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“ C ’mon.” I grabbed my plate. “I need to be outside.”

Swallowing heavily, the guild boss didn’t argue. He followed me through the door to the backyard. The demon had hung his deer to butcher it from a colorful maple near the fire pit, with Finnegan and Skip hovering nearby but out of reach while they bickered with him and each other.

I hadn’t needed to rush to the backyard to monitor them, though. Not primarily, anyway. I walked to the garden pump next to my dad’s greenhouse instead and dropped to the grass to wallow in the steadying vibrations filtering up from the earth my father had nurtured.

Griffith plunked down to sit across from me. And waited.

I ate, content to soak in the power around me, the only part of my dad I could have — his magic, which lingered here still. Surprisingly, Griffith didn’t pepper me with questions or demands. Then again, the guild boss had been a legit close friend of my father. Maybe he remembered what Teddy Mace had been like when he’d needed nature to recharge and help him regain his balance.

“Dad wasn’t a late bloomer, either,” I said when I’d finished the meal and set my empty plate aside. “He knew how to beat the test and would have lived as a mundane forever if his control hadn’t slipped when he met Rosie.”

The guild boss frowned. “Are you sure?”

“Who do you think taught me how to throw the test when my time came?” I laced my fingers in the cooling grass, inhaling its sweet scent. “He never explained why, but keeping what I could do secret was important to him.” I glanced at Griffith. “He had a little precog in him.”

“Very little. He had glimpses of various futures that could result based on the decisions we make, but what he saw was murky, at best.”

“I’d wondered if he’d told you. I’m glad he did. He trusted too sparingly.” Smiling, I reclined on my elbows and lifted my face toward the fading autumn sun. “I was a kid then, but looking back, I think he was scared.”

“He saw his murder and tried to protect you.”

I nodded. “He knew he’d die young, but I don’t believe he knew how or when.” I picked at the blades of grass. “I think he realized his premature death would ruin Ma. That’s why he set up the trust with you as executor rather than her.” I shrugged. “He did the best he could.”

“I didn’t call her.” Shoving a hand through his hair, Griffith groaned. “Rosie must be worried out of her mind.”

That my mother might be concerned about me was strange and unwelcome. I wrinkled my nose. “I can’t deal with Ma on top of everything else.”

Griffith tipped his head at a stubborn angle. “She’s been sober two years.”

That the guild boss could say that with a straight face only proved he hadn’t lived with it, with her, had no clue how low Rosie Mace had sunk or how bad her drinking had gotten when I finally had enough and took off.

To be fair, after Dad’s death, Ma had driven away all of Teddy Mace’s magical friends and associates. She’d wanted nothing to do with the community that had murdered her husband and had been equally determined to keep them away from me, too. In her way, at least in the beginning, she’d been trying to protect me. She’d cared then. Later…the fewer prying eyes, the less abuse she had to hide.

Across the yard, Skip yipped in alarm and darted behind Finnegan, who straightened his spine and stood his ground. The demon flashed sharp claws at both men. It was only a threat, a warning. If the demon had intended to hurt them, he could have. Easily. No one was bleeding, and that’s all I cared about, so I shifted my attention back to the guild boss. “Will I be arrested?”

Brow furrowing at my less than smooth dodge of all matters pertaining to my mother, Griffith thinned his lips. “Your father had a history as a late bloomer, and, like everyone else, you tested at age thirteen. As mundane. Your control over your magic has also been perfect. Finnegan moved into your rental after your familiar found you and he’ll testify that he’s never detected a whiff of magic from you once in those three years.”

“I’ve never used my power. I’m a naturally gifted botanist, but I’ve been careful to make sure that’s all it was.” My gaze snapped up. “Wait. Familiar? I never worked the spell to summon a familiar. I don’t have one.”

My eyes narrowed as I did the math. I didn’t have a pet and had befriended none of the local wildlife. Both were gambles I’d been unwilling to make. What had happened three years ago? I winced. “Do you mean Skip?”

“Familiars can approach their human partners on their own. Magic isn’t strictly necessary.” Griffith raised a silencing palm when I opened my mouth to object. “He isn’t a typical familiar. I’ll grant you that. But you aren’t a typical druid. I’ve known that, sensed it, since you were small.”

What are you? I remembered asking Skip that before Griffith arrived with Finnegan, heralding one too many betrayals for my addled head to absorb. I also recalled Skip hadn’t answered me. Non-human, because Dad’s wards would’ve blocked humans and magical beings who could shapeshift into human form, but thinking in those terms spun my mental wheels faster.

Instead, I focused on Skip. What did I know about my best friend and roomie? He was a stoner dedicated to his worship of…I cringed. “Imps aren’t humanoid,” I said numbly.

