“Ready?” Aaron barked.

Kai and Valerie took up positions on either side of the front door. Tobias strode into the vestibule, but Aaron looked back. His burning gaze swept over me, then to the aeromage.

“Bring them back safely, Ezra.”

“I will.”

My heart clogged my throat. Aaron joined his father, then threw the door open.

Snarls erupted. Dark, furred shapes hurled themselves at the entrance as the two pyromages leaped outside. Their bodies erupted into white-hot flames, and the snarls turned to agonized yowls as the door slammed shut. Valerie bolted it, then spoke a short Arcana incantation, invoking magical protections on the lock.

“The staff are upstairs,” she told Kai.

“Get them into the tower,” he ordered. “I’ll do a final sweep to make sure we didn’t miss anyone, then join you. As soon as you’re up there, call your guild in. We won’t survive the night without help.”

She nodded and zipped back to the second level.

“Be careful,” he told me and Ezra. “They’re at their strongest tonight, and we don’t know what Brian is capable of. If he has Sin …”

“Then we’ll take care of him too,” I said fiercely.

Kai’s dark eyes flicked to Ezra. “Do whatever you have to.”

With Ezra’s nod, Kai sprinted toward the kitchen to check for any staff left behind.

I turned to Ezra. Whatever had happened between us under the mistletoe no longer mattered. “I think Brian took Sin because he wants her for his experiments. He and Kelvin talked about how the mutation passed to the spirit before it infected her. Brian must want to see what will happen when she turns into a full-blown werewolf.”

“Then we have to get to her before that. Where did he take her?”

Anywhere. All Brian needed to do was keep Sin out of sight until the full moon, which meant he could’ve walked into the woods to hide her, but my instincts suggested otherwise.

“To his evil laboratory,” I decided. “The apothecary where he has access to his supplies and conducts all his experiments.”

“That’s outside the grounds.”

I nodded as muted howls rang through the night. “And that means we’re going out there.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

As Ezra led me down the hall at a fast jog, glass shattered behind us. Thudding paws were followed by low, ferocious snarls. The werewolves were inside the manor.

I shoved down my fear. The new arrivals were Kai and Valerie’s job. Ezra and I couldn’t stop.

We darted across the narrow hall where, an hour ago, we had kissed under the mistletoe, then he stopped at the door that opened into the grounds. Passing me his pole-arm to hold, he shook out his heavy-duty bad-guy-smasher gloves. He tugged at the cuff of his dress shirt, then grabbed it and yanked down. The sleeve tore off at the shoulder seam. He ripped off his other sleeve and slid on the gloves—thick material that covered his arms up to his biceps, the elbows and knuckles reinforced with metal.

He reclaimed his pole-arm. “There’s a path heading east. The garage is out of sight behind some trees. Run and don’t stop.” He reached for the small of his back and pulled a sleek pistol out of his belt. “This is your Christmas present from us. It’s already loaded with sleep potion.”

Accepting it, I weighed it in my hand. It might be a paintball gun, but it was a solid, dangerous weapon.

“It’s higher powered than regular ones,” Ezra said, confirming my suspicions. He passed me an extra clip. “Shoots faster and farther. You have seven shots per magazine. It’ll probably take two or three to down a werewolf.”

I slipped the spare magazine into a pocket in my belt that was the perfect size for it. And the funny-shaped loop I’d always wondered about was probably a holster for the pistol. Something told me the guys had gotten my belt made with this gun in mind.

“Ready?” Splitting his pole-arm into two matching blades, Ezra faced the door. “Let’s go.”

Pistol in hand, I reached past him, unbolted the lock, and threw the door open.

He shot out first and I followed, shutting the door behind me. He cut left down a paved path that wound toward a cluster of mature spruce trees. My sharp breath filled my ears, our footsteps the only sound.

Then I heard it: the thud of paws, drumming against the ground in a rapid beat. The raspy huff of canine panting, drawing closer.

I pumped my legs, but the wolves were far faster. They appeared out of the darkness in a deadly rush, closing in on all sides with the moonlight gleaming on their bared fangs.

Ezra’s blades flashed and a band of wind hit the nearest wolves, throwing them back. “Keep running!”

As I sprinted past him, a dark shadow leaped out of the trees ahead of me. I whipped my new gun up. The first pull of the trigger snapped loudly as it opened the CO2 canister that powered the weapon. A yellow paintball burst between the wolf’s eyes. I fired two more shots, then dove sideways as the shifter wheeled drunkenly past me and slumped onto its snout.

