He ignored my question. “Do you always sneak into your own home through the back door in the middle of the night?”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Yes, as it happens.”
“Well, I didn’t know that. Which is another reason we should get to know each other better. I thought you were a… a burglar.”
The little dragon folded his wings back and trotted over for a pat. Ethan was actually a golden retriever and reverted to the behaviors of one when my father wasn’t commanding him. When not breaking and entering, my father used the golden retriever’s classic, marketable looks for modeling work—dog food advertising, calendars, social media influencer.
“A burglar?” I asked. “What would anyone want to steal? My computer is ancient, and I don’t have a TV.”
He studied me for a moment, his crafty eyes narrowing, then shrugged. “Not that kind of thing.”
“I don’t have any significant amount of metal or gemstone.” I didn’t state the obvious, that I couldn’t afford serious magic at the moment—and I wasn’t going to follow in his footsteps.
“Never mind.” He held out his arms, which confused me, especially when he moved closer, bumping his chest against mine.
Then I realized what he was doing. “Are you trying to hug me?”
“Am I doing it wrong?”
I sighed. I never could tell if he was kidding or not. Malcolm Bellrose was a liar and a cheat, a grifter and a thief, always on the make, never looking out for anyone but himself. But he wasn’t all bad.
I hoped.
“No, you’re doing all right.” I pulled his wrists down and bumped against him for a moment. We drew back, both relieved it was over. My father pushed Ethan away—he’d jumped up on his hindquarters to join in, which neither of us wanted as long as he had three-inch claws and slimy green spit carried forth on his breath of fire.
“Why not let him be a dog all the time?” I asked. “Not just when he’s got a camera pointed at him.” I scratched Ethan behind the… earlike holes. “I think he’d be happier.”
“But would I?” He waved a finger at Ethan, and the dragon bounded across the kitchen, flapping his wings until he was airborne. His fire breath set a kitchen towel blazing.
Saving my magical strength, I used my flesh-and-bone fingers to flick the towel into the sink. “It’s not all about you.” I extinguished the fire with a spray from the faucet.
But it was a waste of breath. Malcolm couldn’t comprehend a universe without him at the center.
I peered out my kitchen window into the darkness. Last I’d seen him, he’d been dating a Freewitch. They were radicals who wanted to overthrow the Protectorate. Some even wanted to take over the entire nonmagical world. “Are you alone? Or did you drag that nut along with you?”
“Such ignorance,” Malcolm said, clicking his tongue. “As it happens, the end of my last relationship has left me quite heartbroken. Not that you could see it, but Chantal was delightful. I thought you’d give up that kind of conventional thinking after the Protectorate fired you.”
That was ironic. In spite of his criminal nature, my father had always held the Protectorate in higher esteem than I did. He was a notorious thief, but as the eldest male witch in the illustrious Bellrose family, he still held a bizarre respect for the ancient’s Protectorate’s status and power.
“They didn’t fire me,” I said. “It was an honorable discharge. It was officially recorded as an Incurable Inability.”
“Believe that if that makes you feel better,” he said.
I pulled open the door, determined not to show he had the power to affect me in any way whatsoever. Malcolm cast a spell over the threshold as he stepped outside. Right behind him, I immediately neutralized my father’s attempt at breaking the barrier I’d set for dangerous creatures—such as himself—and inhaled the night air.
I could smell trouble. The fae’s fearful singing still echoed through the river valley.
Why was my father here tonight? Tristan’s death wouldn’t affect him personally, but he might use it as a distraction. There could be something extremely valuable nearby. Something he thought I had in the house.
Not that kind of thing, he’d said.
I realized that I’d kicked him out of the house too soon. He was going to get away without telling me why he’d come. “You weren’t trying to steal my charms, were you?”
He paused on the steps and turned. “Your charms?”
