Oh.

Wow.

Jupe had a lot to say about that, but he couldn’t seem to get the words out. His mouth went all dry, and his heart was beating like he’d been running.

“By the way, my name is Leticia Vega,” she said from the shrinking darkness of the closing door, pronouncing her name with a rich, rolling accent. Le-ti-ci-a. “And if you ever call me ‘Letty,’ I’ll lay a hex on you that’ll make all your teeth fall out.”

If Lon intended to give me another chance to see him naked, I missed it. He called Jupe and the Holidays to report in, and I fell asleep before he’d even finished his phone call. When I woke to the sound of our dueling cell-phone alarms, he was in the other bed, and it was half an hour before sunset. We quickly packed up and began the five-hour drive to Pasadena, trading barren wild coast for the sprawl of Southern California.

And the landscape wasn’t the only thing changing: my unexplained strength had abandoned me. Whether it was time or sleep that erased it, I didn’t know. But when I tested it on a metal letter opener I found in the motel desk drawer, all I got was a hand cramp.

“Had to be a side effect of your transmutation that first night,” Lon said as night settled across the Pacific Coast Highway.

“Almost makes me want to try shifting again if that’s the freebie I get for the effort.”

“Nothing’s ever free.”

True. And my eyes were still a little silvery. Not noticeable enough to have to wear sunglasses, so that was something. But deep down, I was still worried the whole thing was a bad omen.

I spent the first couple of hours of our trip chasing broadband signals as I searched for any information I could find on Karlan Rooke. He was in his early seventies, a wealthy man who’d traveled around the world collecting plants for a twelve-acre private estate, which he opened up to the public in the 1980s. It was one of several botanical gardens in the City of Roses, and although it was not as vast as the gardens at the Huntington Library, it was successful because of its niche collection of unusual plants and had earned a quirky nickname.

The Witches’ Garden.

Seemed Rooke displayed plants prized for their medicinal value to occultists and magick workers. Some of them were run-of-the-mill herbs. Sage, pennyroyal, mandrake root, and belladonna. But there were also unusual things, such as bloodvine and valrivia—prized by Earthbounds but not typically featured in a botanical garden.

Magus Rooke had been busy.

And although I was able to find the occasional reference to both his time spent in the E∴E∴ and his alleged Crowley lineage, it was only speculation; one of the articles pointed out that although these salacious tidbits often popped up in his Wikipedia entry, they were almost immediately removed.

For all appearances, he was just an eccentric old rich guy, one who was inaccessible to the general public. He was said to live in a private house on the estate and only occasionally spoke at fund-raisers or lectured at local universities on the history of magical herbs. But I didn’t have time to contact the Rooke Foundation and formally request a meeting with the man. And after Lon and I discussed the pros and cons, I decided to do something I hadn’t done in years. I decided to use my magical pedigree.

As I’ve said, only a few people in the E∴E∴ knew I was still alive. It was risky to expose myself outside of that circle, especially to someone who’d publicly declared himself an enemy of my parents. But because it was starting to look as if it might be easier to contact the spirit of Howard Hughes than to get an appointment with Karlan Rooke, I figured a spectacle might get his attention.

Lon was still adamant that it wasn’t wise to open up a direct channel to the Æthyr with my Heka signature all over it—my mother might pick up on it—so instead of calling Priya directly, I had Jupe send my guardian out to greet Rooke.

Hermeneus spirits had been used as messengers for centuries. In fact, it was the preferred method of long-distance communication between magicians before there were telegrams or telephones or e-mails or texts. Not every magician had a Hermeneus at his or her beck and call, and the ones who did merely heard their Æthyric carrier pigeon, because they couldn’t see supernatural things such as halos and Heka lines and guardian-spirit projections.

But Priya was no projection; he was solid flesh.

And his appearance in Rooke’s bedroom proved to be the attention grabber I’d hoped. Priya reported back that the man was, indeed, shocked to see my guardian, but when Priya pointed out that he hadn’t set off the man’s house wards and therefore was not hostile, the elderly magician listened to Priya’s message and agreed to meet with me.

We arrived at the entrance to Rooke Gardens just before midnight. Down a gated road to our right, lights shone in the windows of a grand mansion that overlooked the grounds from a sloping hill separating the private part of the property from the public gardens. It probably said something about Rooke’s trust in our intentions that he didn’t welcome us into his home with open arms, but I didn’t care.

An old Victorian carriage house served as the public gateway to the gardens. Its Green Man drinking fountain and gargoyle-tipped gutters were pretty charming. Seemed silly to knock, so I ignored both the OPEN EVERY DAY 8 AM TO DUSK sign and the white Heka glow of the low-key protective ward and pushed open the main door into the lobby.

A large mosaic pentagram sparkled over the granite floor. To one side of it sat a quaint ticket booth. On the other was a gift shop, where whimsical esoteric souvenirs filled the windows: kitchen witches, gnomes, and wooden garden signs that encouraged visitors to relax for a “spell” and have a “magical” day.