Merle stared after the retreating witches, her focus on Juneau burning with a lethal force that ignited her blood. Her instincts screamed at her to run after the bitch, to melt Juneau’s inner organs in a firestorm of rage, and if the wards didn’t stop her, she would have already lunged at the Elder witch.

But cunning as the head of the Laroche family was, she’d calibrated the protective spells around the meeting place to allow her own people to leave…while the Aequitas remained trapped inside. The wards would fall in a few minutes, Juneau had said, once she and her acolytes had a head start.

Yeah, that spiteful piece of trash knew all too well that Merle wouldn’t have let her leave.

“Merle?” Elaine asked form beside her, voice gentle.

“I will get him back,” she said through gritted teeth. Turning to the other Elders, she added, “We will get him back.”

Kristen, head of the Frost family, shifted her weight and cleared her throat. “Maybe we should discuss this.”

“There is nothing to discuss.” A dull pain throbbed behind Merle’s temples. “By the gods, I will go get him all by myself if need be, but I’d rather have you all backing me. I’d do the same if it was one of your family in Juneau’s clutches. And it could be. This is bigger than just me.”

“Merle is right,” Shobha said, her sari swishing around her feet as she walked closer. “This is not simply about Merle and Juneau. It could just as easily have been Thorne she took,” she added, mentioning the young shadow demon who was mated to her granddaughter Anjali. “There is hatred behind Juneau’s actions, a dangerous sort of fanaticism, and it can and will spread to anyone else who stands in her way.”

Hanna nodded. “She would have come after Sarai, too. If not for Alek and Lily’s help…” The head of the Roth family swallowed hard, the pain of recent events darkening her expression.

Like Lily, Sarai—the heir to the Roth line—had been turned into a pranagraha demon during a nefarious scheme by some “seriously underfucked demon bastards,” as Lily so succinctly put it. Sarai was forced into a mating with a cruel son of a bitch pranagraha, her prospects bleak—once mated, pranagrahas had to stay together for life, and if one partner died, so did the other.

The potion to reverse the transformation couldn’t be brewed until Alek procured the rare missing ingredient from Arawn…in exchange for a lifetime of service to the Demon Lord. Lily, for whom the potion was actually intended, decided to stay demon so she could mate with Alek, giving Sarai the one and only chance at turning back into a witch.

The transformation also severed the mating bond to the demon who had abused her, killing him in the process. An event Sarai celebrated with flowing champagne and a roaring party.

“We owe Lily and Alek,” Hanna said, her brown eyes hard. “I will never agree to surrender either of them to Juneau. And we will stand with you, Merle, to get Rhun back.”

Merle gave the older witch a grim, thankful nod.

“Are we all agreed, then,” Elaine asked, “that Juneau’s conditions for peace are unacceptable?”

A chorus of assent.

“So we fight,” the head of the Donovan family said. “And that includes fighting for the freedom of Merle’s husband.” A pointed look at Kristen. “We just need to be smart about it.”

The magic of the wards began to crack.

“I’ll cast a locator spell to find out where she’s keeping him,” Merle said, and exchanged a glance with Elaine.

The other witch nodded, aware that Merle wouldn’t actually be the one to do it, since she wasn’t allowed to draw on her magic. “I’ll come with you so we can talk details.”

More cracks in the wards.

“We’ll be in touch once we know where he’s being held.” Merle looked at each of the Elders in turn. “Until then, we all need to be on our guard and warn our families. I’m not convinced Juneau won’t stoop to a surprise strike at our most vulnerable.”

Sinister faces all around, the gravity of the situation settling about them like a coating of ash.

The wards dissolved on a whisper in the air. Merle nodded at Elaine, and they hurried back to the parking lot.

“I’ll have to ride with you,” Merle said, her breath coming short from the brisk pace. Her heart stung, but this pain had nothing to do with physical exertion. “Rhun has my car keys.”

Elaine shot her a sympathetic glance.

Merle’s cell phone rang just as they drove off.

“Lil,” Merle said when she accepted the call. “That bitch has Rhun.”

Her best friend let off a streak of curses that would have impressed a seventeenth-century sailor, and demanded the full story. So Merle told her. How she managed not to cry, she didn’t know. Perhaps because her rage was so overwhelming it eclipsed everything else. And maybe because tears wouldn’t bring Rhun back. Focused wrath would.

“You’re coming to the mansion,” Lily ordered. “I still can’t go outside, and I want to be there for the locator spell. And all the sneaky war planning.”

“Of course,” Merle said, feigning offense. “You know I wouldn’t plan a prison break without you.”

“Damn straight.”

They had to make a quick stop at the Victorian to pick up supplies for the spell, and arrived at the Murrays’ a few minutes later. Elaine parked in the circular driveway in front of the stately mansion, and Lily and Alek greeted them in the foyer—though the two pranagraha demons took care to remain out of the direct sunlight shining through the huge window above the door.

“We prepared the sitting room,” Lily said, leading them into one of the numerous salons of the mansion, whose original purpose seemed to have been an ostentatious display of expensive furniture. The Murray family came from old money, the house a testament to priorities of a bygone era.

