My hand tightened on Corb’s. He could have died. A wee part of my brain wondered why he hadn’t. Eammon was right—shouldn’t they have targeted the two mentors who’d tricked them? Not that I wanted anything bad to happen to Corb or Sarge, not in the least. But it didn’t make sense, which left my skin down my back itching with the weirdness of it.

“You going to tell me who they are?” I asked. “So we can keep an eye on them maybe?”

Eammon opened his mouth and croaked like a frog, so sudden and sharp that everyone in the room jumped.

I giggled, my nerves getting the better of me. “Excuse you?”

“I don’t think I can speak their names,” he grumbled. I looked at Louis, who opened his mouth and let out a massive, “Heeee-hawwwww!”

Silence fell on the room as the donkey bray faded. With all that energy, all that fear bubbling up in my gut, I swear I couldn’t help it—I burst out laughing, bent at the waist because the noise was so ridiculous. Funnier than that though was the look on Louis’s face. He wasn’t angry.

He was offended.

“Of all the creatures I could be forced to sound like, a donkey is not the one I would have chosen.” He sniffed and put a finger to his nose.

I put my free hand to my lips. “I’m sorry, Louis. I wish you could have seen your face.”

He glared at me, though there was a slight twinkle in his eyes, as if a part of him wanted to laugh too. “I’m glad you find this so amusing when we are dealing with heeee-hawwwww!” The bray flew out of him in a spray that had me pressing my face on Corb’s chest as I shook with a new round of laughter.

Louis’s face was a careful blank as I tried to pull myself together. I kept my hand on my mouth and my knees clamped because I had to pee like crazy, and the more I laughed the more I struggled to keep from wetting my pants.

Eammon cleared his throat. “It seems,” he said carefully, “that we cannot speak their names, or what they are up to.” A tiny “ribbit” slipped out of his mouth.

“But to make you sound like animals? Is that because they have a sense of humor?” I asked.

Eammon stared at me as he pulled himself up off the floor and wobbled to standing. “No, they did it to humiliate us. We couldn’t protect our trainees or even ourselves, and this is their way of showing us that we’re worthless. We are the animals, they are the ribbittt.”

“You describe them, then, if you are so smart,” Louis said softly, more than a bit of venom in his voice. No doubt he wanted to see what I would sound like.

I shrugged, settling my hip against Corb’s because his hand still clung to mine. “Douche Canoe—the leader of the two—would be in his later sixties, judging by the creping of his pale skin and the sagging around his neck. Never mind the fact that he was definitely wearing a toupee of some sort to hide a massive bald patch. Poorly done, if you ask me. The other I would guess is his son? Similar build, not as old obviously, but the features of his nose and eyes were very much the same. White boys, but they’ve been around here for some time, and there is something else kicking around in their background, although I bet they don’t talk about it. Probably a family secret.”

Louis’s mouth flapped open. “How can you even describe them?”

I shrugged. “The magic didn’t go over me. I was behind them, behind the angel tomb.”

“They miscounted,” Eammon breathed out softly. “They counted Sarge as one of the trainees, thinking that they had everyone here.” He rubbed his hands together and then smoothed them over his face. “Not that it matters. Even without the spell I wouldn’t take on another bounty that would involve ribbbittttt!”

Corb’s hand tightened on mine as Eammon’s croak rippled through the air. “What’s happening? Where the hell did meow-meow go?”

His eyes blinked up at me and fell back down to our hands, still linked. He let go. “Oh my GAWD, they made you into a pussy . . . cat!” Yes, I added that second word because, well, because he wasn’t a pussy. He was kind of a badass and I can admit to crushing on him, but that’s what made it all that much better.

Funnier. The funniest.

Corb sat up too fast and swayed. I grabbed his shoulder and helped steady him, sitting him back down, even as I snickered. “Dude, you freaking meowed!” I whispered at him. “That is not going to help you in the lady department unless she’s a crazy cat lady!”

He blinked up at me. “I meowed.” And then he spewed a massive amount of curses. I took a step back. Not because his language bothered me, but because he’d jerked to his feet in the middle of the swear tirade and slammed a fist into the punching bag anchored above his head, snapping it off where it was connected to its hanger. My eyebrows went up.

“As always, that is a most helpful answer, smashing shit,” I said. “So these guys who did this spell, you can’t speak their names, or what you think they are up to, but we know that they have something to do with the ceremony Hattie tried to perform?”

