“We need to make sure it’s dead.” I hated to do it, but it was a threat. “We need to dispose of it too.”

  On the edge of my vision, I spotted the twitch of a plush paw and almost caved to a catch and release. His tail swished next, and I waffled on how dangerous it could possibly be to round him up and relocate him.

  Its liquid eyes opened, glistening and full of the kind of cute memes are made of, but then it bared its teeth.

  The inside of its mouth was a cavern of horrors that reminded me of a payara, whose six-inch incisors had earned it the nickname vampire fish. Except on this already oversized otter, they were more like twelve. It must have negative spaces in the upper portion of its skull to accommodate those saberlike chompers. Otherwise, it couldn’t sheathe them without lobotomizing itself.

  On its right ear, I spotted a black disc, too glossy to be natural. I inched closer, and it did not like that.

  With a shrill chirp, it shoved to all fours and arched its back like an iconic black cat on Halloween décor. I lifted my wand, ready to strike when it got near, but my jaw fell open when spikes pierced its spine in an alarming threat. Nictitating lids slid into place over its eyes, turning them opaque, and its tail plumped at the end, fattening into a club that it swished back and forth in agitation.

  “You didn’t mention it was half porcupine,” I squeaked at the daemon. “Tell me it can’t—”

  A grunt of effort sent four quills flying, aimed straight at us, and the daemon moved to intercept.

  “No hurt Rue,” he bellowed and charged the creature. “Now you die.”

  Since he hadn’t warned me how it administered its venom, quills or teeth, I sprinted after him.

  “Don’t touch it.” I skidded to a halt when he leapt on its back. “The poison…”

  Heavy footsteps thudded behind me as Clay caught up to us, and he whistled at the brawl.

  “He said it’s venomous.” I ducked under his arm, waiting for my opening. “How venomous?”

  “Not too bad.”

  “Oh good.”

  “Unless it hits you with multiple quills, which are like mini hypodermic needles.”

  As I performed a quick count, the daemon tried to rip out the monster’s throat. The dobhar-chú twisted at the last second, giving the daemon a mouthful of quills for his trouble. Already his cheeks bloated, and his eyes swelled. Now he couldn’t talk except to yell his incoherent fury.

  “I’m going in.” Clay set off at a run. “Come behind me and vaporize the sucker.”

  The poison wouldn’t hurt Clay. The monster otter would have to scratch his shem to cause him any harm. He would have been the ideal candidate to wrestle the creature, but it hadn’t been interested in waiting around for Clay to show.

  “Okay.” I pushed out a slow breath, gave him a head start, then followed. “Here we go.”

  Clay joined the dogpile with a whoop of what sounded suspiciously like glee. He got his hands around the dobhar-chú’s throat and squeezed while it fired quills in all directions. The daemon got elbowed aside by the golem and slumped onto the road to catch his breath.

  “Now.” Clay pinned the beast on its back. “Watch the tail.”

  Dancing around the swishing appendage, I jabbed its hide with my wand and murmured a quick spell.

  Magic ignited in its veins, setting it alight, and it burst into ash, leaving Clay to thump onto the flaky pile.

  Relief gusted past my lips, and I sagged on my bones. Control used to come as easy as breathing to me, but that wasn’t the case anymore. Or it hadn’t been until Colby began exercising our familiar bond. The odds of me zapping the dobhar-chú, and that charge transferring into Clay, were still higher than made me comfortable, but I was getting there.

  “Well, that was fun.” He climbed to his feet. “I wish I had gotten here sooner.”

  “Me too.” I scrabbled to the daemon’s side. “Hey, big fella. You with me?”

  “One, four, six.” He smiled, his teeth on display. “So many Rue.” He waved a hand. “Hi, Rues.”

  “He’s delusional.” I pressed a hand to his forehead. “Help me get him home.”

  “He’ll have to shift.” Clay glanced behind us. “We parked in town, remember?”

  “Can you shift?” I scratched the daemon’s scalp with my fingernails. “I’ll wash your hair tomorrow if you do.”

