Crash’s house. Not Gran’s, not mine. He’d taken my name off the deed, just in case. And now I had zero standing.

I started to shake, took a deep breath and held it until I was lightheaded, and finally let the air back out with a hiss of pain. Stapled to the door was a piece of paper folded in half with my name on it written in Crash’s own handwriting. I opened it.

It was the deed to the house, and my name was most certainly not on it. “We’re out.”

Suzy put a hand on my shoulder. “What are you talking about?”

I shook my head and tucked the paper into my back pocket. “We aren’t welcome here anymore,” I said. “Crash wants us out.”

Feish gasped. “He kicked you out?”

I gave a sharp nod, ignoring the hurt. Maybe not the most emotionally mature thing to do, but I was exhausted and not in a great shape to deal with this whole scene. “We’ll clean up, stay the night, and then go.”

In we went, Suzy and Eric talking quietly to each other as they went up to their rooms. I set Kinkly on the kitchen table. “What can we do for you?” I asked, trying to distract myself by keeping my mind on the tasks at hand. “Is there an easy way to heal your wings?”

She pursed her lips. “Celia could have healed them. Karissa could do it, but I doubt the queen will help me now. I can’t believe he is kicking you out! Maybe the queen is forcing him to?”

If my gran could have helped Kinkly, then maybe Missy could. I chose to ignore the rest of her questions. “And if we do nothing, will they heal?”

She bobbed her head. “Yes. I’ll be more of a target in the meantime, but they will mend on their own in about a week.”

I closed my eyes and rubbed a hand over my face, or was going to. My hand was caked with dark brown stains—Davin’s and Derek’s blood had dried in a thick layer on my skin. I lowered my hand. “You could try Missy, but I don’t know who else would be able to help you.”

She shrugged and winced. “I’ll get my two sisters to come and stay with me in the oak tree. I’ll spy on Crash for you. See who’s going in and out for the next week. It’ll be okay, Bree. It will.”

I smiled and managed to give her a wink. She gave me two thumbs-up. As if everything really was going to be okay.

Up to my bedroom I went. I still hadn’t acquired much stuff, and I easily packed it into two bags. I flipped open my hip bag, and Alan slid out. I barely remembered stuffing him in there. “Damn it, I hate you, Bree.”

I didn’t even bother to look at him. Like I needed a Jiminy Cricket twittering on about my failings and insecurities—my own mind was perfectly good at throwing those at me. I had to find a way to remove him from me.

“Gran,” I called out, “I need to talk to you.”

Gawd, I was going to have to say goodbye to her. I mean, I’d only just gotten her back, and if I left, would she disappear completely? And just where the hell was I going to go? I couldn’t go back to Corb’s for obvious reasons, and I was fast running out of money thanks to my spree on the camouflage uniforms earlier.

Gran didn’t come in, and I was just too tired to find her. I forced myself into the shower despite the memories that assailed me of my time with Crash. I might have cried a bit, but you can prove nothing and I’m admitting nothing. When I finished, I crawled into my bed and flicked off the light.

My dreams were as dark as they’d ever been, the Sorrel-Weed house front and center in them, the blood-born demon taunting the crap out of me.

Then someone was begging for me to help them. Then screaming for help. At the edge of my consciousness, I could almost recognize the voice.

“No, don’t hurt her!” I called out in my sleep, partially waking myself.

A hand touched my face and I sat up, batting it away. Corb was crouched by the bed. “Bree, what happened?”

“Did you know that there was no spell on me from the envelope?” The question blurted out of me and I put a hand on his arm. He didn’t tense, and he didn’t look away.

“I was afraid there was. Tom said there was.” He frowned. “Damn it, he used helping you as a chance to tie you to the Hollows again.”

I nodded and slumped back on the pillow, not taking my hand from him. I didn’t think he was lying. Not this time. I was too tired and feeling too alone to be smarter than that.

“Stay with me,” I said.

He didn’t hesitate, just crawled into bed, fully clothed, and carefully put his arms around me. The wash of his magic pushed the darkness back and my body relaxed, floating as if I were indeed in the water, the coolness soothing some of the hurt in both my body and my heart.

No dreams haunted me after that, and when I woke in the morning, Corb was not there. Maybe he’d never been there and I’d only imagined it. I sat up slowly, my body aching but my ribs not nearly as bad as they’d felt the day before.

