“Why are you going along with this?”

“Because…well, because everyone around me is pushy, and you all seem to think this is the right way to do things. But if you think about it, all these people are in town for us, and they were going to come for us sometime. At least this is on our terms.”

He deflated and shook his head.

“Come on.” I patted his shoulder. “Buck up. We can do this. We have a future. I mean, my mother basically foretold it. It was gibberish and only made a mild amount of sense, but it was a future involving Reagan’s…secret. We should trust in that.”

“I foretell futures all the time. It’s how I avoid them.”

I didn’t have an answer for that one, so I said, “Sure, yeah,” and got out of the car.

“There was a tripwire over here,” Reagan said, standing off to the side next to a few trees. “It ran over there.” She pointed across the small parking lot. “We drove through it. I took it down, but it’s too late. Someone with midrange power knows we’re here.”

“Think they’ll drive in?” I asked, walking around the car to get Emery.

“Well, they certainly aren’t going to take camels.”

“Right.” I rolled my eyes and knocked on Emery’s window. “Come on. The first step is the hardest.”

“Your turn to play strongman, huh?” Reagan wrinkled her nose and put up her hands. “There is something else out that way. Do you see it?”

“What do you mean, my turn to play strongman?” I waited by his door.

“Dual-mages.” She waggled her finger in our direction. “You switch off the different hats, right?”

“We’re not a dual-mage.”

She put up her hand to block the sun. “Not yet, but something changed after you left the bar. You’re acting like the Bankses. I can see it. Hell, I can feel constant shifting between you. It’s pleasant. I like when your rage shifts around. That’s the most fun.”

“But we didn’t do anything different.” I remembered the feeling when we’d created the concealment spell together in the gap between the houses in the French Quarter. We’d blended our weaves into and through each other to make the kind of comprehensive, tightly packed spell I’d never achieved on my own.

We’d merged, in a way. The balance I’d always felt with him had become more grounded. Our roots had dug deeply into the ground, entwining as they did so, and our energy had reached into the sky. Oneness.

I wondered if the dual-mage situation would boost that effect again, as it boosted the magic of Callie and Dizzy.

“You’ve got all the essentials lined up,” Reagan said, walking toward the warehouse with her hands out. “Becoming a dual-mage pair would be a natural next step. Of course, that means forever. Scary stuff.”

Biting my lip, I knocked on Emery’s window. “Get out.” I rapped harder.

“See? Right now you’re wearing the bullying hat. Callie wears that most of the time. After this, though, I bet Emery will wear that hat, if he can learn how to say no to you. Or…I guess guys get to be called commanding. Women always get the short end of the stick. But clearly you need to wear it right now, because he turned chicken.” She made sounds like a chicken, loud enough that I knew he heard.

I couldn’t help laughing. “We’re about to be killed. Do you take nothing seriously?”

“Oh, honey,” she said with attitude. She was probably mimicking someone, but I didn’t know who. “We’re not going to be killed. Let’s get these tattletale spells down, and I’ll tell you exactly what we’re going to do.”

It took me a few moments to get Emery out of the car, plus a whopping ten minutes to get him into the warehouse. I finally ended up punching him in the face. I’d tried everything else, and Reagan had advised me to jar him out of it, so I did.

I was pretty sure he could’ve easily dodged or blocked my punch. My heart wasn’t really in it. But he’d let it hit. Probably so I’d hurt my hand.

Which I did. He had some sharp cheekbones, and I had some (evidently) weak knuckles.

A moment later, his eyes had changed and fierce determination had taken over. In other words, the normal, confident problem-solver Emery. I got to go back to coasting. Which gave me a stronger appreciation for Dizzy’s near-constant state of happiness.

Now we stood at the back area of the warehouse beside a long table with a plethora of ingredients organized across its surface. It reminded me of Darius’s warehouse in Seattle, where we’d done a few spells to sell to him.

“When did you set this up?” I asked, looking over everything. The collection of power stones was a little lacking, but I had a pretty good collection with me.

“I called it in last night while I was waiting for Darius,” Reagan said. “I figured we could all work together on some really tight spells, like that ward, and then create an arsenal of casings to keep at the house. We’ll have to raincheck that, of course. We need quick, nitty-gritty spells. Also…” She put her hands on her hips as she examined the various baskets of casings collected at the end of the table. “We might need to special order some larger, more durable casings in the future. I have a feeling these won’t be enough for what I am thinking.”

“We put a powerful spell into two casings,” I said, remembering working with Emery in Seattle.

Reagan turned on me, and anger crossed her face. “That secret-keeping jerk. You see? Every time I think we’re being open with each other, that elder has something up his sleeve. He implied Emery did that spell. He didn’t mention you at all. Which I find a little suspicious, since, you know, I knew you first.” She frowned, pausing for another beat, before wiping it away with her hand. “Whatever. That doesn’t matter right now. He’s got plans. Fine. So do I. I don’t understand those plans, because your mother is like all other Seers, but I have them. And I won’t be spilling. He can suck it.”

“A very odd relationship,” I muttered.

Reagan ignored my remark. “That spell you two did was in two casings. An even more complex spell might take three or four. How the hell can you quickly grab out four casings from among many, sort through them for the order, and then release them all while in the heat of battle? No, that’s not going to work. Well, for now, it probably has to. Okay, here’s what we need…”

Reagan spent the next few minutes listing off the types of spells we’d ideally have ready for the battle ahead. Everything from attack to defense to marvels of nature. Then she described the more important and pressing matter of creating gigantic walls to keep onlookers from seeing the massive battle. We were supposed to create a Not-So-Great Wall of China to basically run along the outskirts of the land surrounding the warehouse, though she wouldn’t say why it needed to be so massive.

Then we needed to wander through the fields and make sure there weren’t any traps and magical pitfalls that had been planted prior to our arrival.

As she was winding down, her phone rang.

“Red.” She tapped the face of the phone and put it to her ear. “Hello?”

Emery plucked at my sleeve before looking over the organic offerings. “Let’s focus on those walls first. They’ll need to be strong and magical, and they’ll need to be in casings. We don’t want them to know we’re essentially trying to lock them in…until we lock them in.”

“Locking in eighty people to our three.” A tremor rolled through my body, begging me to do what he’d suggested in the beginning. Run!

Two hours later, I was jarred out of my extreme focus. A warning shook my bones. My teeth rattled.

I backed away from the elaborate spell I was working on, letting it dissipate and drift into space. Emery straightened up next to me, his body going taut. The magic around us instantly changed from busied loops of beautiful designs, to rolling, boiling bubbles of pure magic and energy.

Reagan glanced over from what she was doing on the other side of the warehouse. Magic draped across the walls in patterns that barely made sense to my eye. A little blurry, sometimes glowing and glittering in places, the weaves seemed to shift into tangible things—walls and chairs and draping vines—made up of moving, surging, and pulsing colors. A high gloss covered the whole thing, and the intent felt majestic.