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I f Rebecca had thought the tension was bad just between Rowan and Maxwell, it was even worse now with Maleine.

Suffocatingly worse.

It did, however, hearten her by a surprising amount to see Rowan practically squirming in his sister’s presence. Scowling every time she inserted herself into his business.

Maleine was the only person in two worlds who had ever been able to get under Rowan’s skin the way she did now. They’d never been on consistently good terms, or inconsistently good terms.

Now, Rebecca couldn’t help but think of it as a well-timed buffer to Rowan’s more infuriating qualities.

For whatever reason, Maleine had tracked him down in this world. Possibly to make sure he was doing what needed to be done, maybe even to help out a little as she’d claimed.

Most likely, though, her reasons for being here included quite a bit more than either of her claims suggested. Of course, much like her brother, Maleine wasn’t going to tell anyone what her true plans entailed.

But she sure did seem to relish the effect she already had on all of them, especially her brother.

Rowan stomped across the parking lot in a huff, muttering to himself with the plastic grocery bag from the liquor store swinging at his side. When he marched right past the Honda, Rebecca stopped.

“Hey!” she called after him. “The car’s over here.”

“Fuck the car.”

“Aren’t we driving?”

“No,” he snapped. “We don’t need to where we’re going.”

Rebecca scoffed and gestured toward the Honda, but she refused to follow him in his current state, without an explanation. “So we’re just gonna walk the rest of the way?”

Rowan finally stopped, turned halfway around to glare at her, then jiggled his head with wide eyes, as if all the answers were perfectly obvious and he was now dealing with a bunch of idiot. “ Kinda .”

Then he spun back around and stomped some more, crossing the street beyond the parking lot without once checking for crossing traffic first. Like he’d suddenly adopted a brand-new death wish.

With Maleine here now, that probably wasn’t all that far from the truth.

Rebecca had no idea where the hell Rowan was taking them, but as she and Maxwell followed in his wake—and Maleine walked ahead of them, practically skipping across the asphalt—she started to think the Blackmoon Elf had lost his mind.

The only thing that existed on the long strip of sparse grass between the road to the liquor store and the highway, acting more like a median than any measure of public open space, was an enormous metal statue.

A dragon statue, rising twelve feet against the blue autumn sky, its silvery exterior winking in the late-afternoon sunlight.

Rebecca had caught a glimpse of the garish human landmark on Maxwell’s furious, skidding serve off the highway and into the parking lot, but she hadn’t thought anything of it at the time.

Why would she? Humans had their own landmarks here—annoying at worst, entertaining at best, and entirely useless to magicals.

When it became clear Rowan headed for the dragon statue on purpose, Rebecca shared a concerned look with the shifter walking sternly beside her.

Maxwell didn’t look any more reassured by the evidence.

Just as she’d feared, the Blackmoon Elf stopped at the base of the statue, set his plastic bag down in the dying grass at his feet, and pulled out one of the two liquor bottles nestled inside. The surrounding area filled with the telltale squeak and pop of him opening up one of those bottles right there in front of them, the sound barely audible over the light rush of highway traffic whizzing past them an hour before the worst of rush-hour traffic.

Without a word, Rowan sighed, then threw his head back and upended the open bottle into his mouth for two massive swigs in quick succession.

Maxwell’s eyes widened, but he remained perfectly silent.

Maleine chuckled.

Rebecca remained thoroughly unimpressed.

“ That’s why we stopped at the liquor store?” she asked. “So you can get your drink on?”

Rowan’s only reaction to chugging from a fresh bottle of 40-proof liquor was to smack his lips and blink. “Not entirely for booze. And I wasn’t planning on having any myself, but, you know. Plans can change on a dime…”

He stepped toward her to offer Rebecca the bottle.

She folded her arms and glanced at the plastic bag in the grass. “Aren’t those supposed to come in paper bags?”

“Not when you ask for plastic and the store clerk thinks you’re the coolest guy ever. His words, not mine.” Rowan swung the bottle toward Maxwell next with a prompting nod.

The shifter merely glared at him.

With a shrug, Rowan took one more swig, then jammed the lid back into the bottle with another squeak, very poignantly refusing to make a similar offer to his sister.

Maleine let out a low, smoldering chuckle, grinning as she watched Rowan putter about with his things while actively trying to ignore her. She seemed to find particular enjoyment in the simple fact that her mere presence was already driving him fucking insane.

Rebecca had a hunch that played a major part in why Maleine had shown up in the first place.

Then the Blackmoon Elf made an enormous production of returning the liquor bottle to the bag before patting down the numerous pockets of his light canvas jacket and jeans.

They’d be here forever, at this rate. And with one new additional member unexpectedly added to his audience, Rowan was taking even longer than usual to get to the point.

Or he was stalling.

Neither was a good sign.

“Ah. Yep. Just a little…” With his hand wedged into the front pocket of his jeans, which didn’t seem nearly large enough to fit his whole hand, Rowan scrunched up his face and struggled to remove his hand. When he finally did, he chuckled and held the retrieved item up to the sunlight.

The large coin shimmered under the single stream of direct light cutting through the outline of the metal dragon towering over them, very clearly not any form of real currency. Even in this world.

“Neat right?” He studied the coin, then asked no one in particular, “Anybody know what this is?”

“Yes,” Maxwell replied, fixing the elf with a deadpan stare before offering further explanation in the driest, dullest voice possible. “And this is the Kaskaskia Dragon tourist attraction. Put a token in the slot, and the metal eyesore breathes fire for ten seconds while its eyes glow red. I remain unimpressed.”

