“That’s basically what Emery always said.” I broke the spell apart, leaving the other two, which were woven tightly together.

“Who’s Emery?” Reagan asked.

“Do you have a block for a head?” Callie scowled at Reagan. “Emery is the Rogue Natural.”

“Oh right. Right, right.” Reagan nodded like that had rung a bell. Given her newly enhanced memory from bonding a vampire, she’d clearly been tuning me out earlier. “With the Guild bouncing back so incredibly quickly, it’s clear Penny doesn’t have much time. It would’ve been better had she come here directly after the Seattle skirmish.”

“She couldn’t,” Callie said in a strangely thick tone. “Not with…what was going on.”

“My trip down to… Yeah, right.”

“Where?” I asked, perking up. This was as close as they’d come to talking about their activities a few months ago. I’d been all set to come to New Orleans when an unforeseen problem had postponed my move. But no one had filled me in on the details. I’d only been told that Reagan and Darius were out of town traveling.

“It’s complicated,” Reagan said. “Anyway, with the Guild’s directive to bring in Penny and the Rogue Natural—”

“I don’t understand why you can’t remember his name,” I said.

“I can, but taunting you is great fun.” She grinned at me. I scowled back.

A manic light started glimmering in her eyes.

I tore my gaze away. It wasn’t worth an altercation.

Her sigh said I’d made the right decision.

“Marie has been monitoring Penny’s situation for Darius,” Reagan said. Marie was a middle-tiered vampire that I’d fought with when we’d broken into the Mages’ Guild compound in Seattle. Given that I hadn’t seen one hair on her beautiful head since I’d set foot in New Orleans to get trained, I had no idea how she’d been keeping tabs on me. “She’s worried enough to call Darius back into town. They have word that Guild scouts are already here, and in enough numbers to make him nervous,” she said. “But they’re in a watchful capacity at the moment. Red said he’s seen them hanging around. They don’t engage with anyone, but they’re on the ground.”

Red was a shifter that primarily hung out in the French Quarter. He’d contacted me in my first weeks, saying he was Reagan’s acquaintance and welcoming me to the city. He’d instructed me to contact him should I need anything, which I’d thought was really nice of him.

Shivers crawled up my spine. Knowing the Guild was coming was different than hearing they were already here. It felt like the door to my house had been flung open, inviting burglars inside.

“It is only a matter of time before they have more numbers than this town can handle,” Reagan went on, moving away to lean against the archway again. “The Magical Law Enforcement office has seen increased calls about magic gone wrong. Darker magic. When they show up to investigate, they can’t find any relevant evidence leading them to the perpetrator. Whoever is practicing these spells obviously knows how to skirt around the system.”

“The MLE office is filled with a bunch of desk jockeys.” Callie shook her head. “If they hired you to sort it out, you’d have the mages caught in no time.”

Reagan’s jaw clenched and her eyes flashed. “I’m supposed to lie low. You know that.”

I didn’t, but I had a hunch I wasn’t supposed to ask. Everything to do with Reagan seemed a secret, and I was met with hostility when I asked more into it.

“I’m just saying that the MLE office isn’t the be-all-end-all when it comes to assessing magic and finding the people responsible.”

Reagan shifted and crossed her arms, exuding pent-up aggression. “Even so. We know for a fact the Guild is here. Among us. They’re sticking to the shadows and watching, for now. Reporting back. But that won’t last forever, especially if they see an easy grab. We need to get Penny trained up so she can protect herself, and the fastest way to do that is to enable her to think on her feet.”

“She can already protect herself,” Callie said, moving another batch of bacon to the plate. “No matter what the ladies of the Rum Social threw at her the other day, she handled it beautifully.” She cocked her head. “Except for those few times when she froze, but Penny worked it out eventually. Like she was born to magic.”

“She was born to magic.”

Callie huffed and batted her spatula at the air. “You know what I mean. Born to fighting. Born to this life. Just look at what happened in Seattle at the rail yard. She was a pro.”

“Except for that bit where I had to implode her spell before she killed everyone.”

“Well sure, except for that. But, as I said, we all make mistakes.”

Reagan was talking about the demon situation I’d helped her and Darius and the dual-mages with in Seattle, something I was forbidden to tell anyone about.

Reagan drummed her fingers against her arm. “But Darius seemed to think she was far more outstanding when fighting the Mages’ Guild than when fighting in the rail yard…”

“The rail yard wasn’t really a war zone,” I said, thinking back. I’d had plenty of backup and people to hold my hand. “Fighting the Mages’ Guild, on the other hand…”

“Fighting the Mages’ Guild was a clusterfuck, right?” Reagan asked.

I infused Emery’s last two spells with my own magic, feeling the same intense longing that I’d sensed in the first layer. Light and color exploded upward, sparkling and simmering through the air. The energy around me electrified and I closed my eyes with the feeling, my magical bubble stabilizing naturally for a moment. A soft feeling of joy drifted down with the filaments before the spell dissolved away.

“A little touchy-feely for my taste,” Reagan muttered, her hands out, feeling the dissipating spell.

“A punch in the mouth is a little touchy-feely for your taste,” Callie said, cracking an egg.

“She’s not wrong.” Reagan pursed her lips in agreement.

I pulled away the string and tore open the paper, finding a pink box underneath.

“Ew,” Reagan said. “Why not red? I’d much prefer a deep crimson.”

“Who is that package for, her or you?” Callie said, glancing back before cracking another egg.

“Just saying.” Reagan moved so she could watch me pull the top off the box. “Pink is highly overrated. As is yellow. I hate yellow. I don’t need a color telling me to be happy any more than I need one telling me to be soft.”

“You have problems,” Callie said.

“Again, not wrong.”

I peered in the box and my heart squished. A single power stone, about the size of my hand, lay on a bed of pastel tissue paper. Stripes of vibrant color sliced through its brown surface, turning an ordinary stone extraordinary. The stone couldn’t wait to get out of the box and be shown around its new home, very happy-go-lucky for a power stone.

“I know what would help with your wards,” Reagan said, sitting at the island in anticipation of Callie getting her plate ready. “A night sleeping at Darius’s French Quarter house. That would scare the bejeezus out of you. Oh!” she snapped. “And what about trips to the bad parts of town? You need to get more street-wise. Maybe it would also help if I exposed you to some serious spells to get the juices of creativity flowing. I have a couple books you’re probably nearly ready for.”

“She is not ready for those books, Reagan Somerset,” Callie said. “It hasn’t even been a year since she turned all those witches into zombies. Not that I’m blaming you, dear.” Callie gave me a grimace that was probably supposed to be a smile. Years of scowling had clearly frozen her face. “Any idiot that would make a potion without knowing what it does, while letting a complete novice with more power than sense lead, deserves what they get.”

“Wow. Don’t hold back for her sake,” Reagan said with a laugh.

“If you gave her that book, she’d end up accidentally killing someone,” Callie said, turning with a plate heaped with food. She set it in front of Reagan. “Honestly, she has come a long way, even in the last couple of weeks. Just you wait and see.”