Mordecai was right—the situation with Kieran’s mom was stressing me out. I’d only been on the job for a day, but I felt completely lost. The situation was much more complicated than I’d thought, and new facets of the problem kept cropping up. Valens clearly had a lot of pokers in the fire. Though we’d found plenty of evidence of him tampering with spirits, we were no closer to helping Kieran’s mom.

I felt like I was failing.

I hated failing. It really ruined my mood.

I grabbed my hairbrush from the dresser top and headed to the bathroom, only to hear another firm knock on the front door.

As I paused in the hall, Daisy and Mordecai each stared at me from their beds, their faces expressionless.

I gestured toward the front door with my brush. “Aren’t you going to get that?”

“If we wait long enough, they’ll probably go away,” Daisy said. Mordecai nodded.

I curled my brush hand under and propped it against my hip. “Do you two have short-term memory loss? Last night there was a knock on the door…and then they broke in.” I pointed at my face. “See this big purple bruise on my cheek? See this thing? It’s all fucked up. I thought an intruder was trying to kill me.” I made a circle with my finger over my temple. “That’s what happens with Kieran’s crew when you don’t open the door.”

“That was this morning,” Mordecai said, attempting to be helpful.

I held up my brush. “Do you want this up your ass?”

“Okay, let’s get real.” Daisy sat up laboriously. Her hair, in a loop at the top of her head, flopped around. “They broke in to suss us out. They won’t try that again until we have more training under our belts. You’re overreacting, which means something else is wrong.”

“She needs our help,” Mordecai said.

Daisy nodded, her hair loop waving. “I agree. She’s floundering.” Daisy clasped her fingers, her face the picture of professionalism, her pajamas swimming in angry unicorns. “What’s the plan of attack?”

“She has on that shirt she thinks is nice.” Mordecai squinted through the gloom of their bedroom, made cave-like by the tightly drawn shades. “She’s going somewhere upscale.”

I sighed, stalked forward, and ripped the shades open. Fog-filtered light illuminated the room. Both kids hissed and covered their eyes like vampires.

“I don’t need your help in anything but answering the door,” I said, stalking toward the bathroom. “And this blouse, for your information, is the nicest thing I own besides the suit.”

“When is that first paycheck coming?” I heard Mordecai ask. He was talking to Daisy. “She needs to go shopping.”

The firm knock turned into a hard rap.

“Get the door!” I yelled.

“Someone is very patient,” Daisy said, and I heard two feet thump onto the ground.

“Jack or Donovan would’ve just come in by now,” Mordecai said, his bed groaning. He was probably getting up, too.

“Yeah, but the others never bother to chase us out of the house,” Daisy said. “Maybe it’s not one of the Six.” She paused in the doorway of the bathroom. “Did you ever hear back from that detective in New York?”

I paused in brushing my hair. “Is this question on repeat? I didn’t leave a name or number. They can’t get a hold of me.”

“How about the mafia? Has anyone been following you? Hanging around?”

“Oh my God.” I pushed past her, cracking under pressure. These two could try the patience of a saint.

At the door, I flipped the lock with too much force, grabbed the knob with a white-knuckled grip, and ripped it open.

“All that, and she opens it herself,” Daisy muttered down the hall. “I could’ve stayed in bed.”

“We should’ve,” Mordecai said, and his bed groaned again.

That probably made two of us.

Zorn stood on the stoop, his expression flat and eyes sparkling with aggressive annoyance.

“I’m here for the girl,” he said without preamble. “I will be taking over part of her training.

I huffed out a humorless laugh. “Good. Run her ragged.” Without another word, I turned and headed back to the bathroom.

“Me?” Daisy asked, the confidence draining away from her posture. I frowned, pausing. It wasn’t like her to react like this when someone wanted to train her.

“Yes,” Zorn said. “Come on.”

“But…” Daisy’s large blue eyes widened. With her pale, porcelain face and dainty features, she looked more like a fragile doll in that moment than the little gremlin Bria had accused her of being. “Why me? I’m just along for the ride in all of this.”

“Not anymore. Let’s go.” Zorn’s tone was rough, his words clipped.

“But…” Daisy gave me a solemn-eyed stare.

“Since when are you wary about training?” I asked, genuinely confused.

