“The fae are a funny folk,” Suzy said, and when I glanced at her with raised eyebrows she shrugged. “I know a little about them, they are close cousins to sirens. Not enough to help you out, though.”

A cloud crept over the sun and that little bit of darkness was enough to drive us inside. Enough weeding for one day. Eric hurried ahead of us and went straight for the kitchen. I began to wonder if he baked when he was stressed.

I had no problem with that.

Back inside, Suzy went straight to her phone and scooped it up. “Luke just left me a message. The Hollows isn’t training tonight.”

“No? Any reason why?” A little chill rolled along my spine. First the raven feather, then the cloud, and now training had been cancelled for the first time in . . . well, as long as I’d been there. Sure, it didn’t affect us anymore, but something strange was happening. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.

Look at me go, forty-one and rocking my intuition.

Suzy shook her head. “No reason from Luke. I think we should train here, though. We can use the backyard, practice what we’ve been learning.”

Gran bobbled between us, and though Suzy couldn’t see her, she shivered and rubbed her arms. “The girl is right. You still need to train. Your mind and your body.” She pointed up the stairs to where I’d left the leather-bound book of her spells.

A smile tried to work across my face. “I’m going to get my gran’s book. We can use it and Eric for the not-body training.”

They raised their eyebrows at me but said nothing.

“Not body training?” I muttered to myself as I stood at the bottom of the stairs that led to the second level of the three-story house. Standing there, looking up, it felt like climbing those stairs might be a task not unlike climbing Mount Everest. My body did not like all this running, training, digging, fighting, being shot. I sighed and put my hand on the banister as a floorboard above my head let out a low groan.

I might have chalked it up to Gran waiting for me upstairs, except I’d just seen her in the kitchen with Feish and Eric, showing the bigfoot where she’d stashed some good herbs.

Which meant someone else was in the house, someone who shouldn’t be. Biting back a groan, I lowered myself into a crouch and crept up the stairs, avoiding the two that squeaked no matter how lightly you stepped on them.

Right hand on the banister, left hand on the knife strapped to my thigh, I popped off the leather strap that secured it in place. Part of me—whatever was left of the Breena who’d lived in Seattle for twenty-ish years—was freaked out at the thought of pulling a knife on an intruder, never mind actually knowing how to use it.

But the rest of me was all outta ducks, and whoever this asshat was who’d climbed into my gran’s house was about to get his ass and his hat handed to him.

I stayed in a crouch at the top of the stairs, forcing my legs to take me forward. The creak had come from my room—I would have recognized the timbre of that sound even if I’d been half dead. Maybe that wasn’t the best comparison given how my life had been going lately.

Another creak and I stood and pinned myself to the wall next to the closed door of my bedroom. Someone had some serious balls letting themselves in like that. I mean, even if Crash hadn’t bought it, the house had belonged to Gran, it was haunted, and there were people living here. People who were currently in the house.

I tightened my hold on the knife and reached across to grab the doorknob as it turned. I jerked back and plastered myself as flat as I could to the wall. The person who stepped out was worse than any monster I could have come up with on my own, worse than a werewolf, a goblin, or, God forbid, a vampire.

I stuck my foot out, tripping his lanky frame as he stumbled toward the stairs. He made a grab for the banister and missed, and I watched with no small amount of satisfaction as my ex-husband fell down the single flight, ass over teakettle, all the way to the bottom.

16

I followed him down the stairs at a slower pace as I tucked my knife away. “Alan, you should really watch where you’re going. You could get yourself killed.”

“What are you doing in here?” he growled, and I took note of the large rectangular bump under his shirt.

“Are you serious?” My hands went for my knives, but I didn’t pull them out. Just let my hands hover over the handles while I stared at what had to be Gran’s book under his shirt.

Feish, Eric, and Suzy came running out of the kitchen with all the noise, Gran with them.

She pointed a finger at him. “He has my book!”

“I know, Gran,” I said softly. “The question is why. Why would a human like Alan want a book of spells? Hmm?” My mind started rapidly shooting through all the pieces, putting them together as it was wont to do. “Maybe the person who helped you take everything from me, who helped you fool the human court system, wanted a little something in return if you got the house?”