There was a chorus of hee-haw, ribbit, meow, plus a tweet-tweet from a barely conscious Tom. I had to close my eyes, fighting to keep my face straight and my words smooth. I was having a dream, I had to be. This was insane in the weirdest way possible. It would also be kind of awesome if not for Douche Canoe’s threat. “I assume that’s a yes.”

Eammon lifted his hand. “We are going to get back to training. That’s what we are going to do. You are a trainee. This does not concern you. We will not interfere with anything. Ribbit-ribbit is stronger than all of us. The council will have to deal with this.”

Except that it did concern us, or at least me. Douche Canoe had threatened my life. He’d spelled all the trainees and the mentors, which meant that no one could so much as discuss the situation.

And he’d done it because I’d stopped Hattie before she could sacrifice Eric.

“Are you sure? I mean, if they are up to something bad—I mean, that is totes obvious”—look at me being hip!—“shouldn’t we be trying to stop them?”

“No.” Eammon gave me a hard stare. “We are taking the warning.”

The question of the day was, who did Douche Canoe want us to stay away from? Eric? Shoot, what if the bigfoot shifter was in trouble again? I put it on my list to check on Eric as soon as I could. That wouldn’t be stepping in things.

I tipped my head at Eammon so he thought I agreed with him. The thing was, I knew when to hold my cards and when to fold them.

Actually that’s not true, I’ve never played poker and have no idea how either hand would apply to this situation. But in that moment, I was content to sit back and watch. There was no point in going off half-cocked and shooting myself in the foot. Yes, that’s a much better analogy.

7

After the laughing fits and the hee-haws, meows, and ribbits of the mentors within the Hollows training grounds (and a seriously needed pee break for me with all that laughter) the other trainees were brought in. As groggy and disoriented as if they’d been day drinking since dawn, they sat down on the stools provided. Eammon led the charge in explaining the situation—or not, as it were.

“Tonight you face another one of our challenges. When you’re hit by a magical spell of unknown origin, you must be prepared to fight through the feelings it causes and attempt to determine just what damage it is doing.”

I stared hard at him and he studiously ignored me. Eammon was going to lie to the trainees so he could sweep this mind-boggling situation under the rug? Of course, they wouldn’t start barking like dogs because they didn’t know anything about Douche Canoe and his friend. But what if the spell had other side effects? Because they’d thought that I—a.k.a. the person who’d screwed up the whole Hattie thing for them—was out there running with the other trainees. Maybe they didn’t know which trainee had caused the problem with Hattie, so they’d gone after everyone to cover Douche Canoe’s bases.

Of course, telling them they’d been attacked with an unknown spell that could have unforeseen side effects would just scare the ever-loving spit out of them. Besides, Eammon wouldn’t even be able to explain the situation because of the animal-sound issue. I slowly gave him a nod—I might not like his decision, but I understood it—and his shoulders loosened as he gave me the subtlest of acknowledgments that he’d caught what I’d thrown down.

Louis stepped up in front of Eammon and raised his hands above his head to call all the attention to him.

“We’re going to work on spells tonight, finding them, identifying them, and diffusing them,” Louis intoned. “This is important in our work because there are many other uses of spells, including defense, apprehension, and sowing confusion. We will start with a simple spell used to alert the user that someone is near.”

He pulled a thin vial from his belt and poured the contents into one palm as he swirled the fingers of his other hand around and around. Like a miniature tornado, the spinning pulled specks of blue sparkling dust into the air. Next he blew on the dust, spreading it out in a line that lowered and settled into the stone floor, disappearing as if it were never there.

I took a few steps back, the sparkling dust reminding me that Kinkly was probably still waiting for me topside. “I’ll be right back.” I didn’t wait as Corb barked at me to stay where I was, instead hustling up the stairs and out into the now fully dark night. “Kink, you okay?”

A flutter of wings pulled me around. “I am here. You came to check on me?”

“I don’t know if you can come in the Hollows—”

“I don’t want to. It’s dank and cold in the tombs of the Hollows.” She spoke softly. “I’ll wait here until you’re done.” She tucked into the crook of the angel’s neck, wrapping her wings around her tiny body.

I gave her a thumbs-up and turned as a hand grabbed my elbow. Startled, I stumbled backward, and would have fallen if not for Corb grabbing both my arms and holding me upright. “Are you really okay?” he asked.