“She’s fine,” I said, resisting the urge to place my hand over hers.

“Yeah,” she sighed. We had all left at the same time. Mira and I in one car for LaVina, and Tristan, Gabriel, Matsui, and Lily in another, for a private airfield where they would catch Mira’s private jet for London. I knew that she was safe, but I was concerned about putting her in Ryan’s hands. While I believed what I told Mira about the warlock, he still had the power to surprise me on occasion. I preferred to think he would not risk Mira’s wrath by using the child as a pawn in his latest game.

With a shake of her head, Mira got out of the car as I did. Yet, she stopped me as I shut the door. “Did you call and tell her we were coming?” Mira inquired. The house was dark except for a single bare bulb burning away on the front porch.

“Not really.” I hedged.

“What do you mean, ‘Not really’?” she demanded, thumping the top of the car with her fist.

“No, I didn’t call ahead. She wasn’t exactly thrilled to see us the first time. I didn’t want to give her the chance to say no,” I admitted. “Let’s just go. Everything will be fine.”

Mira shoved both her hands through her hair and let out a low growl. “Danaus, you don’t go surprising witches. And judging by the trouble she went to for the dirt in her basement, I’m willing to bet she’s a powerful witch.”

“I hope so,” I muttered as I led the way up to the front porch. My footsteps up the wooden stairs were heavy, thundering in the silence that blanketed the area. Sure, I hadn’t wanted her to know we were coming, but I didn’t exactly want to surprise LaVina either. Mira hung back, moving as soundlessly as the wind.

Before I could ring the bell, a light was switched on in the front room, followed by another light in the main hall. LaVina pulled aside the curtain on the door and frowned at me as she shook her head. But at least she unlocked and opened the door.

“We need your help,” I opened before she could say anything.

“You get that one fed?” she demanded, jerking her head toward Mira, who was hovering behind my left shoulder.

“I’ve been properly fed,” Mira purred, seeming to taunt the witch. LaVina only gave a little snort and opened the door the rest of the way so that we could enter her home. Upon stepping over the threshold, I saw that the old woman was wrapped in a soft floral robe over what appeared to be a white nightgown. On her feet were a pair of worn pink house slippers. We had obviously woken her up.

“Sorry about getting you out of bed,” I murmured. It had never occurred to me that she wouldn’t be awake. I had become so accustomed to dealing with creatures that roamed at night that I had lost touch with the majority of humanity that preferred the warm comfort of daylight.

“It happens from time to time. Come on in,” she said, motioning for Mira to enter the house. After shutting and locking the door, LaVina shuffled down the main hall, leading us into the kitchen, where she flipped on a bright overhead light that left both Mira and me blinking as we struggled to adjust.

“Would you like a glass of iced tea? Or maybe you’d prefer some coffee?” LaVina offered, moving over to some honey-colored wood cabinets. “It’ll take me just a minute to get a pot brewing.”

“No, thank you. We’re fine,” Mira said. The nightwalker stepped forward and leaned her forearms on the island in the center of the kitchen. “We need to talk about the bori.”

Leaning back against the counter that lined the back wall of the kitchen, I folded my arms over my chest and watched LaVina. Her old hands stilled on the paper filter. I could see a grim frown pull at one corner of her mouth.

“Is that the way the wind blows now?” she murmured, resuming the task of putting the filter in the coffeemaker.

“You don’t sound surprised,” I commented, but she didn’t reply again until she had finished preparing the coffeemaker.

“Should I be?” she finally said, glancing over her shoulder at me as she pulled down a coffee mug with kittens on it. “From what I’ve been hearing, the naturi have already broken out of their cage. Something’s obviously gone wrong with the spell that held them. Why shouldn’t the bori be trying to break free as well?”

I looked over at Mira to find her staring down at her hands, her shoulders slumped under the weight of our failure. The naturi were running free because we failed to stop them. Rowe had been willing to take risks we hadn’t foreseen. We weren’t going to make the same mistake with Gaizka.

“I was contacted by a bori called Gaizka,” I slid past her question. “He wants his freedom. Somehow he’s here but he’s not free. I don’t exactly understand it.”

“Are you going to tell him how it works, vampire?” LaVina demanded, settling her piercing gaze on Mira.

“The bori are little more than pure spirit energy,” Mira began with a sigh. “If they want to interact with the world in some meaningful fashion, they have to have a host body, an avatar, a puppet.”

“Like when it appeared at your house in the body of an older man?” I suggested.

“Sort of,” she said with a grimace. Pushing off the counter, Mira stood upright and turned so that she could look at me. “That was only a temporary host. They can use a body for a short period of time, but their presence tends to contaminate the body, destroying the host. That man you saw is probably dead by now. However, a bori can prepare a body to be a permanent host so that it can use the body indefinitely. That’s how we trapped them.”

“What do you mean?” I inquired, a strange twisting in my gut caused me to take a step back away from her.

“The permanent human hosts for the bori were locked away in a magical cage,” LaVina explained.

“Take away their permanent home, the main source of their energy, and they are trapped,” Mira continued. “The bori had to follow their human hosts into the cage. We suspected they’d be able to slip out here and there for a short period of time under special circumstances, but they wouldn’t be able to escape without preparing new permanent hosts—something they would never have the strength to do.”

“Until we came along,” I corrected.

“True,” Mira sadly agreed.

I took a step back toward Mira as my thoughts shifted in a new direction. The floor creaked beneath my shifting weight, making the house seem to groan in the silence as night crawled past the midnight hour. “I don’t understand. You said that you didn’t know how they were caged.”

“I don’t know how they were caged or how the cage itself was created,” Mira replied, shoving her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “I know what was caged: humans.”

“Their human hosts,” I said.

“Humans,” Mira pressed, sending a chill down my back. “I think the bodies that these bori inhabit still possess the souls and consciousness of their original owners. We locked up humans in an attempt to save ourselves from the bori. The bori are nothing more than parasites attached to the human body. Just like nightwalkers.”

“Innocent people are being tormented by these creatures?” I murmured, my brain struggling to wrap itself about this horrible thought.

“‘Innocent’ is a questionable word here,” Mira said with a shrug. “They had to make some kind of deal with the bori in the first place. Sure, many were probably tricked, but I wouldn’t paint most of these people as innocent. Of course, I doubt any one of them would have agreed to thousands of years of servitude to these creatures.”

“And now you’ve got one with an interest in Danaus there,” LaVina added, drawing our combined gazes back to her thin frame. The old witch shuffled over to the refrigerator and pulled out a container of creamer. “Gaizka is going to go looking for your weak spot. He’s going to find a way to force you into making a deal with him to protect something you care about. And when you do, he’s finally going to be free.”