“Well, Anand sent him, so she must favor you a great deal.” Griffith shrugged. “Wouldn’t be hard for her to transfigure him into a body that wouldn’t provoke you to reject her gift until you were ready to step into your role as a practicing druid. In the meantime, Skip was an extra layer of protection.”

“Maybe.” Flattening a palm on the grass to draw up soothing, steadying magic from the ground, I struggled to fathom the implications. “But Gods—or in this case, Goddesses—don’t give boons to humans without exacting a price.”

“Hey.” When I glanced at him, Griffith cocked his head at an angle, assessing me clinically. “Anand is Goddess of the Earth, an ally to druids.” He waved at me. “And you may be the most powerful druid in a generation. Of course, she sent you a familiar. You’d have more cause to worry if she had not.”

In my head, I knew he was right. My heart remembered that my dad had never had a familiar, though, and his repeated warnings about the responsibilities one demanded. “But at what cost?” I asked, knowing full well neither Skip nor his Goddess had made demands of me, not so far.

“You’re a botanist.” Griffith sniffed. “You know breathing alone takes oxygen from the ecosystem. Everything has a price.” He squared his shoulders. “Anyway, no, you won’t be arrested. I can spin a credible late bloomer story for you.” His mouth quirked. “The magical council can’t conceive of anyone beating their test or skewing the results so, from a legal standpoint, you’re golden.”

Possibly. I nevertheless frowned because all of it was too much. “They’ll make me retest.”

He nodded. “And with so many eyes watching you, leave whatever tricks Teddy taught you at home. Hide nothing. You’re binding a demon, so that cat is out of the bag. Every bound demon and his North American magical partner are heading to Cumberland to drive him off or kill him, anything to eliminate the risk of another hunter team forming. Fewer rivals mean less potential conflict and more safety to them.” He hummed, considering. “Pittsburgh is close. Clara and Menolac may have already arrived.”

Panic balled my stomach. “Other demons will try to kill him while he’s still weak.”

“Or drive him to portal home. He’d no longer present a threat to them either way. The problem, obviously, is that he hasn’t recovered enough to return to the daemonica realm yet.” Griffith pointed at me. “You are his greatest vulnerability in the meantime. No demon is weaker than an unbound one so your survival is his highest priority. Every resource he can get his hands on will concentrate on keeping you alive and healthy. That’s more important to him than rebuilding his own strength right now.” He spread his hands. “Testing as a level ten druid won’t dissuade bound demons to end their hunt, but their magical partners will be a lot less eager to take you on once you’re rated as a ten, especially prefaced by a display of power.”

My eyebrow winged up. “You want me to work magic. Before I’m retested.”

“As far as they know, you’re untrained. Easy pickings.” Griffith’s smile lacked all humor. “Give them cause to believe otherwise and you might live longer.”

“If I give the council reason to suspect I’ve been trained despite being unregistered, they’ll toss me into prison.”

Griffith waved that away. “The untrained are prone to outburst of uncontrolled magic. If your show of force isn’t a complex spell, you’ll be fine. What’s important is dissuading hunter teams from attacking before your demon heals.”

Sucking in a calming breath, I contemplated what sort of magic would intimidate and deter. “I’d create a living dome of green around my territory, but so far, I don’t think anyone realizes where we are.”

“Teddy made this place untraceable. Once you crossed his wards, you effectively vanished.”

“No need to stick that pin on the map then.” I sighed. “How soon will I have to retest?”

“Binding the demon bought you a couple of days. He siphoned off your power to escape the botanical garden. Not having time to recharge would distort your test results.” Griffith’s chest heaved. “I can buy you two days, maybe three, and that much only if you register as a member of the Towpath. I have no authority to negotiate on your behalf otherwise.”

I rolled my eyes. “As if I would join any another guild.”

“I want you in the Towpath, but we aren’t the only guild in Cumberland. While none of us has direct experience with daemonica , the Whiskey Rebels are more battle-oriented. They recruit most of the area’s mages for the military and local law enforcement. They’re better connected to develop a career with a bound demon.” Griffith frowned. “I want you to do well.”

“A druid contracting with the army. I’m sure that’d turn out wonderful.” Goosebumps pebbled my skin despite the heat wave. “The demon is bound to me only by wild accident. He’ll portal home once he’s strong enough. I want him to.”

“You sure about that?”

“I hid what I am my whole life because being a level ten druid was dangerous enough to get my dad beheaded and dismembered, and only a fool would ignore Dad’s warnings about how dangerous his parents are, estranged or not. Add to that, Teddy’s killer seemed content to ignore me while I was mundane, but may have different ideas about someone powerful enough to cause trouble. Yet you think I’d eagerly line up to increase the risk by binding a demon.” I laughed.