“Oh, listen to Mr. Know-It-All Wolf Boy over here.” Rowan exaggerated a pout in the shifter’s direction as he lowered the token. “Sorry, pal, but again, I seem to have run out of good-boy treats.”

“That’s why we’re here?” Rebecca asked, fighting against the urge to pummel Rowan into the ground for wasting their time. “ You said we were running out of time, but you dragged us out to a liquor store so you could catch a buzz and fuck around with tourist attractions ?”

“You know what?” He looked her up and down and scoffed. “How about everybody just gives me a little more credit, huh? I’ve got a special token…”

“One that looks exactly like all the others,” Maxwell grumbles.

“Well looks can be deceiving, buddy,” Rowan snapped back. “I bet you know that better than anyone…”

After practically shoving the token in Rebecca and Maxwell’s faces for maximum effect—and still ignoring Maleine altogether—Rowan’s frustrated scowl morphed into a showman’s smirk now that he was once more the center of attention in the way he wanted to be.

Setting the token in his open, extended palm, he danced the fingers of his other hand over the coin, playing across its surface with a series of dancing taps and flickering flourishes. At first, nothing happened.

But then a gentle silver-white light bloomed around the token before fading out of existence again.

Rowan plucked the coin from his palm between thumb and forefinger and grinned.

Whatever type of spell he’d attempted, fancy or otherwise, it hadn’t changed a bit of the coin’s physical appearance. No trace of strong magic filtering through the air. No reaction whatsoever from their surroundings.

Rebecca’s deadpan stare remained. “That’s it?”

Unaffected by the staggering levels of cynicism, Rowan wiggled his eyebrows at her. “Watch and learn.”

With unbelievable swagger, he waltzed up to the dragon statue, paused for effect in front of the clearly marked slot where bored humans from anywhere and everywhere were to insert their tokens, then slipped the coin into it with a flourish.

The token pinged through the slot before clanging onto the top of the collected pile of other tokens just like it.

With a roaring whoosh, a whirring bolt of flickering flame burst from the metal dragon’s open mouth, heat and bright light spewing from the back of an inorganic throat.

Rebecca stepped back, partially in surprise that this part had actually worked, and partially so she wouldn’t miss whatever new trick the Kaskaskia Dragon had in store, which Rowan seemed so unwaveringly convinced he’d achieved.

The statue’s eyes did glow red for the full duration of those ten seconds, but that was it.

Then the whirring mechanism igniting the flames in the dragon’s mouth snuffed out, the eyes returned to their dull lightlessness, and all that remained were a fading heat and the faint sent of lighter fluid and hot metal in the air.

Maxwell snorted violently, his nostrils flaring.

Rebeca waited a moment longer, then glared at Rowan again.

The Blackmoon Elf merely grinned up at the dragon statue, nodded, then casually walked around the side of the glinting roadside behemoth. With another flourish, he spun on his heels to face his unwilling audience, leaned back against the dragon’s metal side, and folded his arms.

Particularly pleased with himself.

Maxwell’s next low growl was barely audible. “Can I rip out his throat now?”

Maleine cut in with a tinkling laugh. “Oh, please do. I would love nothing more.”

Rebecca flashed the woman a sidelong glance. She’d almost forgotten they had a fourth among them.

But now that Maleine had made herself impossible to forget or ignore, as usual, the thickening tension among their little party returned with full force.

Rebecca could almost taste it. Everything she felt through Maxwell standing stock-still beside her proved the shifter was just as wary of their current situation.

She hadn’t thought this day could get any stranger, all things considered.

Then something actually did happen.

A soft, thin flicker of silver-white light bloomed around the statue’s metal side against which Rowan leaned. With a harsh, grating squeal like twisting metal, something in the statue moved.

It was slow at first but quickly picked up speed, and then a panel door in the statue’s metal side fizzled away just in front of Rowan to reveal a dark archway in the ribcage of the Kaskaskia Dragon.

With all the pompous self-assuredness returned to Rowan’s smirk, he looked pointedly at Rebecca. “I did say there were layers to the process. Step one, right here.”

Well that was a whole lot of dazzle and flair for nothing.

She stepped to the side to get a better view of what lay beyond that newly opened archway. At first, she saw nothing but thick darkness. But when she leaned just a little closer, there was still enough daylight to illuminate a set of steep stone steps.

Leading ever downward into the literal belly of the beast.

Rowan swept a hand toward the opening and pushed himself off the side of the statue. “After you.”

Rebecca and Maxwell didn’t move.

With a giddy chuckle, Maleine skirted right past them, offering Maxwell another blatantly flirting wink along the way. She didn’t stop at the top of the stairwell but surged confidently through that open archway and quickly disappeared. Her voice carried a metallic echo behind her when she called to her brother, “Bring the whiskey.”

Rowan grimaced and clearly went through great effort to wipe it off his face before he raised an eyebrow at Rebecca and Maxwell. “Well?”

“Yeah, you’re definitely going first,” she told him blandly. “For obvious reasons.”

He studied her face, as if searching for the faults in her serious exterior, then the last of his irritating amusement vanished. “Fine.”

Turning toward the archway, he paused to gaze longingly at the bag of liquor he’d just bought, then sneered. “Pshh. Bring the whiskey . Dammit.”

He left the bag there and dipped his head beneath the curving top of the archway, then he too disappeared into the darkness, his aggravated footsteps clomping down each step and echoing back up into the air.

Rebecca waited.

No screams. No blasts of magical light. No traps detonated.

Taking a deep breath, she leaned farther forward for a closer look, but the darkness made it impossible.

“Any idea what lies at the bottom?” Maxwell rumbled.

She couldn’t look away from the black pit yawning beneath them. “Absolutely not. So we better be ready for fucking anything.”