“The subject at hand is the warlock stalking me. What do I do? I can’t hide from him. I don’t know if he’s after me to hurt me or if he thinks I know something I don’t.” I threw up my hands in frustration. “I am trying not to freak out. If I’m this badass you think I am then I wouldn’t be scared of a warlock. I can’t vanish or teleport. He can. He’s the powerful badass. Not me.”

“Have you ever tried?” he asked me.

“Tried what?” I replied then took a drink of my cocktail.

“Teleporting.”

Was he serious? I didn’t know magic like that. No one in our family did. No one I knew did. I’d heard of it just like he had in scary witch stories but that was it. “Why would I try something I didn’t think was actually possible until I saw it with my own eyes?”

He wiggled his eyebrows. “That’s my point. You didn’t know it was possible. Now you do. Why don’t you try it?”

I needed his help not this insanity. “Duely, focus. I could be in danger. I don’t know who he is or what he wants or how to find him again.” Duely was the only one I could even ask for advice. Telling my mother wasn’t going to help anything. She’d just start ranting about the power of three. Saying how I was making us all vulnerable. Although I now doubted my mother and sisters were in any danger. He wasn’t stalking them. He was stalking me. I wasn’t making anyone vulnerable but myself, and my mother would use this as a reason to push the power of three stuff again. As terrifying as this man was with his vanishing act and mysterious identity, I had rather take him on than team up with my evil sisters. Satan himself would need to come knocking on my door and threatening to take my soul first and possibly even then I’d need some time to think about which scenario was worse.

“For now, just stay here. Until we know who he is and what’s going on. You have no help with your sisters and mother. At least with me you’d have backup.”

Duely was well-known for not sleeping alone. His apartment over the bar was a revolving door of people coming to do kinky things I didn’t want to think about. “As nice as that sounds, I’m not sure I’m up for witnessing your bedroom activities.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m aware of that, Snow White. I’ll keep my debauchery away from the apartment while you’re here. That includes smoking my occasional… daily doobie down here.”