Holy shit, even as the words left my mouth I knew they were true. Even if Alan hadn’t lost color and clutched at the book he’d tucked under his shirt. He scooted backward on his butt toward the door, but Eric was there, blocking his escape. Feish and Suzy were blocking his way to the kitchen, and I was on the stairs just above him.

“Alan,” I said his name with as much composure as I could muster. “Who are you working for?”

He shook his head.

I couldn’t help laughing at him. “That’s the best you got? I have a siren here who could just make you speak.” I wasn’t entirely sure that Suzy could, but Alan didn’t know that. “I’ve got a river maid”—Feish stepped forward—“who could put you through water torture like you’ve never imagined, and”—I held up a finger and pointed to Eric behind him—“I’ve got a bigfoot who could literally tear you limb from limb. I don’t think you’re in a position to—”

Alan’s eyes rolled back in his head and he passed out.

“Well, damn.” Suzy stepped forward and pushed a boot against his squishy middle. “That was rather anti-climatic.”

Alan lay across from me at the bottom of the stairs, kind of crumpled on top of himself, legs and arms akimbo rather like a giant praying mantis. Of course, in that species the female eats the male after they mate.

I can see the appeal of that tradition.

Especially when it comes to Alan or, as I like to call him, Himself. I might have muttered that a little too loudly.

“Why do you call him that?” Feish asked. “It’s strange, you know that?”

I stopped a few steps above him. “Because he thinks so highly of himself, he might as well be royalty. And because I fear that if I say his name too many times, he’ll appear. Like Beetlejuice. You remember the movie with Batman and the Stranger Things mom? And look—” I waved my hand over him, “—now here he is.”

Alan groaned and slowly opened his eyes. “Just a dream, it’s just a dream.”

He wobbled up to his feet and scooped up his hat from the third step, just under me. He jammed it on his head, whatever fear he’d been feeling before gone, though the dark spot in his crotch said otherwise.

“If you peed on the floor and wrecked the hardwood, I’m going to be seriously angry.”

I was going to say pissed, but that seemed a bit much, even for me.

He adjusted his hat as if that would make us forget he was bald under there. I settled my resting bi-atch face into place and stared him down. Four stairs above him, I could do just that while I waited for him to explain himself.

Alan glanced over at the kitchen, took one look at Feish and grimaced. This even though he only saw a woman with a harelip. Her shoulders slumped and something in me snapped.

I rushed down the last steps and jammed two fingers right into Alan’s solar plexus, driving him backward, basically into Eric’s arms. Eric grabbed hold of him, and Alan squeaked like a mouse.

“You’re trespassing, and it looks to me like you’re trying to steal something.” I growled the words, I was so damn angry. “Maybe more than one something? What else did you come here for?” I knew that Gran had secreted items throughout the house, but I needed to find them still. What if whoever had sent him knew about the things she’d hidden? Would foreknowledge of the items allow a person to find them?

He gasped for air as I frisked him, first taking the very obvious leather-bound book out from under his shirt. He’d strapped it to his body, but a quick slice of one of my knives through the thin bindings freed it. To be on the safe side, I continued looking him over. I didn’t expect he would actually have taken anything else, so finding my grandmother’s talisman in his left front pocket drew a growl from me. I’d left it in the bathroom after my shower, forgetting it in the . . . heat of the moment, as it were. “Really?”

He tried to take a step back, but Eric held him steady, a seriously awesome snarl on his normally gentle face. Alan was still fighting to breathe so I jabbed him again in the same spot with my other hand for good measure. “Who sent you, Alan? And you’d better talk before I find a spell to make your dick fall off and your balls shrivel into raisins.”

His face drained of color, and Suzy grinned. “Oh, I’ve been meaning to try that one out. Is it as good as I think it is?”

“Better,” Feish said. “I know of one man who lost his dick and his balls. The spell made it so he was horny all the time but couldn’t do a thing about it.”

Alan’s feet scrambled hard as he tried again to escape. “Men gotta stick together. Let me out, man!”

“Not a man,” Eric said. “Bigfoot.”

Alan squeaked again, but his bravado hadn’t faded yet. “Crazy-ass women.”

I looked at my friends. “Think he can say the name of his boss?”

It was Gran who slid around Alan, her hands brushing over his body. I watched in fascination as the hair on his arms rose, his eyes locking onto her location. I didn’t know if he could see her or not.