Griffith glanced at the demon, who had begun processing the deer in earnest. He’d stretched the deer’s pelt across Ma’s old clothesline, then sliced a neat cut down the animal’s chest. He’d scooped out the entrails with his sharp claws and shoved the sweetmeats into his greedy mouth while Finnegan made retching sounds as Skip rubbed Finnegan’s back. “What if the demon stays?”

Indeed. What if.

“My sole interest is keeping us both alive long enough for him to portal home.” Done with the conversation, I hauled my tired, aching body to my feet and, leaving my plate and glass by the water pump to be carried inside later, I clapped my hands together. “I need a strong show of force?” I tipped my jaw toward the greenhouse door. “Okay. Let’s find one.”

“Good luck.” With a dismissive wave, Griffith settled more comfortably in the grass while he chortled. “I’ve had ten years to break those wards and failed. Nobody’s getting into Teddy’s workroom. Nobody.”

I smirked, because seriously? “Suit yourself.” Grabbing the tarnished door handle, I sent a silent prayer to Skip’s goddess that the mechanism hadn’t corroded shut and gave the knob a quick, hard twist. Dad must have spelled it against rust because the glass door popped open with an almost inaudible click. Behind me, Griffith scrambled to his feet as I stepped inside my father’s domain, his inner sanctum, for the first time since I was ten.

Teddy Mace’s workshop had changed little from my vague memories of the place. Long abandoned, the plants my dad had nurtured inside this protective space would have died if he were mundane, but he’d built the greenhouse with an irrigation system fed from the underground aquifer. If Griffith hadn’t kept the exteriors of the glass panels clean, grime might have choked them of sunlight, but an overabundance of leaves and flowers proved the guild boss had been a diligent caretaker. Vines had shot out tendrils in those years and covered everything in vibrant green—the work table, cabinets containing my father’s tools along the back wall, up the metal frame of the greenhouse and twining among the sprinkler nozzles overhead. The grass under my bare feet rose to mid-calf.

The riot of life was wild, raw, and natural. Beautiful. My breath hitched in my chest as the almost forgotten smells of vervain, poppy, belladonna, and monkshood wafted around me. Garlic and ginger spilled a fall of leaves. Blossoms from overburdened pots dangled from sturdy chains.

Dad would have made a fair witch if his powers had led him thus, but turns out, children are expensive. Rather than bleed dry his inheritance from a recalcitrant grandmother, Teddy Mace had derived part of the income that had paid for my scout camps and Lego addictions by selling spell ingredients to covens across the tri-state. Plants fueling his own magic grew in lush abundance alongside his commercial crops—valerian, mugwort, and primrose.

If I wandered into the forest surrounding the house, to secret places tucked within the boundaries of my father’s wards, I’d find other crops that included varieties of mushrooms and certain trees, though I expected the clove trees had died off without my dad’s constant care. Mistletoe would’ve done all right, though. Fields of yarrow and meadowsweet grew outside dad’s wards, but close enough, as well as nettle, woad, and plantain.

My dad’s best friend, John Griffith, had maintained and repaired the three-bedroom cottage that had been my boyhood home, but this? The greenhouse? Was my true legacy. Even more so the book that lay open, a turkey feather resting atop it. From the door, I stared at the grimoire, my heart skipping a beat at the meticulous scrawl of my father’s handwriting on those pages. It should’ve been ruined. The shower of water streaming from the sprinkler system to irrigate the plants would have transformed any other book into a sodden mess within a day of Teddy Mace’s death, but this was no mere book.

This was magic.

“David,” Griffith called to me on the other side of the entrance to the greenhouse, his voice muffled and distant although scant inches separated us. I reached behind me, through Dad’s wards, to drag my father’s best friend and my godfather into the greenhouse that had been barred to him these many years.

“Holy shit.” The guild boss rubbed his chest. “Crossing his wards still stings.”

“Don’t move from this spot.” I stepped toward the worktable, cautious to center my weight on my toes, which I made damn sure didn’t crush any of the tangled vines. “Some of the stuff he grew could be lethal on contact.”

“I remember.” Griffith didn’t shift a solitary muscle. “Funny that you do.”

“Dad brought me into his workroom when I was in diapers.” Picking my way across the floor, thick with grass, I jerked my chin toward a pair of child-sized rubber gloves hanging from a waist-level hook next to the door. “He taught me more than you know about handling poisons and their components by the time I turned eight.”

“He didn’t traffic in poisons. Hallucinogens, sure, but not poisons.”

