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“Not anymore, but once I was,” she said, her gaze swinging at last to Rasmus. “Then the elders made me into a hybrid creature like him. Luckily, their changes didn’t last.”

“What?”Rasmus said, gripping my arm. “What is she saying about me? Do you know what she means?”

My jaw tightened. “I didn’t think there were any female guardians. All the guardians I’ve met have been men.”

She snorted. “They like to forget about me and the other females. I was the primary troublemaker, but they felt no regret at all when they forced all the others into a humanity none of them wanted.”

Rasmus openly studied her. “How am I like you?”

Zara ignored him to go on. “All female guardians except me rest in graves now. Their human remains long ago rotted while their guardian souls cling to what is left. I’m the only one who remains physically alive—the only one they didn’t manage to organically destroy. I chose to become immortal.”

“Good Goddess, why would the guardians do that to their females?” I asked in a whisper.

“Misogyny?” Zara suggested, then laughed at her cleverness. “Those you call guardians were made in the image of those we call the creators. They created us male and female because this planet is energetically based on gender duality. They created guardians to watch over the planet while they worked on their penultimate creation. Yes, witch, that would be humans. Ironic, isn’t it?”

My mind made a leap it might never have made if I hadn’t been so shocked at her niceness. Bad guys were only nice to get ya to turn yer back. Niceness made ya drop yer guards so the knife sliding between yer shoulder blades caused maximum mental trauma as well as physical. And I knew if this female wanted me dead, there wasn’t anything I could do to stop her knife.

She smiled at me again. “I admit I’m quite impressed with the unique twists humans have added to the two original genders. However, procreation still requires eggs from females and sperm from males. Females are still required to sacrifice their bodies to carry children to term. Nothing has changed since the beginning of your species.”

Rasmus butted in. “Stop avoiding my question. What do you mean that you’re like me?”

She smirked at him before she looked at me. “It wouldn’t take much of a memory jolt to fix him. Do you want him restored? I can tell you don’t like this version much. Your energy is resistant to his.”

“Leave him be. Rasmus is fine as he is,” I said, glaring at her now. “What are ya doing to those women ya captured?”

“I captured no one. They were willing to do anything I asked to escape their dreary, mundane lives. Apathy is a deadly disease for humanity and it’s spreading. The young are particularly susceptible. They long for a purpose greater than themselves and I gave them one.”

“In a vision I had, I heard ya tell the demon wolves to behave and you would change them back into humans.”

“And I will,” she said, smiling even wider. “My work wouldn’t be very convincing if they never learned to shift back and forth.”

“Twelve women went missing. How many have ya changed into wolves? What happened to the others?”

Her smile went away as she waved a hand at the auditorium. “I may be trapped in this human body I got forced into, but my powers work the same. Do you understand that I could kill these people with a snap of my fingers?”

“That’s been done to death in the movies. Think of all the book sales ya’d lose. That would be a waste of good marketing, don’t ya think?”

Her frown disappeared as laughter burst out of her. “What is your name, witch?”

“Aran O’Malley... also Aran of The Dagda. I’m a hereditary witch and a child born in the line of the king of theTuatha De Danann.”

She burst out laughing again. “I slept with your ancestor.”

I sighed. “You and hundreds of other women, I’m sure. Was it lately or long ago?”

“Six months.”

I smiled. “Oh… so The Dagda didn’t go home yet. I wondered if he was still around.”

Her smile was wide. “I like you. Can we be friends, Aran?”

I couldn’t answer her question. “I have to find those missing women and return them to their families.”

“Five are dead.”

“Why? Did ya kill them?” I knew I wasn’t going to like her answer.

“Kill is an unimaginative word. I absorbed the essence of one of them and bottled four others for later use. Each life essence gives me about fifty years.” She snapped her fingers. “What if I made you younger? Would that make us friends?”