I looked at him, and I think I might have managed a single eyebrow quirk. Maybe it took bowel-twisting fear to give me that ability. “Tea and biscuits.”

“With honey?” He shrugged. “I mean, if we’re staying, we might as well be comfortable.”

“You will not stay. I will devour you!”

Oh, I got what Robert was doing. I winked at him. “You know, that bedroom on the first floor would be perfect for my office. I could put a giant Jesus picture right in the middle of the wall. Maybe throw in a few statues of Saint Michael.”

The demon hissed and spread out in front of us. “Insolent.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it even though my legs were jelly and I was pretty sure I’d never been so afraid in my life. “Not the first time I’ve heard that.”

“No, it’s really not. I was there,” Robert confirmed. He grinned at me, laughing, and those icy blue eyes glittered with humor. “It’s a family trait, I think.”

The room went from bright and airy with sunlight spilling through the window to a darkness so complete, I couldn’t see in front of me.

“Oh shit.” I stumbled, barely able to keep my feet under me. All around me was darkness, death, despair. It crawled into me and reminded me of my lack of worth.

I was past my best before date.

I hadn’t even been able to conceive a child.

I was out of my league with Crash. Corb was using me.

This job wasn’t meant for me. I was going to get my friends killed.

No good.

Too old.

Out of shape.

Useless. Beneath notice. A joke.

Scared.

I was so scared that everything around me was a lie. That everything I was, or thought I was, was some fantasy I’d built on a stack of beliefs that weren’t even real. My heart slowed as tendrils of darkness wrapped around it and squeezed. Tears leaked from my eyes.

One less of your kind.

Sadness crushed me, and I bowed under the weight of the darkness and the truths it spoke to my heart. Truths I’d been trying to ignore, trying to re-write.

Glass shattered behind me, and a warm breath of spring air spooled in around me, cutting through the black weight that had taken hold of me. An arm wrapped around my waist, and then I was falling through the air, floating. Maybe I was dying. You saw a bright light when you died, from what I understood, and bright light burned my eyes . . . except I’d almost died just a week ago, and I’d seen nothing of the sort then.

This light . . . it encompassed everything. I couldn’t see anything outside of it, but I sure as hell felt the ground as I landed flat on my back, all the air rushing out of me, showing me that I was indeed still alive. At least for the moment.

I lay there, waiting for my lungs to kick back in, knowing they would but not sure how long it would take. To my left, Robert swayed, his long hair hanging forward over his face once more, his skeletal body rattling with what could only be fear.

He had saved me. Again.

I lay there and stared up at the shattered window and the shadow arms that clung to the edges. When you looked into darkness like that, and it looked back, there was only one thing to do.

My body was moving, running on instinct before I could think it through, before I could even get a real breath of air. I ran, hobbling, sucking wind hard until I hit the front yard of Gran’s house. I hurtled over the small fence and crawled across the grass until I was under the oak tree. Robert hurried after me.

“That was a terrible idea,” I said.

“Bad,” he rumbled. He didn’t have a big vocabulary in this form, so I suspected the effort it had taken him to come out with bad meant it was maybe even worse than I’d thought.

I stayed there under the oak tree, cold and shaking, for a long time—hours was what it felt like, but I couldn’t be sure. My mind was torn up, freaking out about what I’d seen and felt, about falling from a second-story window. Robert crouched beside me, unmoving, a silent companion. Or mostly silent.

“Whiskey,” he finally said.

“That’s a ducking excellent idea.” I pushed to my feet, my legs tingling from the stress of . . . everything. I let myself into the house, went straight for the liquor cabinet, and grabbed the full bottle of whiskey and a single glass.

Maybe I could have gone to Crash and warmed myself with his heat. I could have called Corb or any of my other friends to be with me. But something had happened in that house with the blood-born demon that shook me to my core and made my old wounds raw again.

I wasn’t sure I could face anyone. That I was worth facing anyone.

Back out under the oak tree partially hidden by the hanging Spanish moss, I poured Robert a drink of whiskey first. He knocked it back like a pro, the golden liquid sliding down his spine and puddling under his butt bone.

I put the bottle to my lips and tipped it back, drawing more than a shot or two, the firewater burning its way through me, driving out the cold. Lowering it, I drew a shaky breath and poured Robert another drink.

