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Leona unlocked the door of her apartment and led the way inside. “I’ve been meaning to ask, how did you find me so quickly today? Palantine flatlined my nav amber and my yellow crystal.”

“I found Roxy first,” Oliver said, following her into the small foyer, “thanks to that ridiculous fascinator. She was just waking up from the effects of the drug Palantine used on the two of you.”

“Right.” Leona smiled at Roxy, who bailed off her shoulder, landed on the floor, and fluttered toward the kitchen. “Molly tuned the blue crystal butterfly in the fascinator. She gave it a nav code primarily because she was afraid the hat might get lost, but also because I spend a lot of time in the Underworld and you can never have too much nav amber and crystals.”

“Evidently it never occurred to Palantine that anyone would bother to tune a fascinator. Roxy led me straight to you.”

Roxy bounced up onto a dining counter stool and then up to the counter. She chortled.

“I think she’s hungry,” Oliver said. “So am I.”

Leona checked the time as she followed Roxy into the kitchen. “We’ve got dinner with the moms in an hour. Will some pretzels hold you over?”

“Pretzels and a large glass of wine. I need the booze to fortify myself for dinner tonight.”

Leona took the lid off the pretzel jar and doled out two small bowls of pretzels. She started to close the lid, changed her mind, and filled a third bowl for herself. She set one bowl on top of the counter for Roxy.

Oliver opened the refrigerator and grabbed the open bottle of inexpensive red. Closing the refrigerator, he took two glasses out of the cupboard and carried everything to the dining counter.

Making himself at home, she thought. But it felt right. It was as if the apartment had been waiting for him. There had always been something missing in the decor. Now the place felt complete.

The interview with the FBPI had gone smoothly, thanks to Oliver’s connections. Explaining the three unconscious people had taken a bit of creative thinking, but the Feds appeared to have been satisfied with a story involving a delusional, multi-talent, would-be cult leader who had gone insane. The paranormal atmosphere of the Underworld had overwhelmed her fragile, unstable senses.

In the process of self-destructing, the Vance wannabe had taken down the two innocent men she had hypnotized. Burt and Baxter Richey had both recovered, but they had no memory of how they had become involved in the kidnapping or of the events in the Underworld that had followed—at least, that’s what they claimed. Leona believed them.

She and Oliver had been content to let both men plead innocent due to having been in a hypnotic trance. The important thing was that Melody Palantine was now in a secure cell in a para-psych prison hospital. She was awake but still delusional. The doctors did not know if her paranormal senses would ever recover, but they were prepared to administer psi-suppressing drugs if necessary.

Meanwhile, money was already pouring into the tiny community of Lost Creek, thanks to the arrival of the FBPI, the Guild, and a lot of obsessed para-archaeologists. The inn would soon be booked solid, Leona thought. The diner would be busy.

She sat down across from Oliver and picked up a glass of wine. “You said the moms called you when I disappeared in the middle of my phone conversation with them?”

“Yes.” Oliver munched a pretzel. “They told me you had been in the process of getting into a car at the mansion and that you had just recognized the woman in the photo. Then your phone went dead. They were worried when they couldn’t reconnect. They sent the photo to me.”

“You recognized Darla Price, aka Melody Palantine.”

“Immediately. Eugenie and Charlotte filled me in on what they had learned about her. It was more than enough to send her straight to the top of the suspect list. But I couldn’t track her because her amber was locked. Yours had gone dark.”

“I see.” Leona started to drink some wine and stopped when she got a ping. “Eugenie and Charlotte? You’re on a first-name basis with my moms?”

“I am.” Oliver swallowed some wine and reached for another pretzel.

Leona cleared her throat. “We will get back to that. Moving right along, I gather that when you realized my amber had been flatlined, you started tracking the crystal in Roxy’s fascinator.”

“Yep.” Oliver’s eyes glinted with admiration. “Not that you needed rescuing. You had the situation under control when I arrived.”

She shuddered. “Maybe. Barely. Until Burt showed up.”

“Got a feeling you could have handled him, too. Griffin women can take care of themselves.”

She shook her head. “No, my senses were exhausted after I took down Melody Palantine. They still are.”

“You would have figured it out.” Oliver munched on the pretzel. “What, exactly, did you do to Palantine?

Leona met his eyes. “I’m not sure. But I think I can now say I finally discovered my third talent.”

“What do you think happened?”

“Somehow I was able to use Baxter Richey’s amber to pull energy from the quartz around me and channel it straight at Melody’s aura.”

