“Can you please focus?” Jim glanced over at Eddie. “So what can we do here—”

Adrian cut in with a growl. “Oh, yeah, she’s making him another one.”

“You can so drop that food-as-porn voice.”

“Hey, when I’m into something, I go with it.”

“Try learning to cook then—”

Eddie cleared his throat. “Right. So there’s a tradeoff to protecting this place—the stronger spells will flag the site for Devina.”

“She already knows,” Jim said quietly. “I will bet my balls that she’s already found him.”

“Still think we should lie low.”

“Agreed.”

Eddie reached out. “So give me your hand.”

As Jim offered his palm, he glanced at the pair inside. They seemed insulated from the hurricane swirling on their horizon, and he had the oddest urge to make it so they stayed that way—

“Shit,” he hissed, yanking his arm back. Looking down at the sting on his hand, he found a thick cut down his life line, one that was oozing . . . blood . . . or something like it.

There was a sheen to the welling red flow, like iridescent car paint in sunlight. Funny, he hadn’t noticed anything strange back at the funeral home—then again he’d been a little distracted by his old body’s imitation of a sandbag on that slab.

Eddie resheathed his crystal dagger. “Go around and mark each of the doors. Keep in mind the image of the two of them and see them safe and at peace, protected, calm. Same as before—the stronger your image is, the better it works. It’ll form a kind of emotional barometer within the house—so that if there’s a major disturbance, you’ll feel it. It’s a low-level spell and will get you here fast if something happens—and it shouldn’t get Devina’s attention. ’Course, it won’t keep her out of there, but you can get here in the blink of an eye if she breaches the barrier.”

With his hand dripping, Jim went up the steps to the back door, keeping himself cloaked so that he would appear to Isaac and his lady friend as nothing but a passing shadow. Pressing his palm to the cold painted panels, he focused on the two of them, catching them at a moment when their eyes locked and held. Then he lowered his lids and concentrated on nothing but that image . . .

The world went away, everything from the breeze on his face to the creak of Adrian’s leather jacket to the distant sounds of traffic just disappearing . . . and then his body went as well, his weight lifting off his feet, even as he stayed on the ground.

There was nothing for him, around him, or about him but the picture in his mind.

And it was from out of the vacuum that his power boiled up.