The man’s hand lingered in the air for a moment before he clapped. “Yes, yes. Come, come. I think I have just the thing.”

He led the way back into the hollow of a finely put-together house with rooms galore and lots of areas to lounge. A big staircase curved away right, with a sweeping banister that Mary Poppins would ride down in style. The porch at the back was a large affair with a table and chairs sprawled around a closed-up umbrella. We crossed the deck and then a large section of plush grass.

I didn’t realize, before that moment, that grass could be plush. I’d been in my fair share of parks, but this was the sort of gardening miracle that made me slow and wish for a sunny day.

“Can I come here without you?” I asked Darius.

“Do you know this mage?” he asked.

“No. But his house is fantastic, and it would be even better in the—”

“Oh I’d love to have you,” the man interrupted as he trampled through a patch of flowers. I tried to pick my path much more carefully. “You would fit in here expertly, I can tell. Here we are.”

We had arrived at a large wooden shed in the corner of the property that matched the man’s clothing. He tugged on a rusted metal handle and pulled the squealing door open. Light washed over his face and body.

“Just in here, now.” He hurried in.

“I’m not going in there,” I said as a wave of magic rolled out.

Darius lightly touched my back and leaned in close, his version of a private conversation. “I have been in there many times, Reagan. I vow that you will come to no harm.”

The driver, who had trailed behind us, took up residence near the door, apparently providing security.

I pushed Darius away. “I’m not someone you or your man need to protect, Darius. You opening doors and feeding me grapes and wine—yeah, I’m in. Trying to coddle me on my home turf? That’ll get you punched. You do you. Let me do me. You go in if you want. I’m not.”

He stared at me for a long moment. “I will go in,” he said, “and bring it out.”

“It?” But it was too late. Darius had already stalked into the shed that may or may not have been purchased from the Unabomber. The thing did not fit with the house at all.

I felt eyes boring into the side of my head. I swung my gaze toward the driver. “No one told you staring’s rude, huh?” He continued his unwavering gaze with a straight face and body. “No compute?”

He ignored me. While still staring.

“Were you creepy before you became a vampire, or is this a recent development?” I asked.

“Oh no! Let me show her myself,” I heard from the opened shed door. Mr. Banks hurried outside with a pained expression, trying to shrug off Darius’s attempts at grabbing a long blade from him. “No. You couldn’t understand what it is I have made. Don’t touch it. She needs to be the first.” He stopped in front of me and thrust forward a sword.

“Nope.” I took a step back. “You can’t expect me to take whatever you give me. You must know that.”

Impatience covered his face. He shook the sword at me. “It is ready to pair. You must be the first to hold it.”

“Besides you, obviously.”

“Yes.” He shook it. “Obviously.”

“This is a replacement for the sword you lost,” Darius said with wary eyes as he looked at the weapon.

I felt my confusion cross my face. “My sword took two weeks to make. When was this called in?”

“While you were sleeping,” he replied.

“I loved that movie.” I shook my head at the blade being offered me. “I’ve lost track of time, but I haven’t lost track of that much time. The kind of sword I use couldn’t possibly be ready this quickly.”

Mr. Banks scoffed. “Ignorance.” He shook the sword. “The fundamentals of the sword are easy. We have several on hand. It’s the magical composition that requires finesse, and my missus is a master. She can create a spell to feel out the user’s magic and mesh the two together. If the sword marries to you, it will only work for you, and it will work better than any sword prepared for you by the hacks you usually work with. If this one doesn’t marry, we’ll try another. Simple. She has loaded three swords, per Mr. Durant’s instruction, but I have dozens ready.”

Swallowing down my hesitation—he seemed legit, if excitable—I let my hand hover over the blade. The vibration was pleasant, but too warm. Too…sticky. It made me uncomfortable.

I shook my head and took my hand back. “No.”

Mr. Banks scowled, annoyed, before confusion stole his expression. He analyzed me, looking over my face, my body, and the things I carried before shifting back to my eyes. There was a strange moment of gravity between us, like he recognized me. A smile drifted onto his face and excitement sparked in his gaze.

He stepped away. His eyes flicked at Darius before he minutely nodded. “Let me just get the missus. She is best suited for clients such as yourself, Ms. Somerset.”

I watched him set down the sword, smash a few more flowers, half run across the grass, and go back into the house.

“What kind of dog and pony show is this?” I asked, strangely nervous. Darius’s uncharacteristic look of confusion told me I wasn’t getting any answers from him. The driver, whose name I honestly couldn’t remember even though it had been less than ten minutes since I’d heard it, was staring at the house where Mr. Banks had disappeared, his scowl a permanent fixture.

After an amount of time that had me shifting impatiently, and the vampires go unnaturally still, which probably wasn’t good, an older woman came trundling out of the house. She had a stocky body, a hair net, a shiny sort of robe that must’ve been hard to find, since it was so odd, and fists at the end of her arms. Instead of crossing the grass like Mr. Banks seemed to favor, she took the path, with him trailing after her.

When she reached me, she wore a bulldog expression. “So. You don’t trust me, huh?” She looked over my face.

“This is my wife, Callie,” Mr. Banks said, pushing in close so he could get a good look at me too.

“No,” I said flatly, answering her question and inching back. “Which you should be accustomed to.”

“I’m not, actually.” She sniffed, blinked at me a couple times, nodded as if she was agreeing with something, then walked toward the shed. Mr. Banks followed her.

“What is going on?” I mouthed to Darius, ready to pack it in and take off. I’d never seen mages act so weird around me. They were usually comfortable in my presence because I understood magic but couldn’t cast—they didn’t think I was a threat. These two were studying me, like they knew a secret about me.

Considering the enemies I’d recently accrued in the mage world, and the things I’d done in Darius’s presence, that didn’t bode well.

“No, Dizzy, the red one,” Callie shouted from inside the shed. She stalked out, rolling her eyes. “I hate being in that place. He loves chaos. It’s how he thinks best. I can’t stand it. I need order.”

“So you stuck him in the shed out back?” I asked, taking a step in the direction of the house.

“Which red one?” Dizzy—clearly Mr. Banks’s nickname—called out.

“The red hilt. Deep silver blade. The red one! You know which one. You spent a month on the thing.”

“Oh! That’s the silver one.”

Callie scoffed and threw up her hands. “Suddenly he calls them by the color of their blades and not the hilts.” Focused on me again, she said, “In answer to your question, absolutely not. Do you think I want this God-awful shed dragging down the look of the garden? No, honey. He has a wing dedicated to the sort of chaos he loves. He won’t use it. Prefers this ramshackle disgrace for a workstation. Insisted it be nearly falling down, too.”

“I think better in it,” Dizzy said as he came out holding another sword. “The house is too walled in. I need nature.”

His wife rolled her eyes again.

He held up a smaller sword with a red hilt, an expectant expression on his face.