“My apologies. The shifters’ unusual attributes could also have been caused by tampering.”

“Tampering?”

She nodded. “Though rare, it happens more than we’d like. It’s often misguided altruism—someone trying to suppress the fae or afford the shifter more control. I wish I could stay and—Niavv, would you be quiet!”

Sin and I started.

Josephine shot a glare over her shoulder, then smiled apologetically at us. “It’s just my familiar. He’s extremely talkative. As I was saying, I’d like to help investigate, but I need to return home. The timing of all this is troublesome for me, but when Tobias calls in a favor …” She shrugged.

“As long as I’m fae-free before you go,” Sin said.

“You will be.”

“Um …” I hesitated. “Can I ask an unrelated question?”

The druidess arched an eyebrow curiously. “Of course. Ask away.”

It was a mere curiosity, but it had been nagging at me. “Have you ever heard of the Wolfsbane Druid?”

As I asked the question, a fae’s baritone echoed in my memory. How much of the Wolfsbane Druid’s collection did you steal when you killed him?

All of it, a human voice, raspy and rumbly, had answered. At the time, I’d been deep in the woods of Stanley Park, where we’d just summoned a big ugly darkfae in an attempt to reverse my accidental bond with a sea serpent of doom. It’d been a fun week.

I hadn’t spoken to Zak since he went into hiding over three months ago, but I couldn’t forget his voice—or his odd conversation with the darkfae.

“Ah, the Wolfsbane.” Josephine bobbed her head. “A notorious dark druid. Originally from eastern Europe, I believe, and among the most powerful of this century, with a cadre of truly awful fae at his beck and call. He was—yes, I was about to tell them he’s dead, Niavv. He was universally feared among druids, the good and the bad alike. We were all relieved to hear that he’d died.”

“He was … killed?” I ventured.

“Yes, almost a decade ago. By his own apprentice, according to the rumors.”

The ground tilted under me.

“That’s a risk all dark druids take, considering their methods.” She eyed me with unexpected amusement. “Why do you ask? Most witches I’ve met don’t care to understand anything about druids.”

My brain buzzed blankly. Huh?

Lucky for me, Sin was way more on the ball than I was. “How do you know Tori is a witch?”

Josephine’s amusement deepened. “Well, her familiar brand, for starters.”

I looked at my arm, hidden by my jacket sleeve. Even without clothing in the way, the intricate design, which had originally shimmered in pink and blue, had long since faded to a near-invisible shadow. However Josephine could detect the marking, it wasn’t with regular ol’ eyeball vision.

“Druids are badass,” I said baldly. “You’re cool as hell in my books.”

Surprised, she flashed a pleased grin, then glanced at the sky.

“It’s time,” she announced, pushing her sleeves up in a businesslike manner. Her inner forearms were tattooed with rows of circles, and a colorful fae marking filled each ring. “Follow me, Sin.”

Oh, so the tattoo thing wasn’t restricted to dark druids.

With a nervous smile, Sin handed me her blanket and followed the druidess. As she limped wearily across the grass, I slung the blanket over my shoulder and backtracked to join the guys.

“How’s Sin?” Aaron asked, a note of anxiety betraying his guilt.

“Ready to get this over with.”

Kai, watching the final preparations, nodded sympathetically. “Josephine is a powerful druidess. She’ll get it done.”

A murmuring voice floated from the group of alumni. “Can you really call a druid powerful?”

My hackles rose and I whirled on the group, unsure who’d spoken. “Meaning what, exactly?”

A dark-haired woman shrugged. “All of a druid’s ‘power’ is given to them by fae, so, really, it’s the fae that are powerful, not the druids. Druids, on their own, can’t do anything.”

“By that standard, Arcana users are powerless too,” someone else pointed out with mock disbelief. “In fact, that would mean the only mythics with real power are mages and psychics.”

The alumni laughed as though the suggestion that mages and psychics had anything in common was preposterous—and to my unpleasant surprise, Aaron let out a small snort too.

“Our guild has psychics,” I reminded him stiffly, “who are important parts of our combat teams. You’ve asked Drew, Bryce, and Taye more than once to help you with tough jobs.”

“Of course. They have valuable skills.” Aaron shrugged. “But on the power scale, psychics can’t compare to mages.”

“Oh really?” I snapped, losing hold of my temper. “That’s news to me, because I distinctly remember a mentalist kidnapping you right out of our guild.”

The alumni let out a chorus of taunting oohs.

Aaron stiffened. “That only happened because of you.”