Oliver paused in mid-munch. Then he smiled. “Damn, woman. That’s amazing.”

“No,” she said, “it was a terrifying sensation. Like channeling lightning. It was painful in a way I can’t explain. I wondered if I was incinerating my own talent in the process. I can’t begin to imagine how it felt on her end. And poor Richey fainted.”

Oliver watched her for a moment. “But you’re okay now?”

She nodded. “I think so. My senses are recovering. I definitely do not want to have to pull that trick again anytime soon, though.”

Grim understanding appeared in his eyes. “I know the feeling. I don’t like using my talent to the max, either.”

“Burt called you a monster.”

“He was right. I could have killed him with my talent.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No,” he said. “I didn’t.”

“Was that the reason your marriage was annulled on the grounds of a fraudulent para-psych profile? Your wife witnessed your talent in action?”

Oliver’s mouth twitched in a wry smile. “No wife involved, remember? An annulment means we were never married. But yes, she saw that side of me, and so did I.”

“You mean you didn’t know what you could do?”

“Not until I had the need to do it. I went on instinct and intuition.”

She sipped some wine. “I understand.”

“My non-wife and I were attacked on our honeymoon. One of those wrong place, wrong time things. A couple of high-grade talents carrying mag-rez pistols. I nearly flatlined both of them.”

Leona got another ping. “Your non-wife was shocked to see what you could do with your talent. She never understood that wasn’t your real talent.”

He frowned. “What are you talking about?”

She smiled. “You are a decent, honorable man. The kind of man who does the right thing when the chips are down. I know you would have my back in a bar fight, and you would show up with bail money if I got arrested at two in the morning. That’s the kind of talent that really matters, at least to me.”

He had been about to swallow some wine but something went wrong. He choked on a laugh and spewed drops of the drink into the air and across the table.

“Damn,” he rasped, grabbing a napkin. “Sorry about that.” He laughed again as he mopped up spilled wine. “When was the last time you got into a bar fight or were arrested?”

“It’s been a while,” she admitted. “Like forever. But I don’t doubt you’d be there for me.”

“Always.” His eyes met hers. “You’d be there for me, too.”

“Yes. Always.”

“I’m in love with you, Leona. I started falling for you that night at the Society’s reception when I found you in that lab, setting the dust bunnies free. I’ve been falling ever since. I’m all the way in now. There’s no going back, not for me.”

Joy sparkled through her senses. “I’m so glad, because I’m in love with you. I wasn’t sure what was happening. I’ve never been in love. It changes everything.”

“This is new to me, too. You’re right. It changes things.” His eyes heated. “But it’s been only a few days. We need a little time.”

“Time to be sure?”

“No, I’m very sure.”

“So am I.”

“It’s our families who will want us to take some time. They need to be reassured that we’re a good match.”

She winced. “True. They will insist we go through a normal dating relationship.”

He smiled. “Eugenie and Charlotte, being moms, are way ahead of you. I’ve been meaning to tell you that we have an appointment at the Banks matchmaking agency tomorrow.”

Leona stared at him. “What?”

“It was probably my fault. Late this morning, while you were busy rescuing the Hollister team, I went to the offices of Griffin Investigations to introduce myself.”

“They must have been floored when you walked through the door. I’ll bet they never saw you coming.”

“They are your mothers. Of course they saw me coming. Just so you know, I didn’t simply introduce myself. I told them that I would be asking for your hand in marriage at some point in the near future. I wanted to give them a heads-up. Figured it was the traditional thing to do.”

“Wow. So that’s why we’ve got an appointment at the Banks agency tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow evening we will be having dinner with my family. We will continue to go through all of the conventional steps to a Covenant Marriage because that will satisfy everyone involved. But in the end, we will get married.”

“What happens if the Banks agency doesn’t think we’re a great match?”

“That’s not going to happen,” Oliver said.

“But if it does happen?”

“You and I got away with Pandora’s box and the key crystal the night of the reception. We avoided getting swept up in an FBPI raid. We found a long-lost Vortex machine—to say nothing of dismantling a cult and taking down a killer megalomaniac who was trying to become the next Vincent Lee Vance. We can figure out how to hack a matchmaking computer.”

She relaxed. “So you have a backup plan.”

“Always. For everything except for you. I don’t have a backup plan for any scenario where you are not in my life.”

She went into his arms with a sense of certainty that thrilled all of her senses. This was the right man.

“I love you, Oliver.”

“That’s all I need,” he said.