“This is stupid,” Alan grumbled, and I twisted around in my seat to stare at him.

“You know what’s stupid? You. You’re stupid, Alan.”

“I am not,” he snapped back. “I passed my classes with an A- average.”

I looked across at Corb. “How? How are you two related?”

He reached across the seat and carefully took my hand. “Really, we’re not all that related if you think about it. We’re, like, half cousins. Please don’t hold it against me.” He was grinning as he spoke, and I grinned back.

“I see now why you’re the black sheep of the family. Full of sex magic and naughtiness. Not much of a fit with all those lawyers and doctors on Alan’s side.” I laughed and Corb joined me. Alan did not laugh, which only made me laugh harder.

We pulled up to the front of Gran’s house less than a minute later. From the corner of my eye, the Sorrel-Weed house seemed to shimmer, the bricks turned dark once more. That was where Gran’s and my parents’ stuff was, along with the goblin coin. Damn it, I was going to have to get it back at some point. I let myself out of the car and scrambled forward into the front yard where I felt safe.

Robert stood swaying under the oak tree, his head hanging low. “Friend. Safe?”

“Hey, Robert. Yeah, I’m okay. You okay? That was a lot of whiskey.”

He reached out and tapped a skeletal finger against the oak tree. “Friend.”

I nodded, not sure what he was referring to exactly. That he’d had a good sleep under the tree? That he thought the tree was his friend?

“Anyone home?” I asked Robert, already knowing he couldn’t answer me.

Alan strode past me and down the street. “I’m going to my room—Jesus, what is that?”

I twisted around to see him staring at the Sorrel-Weed house. “You mean the demon watching you from the windows?”

Alan squeaked and scuttled backward until he was partway up the stairs to Gran’s house.

Corb stepped up next to me and Robert let out a grumble that could have been a laugh at Alan’s expense, or irritation at how close Corb was to me. Corb didn’t see him, though, so there was that. We both turned as the rumble of a familiar motorbike cut through the evening.

I stepped out from under the low-hanging Spanish moss first and saw Sarge getting off his bike. Tom had already climbed off and was heading for the small front gate.

“Trouble already?” Tom grinned. I smiled back.

“Are you allowed to help me? I mean, I don’t want to get you in trouble right along with me.”

Tom waved a hand in front of his face as if he smelled something bad. “I can see the spell attached to you from here. Easy to remove.”

I blinked a few times. Something about there being a spell on me didn’t sit right, didn’t feel right and I couldn’t put my finger on it. What was it?

“It is? Don’t you need the envelope the spell came from?” I really didn’t want to go into the Sorrel-Weed house anytime soon. Especially in the dark. I mean, it was important to know who’d killed my family, and Grimm would probably want his coin back, but I did not want a repeat with the blood-born demon.

“Well, no, you don’t need the item that the spell came from.” Tom paused, and his dark eyes held me in place. “It’s a subtle spell—the kind of minor manipulation that the average person wouldn’t notice.” His dark eyes were serious as he drew close and dropped his hands onto my shoulders. A smell of burnt toast filled the air as he whispered words that made no sense, more like sounds than words, and his magic curled around me, sinking into my skin and sticking to the inside of my nose.

I sneezed and wiped at my face. “Okay, what now? Blood of a unicorn? Sacrifice a werewolf’s hide?”

Sarge ignored the jab. He was too busy looking around the yard as if he wanted to pee on something. I opened my mouth to warn him off the oak tree and ended up sneezing again. A chunk of something dark flew through the air and splatted on the ground. For all I knew, it was leftovers from the Sorrel-Weed house encounter.

“What the hell is that?” I spat a few times, tasting burnt toast even though I hadn’t eaten anything of the sort.

Tom winked and stepped back, pulling a small pouch from his pocket. He opened it up, pinched something between thumb and forefinger, then sprinkled black dust onto the gob of . . . whateverthehellitwas. “That’s it. It truly wasn’t a bad spell, just one that was meant to deter you. Which it was doing easily.”

Only I wasn’t fully convinced, still feeling weird about a spell being on me that wasn’t really on me. I looked at Tom, but he was already looking away from me. Not meeting my eyes, which was confusing. “Tom?”

“Look, you can owe the Hollows a favor for me helping you, how about that?” He smiled at me, but it was strained around the edges. As if he didn’t want to say it.

