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My footsteps were quiet as I raced down the street and the fae raised the flute to her pursed lips, drawing on magic.

The cat must have sensed the brewing spell because she jumped into a bush.

When the fae blasted a note on her flute, magic wrapped around the wooden instrument, and the fae took a step closer to the bush where the cat was hiding.

No!

I made it just in time, sliding in between the fae and the cat. I grabbed the flute with my free hand, yanking it from the fae’s loose grasp.

Next, I popped the fae in her unprotected throat making her instantly gulp and gag so she twirled in a circle like a woozy ballet dancer, gripping her throat.

I tossed the flute into the street—away from her reach but where it would be easy to find again—and waited until the fae’s back was to me before I kicked the back of her knees, dropping her to the ground.

I grabbed the back of her neck—she was too busy coughing and hacking to put up any kind of fight.

I took a risk to glance over my shoulder and caught sight of the black cat streaking across a front lawn, unharmed.

Good, the cat is okay.I dropped my shoulders and returned my focus to the fae noble. “Stand,” I ordered. I grabbed her by her arms so she couldn’t fight back, then pointed her in the direction of Brody and Tetiana. “Walk.”

The fae noble tried to shake me off. When that failed, she coughed one last time and tried to bat her eyelashes at me likely in a plan to try to use fae charm.

“Don’t bother,” Brody advised from farther down the street. “Slayers are stone cold—they can’t be charmed.”

The fae noble scowled at me over her shoulder as I prodded her down the street. “Of course, a slayer,” she grumbled. “Why is a slayer poking her nose in fae business?”

“I’m not a slayer,” I said. “I’m a member of the Curia Cloisters’ Magical Response Task Force.”

CHAPTERTWO

Considine

An explosion made the ground quiver under my feet and was marked by a temporary inferno that ate up the west-most turret of the burning Victorian mansion.

I raised an eyebrow as I studied the turret, which was burning much faster than the rest of the building.Was he storing fireworks in there or is Vígí so off his rocker that he had a gas hookup in the turret?

The historic-obsessed Viking had taken great pains to model his estate after a real Victorian mansion when he’d built it twenty years ago. I hadn’t the faintest clue whyhe’d made that decorating decision. He was a Norseman, and had hated Victorian England with a passion, spending nearly every moment of that time complaining about how weak Englishmen were. But time had a habit of defanging vampires—we did not age well, for all that it was one of our powers.

The heat thrown off the burning mansion was immense, and the smell of smoke permeated the air—though any vampire like myself would still be able to detect the pungent odor of gasoline.

I watched and waited, admiring the blaze which lit up the estate grounds so well it was almost as bright as daytime.

It’s just as well Vígí built his hideaway decently far from human civilization. Those self-important insects would have been drawn to a fire of this size and would never resist involving themselves in it.

The boredom was starting to get to me. I sighed and slipped a hand into a pocket of my suit trousers, checking for my cellphone. It wasn’t there, but my gold ring with the garnet stone was. I pulled it out to study it, grimaced, then slipped it back in my pocket so I could check my suitcoat. Yes, I was still wearing my suitcoat despite the blaze—heat didn’t affect vampires much, nor did the cold. Even if it did, I’d still wear it. Unlike Vígí and the rest of the dramatic Dracos children, I had standards.

“My mansion!”

I straightened up—my entertainment had finally arrived.

Vígí was easy to spot among his vampire offspring. He was as thick as a tree and stuck out among the more modern clothes and hair styles with his Viking hairstyle of shaved temples and long hair on top of his neck pulled back into a bun. He staggered through the picturesque glen of trees making his way to me.

His face was red—though that was likely the reflection of the burning fire. “What—who—how?” he sputtered.

I lifted up one of the many empty, plastic gas cans littered around me. “Oops.”

“You set my house on fire?” Vígí gaped at me. “Why?”

“You left me alone.” I let my boredom shine through as I tossed the gas can on the admirably large pile—it had taken a lot of fuel to cover Vígí’s obnoxiously large home. “You went to that house party hosted by Elder Olsson for reasons beyond my understanding as it was guaranteed to be an absolute bore,” I said.