I inhaled sharply—then Kai and Ezra stepped in front of me, blocking my view of Aaron and the alumni group. Aaron didn’t move but the other mages shifted back, too wary of Kai to challenge him.

“The exorcism is starting,” Ezra murmured.

Breathing harshly through my nose, I turned my back on Aaron and the alumni. Sin had taken a position in Josephine’s circle, facing the fire and its coiling white smoke. Across from her, the druidess had begun to chant. Shimmering ripples revealed her familiar a few feet away.

Josephine’s low voice rolled across the lawn. A puff of smoke rose from one of the piles of herbs around the perimeter. Not breaking her chant, she flung powder into the fire. The flames turned blue and the air grew heavy as power rose from the earth. Quiet energy buzzed from my feet up into my chest, making my skin itch. Kai and Ezra shifted uncomfortably, feeling it too.

Sin sat stiffly in the circle, watching the fire dance. A greenish glow washed across her. As the haze emanating from her skin brightened, wisps of reddish power flickered through the green—the same eerie miasma that had leaked from the mutant werewolves.

Josephine’s chant stuttered. She recovered quickly and gestured to her shimmering familiar. The air rippled, and suddenly, the familiar was no longer invisible.

He appeared in mid-step, prowling the perimeter of the circle. Human-like, with long, pale purple hair that flowed around him. Pointed ears framed a beautiful, androgynous face, and his robes flowed over his slender body in shades of gray and silver, the silky ties trailing after him.

The glow radiating from Sin thickened, darkened, writhed. It gathered above her back and head like a shadow, twisting like flames. Rippling like … like fur.

The eerie light had a shape: thick ruff, long muzzle, pointed ears. A phantom wolf hunched above Sin, head and torso rising out of her back, the rest of its ghostly body inside her.

Still chanting, Josephine picked up a wooden bucket at her feet. Her familiar stopped behind Sin, and faint magic glimmered across his long fingers.

“Luna, lunae carmen, tuam ad lucem tuos voca liberos!” the druidess cried out, upending the bucket over the fire. Water plunged over the flames, extinguishing them in a billow of smoke.

Sin screamed.

The wolfish phantom writhed, its semitransparent jaws gaping in a silent snarl. Silvery threads leaped from the fae familiar’s hands and embedded into the phantom wolf like fishhooks. The fae braced his feet and pulled.

Another agonized scream ripped from Sin’s throat. She and the phantom wolf convulsed. Swirls of pinkish-red miasma stained the air as the phantom clung to its host.

I didn’t realize I’d jumped forward until Kai grabbed my arms.

“Keep pulling, Niavv,” Josephine cried.

The fae looped the magical rope around his forearms and lunged backward. The phantom jerked—but so did Sin. She collapsed onto her back, limbs twitching. Miasma boiled out of the spirit, engulfing her in the cloud.

“Stop!” Josephine ran around the circle as her familiar let the magic threads go slack. “This isn’t working.”

The fae opened his hands and the threads dissolved. As the phantom wolf sank into Sin’s body, her skin glowed in a hideous rainbow of green, pink, and red before the light faded.

I wrenched free from Kai and charged toward the druidess, the guys right behind me.

“What happened?” I demanded.

“The exorcism failed.” Josephine’s mouth flattened into a thin line, then she stepped into the circle to kneel beside Sin, who was sprawled on her back, breathing fast but otherwise unmoving. “Even with Niavv’s help, the spirit is too strong to dislodge—not without risking Sin’s life.”

I glanced at her familiar. His eyes, bright and pupilless like smooth opals, turned to me, then his form faded into shimmers. Huh, okay. Not so talkative after all.

“Too strong?” Aaron growled. “But exorcisms always work, don’t they? As long as they’re completed before the full moon?”

“I’ve never failed before.” Josephine looked past us. “We need your healer back out here, Tobias. Sin is unconscious.”

I looked over my shoulder. Tobias and Valerie stood beside Kai and Ezra. At the druidess’s words, Valerie turned and ran toward the academy, as strong and fast as any of the alumni despite her designer clothes.

Josephine rose again and I took her place, kneeling beside Sin. I held her hand, sick with helplessness. Her skin was chilled and a strange odor clung to her—earth and musk, but with a sweet undertone, like cherry syrup.

“Why did the exorcism fail?” Tobias asked, his expression sternly bleak.

“The spirit is too strong,” the druidess repeated. “Did you see the tainted aural colors? That isn’t normal. Whatever change the shifters in the woods have undergone, it’s been passed to Sin through the infection. An exorcism alone can’t remove the spirit.”