“Keep telling yourself that.” Reaching the table, I brushed a beetle off the grimoire pages. I lifted the turkey feather, brown and white stripes as crisp today as a decade ago, and tucked the good omen behind my ear before gingerly lifting the book. Dozens of other beetles nesting beneath it scampered from the sudden burst of light. “Dad was an onion—he had layers.”

The grimoire bulged with crumbling leaves and other samples my father had collected, but I’d watched him wrap a bungee cord around it to hold the fat arc of pages closed so often as a kid, repeating the maneuver was practically muscle memory to me. My target acquired, I pivoted to return to the door, where Griffith watched me as though I were another one of Dad’s specimens—unexpected and a lot more dangerous than I appeared.

He wasn’t wrong.

But the assessment plucked my already fraying nerves. “Out,” I said, grimoire tucked under my arm. “Until I get a chance to tame this wilderness, it’s off limits. I won’t be responsible for the gruesome death of anyone who can’t or won’t respect the work he did in here.”

“His wards kept everyone out.” Griffith crossed his arms over his chest. “No one else can get inside. Just you.”

“Good.” I waved at the door. “After you.”

With a final scowl at the riotous greenery, the guild boss turned and exited the greenhouse. I was hot on his heels, not so much because I feared the plants my dad had collected and cultivated. Most of his specimens were innocuous and, thanks to my father’s careful tutelage, no one was better equipped to handle the poisonous varieties than me. I needed out so I could breathe again, where I wouldn’t almost see my father’s ghost standing at the potting bench in the corner or tipping a watering can over the meadowsweet transplanted from the surrounding woods.

Not that my dad was a ghost. Whoever had murdered him had been smart enough to dismember and scatter his remains, some of which had never been located. Because the crime scene had also never been identified, the cops hadn’t been able to call in a necromancer to identify his killer. No clues to follow. If there’d been any, to Hell with masquerading as a mundane, I’d have tried. But the only pieces of Teddy Mace that had lingered on the earthly plane was the magic he’d sunk into his land.

I was no less haunted by him, though.

I sucked in a cleansing breath once I’d closed the greenhouse door behind us and then jumped, nearly dropping the grimoire when the demon hurried to me, clawed hands bloody from the venison he’d butchered. “Fire.” He jerked his head toward the pit where he’d rekindled his earlier blaze. Skip must have found outdoor cooking tools in the shed, since he hovered over the old grill grate that fit over the firepit, several slabs of the deer sizzling away. “To burn the meat,” the demon said, affront thick in his rumbling voice. “So, you eat.”

“Only if you do, too.” My nerves jittered. “The faster you heal, the sooner you’ll return home, right?”

“My prey was a good kill. Make us strong.” He thumped the breast plate protecting his heart and then reached out to thump my chest as well. I was impressed he only rocked me on my heels a little. “The other tribes come.” I gasped when his palm flattened and a jolt of his magic zinged into me. The boost didn’t refill my power, not even close, but my other senses stirred as though waking from a slumber. My magic, his, who could tell, but a frisson of wary alarm rolled through me.

Holding onto my dad’s grimoire with numb fingers, I gulped. “That’s them?”

The demon nodded.

“Where’s Finnegan?” Griffith straightened, peering around the backyard.

“Setting up bedrooms inside,” Skip yelled from the firepit. “Be dark soon.”

Oh, great. The house had three bedrooms, and counting the demon, five of us needed a place to sleep. I scowled at the guild boss. “You’re staying overnight?”

He shook his head. “I’ll head back into town soon to push through your registration into the Towpath and negotiate your retest with the magical council.”

“Take Finnegan with you.” I frowned. “Actually, take Skip, too.”

Skip jerked upright. “Hey!”

Griffith chuckled. “If I try, he’d find his way back to you. Familiars are like that.”

“But Finnegan—”

“Also stays.” He jerked a thumb at the demon. “He’s injured. Teddy may have trained you in some things, but you’re still out of practice. And every bound demon on the East Coast is on the way here to hunt the both of you. I’m not leaving you alone.”

I rubbed my chest, where the demon had put his hand on me, where the trill his magic had awakened still hummed in warning. Maybe having backup wasn’t such a bad idea. “If Dad’s territory is untraceable, no one will find us if we stay inside his wards.”

“Your territory now,” Griffith corrected. “Your wards, which will require strengthening.”

The demon snorted. “ Hoo-min magic is weak.”

When I opened my mouth to tell the demon to shut the fuck up with his anti-human bullshit, the guild boss raised a silencing hand. “Explain,” he said to the demon.

“I go. I return.” Muscles taut, the demon crossed his arms over his chest. “No difficulty.”

