“—but I’m fine.” I dug my wallet out of my pants pocket, flipping through it until I found Danny’s business card. “Well, you can’t take my car, since it’s sort of ashes right now, but we can call for a nonmortal cabbie. It’ll just take him a little while to get here.” I smiled, rather sharply. “You can tell Sylvester why we had to put a round trip from San Francisco on his tab.”

“Doesn’t anyone here have a car that I can borrow?”

“I rode my bike,” said Jan, apologetically.

“I need my car,” said Elliot. “I’ve been asked to raid the local florists, and that’s difficult to do on the bus.”

Connor blinked. “Raid the local florists for what?”

“I’ll explain later,” I said.

“Toby’s summoning the night-haunts,” said Quentin.

“. . . or not,” I said, as Gordan and Connor exclaimed, in unison, “What?!”

“You can’t be serious.” Connor looked alarmed as he stepped toward me, raising one hand to brush the bandages on my cheek. “You’re already hurt. What if they go for you?”

“The Luidaeg gave me a ritual to keep them from hurting me.”

“This is supposed to calm me down because . . . ?” he asked. “She’s ancient and oh, right, crazy. She’s going to get you killed.”

I reached up, catching his hand and holding it firmly. “I trust her. It’ll be fine.”

I’m a good liar—I’ve had years of practice—and I’ve been lying to Connor longer than I’ve been lying to almost anyone else. He searched my face for a moment, and was apparently reassured by what he found there, because he squeezed my fingers, raising our joined hands to rest his knuckles very lightly against my cheek.

“You look like shit, Daye.”

“You don’t look so good yourself.” I was lying again, but at least this time I didn’t feel bad about it. Connor O’Dell is capable of a lot of things. Looking “not so good” isn’t one of them.

He was tall, lean, and still managed to be fairly compact; if Alex was the magazine cover-model version of the California surfer, Connor was the real thing, right down to the calluses on his hands and the cut of his hair—long enough to be attractive, short enough that the waves wouldn’t plaster it down over his drowningly dark Selkie eyes.

“Yeah, well. When His Grace decides to ship me off to Fremont at a moment’s notice, I get a little worried.” He held my hand where it was for a moment more before releasing it and turning to offer Jan a wry smile. “It’s good to see that she doesn’t just cause collateral damage at home.”

“It’s been educational,” Jan agreed, holding out her hand. “Toby, you want me to call that guy for you?”