Ten feet from the end of the dock. Five feet.

  They launched themselves into empty air, diving out and away from the dock as far as their shifter strength could propel them. Liam caught a glimpse of Lina beside him, her body tucked tight, her bag clutched against her chest.

  The explosion hit like the fist of an angry god.

  The shockwave slammed into them mid-air, heat scorching Liam’s back as he plunged into the dark water. The sound was deafening, even underwater. A concussive BOOM rattled his bones and made his ears ring.

  Cold water enveloped him, shockingly frigid after the blast of heat. He kicked hard, swimming down and away from the surface, putting as much distance as possible between himself and the burning debris raining down from above.

  His lungs began to burn. He needed air. But more than that, he needed to find Lina.

  Liam broke the surface, gasping, and immediately searched the water around him. Flames lit the night sky where the house had been. Now there was just a roaring inferno, debris scattered across the neighboring yards. Car alarms were wailing, and dogs barked in panic.

  “Lina,” he called, treading water and spinning in a circle.

  A splash to his left. She surfaced twenty feet away, coughing and gasping but alive. Her braid had come loose, hair ash blonde hair dark with water and plastered to her face. She still clutched her bag protectively against her body.

  “You okay?” he asked over the roar of the flames.

  “I’m good. You?” she called back.

  “Good,” he replied, moving closer to her.

  They swam toward each other, meeting in the middle. Liam reached out instinctively, needing to touch her, to confirm she was real and unhurt. His hand found her shoulder, and she didn’t pull away.

  “The papers?” he asked.

  She patted her bag, water streaming from it but the flap still sealed. “My bag is water-resistant. They might be a little damp, but should still be readable.”

  In the distance, sirens began to wail. The police and fire department would be here in minutes. The neighbors were already outside, and the closest ones were evacuating in case the fire spread. Others had broken out their garden hoses to put out the flaming debris that had rained down on their properties and the street.

  “We need to go,” Liam said. “Before we’re spotted, and before the authorities show up with questions we can’t answer.”

  “Agreed.” Lina was already swimming toward a neighboring dock that wasn’t too close to the burning home, her strokes strong and sure despite everything.

  They hauled themselves onto the dock of a darkened house several properties down from the chaos, dripping and singed but intact. Liam took stock. He thought he might have a couple minor burns on his back, and his ears were still ringing. He was soaked through, of course, but other than that, he had no serious injuries. Lina looked similarly battered but functional.

  She met his eyes, and despite everything—the explosion, the cold water, the narrow escape from death—she grinned. It was fierce and wild and absolutely beautiful.

  “Hell of a first date,” she said breathlessly.

  Liam couldn’t help it. He laughed. “Agent Goodwell, this wasn’t a date.”

  “Right.” Her grin widened. “Just two colleagues nearly getting blown up together.”

  She chuckled, and he couldn’t help but follow suit. She definitely had an odd sense of humor, but it was very much like his own, so he understood and appreciated it. Grace under pressure. She was the total package.

  They moved quickly through the shadowed yards, keeping low as emergency vehicles screamed past on the main road. His lion was still on high alert, protective instincts in overdrive now that the immediate danger had passed. Every fiber of his being wanted to get Lina somewhere safe, where he could properly check her for injuries.

  But first, they had to disappear before anyone saw them leaving the scene of an explosion.

  “Where to now?” Lina asked as they reached the street where they’d parked, both of them staying in the shadows.

  “I’ve got a place we can go that’s not too far,” Liam said.

  Liam went to the back of his SUV and opened the hatch. Like most shifters, he carried extra clothes with him in case had had to shift and leave his clothing behind. He saw Lina had gone to her trunk as well. Since they were on a public street, she was discreet about changing out of her soaked clothes, doing it quickly and mostly behind cover of her car’s open door. He did the same, and then he signaled for her to follow him.

