For a moment I stared at the empty room, not comprehending. Then, one at a time, the details sank in: the seal with its complicated geometry interrupted by scorch marks, the red stains on the floor and the walls, the strangely astringent scent of ozone, and—most notably—the absence of Ro.

"What have you done?" I whispered, turning slowly to face Lucian. "What have you done to him?"

Lucian's expression was difficult to read. In a calmer state, I might have thought he looked nearly as shocked as I felt, but all I registered was his failure to answer me within an acceptable five second time-frame.

My emotions had been through a lot in the last few hours, and this was one thing too much. Something inside me snapped as my fear hit capacity and ignited into rage. With a somewhat shrill cry of, "What have you done to Ro, you fucking bastard!?" I hurled myself at Lucian with the full intention of beating the answer out of him with my fists.

He caught me easily, his hands closing around my wrists as firmly as the silver cuffs, and I struggled in his grasp like a small child throwing a tantrum.

Still, slight though I was, I'd taken him by surprise and my emotional firestorm lent me more strength than I usually possessed. With repeated and half-incoherent demands that he tell me what he'd done to my daemon, I got a hand free and reached for his throat. The scars covering my skin like a lacy glove glowed with green fire, and Lucian's dark eyes widened with alarm.

Reflexively, he caught my wrist again, and then hissed with pain and released me, staggering back a pace and staring at a red and blistered palm. Meanwhile, the air stirred to life and an unnatural wind rushed about the room and through the house, picking up speed until it roared with a hurricane howl, swishing curtains, knocking pictures from the walls, and sending unseen thing smashing to their doom.

"Ellie!" Lucian shouted over the din as his slicked-back hair whipped into a wild mess. "Ellie, stop this now! I haven't—"

Ignoring him, I lunged forward again, but this time he saw me coming. With the practiced grace of a man who knows his opponent is beneath him, he evaded my attack and struck me with the back of his hand.

It wasn't a hard blow, but with my mind and heart already in chaos, it was just enough to tip the balance too far. Now thoroughly overwhelmed, my nervous system activated its final, nonsensical defense, and pulled the plug. My vision darkened, I fell, and a small, strangely calm corner of my mind noted, almost absently, that I would be unconscious before I hit the ground.

❧

I came to lying on a couch. Quiet voices spoke nearby. One I recognized as Lucian's; the other was a mellow, lightly accented tenor. Footsteps approached and I raised myself a little as Lucian and another man came into view.

The stranger was tall and lean, with short brown hair, an angular face and a long, straight nose. He looked to be about thirty, and wore black slacks, a cream-colored shirt, and a brown vest. His dark eyes held an expression of keen attention and curiosity, but the rest of his expression remained carefully bland. There was something of the guard dog about him, and I could guess who he was without having to be told.

"Ellie. How are you feeling?" Lucian asked cautiously.

His hair was back in its usual neat style, but a bandage wrapped his right hand. We were in a different room than the one he'd first brought me to, and with a quick glance I took in what looked almost like a large, open apartment, with a desk and bookshelves, a sitting area, and another area occupied by a large bed.

"These are my personal chambers," he explained, noting my gaze. "I keep most of my important documents here. And this is Chester," he added, gesturing at the other man, "my familiar."

Chester bowed from the waist, expression unchanged.

I sat up a little more, and Lucian raised his bandaged hand.

"As for Ro," he said, eyeing me warily, "I don't know what has happened to him or where he is, but I intend to find out. My best guess at the moment is that someone summoned him by force—someone very powerful, though not, I think, so powerful as yourself."

He paused, studying me, perhaps waiting to see if I would fly into a mindless rage once more, and then relaxed a little when he saw that I would not. I touched my cheek as a slight, stinging pain demanded my attention, and discovered a small bandage there.

"A cut from my ring," Lucian said, holding up his hand. "It was not my intention to harm you, but in the moment I wasn't sure what else to do. I've never seen magic like that before. Although..."

He narrowed his eyes at me.

"You don't happen to have been here once before, do you? At my sister's wedding, perhaps?"

I winced and sank back against the pillows as a sickening wave of dizziness washed through me. "Yeah. That was me. Sorry about your dogs."

Lucian arched a brow. "They were hardly pets, but they were rather expensive and difficult to acquire. That aside, what were you doing here? You can hardly have been a guest if, as you explained, you only discovered the existence of this world within the last few weeks."

