“How about if I just sleep outside your house, then, in my car?”

I looked up at him with amusement and saw he was only half joking. “Oh, no,” I protested. “No, I don’t need you to do that.”

“Maybe I need to do it.”

“Thank you—I know you’re worried about me. But I’ll be okay.You stay here and help your dad decipher Rose’s spell. I’ll call you when I get home, okay?”

Hunter looked unsure, but I kissed him good night about eight times and got into my car. It wasn’t that I felt I was invincible—it was just that when you go up against someone like Ciaran, there isn’t a whole lot you can do except face it. I knew he wanted to talk to me; I also knew that he would, when he wanted to. Whether Hunter was there or not.

As I drove off, I saw Hunter standing in the street, watching me until I turned the corner.

I felt like crap by the time I pulled into my driveway. I got out of Das Boot and locked it, grimaced at its blue hood that I still hadn’t gotten painted, and headed up the walk. The air didn’t smell like spring, but it didn’t smell like winter, either. My mom’s dying crocuses surrounded me.

It wasn’t really that late—a little after nine. Maybe I would take some Tylenol and watch the tube for a while before I went to bed.

“Morgan.”

My hand jerked away from the front door as if electrified. Every cell in my body went on red alert: my breathing quickened, my muscles tightened, and my stomach clenched, as if ready for war.

Slowly I turned to face Ciaran MacEwan. He was handsome, I thought, or if not strictly handsome, then charismatic. He was maybe six feet tall, shorter than Hunter. His dark brown hair was streaked with gray. When I looked into his eyes, brownish hazel and tilted slightly at the corners, it it was like looking into my own. The last time I had seen him, he had taken the shape of a wolf, a powerful gray wolf. When the council had suddenly arrived, he had faded into the woods, looking back at me with those eyes.

“Yes?” I said, willing myself to appear outwardly calm.

He smiled, and I could understand how my mother had fallen in love with him more than twenty years ago. “You knew I was coming,” he said in his lilting Scottish accent, softer, more beguiling than Hunter’s crisp English one.

“Yes. What do you want?” I crossed my arms over my chest, trying not to show that inside, my mind was racing, wondering if I should send a witch message to Hunter, if I should try to do some sort of spell myself, if I could somehow just disappear in in a puff of smoke.

“I told you, Morgan. I want to talk to you. I wanted to tell you I forgive you for the watch sigil. I wanted to try once again to convince you to join me, to take your rightful place as the heir to my power.”

“I can’t join you, Ciaran,” I said flatly.

“But you can,” he said, stepping closer. “Of course you can.You can do anything you want. Your life can be whatever you decide you want it to be. You’re powerful, Morgan—you have great, untapped potential. Only I can really show you how to use it. Only I can really understand you—because we’re so much alike.”

I’ve never been good at holding my temper, and more than once my mouth has gotten me into trouble. I continued that tradition now, refusing to admit to a fear close to terror. “Except one of us is an innocent high school student and the other of us is the leader of a bunch of murdering, evil witches.”

For just a moment I saw a flash of anger in his eyes, and I quit breathing, both dreading what he would do to me and wishing it were already over. My knees began to tremble, and I prayed that they wouldn’t give way.

“Morgan,” he said, and underlying his smooth voice was a fine edge of anger. “You’re being very provincial. Unsophisticated. Close-minded.”

“I know what it means.” He wouldn’t even need to hear the quaver in my voice—he was able to pick up on the fact that my nerves were stretched unbearably taut.

“Then how can you bear to lower yourself to that level? How can you be so judgmental? Are you so all-seeing, all-knowing that you can decide what’s right and wrong for me, for others? Do you have such a perfect understanding of the world that you assume the authority to pass judgment? Morgan, magick is neither good nor evil. It just is. Power is neither good nor evil. It just is. Don’t limit yourself this way. You’re only seventeen: You have a whole life of making magick—beautiful, powerful magick—ahead of you. Why close all the doors now?”

“I may not be all-knowing, but I know what’s right for me. I’ve figured out that it’s wrong to wipe out whole villages, whole covens in one blow,” I said, trying to keep my voice down so no one inside could hear me. “There’s no way you can justify that.”

Ciaran took a deep breath and clenched his fists several times. “You are my daughter; my blood is in your veins. I’m your family. I’m your father—your real father. Join with me and you’ll have a family at last.”

The quick pang of pain inside didn’t distract me.

“I have a family.”

“They’re not witches, Morgan,” he said painstakingly, as if I were an idiot. “They can neither understand you nor respect your power—as I can. It’s true, I’m selfish. I want the pleasure of teaching you what I know, of seeing you bloom like a rose, your extraordinary powers coming to fruition. I want to experience that with you. My other children... are not as promising.”

I thought of my half brother Killian, the only one of Ciaran’s other children I had met. I had liked Killian—he’d been fun, funny, irreverent, irresponsible. But not good material as an heir to an empire of power. Not as good as I would be.

“And you... you are the daughter of my mùirn beatha dàn,” he said softly. His soul mate, my mother.

“Who you killed,” I said just as softly, without anger. “You can ask me from now until I die, but I won’t ever join you. I can’t. In the circle of magick, I’m in the light. My power comes from the light, not the dark. I don’t want the power of the dark. I will never want the power of the dark.” I really hoped that was true.

“You will change your mind, you know,” he said, but I detected a faint note of doubt in his voice.

“No. I can’t. I don’t want to.”

“Morgan—please. Don’t make me do this.”

“Do what?” I asked, a thread of alarm lacing through me.

He sighed and looked down. “I was so hoping you’d change your mind,” he said, almost to himself. “I’m sorry to hear that you won’t. A power like yours—it must be allied with mine, or it presents too much of a risk.”

“What the hell do you mean by that?”

He looked up at me again. “There’s still time to change your mind,” he said. “Time to save yourself, your family, your friends. If you make the right decision.”

“You tell me what you’re talking about,” I demanded, my throat almost closed with fear. I thought of what he could to me, to the people I loved inside this house. To Hunter. “Save myself, my family? Don’t you dare do anything. You asked your question. I answered. Now get away from me.”

I was almost shaking with rage and terror, remembering all too well the nightmare of New York, when he had tried to make me relinquish my power, my very soul to him. I remembered, too, the terrifying, heady sweetness of being a wolf alongside him, a ruthless, beautiful predator with indescribable strength. Oh, Goddess.

“I’ll leave,” Ciaran said, sounding sad. “I won’t ask you again. It’s a pity it all has to end this way.”

“End what way?” I practically shrieked, almost hysterical.

“You’ve chosen your fate, daughter,” he said, turning to leave. “It isn’t what I wanted, but you leave me no choice. But know that by your decision you have sacrificed not only yourself, but everyone and everything you love.” He gave a rueful, bitter smile. “Good-bye, Morgan. You were a shining star.”

I felt ready to jump out of my skin and tried to choke out something, something to make him explain, make him tell me what he was going to do. Then I remembered: I knew his true name! The name of his very essence, the name by which I could control him absolutely. The name that was a color, a song, a rune all at once. Just as the name sprang to my trembling lips, Ciaran faded into the night. I blinked and peered into the darkness but saw nothing: no shadow, no footprints on the dead grass, no mark in the cold dew that was just starting to form.