She grabbed hold of her emotions, the annoyance threatening to flare into anger, and crushed them ruthlessly under control.

“I just realized I forgot I have a quiz tomorrow. Your test reminded me. And I don’t have any of the class notes with me. Sorry, Mack, but I gotta run back and get them,” she said, brushing his arm with her hand.

The pulse of energy she sent through that touch was enough to stun him just long enough for her to give him a promising smile and then slide away.

“Oh, yeah. Sorry again,” he said with a disappointed little wave.

“No, I’m glad I ran into you,” she lied. “I would have messed up my quiz for sure. Bye, Mack. I’ll text you.” And she was gone, sliding into the shadows, pulling the darkness around her like a cloak.

“Ah, bye,” he said behind her.

She moved silently across the campus, on a parallel path to Main Street, which was the path that Declan O’Carroll would take to get back to that ridiculous preschool for the supernaturally pathetic. She sped up, ghosting through the backyards of the houses that fronted Main Street, mildly impressed with the distance the lanky young man had managed to travel, post gaggle of kids.

There! Just ahead, almost to where South Willard Street crossed Main. She darted behind a corner house and was about to step out onto the cross street sidewalk when another person approached him from downhill. She stopped instantly, frozen in place, evaluating.

A blonde: lithe, beautiful, wary, yet not wary of the witch. He greeted her, slightly surprised. The woman moved up close to him, motions graceful yet tight with power. A fighter. Then she leaned in and sniffed him before giving him a hug. A supe. And based on her actions and looks, she was the werewolf girlfriend.

Lilith, demon baroness of Hell, studied the woman who appeared to lay claim to this contested morsel of a witch, curious.

The whole assignment had been a bafflement. Travel to Earth in her natural form via a portal from the Summer Court of Fairie and abduct a male witch.

It had been absurd when she first heard it spoken by her liege. Who would care a wit for any witch, let alone a weak male? And why the Summer Queen? Why waste a portal, for it had been explained that it would be found and shut down as soon as she used it.

But then the details had come out. This witch was powerful, unbelievably so, perhaps the strongest of any age, from a line that extended back centuries. And had somehow laid claim to a portion of Fairie, along the way handing out injuries and insults to Queen Zinnia and Princess Eirwen. So a prize valuable in power and an enemy to be punished before use.