“So, just to update the status of our various situations,” Beezle said. “Alerian is unhappy with you and will probably send another monster to kill you soon since the first one didn’t do the job. The city’s plan for locking us all up is going forward and you haven’t come up with a solution to stop it. The shifter has way more power than we first thought and we have no idea who its master is. The most famous supernatural blogger in the city witnessed a horrific killing in your house and then you pissed him off by locking him in your basement for twelve hours. And the first of the fallen is getting married in two days and all of your friends and enemies are invited to the party.”

“Seems pretty standard for us, doesn’t it?” I said. “Lots of insurmountable situations to surmount. Let’s start with the protection for the house. We’ve got to have a way to keep the shifter out; otherwise none of us will be able to sleep again.”

“While you were passed out in the kitchen I went online and looked up some information about domicile protection,” Beezle said.

“I wasn’t passed out; I was focusing,” I said.

“Whatever. Anyway, I talked to some witches and they gave me some tips,” Beezle said.

“Shouldn’t you know all about domicile protection since you’re a home guardian?” I asked.

“My job is to watch for intruders. I can’t do a damn thing to actually keep them out. The threshold is supposed to do that,” Beezle said. “Luckily the witches did know a thing or two about spells that can get past the protection of the home. It seems that some of them have cast those kinds of spells in the past.”

“Isn’t that handy,” I said dryly.

“Totally,” Beezle said. “The point is that you and Nathaniel should be able to seal the house up pretty tight.”

“What’s going to happen when we go to Grandpa’s house tomorrow?” I asked.

“I would hope that this creature’s master would have the sense to not attack you while you’re in the presence of the Morningstar,” Jude said.

“I’m not sure we can count on that,” I said. “Beezle will be with me all the time so we’ll be able to see any direct attack coming, but what if the shifter tries to pull the same trick? Stand outside the house and attack from a distance?”

Beezle shook his head. “Lucifer is going to have that mansion protected from anything and everything. Remember, he’s a lot more powerful than you are. And he’s had a lot more time to collect enemies. He would never risk being caught off guard in his own home. There will be layers upon layers of protection. I don’t think you’ll have to worry about murder by remote control.”

“So just the direct kind of murder, then,” I said.

“Anyone who attends the wedding would conform to the laws of hospitality. Most of the creatures attending are old, and many of them have conflicts with each other. But they know that if they air their grievances in Lucifer’s home, they’ll be violating some ancient understandings. You may actually be safer in Lucifer’s presence than you would be anywhere else.”

“There’s something really wrong about that,” I said.

Nathaniel returned to the dining room, looking disgruntled. “That boy doesn’t have the sense to be terrified, even after what he witnessed.”

“Let’s not worry about Jack right now,” I said. “Beezle apparently got some info from witches that will help us protect the house.”

The five of us discussed the spells, worked out a plan, and Nathaniel and I spent the rest of the morning sealing off the house. While we did that, Jude and Samiel went to see Alerian as my “ambassadors.” The hope was that he would either 1) call off any additional giant monster attacks that might traumatize the locals, or 2) help us figure out a way to track down and defeat the shifter and its master. Or both.

But when Samiel and Jude returned, they told me that Alerian had checked out of his room that morning. Jude had attempted to track him, but the trail had gone cold next to the river just outside the hotel. Now we had two superpowerful creatures missing in action on my watch.

They might be holed up somewhere together, plotting, as Nathaniel and Beezle suspected.

Or they might have been taken out of the picture by some other player, something strong enough to remove two ancient and extremely magical beings.

Neither option was particularly comforting.

There was a third option. Alerian and Daharan were off somewhere pursuing their own agendas, and those agendas didn’t necessarily mean destruction for me or anyone else.

But I had trouble believing that Daharan would go off for more than a day without telling me where he was going and what he was doing. A low-level knot of anxiety had permanently lodged in the back of my brain.

So there was no Alerian to negotiate with. The shifter seemed to have disappeared and there was no point wasting energy trying to hunt it down. There seemed to be no way to tackle the other problems at the moment, so we waited.

All of us were exceptionally bad at waiting except for Beezle, of course. Beezle thought he’d died and gone to heaven. He had four people in the house to annoy and all the snacks and TV he wanted. There was no blood and no crises for twenty-four hours, although there were an awful lot of reporters and whatnot lurking outside, making pointed remarks about the wisdom of the mayor’s plan while standing in front of the squid carcass.

The rest of us were snarling at one another like restless lions. Somehow there just wasn’t enough space in the apartment for an angel, a werewolf and a couple of mixed-bloods with too much power and nowhere to put it.