“It’s Zorn,” she said, as though that was supposed to mean something.

“He’s not going to hurt you. Not any more than any of the others would. Kieran knows better.” I shooed her away. “Off ye git. Go learn something and quit annoying me.”

She turned toward her bedroom, presumably to get dressed rather than to hide under her covers.

“No,” Zorn barked, making her jump. “You’ll train in what you’re wearing.”

Her mouth dropped open, and red infused her cheeks. The spell had just broken. She was clearly intimidated by him, but with Daisy, that only lasted until something jogged her out of it.

“You’re out of your mind,” she said, her voice as hard as his. I smirked. That’s my girl. “I don’t have a bra on. Do you know how much it hurts to run with boobs?”

“Do you?” I asked her, and earned a glare.

“You need to be ready at all times,” Zorn said. I slipped into the bathroom and pulled out the blow dryer but didn’t plug it in. I wanted to hear this. Zorn had refused to train the kids up until now. I wanted to see what had changed, and if it was a problem that I’d have to deal with. “You’ll never know when you have to move. When your cover might be blown. Get used to running with no bra. Get used to wearing enough to bed that you can comfortably slip out of a window in the dead of night. Most importantly, get used to being comfortable in your skin, so that when the situation demands it, you won’t worry about little girl pajamas and the comfort of your family. You’ll only worry about the task at hand. Right now, that task is a hard lesson. Let’s go. Your real training starts now.”

I bit my lip, readying for Daisy to blow up, or maybe just call him a lunatic and stalk back to her room. She hadn’t signed up for anything. She didn’t owe him squat.

Instead, I heard her footsteps moving forward.

“Wait…” I abandoned the hair dryer and peeked my head into the hall, catching a glimpse of Daisy’s straight back and head held high as she reached the front door. “What?”

Zorn stepped out of the doorway. I got one glimpse of Bria crossing the grass toward the house before Daisy obstructed my view, leaving the house.

“Is that a good idea?” I asked, stepping into the hallway. “What even is this training? Who set it up?”

Zorn eyed me as Daisy walked by him. “Kieran approves.” He reached in, grabbed the handle of the door, and pulled it shut.

Anger simmered inside of me. Kieran approved? What the hell did he have to do with it?

“Really? You didn’t see me?” Bria pushed the door open, her head turned toward a departing Zorn. “You didn’t notice me coming up the walkway before you shut the door in my face? Oh yeah, keep walking. See how that works out for you tonight. Those handcuffs aren’t going to unlock themselves.”

Shaking her head, she stepped into the house, then bit her lip. “I really want to slam this door, but I’m afraid the whole house will come down on top of me.”

“Likely.” I pointed out the door where Daisy was now entering Zorn’s car. “What the hell just happened?”

“Why didn’t they take me?” Mordecai asked from his bedroom door. He was shirtless and his shoes had been left untied. He’d rushed to get ready, thinking he’d be going, too.

Bria waved the comment away. “Zorn thinks Daisy would make a great spy or assassin. Which is a really big compliment, because Zorn thinks most people are absolutely useless.”

Mordecai’s face fell and my heart squished for him.

Thankfully, Bria noticed it before I could do damage control. “You have a different calling, kid,” she told him. “There’ll be plenty of time for you two to train together. But you’re about to start shifting and fighting like your kind. Daisy wouldn’t be able to keep up. You each need to hone what you’re naturally good at, get it? She needs Zorn for that.”

Fear and excitement crossed his face. His lips pressed together.

Once again, Bria easily picked up his mood, and this time she met it with sarcasm. “Yeah. You’ll be shifting soon. Happiness reigns.” She zeroed in on me. “What the fuck is with that top?”

I looked down. “It’s a blouse.”

She ran her hand across her face. “What a strange circus I’ve found myself trapped in.” She leaned against the wall and sighed. “Right. Fine. Wear Bobo’s painting frock if it makes you happy, but let’s go. Our window is small.”

I plucked at my shirt. “It’s the nicest thing I have besides that suit.”

“Which is a real damn shame, but it’s not my problem at the moment. Come on.”

I went back to the bathroom and grabbed the hair dryer. She followed me in. “I want to look presentable.”

