At least that was my plan.

Of course, my plans had a habit of not going as, well, planned.

6

Standing there in the darkness of the stairwell of a tomb in the graveyard that I was supposed to be running around, it struck me that this might have been one risk too many.

I mean, the one dude had threatened my life, and if they were potential customers, Eammon wouldn’t want me to mess things up with my eavesdropping. Still, I lowered myself onto one of the steps to listen in. Because let’s be honest, if they were working with Crash, then they likely were not working with the Hollows Group.

“Grave consequences,” Tom said, his voice rumbling up to me. “Grave indeed.” He was one of the Hollows mentors—the calm one of the bunch, as far as I could tell.

Louis was up next, his French accent heavier than usual. “What exactly do you expect us to do about it? You can’t imagine we will—”

“There will be jobs offered to you. Do not take them if you value the lives of your trainees.” There, that was Douche Canoe throwing his weight around again. He was threatening our lives to get his way, just like he’d done with Crash. Of course, Crash probably didn’t care too much about the threat, but I wasn’t terribly worried for my safety. He was a do the job no matter what the cost kind of guy. He wouldn’t make the crucible to save me—he’d make it to get paid. From what I could tell, a job was a job to him. I sighed. What a waste of a hunk of handsome man. Maybe that was why Karissa had booted him to the curb. Too much forging of weapons, not enough nooky at home.

I shook myself, and realized I’d missed part of the conversation I was supposed to be listening to.

“You’d best keep it in mind, Eammon,” Douche Canoe growled.

“Get out,” Eammon snapped. “Your kind are not welcome here.”

Get him, Eammon! I wanted to cheer my mentor on, but I held my tongue. Good thing, too, since the next thing I heard was a number of footsteps headed my way. My heartrate spiked and I bolted up the stairs, scrambling to keep my feet quiet but faster than the approaching pair of men.

Ninja I was not, and I knew that there was at least one loud clatter as I ricocheted off the sidewall of the stairs. Hopefully their ears weren’t any better than mine. I burst out of the stairwell, grabbed the edge of the angel tombstone, and pulled myself around it before dropping to the ground. The exceptionally large mosquito buzzing in my ear had me cringing. I couldn’t even swing at it.

Worse yet, the mosquito landed on my shoulder and whispered, “Are they still in there?”

“Shush!” I hissed at Kinkly as I pressed my back against the tombstone, crouching down as far as I could get.

“Are the trainees out there?” Douche Canoe asked.

“I count them all.”

“Good. I want you to keep track of them. As I told Eammon, I will not be thwarted. Our plans will move forward one way or another, no matter the cost.”

I wanted to laugh, I really did. Because I was the ‘oldie’ of this group, and even I thought his manner of speech was ridiculously old school. Yes, I know in theory that forty-one isn’t that old, but when you’re hanging with a bunch of early twenty-year-olds, you are the oldie.

And for those who want to disagree with me about how a forty-one-year-old thinks and feels, you can stuff it. Not everyone rocks their forties, and not everyone suffers through them. I, Breena O’Rylee, sit solidly in the middle. When I’m feeling bummed, I feel ancient, and when I’m feeling saucy, I forget my age and can hang with the best of them. I think.

But I digress.

As I crouched there breathing in the humid air and thinking that they were pretty stupid if they figured Sarge for one of the trainees, a thump rippled through the air and sent me sprawling sideways.

On my hands and knees, I pushed slowly up to peer over the bottom lip of the grave, between the angel’s feet, at the two figures.

“You’re good at this,” Kinkly whispered with more than a little awe in her voice. “They didn’t even look your way. It’s like you’re invisible.”

“Forty-one-year-old woman,” I whispered, as if that would explain it all. The rest of what I might have said slid away from me as I stared out across the graveyard. What could only be called a wave of magic rushed out across the training grounds, a swirl of darkness like a living mist, and before I could so much as draw a breath it slammed into the other trainees and Sarge. They all went down, one right after the other, like dominos.

I had to clap a hand over my mouth to keep the flow of curses contained. If I was discovered now, I had no doubt that I’d be next in the domino line, and that would leave no one to help. Triage at its worst. The two men, Douche Canoe and his friend, strolled down the path toward the exit. Partway to the gates, the air in front of them shimmered and they stepped through that shimmer and just disappeared. Gone.

Holy crap on Christmas toast!

