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“You can smell magic?” I ask in a whisper so low only a vampire could hear it.

“I can, but only because I’ve used it for so many years now. I don’t like the way they’re looking at the exit.”

“But they’re humans.”

“Yes, well, Delgado must have humans that work for him. If his organization were entirely supernatural, we would get to hear of it. I wonder what Delgado does with the power he gains... He must leverage it to a human organization, somehow.”

“Maybe they’re just waiting to meet someone else,” I say, but I don’t believe it.

Minegold knows that, too. “You know that’s not true.”

“I’m rusty.”

“Lies.”

I growl—and the growl dies away in my throat.

There she is.

God, she’s beautiful—and she’s looking at me.

EVER SINCE I GOT AWAYfrom Matteo, I have been sure I was being watched. Since traveling with Kim, I’ve let her know when I suspect someone—and each time she subtly shakes her head and makes me watch to see what’s really going on. That man, reaching into his pocket—just a guy who needs a pen. That guy, bending down at the corner—lost an earbud. Stuff like that.

But I lived with a murderer for months, happily ignorant and never suspecting a thing until I saw it with my own eyes.

We’ve discovered I’m not the best at identifying threats.

But I’m very good at identifying helpers. There’s no mistaking the golem that waits for me, even though he looks nothing like what I pictured.

When I exit the automatic glass doors and leave the stale-smelling airport and cross into the fresh September air, I know Reginald Gray as soon as I see him. He’s broad-chested and stocky, bald and square-jawed. And gray. I dart a glance to Kim. My family believes in magic, but so do most people who live between the Bayou and New Orleans. My father andgrandmother have always told me that most other people can’t see it unless they’re forced to.

But Kim is so perceptive. So highly trained. She’s going to ask why he’s gray. A light gray, a soft gray that could almost pass for beige, like a turtle dove’s belly.

But Kim is looking elsewhere. Her eyes are welded on a dusty old Toyota and two guys chatting next to it.

“My darling girl!” A tall, lean man with graying hair and a wide-brimmed fedora rushes to meet me. “My dear child! I haven’t seen you since you were in diapers, and now here you are, so beautifully grown up!”

“Uncle Jakob!” I gush. (I wasn’t the lead in the middle school production ofAnniefor nothing. I can act—a little.) “It’s so good to see you!”

“And this is your friend—”

“Kim!”

Kim hugs the vampire, too. I wince and hope she doesn’t realize he has no pulse and bone-white hands. She has a gun, after all, and I’m pretty sure Interpol agents would consider vampires a threat. I don’t think he’d die if she shot him, but I don’t want to find out, either.

I turn my attention to the man I’m really supposed to embrace—the golem. The bodyguard. Generations of promises have tied him to my family.

I pictured the faceless, barely humanoid blobs depicted in old books. He’s nothing like that.

Even an unobservant idiot like me can’t help but notice how the wide shoulders and densely packed muscles stretch the fabric of the white dress shirt he’s wearing. I can’t help but stare at his face—perfectly human—ruggedly human, with a square jaw that’s slowly easing his lips into a smile as his eyes go wide.

I never thought I would itch to run my hands over a bald head, but I can’t deny the prickling in my palms. The whole“tall, dark, and handsome shtick” that was hammered into me by book covers and daytime television just “poofed.”

Like magic.

I’m not supposed to like the way he looks. I’m not supposed to like anyone, ever again. It’s not like they’d be safe. It’s not like I can ever have a normal dating life.

This man might be the last man I’m allowed to trust, and my job is to act like he’s the real deal, the true love kind of man that’s worth leaving champagne and caviar for.