Nightkeepers

having seen before, shaped like a bird of some sort. Maybe a hawk.

His voice was gruff with emotion when he said, ‘‘Welcome to the family, Cara.’’

She struggled to breathe normally, struggled to do anything normally as her heart pounded in her chest and low-grade nausea twisted in her gut. She looked around and saw that the ridge and fence line looked as they always had; the sky was blue and the sorrel grazed peacefully nearby. Coyote was long gone, but he’d always been spooky like that. Luckily, he also had a good homing instinct. No doubt they’d find him in his pen, chowing down on his evening ration of pellets.

That thought, that normal, everyday thought, lodged a ball of emotion in her throat, part panic, part . . . excitement. She glanced at her father and saw pride in his eyes, as though she’d just done something wonderful, just become something wonderful. Which she had, she realized. If her father was telling the truth, she’d woken up half a semester away from a journalism degree she wasn’t sure she wanted anymore, and in the space of the past five minutes she’d become Wonder Woman. A magic user. Holy crap.

Her lips curved and she touched the marks on her arm, feeling a faint buzz jangle through her system at the contact. ‘‘Does this mean I can do all those things you used to tell me about? It’s all real? I’m a . . . a Nightkeeper?’’

‘‘Um. Not exactly.’’

She narrowed her eyes. ‘‘What do you mean, ‘not exactly’?’’

Quick hurt flashed across his face and was just as quickly masked. ‘‘You’re my true daughter. My heart. My blood.’’ Then he waited, as he’d done ever since she was a little girl when he wanted her to figure out something for herself rather than telling her the answer straightaway.

When it clicked, Cara shot to her feet, elation morphing to betrayal, anger, shame—a sickening mix of emotions that cranked her volume as she shouted, ‘‘You’re fucking kidding me! I’m a winikin?’’

He didn’t chide her for her language, which just proved she was right.

She wasn’t Wonder Woman. She was a sidekick. Even worse, she was a sidekick to—

‘‘Oh, no.’’ She backpedaled, nearly falling when she stumbled on a rock. ‘‘Oh, hell, no. You’re shitting me. Sven?’’

But if—even for an instant—she bought into the delusion that the winikin were real, then her adopted older brother fit the description of a Nightkeeper all too well. Where she and her father were small and olive-skinned, with dark hair and eyes, Sven was their exact opposite in every way. He was over six-three and as wide as two of her father standing side by side. His skin was fair, his dark blond hair prone to bleaching in the sun, and where she had always been happy with the small pleasures of ranch life, he’d lusted for bigger and better, for the next challenge, the next conquest.

Sven lived life right out loud and loved being the center of attention. He was the true golden boy. At least, he had been. She hadn’t seen him in close to five years, and that wasn’t nearly long enough for her.

Her father nodded. ‘‘Yes. Sven is a Nightkeeper.’’

‘‘How fitting,’’ Cara said, looking at the mark on her wrist. ‘‘He’s a dog.’’

‘‘The Coyote bloodline is old and respected, as are its winikin,’’ he said, voice chiding.

‘‘Don’t call yourself a servant, and don’t call me one, either,’’ Cara snapped. ‘‘I’m nobody’s slave.’’

‘‘A winikin is no slave,’’ her father said with quiet dignity. ‘‘We protect the magic users, and help them stay the moral path.’’

‘‘News flash. You didn’t do so hot on the morality thing.’’ No wonder he’d never wanted to face the truth about Sven. That would’ve meant accepting that the child—the Nightkeeper child—he’d raised wasn’t perfect. Far from it, in fact. Sven had been a spoiled, mean-tempered brat who’d grown into a moody teen, and from there to a young man who’d been far too attractive for his own good, and did his own thing regardless of how it affected others.

‘‘Cara—’’

‘‘I don’t want this,’’ she said, scrubbing at the mark on her arm. ‘‘Take it back.’’

‘‘I can’t . . . I need you. The Nightkeepers need you. The king has recalled the survivors, but one among them has lost his winikin. They’ve asked me to teach him, which means I need you to take my place watching over Sven.’’

She glared at him, furious that he’d done something like this without asking her. ‘‘Fine. I’ll slap some makeup on it, or get a coverup tattoo. Maybe scrub it with some bleach first.’’

‘‘That won’t change anything.’’ He didn’t even have the grace to look ashamed. He seemed calm now, calmer than he’d been since the funeral, or maybe even before that. It was like he knew where he was going for the first time in a long, long while.

The realization terrified her.

This shit was for real.

‘‘Daddy,’’ she whispered, her heart breaking a little when she realized that nothing would be the same ever again. ‘‘I don’t want this. I can’t . . . work for him, whatever you want to call it. I can’t be around him.’’

He looked sad. ‘‘You don’t have a choice.’’

She didn’t argue with that, because there was a hum in the back of her brain that hadn’t been there before, an impulse that made her want to walk, to pace, to jump on the sorrel and ride hard, covering ground, headed southeast to the Carolina coast, where—the last they’d heard, anyway—Sven was wreck diving for conquistador gold.

‘‘I won’t go to him,’’ she whispered. ‘‘You can’t make me.’’

Her father stood and strode toward his horse, and for a half second she thought he was going to ride away and leave her there. Instead, he leaned down and retrieved her hat from where it had snagged on a thick stand of heavy