By the time Lurine had escorted me to my Honda, the blissful fizzing in my blood had subsided and I felt more or less normal, though I couldn’t help but regard her with a new wariness.

Standing in the driveway, Lurine rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t give me that look. You needed a jolt, baby girl. You’ll make yourself crazy obsessing over things that are beyond your control.”

“You could have just slapped me and told me to snap out of it,” I said mildly. “It would have been less disconcerting.”

She gave me a wicked smile. “Yeah, but where’s the fun in that?”

I couldn’t help but smile back at her. Lurine was what she was, which wasn’t human and definitely wasn’t safe. “Oh, fine. Do you want a ride to the end of the driveway?” It was, by the way, a long driveway.

“No, I’ll walk.” Lurine gave me a gentle shove. “Go home. Call your friends, go out for pizza and a movie or something. Do something fun.”

Driving home, I had to admit, Lurine had a point. For the first time in days, I wasn’t thinking about killing Janek Król, or that damn class-action lawsuit, or who was behind Elysian Fields, or the fear that I was capable of destroying the world.

No, I was thinking about the faint tingling sensation that lingered on my lips and that vivid rush of ecstasy.

Gah! It must be something like the way certain snakes’ venom paralyzed their victims, or maybe more like those hallucinogenic toads that people licked—which, okay, wasn’t exactly a flattering comparison.

Whatever it was, I was pretty sure that all of Lurine’s victims over the millennia had died happy.

Hell, no wonder her dead octogenarian millionaire husband had left her his entire fortune! He’d probably considered it a fair exchange for the occasional peck on the lips. It was a good thing she’d just wanted to give me a jolt. If there’d been actual tongue involved, I’d have been on the floor.

Yep, I was definitely distracted.

Score one for Lurine.

And I definitely wasn’t mentioning this to Mom.

      Thirty-two

I ended up taking Lurine’s advice, sort of. When I got home and checked my phone, I found a text from Sinclair, which led to an impromptu meeting of the Scooby Gang out at his place.

And yes, that included our new unlikely mean-girl ally, Stacey, who looked like she’d been crying for days, all red-nosed and puffy-eyed. Like I said, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her.

It turns out that Sinclair had called his twin sister, Emmeline, for insight on using obeah magic to influence the outcome of a lawsuit, a development that made me profoundly uncomfortable. The fact that Sinclair was consulting her on dark magic was . . . worrisome. I was surprised they were even on speaking terms, but apparently they’d reached some sort of understanding when Sinclair went to Jamaica to lay his grandfather’s spirit to rest.

At any rate, it was a moot point since dear Emmy didn’t think there was a damned thing we could do on the magic front, as the trial would take place in a distinctly mundane setting. The nearest federal court was the U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids, some forty miles away. No offense to Grand Rapids, which is a perfectly charming place in its own right, but a city whose chief claims to fame were that it was the office-furniture-manufacturing capital of the United States and the hometown of President Gerald R. Ford was definitely not conducive to magic.

“According to Emmy, Pemkowet should have spent years building an intimidating reputation,” Sinclair reported in a wry tone, “so that a judge would be afraid to rule against us. But even if we had time . . .” He shook his head, his beads rattling faintly. “I don’t see how we could pull it off outside Hel’s sphere.”

“If we could find out where the judge assigned to the case lives, I could send Bethany to pay him a visit,” Jen suggested, only half joking.

“I can find out,” Lee volunteered.

“Hello?” I stared incredulously at my friends. “In the first place, vampires need to be on underworld territory to feed. As below, so above, and all that. Vampiric hypnosis won’t work in Grand Rapids any more than obeah will. In the second place, shouldn’t we be finding a way to protect the judge? I kind of feel like you’re going all Dark Willow on me,” I added to Sinclair.

He frowned. “Say what?”

“Never mind.” I waved a hand. Now was not the time to enlighten Sinclair on the finer points of Buffy the Vampire Slayer references. “But seriously, what about trying to protect the judge from Dufreyne’s powers of persuasion?”

“Same problem,” Sinclair said. “Any spell we cast wouldn’t be effective outside of Hel’s turf.”

“It’s not fair!” Stacey burst out. “I was just doing my job! And I’m the one the Tall Man tried to chop into pieces!” She blew her nose into a ratty piece of tissue. “Stupid curse of the Cavannaughs! If anyone should be suing, it should be me.”

Okay, that didn’t entirely make sense, but since she was right about the attempted chopping, I let it slide. “What about a protection charm?” I asked Sinclair. “Stefan has a pendant that casts a glamour, and it works for a day or so away from an underworld before the magic fades. I know—he let me borrow it last summer.”

Sinclair looked intrigued, but skeptical. “This trial’s likely to last a lot longer than a day, Daisy.”

“At least it would be worth a try,” I said. “Dufreyne said I’d be called as a witness. I’m sure he’ll call Stacey, too. If one of us could slip a charm into the judge’s briefcase or something, maybe it would help.”