I said “no” at the same time Kar Yee said “yes.” Then she threw a piece of popcorn at me.

“Seriously, Bob,” I pleaded, bending to pick it up and toss it back in her bowl. “Wean her off the meds. You said she could take the brace off tomorrow.”

“She can,” he insisted, then mumbled, “You try to wean her off.”

Kar Yee was laughing at the TV, oblivious to our conversation. Once Bob left, I was going to swap out all her pills with Tylenol. “Hey,” I said, snapping my fingers in front of her face. “If you even care, I got the name of one of the guys who robbed us.”

Her languid gaze sharpened immediately. “Don’t tease me.”

“Noel Saint-Hill. The one who used his knack to cut the lights.”

“The wimpy elf?”

Bob threw off the blanket. “Are you serious? How did you find this out? The Morella Racetrack thing?”

I gave them a brief account, leaving out the parts about the silver fog and my dead mother’s voice. Though I did tell them about biting my tongue, which still hurt like hell. Kar Yee offered me one of her painkillers; Bob quickly shook his head while she wasn’t looking.

Part of me wished Bob wasn’t here. It might’ve given me a chance to talk to Kar Yee about my identity. Confessing while she was doped up might make things easier. Then again, that was pretty chickenshit. I guessed I’d wait until after she was healed up, but it was starting to make me antsy. Once I decide to do something, I prefer to get it over with.

“By the way, I need two favors,” I said.

Bob looked up. “Yes?”

“Can you start searching for Noel Saint-Hill’s address online?” I’d already done some poking around on my phone during a short break in the Giovanni-Butler reunion and found what could very well be a couple of his social network profiles—it was hard to tell from the photos, but it didn’t matter, because they were protected.

“On it,” Bob said, whipping out his laptop.

I thanked him, then spoke to Kar Yee. “I also need the key to the rooftop access stairs.”

“Why?”

“Magick. I have to do a spell.”

“On the roof?” she complained. “It’s past midnight.”

“It’s important. Will take me thirty minutes, tops. No one will see.”

She raised a slim, dark brow and puckered her lips, as if she might say no, then blew out a spacey, drug-blissed breath. “Ehhh, all right. As long as you’re not painting pig’s blood on anything, the key is hanging over the phone in the kitchen. But if any of the other tenants catch you, I have no idea who you are.”

• • •

Kar Yee’s apartment building stood ten stories high on the edge of midtown, surrounded by Morella’s twinkling high-rises. Behind me, twenty miles in the black distance, lay La Sirena and the Pacific coast . . . and the bed I normally shared with Lon. I wondered if he’d have trouble sleeping without me. He said he did when he was on business trips.

I made my way to a sheltered area behind a line of air conditioning units. Tenants often used the cement-topped roof for parties. A low brick wall kept drunken guests from falling to their death onto the busy city street below. And even now, when most people back in sleepy La Sirena were in bed, I could hear a steady, speeding rumble of traffic all around me. Somehow this was comforting.

When I first met Lon, I had a link to the Æythr. A witch’s familiar, of sorts—or perhaps a better description would be a magical lookout, a being that could be called upon for information or help. Priya.

After being my eyes and ears on the Æthyric plane for most of my adult life, Priya died a horrible death trying to defend me against demonic attack.

Priya was what magicians call a Hermeneus spirit, an asexual messenger entity that looks sort of like a humanoid bird-person. They are highly coveted, hard to wrangle, and not every magician successfully manages to snare one. To petition their help, you have to lure them in a special ritual. If one of them likes the cut of your jib, it might offer up a lifetime of service. They form a link to your Heka signature—something as unique to each magician as a fingerprint.

Like other Hermeneus spirits, Priya didn’t physically cross over from the Æthyr to my plane when I called. Instead, it used my Heka to transmit a kind of hologram of itself. All they could really do here was relay information, so they weren’t much use for earthly tasks, but they were invaluable Æthyric spies.

And they also had the unique ability to reincarnate.

The last thing Priya relayed to me before dying was a plea to wait for its return. That it would find me. I had no idea how long that would take. Years, maybe? But it had been months, and maybe that was long enough. I didn’t really want to try to bond with another Hermeneus. Sure, Priya and I never had a friendship kind of relationship—these creatures were notoriously aloof. But it was hard to imagine linking up with someone new.

Still, I wasn’t sure if I could afford to wait much longer. I needed an ally who could confirm or deny my parents’ deaths in the Æthyr. I needed someone to tell me exactly what this Moonchild power was, and find out what the hell my parents had called down into me when I was conceived.

A cool night breeze fluttered my hair as I set down the things I’d scrounged from Lon’s for the calling ritual: a zip-top bag of salt, a paring knife, the folded sheets of sketch paper from his photography studio, my pocket-sized caduceus staff, and a nub of my trusty red ochre chalk.