“At no cost,” she said, “because to be silent is to damn us all.” She paused. “You can hear them, far away,” she said, and my throat went tight. I knew she meant our parents.

“Yes.”

She nodded.

“Do you know where the House is now?” I asked.

“Only that they are safe where they are. I can hear them, too, although the sound is faint as dew. But their time is limited.”

“Limited?”

“She has made happen that which ought not happen.”

“She,” I presumed, was Rosantine. “The improbable,” I said. “The unlikely, coalescing together.”

The chaotic.

“Yes,” Claudia said. “The magic she has wrought is old, and it is inflexible. There are ties that will not bend. They will snap,” she said, and the power in that word seemed to shake the entire castle.

She waved a hand toward the table. The food and drink disappeared, replaced by a floating and three-dimensional visage of the waxing moon, the far side shadowed, the near side glowing.

“There are limits to even a demon’s power in this plane, and soon the choice will be irreversible. Soon,” she said again, and the shadow across the moon shifted, grew smaller, disappeared, leaving a glowing silver orb.

“The full moon,” I said quietly, and was suddenly heartsick. “That’s only in a few days, right?”

“Three. On the third day, the die is cast.”

“And the House stays where it is.” I looked back at her. “If we don’t bring them home before then, they don’t come back at all.”

She inclined her head. “We will both of us remain out of phase. The consequences will be fast.”

“I don’t suppose you know how to stop her?”

“Demons are untrustworthy, immortal, and amoral.” (Honestly, I’d have said the same things about the fae, but probably best not to voice that aloud.) “They have no care,” Claudia continued, “for that which does not serve them and them alone. And they care not what consequences their actions bring.”

That matched my experience but didn’t help us.

“Do you know her sigil?”

“I do not.” She glanced at her handmaiden, then back at me. “But beware. You cannot command by words that which will not be commanded. You must feel your way.”

I had no idea what that meant, but I wasn’t about to stay and ask questions. I practically ran out, hustling before another debt was incurred.

* * *

The three of them waited by the SUV on the white stone drive. I wasn’t sure which thing I should be mad about first—the fireball or the confrontation. But I could feel the fury rising up from my boots as I stalked toward them.

“Are you okay?” Connor asked.

“I’ll live,” I said, my gaze on Lulu. “We need a minute,” I said, and Connor and Alexei stepped eagerly back, giving us room.

“What the hell were you thinking?” I demanded.

“Portal magic,” she said again, as if that was the only excuse she’d needed—this woman who’d avoided the supernatural for years—to threaten some of the most powerful Sups in the city. “It was logical they’d done it.”