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“It’s fine,” Zuri said to put her out of her rambling misery. “I was focused on the wards.” She continued walking, arms too full to take the stupid mug.

“Elena mentioned those. What are they?” Marisol followed her to the golf cart, offering her a mug as soon as she set the sack down on the passenger side of the cart.

“They keep intruders away from my home,” she said, a little more pointedly than she’d intended, and accepted the coffee.

“I wasn’t sure how you took it, but I thought, who doesn’t like cafe con leche,” her words somewhere between a statement and a question.

Taking a sip, Zuri made a rumbling sound in her throat instead of admitting that it was delicious.

“Can I help?” Marisol asked.

Zuri wanted to say no. To tell her she didn’t need someone who didn’t know anything about anything following her around. But her eyes were so big and her energy was so damn sincere. Zuri couldn’t make her useless mouth move.

With a roll of her eyes, she huffed a “Whatever” before jumping into the driver’s seat. Marisol moved the sack to sit between them then slipped into the passenger side.

“I’ve been meaning to say something,” Marisol started, shifting in her seat to face Zuri while she drove due east. Because of her affinity to water, she always started with the ward facing the ocean, even if it was miles away. “What you walked in on at the hospital”—she gripped her mug with both hands when they hit a bumpy patch—“I would never do that with a patient.”

Zuri chuckled and took a swig of her coffee before she spilled any. “Oh, okay. I must have been having a stroke and hallucinated what I saw with my own eyes.”

“That’s not what happens with a stroke,” Bambi shot back, her full lips in a little smirk Zuri forced herself to look away from. She rolled her eyes for good measure.

“I’m serious, though. I don’t want you to think I’m that kind of person. That was the first time—I normally would never have ever crossed a line—I just?—”

“Yeah, well, Elena has a way of making you do shit that’s stupid, crazy, and dangerous but just seems like the most fun,” she said to put the woman out of her misery.

With everything that happened in the hospital, Zuri hadn’t even thought about Elena being Marisol’s patient. It’s not likeElena was some vulnerable human. Bambi was on the thin end of that power imbalance. The thought settled in Zuri’s chest until she pushed it aside.

“If you knew that about her, why did you come for her and nearly get killed in the process?”

It was a reasonable question. One Zuri decided not to answer. She looked at her forearm instead. Looked at the jagged line that had already thinned and turned white. Zuri would have bled out if it hadn’t been for Marisol.

She’d had half her coffee by the time they reached the eastern ward. Zuri put the mug in the cupholder and jumped out of the cart.

“So what do you do to it?” Marisol said, looking up at the intricate clay, iron, and hemp rope design hanging from a mature mango tree that gave her the full creeps.

Zuri stopped while reaching into the sack, her stomach clenching. “You can see it?”

Marisol looked back at her, blonde hair swaying against her long neck in the breeze. “This big ass thing that looks like it belongs in theBlair Witchmovie?” She laughed. “Obviously. Were you trying to camouflage it?” She looked at Zuri like she was a kindergartener with a particularly hideous hand turkey she couldn’t find a way to compliment.

Without telling her that the wards were meant to be invisible to all humans, vampires, and witches that weren’t her, Zuri explained that they worked to disrupt the senses. Different elements affected beings differently, but the sensory disruption was similar.

Using disorienting sounds and smells, the property faded into its surroundings for uninvited humans. Subtle energy barriers physically repelled vampires, making them feel the agony of the sun if they tried to push beyond the discomfort. And for witches, Zuri’s home was armed against magical intrusion,shielding her property from invasive spells and alerting her to any attempts to breach her defenses.

“So why don’t I feel any of those things?” Marisol asked when Zuri was finished with the last ward and they were in the cart, bouncing back to the house.

“Because you’re my guest,” she replied honestly, but that didn’t explain why they were visible to her.

She didn’t know why Marisol could see the wards. Even Del and Avani couldn’t see them until she deactivated them.

“Are you afraid of heights?” Zuri asked when she lurched to a stop in front of the shed affixed to the side of the house.

Marisol’s smile was too bright. “No,” she chuckled. “Why?”

Fleeing from the warming sensation blooming in her belly, Zuri all but sprinted for the shed. When she returned, she tossed the first of many heavy ass tarps at Marisol.

“Come on, Bambi. Let’s put these up before Elena has a meltdown about being confined to the closet.” She turned her back on her, getting away from her disorienting presence.

Chapter Twenty-One