Page 25

"Somebody was always going to work out your weakness, Hazel." She set Sissily down on her feet, gently, which was somehow worse than dropping her. "I would simply rather it be me."

That's when Alex moved.

I have never seen anything that size move that fast and I hope I never do again. He didn't shift either. He went at her as a man, which meant he wanted his hands around her neck, for which I couldn't blame him. I wanted to strangle her too at that moment. He covered nine feet of gravel in the blink of an eye with his teeth already changing, elongating, ready to tear her throat out if need be.

Danika sifted.

She was gone before he reached her and standing a few feet to the left before he'd stopped moving. Alex Greywood put his fist through the empty air where the strongest witch on the continent had been standing and kept going until he had to catch himself on the barn wall or go through it.

"I have no quarrel with you, Alex Greywood." Her voice didn't rise. It never did, which was the most annoying thing about her if I could say so myself. "Your son was attacked on my account and I am sorry for it. That is not an apology I have offered anyone in forty years, so I would encourage you to hear it."

Alex stood with his palm flat on the barn siding and his back to all of us, breathing like a pumping bellows.

"Let's hear the rest," I told her. My voice came out wrecked but I didn't care anymore. "You always have more to add."

"Yes." Danika turned to me. "Those imps were organized, Hazel. Somebody put them in sequence and controlled them. Somebody who understood that a pack investigates the perimeter at the slightest disturbance." She let that hang between us for a long moment so it would sink in. "Someone in your midst reported where the Alpha's child would be to a creature capable of controlling demons. That is what happened here tonight, and all of you have been standing in this yard for ten minutes without acknowledging it, so I figured I would. You are welcome." That last part was aimed at Alex, who was still fighting to slow his breathing.

Nobody answered her.

The wind came up off the lake, stirring the burned smell around us again.

"Who was it?" Alex said to the barn wall, his nails digging into the siding.

"I don't know."

"You're lying." I hissed before I could stop myself.

"Occasionally." Danika adjusted one sleeve unnecessarily. "If it serves me, I have been known to, let's say, embellish the truth or avoid it completely. But not about this. Not tonight."

And then, while all of us were standing there with our mouths shut, she walked across that yard past me, past Sissily, past all the shifters who parted for her like a curtain, up the porch steps of a house she had never been invited into.

"Don't you dare…" I was already moving but she was gone before I could stop her.

She came back out before I reached the bottom step.

In her hands she was carrying my book.

Small. Unbound. Warm to the touch and wrapped in a pillowcase that had been in the bottom drawer of a dresser on the second floor.

Everything inside me froze.

"You can't," I muttered, shocked into a stupor. Stupid. Flat. A child's word, as if that would stop her. "That's mine. It bonded to me, it's… mine…"

"It is a Byrne artifact and you are a Byrne who cannot control herself." She came down the steps unhurried while I stood there in the gravel in my bare feet and could not think of one single thing to do about it. "You bled out of your ears the last time you opened it. Twice, according to your friend's hands."

Sissily's hand went behind her back.

Too late. The symbol was still there, smudged at the edges from a night of fighting. My grandmother had spotted it on her way past. Nothing escaped Danika Byrne. Nothing of importance at least, unfortunately for me. I could only hope she thought it unimportant.

"Four days," Danika said as she walked past me. "The Council votes on Thursday, in Cleveland. You will stand in front of it, and you will demonstrate control. If you do that, I can keep you alive. If you do not, they will make you a problem for someone with fewer scruples than I have about ending your life."

"You just stole from me."

"I removed a loaded weapon from a house full of children." She tucked the pillowcase under one arm like a newspaper. "Thursday, Hazel. The Coven building. You know the one, you burned its library."

"Give me the book."

"No."