After way too much chocolate — and not a lot of actual learning — at Chocolate Arts, I seriously hoped that the chocolatier didn’t regret not doubling the price of our tickets. Not bothering with a cab this time, Kandy and I headed up a block and crossed over to Fable Kitchen, which had opened two years ago a few blocks east of the bakery. I hadn’t had a chance to check it out yet, but I really liked its ‘from farm to table’ mandate, and Kandy liked anywhere that cooked a great steak.
We shared mussels to start, and yes, we ‘added’ fries as the menu helpfully suggested. I had the halibut while Kandy got her red meat fix. But the shining glory of the meal was the s’mores for dessert. Yes, freaking s’mores. I tried to not look too closely at the bill when it came, reminding myself that the bakery was doing well and Kandy’s birthday only came once a year. Belated or otherwise. Plus, it wasn’t like I actually needed new shoes … or groceries next week.
We wandered home giggling and joking, cutting down to the alley behind West Fourth Avenue at Yew Street. I always preferred to use the back entrance of the bakery to come and go from my apartment, probably because I adored my kitchen, my haven, so much. Even just passing through it on the way to bed kept me grounded. The sun had set, but reds, pinks, and oranges still streaked the steadily deepening blue sky above the harbor. The colors even kissed the edges of the dark North Shore Mountains.
“You promised me dancing,” Kandy said, then dissolved into a fit of giggles over something she only thought she’d said out loud. Giggling wasn’t the werewolf’s thing. She was more buzzed than I’d ever seen her, and I guessed that mixing drinks eventually had its way with werewolf metabolism as well.
“Tomorrow night. I have to bake in the morning,” I said. “I also have mani-pedis booked at two.”
“And Sunday? Brunch?”
“Only the best for my green-haired friend.”
Kandy’s snort dissolved into another round of giggles, and she threw her arm around my neck.
I laughed, feeling delightfully warm — inside and out — myself.
Then, steps from the bakery’s back door, the shadow of the adjacent wine store’s industrial-sized garbage can tried to grab me.
Seriously, it reached out as if it had actual fingers and tried to latch onto my left arm.
I shrieked, jumped sideways to free myself, and knocked Kandy flying across the alley. I willed my jade knife into my right hand, slashed at the shadow, and met absolutely no resistance.
I stood there, knife in hand, staring at nothing except the deepening shadows of the evening. The echoes of my scream rebounded off the buildings to either side, their presence making me feel suddenly claustrophobic.
“What the hell?” Kandy muttered.
I spared her a glance. She was sprawled on her ass on the asphalt, rubbing her arm. Her bad arm. Shit.
“The shadow … Jesus, I’m sorry. I thought the garbage can shadow just tried to … latch onto me.”
The green of her magic rolled across her eyes as Kandy silently rose up and onto the balls of her feet without placing her hands down on the ground. She stared into the shadows behind the garbage can, then shifted her gaze to look behind the recycling bin. Every hint of the giggles was gone from her demeanor now.
“I don’t smell anything,” she whispered, her voice low and intense. “Magic?”
I shook my head but didn’t sheath my knife. I couldn’t taste any magic nearby other than Kandy’s.
Great. Now I was hallucinating terrors out of thin air. Sure, it was shadowy air, but I’d ruined our buzz over nothing. “I’m sorry —”
Thunder cracked and a bolt of lightning split the air about twenty feet in front of us. The alley flooded with mind-numbing magic that somehow tasted of metal and electricity, along with the underlying spiciness that I always associated with dragons.
Kandy was growling beside me, leaning into the press of the magic as if fighting for her footing.
A dark figure of a man appeared — legs astride and arms akimbo — at the core of the light.
I felt Kandy’s magic shift, two-inch claws appearing where her fingernails should be as she slashed at the magic still buffeting us. I stepped one pace ahead and shifted to place her just behind my right shoulder, shielding her from the bulk of the magic’s force with my body.
The electric white magic — some sort of transportation spell, at best guess — disappeared with a snap.
