Page 67

I kept my gun pointed at it—I wouldn’t move until I knew for certain it was dead. “Grove? Check it, please.”

“Right-o.” Grove trotted past me approaching the boar.

Binx finally relaxed her claws and hopped off the boar—making angry noises as she spat out its most likely foul-tasting blood.

Grove prodded the boar. “It’s dead! It’s not breathing.”

I flicked the safety back on, then holstered my gun as Binx ate some grass from a human’s lawn.

“Well done, Team Blood.” Sarge stepped out from behind a tree planted on the curb. “Very neatly done.” He stopped just short of the boar, crouching down next to it.

I blinked as I stared at him tipping my head.Did he release the spell he’d been holding?

My training—which some might call induced paranoia—poked me, so I turned in a circle doing another scan of the street.

The feeling of fae magic was gone now, and I saw a smudge of gray farther up the street.

I thought I saw a blonde-haired man but when I blinked, he was gone.

“Sarge? Were you holding a spell ready to use?” I asked.

Sarge glanced up at me. “No. Why?”

I hesitated. “I felt a fae spell in the area, and I saw someone down the street. He just left.”

“Ah.” Sarge rested his arms on his knees as he remained crouched. “Yes, I felt the magic too, a block or so down. It was probably a Seelie or Unseelie fae scouting out the fight,” he said. “I saw an Unseelie brownie when we were setting up our perimeter, too.”

I nodded, changing my stance so I was more relaxed but could still easily pull a weapon.

Juggernaut dragged Clarence out from behind a team car we’d parked on the street for cover purposes. “Why’d you guys kill the boar so cleanly? I wanted to try shooting it with lightning,” he complained, holding onto the short sleeve of Clarence’s uniform so he could tow him along.

“You already did that,” Grove reminded him. “It didn’t work.”

“Yeah, well this time I was going to try aiming for its chest—like Blood,” Juggernaut said.

“You’re too bad a shot for that!” Tetiana called from farther up the street, where she trotted after Medium-Sized Robert.

Brody and April followed behind the pair, Brody loping along in his wolf form.

“What’s going on?” The unfamiliar voice came from behind me.

I turned in time to see a woman in her thirties, wearing a fuzzy pink bathrobe and bear-paw slippers, standing in the front doorway of a ranch house.

Sarge glanced at the woman, then shifted to our team, the faint scales on his lower jaw gleaming in the streetlight. “Binx, Clarence?”

Binx stopped eating grass and approached the ranch house, Clarence following behind her.

The moment Binx stepped on the sidewalk that led up to the house, her body language changed. She perked her cat ears, casually twitched her tail like a house cat, and purred so loudly I could hear it in the middle of the street.

Although she was rough in her human form and tended to bristle a lot, in her cougar form Binx was charming and friendly. Even though she couldn’t talk as a cougar, she was always elected to accompany whatever sacrificial lamb was sent to talk to the humans. Her deep purrs and soft fur helped smooth over any human fears.

Clarence was typically her partner for these talks. Clarence looked remarkably unthreatening in general and, when he wasn’t yanking on his cravat in fear, he was very reassuring. (At least, from what I’d heard. Whenever I was around, he was a nervous wreck.)

“Good evening, Madam,” Clarence said as he climbed the step to the ranch’s front porch. “I am with the Curia Cloisters. I apologize for all the noise.”

“Oh.” The woman looked down at Binx, who preened under her gaze and purred some more, inviting pets. “Um. No worries…”

I wish I was as good with people as Clarence,I thought wistfully.