This, as much as anything, was his real physical form. At least it was his go-to form. At his essence, he was a spirit of magic and fire. No physical form could contain him in his entirety. His Power filled the house.

My gods, there’s so much of him, she thought as she stared up at his sparkling, angry eyes. What a calamity he is. Standing in front of him, she felt absurdly young, very small and stupidly, excessively fascinated.

“I offer you a gift beyond price, you foolish creature,” he said between his teeth. “And you throw it back in my face.”

“What do you think you’re offering me?” she asked. “I wake up and I find you with my kids in their bedroom. And I’ll say this again: without my permission. Do you realize how offensive that is? Maybe you don’t. Maybe that’s something Djinn would do all the time. You know what, I don’t care. And I’m not even going to get into all the wrong lessons you were teaching them. Wait a minute, yes, I am. You were a talking cat with children who are much too young to differentiate between that and reality.”

His eyes narrowed. “What nonsense are you spouting, human?”

“What do you think is going to happen the next time Chloe sees a black cat?” Grace demanded. “Do you think she’s going to say to herself, oh this is not like the freaky black cat that talks to me and lets me yank its tail and poke it in the eye? No. Do you know what she’s going to try to do? She’s going to try to talk to it and pull its tail and maybe poke it in the eye. And you know what that cat is going to do—because it’s a real goddamn cat? It’s going to scratch her. It might bite her. Cat bites are filthy things. Usually the puncture wounds go deep, and they get infected. And then suddenly, I’ll be taking a confused, crying four-year-old girl to the ER for a three-hundred-dollar doctor’s visit to get antibiotics, all because of your ignorant arrogance!”

He regarded her with a supercilious expression. “Do all your thoughts proceed in such a fashion?”

“What are you talking about?” Grace blinked, thrown off balance. “Do my thoughts proceed where?”

He gestured with a long hand. He made it look impossibly graceful. “To conclusions of disaster, of course. No doubt there will also be brain-eating parasites in the cat bite, or perhaps a troop of rabid monkeys will escape from a nearby zoo and cut a path directly for your house.”

She stared. “You think I’m making this stuff up? That cat bite happened to me when I was little. I have the scars to prove it. Do you know what I caught Chloe trying to do yesterday? She was climbing on top of the kitchen table. She thought she could jump off and fly like Clark Kent, because we had just watched an old movie rerun with Christopher Reeve, and if Superman could fly, she thought she might be able to too. Maybe she wouldn’t have broken her leg if I hadn’t caught her, but she probably would have hurt herself somehow.”

The curve of his elegant mouth turned cruel. He looked around the living room, his gaze cold and judgmental. “How unfortunate then for your children that you choose to nap in the daytime instead of watching out for them the way you should.”

She flinched as if she’d been slapped, and she looked around the living room too. Her textbooks were stacked on the coffee table. Toys littered the floor. A basket of unfolded laundry sat on the floor by the armchair. Chloe had spilled some of her pretzels on the area rug in the living room then walked over them. Crumbs were everywhere.

Grace thought of the tangle at the back of Chloe’s head that she still hadn’t brushed out. Embarrassment and fury clogged her throat so that she couldn’t speak. After a moment she managed to whisper between clenched teeth, “You have no idea what you’re talking about. You have no real understanding of me, my kids, or any of the issues we face. That lack of understanding alone makes you dangerous to us.”

“How dare you?” He thrust his angry face close. “I would never cause harm to a child. The whole reason I stayed was to protect them!”

His rage curled around her, manifesting as black smoke. She felt as though she stared into an inferno.

She would not flinch. She would not.

There was simply no point in trying to reason with him. They were too different from each other, and he was too arrogant to listen to anything she said. She dug down deep and found enough composure to say, “I get that you don’t mean us any harm. Thank you for staying this morning to make sure Chloe and Max were protected. If you don’t wish to petition for a consultation with the Oracle, I’m telling you now to leave my house.”

He scowled and opened his mouth, clearly intending a scorching reply, but a small, sad voice beat him to it. Chloe said, “No more fighting. Don’t be mad anymore, okay?”