“Why? He won’t be there. It’s a quick get in, look around, and get out situation. Hopefully we won’t see a soul. Or…you know, a human. You might see a soul. But they can’t tell on us, so who cares.”

I paused with the plug of the blow dryer an inch from the socket. “But I was going to head to the government building.”

“That’s not on the list. We can head there and talk to the girl if we run out of leads. We’re headed to Valens’s house. Three of the rooms made Kieran’s mother’s list. We’re going to check them out while he’s in a meeting. Don’t worry about Jack.” She motioned to the front door. “I stopped by to say hi, then jabbed him with a needle filled with a liquid roofie. He’ll be sleeping for a while. Zorn didn’t even notice. That’s why you play head games with boys. It helps your misdeeds go unnoticed. I don’t advise that with a Demigod, though. That would just make him more unpredictable. Nothing worse than an unpredictable Demigod.” She paused in her babbling. “Well? Let’s go!”

I batted away all the crazy information she’d slapped at me and latched on to the most salient bit. “You want to go to Valens’s house?” I paused, wrapping my head around this. “You want to go to the house of the Demigod of San Francisco—uninvited—and have a look around? Bria, he kills trespassers. And then traps them on Earth so he can torment them forever.”

“Yeah. He’s a real piece of work, isn’t he? Fucking nuts.” She motioned me forward. “Come on, let’s go. We’re wasting our window.”

“I feel like you’re ignoring me. Bria, he kills trespassers.”

“Don’t worry about that.” She waved the thought away. “We won’t get caught.”

“But…we might.”

“Nah.” She shook her head. “We won’t. We’re good. Come on. It’ll be a quick little peek, and out we go. He’s not even there. Neither is Kieran. I checked, and they’re both in a budget meeting. Those things go forever. We’re good.”

Nervous tremors raced through my body. Adrenaline pumped into my blood stream. I’d guessed I might have to enter the den of the beast, maybe even a likelihood, but I’d half hoped I’d crack the case before the need arose. I’d more than hoped Kieran would be with me.

Valens was ruthless. No, beyond ruthless, he was possibly unhinged. If he found us, even without figuring out what we were doing, or what I was, no one would be able to save us.

“You’re out of your mind,” I said, sticking the plug into the wall. “We should wait for Kieran. He’ll flip if we go without him.”

“Kieran is watched whenever he’s in the magical area. Valens doesn’t trust him, and for good reason. Having him along would bring even more heat down on us.” She shook her head. “No. That’s a terrible idea. Trust me, I’m a master at breaking and entering. I’ve even got a cadaver in my trunk for distraction. Worst case, I load up that cadaver with the soul of a madman, set him loose, and we run like hell. Crazy souls in an unfamiliar body wreak havoc. They really steal the show. This’ll be a piece of cake.”

I put my hands out to the sides. “Breaking into a Demigod’s house is suicide, Bria—”

“Only if you get caught.”

“—and don’t even get me started on carrying dead people around in your trunk.”

“He’s dead. He doesn’t care. That body is just bone and tissue at this point. It’s fine.”

I could only stare at her with my mouth hanging open. How could she possibly be this blasé about something like this.

“I’ll guard the front,” Mordecai said, his patchy head suddenly stuck in the doorway of the bathroom. The hair that had fallen out in his illness was just starting to grow back.

“There.” Bria shoved her finger through the air in triumph. “He’ll guard the front. Case closed.”

“No.” I pointed at him. Then her. “No! Mordecai, you’re supposed to be the voice of reason. This is madness.”

“Despite your theory about the water, it makes sense that the you-know-what would be in his house,” Mordecai replied. “Valens would probably want to guard it. And Bria said Demigod Kieran is watched at all times. If you have to go, better to do it now, at the beginning of the investigation, when there is no suspicion and both of them are engaged elsewhere.”

Bria’s eyebrows lifted and her lips pulled down at the corners. “Wow. You’re really level-headed.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“It wasn’t a compliment. This is probably the only situation where you’ll be any fun.”

Mordecai frowned at her.

I looked between the two of them. The gravity of the situation weighed on my shoulders. Mordecai’s serious expression flipped my stomach.

Fucking hell, I was going to do it. I was going to go along with this outrageously stupid plan.