“How can you tell when someone’s got lots of pneuma?” I asked.

“One learns to sense such things,” he said. “Especially when one is Outcast.” He sipped his water and smiled a little. “In your case, the fact that your emotions are actually capable of effecting change on your physical environment was a good indicator that you were brimming with it.”

Huh. And here I’d thought my volatile temper wasn’t good for anything. “What else does it work on other than the Outcast?” I asked him. “Could I stop Emmeline Palmer from putting a hex on me?”

“No,” Stefan said with regret. “It is ineffective against spellcasting. But if you are diligent in your practice, you can defend yourself from all manner of compulsion, such as vampiric hypnosis and demonic persuasion.”

“Ooh!”

He pointed a stern finger at me. “If you are diligent, Daisy. It is like any skill. It must be honed until it is second nature to you, until the act of raising and maintaining a shield requires no more effort than breathing.”

“Duly noted.” I shifted and began to curl my legs beneath me, then changed my mind when I saw a look of polite dismay flit over Stefan’s face. Right. No shoes on the fancy leather couch. “Stefan . . . if this energy, this pneuma, can be used to raise a defensive shield, can it be used as an offensive weapon, too?”

Stefan didn’t answer right away. His pupils contracted in his pale blue eyes, giving him that eerie, sightless look. “Against some opponents, yes,” he said at length, sounding reluctant. “But to do so is dangerous, exposing you to far greater vulnerability. Promise me that you will not attempt it.”

“What if—”

His pupils zoomed. “If the time comes when I deem you ready, we will speak further of this. Until then, promise me.”

“Okay, okay!” I raised my hands in surrender. Well, one hand and my water glass. “I promise.”

“Thank you.”

I considered Stefan for a while. “Why are you doing this?” I asked him eventually. “Helping me?”

“Why would I not?” he replied. “You are Hel’s liaison, and there is a debt of honor between us.”

I wasn’t entirely sold. After all, he was the six-hundred-year-old son of a Bohemian count, and I was a twenty-four-year-old American hell-spawn who grew up in a mobile home. Of course, Lurine had a couple of millennia on him, and then there was the matter of Hel herself, but . . . somehow this was different. They weren’t human. Stefan was, or at least he had been.

“And I like you, Daisy,” Stefan added unexpectedly, summoning one of those surprisingly charming smiles. “Is that so difficult to believe?”

“A little,” I admitted. “Do you mean you like me, or you like me like me?”

He raised one eyebrow. “Are you asking if I harbor romantic feelings toward you?”

“Do you?” I countered.