Khalil’s diamond gaze flickered. He looked down, as Grace did, at Chloe’s worried face. Then Grace witnessed a remarkable thing, as his elegant, malicious expression gentled. He went down on one knee so that he could come face-to-face with Chloe. The girl regarded him gravely. Something in Grace’s chest twisted. He was so enormous, and Chloe so tiny.

“I will not be mad anymore,” Khalil said. He did something to throttle back the Power in his voice and spoke quietly.

“Promise?” Chloe asked.

His gaze slid sideways and up at Grace. He looked sour. Wow, Grace thought on a sudden spurt of hysteria, he really doesn’t want to give up on his grudge. But he wasn’t talking to Grace any longer. She raised her eyebrows and nodded toward Chloe, telling him with the silent gesture, you’re answering to her, not to me.

His strange, unfriendly gaze pledged something to her, but she didn’t know how to read unspoken Djinn messages. With an air of decision, Khalil turned to Chloe. He said, “Yes, we both promise.”

Wait, what? Grace straightened. She hadn’t given him permission to speak for her.

“We will not fight anymore,” he continued. “It is too upsetting for small people.”

Chloe said strongly, “It’s upsetting for big girls too.”

“Indeed,” said Khalil. He held out his hand and Chloe put hers into it.

Chloe was so small, Grace thought, biting her lip. So fragile, so precious. Grace held herself so tensely her muscles were starting to ache again.

He brought the girl’s fingers to his lips and kissed them. Then he let her go and straightened to his full height before he vanished.

Grace stared at Chloe, looking for some kind of reaction to his sudden disappearance. Other than wiggling the fingers Khalil had kissed and looking intensely thoughtful, the little girl didn’t appear to have much of one. Maybe Chloe was concentrating on trying to disappear too, and she was discovering that she couldn’t do that either.

Max shouted angrily from the bedroom. Normally good-natured, he’d apparently had quite enough of being left out.

Grace sighed and went down the hall to collect the little man. Chloe had eaten her pretzels snack, but Grace and Max had missed out on lunch. He had to be starving. She knew she was. She changed Max’s diaper and tickled him until his bad mood vanished, and he kicked and giggled. Then she settled him on the hip on her good side and turned to Chloe, who had followed her into the bedroom to watch.

“Think it’s about time we had some supper?” she asked.

Chloe gave that proposal due consideration. “Indeed.”

…

Grace fixed macaroni and cheese for supper. Chloe liked macaroni and cheese. Janice said Chloe had only picked at her breakfast, and the only other thing she’d had to eat that day were the pretzels.

Chloe liked applesauce too, and so did Max. What the hell, Grace thought. Let’s get wild and crazy, and switch things up. We’ll have applesauce tonight instead of a vegetable.

A bout of trembling hit as she pulled a jar of applesauce from the fridge. She left the jar on the counter and sat at the table while her limbs shook as though she had a fever.

In the living room, Chloe danced and sang while she watched a Disney DVD. Grace couldn’t remember the name of the movie. It was another story about a spunky princess with a requisite sidekick. Max sat quietly in the middle of the kitchen floor, happy to chew on a soft plastic baby book. Grace rubbed her forehead as she watched him. Apparently she was going to have her reaction before the kids went to bed, whether she liked it or not.

The killing.

For her, the events that led up to the Djinn’s arrival, and then to the killing, all began with Max’s ear infection. He had started to act cranky yesterday, which was enough of a change from his normal, happy personality that she took note and began to watch him closely.

He had worsened until he was up half the night, feverish and crying, until a strange and extremely dangerous trio came knocking on their front door.

If there had ever been a time when she had not wanted to answer the door, it had been at three thirty that morning. She had been walking the floor with a crying Max and trying not to pull her hair out. Unused to handling such crises, she didn’t know if she should tough out the night and take him to his regular pediatrician in the morning, or if she should wake Chloe up and take him right away to an urgent care facility.

But whether it was convenient for her or not, she had to answer the door. Her newly inherited position as the Oracle of Louisville demanded it.

