“Wh-what?”

“You went outside. Where did you go?”

“I … I walked to the coffee shop.”

“Do you remember the whole walk?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see anyone else?”

“No.”

“What happened next?”

I locked my hands around his wrists, clinging on for dear life. “I went into the coffee shop. I looked at the donuts, then I got in line.”

“Did anyone talk to you? Did anyone touch you?”

“No.”

“What happened after you got in line?”

“I … I left.”

“Did you buy anything?”

“No, I just … left.”

“Why?”

“Because …” My brow scrunched. “I don’t know. I think I … I needed to come back here right away.”

“Do you remember walking back here?”

“Yes …”

“Did you plan to get out the gun?”

A tremor shook my limbs. “I don’t know.”

Blake crouched beside Aaron, his expression grim.

“Black magic?” he rumbled. “Or Psychica?”

Aaron rubbed my upper arms through my jacket. “Alchemy strong enough to control her would probably cause memory loss. If she remembers everything but doesn’t know why she changed her behavior—”

“Psychica,” Blake concluded with a nod. “Probably a mentalist.”

“Wait.” I looked between them, my face cold with tears. “You think someone made me do that? But—but I didn’t talk to anyone, or touch anyone, or drink a potion. No one told me to walk back here and—”

“Mentalists’ powers come in a lot of foul flavors,” Aaron interrupted. “Do you remember the one from KCQ who got me?”

I remembered. A woman who, with a simple touch, had taken full control of his mind and body.

“You encountered someone like that, and they influenced you without making contact—or they did make contact and made you forget.”

“Did you find them?” Justin asked. He’d reclaimed his gun and was emptying the chamber into his hand. He stuffed the lone bullet and magazine into his pocket.

Shaking his head, Blake pushed to his feet. “There was no one nearby, and we didn’t know who to look for.”

“What if there was no mentalist?” I whispered. “What if I just snapped? What if I’m going crazy and I—”

“Tori.” Justin stepped closer. “I’ve seen you in the grip of every kind of anger. Even when you get vicious, I know what it looks like, but that—that was completely different. Your eyes were empty, like you weren’t thinking or feeling anything. Whatever happened, that wasn’t you.”

My mouth trembled. I launched past Aaron, arms stretched out, and Justin pulled me into a tight hug. I could feel the unsteady shivers in his limbs. A sob shook me, and he put his face against my shoulder.

“But you still scared the shit out of me,” he mumbled. “Why didn’t the gun fire?”

I peeled away from Justin and glanced at Aaron. “You suppressed the shot, right?”

He nodded. “But like I’ve said before, don’t ever count on me being able to stop a gunshot. I have to be really close, and even then, my success rate isn’t fantastic.” Rising to his feet, he glanced around. “Now let’s pack up. We need to get out of here ASAP.”

My brow furrowed.

“That wasn’t a random mentalist who sent you back here to blow a hole in your brother.” He strode into the bedroom, his voice floating back out. “I’m not sure how, but our poking around yesterday didn’t go unnoticed. Maybe the Praetor saw our vehicles or checked the attic and found evidence of an intruder.”

Hastening after Aaron, I found him scooping his shaving kit off the bathroom counter and tossing it into his duffle bag. “Hurry up and pack, Tori.”

I rushed into the bedroom I’d slept in, where my suitcase sat open on the bed. I scooped yesterday’s clothes off the floor and threw them in.

“The Praetor isn’t messing around.” Blake’s voice rumbled out of the living room. “He went straight to hiring a professional.”

“Professional what?” Justin asked.

“Assassin—one who can make us kill each other and end our investigation without ever drawing attention to the cult.”

I shuddered at his words. An assassin. Had they known they were sending me to kill my own brother? Out of the three men, Justin was the least dangerous. Killing Aaron and Blake would’ve been the smarter move, but maybe the assassin didn’t know that.

I hadn’t hesitated to aim for Justin. Had the mentalist specified my target … or had I chosen him because of something in my subconscious?

Shivering even more, I pushed the thought away and opened my makeup bag. Fishing out the compact with the demonic amulet, I popped the lid up, slipped the mysterious talisman from its hiding spot, and tucked it in my pocket. I’d surreptitiously move it to my combat belt as soon as I had a chance.