The man was dressed in dragon leathers and easily over six feet tall. He was dark blond, broad shouldered, and unarmed as far as I could see. But with the amount of magic he wielded — especially if the transportation spell was of his own making — I knew that visible weapons meant very little.
“Dragon,” I whispered for Kandy’s benefit. “I … think.”
“You think?” she asked, her wolf growl infusing her tone.
The possibly-a-dragon-or-possibly-some-hybrid-I’d-never-met opened his eyes. With the dim light in the alley paired with the near dark of the night, I couldn’t distinguish their color.
“Sie! Frau!” he shouted.
Immediately after the foreign words left his mouth, he threw back his head, arched his body forward, and screamed in agony. Then he collapsed onto the asphalt before us.
“That can’t be good,” I said.
Kandy had slammed her still-clawed hands over her ears at his scream, but she dropped them as we cautiously stepped forward. She prodded the possible-dragon with her foot, then looked at me.
I shrugged. “His magic is dim.”
“Does your knife cut dragon flesh?”
“Haven’t had a reason or a chance to try it yet.”
Kandy raised an eyebrow at me. Yeah, dragons were pretty quick on their feet, even in training.
“Okay,” Kandy continued. “Well, if he tries to kill me …”
“I’ll skewer him. Dragon or no.”
Kandy grabbed his shoulder and rolled him over with a grunt. “Heavy.”
“Dragons usually are.”
We stared down at the black leather-swathed dragon at our feet. He was out cold. Everything about him was definitely broad — as in shoulders, chest, nose, cheekbones, and jaw.
“At least he’s damn cute,” Kandy said. “You know, if he’s here to eviscerate us.”
Kandy and I had very different opinions on what qualified as ‘cute.’ The man at my feet was dangerous. I could tell that by his magic alone.
Still, he was a dragon … I thought.
I sighed.
“We’re going to have to bring him inside.”
“Yep, that scream was crazy. I’m surprised the neighbors aren’t swamping us yet.”
“Friday night. Most of the nearest neighbors are still at work.” Kitsilano was a pretty upscale neighborhood, but the bakery was backed by apartment buildings typically rented out to people who worked in the area. I was fairly certain we’d been served by a few of my neighbors at the restaurant tonight. Even Todd, my espresso wizard, lived a couple of blocks from here. His rent wasn’t fantastic but he was only blocks from work and the beach, and what more did an early twenty-something want?
I grabbed the guy’s wrists, thankful that he wore leather gauntlets so I didn’t need to touch him skin to skin. Kandy grabbed his booted ankles and we dragged him to the bakery alley door. Yeah, dragged. He was too heavy to lift in heels.
We got him through the back door and situated on the tile floor between my stainless steel workstation and the oven. Oddly, getting him through the bakery wards took some extra thought and magic exertion on my part. The invitation to enter was usually made between two conscious parties. I hadn’t known that made a difference until tonight. I thought about trying to lift him up onto the counter, just to be polite, but decided his weight might crush it.
“Should we tie him up?” Kandy asked.
“He is a dragon …”
“But not one you know.”
“Yeah, but all dragons are supposed to be, you know, peacekeepers.”
Kandy snorted. “Right. Your dad, the peacekeeper.”
“I say we leave him here to sleep it off … I’m assuming the transportation spell drained him. And you stay with me tonight, behind the wards of the apartment.”
“And when he wakes and we aren’t here?”
“I’ll feel him from upstairs,” I muttered. “He packs a lot of magic.”
“Seems risky.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, but I couldn’t figure out what else to do. “I could take him to the nexus, if I could manage to pull him through the portal with me, but … I’m wary of dragging beings I don’t know into the nexus.” Yeah, I’d been there and done that … with a demon, the very first time I’d met my dad, actually. I was still on Suanmi’s black list — and quite possibly the black lists of other guardians as well — because of it. Well, that was one of the reasons Suanmi hated me anyway.
“Sensible.”
“Yeah.”