“Eammon!” I yelled for him as I scrambled to my feet and got running as fast as I could toward where Sarge and the other trainees had gone down. I hadn’t known I could run that far, that fast. Crazy what some adrenaline could do for even me. I slid to a stop at the first body, which was Suzy, her blond hair spread out around her head like a halo. I bent and put two fingers to her neck and found a steady pulse. “Kink, help me check the others!”

“Okay.” She seemed uncertain, but she flew around to Luke. “He is breathing.”

I checked the others quickly and stopped at Sarge, who was in his wolf form sprawled out flat on his belly, snoring softly.

I did a slow turn to see if there was any other damage to the area, but it didn’t look like the wave of magic had done anything besides knock them over. No, that wasn’t right. They hadn’t been clubbed unconscious—they were all sound asleep.

Eammon didn’t come huffing and puffing up to me, and a chill swept down my spine. I really didn’t want to run back to the Hollows tomb, but for Eammon not to have heard me meant . . . well, what did it mean? That they had been knocked out too? Or worse?

“Kink”—I pointed at the trainees passed out on the ground—“stay here with them. Come get me if someone is in distress.”

“Um, I don’t know.”

“I’ll owe you,” I said and tried not to grimace as the words came out of my mouth. Something in my dusty memory banks tried to tell me that owing a fae—even a small one like Kinkly—could go badly. But I didn’t have time to give it more thought.

I had to stumble-jog back to the tomb. The burst of adrenaline was totally gone, and my body was not-so-graciously reminding me that I was not in shape for this. Sure, I was in better shape than I’d been, but exercise hadn’t magically made me younger. My body was going to grump at me come morning. Tomorrow was going to hurt.

I made it back to the tomb, breathing hard. Hands on the walls of the stairwell, I guided my way down through the dark, listening to the heaving of my own breath.

Running was not my friend.

“Eammon?” I tried his name first and got a groan in reply. At least that meant he was alive, right?

I stumbled on the last step, going from dark into the light. “Eammon, you okay?”

“Ah, lass,” he groaned, his voice turning me to the left. He sat next to the tall barstool he used for lectures. Over the past few weeks, it had occurred to me more than once that he might be tempting fate, what with his short legs, shorter frame, and roundish physique.

“They knocked you out too?” I crouched next to him.

He blinked up at me. “You saw them?”

I shrugged, not sure how much to tell him. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him, but Eammon and the other mentors had made it clear that they didn’t approve of my alliances. Particularly my interactions with Crash. Which meant I had to be careful. What would they do if they found out Douche Canoe had already threatened me because he’d found me in Crash’s bed? Wait, that makes it sound like we were together-together. Yes, I’d been pretty much naked under the covers, but it wasn’t like that. Honest.

I’d be bragging if I’d managed that.

Regardless. If I ever wanted to buy my gran’s house back, I needed this job. Karissa’s gig would pay well, sure, but it was a one-off thing, and I knew in my heart that Crash was going to make me pay through the nose and jump through some hoops while I was at it to get the house in my name.

Eammon prompted me. “Breena? You saw them?”

I nodded. “I watched them leave, so I only got a look at them from behind. I was sitting down taking a . . . break.” Which wasn’t entirely untrue. “They blasted magic across the graveyard and hit all the trainees and Sarge too. They’re okay, I think, but they’re all sound asleep.”

Eammon rubbed his head. “Check on the other mentors here, lass.”

I did as he asked, going to Tom first. His breathing was shallower than the rest I’d checked, and his dark skin had an awful ashen tone. I found a blanket in the spare gear room and covered him up. “Tom is in shock.”

“That will be the magic.” Louis sat up with a low groan. “It will have hit him the hardest, draining him.”

Tom wasn’t the only one who had been hit hard. Louis’s pale skin was even whiter than usual, and the dark rings under his eyes made it look like someone had punched him. Twice.

I offered him a blanket that he shook off.

The last in the room was Corb. I put my hand against his neck and found a pulse, then laid the blanket over him. He muttered something in his magic-induced sleep, and his hand slid over mine, holding me tightly enough that I stayed with him rather than attempting to pull away.

I looked over at Eammon. “Everyone is alive. Could they have killed us?”

The look on Eammon’s face said it all, but he answered anyway. “Yes. They are unhappy with our meddling in the ceremony, and the fact that Sarge and Corb were double agents, as it were. We’re lucky they didn’t kill the two of them.”