  Then, he got into his SUV and drove away from the chaos of the burning house a few blocks away. He sent a quick text to Rich Kinkaid, one of his newfound cousins who was mated and now lived in the same subdivision that most of the Marsh Witches had lived in for decades. He’d arranged for Liam to use one of the vacant houses in the development as a base of operations, should he need one.

  It was also a coastal community on the South Shore of the Island and wasn’t too far from where Mrs. E had set up her alter-ego of Margaret Thornfield. They arrived in less than fifteen minutes, and Liam parked in the driveway. Lina parked her car on the street in front, then got out and joined him, walking up the front walkway.

  Rich was there, with the key, waiting for them. He greeted Liam with cautious friendliness. They’d ironed out a few things between themselves, but the three brothers had spent all their lives estranged from the Kinkaid Clan and had only made peace recently. Things were still a bit tentative, but Liam hoped their relationship would even out, given time and shared experiences.

  Liam shook Rich’s hand. “Thanks for arranging this.”

  “Happy to help. We want to catch Mrs. E as badly as anyone. She caused a lot of heartache for the ladies of this community,” Rich said, his expression going hard for a moment.

  “Rich Kinkaid, this is Lina Goodwell of the FBI,” Liam introduced them.

  “Nice to meet you, ma’am. Thanks for looking into the Mrs. E situation,” Rich said politely as they shook hands.

  “Happy to help,” Lina replied. “Thanks for setting up this place. Looks like we’ll need a spot to go over evidence.”

  Chapter 5

  “Evidence?” Rich asked, looking from Lina to Liam and back again.

  “We located a property owned by one of Mrs. E’s aliases and did a little reconnaissance. Unfortunately, she had it rigged to blow, and the place is in a million pieces right now,” Liam reported as he opened the door and ushered everyone inside. “But brilliant Agent Lina grabbed a stack of papers that was on the kitchen table before we hightailed it out of there and jumped off the dock. Could be something in there, or it could be nothing, but we need to take a look and see what we’ve got.”

  They entered a house with very little furniture, but it would do for now. There was a kitchen table and a few chairs, as well as a coffee maker, which Liam started as Lina opened her bag and spread out the slightly soggy papers on the table. Rich didn’t sit, but regarded the papers with interest.

  Liam knew Rich’s background. He was a Spec Ops warrior, like Liam himself, but recently retired. Rich and his two brothers, Billy and Colt, had been a Top-Secret black-ops specialty squad. All three of the brothers were highly skilled and were also very powerful lion shapeshifters. They’d been estranged from the Clan because their parents had been young, in love, and had run from both their mother’s magical family and the Clan that disapproved of their mating.

  Their mother had been a Rollins, which was a very dark family full of mages with questionable morals. Their mom, by all accounts, hadn’t been evil like many of her kin, and she’d fallen head over heels in love with their dad, a Kinkaid lion. The Alpha of the Clan at the time hadn’t approved, and life had been difficult for the young pair. They’d taken off for parts unknown, distancing themselves from everyone and everything. They’d had three sons and then were killed tragically, leaving the boys orphans.

  The eldest had been old enough to take care of the younger two, and they’d all gone into the military to get their educations and earn their way in the world. Now they were all older, wiser, and all three had recently mated. Their reintroduction to the Kinkaid Clan had begun with Rich and the trouble with the Marsh Witches. Liam and his father, Lester, had been called on to help, which was their first encounter with the brothers.

  The relationship progressed through Billy’s mission to safeguard one of the witch’s granddaughters. Liam’s cousin, Gavin, had helped Billy and ended up touring the fey realm, of all things. But they’d formed a solid friendship that had only brought the estranged brothers closer to the Clan.

  It had been the youngest brother who’d really cemented the new bonds, however, when he traveled down to Texas, where the Clan was based these days, and helped prevent a demon infestation with the help of his new mate, who was a rare and powerful Demon Slayer.