I glanced at the digital clock on the oven. It was just after midnight. “I’ll check on him on the hour. If he’s not awake before I need to bake, I’m going to have to move him anyway.”
Halfway up the back stairs to the apartment, I remembered I had the dragonskin tattoo map in my satchel. Kandy insisted on coming down and keeping watch on the sleeping dragon while I slipped into the back office.
I’d bought a small fire safe when I opened the bakery, but I’d only ever used it to hold deposits that I couldn’t immediately walk the block to the bank, as well as the cash float. After Tofino, I’d moved that safe underneath the front counter in the bakery and replaced the one in my office with a crazy expensive, bolted-into-the-floor model.
The installer thought I was crazy when he found out I was putting it in the back of a bakery and not in some six-thousand-square-foot Shaughnessy mansion, where I was probably planning on filling it with diamonds. It took up about a quarter of my office. In addition to the wards already on the bakery, I layered the safe with the same protection spells I’d placed on my apartment. Then I asked Scarlett and Gran to add their own protections. All the spells were keyed to me, and I was the only person who knew the combination. I didn’t even write it down.
Yeah, it wasn’t overkill.
Because after Tofino, I found myself in possession of two magical items that … well, that scared me silly to possess them.
One was Blackwell’s original leather-bound Book of Demon History on Earth. This wasn’t actually a spellbook, but had enough information in it that my sister had managed to use it to raise two separate sets of demons — one in London and one in Tofino. The book itself wasn’t powerful, but obviously the information contained in it could be dangerous.
The second item was of my own making. And it was far, far more terrifying. I’d taken a sacrificial knife that had previously been wielded by my sister to kill a teenaged werewolf in order to summon a demon. Then, using magic stolen from a sorcerer who my sister had also killed, I turned that knife into a weapon that could cut through any magic. Well, any magic I’d seen it tested against. A knife sharpened by blood magic and forged with my alchemist powers. A knife that had almost killed an ancient vampire, who I’d previously thought immortal.
Actually, I was pretty sure that the knife had killed Kett, and that only the intervention of his maker and an uber-powerful elder vampire had brought him back.
So, yeah. I didn’t want either item in the hands of anyone. Not even me. But they were my responsibility now, and I wasn’t going to shirk the duty even if it scared me silly.
I placed Pulou’s map in the safe, two shelves down from the knife and the book. I didn’t think the blood magic would leech out or anything. I just really, really didn’t want to accidentally brush the cursed knife. I had tried to figure out what I’d created — and how to undo it — months ago, but the magic was tangled, fused. I could probably separate it from the knife, but into what? I didn’t want to inadvertently create something even more terrible.
Sigh.
Pulou had called the knife a trifle when I tried to give it to him. The demon history book was so insignificant to him that he barely spared it a shake of his head when I tried to donate it to the nexus library. I needed to keep reminding myself of that. Of course, none of the nine guardians saw Blackwell as a threat either, but I knew better. Didn’t I?
Anyway. With the map locked in the safe, I needed to get some sleep before I had to bake in four hours. I had a new recipe I wanted to test, a variation of Kandy’s blackberry birthday cupcakes. The dragon was still out cold on the kitchen floor as we headed back up to the apartment and rolled into bed. Kandy took the couch. Scarlett wasn’t home, so I sent her a text message as my head hit the pillow.
Beware of the sleeping dragon in the bakery kitchen.
I woke up suddenly and fully aware. What had woken me and whether I’d been dreaming, I didn’t know. My bedroom was pitch dark. I reached over and tapped my phone on the nightstand to check the time. It was 4:21 in the freaking morning. I still had over half an hour until my alarm.
Then I remembered the dragon in the kitchen bakery. I stretched my dowser senses beyond the apartment wards, but didn’t taste any magic other than Kandy’s berry-infused dark-chocolate from the living room. The unknown dragon was probably still unconscious, because I was certain I would taste someone as powerful as him even through my wards.
Though, speaking of wards, something was off. I just wasn’t sure what or where.
