Once we eliminated the illusions on the remaining limousine, we followed the original to the Grotto.

"Bingo!" I whooped, meeting Elyssa's high-five as we celebrated a minor victory.

Stacey hugged Bella. "Bloody fabulous!" she said with a grin.

"Hold on," Shelton said. "I don't want to rain on your parade, but we won't know for sure if this one came from the Conroy residence until we scout it."

Our celebrations subsided as his sobering words sank in. He was right. And what was to guarantee this was the only house the Conroys owned?

Shelton toyed around with the map application on his arcphone. "The house is on Riverside Drive," he said. "It has a steep driveway, and a wooded area around it. That means it'll be hard as hell to stake out using conventional methods."

"Or magical," Bella added. "I'm sure they have a substantial number of wards on the property."

"We have an omniarch," I said, an idea springing to mind. "What if we used it to leapfrog across their property until we get where we want to go?"

Shelton looked impressed. "Way to go, kid. That's a great idea."

Cutsauce yipped.

I felt so pleased with myself, I didn't bother correcting his use of the word "kid". "I figure if we get a detailed image of the front yard and surrounding areas, we can open a portal there, then find another point somewhere further in, close the arch, and reopen it on that spot."

"You'll need to exercise caution," Bella said. "If you open the portal in the middle of a tree, it will probably sever the trunk. Not to mention what might happen if you open it inside of something living."

I made a face, imagining the results. "Are you sure opening the portal will destroy anything in its path?"

Shelton shrugged. "I'm a bounty hunter, not a magic arch specialist."

"Shall we experiment?" Bella asked, standing. Cutsauce leapt from her lap as she stood, perking his ears at her as if wondering what was so important it warranted disrupting his nap. Bella motioned toward the door.

I rubbed my hands together. "I love experimenting."

We made our way down to the arch room with the little hellhound dogging our steps. Bella continued through it to the gauntlet room. After a few minutes, she returned. "I set up rows of bricks. When I open the portal, it should open up in the middle of the stacks. I'm curious to see if it will sever the bricks, or merely pulverize them."

"I'll go watch the bricks," I said, taking Elyssa's hand and walking to the gauntlet room. On the other side of the low wall in the practice range, I saw several rows of the large cinder blocks we used for levitation practice arrayed in such a way that no matter where Bella opened the portal it would intersect with the bricks.

"You realize we never finished our match, don't you?" Elyssa said, giving my hand a squeeze.

I smirked. "Pretty sure I had it in the bag."

"Oh, really?" She punched me in the shoulder with her free hand. "Maybe we should settle that right now."

The air above the center of the cinder blocks shimmered, flickered, and split into a portal right in the middle of a stack. The bricks bent around the portal as if suddenly rendered insubstantial, clearing a space for the portal. Cutsauce yipped at the portal, hopping around on his little legs. The portal flickered shut a few seconds later, and the bricks snapped back to their former shape. The hellhound whined, tilting his head.

"Calm down," Elyssa said, picking him up.

He licked her face.

"Attention whore," I said.

Our little contest forgotten for the moment, I walked to the formerly warped blocks and inspected them. They seemed no worse for the wear. It was as if the portal temporarily transmuted them from solid to something else. Bella joined us for a repeat of the experiment. I touched the warped cinder blocks. They felt solid as ever.

"How bizarre," Bella said, obviously as puzzled as the rest of us.

We repeated the experiment using the wooden melee dummy, chairs, and even a pool of water. In all cases, the portal merely warped the objects in its physical space, displacing anything there. Nobody volunteered to let Bella open a portal on top of them, but we felt confident it wouldn't kill anyone. Shelton wanted to test it on Cutsauce since the little hellhound kept following us everywhere, yipping excitedly whenever the portal opened. Bella gave him a horrified look.

"One thing I'm concerned about would be Gloom cracks," Elyssa said after we finished experimenting. "The silver circles around the Obsidian Arches and the smaller arches in the control rooms prevent Gloom cracks from spreading outside the magical circuit. There's no circle at the destination portal, so what's to prevent cracks from opening and spreading?"

"It might create a temporary invisible circle around the area it opens in," Shelton said. "I guess we'll have to experiment more."

At that point, though, it was late, and I wanted to go to bed. We opened the omniarch back to Stacey's residence, and saw Ryland, Stacey's lycan boyfriend, on the other side wearing a chef's apron and not much else. She let out a sensual growl and raced through the arch and into his burly arms.