  “Brush?” The daemon purred for me. “Braid?”

  “Yes,” I promised. “Wash, brush, braid. All of it. If you shift now so we can get you both help.”

  “You two and your kinks.” Clay shook his head. “Where did I go wrong?”

  The daemon, pleased with our deal, allowed Asa to claim his skin, which only highlighted his injuries.

  “I’m certain that spending my formative years with a golem who tucks his wigs in at night had nothing to do with who I ended up with romantically.” I checked to see if Asa was conscious, but he was out cold. “I really don’t want to do this, but we need to get the worst of these quills out before he wakes.”

  “I don’t tuck them in.” Clay reached up to pat his brown curls. “I box them in. Totally different.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  With gentle hands, I worked on Asa’s face, which plumped under my fingers to an alarming degree.

  “Not everyone can pull off a wig,” Clay extolled, allowing me to do the heavy lifting—yanking?—while he watched our backs. “It takes a connoisseur’s eye to select the finest cap and hair, and then you have to know how to style it. You must invest in wigs. Buy quality. Spend the time maintaining them.”

  Familiar with how he spent his downtime washing, brushing, and taking them on “walksies,” I zoned out.

  And yes, he really called wearing his wigs, particularly ones that hadn’t been worn in a while, walksies.

  “Done.” I sat back on my haunches. “Lift him, and let’s go.”

  Once the golem had his partner in a bridal carry, we began the long walk back to the parking lot behind my shop, where I had parked my SUV. Halfway there, I texted Colby a heads-up. Healing made her nervous, and with good reason. She still heard the Proctor grimoire speaking to her on occasion, offering tips, tricks, and helpful suggestions.

  Every time I muffled its voice, it found a new way to be heard, and I had to plug that hole.

  Honestly, it was a lot like playing whack-a-mole. Or patching leaks in a dam that was about to burst.

  By now, I should have had the grimoire memorized and been ready to toss it into the backyard firepit. But it was a tricksy old book. A sentient one too. It kept hiding the chapters on Colby, on loinnir, and producing new material relevant to my past interests.

  Melissa Rivers, Clay’s ex-lover turned pile of ash, had been right when she claimed I couldn’t read the book. But it wasn’t about lack of power, as she had implied. It was the will of the book that I absorb it, that I covet it, that I begin to care more about it than my mission to protect Colby.

  As much as I hated the idea of dispatching knowledge that might help me protect her, I was close to saying the heck with it and roasting s’mores over the book’s smoldering pages.

  Clay, unable to fit in the copilot seat even if he wanted to, climbed in the back to hold Asa.

  “He’s trying to kill me.” I stomped on the gas. “Death by heart attack.”

  “The daemon thinks with his fists,” Clay joked. “When it comes to you, he doesn’t think period.”

  Hands tight on the wheel, I gripped harder. “I don’t like this feeling.”

  “Love,” he said, meeting my gaze in the rearview mirror, “is practically the same thing as terror.”

  From life with Colby, I knew what he was telling me to be true, but Asa was twice as killable, in a way.

  “He can’t keep throwing himself between me and danger.”

  “Hey, you don’t fuss when I play shield for you.”

  “You’re indestructible.” I shot Asa a glare over my shoulder. “He’s not.”

  “He could heal this on his own, Rue. It would take a while, and it would hurt, but it’s hard to kill him.”

  After our last case, I had two words for him. “Cold iron.”

  A deformed bullet, one of many Colby and I forced out of Asa, sat heavy in my pants pocket. I had been carrying it around since that night, and I couldn’t let go of the reminder of the fragility of happiness.

  “He has the weaknesses—relatively few I might add—of his mother’s people, but so do you.”

  “It’s not the same,” I protested. “I’m not…”

  “You’re not what?” Clay loomed behind me. “Careful how you talk about my best friend.”

  “He’s good,” I said softly. “He doesn’t have to stop and think before he does the right thing.”