I put my fingers on the warm wooden beads around my neck and sent out a small current. Nothing painful, just the witch equivalent of a tap on the shoulder. I didn’t detect any of my fingerprints on him, nothing I’d made to sell. “My beaded focus strings are my livelihood now. I sell them on the magic market—the legal one. You might not know anything about that. To pay rent, buy groceries. Make an honest living.” He’d never given me a thing, but I didn’t think he’d actually steal the food out of my mouth.
“Only because you couldn’t hold a real job.”
I followed him around the house to the front yard. “What were you looking for, Dad?”
But he’d moved too far from the strongest source of my power in the kitchen and had broken into a jog. The dragon’s breath was a blurry flashlight, leading the way.
“You, of course,” he shouted. “But I’m intruding. Lovely to see you. Terribly sad you don’t feel the same way.”
“Oh, give me a break,” I said. “You snuck into my house in the middle of the—”
A crackling sound cut me off. I spun away, squeezing my eyes shut as the white light flashed.
My father and his pet were gone.
Just like that.
Malcolm was rightly proud of his teleport spell. I myself hadn’t mastered it. It wasn’t the kind of spell you wanted to do without complete confidence. Unless you didn’t care about your limbs, of course. One failed attempt at twenty had been enough to scare me away from those arts for a lifetime. I still had a scar on my left arm. The elbow wasn’t quite as pointy as it had been.
Damn, he could be a mile away by now. Unlike the rest of town, he wouldn’t be blocked by the emergency vehicles on the bridge.
What was he looking for? It couldn’t be a coincidence he’d appeared only hours after Tristan was killed. Whatever he was looking for, it had to be magical. Something he could sell or something he could use?
I blinked into the darkness, searching for any hint, any clue, of what he’d come for.
And found something—someone—else.
“Hello, Alma,” he said.
I spun around. Unlike my father, this was a visitor I’d been expecting.
The demon who had cost me my job.
Chapter Three
Seth Dumont stood in a beam of light from the house, grinning at me, darkly handsome as always. He looked thirty. I didn’t know how old he really was; told myself I didn’t care.
“Keep your voice down, SD,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “It’s the middle of the night.” I cast out my senses to make sure Willy was all right. I didn’t think Seth would hurt me, but demons were known to hunt fairies. Gnomes weren’t as weak as little pixies, but they were part of the fae world. For all I knew, gnome kebab was Seth’s favorite dish.
“Why are you wearing your pajamas?” He looked me over, frowning. “And were you swimming in them?”
“Busy night.” I fingered my necklace, focused my senses. “As you must know.”
“Shame about your ex,” Seth said.
He bowed his head, but I knew he wasn’t grieving. With Tristan gone, Seth was now free to explore Silverpool. Theoretically, he could invite other demons from all over the world to join him and overwhelm the Protectorate’s resources to protect not only fae but nonmagical humanity. All demons were equally dangerous, and all needed to be destroyed.
Theoretically. That’s what they’d taught me when I was an agent. But I’d developed doubts. What about due process? How could we execute somebody for a crime he or she might co
mmit?
And how could we be certain that all demons were evil? Ancient mythology from all over the world had other theories about the varied nature of supernatural spirits.
My doubts had gnawed at me during my years of training, but I’d kept them to myself. Surely, I figured, I’d learn the answers with more experience. So I worked hard, practiced my spells, learned my lessons, and looked forward to my future as a prestigious demon killer. Finally, after a childhood of embarrassment as Malcolm Bellrose’s daughter, I would be able to hold my head high.
But then Seth Dumont had showed up. I don’t know what he’d done to draw attention to himself when he’d arrived in San Francisco, but my first big mission had been to track him down and drive a silver stake through his ribs.
I tried. I really did. I found him. I trapped him—and then, to the shame of my family name and my bank account, I let him walk away.
The upper-level witches who probed me afterward determined I was unable to kill not only this demon, but any creature. My heart was too soft. I was fundamentally too weak. A day later, my brief career as a Protectorate agent came to an end. The official dismissal report termed my weakness an Incurable Inability.