Bella shut the portal in record time.

Chapter 17

The next day was Saturday, so we got up extra early to go to Elyssa's initiation ceremony for the Templars. Bella, Shelton, Elyssa and I used the omniarch, opening the portal in a room inside the Templar compound and leaving it open for our later return.

"Where has Nightliss been lately?" I asked as we walked outside to the large lawn behind the house where the ceremony was to take place.

"Meghan said she was going to practice and recover, but I haven't seen her for a few days," Bella said.

"Justin!" said a familiar voice. I turned in time to receive a hug from Katie. She squeezed me so tight I couldn't breathe for a minute.

"Hey, Katie," I wheezed as she released me. "Geez, you been working out?"

She squeezed Elyssa with a hug, eliciting an oof from my girlfriend.

Katie gave a sheepish grin. "Um, kind of, I guess."

I'd once had a huge crush on the pretty blonde. By the time she'd reciprocated the feelings, I'd already moved on and fallen in love with Elyssa. Unfortunately for Katie, that had been about the time hellhounds decided to chase me out of my childhood home, leading to her terrifying initiation into the Overworld.

"How's college?" I asked.

She shrugged. "It's okay, but it's so boring going to a nom school when you know about all the cool stuff at Arcane University and Science Academy."

I chuckled, though a sobering thought flattened my smile as I remembered the last time she'd seen action with us and mowed down a gang of armed vampires with an assault rifle. She'd saved our lives, but at the cost of emotional trauma.

Katie turned to my girlfriend. "I'm really happy for you, Elyssa." She held out a wrapped package. "It's not much, but I figured graduating to a full-fledged Templar means you deserve a gift."

Elyssa's eyes softened. "Thanks, Katie. It means a lot to me."

My stomach clenched. Should I have bought her a gift, too?

Shelton's eyes caught mine. He smirked, probably knowing exactly what I was thinking.

Other members of my extended family were also there, including Felicia Nosti and her nom boyfriend, Larry. I was happy to see them still together after a few months, since she wasn't usually one to stay committed to anything or anyone. After her and Adam's parents had died, she'd gone off the deep end, doing drugs, and abusing her body in all sorts of other ways, culminating in her becoming a vampire and doing dirty work for Maximus. He'd nearly killed her, allowing her to be infected by vamplings, but Nightliss had cured the curse somehow by purging Felicia with the blood of the vampire who had turned her.

I spoke with her for a while, moving on to other friends, Ash and Nyte, former schoolmates from Edenfield High School.

"Justin!" Ash shook my hand with bone-crushing force.

I winced. "Easy, dude. You're gonna break somebody's hand if you're not careful."

Ash smiled sheepishly. "Sorry. I got excited when I saw you."

Nyte snorted. "Life has been an adjustment ever since the Maximus ordeal."

The rogue vampire had used my blood to make a potion that turned noms into vampires. Ash and Nyte had taken the potion and joined the blood-sucking crowd. But when I altered a spell intended to kill all the vampires in Maximus's Atlanta compound, the alteration removed the vampirism from the vampires present, instead. Even though my intervention had taken the fangs and desire for blood from my two friends, they'd retained supernatural strength and crystal-blue eyes—a side effect of my blood having been used in the vampire potion.

"I'll bet," I said.

Nyte grinned. "So we decided to join the Templars."

Ash nodded. "Mr. Borathen—"

"Commander," Nyte said with a sigh. "He isn't the dad of your best friend anymore; he's your leader."

"I know," Ash said, grinning at Elyssa. He and Nyte had been her besties before I'd stumbled into their lives.

I spotted Elyssa's father walking from the house and flinched in surprise at the woman walking by his side.

"Nightliss?" I said.

Elyssa's forehead furrowed at the sight. Ash and Nyte both went silent with awe, their mouths dropping open in unison.

"Dude, that's the angel?" Nyte said. "She is so hot."

"Is she single?" Ash asked.

"I'll be right back," I said, and made my way through the crowd, Elyssa following close behind.

Thomas Borathen, leader of the Atlanta Templars and father of my girlfriend, regarded me with his cool blue eyes. "Mr. Slade," he said in a professional tone.

"Hello, sir," I said, giving Nightliss a quizzical look. She smiled.

"Hello, Dad," Elyssa said, and went in for a hug.