“Is that the pretty Fey-blood’s name?” David asked.

Hawthorne stiffened. “What did you call my sister? How did you know about that?”

“About the power in her? She fairly glows with it.” He lifted his eyes to the ceiling. “Callista. A beautiful name for a beautiful woman,” he mused aloud.

“You’ll keep your tongue between your teeth about my betrothed or I’ll cut off your tail, little mouse.” Corey’s cane found David’s shoulder, his thighs, aimed for his crotch, but David arched away before it did any permanent damage.

“Stop. Stop,” Hawthorne whined. “Don’t you see, Mr. Corey? This creature could make us our fortune.”

“What do you want to do? Sell tickets? Look at him, Hawthorne. He’s naught but a man. Who’ll pay to see that? I say we take him apart in pieces.”

“He may look human, but he’s far more. He’s Imnada. A shifter. You heard the men that brought him here. He can become a wolf with a snap of his fingers. People will definitely pay to see that. You give me twenty-four hours and a loan of a hundred pounds, and I’ll double—mayhap even triple—your initial investment in a week.”

“You’ll not wriggle out of our deal so easily. Callista’s still mine.”

Hawthorne rose from his chair. “Of course—wouldn’t hear of backing out of that part of the agreement; but there could be more. The scope staggers. Twenty-four hours for me to make some inquiries about our friend here. If I can’t make the creature pay in spades, you can feed him to the fishes.”

Corey grunted his reluctant assent, and with a final painful smash of the cane upon David’s stomach, the two of them departed.

The scrape of the key in the lock grated against his nerves. The thump of their boots on the stairs echoed in the pounding of his heart. Alone, he fought like a wild man, writhing against his bonds. Back and forth he sawed until blood oozed hot over his fingers and his breath came broken and ragged, but the silver drained his strength even as it held him fast in his human form. He could not shift. He could not escape.

He was fucking trapped.

David St. Leger was still very, very angry. But he definitely wasn’t bored.

3

“Come along to the dining room, Mr. and Mrs. Hopewell. Some tea will help you gather yourselves together.” The grieving couple followed Branston out, she dabbing at her nose, he pale but collected.

Branston closed the door behind him, leaving Callista alone to recover from her journey into death. A few deep breaths to steady the fluttering of her heart. A shot of brandy to warm her chilled and stiffened limbs. A long, unblinking stare into the heart of a candle’s bright flame to break her free of the horizon-less shadowy landscape that was Annwn. These were the techniques Mother had shown her to ensure her spirit’s full return.

A missed step, and who knew what part of her soul might remain lost within the maze of paths that led always downward into the realm of Lord Arawn, ruler of the underworld. Even Branston respected the ancient rituals enough to leave her in peace as she collected herself.

“Fools and their money, eh, Callie?”

Unfortunately Mr. Corey proved less considerate. He swaggered from behind the heavy velvet curtains drawn on rods all the way around the small room they set aside for appointments. The thick blue fabric muffled sound and light, making for better spectacle as well as simplifying her search for the border into death.

“Good trick. Giving them a song and dance about dear little Joe and his dear little pony. Almost made me want to blubber—or puke.”

She swallowed the lump in her throat. This was the third time in a week she’d been asked to find a child. She hated these requests the most. Not only were children difficult to summon but they were notoriously hard to bind long enough for conversation. And they were such delicate fluttery bright little things. She always felt as if she’d captured a firefly in a jar, its tiny body flinging itself against the glass, desperate to escape. Little Joe Hopewell had been no exception, barely offering his bereft parents a spark of comfort before he slid from her grip, to be lost within the tangle of roads leading to deeper reaches where she dared not trespass.

But it had been enough. She’d seen that as soon as she passed back through the door and into her body to find Mrs. Hopewell snuffling into her handkerchief, Mr. Hopewell’s eyes suspiciously bright.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said, picking up the first and largest of the three bells to polish it. Key had an ebony handle engraved with the sword and cauldron of Arawn. Its deep, solemn tone paired with her tracing of the proper symbols freed her powers to unlock the door between the realms of the living and the dead. Allowed her to pass through into the vast frozen tangle of paths where cold sapped the strength from her body and deadened her aching limbs. Mother had warned her never to stop moving once she entered death and never to tarry lest the demons and dark spirits find her and take advantage of her weakened state.

Unfortunately, she’d never told Callista how to avoid the monsters within her own house.

Corey came up behind her and put his hands upon her shoulders, fingers digging into her skin. “I like to watch you do your hocus-pocus act.” He leaned down to whisper in her ear, his breath hot against her cheek. “Better than a night at Vauxhall. You’ve the gift of the actress. A real showman, you are. Had them eating out of your hands.”

“Well, the show’s over.”

Doing her best to ignore him, she placed the bell in its case and picked up Summoner, the next in size and the one whose higher strident ring called and bound the spirits to her so that she might speak with them. With the pad of her thumb, she caressed the four faces carved into the ash wood handle: the maiden, the warrior, the innocent, and the priest. Ran the cloth over the aged sheen of the silver before placing it, too, in the case.

Lastly, she wiped clean Blade, the smallest of the bells but the most deadly, and her only weapon against those creatures that made the underworld their home. Its hawthorn handle was always warm to the touch, its call sharp as a soldier’s sword. If only its power to banish and disrupt worked on the living.

“You’ll find my brother in his office counting his coins,” she said. “Why don’t you go gloat over the misery of others with him and leave me alone?”

Corey spun her around to face him, leaning in close. She could smell a mix of cloves and brandy on his breath. “You think you’re better than me, don’t you? I have news for you, you’re nothing but a sideshow freak. The same as that chap locked upstairs.”

The man upstairs. David.

The name suited him. Strong yet with a touch of upper-class panache.

Unfortunately, knowing the prisoner’s name only made her feel worse about knocking him over the head and dragging him into this mess. Not to mention that had she accepted his help as it was meant, she might have made her escape. She might even be aboard a northbound coach by now. Free and clear. On her way to Scotland and Aunt Deirdre.

Safe.

“All of our kind are afflicted with powers that make us strange and different. Make us more than human.” Corey looked past her and muttered a few words of household magic, causing the candles upon a side table to burst into flame and the fire in the hearth to roar to life. “It’s what we do with them that’s the key.”

“Just because you use your powers to swindle and scam doesn’t mean I should do the same.”

She winced as he turned the same intensity of expression on her that he’d used to kindle the candles. “Those powers were all that kept me from starving when my pa chucked me out. Six years old I was, and lucky he didn’t have me tied in a sack and drowned in the river for being a monster. But I didn’t starve, did I? I succeeded. Got rich. And made sure the old man knew it, right before I gutted him like a market hog.”

She tried to edge away from him, but the table dug into her back, the chair cutting off her escape. “I didn’t know.”

His scarred face twisted in a cold look of fury. “Of course you didn’t. You think I go about advertising what I am or where I come from? You think you’re something special, but you’re not. You’re a dealer in dreams just like I’m a dealer in goods. We each use what we have the only way we can to get ahead and to hell with the stupid prats who don’t have our advantages. They deserve to be swindled.”

She dropped her gaze to her hands, the truth of his words more painful than the grip he had on her chin. “That can’t be all there is. Or the only reason for our gifts. I won’t believe it.”