“This is escalating faster than I expected,” Blake added, “but it’ll be another eight hours at least before the team is here.”

I froze—then shot toward the door. Bursting into the living room, I demanded, “What team?”

“A Keys team.” Blake had his phone out and was peering at the screen. “Make that two teams. They’ll tag the Praetor, and I’ll let them know about the assassin as well.”

Panic drummed across my ribs. Bad, bad, bad. We were here to find a grimoire that could save Ezra’s life, and the presence of even one Keys of Solomon mythic was already complicating that. Two teams of them would screw us completely.

Which meant we needed to act fast. We had only eight hours before the Keys teams arrived and snatched away Ezra’s last chance.

I darted back into the bedroom, flung my shit into my suitcase, and zipped it up. When I dragged it into the living room, Justin was closing his duffle bag. Leaving my suitcase beside him, I hurried into Aaron’s room to see if he needed help.

Standing at his bed, he stuffed a shirt into his bag, then pulled the zipper.

“Ready?” I asked. “We should—”

He glanced up, and I faltered at the paleness of his face.

“Aaron?” I stepped toward him. “What—”

He shifted away from me like I had a contagious disease, then caught himself. His jaw tightened. “Tori, if I seem to be acting even the slightest bit strange, run the hell away from me. I won’t be offended.”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

His hand closed over the shoulder strap of his bag, his knuckles turning white. “An assassin who can make us attack each other …” His haunted eyes flashed across my face. “A gun is child’s play compared to my pyro magic. One bullet hole? I could—”

Breaking off, he shook his head, unable or unwilling to describe the damage his white-hot fire could inflict on a living body.

“If that mentalist gets me—” He swallowed. “Maybe I should stay behind.”

I strode across the gap between us and threw my arms around him. “You’re coming with us, Aaron. We’ve handled worse.”

His gaze dropped, and I could hear his unspoken, “But have we?”

Taking hold of his arm, I dragged him out of the bedroom. “Let’s get moving already, guys!”

Blake went ahead, climbing into his jeep and starting the engine while Aaron, Justin, and I threw our bags in the back of the SUV. We drove our convoy of vehicles to a supermarket parking lot, where Justin left his truck and got in with us. Aaron followed Blake’s jeep toward the suburb’s outskirts.

“An assassin,” I muttered, shivering at the word. An assassin trying to kill us. Not that people hadn’t tried to kill us before, but this was a lot scarier. Not merely a killer—but a manipulator who would try to make us kill each other.

Swallowing a surge of dread, I added, “And pretty soon we’ll have two Keys teams to deal with too. Unless there’s a cult grimoire in the Praetor’s house, we have no chance of finding one before they show up.”

“We need to get rid of Blake and the Keys,” Aaron said, eyes on the jeep ahead of us. “If we can send them off in the wrong direction, that’ll buy us time. As soon as Kai joins us, we can figure out a plan.”

I nodded. Yes, we needed Kai. He was our plan guy. He knew how to get shit done. He did his research, and …

My eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “You brought a laptop, right?”

“’Course.”

“Then while you search the house, I’ll work on something else—something that’ll put us a good long step ahead of Blake and the Keys.”

By the time we arrived at the Praetor’s house, his garage—the vehicle one, not the demonic-worshipping one—was empty. He’d already left and would hopefully stay gone for the day.

Aaron and Blake had the job of breaking in and systematically searching the entire four-thousand-square-foot house. Me, on the other hand—my ass was parked in the SUV, and the SUV was parked in a sheltered copse of trees just off the road. Through the windshield, I could barely see the street and one corner of the Praetor’s distant driveway.

Aaron’s laptop was open on my knees, and on my phone was Justin’s video recording of last night’s cult meeting. I clicked around in the spreadsheet I’d made, prepping it for my self-assigned task.

My brother, sitting in the driver’s seat, leaned over the center console to peer at the laptop. “What are you doing?”

“Making a chart with our best guesses at the age, height, weight, hair color, and eye color of all the cultists. Then Aaron or someone else in the Crow and Hammer can use the information to search the MPD’s mythic database for them.”

“Is it a database of criminals, or …?”