“Love you.” Lark hugged Helena one last time.

“Love you too.”

Faine barely restrained himself from taking her hand but did allow a brief touch of her lower back as he guided her from the room.

Their bags were already in the car and they headed off to the airport. They didn’t have Mia to fly them this time, but they had engaged the services of another witch who’d handle the air travel for the time being.

They loaded in and Faine sat, patting the seat next to him. “You may as well relax for the next few hours. There’s nothing you can do while we’re in the air. Sleep. I have a feeling you’ll need it.”

“I have work to do.” She pulled out one of her dusty spellbooks. “There’s some old-school arcane magicks in this. We lost our ability to work this sort of magick generations ago. Like a muscle you don’t use, we got flabby. But with this power boost after the Magister, I think some of us can. And we’re going to need every weapon we can get.”

“Why do you think there’s this power boost?”

She looked up at him after she got strapped in. “I’ve thought on it a lot. Heard all sorts of theories. I think it’s that when the Magister left, all the unused magick from the Others that disappeared bled out and we soaked it up. We lost nearly half of our population worldwide. Yes, the mages stole some and the Magister too. But we generate magick by using it. There’s magick in the air and the earth. Less people to use it means more for each of us. That’s my best guess anyway. Morbid though it might be.”

He sighed. “A good enough guess.” He leaned back and closed his eyes. He didn’t need to sleep, but the quiet time to think and work things out would be welcome. There was a lot to piece through. Plus, he rarely got the chance to simply be still with her when she wasn’t bleeding or being shot at.

She put her head on his shoulder and he opened his eyes, taking in the sight. Possession roared through him. Satisfaction that she’d turned to him with a simple show of affection.

His beast pressed against the man’s flesh, flexing its claws before subsiding. Just another way she was different than any other who came before. His beast approved mightily.

There were others on the plane and she’d touched him that way. He held back a smile, settling for a kiss on the top of her head, breathing her in.

“Thank you.”

She sat back in her own seat so she could look up into his face.

“What for, Alamah?”

She smiled. “You’ve set aside your life to help with all this. You could live in Lycia and no one would try to kill you. No one would discriminate against you for being what you are.”

He chuckled at that. “Things are not as perfect in Lycia as you might imagine. We go to war. There are dominance battles all the time. I came to you covered in battle scars, remember?”

She smiled. “Well, I guess that’s true. But I . . . thank you for being there when I needed you. You’ve given me so much great advice. You’ve been someone I could turn to.”

“It is my pleasure to be there when you needed me. As for setting aside my life? Pah. This is my life. Here with you.”

“Lucky me,” she murmured, but it wasn’t sarcastic. He squeezed her hand before she went back to her book.

BY the time they’d landed Helena knew the news cycle would have begun to spin like a giant tornado. Being with Molly while they were all on the road together had taught her that much.

She turned on the news as they drove from the small airport back to the Gennessee offices. She wanted to ask Faine when they were alone why they couldn’t just use trips through the Veil to cut through all this plane travel. There was a time she actually liked to fly.

But even with private planes, which she had to admit kicked ass, it was still hours she couldn’t do stuff. Then again, it was hours she couldn’t do stuff, and she so rarely got downtime she supposed she should appreciate it.

She didn’t though. She needed to be making calls and dealing with email and all that stuff.

“Brief me,” she said to her father, who’d picked them up.

“We’ve taken the havens and are transforming some of them into guarded enclaves for the witches and Others who live outside major cities. That was a very good idea.” He winked at her and she smiled, warmed by the praise.

“I have them sometimes.”

“There are four currently operating in the Los Angeles metro area. But that’s not enough, obviously. We’ve connected with the Weres. Some of them have huge swaths of private land already. They’ve hooked up with some developers about turning some of that land into mini subdivisions that would include schools, retail, that sort of thing. Oh, and networking hubs so people can work remotely without having to leave to go in to offices. It’s not perfect, but it’s a start. It’s a boom business for developers now, which is a good thing to come out of the bad, I suppose. Rebecca is looking into buying three apartment buildings on the same block in San Diego. The Vampires have offered up some property as well.”

“Really? Well, that’s interesting.” The Vampires weren’t much for playing well with anyone else.

“Franco likes Lark. I think she drew blood at their first meeting.”

Helena laughed. “She did. I guess Simon nearly blew a gasket when she went into their nest and popped someone before they’d even gotten inside the front door.”

Faine groaned under his breath.

“So we’ve got a short-term solution for most of our people. There will be those who won’t want to leave their current homes.”

Helena nodded. “I know. It won’t be mandatory. But we can’t offer protection to everyone. It’s an option. People can take it or not. It’s not an option or a solution for every Other.” She accepted that. There was already one in Pasadena. A small subdivision had just finished the first houses. The developers were connected to the ones who created the one Faine lived in, so the new owners were all Others of one type or another. She had looked at a two-bedroom cottage-style that fit in quite nicely with the architecture in that part of the city. Maybe it was time to pull that trigger.

“Evan has been working to get a schedule up and in place to patrol each of these enclaves. The Gennessee wants you to get some law enforcement structure in place with courts and that sort of thing. If we’re stepping totally out of human law enforcement it’s going to be more complicated than what we’ve been doing so far.”

She’d already drawn up a preliminary plan the night before so she’d be sure to stop in to see Rebecca first thing and drop it off.

“I don’t see any way around it. I wish I did. If they’re not going to help us, we have to help ourselves, and that means building our own structure. Maybe I’m wrong.”

“Stop it now.” Her father’s voice was terse enough to snag her attention and make her turn to him, mouth open.

Faine leaned forward but she held her finger up to stay him.

“Stop what?”

“Now isn’t the time to second-guess yourself. You’re in charge for a reason, Helena, and it’s not because I’m your father. You’re not wrong. You’re doing what you need to to keep people safe in this new world. We can’t afford to sit around and wish things were different. They aren’t. You know that more than most anyone. You have seen things most of us haven’t. Your decisions are good and sound and you have to stop this ridiculous guilt tripping over Indio and you have to do it right now.”

Faine sat back as she thought of what to say.

“Chris Stevenson was one of their spies. He was one of my people and I had no idea he was betraying us. That’s not good decision making.”

“He is, yes. And he’s been questioned by me. He has a gambling problem. He owes a great deal of money in Las Vegas. The mages had been watching for just such a weakness and they sought him out. Once he’d helped them the first time, they used that against him. And then when the haven in Indio was taken they had him for good. No turning back when your actions cause the death of twenty-two people. He wasn’t evil. But his weakness is more than a flaw.” Her father shrugged. “This is more than a mistake. This is bone-deep selfishness that brought him to his knees and still he said nothing. Still he gambled and kept himself in debt and he continued to betray our people. That hasn’t got one thing to do with your decisions.”