He bolted off the couch.

  As he dug into the pint with a spoon, I suppressed a smile. If only all my problems could be solved so easily.

  Awkwardness abounded when our parents arrived. I got hugs, and Dad pushed some of his power into me, for which I thanked him quietly. He gave me a look that said we’d talk but turned his attention to his more problematic child.

  Dad gave Drew his best disappointed look. If it had the same effect on my bother as it had on me, he was feeling smaller than an ant.

  Lynn frowned every time she looked at Drew, but her eyes held worry and a hint of fear.

  Under the pretense of needing wardrobe advice for a date (ha! Between the case and my necromancy, that’d be an exercise in lying) I lured Lynn into my bedroom and shut the door. Before she could ask where the outfits were hiding, I gave her a big hug. “You’re a good mom.”

  She sniffled and leaned into me. “You were an easy child.”

  My memory said different, but growing up was never easy. “I refused the clan business and went to college.”

  “And that worked out, though your father credits half his gray hairs to the stress of it all.” Lynn pulled back and narrowed her eyes. “It isn’t the same.”

  To give myself time to answer, I retreated to the door and leaned against it. “It isn’t. Drew and I are different people. I knew what I wanted and badgered you and dad mercilessly. I kept at it until I found a way. Drew brooded and decided to figure it out on his own.”

  “This talk of yours is making me feel worse, not better.”

  I struggled to find the right words. “Women talk more than men, especially about their feelings. He lied, a lot, and that deserves punishment, but this isn’t your fault.”

  Mom rubbed her head. “He didn’t trust me.”

  “He didn’t trust himself, and he didn’t know how to talk about his feelings until he was caught in his own web. If he didn’t trust you, he’d have bolted as soon as I called, but he didn’t.” I shrugged. “He trusted you enough to wait here, that you’d help him.”

  “From big protective sister to mom?” She sighed and pushed off the bed. “There was a time your dad and I worried you kids would never bond.”

  “The hunting trips and picnics didn’t leave a lot of options,” I said dryly.

  She snorted. “Parental desperation to bridge two worlds.”

  “It worked, and you can help him make this work too.”

  This time, Lynn hugged me. “Smart and strong daughter.”

  I hoped so. It would take that and more to hide my necromancy.

  Mom went out to have words with Drew, and somehow, Dad cornered me. This time, the worry in his eyes was directly squarely at me.

  “Thank you.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “There’s a dead squirrel by the driveway, if you need to practice your new skill. And rest up. It’s not good for you to be so low on magic.”

  “Work’s been hard.” Not that the idea of bringing a poor squirrel back to life had great appeal, but if I wanted to control these powers, I had to practice them. “Thank you, and you’re welcome.”

  I declined a dinner invitation, which earned me a glare from Drew, and Mom and Dad started ushering him out the door. On his way out, Drew looked over his shoulder. “Have you ever really looked at that vase? Let me know if it works.” He closed the door.

  Footsteps echoed though the hall while I retreated to my bedroom. The blue glaze took on the look of the night sky with the white spots speckling it. The slender curve and lightly flared opening were far prettier than I expected out of a gift from my brother.

  I dumped the fake flowers on the floor and took a close look at the vase. The bottom and lower bit of the sides showed off smooth glaze. My eyes were drawn back to the sides, where he’d managed to give it texture and a bit of depth that almost tricked the eye into seeing shapes or movement in the clay.

  Light shone on the glaze as I turned the vase in my hands. For a moment, I thought I saw a shape etched in the clay.

  A shape or a rune?

  In the bathroom under the brightest lights in the house, I slowly pivoted the vase until I could make out the shape. Not only was it a rune, but there were dozens or even hundreds of them. With each bit I turned the vase, I found more, spanning the vase from the glaze line, up the side, and curling around the inside of the rim.

  When I found the starting point, inside the mouth of the vase, I started the painstaking process of reading the runes. Five lines in, a shiver ran up my spine.

