I heard the higher-pitched voice of a woman. “Scream for me, human, scream for me!”

Julian’s voice came thick and low with effort. I knew the sound of strain in his voice as he fought not to scream. “No.” He said it calmly and clearly.

Steve’s voice rose. “No, Bitter. If you kill him, she won’t make you big.”

Her voice was a high-pitched whine now. “I’ll just cut this part off. He won’t miss it.”

“If you hurt him too badly there won’t be anything to save,” I said, and it was my voice’s turn to be emotional. Fuck.

“Bitter, you want to be big, don’t you?”

“Yes.” And her voice was already changing. “Oh, God, what have I done? Where are we? What’s happening? Steve, what’s happening?”

“You need to come tonight. No police or he dies. No guards or he dies.”

“They won’t let me come without guards. I’m pregnant with their children. They won’t let me come alone.” We’d already had that talk days ago, and Galen had won this one point. If the bad guys called and wanted me to meet them alone I wouldn’t do it.

Bittersweet was crying, and from the sound of it she was on his shoulder near his ear as she sobbed. At least this side of her personality wouldn’t hurt Julian. In fact, I raised my voice and said, “Bittersweet, it’s Princess Meredith. Do you remember me?”

“Princess Meredith,” she said and her small voice was closer to the phone, “why are you on the phone with Steve?”

“He wants me to make you bigger.”

“Yes, like you did for Royal,” she said and her voice was calming as she talked more.

“He says if I don’t do it he’ll kill my friend.”

“He just wants us to be able to love each other.”

“I know, but he says that you’ll torture my friend if I don’t do it.”

“Oh, I could never …” and then she saw something and started to make little screams. “Blood, blood on me, what did I do? What’s happening?” Her voice got farther away and Steve was back on the phone.

“I need you to meet us tonight, Princess.”

“She needs help, Steve.”

“I know what she needs,” he said, and again there was emotion in his voice.

“Let Julian go.”

“You should have guarded your friends and lovers better, Meredith.”

I started to say that Julian wasn’t my lover but Doyle touched my arm and shook his head. I trusted his judgment and said, “Believe me, Steve, I know we screwed up.”

“Meet us tonight. You can bring two guards, but if I sense that they’re casting spells then I will shoot your lover in the head. He’s human; he won’t heal.”

“I know he’s human,” I said.

“With all the talent in your bed, why take a human?” he asked.

I thought that wasn’t an idle question for Steve. “He’s my friend.”

“Do you love him?”

I hesitated because I wasn’t sure which answer would keep Julian safest.

Doyle nodded.

“Yes,” I said.

“Then come with just two guards and it can’t be the Darkness or the Killing Frost. If I see either of them I’ll just shoot him.”

“Okay, I won’t have them with me as my guards. Now where do I meet you?”

He gave me an address. I wrote it down on the paper that Frost brought from the bedside, and repeated it to him so there wouldn’t be a mistake. Lives have been lost over a transposed number more than once.

“Be here at eight. By eight-thirty we’ll assume you’re not coming and I’ll let Bitter do what she wants to him.” He lowered his voice and whispered, “You saw the last bodies. She’s getting better at killing. She enjoys it now. She’s picked her illustration and it’s not from a child’s book.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s a textbook, a medical textbook image. Don’t be late.” The phone went dead in my hand.

“Did you hear that last part?” I asked.

They had.

“Fuck, I didn’t think Julian was in danger. Why him?”

“That day you snuggled up to him on the street they must have been watching,” Rhys said.

“There were police wizards at the scene. Rhys, he might have been working his own crime scene.”

“Makes sense.”

“And if they were watching the house they know he stayed over and didn’t leave until morning,” Doyle said.

“He’s been living with another man for more than five years. Why wouldn’t they assume he was sleeping with one of you?”

“Because Steve Patterson is heterosexual and he’ll think girl before he thinks boy because of it,” Rhys said.

“A medical textbook. She’s going to butcher him.”

Rhys leaned in the doorway as Frost and Doyle looked at each other. “The question is, are they already at this address or will they move Julian to the meeting spot?” Rhys said.

“Do we tell Lucy? Do we tell the police?” I asked.

The men exchanged a look. Doyle said, “If we don’t bring the police in we can simply kill them. They don’t want me at your side, that’s fine. I am the Darkness. They won’t see me until it’s too late.”

“If we just plan to kill them, it’s easier,” Rhys said, “simpler.”

“What gives Julian the best chance to get out of this alive and whole?” I asked.

They exchanged a look among them again. “No police,” Doyle said.

Rhys nodded. “No police.”

Frost hugged me, and whispered it into my hair. “No police.”

And just like that the plan changed again. We wouldn’t call the police. We’d just kill them. I should have been human enough to be bothered by that, but I kept hearing Julian’s voice over the phone and her voice asking him to scream for her. I kept seeing their victims. I remembered my dream with Royal dead in it. I thought about what they planned on doing to Julian and might be doing to him right this minute. I didn’t feel bad as we planned how to find the address, scout it undetected, and decide how best to save Julian. If we could take them alive, we would, but we only had one priority: Julian as unhurt as possible, and the only dead: Steve and Bittersweet. Beyond that it was all fair game.

Rhys was right. It was much simpler.

Chapter Fourty-five

The address was a house in the hills. It was a nice house, or had been before the bank got it and the housing market crashed. Apparently our serial killers were squatting in the house. I wondered what they’d do if the estate agent brought prospective buyers around unexpectedly. Probably best that that didn’t happen.

Sholto came back to L.A. He was the Lord of That Which Passes Between. The tree line and the yard of the house was a between place, just like where the beach met the ocean, or where a cultivated field abutted a wild place. He could bring more than a dozen soldiers to the edge of the yard itself. But that was as close as he could get. Doyle had been in charge of scouting the area and had found the house thick with magical wards. They might be crazed serial killers but they knew their magical wards. It was a mix of human and fey magic, as good as any he’d seen in years, which was high praise.

It meant we would have to be inside the wards and just trust that either we wouldn’t need Sholto and his backup, or that we could stall until they smashed through the walls. He was going to bring the Red Caps because the magical wards wouldn’t stop them. They’d just avoid the windows and doors, which were the most heavily warded, and make new doors in the walls themselves where there were no wards. Demi-fey were strong, but they didn’t think about that kind of brute force any more than humans did. It was an edge for us, but we needed more.

Frost was coming with Sholto and the Red Caps. Doyle would go in ahead with Cathbodua and Usna, who were the other two guards about whom he actually said, “They hide almost as well as I do. I would trust them to do this.” Again, high praise.

The question was, who would go in as my two overt guards? Barinthus asked to go. “I have failed you, Merry. I have been arrogant and unhelpful, but for this I am ideal. I can take more damage than even most of the sidhe. I have used diplomacy for centuries but it’s not because I lack skill with any weapon.” Doyle had backed him on that.