I slipped out of bed, wiggled my toes into some flip-flops, and pulled a hoodie over my tank top and cupcake-printed pajama bottoms. The PJs were a gift from Kandy for my twenty-fourth birthday last February. Yeah, I was a Pisces. Supposedly, that was why I had a thing for shoes — according to a local astrologer. I brushed my fingers over the hilt of the knife invisibly strapped to my right thigh, which I slept with most nights now. My comfort blanket was a knife, so no wonder I was imagining being attacked by shadows in the alley after a couple of drinks.
I wandered out into the living room, still not knowing what had woken me. All that remained of the dozen Flirt in a Cup — a blackberry cake with chocolate-blackberry buttercream icing — that I’d given to Kandy as a bedtime snack were the crusted paper cups strewn across my steamer-trunk coffee table. The green-haired werewolf was snoring and sprawled out on the couch, but she woke instantly when I lightly touched her shoulder. She rolled to her feet in a smooth, silent motion behind me as I crossed through the room to the back stairs.
I couldn’t taste Scarlett’s magic, so she hadn’t come back to the apartment last night. I wondered if she was with my dad. She often came home smelling of sun and sand, but usually left me a note on the fridge. Of course, I hadn’t checked for one last night.
At the top of the stairs to the bakery, I changed my mind about the flip-flops and shucked them off my feet. Then I sidled down the stairs with Kandy close behind me. I didn’t turn on the lights. I couldn’t see in the dark as well as Kandy, but I could see well enough by the digital light coming off the various appliances to note that the kitchen was empty. No sleeping dragon.
The light was on in the office, but the door was half closed.
The tile was cool underneath my bare feet as I slipped as silently as possible past my stainless steel workstation. Then, standing an arm’s length away, I slowly pushed the office door all the way open.
The black leather-swathed dragon — if that was what he was — stood in front of my safe with his back to the door. The safe door was freaking crumpled and hanging off one hinge. He appeared to have effortlessly ripped through the multilayered wards along with the man-made steel. I seriously hoped the magical backlash had been a bitch. If it hadn’t, I’d happily make him regret destroying days of work and hundreds of dollars. The nullification of the wards was probably what had woken me. Because, even standing this close, I could barely taste his smoky dragon magic.
He turned — almost lazily, as if he had all the time in the world — toward where Kandy and I stood in the office doorway. I estimated that there was maybe seven feet between us. I could have my knife in his heart with one lunge. Except he had my map — Pulou’s map — draped over his hands. And I didn’t go around stabbing people in the heart without some witty banter first.
He was glaring at the tattooed map as though it was the bane of his existence.
“That doesn’t belong to you,” I said. “And you broke my freaking safe.”
“The freaking safe wasn’t safe enough.”
His English was heavily-accented with German, I thought. He spoke as if testing out the words.
“Hilarious, asshole. I could have left you in the alley.”
“You couldn’t have kept me out.”
“I can kick you out now … without the map.”
Kandy shifted behind me.
The guy’s gaze flicked to her and then back to me. “You going to set your wolf against me, witch?” he asked. “I will crush her skull with one hand.”
Kandy started laughing. “I love it when they underestimate you,” she said between chortles.
“Dragons are immune to witch magic,” he snapped. Well, that confirmed the dragon identification. Oddly, his accent was easing with each word he spoke. “That I even have to explain such things confirms that you are in possession of something you have no ability to protect —”
“Wrong species,” Kandy interrupted. “Dumb, dumb.”
He looked confused. It was difficult to maintain intimidation when confused, but he pulled it off.
So I pulled my knife.
A smile spread across his face. I ignored how this transformed him from stern, grumbly dragon into a gorgeous creature of great power. Delicious, actually. Yeah, there was nothing cute about him at all.
“Alchemist,” he whispered. His English was almost unaccented now, which was freaky weird but cool. Gold glinted across his could-be-green, but might-be-blue eyes. I’d never seen dragon magic manifest like that before. Man, his arrogance would give Kett a run for his blood money.