  The two older brothers, Rich and Billy, had settled in this neighborhood with their new mates, surrounded by the coven ladies, while Colt remained in Texas for the time being. Liam wasn’t sure if Colt would join his brothers here or stay in Texas, but they all had mates to consider now, and it would probably be up to their better halves to decide where they’d live. Lucky bastards.

  It was every shifter’s dearest wish to find their one and only true mate. All three of those brothers had. Even Gavin had found his mate recently. But Liam was still looking. Of course, if the fair Lina continued to be as intriguing as she was…

  Of course, they had a mission to complete first. He had to keep his head in the game and find Mrs. E before she could wreak any more havoc. She was a powerful witch with the ability to summon demons, and she was definitely playing for the wrong side. She had to be stopped, and he fully intended to make that happen.

  Coffee made, Liam turned back to the table with three filled mugs in his hands. He served Lina first, then gave a mug to Rich and kept the last for himself as he took a seat at the round table. Rich had sat down at some point, apparently unable to resist looking at the evidence Lina had gathered.

  Lina spread the papers out carefully, giving each piece room to dry. She worked methodically, sorting them into piles as Liam and Rich watched.

  “Okay, let’s see what we’ve got,” she murmured, more to herself than to them. “Junk mail. Electric bill for Margaret Thornfield. Credit card offer. Water bill.” She pushed those aside into one stack. “All in Margaret’s name. Nothing unusual there.”

  “Dead end?” Rich asked.

  “Maybe. At least it’s confirmation that she actually owned the place and maybe lived there for a while.” Lina moved to the next items, her brow furrowing. “Here’s something more interesting. A receipt from the Center Moriches Post Office.”

  Liam leaned forward. “For what?”

  “PO box rental. Six months, paid in cash.” She held it up to the light, squinting at the faded ink. “Name on the receipt is Penelope Atwood.”

  “Another alias?” Rich suggested.

  “Could be.” Lina pulled out her phone, snapping photos of the receipt from multiple angles. “I’ve got a contact at the postal service who might be able to pull the application for that box. They require an address for PO box registration. She’d have had to provide something, even if it was fake.”

  “That could prove fruitful,” Liam said, feeling a spark of hope. Mrs. E was clever, but she’d left breadcrumbs. Intentional or not, they had to follow this trail wherever it led.

  “I’ll reach out first thing in the morning.” Lina set the receipt aside with care and reached for the last item on the table.

  Liam had noticed it earlier but hadn’t wanted to touch it. Even from a distance, the thing radiated wrongness. It was a single page, roughly torn along one edge as if ripped from a larger book. The parchment, not paper, looked ancient, yellowed and brittle at the edges. It seemed innocuous at first, if a bit odd, but it was what was written on it that made his inner lion recoil.

  Runes covered the page in precise, spidery handwriting. Not the clean, standardized runes he’d seen in books about Norse mythology or Celtic tradition. These were twisted, malformed things that hurt to look at directly. Between the runes were symbols he didn’t recognize, geometric patterns that seemed to shift when he wasn’t looking at them straight on, and scattered throughout were words in languages he couldn’t identify, along with sequences of numbers that followed no logical pattern he could discern. The whole thing practically hummed with dark energy.

  “Don’t touch it,” Rich hissed, his hand shooting out to stop Lina as she reached for the page.

  She froze, then slowly withdrew her hand. “You feel it too?”

  “Yeah.” Rich’s expression was grim. “That’s some old magic, right there. Dark magic. Nothing good was ever written on that page.”

  Liam carefully slid a clean piece of paper beneath the parchment, using it to lift the page without making direct contact. Even through the barrier of modern paper, he felt the malevolence radiating from it. “This was torn from a book. A grimoire, I’m guessing.”

  “A very old one, by the look of it,” Lina agreed. She’d pulled back from the table slightly, her inner lynx clearly as disturbed by the thing as Liam’s lion was. “Question is, why did Mrs. E have a page from it lying on her kitchen table?”

