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Rage erupted in my veins. I’d seen enough.

“Hey!” I marched forward. Ice flew at me, struck my thigh, my hip, and one shard whizzed by my arm, but by then I was inside the wispy cloud where the ice witch glowed blue. Her eyes widened with shock—her icicles hadn’t stopped me—and that shock gave me an opening. I grabbed her neck and flung her against the cellar’s back wall.

“Lady, I do not want to hurt you, but I will if you hurt them.” I flung a hand behind me, gesturing at my two wounded partners.

She didn’t seem to be listening, and rising to her feet, vapor poured off her as a cloak of cloud.

Whatever she was, it was powerful. But not my kind of powerful.

If I got my hand around her neck again, I could snap it in two, but I really, really did not want to do that. “Listen. I am a nice person. Most of the time.” I lowered my hands, fingers twitching. “We don’t want to hurt you.”

With a vicious snarl, she snapped, “Get out of my house!” And as she flung out a hand, a wall of ice sealed the cellar behind me, trapping me in the far end with her. Any second now, Zee would poof inside . . . and she’d stake him through the heart. I saw the intent in her eyes, but maybe the brittle cracks of fear too.

Uncertainty, confusion. Was she scared of us?

“Stay out there, Zee! I’ve got this.”

But as I turned to find the ice witch’s jagged teeth bared and her blue eyes blazing with arctic power, I was not at all certain I had this.

CHAPTER 9

How do you talk down an angry ice witch who thinks you’re trespassing without getting stabbed by a bunch of icy shards?

Her blue lips rippled in a snarl. She raised her right hand, and inside her grasp, a dagger-like piece of translucent ice formed.

“Wait!”

Surprisingly she hesitated, hand raised, nails glistening like tiny icicles.

Now I had to say something . . . something to convince her we weren’t here to do her harm unless she meant us harm, but also something to convince her I absolutely could do her harm if it came to that. “So uh . . . here’s the thing.”

“Is it the vampire?” Zee called, his voice muffled behind the ice door. “I get it, nobody likes vampires. I can get rid of him if that helps?”

She tilted her head and blinked. I really didn’t think it was Victor’s presence in particular making her angry, but all of us.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said again. What was that, three times now? But I hadn’t been stabbed again, so maybe it was progress? “We’re just trying to figure out what’s going on. If this is your house, then I’m sorry, we didn’t realize.”

Blue light glinted off the jagged shard in her fist.

“We’ll go . . . it’s just, those people . . . the frozen ones? Are they dead?”

“Who are you?” Her voice was soft but held an air of authority, and the accent wasn’t local or even American. Perhaps European of some kind?

“I’m Adam.” I touched my chest. “And the warrior demon is Zee. The vampire is Victor.”

Her shining eyes narrowed. “You have strength, Adam. You are of the old world.”

“I’m a Lost One. A uh . . . dragon?” Sometimes revealing what I was had people intrigued, other times it made them run screaming. As she studied me, she seemed to be leaning more toward intrigued.

“Dragon.” She lowered the ice dagger and with a wrist-flick, vanished it altogether. “It has been many seasons since I’ve conversed with your kind. Are your kin still oppressive kings of the wild lands?”

“Uh . . . Yeah, mostly. Although I’m kind of the only one left.” Sort of.

“That is good. Sad, but good.”

I had to agree with her, although I wasn’t all that sad about being the last.

As she wasn’t brandishing a dagger anymore, were we friends now?