Nowadays, especially since the death of Hazel’s older sister, Isabel—incidentally, the witch who instigated Maeve’s kidnapping with the aim of letting the demon steal Maeve’s powers for Isabel—the rooms of the mansion slowly underwent a change from prestigious declaration to charming gallimaufry. Hazel’s many-faceted hobbies had started filling up a lot of the less-used salons, and the sitting room currently resembled a quilting workshop.

Lily had cleared one low table and set a detailed map of Portland on it. Merle took the candles out of her bag, placing one on each cardinal point—east, south, west, and north. Next she pulled out Rhun’s brush from the bathroom at home, plucked a few strands of hair from it, and attached them to the pendulum she’d fetched.

“Elaine?” She held out the salt.

“I’ve got it from here.”

The Elder witch took the salt, pouring it in a circle around the table as a ward against intrusive spirits which might impair the spell.

“If you would light the sage?” Elaine asked.

With a nod, Merle pulled out the dried herbs, lit them, and waved the heavy smoke in the room to dispel negative energy, another precaution to ensure the spell wouldn’t be corrupted.

“This is fascinating,” Alek murmured from his spot against the wall, arms crossed. “I’ve never seen witches work before.” He cleared his throat. “Well, not from a friendly vantage point, I mean. Usually I had to duck and run, so…”

“Shush, prana-groupie.” Lily patted his shoulder.

Magic rose in the air, crackling like electricity. Elaine swung the pendulum over the map as she murmured the words of the spell.

Merle’s heart pounded up into her throat as she watched the pendulum swing, swing, swing while the power in the room grew to a crescendo. Lily and Alek winced, the magic no doubt abrasive to their demon senses.

With a hush, the power flattened out, the light of the candles extinguished on a whisper of magic. The pendulum flew out of Elaine’s hand as if yanked away, its pointy tip embedding in the opposite wall.

Silence.

“Does that mean we need to go that way?” Alek asked, brows raised and eyes on the pendulum.

“No,” Merle choked out. She could barely breathe past the pressure on her chest.

“It means,” Lily chimed in, her voice soft, “the spell failed.”

Alek pushed off the wall. “What? But doesn’t that only happen when—”

“He’s still alive.” Merle rubbed a hand over her breastbone, where she felt the mating bond. Weaker, and with an echo of pain, but intact.

“Then how…?”

“Juneau is likely blocking him,” Elaine said, the corners of her mouth turning down.

Alek looked at Lily. “Like Isabel blocked the demon who kidnapped Maeve?”

She’d undoubtedly told him most of the tale of how Merle and Rhun met half a year ago, under circumstances that were anything but romantic. The fact that Isabel had indeed blocked the psychic signature of the demon so Rhun couldn’t find him was the reason Merle had to make the ill-fated bargain with Arawn in the first place—the Demon Lord was the only one who could break the blocking spell.

“Yeah,” Merle said, her heart heavy, her arms starting to shake with the drop of her adrenaline. “And like hell will I make the same mistake twice.” She met Lily’s eyes, then Alek’s. “I will not ask him,” she added, steel in her voice. “Not again.”

She’d lost her sister the night she went to Arawn for help.

“I don’t think you have to.” Elaine cleaned up the salt circle with a dustpan and brush. “When you were looking for that demon, you had no idea where to start or whom to ask. This is different. Juneau is likely holding him in the home of one of her witches, and even if she is not, there should be several witches among the Draconians who would know where she’s keeping him. Juneau didn’t drag him there herself. So.” She straightened, threw the salt in the trash, shrugged. “All we need to do is catch a witch who can tell us where he is.”

“Oh, great,” Merle grumbled. “Let me just get my old witch trap out of the basement, and we’re all set.”

“Look at the bright side.” Lily walked over to her, slung an arm around her shoulders. “When we do catch one, you get to torture the information out of her.”

“That’s more of an if,” Merle muttered. She was shaking hard now, had to sink down on one of the couches, with Lily propping her up.

Maeve had left, and now Rhun was gone too, and she was so damn powerless—literally. She couldn’t even use her magic to get either of them back. The gods must hate me.

And catching a witch… It was going to be impossibly difficult. Witches were hard to ambush in general, as they rarely went out alone, and had their guard up most of the time. In light of the tense situation in the community, Juneau’s witches would be even more alert, harder to catch unawares. It might take days to trap one.

And all the while Rhun would suffer.

“He’s hurting,” she whispered.

“Hey,” Lily said gently, squeezing her shoulder. “You know how tough he is. Remember how he was all charm and swagger when you found him chained up in our basement? Juneau and Isabel couldn’t even crack him a little. And if anyone is able to endure pain, it’s him. He spent two decades in the Shadows, and he came out all right.” She shrugged. “Well, mostly all right. He does have that OCD thing going, but I’m not sure he didn’t have that even before doing time.”

Merle’s mood took a turn for the worse at the thought of the dark, torturous prison dimension where her grandmother bound Rhun as a punishment for a crime he didn’t even commit. Yes, he’d survived those twenty unending years of drowning in agony…but that was all the more reason she needed to get him out, and soon.

Rhun had seen enough pain to last him for the rest of his life.