Magnus nodded solemnly at her earnest assurance, but he was biting his tongue to keep from grinning. The fact that she knew how to do what she’d mentioned was impressive to him no matter how long it took. He wasn’t mechanically minded himself and wouldn’t have known what to check.

“Did you find the problem?” Tricia asked.

“Oh, yeah,” she said dryly, and then admitted with disgust, “It was out of gas.”

That startled a laugh from everyone but Lucian. Allie didn’t appear offended, though, and laughed with them before saying, “I know. That’s the first thing I should have checked.” She shook her head at her mistake. “Anyway, it was after eleven thirty by then. Stella decided to leave it for the next day to finish, so I wished her good night and went back home to return to work.”

She paused briefly, her eyes looking off into the distant memories, and then said, “I don’t think it was more than an hour later that there was a knock at the door. I considered ignoring it, but twelve thirty is an odd time for visitors and it might be an emergency so I answered it in the end. And there stood Stella with a bright smile and a pan of freshly baked brownies in her hands to thank me,” Allie explained, and Magnus nodded encouragingly.

“I should have said, ‘Thank you but no, I have a deadline and need to work.’ Unfortunately, I’m something of a chocoholic and she looked so . . .” Allie frowned as she tried to find the words to explain, and then said, “I don’t know . . . lonely, maybe, but hopeful. I didn’t have the heart to send her away. It would have been like kicking a puppy.” She shrugged. “So I invited her in and made tea.”

Kind, Magnus thought. She was kind as well as brave.

“Stella told me later that she’d intended on feeding on me when she came over and the brownies were just a way to get in the door. But we got talking while I puttered around fetching plates and making tea, and by the time we sat down, she liked me too much to bite me.”

Magnus frowned at this news, suspecting that Stella’s feeding on her would have been a death sentence. The woman had obviously been a rogue if she was biting mortals and not feeding on blood bags as immortals were supposed to do. Rogues didn’t often concern themselves with the well-being of their chosen dinner.