  I dug my phone out of my pocket and texted my brother, asking where he’d found the spell. I added a request for him to call me later, but doubted he’d get a chance for a few hours.

  It took me an hour to work my way through the entire spell. Drew still hadn’t texted me back, so I pulled up a few drops of my magic, which was all I could spare. One went into the runes. They glowed as the spell settled through the clay. I let the other two drops fall into the vase.

  They spread out over the bottom of the vase, moving around as if they were drops of water. Cool.

  Now, could I extract them?

  I poked my finger through the center of the opening, and the magic rose up and slid into me. Extra cool.

  When I got him on the phone, I’d have to praise him and scold him for mucking about with spells. Then thank him again and buy him some clay. He’d managed to turn this vase into a magic depository. When I had extra energy, I could drain some into here and withdraw when I needed to recharge, like today.

  But, I couldn’t keep something like this next to my bed. What if I knocked it off in the middle of the night? Vase cradled against my chest, I opened a padded compartment on my apothecary’s cabinet and settled the vase inside. Next time I had extra energy, it would be easy enough to get to and far less likely to be broken accidentally.

  My phone rang, and I closed the compartment before answering. “Pine.”

  “Does it work?” Drew demanded.

  “Where did you get the spell?” I owed it to Mom and Dad to add a little scolding in before the praise.

  “Found Dad working on translating it. When he finished, I took a picture of the original and the translation. As soon as I read it, I had to try making a pot with it. I thought you’d notice when I gave it to you, but you didn’t, so I figured it didn’t work. It wasn’t until today I realized it might not feel like a spell until it was activated. Did it work?” He stopped to breathe.

  “First, you shouldn’t mess with spells. They can hurt you.” He made a rude noise, and I smiled. “And yes, it worked!”

  “What? Really?”

  “Yes, really. Do you know how much something like that sells for?” As soon as the words left my mouth, I regretted it. We had enough of the wrong type of attention on our family without him selling rune-etched pottery.

  “No.” He drew the word out. “What… you make it sound valuable.”

  “If you could get the license to sell that stuff, thousands of dollars.” I hated to crush a bit of his dream, but it was my fault for mentioning it to begin with. “But you’ll have to see where Dad got the spell and what he thinks about you selling pottery like that. With two of us being witches, it wouldn’t do to have the clan think we were using our abilities without their approval, and you really do need the license.”

  “Okay. Let me think about it, but I promise I’ll talk to dad before I make another.”

  “Thank you, and nice work, Drew.”

  “Can’t believe it worked.” He sucked in a deep breath. “Mom’s yelling for me. Bye, sis.”

  My part of the shared joy faded. Drew had helped me solve my energy management problem, but Dad had offered a way to address a much more dangerous aspect of my life.

  With the last of the sunlight fading, I went out into the driveway to find a dead squirrel. A little death, a little magic. What could go wrong?

  Chapter Seventeen

  Randolf had spent years creating a garden behind the house. Pathways snaked through flower beds and around trees. In the far back corner, an ornamental cherry tree and a tall fence separated this property from the neighbors. A trellis covered in wisteria effectively shielded this corner from the house and garden.

  With a bag of salt, a steel knife, and the cold touch of my necromancy flowing through me, I set down the shovel and its occupant. For having been hit by a car, the squirrel looked pretty good, but death had its own signs, and even in these early stages, they were less kind.

  I scanned the area. As far as I could tell, I was alone with the squirrel for now. “Sorry little guy. You deserved better.”

  Hoping no one noticed me out here, I pushed my slowly regenerating pool of magic to the side. Cold tendrils of my necromancy rose to my hand. Directing the flow of power with my wand, I focused on the squirrel. “Eair Deyr.”

  The necromancy jumped from my wand to the squirrel. It twitched, rolled to its feet, and sprinted around the yard. Afraid it would strain its decomposing body, I tried a command. “Stop.”