Ezra jumped over it, racing for the building peeking through the trees, and I chased after him. He kicked the door, adding a blast of wind for extra force, and the door flew inward. Automatic lights blazed, illuminating six sleek cars that ranged from the luxury sedan Sin and I had ridden in to two low-riding, aggressively styled, fire-red expensive-mobiles.

As I faced the doorway, my pistol aimed at the two wolf shadows prowling cautiously closer, Ezra grabbed a set of keys off the rack beside the door. The black sedan beeped and flashed its lights.

“Tori!” He tossed me the keys and I caught them, surprised. “Get in.”

I holstered my pistol and yanked open the driver’s door. As Ezra slid into the passenger seat, I started the engine. He prodded the garage button and the overhead door began sliding upward.

A wolf rammed its head into my window.

I screamed. The shifter withdrew from the cracked glass and set its feet to headbutt the window again. I slammed the gear selector into drive and hit the gas. The car shot forward under the still-opening door, and metal shrieked as it dragged across the vehicle’s roof.

“Oops,” I gasped as I wrenched the wheel, spinning the car toward the manor. The east wing whipped past, then we blew under the carriage porch. The front door, which Valerie had bolted and sealed with magic, hung off one hinge. Multiple ground-floor windows were broken.

I swallowed back my terror for Kai and Valerie. “I can’t believe I didn’t even suspect Brian. He seemed so—so harmless.”

“None of us thought of him,” Ezra said tersely. “Kai was investigating Kelvin, but he didn’t even look at Brian. Take a right here.”

I hit the brakes, took the corner so fast Ezra grabbed the handle above his window, then floored the gas pedal. The pavement flew toward the headlights and vanished under the car’s nose. It had taken almost half an hour to reach the apothecary earlier this week. I was going to do it in half that.

“Investigating Kelvin?” I repeated in disbelief, resuming our conversation.

“He’s a transmutation expert. When he was struggling to figure out the transmutation, Kai and Aaron wondered if he was pretending to be stumped.”

“Or maybe Brian was sabotaging his master’s work to hide his tracks.”

Ezra nodded.

I glanced at the clock on the dash. 11:02. Sin’s exorcism was supposed to happen at midnight, meaning we had less than an hour to rescue Sin and get her to the druidess. This was going to be tight.

The twisting road sped beneath us. Ezra directed me, familiar with the area from his many holiday visits to the academy. We scarcely spoke, our attention on the road—and our fears. Sin. Aaron and Tobias. Kai and Valerie. Every moment we were gone meant we couldn’t help Aaron and Kai fight. How long could they last against a pack of full-moon-empowered, mutated werewolves?

When the apothecary’s small community appeared around a bend, I almost blasted right through it. I slammed the brakes, throwing Ezra into his seat belt. The vehicle slid to a stop, my door perfectly aligned with the apothecary’s storefront.

Flashing Ezra a part proud, part apologetic, part terrified smile, I cut the engine and unbuckled my seatbelt. “Time to find Sin.”

Silvery moonlight streaked down, the serene luminescence accentuating the eerie quiet. The apothecary was more like a converted house than a store, and we crept alongside the building and into the backyard without issue. Though the apothecary was dark and silent, a faint light glimmered through the trees across the long backyard.

Ezra gestured toward it and I followed him across the grass. The soft glow leaking through thick spruce boughs brightened. We slipped into the trees and I winced as a twig snapped under my ballet flat. You’d think I could walk more quietly in these than my steel-toed hiking boots, but nope.

Ezra stopped so suddenly I collided with his back.

“Something moved up ahead,” he whispered.

A moment of quiet.

“Oh, so it’s you,” a gruff male voice called. “I was hoping you would come.”

Ezra tensed, then started forward again, moving swiftly instead of quietly. Ahead, a much smaller lawn preceded a ranch-style home, its front window glowing brightly. A man with tangled black hair waited for us in front of the house, and my jaw clenched when I recognized him.

He licked his lips as his gaze fixed on me. “And you brought the feisty girl too.”

Busy scanning for more werewolves, I didn’t bother returning verbal fire. No others in sight, but that didn’t mean they weren’t nearby.

Ezra pulled me hard against his side and I gasped in surprise. When he pressed his mouth against my ear, I had to give myself a mental “pay attention!” slap as my stomach did an entire circus’s worth of acrobatics.

“I’ll take him head-on,” he breathed almost soundlessly so the werewolf’s supernatural hearing wouldn’t pick up his words. “Stay back. If you have a clear shot, take it, but only if you’re certain you won’t hit me.”