Only I knew that Seth had stayed in the area, apparently able to drop off the Protectorate’s radar again. Sometimes when I drove out of town, he would appear and say hello, and we’d developed a bizarre almost-friendship. Once, he’d surprised me in the tampon aisle at a drugstore in Santa Rosa. It was usually something slightly embarrassing like that.
Honestly, I wasn’t sure I’d done the right thing by letting him go. In fact, ever since I’d seen Tristan’s body, I’d been wondering if I’d been an idiot, that Seth was just as evil as the Protectorate had said.
“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me who killed him?” I asked.
“Me? Why would I know anything?”
“Maybe because you killed him.”
Seth’s voice hardened. “You really think I’d do that?”
“Tristan wouldn’t be the first witch you’d attacked.”
He stepped closer. It was too dark to see his face, but I could feel the air around me get warmer. A living, breathing space heater. “I never attacked you.”
As chilled as I was in the night air, I stepped away from his space-heater warmth. Seth had way too much sex appeal and the enthusiasm for wielding it to get what he wanted. “You threw my partner into the San Francisco Bay.”
“He surprised me. It was a self-defense reflex.” He moved closer, crowding me. His voice lowered. “But I apologize. As soon as you released me, I made sure he was all right.”
“They found him sleeping in a day spa in Japantown.”
“That was my doing. Warm and dry, smelling much better than before, am I right?”
Perhaps it was stupid, but I believed him. Darius did say he’d never felt so good. And we had attacked Seth from behind, unprovoked, as he walked across the Golden Gate Bridge.
“I’m freezing,” I said with a sigh. “Let’s go inside.”
His white teeth flashed. “Thanks for the invite.”
“Yeah, just this once.” I had enough power inside my house to protect myself. As well as a silver stake I’d kept as a memento. But I knew the debt he owed me was more powerful than any witch’s magic.
His chuckle trailed behind me as I walked around the house and through the door into the kitchen. Unlike my father, he didn’t pause at the threshold to test the boundary spell. With his cockiness—and my spoken invitation—he marched right in.
“How’s dear old Dad?” He bent over, swiped a blob of dragon slobber off the kitchen tile, made a face, and went to the sink to wash his hands. As he sudsed up, he didn’t mention the embers of dish towel smoldering in the basin. “Still up to his tricks? No Bright witch would treat fatherhood the way he does.”
I began to protest, to defend “dear old Dad,” but I agreed with him. “He was looking for something,” I said. “Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Are you looking for it too?”
“Looking for what?” Seth wiped his hands, his long nose sniffing the air, and before I could stop him, he’d wandered into the living room.
And from there, he disappeared somewhere else. I finally found him washing his hands in the bathroom.
I blocked the door before he made it into my bedroom. “Did you come here for whatever it was my father wanted?”
He looked at me with eyes as blue as a Sapphire witch’s robes. “No,” he said. And stupid me, I felt myself believing him again.
It really was an Incurable Inability.
I braced my hands on either side of the doorjamb and met his gaze. Then I stepped aside and let him out of the bathroom—but I followed him to the kitchen.
“Look, SD, I’ve had a rough night. What do you want?” I sighed a little so he could see a hint of my grief and exhaustion.
“The same thing I’ve always wanted.” His gaze dropped to my chest.
Before I could react, the dish towel in the sink burst into flames again.
I rolled my eyes. “Fine.” I walked over to put it out. I wasn’t sure if the flames were real or magic, but I could use water on either one. “You don’t want to tell me. Time for you to leave.” I took the sprayer from the sink and aimed it at the blaze. The flame disappeared from the middle and then outward, leaving a shimmering, Hula Hoop–sized ring for a split second before completely going dark.
“It’s the truth, Alma.”
I picked up the charred remains of the dish towel and flung it at him.
