Another brow arch.

"I'm serious. Take Harvard, for example. Doesn't matter where you came from originally, after three years at Harvard, it's Hah-vahd."

"So before you went to Harvard, you pronounced the 'r'?"

"No, I'm a Bostonian. It's always been Hah-vahd. Wait, the cookies are almost done."

I turned off the timer with five seconds to go, then pulled out the tray and moved the steaming cookies onto the rack.

"So let me understand this theory," he said. "If someone was from the Boston area and went to college elsewhere, he would cease to pronounce Harvard as Hah-vahd."

"Of course not. I didn't say it was a perfect theory."

He leaned back against the counter, lips curving slightly. "All right, then. Test this hypothesis. Where did I go to school?"

"Have a cookie first, before they harden."

We each peeled a cookie from the rack. After a few bites, I cleared my throat with a swig of coffee.

"Okay," I said. "I'm going to list some colleges. You repeat each one in a sentence, like 'I went to blank.' First, Yale."

"I went to Yale."

"Nope. Try Stanford."

I listed all the major law schools. One by one, he repeated them.

"Damn," I said. "It's not working. Say Columbia again."

He did.

"Yes… no. Oh, I give up. That sounded close. Is it Columbia?"

He shook his head and reached for another cookie.

"May I suggest that your logic is flawed?" he said.

"Never. Oh, okay. Like I said, it's not a perfect theory."

"I'm referring not to the theory, but to the assumption that I attended a top-tier law school."

"Of course you did. You're obviously bright enough to get in and your father could afford to send you anywhere, ergo you'd pick from the best."

Savannah appeared in the doorway, dressed in a lily-print flannel nightgown. The plastic tag still hung from the sleeve. Someone from the Coven had given her the gown for Christmas, but she'd never worn it. She must have dug it up from the depths of her closet, a concession to having a man in the house.

"I can't sleep," she said. She glanced at the rack on the counter. "I knew I smelled cookies. Why didn't you come get me?"

"Because you're supposed to be sleeping. Take one, then get back to bed."

She took two cookies from the rack. "I told you I can't sleep. They're making too much noise."

"Who?"

"The people! Remember? Mobs of people outside our house?"

"I don't hear anything."

"Because you're in denial!"

Cortez laid his empty mug on the counter. "All I hear is a murmur of voices, Savannah. Less than you'd hear if we had the television on."

"Go sleep in my room," I said. "You shouldn't hear the noise from there."

"There are people out back, now, too, you know."

"To bed, Savannah," Cortez said. "We'll reevaluate the situation in the morning and discuss taking action then."

"You guys don't understand anything."

She grabbed the last cookie and stomped off. I waited until her door slammed, then sighed.

"This is tough on her, I know," I said. "Do you think they're really keeping her awake?"

"What's keeping her awake is the knowledge that they're there."

"It would take a lot more than an angry mob to scare Savannah."

"She isn't frightened. She simply finds the idea of being trapped by humans quite intolerable. She believes, as a supernatural, she shouldn't stand for such an intrusion. It's an affront. An insult. Hearing them is a constant reminder of their presence."

"Sure, I suppose surrounding our house could be seen as an indirect threat, but no one's throwing rocks through the windows or trying to break in."

"That doesn't matter to Savannah. You have to see it from her point of view, in the context of her background and her upbringing. She's been raised-"

"Wait. Sorry, I don't mean-Do you hear that?"

"What?"

"Savannah's voice. She was talking to someone. Oh, God, I hope she's not trying to provoke-"

Leaving the sentence unfinished, I hurried to Savannah's room. When I got there, all was silent. I knocked, then opened the door without waiting for an invitation. Savannah was glaring out the window.

"Did you say something to them?" I said.

"As if."

She retreated to her bed and thumped onto the mattress. I glanced at the phone. It was across the room, untouched.

"I thought I heard you talking," I said.

Cortez appeared at my shoulder. "What spell did you cast, Savannah?"

"Spell?" I said. "Oh, shit! Savannah!"

She collapsed onto her back. "Well, you guys weren't going to do anything about it."

"What spell?" I said.

"Relax. It was only a confusion spell."

"A sorcerer confusion spell?" Cortez asked.

"Of course. What else?"

Cortez spun and disappeared down the hall, sprinting for the front door. I raced after him.

Chapter 25

SAVANNAH HAD CAST A CONFUSION SPELL ONCE BEFORE. Though I hadn't witnessed the results, Elena told me what had happened. During their escape attempt at the compound, Elena had been heading down a darkened hall to disarm a pair of guards. An elevator filled with guards responding to the alarm touched down behind her. The doors opened. Savannah cast a confusion spell. The guards started firing-at each other, at Elena, at everything in sight. She hadn't told Savannah that she'd nearly been killed, and I hadn't seen the sense in bringing it up later. Now I saw the sense.

Cortez started for the front door, then stopped and turned toward the rear.

"Wait here," he said, pulling open the back door. "I'm going to countercast."

"Can't you do that from inside?"

"I need to be at the locus of her cast, the presumed target area."

"I'll go to her window and direct you."

"No-" He stopped, then nodded. "Just be careful. If anything happens, get away from the glass."

He checked to make sure no one was looking, then ducked out. People had only begun congregating in the backyard an hour or so ago, so the crowd there was less than a third of that out front, no more than a dozen people. With the patio lights off and the additional shadow cast by the room overhang, the back door was in darkness, so Cortez was able to slip through without being seen.

I hurried to Savannah's bedroom. She was still lying on her bed, arms crossed. I moved to the window.

Cortez appeared a moment later. There must have been people out there who'd seen him escort me into the house earlier, but no one gave any sign of recognizing him now.

As Cortez slipped through the crowd, I looked over the sea of faces, searching for a sign of panic or confusion. Nothing. Cortez moved behind a couple selling cans of soda and glanced toward the window. I shifted left, positioning myself where Savannah had been. Standing on tiptoes brought me to her height.

"You're both as bad as the Elders," Savannah said. "Making a big fuss out of nothing."

I waved Cortez to the right a few steps, then motioned for him to stop. His lips moved as he countercast. When he finished, he glanced around, as if trying to determine whether the spell was broken. Yet there was still no sign that Savannah's spell had worked at all.

I motioned for him to come inside. He shook his head, waved me away from the window and headed into the crowd.

I released the curtain, but didn't step away, only shifting out of his direct view. He traversed the crowd, pausing here and there before moving on.

"I don't think it worked," I said.

"Of course it did. My spells always work."

I bit my tongue and kept my attention on Cortez. When someone shouted, I jumped. A man laughed and I followed the sound to see a couple of young men jostling one another and laughing between gulps from a paperbag-covered bottle. Guess my lawn had replaced the Belham Raceway as the leading source of community entertainment.