Once I turned the microphone on, I started fiddling with the knobs, trying to maximize the range and clarity of sound. Mostly, what I heard was the steady, high-pitched whine-whine-whine of the power saws that the dwarven workers were using, along with the heavy thwack-thwack-thwacks of nails being hammered into boards. Whatever the crews were doing inside the mansion, it sounded big, loud, and impressive. Exactly what I would expect, given what a splash Madeline had made when she came back to Ashland.

After about ten minutes, some of the workers took a water break, and the sounds of the sawing and hammering died down to more muted, manageable levels. I leaned forward and adjusted the microphone a bit more, trying to get the most out of it that I could, before I pointed it at the patio again. It took me another thirty seconds, but I finally found a sweet spot that let me hear their conversation. I also raised my binoculars back up to my eyes and peered through them.

“. . . how are things progressing?” Madeline asked.

Emery chugged down her lemonade, set the glass on the table, pulled out her phone, and started texting on it. “Everything’s set.”

Madeline turned her gaze to Jonah. “And you?”

He cleared his throat and adjusted his tie again. “Everything’s ready on my end. I’ve reached out to all the right people. Dobson, in particular, is ready and eager to get started.”

I frowned. Dobson? Who was that? And what was he so ready and eager to do? I pulled out my own phone and texted myself a note with that name so I would remember it later.

Then the wind picked up, bringing more paint-and-sawdust fumes along with it. I moved the directional mike from one side of my makeshift tree house to the other, but the breezy gusts kept me from hearing much more than sharp, staticky crackles of air.

But it didn’t matter because Madeline drained the rest of her lemonade, then rose to her feet. She gave Emery a conspiratorial smile, not even bothering to glance at Jonah, who was clutching his still-full glass of lemonade with one hand and his briefcase with the other.

“Good,” she purred. “I’m glad that everything’s finally in order. It’s been a long wait, but now it’s time to really make my presence known—to everyone in Ashland.”

Madeline beamed at Emery for another moment before turning and sweeping into the mansion.

Jonah got up and started to follow her, but Emery moved in front of him, giving the lawyer the same cold gaze that she regarded everyone else with.

“Don’t fuck this up,” she growled. “Or you’ll be wishing that Blanco had killed you when she had the chance.”

Jonah smiled, trying to defuse the tension between them, but the expression didn’t even come close to reaching his brown eyes, and his tan skin seemed even tighter than normal, as though he was clenching his teeth together to keep them from chattering in fear. I wondered how he liked his new masters. I was willing to bet that Madeline was more of a nightmare than Mab had ever been, given her propensity for playing games with people.

Emery gave Jonah one more hard look before she too disappeared into the mansion.

The lawyer stayed where he was, swaying back and forth on his feet, as though he were about to topple over in a dead faint. He glanced around, making sure that no one was paying any attention to him, then put his lemonade down, opened his briefcase, reached inside, and drew out a not-so-small silver flask. He threw his head all the way back and drained the flask’s contents, whatever they were.

I chuckled. Poor Jonah. Just a month in and drinking on the job already. Aw, I just hated that for him.

After he drained his flask, McAllister stuffed it back into his briefcase, snapped it shut, squared his shoulders, and headed back into the mansion to suffer through whatever else Madeline and Emery had planned for him for the rest of the day—

Crack.

I froze at the sharp, staccato, unexpected sound. But what was even worse were the voices that accompanied it a second later—low, gruff voices that were getting louder and louder the closer they got to my location.

3

I remained as still as death, scarcely daring to breathe, as I waited and listened, trying to determine if I’d been spotted.

“Do you really think there’s someone out here?” a giant rumbled, his low, deep voice much closer than before.

“I don’t know,” another one muttered back to him. “But Emery thought she saw the sun reflecting off something in the woods. She texted and told me to come check it out.”

Since they hadn’t spied me yet, I slowly, carefully, quietly turned off the directional microphone, so the crackle-crackle of static wouldn’t give me away, and then set it down, along with my binoculars. I dropped down onto my belly, ignoring the splinters that pricked through my T-shirt and into my stomach, and eased over to the edge of my makeshift tree house, peering out through a rip in the camouflage fabric at the forest floor below.

Sure enough, about ten feet ahead, a large clump of rhododendron bushes rustled, and two giants stepped around it.

Sloppy, sloppy, Gin! I silently cursed myself. I’d been so focused on fiddling with the microphone and trying to hear what Madeline and the others were saying that I’d neglected to keep an eye on the guards patrolling the lawn. Two of them had slipped away from their posts and were now creeping through the woods toward my position, heads swiveling left and right, guns drawn, fingers curled around the triggers, scanning their surroundings for the smallest sign of movement so they could blast the danger into oblivion.

Emery must have seen the sun winking off my binocular lenses as I was watching their little lemonade party. But instead of sounding the alarm and sending a platoon of giants after me, she’d been discreet about things, slyly dispatching her men to my position, and hoping to catch me in the act—and then murder me.

I remained absolutely still and silent as the giants swept the woods below. I could have palmed a knife, leaped down from my perch onto their backs, and killed both of them, but I doubted that I could do it quietly enough to keep all the other guards from running in this direction. And if the giants swarmed on my position all at once, well, I’d have a hard time escaping, especially since Emery would no doubt come and lead the charge. She wouldn’t be satisfied until I was trapped—or dead.

But even more than that, I didn’t want to tip my hand that I’d been watching the mansion. I might need to come back out here again, and I wanted my hidey-hole to be intact if I did. So killing the giants was out, unless absolutely necessary to save my skin.