“And who’s going to protect you if anything goes down?” Ian sat up straight, brushing off his palms.

“I don’t need anyone to protect me, all right? Trust me on that one, too.”

He mumbled something under his breath, and then stood up and held out his hand to help me to my feet. “It’s after noon. I should get you home.”

I followed him back the way we had come, drawing slow, steady breaths of ocean air into my lungs and taking measured, sure-footed steps over wobbly rocks and loose gravel. Time to get ready for tonight … and maybe squeeze in another hour of knife practice, too. There was no way the Mazikin were getting my friends. I was just getting my head right when my phone buzzed with a text from Henry.

Tonight we won’t be so gentle.

While I tried to make sense of the words, my phone buzzed again. It was a picture. A man, lying in a pool of blood, his face a pulpy, unrecognizable mess. But even so, I knew him by the scarecrow limbs, the thinning gray hair.

And the crossbow lying at his side.

THIRTY

THIRTY

“STOP FIDGETING, FOR GOD’S sake, Lela. Do you have ADHD or something?” Tegan was about to lose it on me. I’d arrived an hour late at her house, having spent the entire afternoon in an intense planning session with Malachi and Jim, waiting to hear word from Raphael.

Henry was in the hospital, under heavy police guard. The Mazikin had somehow figured out who he was, beaten him nearly to death, and called in the cops. We didn’t know if they’d possessed him before they dumped him. We didn’t know if he would survive. All we knew was that he was the prime suspect in the homeless murders, and in his head he carried all the necessary knowledge to bring the earthly Guard unit down. Raphael had gone in to do damage control, however he saw fit, but if Henry was a Mazikin now, one of us would have to put him down. That knowledge, along with my rage that they’d hurt one of my Guards, almost made me look forward to fighting them face-to-face. I wanted to hurt them. Especially Sil. I had no doubt he was responsible.

Tegan pinned another curl into position. Her own hair was slicked into place, and her makeup was shimmery and perfect. I had a feeling Jim was going to have a hard time holding himself together when he saw her. With the stakes so high and the danger so clear, all his protective instincts would go into overdrive.

“You and I haven’t talked about Jim,” I said, wishing I were better at girl talk.

Her look softened. “I’ve never met anyone like him.”

“That makes sense,” I mumbled.