“Sorry,” I said, my voice more self-contained than I expected. “No Merlin. But if a demon was called and collected here, I have the only tool that might help.” I slid from the car and pulled on the jacket. “Thanks.” On top of the jacket that smelled of Villetti—a scent I had forgotten but that was suddenly familiar—I whirled my cloak around me and let the pain of the null energies settle deep into my cold bones. I took my staff into my uninjured hand, turning it so the trigger was close to my thumb. There was a time when I had tried to inlay more amulets into the staff, until I realized the null antimagic sucked all the workings into itself.
I needed more amulets, the kind I had created and carried when the bounty was placed on my head. The kind I carried when I had no choice but to kill. The amulets I had left in my apartment. Yeah. My thinking was off from the concussion.
I adjusted the tiara and snorted softly at my reflection in the dark vehicle windows. I looked like an idiot in the borrowed clothes, a blue cloak, a staff, and a freaking tiara.Please, dear God, don’t let anyone take a pic.
EJ
Sleet crunched under their feet and pelted against their already wet hair as they crossed to the house. EJ tossed the palillos up and down in one hand as he followed his sister into the garage. The castanets had a little power remaining, a soft chime of energy, sounding of F sharp. It was enough to slow down asprite—a mini-demon—but not enough to stop one. Anything larger, even achort, would blow right through the working.
He paused at the body because Angie did, mentally calculating their client’s wounds. Nearly beheaded by the double blades. Messy way to die.
“Do you agree that a Kogot did that?” she asked, her voice distant, remote.
His sister’s pale face reflected the light of her unicom flashlight. Her expression was detached, as though she stood outside of herself. It was the way seasoned cops—or warriors—looked at dead bodies.
An unexpected wave of disbelief flowed through him. Angie had been through something he didn’t know about. Angie had…secrets.
The only time she had been away from family was when she lived with Asshat. The asshat who had cheated on her. What if it went a lot deeper than that?Son of a witch.
EJ said, “Yeah. Not a vampire, though the resemblance is very close.”
“Could a vampire have done it and faked it in some way to make it look like a Kogot?”
From EJ’s other side, Walter said, “They could have faked it to the senses of a human or a witch.”
“But you?” Villetti asked.
“I can tell that no Mithran, no Naturaleza, did this.”
Mithrans were technically the good vamps, asking permission, signing contracts. Naturaleza wanted the hunt, the pursuit, the thrill of chasing terrified humans. The queen kept them in line, but there were always fangheads who hunted in secret. Angie’s ex had been on the blade’s edge of going Naturaleza when she left him.
Now, Asshat was back, dragging her past with him like a taunt. Or challenge. Or bait.
“Layer upon layer,” Angie said softly. “I thought I was past all this.” She turned and walked toward the door to the house.
Past all what?With one part of his mind, EJ evaluated his sister, as he followed her inside. From the moment she heard that her ex was sleeping with the enemy, something had come over her.
With another part of his mind, EJ listened for the broken sounds of magical attack. He hated that anyone else was going in first, but Angie had the only efficient weapon and the best defense. Angie protecting him wasn’t something that had happened since they were children. He was the one who had gone to war, had foughtshedim,chorts, anddjinn, not Angie.
“Three entering at our twenty,” Villetti said softly from behind them, his voice also sounding over unicom and headsets. He gave their names as they stepped into the darkened hallway. They were clearly on record, and officially part of law enforcement response, not pals doing a favor.
Angie moved steadily into the house, her eyes sweeping leftand right, her cloak swinging heavily, her injured hand clutching an amulet that contained ahedge of thornsprotective shield, and the other hand gripping her staff. She moved like a warrior. She moved the way Aunt Jane did when she was taking over a room.What the hell?
As a child witch, Angie had been utterly self-confident, able to work with raw magic the way Mozart worked with music. But something happened the night of theChange. After that, Angie’s magic changed too.
EJ vaguely remembered that, for a time, Angie was aloof, sad, and refused to use her magic at all. Eventually, she had adapted, her magic had adapted, and her self-confidence had returned, but even then she hadn’t walked, hadn’t moved, like the Angie that paced in front of him with the slow, cautious gait of a soldier in a minefield. She had been quiet, studious.
“Half bath clear,” she murmured.
“Copy,” Villetti said from the garage entrance door.
Until she went off to university. Angie had come home from her first semester a colder, harder person. Lonely and defiant, closed in and angry, resentful of everything and everyone. She had suffered because she was a powerful Everhart witch. Because she was part of the queen’s family. Because she was a princess.
Not that she had been picked on or bullied. She’d had no idea how to make friends among humans. She had been ignored and probably feared. People had whispered about her. Stepped aside from her when she walked from building to building…with her entourage.
Right. She’d had full-time bodyguards…She had escaped from the nighttime vamp several times and the last time Angie slipped away, she’d been attacked. She’d wounded two men andtied them up in magic for the police. It had created a sensation on campus.
He had been in school in Asheville, part of a huge social group, busy with sports, and doing teenaged shit with his friends. But that attack he remembered. Their parents had been mad and worried. He recalled a huge fight around the dinner table.
