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“Fairy Folk don’t carry phones,” Conn said, grinning at Fiona. “But I know how to reach him. Do you think we ought to set up a date? Murray wasextremelyinterested in your mother. He repeatedly mentioned wanting to sharemagickwith her.”

A tsunami of laughter burst out of my daughter’s mouth until the entire kitchen was flooded in it. Conn’s chuckling at his own storytelling added even more.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I ran from the kitchen. Normally, I could swim with the laughing sharks I called family, but after last night I might drown.

ChapterTen

We parked the car near the other two or three in the lot. Not far away was an assortment of work trucks with ladders and equipment, but I saw no owners in them. The dilapidated condition of the building and parking lot made me check the door locks before walking away. If I had to come here every day, I’d have to buy a car alarm. Until the wards were set, any vehicle here was at risk of being broken into.

Conn looked around and made a face. He didn’t have to say anything for me to know we were on the same page. I made a disgusted sound. “This place doesn’t send a very positive message, does it?”

Conn chuckled. “It’s wrecking ball worthy in my opinion.”

I sighed as we started walking. “Ben is one of those men always looking over his shoulder. I can’t imagine he thinks this place is safe enough for any business to exist here.”

Conn shrugged. “Maybe he doesn’t realize that magick can’t fix a broken neighborhood or the people inhabiting it. Or maybe the company rep for the Shadow Breakers bought this place not knowing how bad it was.”

“Either of those could explain it,” I said, and then stopped walking. A whistling sound followed by an enormous crash caught my attention. “Did ya hear that?”

“I smell a troll and he has a tiger cat with him,” Conn said.

Then he morphed into a large, mutant dog and bolted off across the lot. I stared after Conn in shock. Was I just supposed to stand there in the open watching for the troll while I waited for Conn to chase down some freaking cat?

“Incoming!”a man yelled out as he ran across the parking lot toward me.

My head swiveled on my neck as I looked around for the danger.

“Above your head,”he yelled again.

I looked up just in time to see two giant troll feet barely miss me. The troll landed hard enough behind me to make holes in the asphalt. Before I could react appropriately to the threat, the troll grabbed me around the throat. He choked the breath from me so I couldn’t speak.

I struggled in his grip before I got hold of my panic. It had been a while since I’d been attacked.

“No spells.”The troll snarled the order and held up his giant club to make sure I knew he was ready to back up his words.

My head could barely nod against the hairy hand clamped around my neck. Luckily, I didn’t need to speak aloud to call Conn’s mantle into existence. The energy forming over me had the troll turning loose in a hurry. The mantle put off quite the charge as it shaped itself.

“No spells,” the troll ordered again, pitching his growly voice even louder.

After air filled my lungs enough for me to breathe, I called up my sword. I held it up for him to see. “Does this look like a bloody spell to ya?”

“Looks like witchtrick,” the troll spat out, and then lumbered away.

His feet wrecked the already crumbling pavement with every step. Trolls moved at a slow pace, so I waited a moment more for my breath to return. Before I had a chance to pursue the troll, a winged man dove from the air and knocked him to the ground.

I lowered my sword to watch the man wrestling with the troll. Despite having wings and the advantage of a surprise attack, the troll grabbed the man by his clothes and threw him back across the entire parking lot.

The man scream-cussed at the troll in several languages as he used his wings to help stop his free-falling flight. I winced when he righted himself. The friction of sliding to a stop on the asphalt had to have burned the soles of the winged man’s feet. Physics was not yer friend in a fight.

“Next time, I rip out wings,”the troll warned him loudly.

It was the longest and most grammatically correct sentence I ever heard a troll utter, which made me laugh out loud.

The winged guy suddenly zoomed back at him. This time he knocked the troll down on the pavement and held him there. I don’t know how his wings didn’t get damaged from all the rolling around. Falling into potholes alone had to hurt.

I don’t know why exactly, but I couldn’t stop laughing at the whole situation. In between my chuckles, I offered my help. “If ya turn loose of that troll for a minute, I can stop him for ya.”

Instead of answering me, the guy drew back a fist and punched the troll so hard the troll’s head bounced against the pavement.