Hell, I was halfway convinced. She was good. But Sinclair looked away and shook his head again. A few scraps of wallpaper floated to the paving stones. “Maybe God draws straight using crooked lines, but I don’t believe people do. At least not our mother.”

“You never gave it a fair—”

“She put a love spell on our father, Emmy!” he shouted at her. “He hated everything she stood for! He never wanted anything to do with her!”

Ohh-kay. I was definitely in the thick of some serious family issues now. Ordinarily, I would have beat a discreet retreat, but I’d instigated this confrontation and my authority was still on the line.

“It’s a path of balance,” Emmeline said defiantly. “You know that! You’ve got to take the dark with the light. But you know what you can’t do? Turn your back on it. And that’s what you imagine you’ve done.”

“Yeah, I did,” he said. “By choice, when I became a man.”

Now she shook her head. “It will find you, Sinclair. How do you think you ended up here?” She pointed at me. “With that?”

“Hey!” I protested.

His shoulders tensed. “Leave Daisy out of it. You’ve done enough to her already.”

Dear Emmy laughed. “Oh, that little charm?” she said in a dismissive tone. “That was nothing. Just a friendly warning that I mean business.”

Some warning. My tail twitched in the confines of my jeans. “I think we’ve gotten a little off track here,” I said to her, my hand resting casually on dauda-dagr’s hilt. “This is my friendly warning that I mean business. You have twenty-four hours to leave Pemkowet voluntarily. If you don’t, I’ll have you escorted outside the boundaries of Hel’s territory.”

She gave me a long, appraising glance.

I returned it steadily. Along with being seriously pissed in a slow, simmering way, I was feeling pretty confident about my backup after Stefan’s visit. If Emmeline wanted a showdown, I was ready for it. But she zigged when I was expecting her to zag.

“You know, you really should have agreed to work with me on this, Daisy. It would have been ever so much more civilized,” she said, gathering her things. “Very well, I’ll go. But I’ll be back. Sinny, this isn’t over. You have a month to think about it.”

His face was stoic. “I don’t need a month. My answer is no.”

“I won’t ask nicely the next time,” Emmeline warned him. “Whatever happens, it will be on your head.”

“Nice,” I said. “Classic abusive logic. Oh, and by the way? You’re not welcome to return.”

She ignored me. “Deep down, there’s a part of you that wants it, Sinclair,” she said softly. “I know you miss me. And you know that the two of us together could be more than twice as powerful as either of us alone.”