“Yes, I am. You were tempted to stop in Mobile, but you came in tonight because of the storms getting worse by the minute and the flash floods. I heard.”

“You were meditating, so we left you out there. You okay, big-cat? You don’t look so good.” She patted my waist, holding on to me, her head tilted back to look up. At six feet, I looked down on most women, though not metaphorically, and Molly was no exception.

I hugged her one-armed, and then squeezed Big Evan when he gathered us both up in a bear hug. Which felt weird, the smell of sweat and car and man and magic, the heat of his body. Big Evan and I didn’t hug. Most times we disagreed on everything, but he seemed genial and pleasant and I was loath to disregard that. Even if it too was the result of Angie’s magic.

I didn’t know what to say to them about their daughter, so I said, “I’m good. Other than no sleep and keeping vamp hours.”

Big Evan stepped back, headed for the stairs, pointing to his chest. He said, “Shower. Then bed. Big day coming up. Oh. And tomorrow we check you for booby-trap spells and trace magic.”

Which their daughter had already done. She must have been listening to her parents talk about searching for outside energies left inside me and done her own scan. Little girl with big ears.

“Me too,” Mol said. “We ate on the road, and Eli told us how you were needed back at suckhead central, so you go. We’ll set the wards and we’ll be fine. To get in, just walk through. The wards will recognize you.”

Angie smiled and kissed her doll on the cheek, looking sweet and angelic, like her name, Angelina. But she was so much more than that. She was perhaps the world’s only homogenous witch, with two witch genes, one from each parent. She was terrifying, overwhelming, and I didn’t know what to do about that. It was a problem that had been growing for years and her parents had never really had a handle on the reins of her magical potential. Yeah. Little Big Ears.

“Yeah. Fine,” I said, fingering my T-shirt, feeling the pull of the black mote of power in my chest, remembering the way it slid through Angie’s fingers as it returned to the heart of me.

Molly hugged me again and picked up her son. “Come on, little man. Let’s get you in the tub and then in the bed.” She looked to Eli. “May I bathe him in your tub while Evan’s showering? It’ll speed things up.”

“Help yourself, ma’am,” Eli said.

“Ball!” EJ shouted.

“Tomorrow. Plenty of time for play then.” Molly took Angie’s hand and pulled her daughter from the chair and up the stairs. My last look was of Angie’s smiling face as she made the turn upstairs.

* * *

I said nothing all the way back to vamp HQ, rain sluicing down the windshield and windows of the armored SUV, rivulets that reflected the neon lights of the Quarter, turning them into vibrant, liquid lines of light. Silent while Eli adjusted the air repeatedly as the AC fought the inside condensation of the night storm.

We were late, but I didn’t care, couldn’t seem to find the desire to care about much of anything. He accessed security and drove past the heavy iron gate, which had been affixed with a wrought-iron fleur-de-lis to prettify the design. I hadn’t known the stylized “flower of the lily” had been going up, but I couldn’t complain. The gate had been awfully ugly. Eli pulled into the front drive, parked, and turned off the engine. He sat there, not looking at me, the rain isolating us from the rest of the world. After a time, his thumbs tapped on the steering wheel. “Twenty-seven minutes.”

“What?”

“That’s how much time I’m missing from this evening. Twenty-seven minutes and a few seconds. What happened?”

“Angie Baby put everyone to sleep so she could tell me I had a black magic mote of power stuck inside me and that I’d die if she took it out. I think Little Evan helped. I think Angie’s magic is bringing his magic on early too. I have to assume that the mote made it easier for the witches to spell me. And Gee. As if it’s a weak link in my soul. I think . . . ” I took a deep breath that did nothing to relax me. “I think we’re in deep shit.”

“Hmmm,” he said, probably interpreting my use of the S-word. “Okay. I can handle the shit. You figure out how to fix the black magic whammy.”

I let a tiny smile touch my face. “That’s it?”

“What else is there?” He unlatched his seat belt and stepped into the rain. Feeling oddly buoyant and more optimistic, I followed my partner up the stairs to the doors, the rain dampening my hair and clothes. The scents of vamps and humans and blood and sex filled my nostrils as we passed through two sets of double doors and out of the rain.

“Legs,” Derek said to me as we shook rain to the marble, fleur-de-lis floor. To his people he added, “Make it fast. Leo’s a bear.”

The security measures and pat-downs at the entrance were hurried, as if they had orders to get us to the conference room pronto, and I noted that no new people were working the entrance, just the Tequila boys and the Vodka boys, Derek Lee’s best and most dependable security personnel, all former military. And then we were in the elevator and on the way down to the conference room, Derek accompanying us, his hands clasped in front of him, his new work clothes looking expensive and well made. Tailored. Far different from the camo-clad man of our first meeting. Of course, I was different too. That night I had been wearing a bloody party dress and carrying the severed head of a young rogue vamp. I glanced at my reflection in the metal door, dressed again in the professional outfit of an Enforcer in conference—as opposed to an Enforcer in battle. Big difference there too. We had both come a long way in a short amount of time.