“I’m not going to argue with that,” Gawain said. He stood, and Nikolas followed suit to haul him into a hard hug. “You want me to update the others?”

“You can if you want. There’s not much to tell them yet.”

Gawain squeezed his arm. “Look after yourself, Nik.”

“You do the same.”

As he watched, Gawain spat on the back of his hand and rubbed it on his napkin. Within seconds, the null spell evaporated. The witch had been true to her word.

Gawain strode out, and Nikolas stayed just long enough to pay the bill, then he too left and studied the outside of the building until he found the window of Sophie’s room. Settling his back against the trunk of a tree, he watched until her light went dark. A few moments later, she left the pub.

Now, facing her in the shadow of the cursed house, he was glad she had turned off the flashlight. His night vision adjusted quickly until he could see almost as well as if it were daylight.

Except it wasn’t daylight. The moon’s magic spilled all around them, and in the privacy of the relative darkness, he was able to stare his full at the female who stood in front of him.

She was magnificent. In the truth revealed by the moonshadow, her eyes gleamed brilliant like diamonds, and an unseen wind played in her dark hair. The angles of her face blended harmoniously into a strong, feminine whole. The effect was softened by the generous curves of her mouth. Silver runes shone on her hands and arms, gleaming with magic spells overlaid upon spells.

She was an enchantress, dangerous and Powerful, and for the first time since they had met in the flesh, he fully acknowledged she was her own force to be reckoned with.

When he named her as part Djinn, she stared at him. “No one has ever been able to tell me what I was before. I had to find it out for myself.”

“Did you?” He found that he was intrigued, while his attention lingered on the shining spells on her arms. They made her look both elegant and barbaric at once. “How did you discover your nature, if no one was able to tell you? Didn’t your family know?”

“When I was five, I was adopted into a family of witches. It wasn’t a good experience, and I left home when I was eighteen. But I had plenty of training while I lived with them, and I already knew there was something odd about me when I left. Something not quite human.”

“Did that bother your adopted family?”

She snorted. “When I was younger, I liked to blame how they treated me on that unknown part of me, but the truth was, they were just predatory jerks. They trained their children in witchcraft to work in the family business. I was very magical and not quite theirs, so I was expected to work harder than everyone else to justify my place. They made their affection conditional on how well I did, and I never quite measured up. I was never quite good enough, so I always had to keep working harder and harder. They made a good profit off me for a while until I was old enough to understand what they were doing and choose a better life for myself.”

He raised his eyebrows. “That is a subtle kind of cruelty, especially to a child who doesn’t have the defenses and filters that an adult has.”

“Yes.” She turned away from the house and picked her way carefully along the flagstone path back to the Mini, and he strode along beside her. “Anyway, I left home as soon as I could, and I traveled from demesne to demesne and talked to the most knowledgeable people I could find in each place. When I reached the Demonkind demesne in Houston, I found my answer with the Djinn. I stayed with them for a while and learned what I could, then I made my way west and spent a few years with my teacher in Nevada before getting the consultant job in LA. So there you have it—twenty-nine years encapsulated in a few sentences.”

“For you to carry Djinn magic, the Djinn in your past must have fallen into flesh and mated with your human ancestor.”

“That’s my understanding.”

From what little Nikolas knew, the rare Djinn who fell into flesh were typically not fertile or able to bear children. He murmured, “You are a very rare occurrence, Sophie Ross.”

“I’ve been called less flattering things. ‘Anomaly,’ ‘abnormality.’ Personally, I like ‘statistical outlier’ the best.” Several yards from the car, she swung around to confront him. “I don’t like being followed. What are you doing here?”

He smiled to himself. She had drawn him out of the shadow of the house, into the open clearing where she could see more clearly. If he wasn’t careful, he might end up liking this almost-human female.

“Earlier you said that now we’ve met, we’re done. I don’t believe you,” he told her. Then he switched to telepathy. And Robin is going to get you killed. If he escaped from the one who was holding him prisoner, she’s going to come after him.

Isabeau, you mean? she said. The Fae Queen of the Light Court is going to come here, to me?

He clenched his teeth and gave her a dark look.

She laughed, and the wind picked up the sound, carrying it across the open space. The wind loved her, Nikolas noted. He barely felt the breeze in passing, but it played with her hair constantly.

She told him, Did you think I wouldn’t notice when you said “Queen” earlier, or I wouldn’t put two and two together? I read a few things before I came, so I’m not quite as ignorant as you might think. Your enemy is the Light Court. I’m guessing that makes you a member of the Dark Court, and probably one of high standing, but I’m not going to make any assumptions—from what I’ve heard and read about her, I’m guessing Isabeau has a talent for making enemies.