“You traveled through the wards that easily?” I gaped at him. “On your own?”

“ Issa. ”

“Teddy didn’t ward against demons then. Not like we see a lot of demons in western Maryland.” The guild boss scowled. “Or any demons, for that matter.”

Nausea clawed my throat as I stared, horror-struck, at Griffith. “We’re going to die.”

He rolled his eyes. “Don’t be melodramatic.”

“Come.” The demon grabbed my biceps. “We fix.” He tapped his chest. “Before other tribes close in.”

“Go ahead. You need to feed Teddy’s wards a spark of your power to fully claim their protection, anyway.” Griffith gave a dismissive wave. “I need to find Finnegan and get him on task before I return to town.”

Since what translated to on-task didn’t bear contemplation, I let the demon tug me around the house to the front yard. When he halted and waved at me to proceed, I ambled to the driveway, stopping at the edge of my dad’s innermost wards, right before Griffith’s parked truck. “You really can’t feel the wards?”

“Ne.” The demon frowned. “I sense…something. An itch.” He shrugged, presenting his arm. He twisted it to expose an expanse of skin bared by his greaves. When he shook it, dried blood flaked off him like psychopath confetti. “Also itches, though.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t take a dip in dad’s pond while you hunted.”

The demon glowered. “Cold.”

Yeah, right. I’d forgotten. “Well, we’ll get you into a hot shower after this.” I stepped forward until I felt the trill of the land’s wards plucking my nerves. I lifted my palms.

“Here?”

I nodded. Closing my eyes, I concentrated to focus the kernel of magic the demon hadn’t siphoned from me and sent a spark into my dead father’s magic. Fortunately, I was related by blood to the ward’s creator, and those protections were crafted for my benefit. That I’d lived here throughout my early childhood helped, too. The magic recognized and accepted me, no sacrifice or incantation required.

When I opened my eyes, the demon stared at me, his brows furrowed. “Finished?”

I nodded. “You?”

He grimaced and flicked a clawed finger in the general direction he’d seen me greet my dad’s wards.

A shock zinged through me at the intrusion, the demon’s magic a slight sizzling discomfort, but only for a moment. The wards absorbed whatever the demon had shot into them, accepted that foreign power as readily as the magic had taken in mine.

Which should not have happened. The spells my father had winded around this place were intricate, multi-layered. He’d had years and years to build complex, tedious magic to protect us. Anyone not named Mace or blessed with our DNA should have needed months, maybe years, to manipulate his magic.

The demon had done it with ease.

The binding.

Had to be.

Dad’s magic hadn’t resisted the demon’s addition to our territorial defense because the demon was, indeed, binding to me. As tenuous and nascent as the connection was, the wards no less accepted his demon magic.

My stomach knotted. “That’s it?”

“Issa,” he said. “I can do more later. Not yet.”

When more of his power returned to him as he recovered. “Well, c’mon. We can at least get you cleaned up.” I turned to the steps of the front porch. I came to a halt when I reached the front door. “Do you have a name?” At his thunderous scowl, I relented. “Not your birth name.” For demons, nothing was more powerful than the sacred name given to demons at their birth and, as such, that name was strictly guarded. “What do others call you?” At his fierce glare, my frustration kicked back to life. “I need to have something to address you as besides Random Demon Guy. You know my name. I should know yours.”

The demon’s lips thinned, but his head dipped in acknowledgment. “I am Jae, a prince of the First Blood.”

“First Blood. That’s your tribe?”

He nodded.

I pivoted and thrust out my hand. When Jae only stared at it, I grabbed his hand and gave it a formal shake. “David Mace,” I said.

“Da-veed Mace.” He regarded me with solemn aplomb. “Mace. That is your tribe?”

“Yeah. I guess.” Dad’s parents were psychopaths. He’d cut off his entire family and lit out of Chicago with Rosie to elude them before I was born, but extended families were the best approximation for what demons understood as a tribe. Just my sad luck that, with Teddy dead and my years-long estrangement from Ma, I was the last Mace standing. I snorted a laugh. “A tribe of one. Yep, that’s me.”

The demon—Jae—squeezed my hand. “You, the old human, the young human, and the imp are more than one.”

That much was true. Teddy’s biological family had been and probably still were a pit of vipers, toxic as fuck, but my dad had found and built his genuine family in Cumberland, people he had loved and had cared for him in return. As alone as I usually felt, I suppose I had built my family, too. Retrieving my hand from his grip, I chuckled. “Thought you said they stink of lies.”

“Thought you said we need allies,” he snarled back.

“Got me there.” I shrugged. “C’mon. I’ll show you where the shower is.”