Grace, Chloe and Max lived in the sprawling, old farmhouse where Grace had grown up. The house had been in the Andreas family ever since they had come to the States. It sat on a five-acre stretch of land that bordered the Ohio River. By inter-demesne law, the entire property was supposed to be a place of sanctuary for all who came to consult with the Oracle, and the Oracle had the obligation to welcome all petitioners.

But the Oracle should have been either Grace’s grandmother or her sister, Petra. Grace had never really believed that the Power would pass to her. Ever since the accident, she had been close to chucking away an ancient family heritage that had spanned thousands of years, but she’d held on to the impulse so far.

Barely.

So when the knock came in the middle of the night, Grace opened the door. She found Carling Severan, Rune Ainissesthai, and Khalil standing on her doorstep. Carling was one of the most Powerful witches in the world, a Vampyre, and she had once been Queen of the Nightkind. She was also newly retired from her most recent role as Councillor on the Elder tribunal. Her partner, Rune, was not just any Wyr. He was a gryphon, and he had been First sentinel for the Wyr demesne, although he too had just recently retired.

Then there was their companion, the Djinn. Khalil Somebody Important.

It almost sounded like the setup of a classic joke. Do you know what happens when a Vampyre, a Wyr and a Djinn walk into your house…? Only Grace found out that the punch line wasn’t funny.

Max’s illness was one of the reasons why she had tried so hard to persuade Carling, Rune and Khalil to come back at a more reasonable hour, but they couldn’t be dissuaded. At least Carling had healed Max’s ear infection before formally petitioning to speak to the Oracle.

Thankfully, nighttime petitions to consult the Oracle were rare. When they did occur, they tended to involve matters of some urgency. Such was the case with Carling and Rune. Rune had been wounded, and apparently their mission was urgent, and shit just sometimes happened.

The shit that had happened this morning just before daybreak had been big and bad enough to attract some of the most Powerful creatures on the North American continent. All but one of the seven Elder tribunal Councillors had converged in a tense confrontation with Carling and Rune. Two of the seven demesne rulers—Dragos Cuelebre, dragon and Lord of the Wyr from New York, and Julian Regillus, Vampyre King of the Nightkind demesne from San Francisco—had also been present.

Catching sight of the dragon that had filled up the back meadow before he shapeshifted into his human form—now that had been a helluva kick in the head.

Nothing Grace had ever seen on television or in movies or in her own imagination could have prepared her for the sight of the dragon in real life.

She had already been struggling. She’d had the sleepless night with Max. Then she summoned the Power of the Oracle in an intense session with Carling and Rune that had left her with a blackout of blank time in her head. And to top it all off, Rune had shoved Carling—he had meant to get her out of danger, but Grace had been in the way. Carling had fallen into her, and Grace had been knocked on her ass hard enough to jar her whole body.

And things kept going from weird to worse, like some sort of high-speed hallucinogenic car chase. Picking herself up after the fall, Grace had watched from one side, largely unnoticed, as the scene unfolded.

She hadn’t understood everything the group discussed. For some reason, Carling was under a death sentence. Then the Elder tribunal decided to put her in quarantine instead. Except Grace was pretty sure Carling didn’t have anything contagious. Where the tribunal would hold Carling was also under some debate. Grace couldn’t figure out if the tribunal meant to put Carling in a hospital or a jail.

To complicate things, Rune had also taken Carling as his mate and refused to be separated from her. They couldn’t go to the Nightkind demesne—there was some kind of bad feeling between Carling and her progeny Julian, the King—and nobody liked the idea of the pair going to the Wyr demesne.

Meanwhile, image upon fantastic image careened by in front of Grace’s astonished gaze.

The Councillor from the Elven demesne, standing tall and shining and ageless. Holy crap, that woman had been riveting. The Djinn Soren, Demonkind Councillor and head of the Elder tribunal, with white hair and stars for eyes, whose Power was a tower of flame so intense it burned her mind. The trio of Vampyres: the Nightkind King with his pleasant-faced companion, Xavier del Torro, who was so notorious even Grace had heard of him, and the blonde woman with them who had pulled a sword on Carling while in sanctuary. That single act confirmed everything Grace had ever known, that the laws protecting the Oracle, her petitioners and her land were simply not enough.