“Five minutes. If I have to come find you, one of you will die,” Faris said, as causally as if telling us a rainstorm was headed our way.

Doran broke into a jog and I followed him, a growing ache rolling up my legs and through my body. If pain really was just weakness leaving the body, then I should have been a fucking superwoman by now. I bit back the groan that attempted to escape my lips and focused on something else. How about clothes? At least I had my boots, even if I was in this stupid ass dress. “Are you sure you don’t have anything better for me to wear?”

“That is the piece that covers the most. Hurry up—do you remember what we need?”

Son of a bitch, he was right. The recipe, there was no way we were going to be able to go back for it. This was all going to be on my memory and nothing else. Doran’s shamanic room smelled of herbs and sharp spices. The black-skinned demon book sat on a pedestal in the middle.

“Doran, I can’t leave that unprotected.”

He grabbed it from me and shoved it into a bag he snatched from the wall. “I’ll bind it to the house, anyone tries to take it out will be killed, and I’ll make the bag look empty.”

With two flicks of his wrist, the bag stiffened and then he hung it back on the wall with a wink at me. “No one looks for the obvious spot, anyway.” Shit, the thing did look empty. It would have to be enough for now. Had to be.

I stood in [">Is spotthe middle of the room thinking. Wracking my brain, I recalled the ingredients. “Sage, bloodwort, jasmine root, Troll tooth …” I covered my face with my hands, tried to envision the sheet of paper. “Fuck, there were three other things.”

Doran scrambled around the room, stuffing things into small drawstring bag. “Crucible?”

“Yes, mortar and pestle. A diamond, that was one of the items, moon dust—”

“Wait, what?” He froze mid-step.

“Moon dust?” Oh fucking holy hell, let me not be wrong.

“Shit, I don’t have any, maybe Louisa might.”

“There’s no way Faris will let us go,” I whispered. Shit, the vampire could probably hear us as it was, why the fuck was I bothering to whisper?

As if reading my mind, the vampire called out from the other side of the house. “Three minutes, children.”

“Shake it off.” Doran started to move again and I saw him grab an opal and it was indeed the size of a peach pit. “We will have to see if we can get it along the way.”

“How are we going to do that?” I snapped.

“Trust the gods watching over us to set things in motion. It’s about all we’ve got. Now, what the hell was that last ingredient?”

Alex let out a woof and I stared at him, a chill sweeping through me. How could I have forgotten? “Hair from a submissive wolf.”

Doran chuckled. “The gods, they do have a sense of humor. Take it from him now, I’m not sure how much longer he’ll be submissive.”

I ran my hands over Alex’s coat, easily plucking out some long silky fibers.

“Shit, so we’re only missing one thing, moon dust.”

Doran pushed me ahead of him out of the room. “We’ll be missing more than that if we don’t get back to Faris. Grab your weapons, they’re on the bed.”

We ran down the hallway, parting at the juncture. I bolted into the bedroom and scooped up my two blades, back sheath, whip and leather jacket, which looked to be cleaned, or at least wiped off. I didn’t want to think why Doran had put all my weapons in his bedroom. Horny bastard. Faris began to count down in a booming voice.

“Five, four, three …”

Arms loaded down, I ran as fast as I could, skidding to a stop in front of Faris as he tapped his watch.

“Seconds to spare. Rylee, I do hope you aren’t going to push me the entire time.” He reached out and grabbed my arm, squeezing the flesh, his fingers re-bruising where the Trolls had taken their toll.

I ground my teeth but said nothing. Silence was its own power sometimes. I didn’t use it often enough. It didn’t hurt that I knew his little secret, that he hadn’t killed Charlie. Perhaps he wasn’t as tough as he seemed.

“Well, well, the Tracker has learned control? I don’t believe it. Now, give me your weapons.”

Fuck, I’d been hoping he’d forget about that. I handed him my swords, sheath, and whip. “What happens when we run into uglies? You going to do all the dirty work?”

Faris shook his head. “There will be no uglies, as you call them. You are here just for your ability to Track. And perhaps in that dress, act as a tart piece of arm candy.”

Alex blew a raspberry at him. “Uglies are always at Rylee.”

My lips twitched and the vampire only frowned more. “What’s in the bag [s . “?”

What small smile had been creeping across my lips dropped off my face. That he’d noticed the small back of items Doran carried was not good. We did not need him knowing what we were up to.

Doran saved us. “I have a plan to knock Berget out, but it is a powerful spell that can’t be put together until right before we tackle her.”

Faris looked from me to Doran and back again. Shit, he could kill us both and we would be unable to stop him. Though Doran was a Daywalker, it was the same difference of strength between them as that between a human and Doran. There would be no stopping Faris if he decided he’d had enough of us. Which I knew would happen. Right around the moment he figured he’d gotten everything he could out of me.

Control was not something I practiced a lot of, but it looked like I was about to get a crash course in keeping my tongue in my mouth. At least until that final moment when I would take Faris’s fat head and remove it from his treacherous body. Which was a distinct possibility if I could set Doran on the throne instead of Faris or Berget.

“Why are you smiling, Tracker?” Faris stared at me, his icy blue eyes hard.

I stared back. “None of your fucking business, vampire.”

And with that, our little ragtag bunch was off to a screaming start.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

“Roll the window down, Pamela.” Liam did his best not to gag on the words. Agent Valley was in the very back of the Jeep, letting out a moan every now and then, but otherwise his old boss was being pleasant. Not including the smell. And considering he was a rotting zombie…