  “His upbringing was vastly different from yours. Neither of you had it easy, but half his childhood was as idyllic as it gets for fae.” He didn’t go into detail, in case Asa could hear. “Not to take anything away from him, but he was taught knee-jerk responses for right and wrong. He acts on those, without thought, in an established pattern. He uses his mother as his own moral barometer. You don’t have that.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “What I’m saying is, you work hard to be good. Your own version of it, anyway. Your actions aren’t automated, they’re deliberate. You make a choice, every day, every time, to make the right call.” He patted me on the head with his wide palm. “That makes you pretty remarkable in my book.”

  “You’re just saying that because you hope I’ll stress bake during his convalescence.”

  “Two things can both be true at once.” He hesitated. “I was considering brookies.”

  “Double the batter, double the fun.”

  “What’s not to love about brownies and cookies stacked together in nature’s perfect square?”

  “Not sure how much nature had to do with that.”

  “Don’t miss your turn.”

  “What?” I jerked to attention. “Goddess bless, I’m a mess.”

  He had distracted me too well, and I overshot the turnoff to the house.

  “Warn a girl next time.”

  “I did.”

  “Before we sail past my driveway.”

  “It’s not my fault you were daydreaming about brookies and forgot about Ace.”

  As I twisted in the seat for a better view backing the SUV down the road, I was tempted to smack him.

  Sadly, it would only hurt my hand, and it wouldn’t teach him a lesson.

  Asa wasn’t the only one who came with preprogrammed responses. Clay’s had been molded into him. It meant more to have him praise my choice-making abilities, given how few he had in life. Not that he was a robot, by any means, but he operated with the knowledge his freewill could be snatched from his fingers at any moment. One order from his master, and he lost any objections to his task.

  No.

  That wasn’t right.

  He retained the ability to object, to decide for himself it was wrong, but he could be forced to act against his conscience.

  We reached the house as the front door swung open. Colby zipped out in a tizzy and made loops above our heads after we entered the wards with Asa.

  “Tell me what to do.” Her eyes hardened with determination. “We got this.”

  A swell of pride pushed against my breastbone at her rising self-confidence, despite all the hiccups along the way. The fact she included me, how she always made us a team, was its own peculiar morale booster. I had had partners in the past. Clay, obviously, had been my favorite, but the bond between Colby and me transcended even that, and I was proud of how far she had come.

  “Let’s get him in.” I waved them toward the house. “We’ll put him in the spare room.”

  Arms full of poisoned dae, Clay lumbered past and beat us to the bed where he set down his partner.

  “Ready.” Colby lit on Asa’s shoulder and rubbed her hands together. “Let’s do this.”

  Amusement quirked Clay’s lips at her enthusiasm, but she was eager to redeem herself in my eyes, as if I was anyone to impress. I worried she might never forgive herself for allowing the grimoire to creep into her thoughts and channel our familiar bond into searing magic that almost burned me alive.

  Yet another reason why it was critical she learn to harness her power.

  And protect her mind from outside influence.

  Which would be easier if I could flambé that grimoire.

  Hand on Asa’s shoulder, I reined in our familiar bond. “We do this slow and easy, okay?”

  “Slow and easy.” She rubbed her temples. “I got it.”

  Closing my eyes, I opened myself to our bond, pulling on her magic to supplement mine into a steady flow. Together, we fed power into Asa until viscous black fluid dripped from his pores, evaporating on his skin. He began to glow, and I don’t mean with health. Colby was a beacon, shining bright and banishing the darkness in his blood, and Asa glowed alongside her.

  Within a few minutes, he finished purging, and his eyelids began to flutter against the light.

  “Hold still,” I chided him. “We’re almost done.”

  As soon as Colby gave me the nod, I scooped her up and severed contact with Asa to let him settle.

  Residual magic fizzled between us, and she glided to Clay to break our familiar bond clean.

  “The light show is impressive.” Clay began to clap. “You guys should take your show on the road.”

  “Very funny.” I flicked my wrist at him. “Shoo.” I brushed the hair off Asa’s forehead. “He needs to rest.”

