The bad news was that the Fabulous Casimir’s failure meant that Emmeline Palmer’s power exceeded his by a considerable degree.

The good news was that Cas was pissed off about it. “Let me talk to the coven,” he said to me. “We’ll schedule a ritual with the full circle. There’s no way she’s a match for all of us.”

I nodded gingerly. “Okay.”

“We can do this, Daisy,” he promised me. “Don’t start looking for alternatives, you understand?”

“You mean my father?” I asked.

He shuddered. “Hell, yes, I mean your father, girl.”

I wasn’t looking. As always, I kept a tight lid on that thought. But as always, it was there. And I had to admit as I walked blindly home, clinging to the arm of an uncharacteristically quiet Jen, doing my best to support the pain-filled balloon that was my head, my tail lashing with impotent fury, that I was really fucking tired of being so goddamn powerless in a position of responsibility.

Powers of persuasion and seduction would come in really handy right about now. So would a splendid set of bat-veined wings and a fiery whip, just because.

Oh, the possibilities!

But there was that whole business about cracking the Inviolate Wall.

As much as I wanted to face down dear Emmy on my own terms, it certainly wasn’t worth unleashing Armageddon. And, too, in the back of my mind was the well-dressed hell-spawn lawyer I’d seen in the PVB office the other day, attempting to work some kind of wiles on Amanda Brooks.

He’d smelled bad. Rancid.

I didn’t know what that was all about, what the lawyer was up to, and why his presence and his apparent acceptance of his birthright didn’t threaten the Inviolate Wall, but I knew I didn’t want that stink on me.

As if on cue, Jojo the joe-pye weed fairy popped up from her lurking place amid the rhododendrons alongside the alley by my apartment. “Stupid reeking slattern!” she screeched at me in a brain-drilling octave that didn’t exist on any human scale, not even Mariah Carey’s. “It’s in your bag!”

Jen’s arm tightened under my grip. “What the fuck?”

“Seriously, Jojo?” My head hurt so badly, I wanted to lie down and cry. “Not now, okay?”

Hovering several feet above the ground on agitated wings, Jojo swore up and down and sideways in what I suspected was a variety of languages. “It’s in your bag! The charm is in your bag, dullard!”

I blinked. “What?”

Jojo let out another piercing shriek and tugged at her purple hair. “I can’t touch it, you fool! There’s cold steel and iron in there!”

“Um, Daise?” Jen said. “I think the fairy’s trying to tell you that Emmy’s charm is in your bag.”