Kandy snorted. “Don’t dragons usually call you ‘warrior’s daughter’?”
That wiped the smile from his full-lipped, wide-jawed face. He narrowed his deep-green eyes at me.
Okay, I got that I kept noticing he was hot. Forgive me. I hadn’t had a good romp in over a year. Hell, I hadn’t had a great romp in much, much longer than that.
“Remind me not to elect you secret keeper,” I mock hissed at Kandy.
I felt her shrug behind me. “Fair fights are more interesting to watch.”
“Yeah, but now he’s not sure. Fight blocker.”
Kandy choked out a laugh. “Fine. You want to ruin your bakery, you go for it. He’ll hit back.”
“I will,” he said. Then he pulled the sacrificial knife out of the sheath on his right thigh.
He’d stolen my freaking knife as well.
“That’s not yours,” I snapped.
“It feels like mine.”
“Really not a point in your favor, dragon. You know, on the good or evil scale.”
“Come take it back, then.”
So I did … without taking a step. I’d been testing my alchemist powers for over a year. And I had specifically been working with the sacrificial knife, trying to figure out a way to neutralize its magic. When the neutralizing didn’t work out, I’d installed a fail-safe.
The knife, like any other magical object I constructed, was made with my magic. And my magic was tied to me. I’d found I could call an object I made back to me with a single thought. Well, a super-focused single thought. Okay, some intense thinking and coaxing. The sacrificial knife was a bit pissy, actually. It didn’t much like being held by me. Yes, it was an inanimate object, but that was what it felt like to me. Maybe I was just projecting because I was repelled by it.
Anyway, it had taken a bunch of coaxing and more applications of my magic. But the sacrificial knife came now at my call.
The dragon looked a little shocked to be weaponless. Then he looked more shocked to find my jade knife at his neck and the sacrificial knife poised at his heart. The fact that he had the capacity to be shocked humanized him. I tried to not notice the starburst of deep blue around his pupils.
“Not a witch, nor just an alchemist,” he murmured. His throat moved against the blade of my jade knife. He needed a shave. The blade was helpful in that regard. I tried not to smirk and failed.
“That’s my map, entrusted to me,” I said.
“This?” He held the map with one hand so I could see it. “By whom?”
“Kandy?” I prompted.
The green-haired werewolf reached over my shoulder and flicked her claws in the guy’s face before she carefully took the map from him. He flinched and looked like he was thinking about not letting go of it, but he did.
“You think that knife can pierce the heart of a dragon, warrior’s daughter?” he asked, heavy on the sarcasm. For someone who might have just learned English, then adapted his accent to match mine, he sure picked up speech nuances quickly.
“You held it, dragon. You tell me.”
He held my gaze for a moment. Then he leaned into me — pressing against both blades, the jade knife at his neck and the sacrificial knife at his heart. I ignored the instinct to back off even as the jade blade drew blood and the sacrificial knife cut through his dragon leathers like soft butter. He hissed and curled his lip at me.
Then he took a step back, his gaze still locked to mine. He lifted his hand and wiped the blood from his neck. Besides the blood, his skin was unblemished. He healed as quickly as Kett, and much quicker than I did. He let go of my gaze to stare at the blood on his hand. He looked bemused.
I lifted my jade knife vertically, drawing his attention as I watched a drop of his blood slide down the hilt. Then I reached out with my alchemist powers, and with a single lick of magic, I absorbed the blood into the blade. I felt the dragon’s magic dissipate through the knife, then settle.
The guy grunted in surprise, but then tried to cover. Apparently, he’d never seen an alchemist in action before.
I took a step back, twirling the knife and its new pulse of power in my hand. Then I sheathed it. The dragon watched me, dissecting my every move. That was what Branson the sword master had trained me to do. I kept hold of the sacrificial knife in my left hand but allowed it to hang by my side.
Then I waited.
The dragon rolled his shoulders and his neck. Then, having made some decision, he huffed out an exasperated sigh.