“I like what you’ve done with your hair,” he said, gracefully dancing out of the way. “The natural curls go with the wild-witch-in-the-forest thing.”
“Just because I didn’t kill you that night doesn’t mean I won’t hurt you now.”
The smirk faded from his lips. “All right. I couldn’t resist. I heard about the Protector’s death and had to see if it was true. I came to see you because… it seemed polite.”
I went over and cleaned up the remains of the towel, this time dumping it in the trash. “Courtesy accomplished, now you can go home and celebrate. Set your own towels on fire.”
“I’m sorry you lost a friend,” he said softly.
Delayed grief stung my eyelids. “Well, I can confirm he’s dead. Very dead.” I cleared my throat.
“Let me comfort you.” He held out his arms in a display of faux paternal comfort that was even less convincing than my father’s had been.
“Nice try.” Wiping my eyes, I maneuvered out of reach. I’d had enough company for tonight. If Seth murdered a friend of mine, he wouldn’t come to see me immediately afterward. Just because he was a demon didn’t mean he was pure evil.
Of course, I was alone in thinking that.
“The invitation into my home is about to officially expire. Time to go.”
“It’s almost dawn. I’ll make us breakfast.”
“No, thank you. I’ll be climbing into bed.” I strode past him and opened the door, wrapping my fingers around my necklace for a quick burst of energy in case it was necessary.
He sauntered over to me, his full lips curving into a smile. “I won’t joke about joining you there.”
“You just did. Now out.”
His grin widened. “If you say so, witch. I suspect you could make me if I put up a fight.”
“You bet I could.”
With a wink, he stepped outside. Just as I was closing the door between us, he asked, “Will there be a funeral?”
I was wondering the same thing. Tristan didn’t have family, and the Protectorate kept their rites invitation only. “None of your business.”
“I wish that were true, but the Protectorate has made itself my business,” he said. “As you well know.”
The chill in his voice was as sharp as the night breeze. As Protector, Tristan had merely blocked demons from entering Silverpool. His replacement might be more aggressive.
I met his gaze. Neith
er one of us wanted that to happen. “I imagine there will be a memorial service for nonmag people because he owned the winery and knew everybody. But I probably won’t be involved in that. I’m too fringe.”
“Shall I subtly encourage all his ex-girlfriends to attend?” His white teeth gleamed again. “Imagine what a crowd that could be. They’d have to hold it at the Oakland Coliseum.”
My sympathy for him and his kind vanished. Seth just might be able to drop a few magical hints into a few—or a few dozen—unsuspecting human minds if he was feeling bored or vengeful.
“If you interfere in any way,” I said in a low voice, “I’ll drive a silver fork through your heart and feed you to my father’s dragon.”
Waving, he disappeared into the shadows, his rich laughter trailing away with him.
Chapter Four
The sound of howling woke me up.
I rolled to the edge of my bed and slapped the top of the nightstand for my phone.
Just before nine. At first I’d thought the noise was my alarm, but as my head cleared, I realized the noise was coming from the other room.
I clambered to my feet without a quarter of the grace my elegant father had, pushing the hair out of my face as I staggered through the house to find the source of the howling. My house was only nine hundred and fifty square feet, so it didn’t take long. I found the creature in the living room trapped between my file cabinet, filled with beads, and the redwood staff, filled with magic, that leaned against it. Within the triangle of space between the two, wedged against the wall, a large black dog of mixed breed sat and howled.
“Hello there,” I said.
The howling continued.
Where did he come from? I’d set up a second set of guarding spells before going to bed.
The curtain over the window above the file cabinet rustled in the wind. Had he simply jumped in? My spells were only directed at enemies. Perhaps he wasn’t dangerous and might not be magical at all, although some animal sixth sense had told him to stay away from the staff. Away from home, it was only slightly stronger than one of my redwood beads. But inside the house, because I’d carved it from a broken beam I’d found in the attic, it was quite powerful.
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