“It’s almost as if you didn’t know a crazy, powerful mage was running your benefactor ragged,” I said. They looked at me lazily, like two people might after a Thanksgiving dinner. They didn’t speak.

I stuck out my hand. “I need money.”

“Where is Darius?” William asked, making a halfhearted attempt to sit up.

“Were you giving blood, or taking it? I’m confused why you’re this slow.” I reached down and patted his pocket. Nothing there. “Money. Where is it?”

“We do not give out money, human,” the woman said around a mouthful of fangs.

“Ew. Put those things away,” I said.

“I am off duty and pleasantly relaxed.” William draped his arm over the arm of the sofa.

“Off duty? Looks like Darius made sure to keep you informed.” That was sarcasm. They didn’t seem to notice. “Whatever. Give me money.”

“William, get rid of this annoying pest, would you? Her smell is making me nauseated.” The woman waved her hand in front of her face.

“Stop breathing. Easy solution.” I reached down to William’s exposed chest, grabbed hair, and pulled. “Up we get.”

His eyes cleared before sparking with anger. An instant later, he was standing in front of me, arms flared at his sides, ready to battle. “You are protected now. You won’t be protected forever.”

I laughed and motioned him on. “Same goes for you. Let’s go. The sooner you give me what I want, the sooner you can go back to being useless while I protect the future of your species. No, no. Don’t thank me. It’s all in a day’s work.”

His glower didn’t stop him from moving out of the room and toward the stairs. We ended up in a large room with a tussled bed, thankfully empty. He opened a ceramic pot with a lid—either a poorly designed vase or an urn—and extracted a wad of money. Before he could leaf off a few bills, all twenties, I snatched it out of his hand.

“Thanks,” I said, already walking.

“Darius will be hearing of this.” William trailed me. “Your days as his honored guest are numbered.”

“You were so nice yesterday. What happened?” I jogged down the stairs, passing the buff human who’d disappeared from behind me somewhere along the way, and headed out the front door. “Have a lovely evening.” I closed the door in William’s face, not an easy feat from the outside. Timing was on my side.

Surprisingly, the driver was still there.

“Boy are you getting a big tip,” I said as I climbed in.

“Just remember to review,” he said sheepishly, waiting for me to input the next destination.

“Five stars, all the way. There you go, the destination is loaded.”

He checked the new route, and away we went.

I tapped my fingers against my knees as silence descended. I thought back to that woman vamp who’d said I smelled bad. From what little I’d seen of her, I couldn’t guess at her age, but I wondered if younger vamps were repulsed by my smell, while the older ones were attracted to it. It seemed to fit, but I had never heard of that happening. There were a few magical creatures that vampires couldn’t get enough of, but none that I knew of had a dual effect.

I shrugged to myself and glanced around as the driver slowly crawled through the French Quarter. Even so late and with a light haze of rain finally deciding to fall, people wandered around with their drinks, talking and guffawing, staggering or standing in doorways.

“What happened to the door?” the driver asked a while later as we pulled up outside my house.

My brow lowered in confusion.

The front door, which had already been busted, now leaned against the doorframe to mostly cover the entrance. The screen, which I’d left in the yard, had been placed on my porch, tucked behind my chairs.

“The cat got to it,” I told the driver as I got out.

I’d expected the door to be in bits, or at least knocked more to the side. Maybe the high mage hadn’t been my visitor after all.

The optimistic feeling was short-lived.

My heart dropped as I moved the slab of wood and got my first peek inside.

Charred to hell was the first thought that rolled through my head.

The floor creaked as I stepped on it. I paused and listened. Shuffling sounded outside, the slide of a shoe. I glanced over my shoulder, making eye contact with the man from down the way. He gave me a stiff nod as he trudged by, his glance taking in my front yard before darting into the house. I wasn’t sure what that was about, but he made looking creepy an art.

I took another few steps, gauging the floor. Similar to the mage’s house, it was charred but mostly solid. I could walk on it to check out the crime scene, but I couldn’t live on it without some serious repairs.

There goes my deposit.

Pressure squeezed my chest as I looked around my living room, a blackened, twisted mess. My couch was a pile of char. Same for my chair. The glass from my coffee table littered the blackened ground. All the little things I’d gathered over the years were destroyed. My physical memories, gone.

Rage and sadness choked me in turns as I checked out my kitchen. Unusable. It would have to be gutted and redone. The weird porcelain cow my mother had given me before she died was nowhere to be found. The blown glass I’d bought off a street vendor lay in black shards.

I blinked away tears. I’d been on the receiving end of grudge attacks before, but this was, by far, the worst penance I’d ever received from doing my job. This was hitting me on an extremely personal level.

In a daze, I continued on, noting that the hallway entrance was in the same state of disrepair. Halfway through, though, the destruction began to fade. The deep black of the walls lightened, and then disappeared entirely as I neared my bedroom.

A shock of fear stole through me. Had the mage stopped his shock and awe campaign because he’d found one or more of my stashes?

I hurried into the spare room, equally as untouched as my bedroom, and slammed open the closet door. Magic pulsed like a heartbeat, strong and comforting. My heartbeat, to be exact.

Quickly, I pulled away a comforter and the board games piled on the floor. The small rug was next to go, revealing a square crack in the floorboards. It was completely undisturbed. No foreign magic loitered around it, and no defense spells had been set in motion. Something else must have prompted the mage to give up burning my house.

I exited through the back door to check out my shed. The lock was broken and the inside looked ransacked. I waded in and put out my hands, feeling the familiar pulse echoing in my veins.

Another feeling caught me. Something foreign. Probing, almost. Like someone had tried to delve into my unique blend of magic to see how it worked.

Why would the mage do it back here and not inside, where he was less likely to be disturbed?

Unless the person who’d hit the shed wasn’t the mage, but someone else who was curious about me, someone who’d recognize both the faint pulse of my heartbeat and the ancient magic I’d used to create this cache.

Possibilities crowded into my head, but there was only one person who came to mind. With his extra-sensory hearing, he certainly knew my heartbeat, and he had connections to mages who could study the magic I’d used.

That stalking bastard.

He definitely needed that punch in the face. He was asking for it.

I checked the other caches, found them all unmolested, and returned to the spare bedroom closet. Once there, I pricked my finger. Blood welled up, hot and red. Turning my other hand palm up, I created a ball of fire, setting it to float in a perfect sphere.

The blood wobbled on my finger before falling through the air. When it touched the fire, a sizzle sent steam twisting upward. I surged my magic in pulses, timed to my heartbeat as I muttered the incantation in Gaelic.

I’d asked my mother, “Why not Latin?” when she’d taught me this spell. Her response: “Gaelic is less used than Latin.” I’d thought she was crazy at the time. Some villages in Ireland still spoke Gaelic as their primary language, not to mention the little bit children across the whole island learned in school. Since then, I’d seen so many magical people use Latin, each of them thinking they were so smart, so individual.

The ball of fire froze into a block of ice, which fell to the ground and cracked open. Vapor rose into the form of a skull, turning slowly through the air. Green light shone from its eyes and out of the missing front tooth. After a full circle, I said, “Droim ar ais.” Reverse.