“Warner, sentinel of the instruments of assassination, son of Jiaotu, guardian of Northern Europe,” he said. His tone was formal but his bow was limited to a tilt of his chin.
I had no idea what ‘sentinel’ or ‘instruments of assassination’ meant. Sure, I’d been studying, but the nexus library was insanely huge. I could devote my entire life to it and still not get through a single row. Though, granted, I’d been rather focused on Blackwell and figuring out the proper way to ‘reclaim’ his circlet. Hell, figuring out how to seize the sorcerer’s entire collection would have been even better.
Kandy stepped up beside me. “Kandy, werewolf, enforcer of the West Coast North American Pack.” She snapped her teeth on the ‘k’ in pack and I stifled a smile. The green-haired werewolf had a real loathing of formalities.
Warner inclined his head in Kandy’s direction but kept his gaze on me.
“Jade Godfrey, granddaughter of Pearl Godfrey, Convocation chair,” I said. Then I raised my chin just a little more. “Daughter of Yazi, warrior of the guardians, guardian of Australia.”
Warner started to sneer at this proclamation, but he managed to control his expression. “Child of a witch and a guardian?” he asked doubtfully.
“I was unaware that Jiaotu had any children,” I countered. “You look nothing like him.” Jiaotu was as white blond and almost as pale as Kett. He was also fast ‘friends’ with Suanmi. He’d witnessed me dragging a demon into the nexus, of course. Then he’d been an asshole to Kett and outraged over my heritage. Since then we hadn’t spoken.
Warner’s face blanked. “She and I are very alike,” he said, enunciating his words carefully.
“She?”
“What year is it?”
I glanced at Kandy. She curled her lip at me questioningly.
“2014. September 19th,” the werewolf answered. “You’re crashing my belated birthday party.”
Warner let out a pained breath. “Four hundred and fifty years,” he whispered.
“That’s a lot of time to be missing,” Kandy said, putting together the pieces of the conversation quicker than I did. “Why show up now? Here?”
“It’s my duty to protect the location of the instruments,” he answered doggedly, as if he might be trying to convince himself. “No matter what year you claim it to be.”
“Instruments?” I asked.
He lifted his hand and pointed a finger at the map Kandy still held. “Where did you get that?”
Kandy tilted her head, suddenly more interested in than wary of Warner. But I’d felt his magic spread through my knife. I wasn’t so quick to relax around someone who held that much power in a single drop of blood.
“Tell him the rest of your title,” she prompted.
I hesitated. Then, trusting the werewolf’s judgement, I said, “Alchemist. Hunter for the treasure keeper, Pulou. Do I need to elaborate?”
He shook his head, clearly not happy with my ‘job title.’ “You’re not powerful enough to hold such a thing,” he said, referencing the map.
“I believe she just established her dominance, dragon,” Kandy growled. Then, to prove her point, she turned her back on him and crossed into the kitchen. She rolled the map as she did so, tucking it into the elastic band at the small of her back.
Knowing a werewolf game when I saw one, I followed her, flicking on the kitchen lights as I did so.
“I would speak to the treasure keeper,” Warner called after me.
“Go for it,” I said as I crossed around the stainless steel workstation to the bakery fridge.
Warner followed us out of the office, his gaze sweeping the kitchen to identify the two exits. “You will take me to the nearest portal.”
Kandy, her back still to Warner, climbed up on a stool that was reserved especially for her. She laid her head in her arms as if taking a nap.
I pulled butter out of the fridge.
“What are you doing?” Warner asked through gritted teeth.
“Baking,” I answered. “It’s my shift. And I’m already awake, aren’t I?”
“Baking? Baking?” he echoed, getting angry now. “The warrior’s daughter, the treasure keeper’s hunter, bakes? Bakes what?”
“Tasty cupcakes.” Kandy smacked her lips together for emphasis.