My head was shaking of its own volition, mostly because I couldn’t stop staring at what now looked like a slug shriveling up under some salt. That was in me? Gross. “But that makes no sense, does it? I mean, deterring me is one thing, but—”

Tom patted my shoulder. “You didn’t really want to open the paperwork. Something about it worried or scared you?”

I gave a reluctant nod. “Yeah, something like that.” Still, something wasn’t adding up, but Tom talked right over my thoughts.

“Some spells aren’t meant to be big and loud. Simple ones can be more effective than powerhouse curses or spells. Because you don’t sense them, and they align with your own hidden thoughts and inclinations. I’ve seen people with spells on them for years without realizing it. Sometimes they think they’re haunted, but they aren’t. Just spelled.” Tom gave my shoulder a squeeze when I shivered. “Trust me, this was not a bad one. Effective, but not bad.”

The real question was why that paperwork would have a deterrent spell on it. Who was trying to keep me from finding out about Gran’s and my parents’ deaths?

“Any idea who did it?” I asked. “I mean, I assume it was someone who had something to do with their deaths, but a name would be great.”

Tom sighed. “I can’t trace magic like that. Sometimes the spell bears someone’s signature style, and it’s obvious, but not in this case. Though you could ask Missy. She’s better at tracing spells than I am.”

I wrinkled my nose. “I’ll put that low on the priority list, thanks.”

Corb, who’d stood quietly beside me the whole time, finally spoke up. “So she’s okay? It really wasn’t bad?”

Tom grinned and looked from Corb to me and back again. “She’s fine, Corb.”

Holy crap, was he that worried about me? I felt the tension in him slide away with Tom’s words, and a terrible warm, fuzzy feeling suffused me. The spell hadn’t been a big deal, but Corb hadn’t known that. And that was why he’d gone out of his way to get Tom over here.

I squeezed his hand. “Thanks.”

Corb didn’t let me go. “I don’t want to lose you, Bree.”

The hum of power under his skin whispered to me, and the smell of the ocean tugged on me. I bit the inside of my lip and pulled my hand away. I wasn’t sure what to think about the possibility of him and me . . . not when Crash was in the picture. Not when Alan was in the damn picture, for that matter.

Behind me, Robert grumbled. “Friend.” I twisted around to him. He pointed at Sarge.

Sarge was across from us, sniffing the air, and I grimaced at the thought that he might be smelling Roderick. I couldn’t say why, but I didn’t feel like explaining my dealings with the council. “What are you smelling?” I asked.

“Goblins.”

That one word from Sarge—goblins—was not unexpected. I shook my head, relief flowing through me. “I have a goblin neighbor, Bridgette. She came over here earlier.” Or so I recalled from my drunken haze.

Sarge shook his head again, nostrils flaring and the muscles across his chest flexing with the deep breaths he was taking. “No, there were a lot of them—a full mob by the way it smells. Way more than should be anywhere this far into Savannah.”

“A mob of goblins?” Tom asked. “There hasn’t been anything like that in Savannah in years. New Orleans, yes, but that’s a whole other ball of wax and trouble.”

A niggling bite of fear had my feet moving toward the front door of the house. I’d warned everyone, but my friends could be stubborn. What if they’d come back anyway?

Just in case, I headed up the stairs and into the house, shouting, “Eric, Feish? Suzy? Kink?”

No answer.

My stomach rolled, although I wasn’t sure why—if they hadn’t come home, they wouldn’t be there to answer, right? Still, something felt wrong.

I picked up speed, heading straight up the stairs to the bedrooms. “Gran, have you seen anyone?”

“No,” she answered quietly. “No one has been here since they were taken. The spider did not stop them.”

I skidded to a stop, grabbing at the banister railing on the second landing. “What did you say?”

Her image was wispy and faded in and out as she walked toward me. “They were taken.”

Only . . . only this wasn’t Gran as I knew her, but a younger version. Like she was aging in reverse and was now closer to fifty rather than a late seventy year old. Was that possible? What was happening to her?

Her image stuttered as if she were on a projection screen that had suddenly hit a rough patch. Her voice was soft, and she kept her eyes low. “They took them all, Bree, and you are the only one who can save them.”

20

I wanted to grab the ghostly version of my now youthful Gran and shake her until her teeth rattled, but of course that was impossible. I settled for snapping my fingers at her, which had worked rather well with Alan’s ghost. Her eyes flew upward so her gaze met mine, hard and flinty with a steel that age had mellowed in her.