Drink, pour, repeat. That became the mantra. The bottle was more than half empty by the time the sun starting going down. Bridgette came over at one point and asked me a question. I’m not sure what, but I saluted her with the whiskey bottle and mumbled, “Every house will whisper its secrets to you, if you listen.”

She backed away, understandably, and I think she might have told me to sleep it off. I slumped against the oak tree, wondering where in the hell that had come from. No, that’s not true, I’d seen that saying somewhere. I fumbled with my bag and pulled out the old spell book. Or I pulled a spell book out. The kraft brown paper crinkled under my fingers as I cracked it open, looking for that line.

I couldn’t find the passage I wanted, though—my drunken fingers unable to even separate pages properly, never mind find the right book. The sun was gone and with it the light, and I knew I had to be in Gran’s room, that I had to watch the house next door.

I had to tell my friends to not come home. I dug around in my bag until I found the cell phone Suzy had insisted on. Managed to put together a group text, telling everyone to stay away from the house until things had settled.

Stay away my friends, I love you so mmmmmuch, oh gawd, I’d feeling so ducking bad if something happened to, so you need to go sleep off somewhere else.

“Too many things,” I whispered. I scrubbed my hands over my face, which meant I rubbed one side with the phone, and then looked at the book in my lap. I’d flipped all the way to the back looking for a silly saying about houses. The top edge of the back page curled ever so slightly, separated at the corner like . . . it was glued together?

I picked at the edge with a fingernail, still drunk as a skunk but pleased to have a distraction from everything. The paper crackled as I pulled at it, and it slowly gave way under my persistence.

A slip of paper fluttered out, hidden in that pocket between the pages. I picked it up and stared at the words, not really understanding what I was seeing. Of course, I read it out loud.

“Of death and power, of magic and pain,

That which comes shall find those slain,

Raised anew and given life,

A warning alone, this call is strife.”

I frowned at the paper, turned it over to see nothing but a number on it. Three. What the hell did a three have to do with whatever it was I’d just read?

I folded the paper, tucked it back into the pocket, and squeezed the edges shut. They stuck, not well, but they stuck. Good enough for me. I leaned my head back and looked up into the underside of the oak tree’s leaves.

Feeling like shit. Not because I was drunk, but because the darkness in the Sorrel-Weed house had pricked holes into every piece of self-confidence I’d been building since Alan and I had split. Every fear, every worry that I was going to duck up this new life of mine, ate at me once more. The sound of footsteps turned my head to a man in a long black trench coat marching up my gran’s walkway to the steps leading up to the front door.

I recognized him.

“My plate spilleth the duck over,” I muttered to myself, doing that stage whisper the drunken do. You know the one.

Roderick paused on the path and then bent over to look under the hanging moss and stare at me sitting under the oak tree, a half empty whiskey bottle in hand, skeletal buddy passed out beside me and snoring ever so slightly.

I held up the bottle, forgetting for a moment that he was a council guy that I probably shouldn’t like at all. “Wanna drink?”

16

Roderick turned out not to be too bad in terms of the other douche-tastic council members. Okay, the only other ones I knew were Davin and No Face Bruce, but they’d both made an impression—neither good. Roderick may have forced magic on me in the hotel, but now he helped me to my feet and hustled me inside my gran’s house to the kitchen.

He paused and tipped his head to the side as if listening to something, and then went to the counter nearest the sink.

“Let’s get some coffee into you,” he said. “Where are your friends?”

“Out.” I laid my head on the table, not liking the way the room spun and my stomach pretending it had never had whiskey before. Had I had that much of the amber drink?

“Out? On jobs?” Before I knew it, he set a cup of coffee close enough that I could smell it and feel the warmth against the back of my hand.

My stomach rolled, and I lurched out of the chair, barely making it to the kitchen sink. I heaved until my belly was empty, not sure if it was the whiskey or the residual darkness from the house next door that had sunk into my skin. I blinked and stared at the black bits and pieces that floated in the whiskey.

Yeah, that couldn’t be good.

“Bad mojo,” I whispered. I ran the water, rinsed my mouth, and a cold cloth was placed over the back of my neck.

Slumping by the sink, I clung to the edge.

Roderick cleared his throat. “The council would, of course, like to see you tonight.”

“Of course they would,” I mumbled. “When?”

“As soon as I can get you moving. They are waiting on us.”