I pressed both hands to the bar top, fingers splayed.
“We joined together.” He slid his hands up into his hair. “I’ve never been a member of the Crow and Hammer without him. I’ve never been a member of any guild without him.”
“He’ll be back,” I whispered. “He said he’ll figure it out. He promised.”
Aaron didn’t reply, his fists clenching in his copper hair. After a long moment, he dragged his head up. “I need a drink.”
I slapped my butt, searching for my phone so I could check the time, before remembering I’d left it at home on Philip’s orders. No electronics allowed during my witchy nature ritual. But even without my phone’s clock, I knew it was nowhere near four, when the pub officially opened.
With a quick look at Aaron’s morose pallor, I decided to ignore that. “What do you want?”
“Tequila. Lots of tequila.”
I got out a pair of shot glasses and fetched a bottle of silver tequila off the back shelves. After pouring two shots to the brim, I slid one to him.
He didn’t pick up the glass. “What the hell are we going to do? Kai’s left the guild, and Ezra is …” He swore, his voice hoarsening. “What do we do?”
I took hold of his hand and pushed the shot against his palm. Then I lifted my glass to my lips and stared at him until he raised his. In unison, we tossed the liquor back. I swallowed against the burn.
“Aaron.” I set my glass on the bar and picked up the tequila bottle. “You can’t volunteer to take Felix’s shift.”
He watched me refill our shot glasses. “Why not?”
“Because we have something else to do.” I slid his shot over and lifted mine. The cold glass pressed against my lower lip. “I don’t know what we can do for Kai right now, but Ezra needs our help.”
Aaron’s fair skin lost what little color it had left, and he threw back his shot like it was the only thing keeping his stomach down—which made no sense to me. Tequila had the opposite effect on my stomach.
His glass thudded against the counter. “There’s only one thing we can do to help Ezra.”
I poured the tequila down my throat, then slammed my glass down beside his. “Bullshit. I know you and Kai looked into it years ago, but neither of you has connections to the world of black magic. Zak did—or does.” I grimaced. “Whatever. What I mean is I asked him about it.”
“What did he say?”
“He said whatever the MPD knows about Demonica—or what they admit to knowing—is the kid-gloves version. It’s the basics and nothing more. Zak said that summoners are like druids, and that master summoners guard their secrets, never revealing them to anyone but their chosen apprentice.”
Aaron clenched and unclenched his jaw. “Zak is a lying bas—”
I raised my voice over his. “I also talked to an ex-summoner from Odin’s Eye, who told me there’s no standard method of creating a demon mage, and each summoner who does it has a different technique.”
Pressing my hands to the counter, I leaned across the bar. “To unmake a demon mage, we need to know how he was made. We need to dig into the dark magic of Demonica—the scary, illegal shit that MagiPol doesn’t want anyone to know about.”
“And how will we do that?” he asked with a mutinous scowl, like I was suggesting we cancel Christmas.
I exhaled harshly through my nose. “I get it, Aaron. You don’t want to hope. You already tried everything, and you’ve been steeling yourself for this for years. It’ll just hurt more to try again and fail.”
“If you understand, then why—”
“Because I won’t ignore a chance, no matter how slim. I don’t care if the odds are one in a million. I’m going to try everything before I let you or Kai or Darius end Ezra’s life.”
He absorbed my vehement words, then huffed. “I’m not doing anything about Ezra without Kai, but Darius knows what happened. You can’t stop him from—”
“I can. I already did.”
Aaron’s eyes widened.
“I talked to him. He’s going to wait. He even cleared my shifts so we can leave immediately.”
“We—leave? What? Where?”
I splashed more tequila into my shot glass and raised it in a toast to no one. “We’ll go first thing tomorrow. I just need to arrange a few things, and talk to Kai … and Ezra.”
“Go where, Tori?”
Knowing he wouldn’t like my answer one bit, I tossed the shot back and smacked the glass down. I met his demanding glower with a steady stare.
“We’re going to Enright.”
Chapter Two
Thanks to a cold walk home, I was sober enough to hesitate as I swung open the door to my basement apartment. Poised at the top of the steps, I listened.
Silence.
And that was all kinds of wrong.
My hand went to my back pocket, where for eight months I’d carried the Queen of Spades. But my trump card was no more, and I hadn’t replaced any of my magical defenses. I didn’t even have my phone on me.
Well, if trouble was waiting for me, I’d just have to improvise. With my fists.
“Hoshi,” I whispered.
A silver shimmer. She appeared behind me, paws resting on my shoulders and nose bumping my cheek.
“Are there any fae or druids down there?”
She cocked her head, then sent me a blip of dark red. Negative. Thank goodness.
I opened the back door then slammed it shut to make it seem like I’d left the house again. With Hoshi trailing behind me, I tiptoed down the stairs, skipping the squeaky fifth step. Heart thudding with adrenaline, I crept to the bottom, crouched, and peeked down the hallway toward my living room.
There was someone in my apartment. A man sat on my sofa, his back to the hallway, but I recognized that brown hair and those broad shoulders.
The tension left me all at once. I sucked in a deep breath—then let it out in a furious shout. “Justin!”
My brother started violently and whipped around.
“What the hell are you doing in my apartment?” I snarled, my post-adrenaline-rush temper riled real good. “Did you break in? What’s wrong with you?”
“I didn’t break in,” he spluttered, shoving to his feet. “You gave me a key!”
My stomping steps faltered. Oh right. I had given him a key—back when we’d been speaking. Before I’d killed a mythic in self-defense and Justin had unilaterally decided I was a criminal in a magic street gang.
He scrabbled for something on the sofa cushions, then straightened, a cell phone in his hand. “I called you about six times. Why did you leave your phone at home?”
I strode over and snatched my phone from his hand. “Why are you here? In case you forgot, we haven’t talked since before Christmas, when you shouted at me that we weren’t family anymore and stormed out.”
He flinched.
“And,” I added, summoning more anger to hide my hurt, “you didn’t even respond to my Merry Christmas message.”
He stared at the floor, arms hanging limply at his sides.
Heaving a sigh, I headed into the kitchen. “So? What do you want?”