"I wasn't a guest," I murmured, shutting my eyes against another round of dizziness. "I was helping one of the caterers. The cupcake lady, Evangeline."

"Cupcake lady?"

At his sharpened tone, I opened my eyes again and sat up quickly, realizing I might have inadvertently gotten Evangeline in trouble.

"She had nothing to do with me being here," I hastened to explain. "Helping her was just my—Ro's and my—excuse to look around. We were hoping to find clues about my dad. We overheard Al saying you and my dad were researching angels, so we snuck in here to investigate. Then your dogs..."

I winced again.

"Chased you and got their tails handed to them on a smoking platter. Never mind that." Lucian turned to his familiar. "You handled the catering, Chester. You know this 'Evangeline?'

The other man shook his head. "One your sister must have arranged, master."

Lucian frowned. "My sister can hardly arrange to get herself out of bed in the morning. Find out who hired her."

"Yes, master," Chester murmured with a bow, and left the room.

Lucian rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "You know this 'Evangeline' well?" he asked.

"No, not really. She has a shop across from—" I stopped myself, and Lucian's arched brows lifted again.

Explaining Evangeline would be difficult without mentioning Janelle, and Lucian confused me.

On the one hand, he'd held me at gunpoint, kidnapped me, threatened my life, and hit me. On the other, he'd let me go, hadn't hurt me (apart from the backhand slap, which I couldn't really blame him for, considering), and had even put a tiny bandage on my cut (or at least told his familiar to do so, which seemed more likely).

If he wanted to kill me, he'd have done so, and if he wanted information, there were quicker and less pleasant ways of extracting it. Then again, he seemed very serious about his job, which was to uphold witch-law and the tenants of witch society, and Janelle was breaking and defying each respectively. The last thing I wanted was to bring trouble on the head of someone who had helped me.

"She has a shop across the street from the people I'm staying with," I said at last, and hoped that it would satisfy. "What about Ro? Can you summon him back?"

Lucian studied me for a moment before answering. "I could try; but I believe you yourself would have a better chance. He is your daemon, after all. However, I advise against it. Whoever summoned him was able to do so despite all my wards and seals; calling him back from wherever he's been taken could be dangerous—for you as well as him.

"I have to try," I said, pushing myself into a more upright position. "I can't do nothing. None of this would have happened if he wasn't wearing that collar, and he's wearing it for me."

"Collar or no collar, the root of the problem is that someone incredibly powerful knows Ro's name. Any idea who that might be?"

I shake my head and hear the edge of despair in my voice. "Ro told me only three people knew his name: me and two others he trusts. Then we found out whoever killed my dad knows it, and if that's not you, then... at least one other person."

Lucian's expression turned guarded and thoughtful, but he said nothing more. A moment later, Chester returned.

"There's no record of anyone hiring an 'Evangeline,' master," he said. "I'm quite certain I did not. Perhaps a friend of the bride or groom made the arrangement."

"What about the wedding cake?" I asked, perking up a little. "Doesn't the bride usually pick something like that out herself?"

Chester nodded. "It was flown in from a place in LA."

I frowned. "No it wasn't. Evangeline made it. She delivered it, at least. I helped her carry it in."

Lucian regarded me with a deep frown.

"Ellie, I do believe you've been keeping bad company. Whether by coincidence or design, 'Evangeline' may have had more to do with your being here on the day of my sister's wedding than you believe. If she was able to infiltrate a wedding, where else might she have done the same? The last council meeting your father attended, for example, at which you tell me he was poisoned via baked goods."

I shook my head again even as I raised my hands and studied the latticework of scars marring my skin.

"That can't be. If she knew about Ro, then she'd have known about me—especially after what I did to your dogs. She's had plenty of opportunity to kill me if that's what she intended."

"If that is what she intended," Lucian repeated firmly. "Until we understand the motive, we won't understand the crime."

"That sounds like something Al would say." I sniffed and wiped my eyes as a new wave of guilt and sorrow overtook me. "Poor Al, and poor little Peetie. And poor Tobin. He doesn't even—"

I cut myself off as a new thought occurred to me, and raised my eyes to Lucian's once more.

"Tobin!" I exclaimed in a breathless whisper. "Al's former daemon! He disappeared a few days ago. If we can't summon Ro, we could try summoning him. Maybe he knows something."

"You know his true name?" Lucian asked, interest quickening his tone.

I bit my lip, and then decided to take the risk, and to accept whatever consequences came of it.

"No," I said, "but I know who does."