He wrapped his arms around my lower back. “I’m not. To be honest, I’m—”

“Relieved.”

He chuckled. “Yes. Very good.”

“Mmm.” I stared at the ring. I couldn’t help it. I’d never been the kind of girl to pore over wedding magazines and dream about square-jawed princes whisking me away to some fairy-tale white-picket-fence home. But the ring was pretty dazzling. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I wasn’t sure what you’d want, but I couldn’t see you wearing something precious or girly.”

“It’s beautiful.” Had I said that already? My cheeks warmed. “And bizarre that I can’t remember anything that made you want to give it to me in the first place. I’m sorry all of this spoiled your plans.”

He took in a deep breath through his nose. “I bet a lot of couples have wondered, if they’d met under different circumstances, perhaps they would’ve taken a different path and never ended up together. And in a way, you got that opportunity. You chose me twice. If that’s not meant to be, then I don’t know what is.”

I swiped a couple of quick tears from under my eyes. “Well, when all my memories come back, I hope you’ll still want to give it to me.”

“I will,” he assured me, but I heard a little disappointment behind his words and knew I’d hurt his feelings. “I can wait. There are other . . . practical things to consider.”

“Like what? I hate to break it to you, but you’re going to be sadly disappointed if you’re expecting a dowry. I have no cattle or acreage to offer.”

“No cattle?”

I laughed. “I can give you half my share of the profits from the Tahitian pinball machine at Tambuku. And maybe—”

“Maybe . . . ?”

Oh, shit. I leaned over Lon to reach the side table and got my fingers on Wildeye’s wrinkled journal entry.

“What?” he asked.

“3AC 1988,” I said, staring at the page. “Jupe said Mrs. Vega first met my parents in La Sirena in January 1989. What if they bought the winter house instead of renting it? Not ‘3AC’ but ‘3 AC.’ Three acres.”

“Three acres purchased in 1988,” Lon murmured. He lifted me off his lap and rolled over to pull down his laptop. “If that’s right, there’s a public record of it.”

It didn’t take long to search through the state’s land-sales records, and there was nothing under Duval. But a few minutes later, under a search in the county’s real estate archives, he found a two-bedroom house on a three-acre plot of land about fifteen minutes north of Lon’s house. It sold in December 1988 to an E. Artau.

A misspelling that cut off the last letter in Artaud.

Enola Artaud. My mother’s maiden name.

The land’s previous owner was listed, and when I saw the name, I forgot how to breathe.

The party who sold it to her was Ambrose Dare.

The SUV’s headlights illuminated the white antlers nailed around the front door of the hunting cabin. The property was nestled in some heavily wooded foothills bordering a popular hunting spot that had become popular over the last couple of decades for wild boars. The house, we learned, was built by Dare’s father in the 1940s. Dare had sold it to my parents for a dollar.

It was almost two in the morning. Lon cut the engine and transmutated, listening for any signs of life before we stepped out of the car. The heavy silence felt deceptive. I half expected to be attacked by a ghost—Dare’s or my mother’s. Or maybe some golem my mother had constructed to guard the house.

Nothing.

“Look how the SUV’s wheels cut into the gravel.” Lon shone a flashlight in one gloved hand and motioned with the sawed-off shotgun in the other. Now that we were home, he’d traded the handgun for his beloved vintage Lupara. I usually hated the noisy thing, but I wasn’t complaining tonight; we might need it. “No other cars have been out here for a long time. And the front steps are covered in dead leaves.”

He was right. The place looked as if it hadn’t had human contact in a while, at least since autumn. In fact, the only active life I could detect was an owl hooting somewhere in the distance and a subtle glow of warding magick twining around the house.

“You see it?” I asked Lon, whispering as if I could be heard out here, miles away from the nearest paved road. I wrapped my fingers around his flashlight hand and tilted it toward the edge of the front porch. “White Heka disguised by the white paint in the trim. Bet you anything that’s lead paint or there’s lime powder mixed in to hold a charge.”

He grunted. “But those are just extensions. Where are they anchored?”

Good question. We stepped closer and got our answer: the heart of the ward was hidden in the white antlers decorating the front door, which were delicately carved with magical symbols. Clever. But not extraordinarily sneaky. And not extraordinary warding magick, either, just a standard spell that would give the owner a brief mental image of anyone who crossed it. Not half as complex as the ward Lon had built around his house.

“It’s a distraction,” I murmured. “Anyone looking for the symbols or the Heka signature can find it, but it’s hidden just well enough—”

“To make someone cocky enough to think they’d outsmarted it. An ego stroke.”

“Exactly. There’s more magick inside, I guarantee you.”