Yeah. He was pushing this. I had to wonder why he was picking now to challenge me, but I didn’t really care. I was suddenly in the mood to hit something, and the vamp was available. I leaned in and sniffed him, picking out the floral reek of the undead and the stink of lies, secrets, and underhanded vamp crap. I blew out, my breath ruffling his hair, letting my anger grow, letting the stink of it fill the backyard. And I started to growl, low in my throat. Molly grabbed both kids and backed away slowly. Eli took Alex by the arm and pulled the teenager away, back to the porch. Molly and Eli were smart. Edmund, not so much. He turned his eyes up to mine, meeting my challenge.

“Vamp profiling? Could be,” I said, showing teeth in a smile that had no humor in it all. “Not that I care. I don’t dislike you, but I don’t want a vamp here. I don’t need a vamp here. I don’t want a primo or an Enforcer or the responsibility to take care of and for another being. I have too many people I have to take care of as it is. I am not adding a fanghead and a werewolf stuck in wolf form to the list of people I have to protect and can’t.”

The backyard went silent.

After the sound of the words died away, I actually heard them.

Beast snorted, Jane is stupid foolish kit.

I saw Eli and Alex on the porch. Eli looked severely ticked off, eyes narrowed, mouth a forbidding line. Alex looked scared. Molly and Evan stood in the open back door and Molly was mad, her eyes spitting sparks. Evan was gathering power, witch power. I heard it in the low hum of the basso note that came from his throat, a note so low it was little more than a vibration, making his red hair and beard stand out around his head in a corona of energies like something Tesla might create. Molly took his hand and her curls lifted, swirling in a breeze that wasn’t there. “Ummm. That’s not quite what I meant,” I said.

“Yes, it is. That’s exactly what you meant and what you believe,” Molly asked. “In some sick little part of your stupid brain, you believe that we come here to be protected. That you are responsible for us all.” She dropped Evan’s hand and strode out of the doorway, pushing past the Youngers, her energies gathering, her anger growing. “I’ll have you know that Evan and I are perfectly capable of taking care of ourselves and our children, born and unborn, against all comers. We are capable of taking down Leo and his entire council. Just the two of us. We don’t need you, you stupid cat. We love you and want to help you. Or I did until you said that load of horse hockey.”

I turned away from my friend and looked at the ground. I didn’t know what to say. But Eli did. His anger falling away, he said, “Not horse hockey. Somewhere, deep inside, Jane needs to take care of the people she loves. But her family is growing too fast and it’s creeping her out.”

Molly considered that, the magics sparking into the air easing off. She said, “Because they get murdered or raped or killed or disappear into snowstorms. Or they take off with a cat in heat and leave her alone.” I felt the heat magic dissipating. “Well, da . . . ang. I get all that, big-cat. I do. But we’re a team, not your dependents. Not your parents. Not your kittens. Not your housemothers or the children you protected from bullies at the children’s home growing up.”

I looked up at that one.

“Yeah. We all know about that,” Alex said. “Reach got hold of your records from the home and I . . . kinda shared them. You know. Once we met Misha we sorta kinda knew anyway.”

Misha was an untrained witch whom I had defended from bullies in the Christian children’s home where we both were raised. I closed my eyes. “Oh, crap.”

Molly said, “We’re also not your responsibilities to worry over or provide for. We’re your friends. Your family.”

“Ditto,” Eli said. “And if you need reminding, I can still kick your butt when I have to. Admittedly I have to cheat to do it, but I can.”

“And we can deal with the fanghead and the wolf,” Big Evan said. “If he tries anything, Mol can drain his undead, unlife-force so fast he’ll be true-dead on the floor before he knows what hit him.”

Edmund tilted his head on his neck in one of those birdlike motions they usually try to hide, a gesture that proves they aren’t human anymore. “You can try, witch,” he hissed.

“This. This is why I don’t want you here, Ed,” I said. “I can’t deal with your silly, vamp lack of emotional control.” Good. Direct the attention off me and my big mouth. “And I know you can take care of yourselves,” I said to Molly and Evan. “It doesn’t stop me from feeling responsible for you and your kids and your sisters and every witch in the world, including the sister I had to kill to save you.” And the effect her life and death had on me. Which might include the flower that morphed into a snake head in my soul home. Evangelina’s scent and favorite flower had been a rose. Something to worry over later, when I had finished trying to destroy or save my relationships. I wasn’t sure which I was actually doing.

“And you?” I said to Eli and Alex. “You’re my baby brothers. Get used to being protected. It’s what big sisters do.”

Edmund, who looked human again when I slanted my eyes at him, seemed to be thinking, his gaze holding a faraway stare. Without warning, he dropped to one knee and said, “Jane Yellowrock, Enforcer to the Master of the City of New Orleans, rogue-Mithran hunter, bravest woman I know. I, Edmund Killian Sebastian Hartley, do hereby swear fealty to you and to yours, to your entire extended and many-peopled and many-creatured family and Yellowrock Clan. To provide, protect, care for, fight for, and to die true-dead as you may need. I place all my needs second to yours and to theirs. I place my hunger second to yours and to theirs. I place all that I am and all that I can be and all that I can do at your disposal, into your hands, for the duration of the next nineteen years. I am yours in life and undeath and in true-death.”