A man glanced up from behind a counter cluttered with books. He was slight, pale, goateed. His expression held curiosity about her hesitation at the doorway, but no hint that he’d felt the wards reacting to her.

A clerk, she guessed, not a practitioner, though she couldn’t be positive.

Tir entered, and the man’s attention went unerringly to the tattoos. His eyes flashed with surprised recognition, sending nervousness skittering through Araña.

She looked away from him long enough to see if the shop was empty. The sight of two men, their hands resting casually on guns worn at their sides, caused her to brace for trouble.

The guns weren’t their only weapons. Bandoliers crisscrossed their chests. Only instead of bullets, they held knives and deadly throwing stars.

The men made no movement other than to note her awareness and actions with their eyes. Bodyguards, she thought. Not guardsmen or police.

There was a third presence, the person the bodyguards stood in front of. His identity didn’t matter as long as he didn’t prove to be a threat.

Araña allowed herself to relax enough to return her attention to the man behind the counter. He was tucking a piece of paper under a book, the nervous swipe of his tongue over his lip and his hasty movements drawing her interest where simply walking away from whatever he was doing would have better served him.

He closed the other books strewn across the counter, leaving her with the impression he was researching something. The lack of a pen or pencil nearby suggested that rather than looking for text to copy for a client, he was comparing whatever was on the paper he’d tucked away to what was in the books.

She’d only been in an occult shop once before, when she’d accompanied Matthew in order to stand guard while he negotiated a job with the owner. But she doubted this place operated much differently. The candles and supplies could be bought, while the books were available to study and, for a price, to have sections of them copied.

Araña shivered at the thought of using spell magic. Much of what was contained in the shop was probably worthless or harmless to someone without the gift for using it, but some of it was deadly, to practitioners and nonpractitioners alike.

The man came around the counter, pale, white fingers worrying his goatee. “Can I help you?”

Araña left Tir to answer, her attention caught by a glassed bookcase near the counter. She edged closer. Inside it were books filled with demon names and rituals for summoning and commanding them.

She shivered and surreptitiously rubbed the spider, trying to ease the burn of it. It was part of her and yet not part of her, a sentient gateway giving a demon access to this world and to a human tool that could be used to bring about suffering and death.

The thought made Araña turn away from the case and the reflection of her face caught in it. Her stomach knotted and she fisted her hands.

She didn’t want to think about what it meant to bear the mark, to have her soul tainted by it. But it was impossible not to consider that the answers to questions that had haunted and shaped her life might be here, in this shop.

The bodyguards eased their stance though they remained alert. Her gaze was drawn to the wall of books behind them.

Shock rippled through her at the sheer number of them—all of them the private journals witches and warlocks kept, shadow books that held their secrets and a record of the power they’d gained in their lifetime.

Movement broke the trance of seeing so many of them in one place. Araña’s attention slid from the wall to the man who moments before had been blocked by his bodyguards.

A single, emerald green eye blazed, its twin gone, replaced by scarred flesh in a melted-wax face, as if he’d played with magic and been marked by the fires of Hell.

There was speculation in his gaze as it moved from her to Tir. And what might pass for a small smile before he murmured to his guards, “I’ve satisfied my curiosity here. It’s time to return to the club.”

One of the bodyguards peeled away. But rather than walk past Araña and go to the front door, he went to the back of the shop, to a door not immediately obvious until he opened it.

Araña watched as the bodyguard stepped outside. He looked around before giving an all-clear signal and exiting completely.

The man he was guarding and the second bodyguard followed, closing the door tightly so it once again blended into the wall. “Who was that?” she asked, knowing the man had to be both wealthy and powerful in Oakland to be accompanied by openly armed men.

“Rimmon,” the clerk said, shuddering, his voice holding fear. “He’s one of the vice lords.”

“In the red zone?” Araña guessed.

The clerk nodded and licked his lip, reminding her of his earlier nervousness regarding the books he’d been looking through when they entered the shop. Now that they were alone, just the three of them, she saw no reason for subtlety or delay.

Her eyes met Tir’s, and for a heartbeat it felt as though they were one person. Perfect understanding flowed between them, like what Matthew and Erik had together.

She took a step toward the counter, gambling that the clerk didn’t have inherent magic of his own and wasn’t protected by it, guessing whoever owned the store valued only the books enough to ward them.

The clerk squawked, either from her movement toward the counter or from Tir’s hands wrapping around his scrawny arms to prevent his interference.

“No,” he protested, struggling, his panic increasing as Araña tugged the piece of paper from its hiding place.

Her pulse quickened when she saw what the clerk was researching. Small sections of incomprehensible texts and symbols were scattered on the page, as if someone had randomly reproduced pieces of the whole from memory.

She recognized some of it, could remember tracing over it with her fingertip as she and Tir lay together. Her heart slid into a racing beat as her thoughts went immediately to the vice lord who might even now be setting an ambush into place outside the shop.

“Who’s this for?” she asked, turning the page so Tir could see it.

His face hardened in sheer ruthlessness. Intentionally or unintentionally, his grip tightened on the clerk.

The man cried out, fear pouring off him. “I can’t—”

He broke off at the feel of steel against his throat, Araña’s action was smooth and unconscious, like drawing breath. “This isn’t a cause you want to die for. Who asked you to research what’s written on the paper?”

His eyes darted to the left, where her gloved hand rested on his shoulder, instead of to the right, where the crime lord and his bodyguards had disappeared through the unobtrusive doorway.

“Who?” she repeated, numbing her mind and her conscience to what might come next even as she fervently hoped the clerk wouldn’t force them to hurt him.

“Father Ursu,” he said, sagging in relief when she pulled the knife away from his throat and sheathed it.

The name held no meaning for Araña. She glanced at Tir and found his eyes narrowed.

Realization came to her then as she thought about how he’d healed her after she fought with the dragon lizard. There was no cure—either magical or medical—that would have been able to save her.

Many would view what he’d done as a miracle.

She’d assumed he was being taken to the maze. But what if he’d been bound for the Church instead? He’d be priceless to them.

Her gaze moved to the books she’d ignored in her hurry to retrieve the paper. They were old, created well before the world was forever changed.

All but one of them had writing on the cover like she’d seen in Erik’s history books. She remembered the pictures of artifacts and parchment texts with script common to the place where The Last War was said to have started, a distant part of the world once known as the Holy Lands.