He smiled deeply enough for his dimples to emerge. “I have an acquaintance in the historical replica industry. This is actually their standard base model buckler, but I had it specially burnished.”

Flexing the fingers of my left hand, I curved them around the grip and hoisted the shield aloft.

It felt good.

I gazed at my distorted reflection in the concave surface facing me, then lowered the shield. “Okay. And, um, thank you. Shall we try it again?”

In the center of the living room, Stefan took a stance opposite me, his back to the window. “Yes.”

When we’d done this before, Stefan hadn’t menaced me in earnest. This time, he did. With the sun in my eyes, I couldn’t see the warning shift of his pupils, but I felt the inexorable tide of his hunger pulling at me.

Without thinking, I swung the shield up between us. Brilliant sunlight splintered off the highly polished surface, sending a thousand scintillating points of light dancing around the room. And just like that, something clicked inside me. I kindled the same mirror-bright blaze in my thoughts, holding it between us, a barrier that reflected Stefan’s hunger back at him while it reflected my own emotions and feelings back into me.

“Ha!” Stefan broke into a grin. “That’s it! Perfect! You did it, Daisy!”

Blinking against the brightness, I held the shield—the real one and the one in my head—in place. “What happens now?”

“Now?” His grin turned fierce. “Now we practice.”

If you think holding a single image blazing in your mind sounds like easy work, think again. Despite my breakthrough, it was hard. Stefan worked me ruthlessly. And just when I thought I was becoming adept, he made me put down the physical shield, forcing me to conjure the mental image without it.

By the time he called a halt, I was exhausted and elated. I could do it. I could conjure a shield capable of holding a six-hundred-year-old ghoul—oops, Outcast—at bay. And for the first time since I’d begun to serve as an agent of Hel, my frustration at my own relative powerlessness abated.

I could do something. Something magical.

“Thank you,” I said again to Stefan, this time with the sincerity and gratitude he deserved. “This is amazing, truly. How did you know?”

“It was a hunch.” Returning from the kitchen with two glasses of water, he handed one to me. “But I have some experience with these matters.”

I took a long drink of water. “Teaching people to protect themselves from you?”

A shadow crossed his face. “Yes.”

Okay, probably not the time to get too personal with that line of questioning. I sat on his leather couch. “Can anyone learn to do it?”

“No.” Taking a seat in an adjacent chair, Stefan shook his head. “There is a quality one must possess in abundance. The ancient Greeks called it pneuma, the breath of life.”