I played the message again. It didn’t say anything different.
He wanted to know if we were cool. That made two of us.
I dialed the number on the message from Roman, whoever he was. A familiar male voice answered. “Hello?”
Ha! The volhv. “Morning.”
“You should give the staff back to me. I can come to your office and pick it up. I promise, no tricks even. Nobody will die.”
“You got that right.”
“Are you going to be a hardass about this?” he asked.
“I’ll trade you the staff for Adam Kamen.”
“No.”
“Those are my terms.”
He heaved a dramatic sigh. “We could do this like civilized people. But no, now I’ll have to go to your office and unleash plagues on things, and set things on fire, and condemn things. Nobody wants that. Just give me the staff and we’ll call it even. I am trying not to be a bad guy here.”
As soon as the magic wave hit, I’d have to reinforce the wards, just in case. I’d taken him down, but it was mostly luck and surprise. This time he would be ready.
“An hour with Kamen, and you can have your stick back.”
“
“You’re a pagan. Saying ‘Devil take you’ is a Christian curse. How does this work exactly?”
“That’s a funny thing about Christianity; when the dead God’s priests came to Europe, they made all the old gods into devils. So technically when I am saying
“Wait. When you snagged Adam from his workshop, did you take the thing he built with you?”
Roman paused. “Hypothetically, if we had taken such a thing, it would no longer exist. It would be as if it had never been built. An urban legend.”
“So is it? A legend?” If they had gotten hold of the device, they would’ve destroyed it by now.
“Not so much.”
He hung up. Starting the day with a philosophical debate with a priest of the Embodiment of All Evil. It could only go downhill from here.
I took a shower, got dressed, got a sandwich, and went down the stairs, eating it on the way. No shapeshifters assaulted me and tried to take my food. No wolf alphas sprung any surprise attacks. Nobody even offered me a bouquet of headless roses. The lack of drama was downright disheartening.
Outside, the sunrise split the horizon, sudden and bright, like a gush of blood from a knife wound. Both of my vehicles were idling in the yard. The boy wonder had started my car for me and now waited by his Jeep. He wore a dark hooded sweatshirt and beat-up jeans. If you didn’t see his face and didn’t pay attention to the broad shoulders, you’d think he was just a kid, fifteen, maybe sixteen. Knowing Derek, he did it on purpose. The younger he appeared, the less his potential opponents would think of him. Except he was filling out. Another year at this rate, and he’d have to update his wardrobe.
“Thanks for starting the car.”
He grinned, a quick flash of teeth.
“Where is the bane of my existence?”
“He knows the time. I’m not his nanny.”
“What did you think of him?”
“Not much. He’s a spoiled baby.” He shrugged. “You give boudas a young male and they fall over themselves to pamper him.”
A side door opened and Ascanio emerged, followed by a familiar plump woman. She looked to be in her early fifties, with graying hair rolled into a bun, and a kind face, like a young grandmother. You half expected her to start handing out school lunches and tell you to play nice with the other kids.
She waved at us. “Kate!”
I cleared my throat. “Aunt B, good morning.”
Aunt B hurried over, Ascanio in tow. “I have to go to the city. So I thought, why don’t I just catch a lift with you? We can catch up and chat.”
I’d rather give a lift to a rabid tiger. “Of course.”
“Wonderful.” Aunt B hopped into my passenger seat.
Derek hesitated for a long moment. He plainly didn’t want to leave me alone with Aunt B, but the Jeep could only seat two. He made a follow motion to Ascanio, and without waiting he turned slowly and went to his own vehicle.
We drove out of the Keep’s yard and headed toward the city.
“I heard about your run-in with the wolves,” Aunt B said.
“Not the way I heard it. Well handled, dear. Well handled. Jennifer isn’t a bad sort, but she is young. She has been an alpha for barely two years. She’s still establishing her place, and of course losing a loved one, especially so young, it can mess with your head. She’ll come around.”
That would be the day. “You have a lot of faith in her common sense.”
Aunt B smiled. “Oh no, dear. I have a lot of faith in Daniel. He fought hard for his spot at the top. He won’t let anything jeopardize that, not even her. Speaking of sweet young things, how is my boy fitting in?”
Like a square peg into a round hole. “We’re working on it.”
“It’s so rare, you know, for the boudas to make it through puberty without loupism. That was the problem with my first two boys. They were just like Ascanio: handsome, funny, charming . . .”
Undisciplined, spoiled, cocky . . .
“He has so much potential. I haven’t seen such good half-form at such a young age in years. Almost as good as my Raphael.”
Oh wow. She really liked him, if she was comparing him to her son. “So why give him to me?”
Aunt B sighed. “He hasn’t grown up in the Pack. His mouth gets away from him. He pushes things too far, sometimes in public. I’d hate to kill him. I’d do it, of course, but it would break my heart.”
There you go, that was Aunt B for you.
“And his mother is such a nice girl, too. It would devastate her. Of all the places he could be, he’s safest with you. You’re much too softhearted to murder children.”
I stared at her.
“Mind the road, dear.”
I swerved to avoid a fallen tree. “What’s his story? If I have to take care of him, I might as well know the whole thing.”
“It’s all very, very sad. Martina, his mother, met his father while she lived in the Midwest. Not a lot of boudas out that way, so when she found him, she didn’t look too closely at the quality of his character. And he seemed like a good enough sort, a proper bouda, on the passive side, but our men sometimes go that way. They had their fun, she conceived. She was thrilled. He was not.”
“Didn’t want to be a father?”
Aunt B rocked her head from side to side. “Not exactly. Turns out to be that he was on his ‘pilgrimage.’ He grew up in a religious community out in the boonies led by some prophet, and they sent him out to see how the ‘heathens’ live. He wasn’t supposed to be getting his jollies on and seek carnal pleasures.” She raised her eyebrows at “carnal.”
“So what happened?”
“He stayed with her. Martina thought they were a family. She gave birth. It was a hard birth. The hospital had sedated her—they were afraid she might snap from the pain. When she woke up in the hospital bed, the baby and the father were gone. He’d left her a note. He was going to raise the baby in the ‘proper’ way. The baby was an innocent, but she was unclean, because they’d sinned and had intercourse without the blessing of the prophet, so
