“Did he tell you what happened?”

“A little—”

“Yvonne said they left Jupe at the table while they went to talk to someone else in the restaurant, and that’s when he sneaked the wine.”

“Look, I’m not saying she’s a liar, but Jupe said that Evan guy encouraged Yvonne to let him drink. They left him at the table with the wine bottle, and they were gone long enough for him to empty it. And—” I stopped and decided against telling her about the elixir. It just complicated things, and I needed to see it for my own eyes first. Jupe was drunk, after all.

She swore under her breath. Her anger was contagious, because now that I was satisfied Jupe would be okay, I was furious. “I don’t know who this Evan guy is, or what they were thinking, but Jupe says Lon hates him. And given the fact that he’s Hellfire, and nobody I’ve met from that bloody club has a decent bone in their body—”

And if he had a whole bottle of elixir on him, did that make him the distributor? Was this the guy Telly originally robbed to get his supply? If he was Hellfire, it would explain how Merrimoth got it, back when this all started. Could also explain its presence at Peter Little’s Richie Rich party.

“I knew she was lying,” Rose said. “She just tried to use her knack on us.”

“Out there?”

“Just now. Anytime she does anything wrong, that’s what she falls back on—the knack. Only it didn’t work on me because of my charmed ring. When she didn’t get what she wanted, she pressed on and shifted herself.”

“Transmutated?”

Rose nodded. “Almost too much for the ring to fight. It was tough, but I did.”

“Where is she now?”

“Sitting in the backseat of her rental. Adella’s got the ring. She’s guarding her. I’ve got her car keys.” She opened her palm to show me. We stared at each other for a long moment. Long enough to hear Jupe snoring through the closed door. Rose eventually said, “You remember what we talked about?”

“Excuse me?”

“You said you could strip away that magick from her. So she can’t shift like that.”

“Whoa,” I said, throwing up both hands. “I said I possibly could.”

“Lon tells me you’re special. Different. He says you can do incredible things that other magicians can’t even dream about doing.”

“But—”

“Do you want me to beg you? Because I will. She could’ve hurt him,” she said, pointing at Jupe’s door. “What if he’d ended up in the hospital getting his stomach pumped? What if she got drunk too and crashed her car?”

That thought made me sick.

“She’s a danger to everyone around her, and she’s going to end up killing someone or herself before it’s all over.”

“I don’t know,” I mumbled, trying to move things around in my head. To make sense of everything. I was overwhelmed. Could I do what she was asking? I knew I couldn’t with a traditional spell. It would have to be the Moonchild power. As much as I didn’t want to admit it after what happened in Hajo’s parking garage, I’d had success using it. In fact, I’d instinctually been able to get the results I’d wanted every time. They weren’t always results I knew were possible: freezing time to help Lon, trapping Noel with smoke at the car rally, squeezing the trust funder to the brink of death, teleporting myself home.

But could I use it to poke around the innermost workings of a human being? Could I “will” Yvonne’s transmutation spell out of her? Or would I melt a few organs in the process?

Even if I could, there was the other sticking point. Priya warned me: I was calling attention to myself in the Æthyr when I used it. Specifically, my mother’s attention.

Rose became frantic. “What do you think Lon’s going to do when he gets back? Huh? You think he’s going to just let her go back to Miami? He’s going to end up in jail, that’s what’s going to happen. You want to lose him to her? Because if she has her way, she’ll take him down however she can.” She leaned in closer, putting her face right in front of mine, intense green eyes on mine. Swirls of her halo cast a glow on the tip of my nose. “God forbid she catches Lon alone. If he doesn’t have something like this ring to protect him, she’ll have him on his knees in seconds. And if you want to know how that story ends, you go ask Adella.”

I didn’t have to. Adella’s story was still fresh in my mind. And it wasn’t like I hadn’t made myself sick worrying about Yvonne’s possible control over Lon.

My hands were shaking with anger. I walked around Rose, heading back down the hall. She trailed me downstairs to the living room as I dialed Lon’s number. “Pick up, pick up,” I muttered. But he didn’t. I tried again and hung up when his voicemail came on a second time. Then I stopped in the middle of the living room and stared at Rose for several beats, fingernail clicking on the screen of my phone.

“Her knack by itself, I can handle,” Rose said. “Even without this ring. But when she shifts, there’s nobody in this world that can stand between her and what she sets her mind to have. And as much as she’s done to hurt this family, I still want her to get better. But without getting rid of that magick inside her, it’s just not going to happen. God help me, but she’s my daughter.”

“Rose—”