Feeling content, I checked the time and my messages. Everything was going according to plan, the Witch Conclave was going perfectly, the Youngers had everything in hand, everyone was doing his and her jobs, and I had some time to relax. Ducky. It paid to have minions. Not that I’d ever call the Youngers or Derek Lee that. I’m not stupid all the time.

I combed out my hair, leaving it to dry down my back before braiding it. I had learned my lesson about putting my hair up wet. In the Louisiana humidity, hair could stay wet all day, all night, and all the next day, if not allowed to air. I also brushed my teeth and left my toothbrush next to his. It was weird to see it there, next to my comb, my body oil, my face cream, which he had bought for me, and my lipstick. All in his apartment. Just weird.

I left the bath to catch the scent of shrimp and grits from Café Amelie and beignets with chicory coffee from Café du Monde. And tea made by Bruiser. He made great tea, especially for breakfast, strong enough to kick-start a mule. I liked a good strong tea, but Bruiser’s idea of breakfast tea was way more British than mine, which is to say, way more strong.

I heard him moving in the kitchen nook and followed him there, to climb up on one of the three white bar chairs. I rested one elbow on the bar and my head on my lower arm as I thumbed through the texts awaiting me. Again, nothing urgent. I put away the cell and looked up at my sorta boyfriend. He was shirtless and barefoot, wearing my favorite thin linen-weave pants that hung low on his hips. “Can I hire you as my full-time chef?” I thought for a moment and added, “And lover?”

“You want me for a gigolo?” He placed a ladylike cup of tea beside my elbow and shared a half smile with me.

I let him see the satisfaction in my eyes. “You are uniquely qualified for the position.”

“Which position?” he inquired, his eyes heating as if he remembered several from last night.

I picked up my teacup in both hands and brought it to my mouth. The steam curled around my face, warm and soothing. “All of them?”

He pulled a serving spoon from a round utensil holder and opened a food-delivery container. As he dished up a late breakfast, he gestured to his shirt on me. “Is it a theme for us? Bacon?” he asked. I pulled out the tee and read it upside down. It was a tee I had bought for him at the touristy shop after seeing it hanging in the store window. It had a big raindrop on it and garish letters reading, I LOVE NOLA RAIN. IT SOUNDS LIKE BACON FRYING.

“Could be worse,” I said. “It could read Life Without Bacon.”

“True.” He dished up shrimp and grits into a china pasta bowl and set a plate of beignets between us. He leaned on the bar and dipped a spoon into his own bowl of spiced breakfast, and we ate several bites in companionable silence. “Shall I have that shirt framed too?” he asked.

“Eh.” I swallowed peppery grits and sipped my tea, which was a breakfast blend strong enough to bend iron bars and leap a locomotive, perfect for the spices. “Too much bacon might spoil the décor.”

He laughed and leaned farther across the bar to cup my head in his hand and claim my mouth as his own. An hour later, I went home to a nearly empty house. Molly and Evan were at the conclave, talking and voting, along with every other witch in town. Eli and Alex were at the conclave monitoring the witches’ security arrangements. The kids were in the safe house where Katie was sleeping, guarded by Derek’s most experienced men, the last members of Team Vodka. And by Brute. How weird was my life when I was grateful to have a werewolf guarding my godchildren?

Edmund was sleeping somewhere. Bruiser was at HQ making sure everything was okay there. I hadn’t been alone in the house in months, and the silence that had once been peaceful was unnerving. So I pulled out all three of my new fighting leathers and tried them on to decide which one to wear. Based on color. On style. Tried out all the color-coded custom Kydex holsters on the new weapons rigs. Badass. Totally badass.

And then I braided my hair and went through my meager collection of makeup to choose what I would wear with my ensemble. I am such a girl.

* * *

Two hours before dusk, I received the call from Molly and Big Evan. It should have come before I left Bruiser’s and I had been pacing the floors waiting. “We have approval,” Molly said.

“You sound less than excited,” I said.

“You try to get agreement between a couple hundred witches on anything and see how excited you are afterward. It took an hour before they could decide to update the rules on the national council—which hadn’t been updated in over a hundred years, about the time the first telephone lines crossed the nation. Then there were another several hours of wrangling on the need to update the rules on witch behavior and mores, and another hour on who was to enforce those rules and—” I could almost see Molly rubbing her forehead. “All that was before lunch, which was served late because the Seattle coven insisted on a thorough cleansing of the kitchen, in a spiritual sense, not with Comet and elbow grease, though that might have been considered too at some point. And then they had to purify all the copper pots the food was prepared in. And let me tell you, the stink of frankincense, yarrow, and white sage is awful on the air.”

“And?”

“And then, about three p.m., we began to discuss the fanghead situation. And we just got the vote. Leo’s in. His proposal for rapprochement has been approved without any substantive changes to the wording or the reparations. The mayor and the governor have been notified and will be here for a live, remote, glad-handing photo shoot for the late-evening news.