  The squirrel froze, front paws on the base of a tree, tail curled.

  “Come here, slowly.” I held my breath, not sure it would work.

  Sure enough, the squirrel dashed in my direction. When it was a foot away, I gave it another command. “Get on the shovel.”

  It did.

  Breathe in, and focus. “Deyr.”

  The squirrel fell over, and the necromancy that had been in it faded away. I sprinkled salt on it and tapped it with the knife to be sure, but it was dead.

  Before I could celebrate intentionally raising something from the dead and retiring it to true death, I picked up the shovel. The sun was down and the streetlights far enough apart it wouldn’t be too easy to tell what I was doing, unless the person watching had really good night vision. My luck held, and I returned the squirrel to where I’d found it without incident. After that, it was easy enough to return the shovel to the tool shed.

  Back in my apartment, I leaned against the door, taking deep breaths. Undead, following my orders, and dead again, with my necromancy happily back into its spot. Now that I had a feel for how to use my power intentionally, it should be easier to control.

  Yup, helping my brother and practicing forbidden magics was exactly what Smith had in mind when he’d sent me home early.

  At this rate, I’d stop recognizing my alarm clock and only wake up if my phone rang. “Pine.” I put as much sourness in my voice as I could.

  “How do you feel about a stakeout?” Harris asked.

  “I feel like you sound too awake and too happy for this hour.” I pulled the phone away from my face. “Narzel. It’s one in the morning. Why?”

  “Stakeout. You know, we wait and try to spot the bad buy.”

  “Do I have a choice?” I threw off the covers and sat up.

  “Smith said you might be resting, so yes, but I don’t have the magic to fix this werewolf.”

  Legs dangling over the edge of my bed, I focused inward. My well of magic had regenerated faster than I’d expected. “I’m at half capacity, so I can do it. But next time you plan on waking me up at an uncivilized hour, you should warn me first.”

  “I have tea and scones.”

  It was a good bribe. “Where are we meeting?”

  Practice had given me a better middle of the night routine than I’d ever wanted to develop. On my way out, I waved to Randolf, who was working in the garden again. He didn’t mention the squirrel, so if he’d noticed anything he was keeping it secret.

  The one thing I had to admit was nice about this hour was the lack of traffic, which was how I made it to work in near record time. On Harris’s request, I detoured past the lab, got out the deer blood, and put together a tracking spell to look for deer with similar but not identical blood. Satisfied with my work, I tidied up and went to the parking lot.

  True to his word, Harris was waiting for me, leaning against the car with a box and giant travel cup. “Scones or tea first?”

  I took the box of scones from him. “You drive, I eat.”

  “Deal. Which way is the charm pointing?” he asked as he unlocked the car.

  I shoved everything but my travel mug, the charm, and the precious scones in the back seat. “Nowhere.”

  He grinned. “Good.” Meaning the werewolf hadn’t attacked another deer yet.

  Not caring where Harris thought we should do our stakeout, I bit into a scone oozing cinnamon flavor.

  “You’ll get crumbs in the car.”

  “In my world, vacuums take care of such things.”

  He grinned and kept driving.

  All that was left of the scone was the hint of flavor I was busy licking off my fingers when I recognized the area of this morning’s crime scene. “Why here?”

  “He’s hunting like an animal: pick a territory and stay for a while. Move when there’s a reason. I don’t know what made him move over here, but he did, so I think he’ll hunt here again tonight.” Harris drove past the strip mall, which still had police tape around it. He took a right and pulled into the empty parking lot of an older car wash.

  “So, we’re close enough that when the charm gives a direction, we can get there.” That sounded good in theory. “How are the two of us supposed to stop him?”

  Harris shrugged. “Tonight, I’d settle for both of us getting a good look at him. Capture or even kill is a secondary objective. We’re hunting something we’ve never seen before. More information would help.”