  A thump on the window left me crossing my fingers Mrs. Gleason hadn’t come to investigate our shenanigans. She was used to lights being on in the house at all hours. She knew I was an insomniac. But she was a night owl herself. She might have noticed Aedan before we relocated him and decided to slink around and catch him on her land. She might have used the glow as an excuse to interrogate me so late.

  A webbed hand lifted in a wave when I peeked through the blinds, and I swore under my breath before remembering Aedan could hear every word. Since the wards weren’t blaring at his intrusion, he must have tossed a pebble against the glass to get my attention rather than knock.

  “New plan.” I released the blinds to snap back into place. “Draw the curtains, Clay, and guard Asa.”

  “Rue,” a groggy voice protested from the bed. “Stay.”

  “I won’t be long.” I leaned over and kissed Asa’s forehead. “Be a good patient for Clay while I’m gone.”

  The press of my lips to his skin set him purring, confusing me all over again, but I had no time to linger.

  A daemon was outside the house, one who had issued a challenge to Asa, who might now be aware that he was in no shape to fight. It would be simple for Aedan to take advantage to save his own hide, after I hit him with that pep talk earlier.

  Way to go, Rue. Convince him to fight for his life then top it off with letting him glimpse Asa unconscious.

  With a grim set to my jaw, I exited the house to determine whether I had to kill Aedan myself.

  4

  “I saw the light,” Aedan said by way of explanation, when I stepped outside. “I thought there might be trouble.”

  “There’s no trouble.” I took the stairs and joined him in the yard. “Why leap to that conclusion?”

  “You’re harboring me?” The slits opened on one side of his neck, the other was caked with poultice. “I don’t want to bring trouble to you.”

  “Oh.” I waved away his concern. “I forgot about that.”

  In an adrenaline-fueled rush to determine whether I had to kill you to protect Asa.

  “You…forgot?” He laughed softly. “Life with Astaroth must be some kind of adventure.”

  There was no good answer for that, so I spun it into a question. “What do you know about dobhar-chú?”

  “They’re adorable when docile and vicious when riled.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Have you seen one?”

  The internal debate on how much to tell him waged only for a few seconds.

  “One attacked an animal in town.” I watched for his reaction. “I killed it tonight.”

  “Pity.” He rubbed his nape. “They’re not a bad sort…” He dropped his arm. “You saw one in town?”

  “Yes.” I tracked the play of emotions across his face. “What of it?”

  Others were much easier for me to read than the clutter of feelings looming when I turned my gaze inward.

  “They’re comfortable in rivers and lakes, but you don’t have more than the creek out back and one hole I noticed local humans swimming in. Dobhar-chú come inland to birth their pups, but not for much else. It wouldn’t have come to a landlocked place like this of its own choice. It’s most vulnerable out of water, and several pups would have died on the trip back to the river.”

  “How do you know about those waterways?”

  “These aren’t to enhance my good looks.” He flexed his healing web fingers at me. “Do you think I would travel to a landlocked area without mapping all escape routes first?”

  A smile crept up on me. “Escape routes?”

  “I came to challenge the high king’s son and heir.” He huffed. “Only a fool wouldn’t come prepared.”

  “So…” I crossed my arms. “You came to die, but you wanted to know where to run.”

  “I…” A frown knit his vibrant-blue brow. “It’s habit.”

  That much was probably true, but I suspected more. “Or you didn’t really want to die.”

  “No one wants to die.” His confusion evaporated. “I see what you’re doing.”

  Good.

  That made one of us.

  A low rumble that promised violence poured into the night behind me.

  “Um.” I lifted a finger. “Hold that thought.”

  One of these days, I would remember that the instant Asa went under, the daemon clawed his way up.

  “Rue,” the daemon snarled as he stomped toward us, “mine.”

  “Ace,” Clay yelled from the porch. “Get your butt back in here.”

  Legs braced apart, I waited for the daemon to reach me, the better to shield Aedan from him.

  “Hey.” I snapped my fingers in the daemon’s face. “I’m not a chair. You can’t own me.”

 

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