  “She was either studying it or preparing to use whatever spell is written there,” Rich said. He stood and walked around the table to get a different angle on the parchment, careful not to get too close. “We need an expert.”

  “Do you have anyone in mind?” Liam asked.

  Rich nodded slowly. “Mrs. Peabody. She’s one of the coven elders, and she’s been practicing for more than seventy years. Probably longer. If anyone can decipher this, it’s her. Plus, she has access to the coven’s library, which I’ve heard has books on dark magic that most modern witches have never even guessed at.”

  “Can you arrange a meeting?” Lina asked.

  “I can. She’s usually up early. I’ll call her first thing in the morning and explain the situation. She knows Liam from when they were attacked, and he led the contingent that backed us up during the battle.” Rich pulled out his phone and made a note. “Fair warning, though. She’s sharp as a tack and doesn’t suffer fools. Don’t let her little old lady looks fool you. Come prepared with questions and don’t waste her time.”

  “Understood,” Liam said. He looked down at the grimoire page again, trying to make sense of it, but the symbols seemed to writhe away from his gaze. “In the meantime, we need to secure this. Do you have anything we could store it in? Something that might contain the energy coming off it?”

  Rich thought for a moment. “There’s a wooden lockbox in the hall closet of this house. It’s lined with cotton and wool. We keep them in some of the houses for storing magical items that need to be contained. I’ve learned that natural fibers and materials are the way to go with such things.”

  “I’ll get it,” Lina volunteered, already standing.

  While she was gone, Liam studied the other papers again, making sure they hadn’t missed anything. But it was just bills and junk mail. The detritus of a fake life that Mrs. E had constructed and then abandoned.

  Lina returned with a small wooden box, its surface carved with protective symbols. She set it on the table and opened the lid, revealing a cloth-lined interior.

  Very carefully, using only the blank paper to handle it, Liam transferred the grimoire page into the box. The moment the lid closed, the oppressive feeling in the room lessened noticeably. All three of them let out simultaneous breaths of relief.

  “That’s better,” Rich muttered.

  “Much better,” Lina agreed. She looked at the receipt and the stack of bills. “So we’ve got two possible leads. The PO box in Center Moriches under the name Penelope Atwood, and that grimoire page.”

  “It’s more than we had this morning,” Liam pointed out. “And we confirmed Mrs. E was in the area recently. She might still be close by.”

  “Whatever she’s planning, that page suggests it’s nothing good.” Rich shook his head.

  Liam met Lina’s eyes across the table. Despite the exhaustion he saw there, despite the damp hair and the lingering smell of smoke and water, her gaze was steady and determined.

  “We’ll find her,” she said quietly. “Whatever it takes.”

  Rich glanced between them, a knowing look crossing his face, but he didn’t comment. Instead, he stood and stretched. “I should get back to my mate. I’ll confirm your meeting with Mrs. P in the morning after I talk to her. Give me a call after you meet with her.”

  “Will do,” Liam promised, walking him to the door.

  After Rich left, the house seemed very quiet. Liam turned to find Lina staring at the lockbox with a troubled expression.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Just thinking about what kind of spell might be on that page.” She looked up at him. “And wondering if we’re really going to be able to stop her before she casts it.”

  Liam moved closer, drawn by the worry in her voice. “We’ll stop her.”

  She smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “You sound awfully confident for someone who just almost got blown up.”

  “That’s because I’ve got a brilliant FBI agent on my team who had the good sense to grab evidence before running for her life,” he said. “We’re going to catch her, Lina. I promise you that.”

  This time, her smile was real. “I’m going to hold you to that, Kinkaid.”

  Chapter 6

  The adrenaline that had carried them through the explosion and its aftermath was clearly wearing off. Liam could see it in the slight slump of Lina’s shoulders, and the way she rubbed absently at her temple.

  “You should probably stay here tonight,” he said, walking closer to her.