Eilahn dropped from an oak tree in the front yard, landing with impossibly graceful ease. I had to wonder what the neighbors thought of a beautiful woman shimmying up a tree but doubted Eilahn gave a crap about what they thought.

She moved to me, brow creased. “You are disturbed.”

“My aunt. She’s . . .” I drew a breath in a doomed effort to steady my voice. “She’s either having a stroke or she’s been manipulated.”

Concern narrowed Eilahn’s eyes. “If she is having a stroke, does she not require medical attention?”

Scowling, I sat down on the step. “She’s not having a stroke. That would be easier to deal with.” I gave her a quick recap of my conversation with Tessa and the associated weirdness.

Eilahn pursed her lips. “A manipulation to avoid focus on time in the demon realm as well as to fabricate the death of a child. This is indeed a grave matter.”

“No shit!” I exclaimed. “But why the hell would she need to be manipulated about that and by who?”

“This I do not know.”

Frustrated and worried, I returned to my car and retrieved a pre-addressed padded envelope from the back seat. I placed the used tissue in a plastic bag, then carefully selected about a dozen hairs with the root follicle still attached. I tucked those into another bag and slipped both into the envelope to join the others containing Idris’s hair and his toothbrush.

One way or another, I’ll know for sure.

I sealed the envelope and headed to the post office, where I nearly ended up in a knock-down-drag-out fight with Eilahn over our apparent need for several hundred stamps with pictures of kittens on them. I finally talked her down to a slightly more reasonable eighty stamps, which was still far more than I could possibly need, and would no doubt last me until the next century. I paid the too-cheerful postal employee for the stamps and the overnight shipping charge for the envelope, then quick-stepped back to my car with Eilahn while she made delighted noises at each and every stamp.

She abruptly cut off her rapt perusal, lifted her head, and went demon still.

Alarm crept in. “What’s wrong?”

“Wards have triggered at the house,” she told me, voice serious as she continued to assess. “Intruders at the perimeter near the fence line on the west side. Multiple people.”

I surged toward my car. “Shit! Does Zack know?” Though as soon as I asked the question, I knew the answer. “Never mind. Of course he does.” Zack had set the majority of the wards along the new fence line. If Eilahn felt the alarm wards trigger, Zack surely had as well. “Can the intruders get through?”

“Unless they have a demahnk or a qaztahl with them, they will not pass.”

I stopped and wheeled to face her. “They don’t, do they?!” The most likely culprits were Katashi and his summoners, which meant it was sickeningly possible they had one of the Mraztur with them.

“I can only sense presence, not the specifics,” Eilahn replied, which did nothing to ease my anxiety. “Zack may know more. Is Ryan at the house?”

“I don’t think so,” I said as I yanked the car door open. “He had to go to the office.” My phone rang. I snatched it from my pocket, checked the number. “Zack! You’re at the house? Eilahn said someone’s trying to get onto the property.”

“I’m not at the house,” he said, utterly calm. “I was calling to let you know about it. They’ve withdrawn now, but it was a serious, focused attempt.”

“Do you know who it was?” I jammed my key into the ignition, cranked the engine.

“I wasn’t there to see,” he said. “I’m heading that way momentarily.”

“Any sense that Rhyzkahl or one of the other assholes was there?”

“No. They definitely didn’t have a qaztahl with them.”

I exhaled in relief. “All right. I’m heading home now too.”

“I’ll see you there,” he said and disconnected.

As I drove home my thoughts churned back and forth between Tessa’s manipulation and the attempted intrusion. It was only when Eilahn reached and touched her cool hand to my shoulder that I realized I’d been muttering under my breath.

“All will be well,” she said with such solid conviction that I found my anxiety slipping away.

“Thanks,” I said and gave her a grateful smile. The syraza was a kickass bodyguard, but she also did a damn good job protecting my mental health.

I made the turn onto Serenity Road, a narrow two-laned affair with deep ditches on either side. My dad had died on this road—killed by a drunk driver when I was eleven—and I’d avoided it for close to a decade afterward even though the road offered a significant shortcut into town, shaving the travel time from forty minutes to the thirty it now took. When I became a cop I began to use it again, and the first time I drove it I couldn’t even find the place my dad was killed. The tree he’d been crushed against had long since been cut down, and even the tight curve had been straightened and graded in the intervening years. I probably could have located the exact spot from the accident report, but what would have been the point? Sometimes the past was best left in the past.

“Kara!” Eilahn shouted, but I’d already seen the dark blue Lexus sedan swerve into our lane and had my foot jammed hard on the brakes. For an instant I weighed whether going into the ditch would be worse than hitting the car head on.

Then both options disappeared as the sedan screeched to a stop sideways, blocking the road.

“Shit!” I skidded to a rubber-burning stop, all the while aware that the other vehicle’s move was intentional. Too precise to be anything else. And the location had obviously been carefully chosen. A quick glance in the rearview mirror revealed another car coming to a stop behind us.

“It’s a trap,” I snarled as I threw the car into park. “Bail out!” I hit my seat belt release and shoved the door open all in one motion, yanked my gun from its holster and prepared to dash to the trees beyond the ditch.

I made it two steps before I stuttered to an awkward stop, freezing at the sight of the MAC-10 submachine gun leveled at me. Heart thundering, I extended my hands out to the sides in as non-threatening a manner as possible and kept my gun lowered as I took in the details beyond the muzzle of the submachine gun. A red-and-grey-haired powerhouse of a man in a well-tailored black suit held the MAC-10 as he stood beside the open front passenger door of the Lexus. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Eilahn motionless on the other side of our car, though her stance told me she was poised to move. Ever since she’d been shot she habitually wove protective arcane shielding, but it wasn’t infallible.

I heard car doors open behind me, but I didn’t waste my focus looking. Eilahn could assess with far more ease and accuracy. Besides, MAC-10 guy hadn’t shot us dead yet, which meant the trap had a different goal in mind.

The back door of the Lexus opened, and James Macklin Farouche stepped smoothly out. I’d never met the man in person, but the pictures I’d seen of him did nothing to convey the confidence with which he carried himself. Immaculately dressed in a perfectly-tailored dark suit, white shirt, and a blue and gold-patterned tie, his steely gaze penetrated, though his expression remained one of utter ease.

Slowly, I crouched and placed my gun on the ground, then straightened and gave a nod. “Mr. Farouche.”

Farouche flicked a glance to my gun then to me as he began a slow approach. “Smart girl,” he said with a confident smile, and I had to fight to control a scowl at the condescension. Not such a saint after all. “No one’s going to get hurt as long as you remain smart,” he continued. “I simply want to talk.”

I lifted my shoulders in a casual shrug. “Then talk.”

“You are holding my people, and I want them back.” His voice reminded me oddly of Mzatal—not in tone, but in expectation of compliance. “Where are they?”