  Sure, if CJ didn’t decide to hunt us instead of the deer. “Just one more question.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “You told me you were in the forensics department. Why are you in the field now?” Transfers like that weren’t common. It had been part of the challenge when creating my position.

  The easy smile faded. “I wanted to be in forensics, but I’m good in the field.”

  Not the answer I’d been looking for, but I also hadn’t intended to upset him. I held out the box. “Want a scone?”

  “Why raisin?”

  Harris leaned his head against the window. “We’re supposed to be looking for CJ.”

  “The charm hasn’t found anything. I don’t feel anything, and I can’t see anything. So, why would someone put raisins in scones?” When he didn’t so much as twitch, I prodded him. “You interrupted a lovely night’s sleep. The least you can do is entertain me.”

  “I gave you too much caffeine, didn’t I?” Harris groaned.

  “Just the right amount to keep me awake.” I pumped my voice full of as much cheer as I could.

  He groaned again.

  I took pity on him. “Thank you for the scones and tea. Well, not the raisin, but the rest.”

  “Welcome. Now can we look for CJ?”

  The charm resting on my leg still wasn’t showing anything. And while peering out the window hadn’t been too bad for the first hour, witches didn’t have fabulous night vision. Unless CJ was right at the window or in front of a light, I wasn’t likely to see him. I had switched from regular vision to magic sight, which told me the bug repellent spells on the strip mall were fading. “I never stopped.”

  For the next excruciatingly slow twenty minutes, I divided my attention between the charm and what little I could see outside the car.

  “Did you see that?” Harris leaned forward and pointed out the windshield.

  “I see darkness.”

  “Three, no, four deer.”

  “Huh. I would’ve thought they’d stay away from where one of their own was killed.” I still couldn’t see the deer, but a flash of color in the woods drew my eyes. Was that a spell?

  “No sign of CJ.”

  The spells reappeared, moving faster than my eyes could track toward something in the field. The charm on my leg flared to life. “He’s here.”

  “I see him.”

  For the first time, I was happy to have the cover of darkness. I didn’t need to see CJ devouring a deer, and what my magic sight showed was far more interesting anyway.

  The blood magic radiating off him came from an intersection of two spells and CJ himself. The original purpose of the stimulant spell was lost, but it continued to force his body to stay in a heightened state. A knot of magic unlike anything I’d ever seen tied the stimulant magic into the blood magic.

  Mixed with those, and threaded through every part of CJ, was another spell. When I tried to get a good look at it, it slid away, but it drew its power directly from the werewolf before mixing with the other spell. That one fed into the knot of magic, supplying it with energy from CJ.

  Werewolves’ bodies had adapted to house both the wolf and human. That gave them better senses and some other advantages over witches, but it didn’t give them the energy-channeling abilities we had.

  “Narzel’s bones.” And that was why all of this was so hard to figure out. CJ had to eat constantly to maintain the energy flow, and even so, it was slowly burning him up. How all of that had been twisted into blood magic was a different question. One that I suspected had something to do with the spell I couldn’t get a good read on.

  “What?” Harris whispered.

  “There’s another spell.”

  “So?”

  “With the way they interact, it’ll take a full ritual to hold and cleanse him.” If that would even work. I chewed on my lip. It should, but blood magic was strange. Almost as strange as my necromancy eating the blood magic. “Or kill him.”

  “Let’s call that Plan B. It’s hard to get answers from dead werewolves.”

  I pressed my lips together to hold back a laugh. Not as hard as he thought.

  CJ moved around, this time slowly enough that my eyes could follow. He stopped, but without better visuals, I couldn’t be sure where.

  Beside me, Harris tensed.

  CJ blurred again, this time coming toward us. The next thing I knew, the glass was falling on me, and claws dug into my shoulder.

  I blasted raw magic in CJ’s face. He jerked back as his body absorbed the power, but he released my shoulder, which was all I needed. “Sowil.” The containment spell would slow him down.