“Cupcakes!” he bellowed. “You have triggered the shadow scouts with your ineptitude and blatant disregard —”
“You think he’d be thanking us, hey alchemist?” Kandy said. Then she turned to sneer at Warner. “I get what ‘sentinel’ means. That’s your job. You work for the dragons, and so does Jade.”
Kandy was always quicker on her feet than I was. She figured people out by playing them. Warner went very quiet. I unwrapped the butter and dropped it into my standing mixer.
“I don’t know where I am,” Warner finally said, his tone quiet but strong. “I must speak to the treasure keeper.”
I glanced over at Kandy. She shrugged, leaving the decision to me.
I looked at Warner. He was huge. I could barely see the doorframe of the office behind him. He was almost as wide at the shoulders as Desmond but was taller, so that his girth was proportional. Even weaponless, he was intimidating.
I brushed the fingers of my right hand across my knife, invisible at my hip. I called up his magic that now resided in it. Powerful dragon magic.
“Something tried to grab me in the alley,” I said. “A shadow.”
“You fought it off?” he asked. His tone of surprise irked me, but I just nodded.
Kandy snorted. “Shook it off, more like it,” she said. It seemed the wolf wasn’t interested in hiding power today.
“These shadows are after the map?” I asked.
Warner hesitated, his gaze dropping to the map tucked in at the small of Kandy’s back. “It was likely a demon scout. A benign shadow form ultimately after the location of the instruments. Their detection is one of the … functions of the sentinels. The map is dangerous in the wrong hands.”
Yeah, I wasn’t a complete idiot. ‘Benign’ meant something very different to a dragon than it did to the rest of us mortals. He’d hesitated to use the word ‘function’ as well. Maybe because he was still learning English. Or maybe he was just being guarded. Actually, I was surprised he’d offered as much as he had already. Dragons weren’t all over the concept of sharing.
“Can you read it?”
“No.”
I glanced at Kandy, who shook her head. The wolf could usually figure out if someone was telling the truth, but I took her head shake to indicate she couldn’t tell with Warner.
“Will you escort me to the nexus, and present me to the treasure keeper?” he asked.
“You want me to come with you?”
Warner clenched and unclenched his hands at his sides. It bothered him to request my help. “2014,” he murmured, not looking at me or answering my question.
“That’s a long time for you?” I asked, suddenly feeling sorry for the displacement he must be feeling.
He nodded.
“I will escort you,” I said. “After I bake, and …” — I glanced down at my PJs — “… and change.”
“That would be wise,” he said snarkily.
And I didn’t feel sorry for him anymore.
“Though time is of the essence,” he continued.
“Nothing is coming through the wards,” I said.
“I countered your wards easily.”
“Did you?” I asked. My tone was deadly quiet, but challenging. I knew there was no way he’d broken into my safe without getting some backlash. In fact, I wondered now if that was why he’d been slow to engage me further.
He didn’t answer.
Kandy flashed her nonsmile at Warner and laughed huskily. “This is going to be fun.”
“Only you would think so, werewolf,” I answered.
“Nah, you love this part. You just don’t like to admit it because it clashes with your image of yourself.”
I snorted, and applied myself to baking cupcakes.
Warner took a few steps farther into the kitchen, glowering distrustfully at the overhead fluorescent lights. He touched the edge of the stainless steel workstation tentatively, as if concerned it might bite him, but then didn’t seem to know where to place himself. “I’m rather hungry,” he finally admitted.
Kandy chortled, slipped off the stool, and grabbed a liter of milk out of the fridge along with some eggs.
She passed the milk to Warner and went hunting for a frying pan.
Warner popped the cap off the glass milk container and smelled it. “I’d prefer mead,” he said. “Milk is for babies.”
We ignored him. He tilted back his head and drank the entire container of milk in one long swig. I realized I was watching the muscles move in his neck, and tore my gaze away to find Kandy smirking at me.
“I like my eggs scrambled,” I said.
“I like my cupcakes by the dozen,” she retorted.
I laughed. What the hell, hey? This wasn’t any crazier than my life usually was.