“I can’t believe you slept with him,” Alan snapped from his corner of the room.

I twisted around. “So he was here?”

“He held you all damn night.” He shook his head, his nose wrinkled and lips pursed. As if it were disgusting that Corb had showed he was worried about me and had given me far more care than Alan would have done if the roles had been reversed.

I rubbed my face and slowly pulled on my jeans, a clean bra and shirt, and my work boots. I put my knife sheaths over the jeans—I wasn’t going out without them anytime soon. Scooping up my bags, I took them out onto the second-floor landing.

“Gran, I have bad news,” I said softly.

She flickered to life in the doorway to her bedroom. “I also have bad news.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “You sound weird, are you okay?”

She spread her hands wide. “I am not your grandmother. My name is Matilda.”

I wasn’t quite sure how to react to that, so I just stared at her a moment before I could speak. “Shouldn’t you have been kept out by the spells and garden?”

“The other witch removed the protections as she left, the one you call Missy,” she said. I noticed that her terrible wounds were healed. She touched her neck. “Yes, the energy here is healing for the undead. Which is what has finally allowed me to speak. The blood-born demon has your grandmother. She’s been trying to help me these last few days, but that was what he wanted all along. He wanted her. I was here, and she was busy hiding me from you. We didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late. We didn’t realize he wanted her knowledge.”

“Why would she help you?” I snapped, not sure I wanted to believe her words. “You were like two small dogs barking at each other across the fence.”

She spread her hands in front of her. “Because the demon made a grab for you. We all saw that. She thought to weaken him by bringing me here.”

And that made perfect sense to why Gran would do what she did. To protect me.

I was up and running before she could say anything. I grabbed my hip bag and threw it over my shoulder.

The blood-born demon had my gran.

I was going to kick his balls so hard that they lodged in his throat if he so much as hurt a hair on her undead head.

I yanked the front door open and was outside with a single jump. “Robert, he has Gran!”

Robert was at my side in a flash, and I was sprinting across the lawn, hopping the fence and pounding up the front steps of the Sorrel-Weed house as if I didn’t have cracked ribs and a wounded heart. As if I’d never been remotely scared of it.

The door swung open for me, but the eeriness of that didn’t bother me. I was burning with rage that he’d dared touch my gran. Never mind steal her away.

In the main room I stood, breathing hard, Robert next to me. I reached out and touched him, my magic flaring as I brought him from skeleton to a fully formed man.

“Bree,” he growled. “The magic here is darker now. Just in that short time since we were here last, it’s been growing.”

“The basement,” I said, pulling my knives from their sheaths. “That’s where the tour guide said not to go, so that’s where we go.”

Robert nodded and took the lead. He opened the door and reached for the light. Nothing.

“In my bag,” I said. “There’s a flashlight.”

He opened the bag, pulled it out and flicked it on. “This is going to be rough.”

“I’ll probably pee my pants at some point,” I said. “Don’t tell anyone.”

He grunted and took the first few steps down. “I’ll probably pee my pants too. Your secret is safe with me.”

I kept close to him and wasn’t surprised in the least that the door slammed behind us. Not surprised, but I did still jump and wobble on the stair edge.

“This feels funny,” I said as we made our way down the steps. “Like the air is wrong.”

“A demon’s home is never funny,” Robert said. “Smelly, horrid, but not funny.”

At another time I would have laughed.

Okay, I did smirk. Give it to Robert to pull even that much out of me. We reached the bottom of the steps, and he swept the flashlight over the room. Beside him was a light switch on the wall, and I reached over and flicked it on, figuring there’d be electricity due to the tourist visits.

Robert didn’t flick off the flashlight. We crept forward. The basement had some ground-level windows, and there were pieces of furniture all over the place, scattered haphazardly.

“Gran,” I whispered her name.

I knew you’d come.

The blood-born demon’s voice curled around my ear and I spun, slashing with one knife, cutting through absolutely nothing. Laughter rippled around us and the lights dimmed but didn’t go out.

“Where is my gran?” I yelled.

I’m going to enjoy killing you.

A whoosh of air behind us, a sudden shriek, and I hit the ground, rolled onto my belly and found myself looking straight at Robert. He’d pulled the same move. “We have to kill it.”