Demonkeepers

expensive stuff.”

Jade closed her eyes as her brief amusement fled. She was starting to shake now, with a combination of reaction and what she suspected was going to be a hell of a postmagic crash. “I did it.

It was all my fault. I was looking at the fireball spell in the Idiot’s Guide , and it morphed into something else in front of my eyes. I recited what I saw and . . .” She trailed off, opened her eyes, and looked around, seeing a few faces missing. Including Lucius’s and Shandi’s. Fresh worry clutched at her. “Did I hurt anyone?”

The king shook his head. “We got lucky.” From the sudden satisfied glint in his eyes, she got the feeling he wasn’t entirely unhappy with what had just happened. He reached down and, before she knew what was happening, he had hauled her vertical and was leading her along the hallway, where their feet squished on the meltwater-soaked runner. “The great room was empty. Jox was in the kitchen, but he ducked behind the breakfast bar when the leading edge hit. The power was dissipating as it came, so by the time it reached the kitchen it was down to a spring frost and a couple inches of snow.”

That dry rundown didn’t even come close to prep-ping Jade for the sight that confronted her when she stepped through the arched doorway with the others crowding behind her.

The sitting area was demolished. Jagged, frozen chunks of what might have been the comfy chairs and assorted pillows were scattered across the space, which was draped with sharp-edged splashes of crystalline ice and drifts of snow. The sliders had blown out and snow drifted onto the pool deck, where it melted pretty much the second it hit the sun-baked deck. A large, dark shape lurked in the pool, leviathanesque. She was pretty sure it was the couch.

Holy. Shit.

Jade knotted her fingers together, her stomach churning as it had right before the magic, only more in an I’m-going-to-vomit way. “I’m so sorry.” She directed the apology at Jox, who had overseen the renovations and always did his level best to keep the mansion clean and comfortable for everyone.

“Gods. I’m sorry.”

The winikin’s expression bordered on wild. “Ice,” he said faintly. “There’s no such thing as an ice spell.”

“There is now.” She glanced at her scribe’s mark. “I think I just made it up. Or my talent did.”

“Just like that?” Strike snapped his fingers. “No warning?”

At that moment, Lucius appeared from the direction of the cottages, moving fast, his eyes hard and hot. He hesitated at the sight of the melting snowdrifts and the submerged sofa, then strode through into the ruined main room. His eyes swept the crowd and settled on her, then skimmed past. His aggressive stance eased. “I take it we’re not under attack?”

“Not an intentional one,” Leah answered dryly. “Jade was just about to tell us about when and how her powers started coming online. Because I’m guessing this wasn’t the first clue.”

Jade winced. “Yes and no. There was one other time, but I convinced myself it was nothing.”

“This,” Sven said, “is clearly something.” Patience elbowed him into silence.

Flushing, Jade sketched a brief summary of what she’d felt when she’d brought herself out of the barrier, and how she’d glanced at a supposedly gibberish text and seen a blessing instead. “I didn’t mention it before because I was convinced the magic had come from the Vennie nahwal, or that maybe she had tried to jump-start my talent and failed because my magic is simply too weak.”

“Apparently that’s not the case.” Despite the fact that he was standing ankle-deep in the melting mess and most of the living room was gone, Strike’s eyes gleamed. “Congratulations, Jade. You’re a scribe.”

“Yeah.” She grinned up at him. “I am.” Her smile felt foolish, though, and his image was a little watery around the edges, filtered as it was through unshed tears. “I also think I’m about to pass out.”

She didn’t, but it was pretty close.

Sasha and Michael propped her up and got her to her suite; she waved off the offer of an IV—she’d far rather pig out, thanks—but nodded floppily when Jox called after them that he’d have Shandi bring food. She would’ve warned him that Shandi was mad at her, but lacked the strength. Besides, given that Jox was the royal winikin, he probably already knew what was going on, and why. He’d already shown, though, that he wouldn’t interfere in a winikin’s relationship with his or her charge. Each winikin was chosen for a reason, even if that reason wasn’t immediately obvious. The gods move in mysterious ways, Jade thought woozily.

Once she was in bed, Sasha shooed Michael away and helped Jade undress and drag on an oversize T- shirt. Jade was asleep before Sasha pulled the curtains.

She awoke sometime later to the sight of French toast and OJ on a tray at her bedside table . . . and beyond that, Lucius sitting in the chair where she typically dumped her clean laundry. He was reading.

He didn’t realize right away that she was awake, giving her a few seconds to simply watch him. In her mind’s eye, the moment kaleidoscoped to the many times they’d read together in the archive, working separately but together, each of them in their old guises. Now, as he frowned down at the text —which was newly water- damaged, she saw with an inner wince—she found his single-minded, almost fanatical concentration arousing, in large part because she now knew that he brought that same level of intensity to lovemaking. Sex, she reminded herself. Sex, not lovemaking. Keep your own rules straight. Still, the sight heated her blood and tightened her skin despite the tug of lingering fatigue.

“Good book?” she said, drawing his attention before her thought process ran any further aground on itself.

His head came up, though it took him a second to pull himself out of the written world and refocus on her. When he did, his lips curved in a long, slow smile. “Not as useful as I would’ve liked.” He flashed her the cover as he closed the book and set it aside; it was one of the histories of the star bloodline that she had skimmed through earlier and bypassed as being too superficial to be of any real use. “You look better.”

“I’m not covered in frost and wearing soaked jeans and an expression of terror, you mean.” Even saying it brought a burst of pride laced with deeper, less sure emotions.

“Something like that.” He took her hand, idly turning it so they could both see her forearm, where the scribe’s mark was unchanged, even though everything was different. “Big day.”

“Yeah.” The grin felt like it lit her from the inside out. “I’ve got magic.”

“I never doubted it.”

They sat like that for a moment, and Jade found her thoughts going not to the magic, but to what had happened just before she cast the spell. “I talked to Shandi again. She told me more about what happened right before the massacre.”

“More about your mother?”

“Not directly.” Before she realized she was going to, that she needed to, she was telling him about Shandi’s revelation, how it explained so much, yet didn’t give her any options. The words spilled out of her, tumbling over one another. “I’m not responsible for the will of the gods,” she finished, “and I can’t undo the bond between us. Or maybe I could, but to what end? Denny and Samxel are gone, just like my parents are gone. Shandi—” She broke off, frustrated. “I don’t know what to say to her. She’s been harboring a grudge for twenty-six years. It seems inane somehow to say that I’m sorry for her loss. More, if you ask me what I really think, it’s that she needs to grow up and get over it already. It wasn’t my fault, and blaming me for it is . . . pointless.”

“Shandi’s not stupid. I have a feeling she knows that.”

Jade looked up at him. “Meaning?”

“Maybe it stopped being about you a long time ago and became the thing that keeps her going from day to day,” he suggested. “And maybe she even realizes that herself, but is afraid to let it go, afraid to let herself care for you, knowing what the future might hold for all of us.”

“That’s . . .” Jade trailed off, thought for a moment, then finished, “. . . not the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Shit. Give me a minute here.” Needing to make a mental shift, she pulled herself up to sit cross- legged in the bed, with the sheet pulled over her legs. Pressing her fingertips to her temples, she said, “You’re right. She lost her family to war; it’s possible that she doesn’t want to run the risk of living through that sort of loss again. Although I’d like to point out that unless the Nightkeepers win the war, she wouldn’t have long to grieve, because we’re all going to be wiped out in thirty or so months.” Her stomach knotted on the