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Just then Isabella glanced my way, and I nodded and smiled.

Despite the times she’d tried to kill me, she was in Felicia’s corner.

Isabella nodded back, with a small upturn of her lips.

She looked at my dress particularly and raised her eyebrows as if to say, Do you like it?

I understood, with no small shock, that she was the one who had picked out our dresses.

Was it Isabella who’d told Felicia to ask me to bring my guns?

The crowd was still milling, people were still entering.

Felicia had found her friend Fenolla, and Fenolla had told her something that had Felicia wide-eyed and beyond excited.

Felicia threw her arms around her friend.

Katerina joined them. I was surprised the girl had found the heart to come tonight since the bodies of her mother and brother had been found the day before.

The man with her must be her father who worked in Hollywood.

He was short and a little paunchy, with heavy dark eyebrows and a pleasant face.

He looked friendly and open and smart. I wandered over to meet him out of curiosity.

I didn’t know where Eli was or what he was doing. I didn’t see Felix, either.

“Hello. I’m Felicia’s sister, Lizbeth Rose,” I said. I’d decided to stop being a princess, no matter what it got me.

“I’m Evan Swindoll.” He shook my hand heartily. “I have a lot to thank you for, I understand.”

Well, my husband killed your wife and son , I thought, but that would not make him especially thankful. Or it might? Irina had been stupid and brutish. “Nothing to thank me for,” I said.

“You got them all out in time,” Evan said. “You saved my daughter.”

“Katerina is a sweet girl,” I said, since that was always the right thing to say. “She’s a good friend to my sister.”

“I understand you were hurt pretty badly,” he said, his whole face radiating concern. “You seem like you’re feeling pretty well now, and it certainly didn’t tarnish your good looks.”

It seemed like a month ago that I’d had a giant wooden splinter in my back.

“I do feel well,” I said. “I had some healing done, and I rested for a couple of days.” I was dodging the remark about my looks.

I never knew what to say to compliments from people I didn’t know. Or people I did know, for that matter.

“Well, if you’d ever like a guided tour of Hollywood, I’m your man.”

“If I ever do, you’ll be the first person I think of,” I told him. Evan clapped me on the shoulder and shook my hand again.

“Me and my daughter are going back to Los Angeles tomorrow morning, and I don’t know if she’ll go back to school. This whole thing with her mother and brother dying, the circumstances… it’s shaken her up pretty bad.”

“Of course,” I said. “I hope you get to spend some time with her.” I bit off the “now” that should have gone on the end of that sentence.

“I will for sure,” Evan answered, and he sounded sincere.

I saw a few more people I knew after Evan and I said goodbye.

After Evan and I parted ways, I spotted Felicia talking to Fenolla.

I asked Fenolla where her parents were, and she pointed over to a potted palm.

The Gregorys were standing with Penny Featherstone.

Suddenly I understood what the excitement was all about.

Jason and Fenolla must have gotten engaged.

I didn’t know whether or not to say anything to Fenolla until the official announcement. Probably better to wait. The girls were acting a bit odd. Whispering, and making little gestures to some of the other Listeds.

I put my hand on Felicia’s shoulder. I gripped it hard. “What are you up to?” I said, keeping my voice low but pretty damn fierce. Something was up, and it couldn’t be something good.

“Just be calm and collected,” Felicia hissed at me. “We’ve got a plan. We’re sticking to it. Stay by the wall.” She yanked her shoulder out of my grip. She and Fenolla got lost in the crowd.

I said something terrible, but under my breath.

I caught a glimpse of Eli and began making my way toward him.

He was talking to a Frenchman; I believed the man was a wizard.

They were looking very serious. I grabbed Eli’s wrist, startling him.

“What is it, Lizbeth?” he asked, trying to be calm about being interrupted so rudely.

“The kids are up to something. They have a secret plan,” I said, as close to his ear as I could get. Suddenly he didn’t mind being interrupted.

“No,” he said, but he wasn’t really denying that was possible. “No.”

“Yes,” I said.

“What is it?” He’d forgotten all about the Frenchman, who was looking from me to Eli with narrowed eyes. I figured he spoke English.

“Felicia wouldn’t tell me. She ditched me. She and Fenolla are in on it.”

Eli was thinking furiously.

A voice, magically amplified, boomed through the room. “Good people of the magic way! Tonight is the last event of our special week! I hope all of you have had a week full of fellowship, making ties, and perhaps even finding love.”

There was a gust of laughter.

“Please form the great circle,” the voice directed, and people began to shuffle around with a purpose. Eli took my hand and drew me to the edge of the room, where we turned to face inward. His face was grim and hard.

“She said we should stay by the wall,” I told him.

We took steps back. Now we were literally against the wall, the outermost circle in a greater circle of magic practitioners. Only the middle was empty. It was obvious most of the others had done this before.

“Let’s celebrate our countries! First, from Argentina…

” the voice droned on, listing all the Listeds in the Argentinian group, who came out of the circle to stand in the middle, smiling, their chaperones and bodyguards around them.

They all waved and smiled and received the applause of the other attendees.

The recognition went on and on, each nation stepping into the middle, getting praised, melting back into the circle.

Britannia came and went, and I looked hard at the small group, finding Camilla and Clayton in the center.

Clayton waved at me, and I managed to smile back.

Camilla looked very pleased indeed, and I thought I saw a ring on her hand as she waved. The Canadian horse guy, I guessed.

Yep, he was in “Canada,” and he was beaming, too.

There were countries I hadn’t even realized were here. Some of them had two representatives, some of them forty. I’d only seen a little corner of the week’s celebrations. Maybe the rest hadn’t had any assassination attempts or explosions.

There were about ten people in the Finland group. Then a large crowd from France. “G” would be coming up. At that moment, all my alarm systems began tingling.

I’d lost sight of Felicia and Fenolla. “They’re gone,” I said to Eli, and he jerked around, looking at me with real alarm. “They’ve got a damn plan.”

We had thought this was the end of our watchdog duties, and we’d let our guard down.

As the very large group from Germany gathered in the middle of the floor, looking proud and cold as befit the future conquerors of the world, I caught sight of my sister.

She was at the front of the circled audience, all the way across the ballroom.

She looked to her left, and I spied Fenolla, forty-five degrees around.

To Felicia’s left was Jason Featherstone.

He didn’t look like a tall goofy wallflower anymore.

He looked grim and determined. And opposite Felicia, several people closer than me to the edge of the circle, was the Polish girl, Agnieszka.

There were more Listeds I didn’t recognize, who’d all worked their way forward to be next to the empty space where the countries were recognized.

I could not stop this. Eli actually took a step or two forward, his mouth open, his hand upraised, but all he could do was distract them now.

If they were going to do this, they had to do it completely.

I jumped forward and wrapped my arms around my husband for the last time.

I pulled him away from the circle around the Listeds from Germany and their companions.

I was still restraining him with all my strength when Jason, Fenolla, Agnieszka, and Felicia killed all the Germans.

It took maybe three minutes.

Most of them really didn’t know what had hit them.