“How did you fool Darius?” Her eyes blazed. “MagiPol is just waiting for an excuse to disband the Crow and Hammer. How dare you put our guild at risk?”

“I—I didn’t—”

“A contracted demon with magic,” she spat. “Now I know how you took down the unbound demon on Halloween. There’s no way you can control your demon. There’s no way you aren’t a danger to everyone with that—”

The patio door banged open. Taye rushed in, Amalia right behind him.

“Zora,” he said sharply. “You all right? The police are on the way. I put in a call to the MPD and they’re sending agents and a cleanup crew, but we should leave the crime scene.”

Her furious stare jerked back to me. “Are you waiting for the MPD?”

So they could arrest me on the spot? No thanks. “I—I should go.”

“You can go for now,” she said darkly, “but we aren’t finished, Robin Page.”

Taye’s brow furrowed, whereas Amalia’s expression flashed from confusion to alarm as she guessed what had happened.

Zora grabbed her sword case off the floor and crunched across the room to the patio. Amalia stepped back as the sorceress strode out the doors, Taye hurrying after her. As their footsteps retreated, the wail of police sirens drifted into the unit, growing louder by the second.

“Shit,” Amalia muttered. “What does she know?”

“She saw Zylas use magic,” I said heavily, fighting the nausea building in my stomach. “She knows my contract isn’t legal, but not the full extent of it.”

“Shit,” she said again. “We need to get out of here.”

Nodding grimly, I climbed over the fridge door—when had it fallen off?—and grabbed both the case of demon blood and the case of syringes from Claude’s desk. Amalia scooped the papers and photos off the floor. Carrying our loot, we ducked out the doors.

The patio backed onto a courtyard shared by several apartment towers. We cut across it and joined the busy sidewalk. Three police cruisers with their lights flashing were parked on the curb, two officers directing pedestrians away while four more headed toward the condos. They were about to get a nasty surprise. The MPD agents would have fun smoothing over that bloodbath.

All in all, though, that didn’t even rank on my list of worries.

I clutched the metal cases to my chest, breathing hard. Zora knew my secret. What would she do? Report me to the MPD? Report me to Darius? Both courses of action would have the same result. Darius had warned me that if anyone from the Crow and Hammer discovered the truth, he would turn me in to protect his guildeds.

No matter how I looked at it, I was doomed.

“Maybe she won’t report you,” Amalia said, her mind on the same worries as mine. “It’s not like you’re hurting anyone. Maybe …”

Faint hope sparked, but I didn’t let it grow. Considering how furious and betrayed she’d appeared, I didn’t think she’d ignore her discovery.

“I’ll call her,” I mumbled. “If I can explain the situation like I did with Darius, she might look the other way.”

“Yeah … yeah, she probably will.”

Silence fell between us. We both knew we were fooling ourselves.

“I grabbed all this stuff”—she hefted her armload of papers—“so the MPD wouldn’t have a reason to look at my dad, but why’d you take those cases?”

“These are proof.”

“Of what?”

“One holds bottled demon blood. The other … it has vials of vampire saliva. Last time we saw him, Claude used a syringe of it to bring down Zylas.”

I couldn’t believe I hadn’t put the clues together before. The tranquilizing effect of a vampire bite was identical to Zylas’s collapse after he’d been injected with the mysterious syringe. Vamp saliva was the perfect demon neutralizer, especially since it had an even stronger effect on demons than humans.

“You think Claude has been trading his demon’s blood to the vampires in exchange for their saliva?” Amalia squinted. “But why did they trash his townhouse? And why did his demon steal back his documents from the vampires?”

“That part I don’t get, but I suspect it has something to do with that Vasilii guy the other vampires are following. Maybe Vasilii isn’t happy with their arrangement anymore.”

We stopped at a crosswalk and waited for the light to change. The lunch rush had dispersed, leaving the streets much quieter.

“Hmm, well.” Amalia cast me a sharp smile. “We might not know what’s going on with Claude and the vampires, but we do have this.”

She held up the snapshot of Uncle Jack and the bearded stranger standing over a dead moose.

“What’s special about that?”

“This,” she declared, waving the photo, “is where we’re going to find my dad.”

Not even a hot shower could calm the nerves churning through my gut. I rubbed a towel over my hair, watching my reflection in the foggy bathroom mirror. A thin white scar stood out against the smooth skin of my neck; the sight of it always chilled me. My blue eyes were tired and a seemingly permanent wrinkle of worry had formed between my eyebrows.

In less than twelve hours, I might finally reclaim my mother’s grimoire.

According to Amalia, that photo was the clue she’d needed to figure out her dad’s location. She’d booked a rental car so we could drive out to the property in the photo, owned by the bearded man whose identity Claude hadn’t been able to uncover.

If she was right, my uncle would be there, and almost eight months after my parents’ deaths, I would have in my hands their most treasured possession—a possession they might have died protecting. The two letters my mother had written, one to her brother and one to her daughter, sat on my bedside table. I would bring them with me tomorrow, and when I saw Uncle Jack, I would demand not only the grimoire, but answers. And, unlike our past confrontations, I wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.

The girl he’d bullied and dismissed seemed like a stranger to me now. The new and improved Robin was a contractor. She regularly pitted her will against an ornery demon. She had faced an escaped demon from the powerful First House, a rogue guild, and unnaturally powerful vampires. She wouldn’t be intimidated by her portly, middle-aged, cowardly uncle.

Or so I hoped.

I scrunched the water from my hair, considered blow-drying it, then decided I was too tired. Throwing my towel over the edge of the tub—the towel rack lay on the floor, ripped off the wall by Zylas—I pulled on a tank top and cotton PJ shorts.

Cool air rushed into the steamy bathroom when I opened the door. Across the living room, a pair of green eyes reflected the dim light. Socks was curled up on the sofa, watching me, and I crossed the room to scratch her furry ears. The whir of Amalia’s sewing machine accompanied the pattering of the rain against the window. I wasn’t the only one having trouble sleeping tonight.

MPD agents hadn’t knocked down our apartment door, so I assumed Zora hadn’t reported my illegal contract yet. I’d tried calling her—six times—but my calls had all gone straight to voicemail. I didn’t dare go to the guild to see if she was there.