It was like trying to fight some kind of tentacled, soul-sucking fog. I battered frantically at it with my mental shield, left and right, high and low. Cooper circled me, forcing me to turn with him.

“Draw your dagger, you eejit!” he shouted at me. “If this was a real fight, you’d need it!”

Duh. It hadn’t occurred to me. I wrapped my hand around dauda-dagr’s hilt and pulled it from its sheath.

Cooper took a few wary steps backward. “Right,” he said. “Now put down the shield. You need to be able do this without it.”

Without breaking eye contact, I tossed the buckler aside. It clattered on the packed dirt. My mental shield continued to blaze steadily and with dauda-dagr in my right hand, I felt balanced in a way I hadn’t before.

“All right.” Cooper grinned, his dilated pupils shining. “Let’s dance.”

I don’t know how long we sparred, but it felt like a good long while and by the end of it, I was wrung out, even more exhausted than I had been after my bout with Stefan—in part because I didn’t have that initial I-can-do-this rush of elation to sustain me and in part because Cooper had pushed me harder.

He took a moment to collect himself when I called for a stop, then excused himself and ducked into the bar through the rear entrance. I sheathed dauda-dagr and waited uncertainly until he returned a few minutes later, his pupils normal and a pair of cold Budweisers in his hands.

“Sorry about that.” Cooper handed me a beer. “Needed a little something to take the edge off.”

Somehow, I didn’t think he meant the beer. I was pretty sure he meant one of the mortal barflies and hangers-on inside the Wheelhouse. “That’s . . . okay.”

He eyed me as he took a pull on his beer. “Makes you a mite squeamish, does it?”

“A mite,” I admitted. “My first experience with, um, an Outcast’s appetite wasn’t a good one.”

Cooper looked surprised. “Himself?”

I shook my head. “No, not Stefan. It was a guy named Al. He’s gone—Stefan banished him. But he . . . tasted me against my will, and it sent him ravening.” The memory of it still made me feel dirty.

“Ah, well. It’s different when you’re willing,” he said, taking another swig of beer. “But then, you know that, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” I’d given Stefan permission to drain my anger when I was on the verge of losing my considerable temper and causing an ungodly scene at a funeral. The fact that it had felt as good and shockingly intimate as it had was almost as unnerving as being coerced against my will. “I do.”

Cooper changed the subject. “You did well today. You’ve got the knack for this.”