“Or taking a rowboat out after hours and making love on the river?” Lena suggested. To Deb’s exasperated look, she said, “What? I work part time for Parks and Recreation. I’ve got the keys to the boat sheds.”

“That would be good, too,” I said, shifting position. “See, it’s that kind of talk that explains why men used to go wild over nymphs.”

Her lips quirked. “Not just men.”

“Ooh. Now that’s just the kind of information that would have spiced up those fantasies.”

Deb gave me a gentle smack on the arm, pulling my attention back to the immediate crisis. “I’m sorry, hon. I didn’t believe you could be involved, but I had to be certain.”

“I understand.” I’d probably be pissed later, but for now I didn’t care. “I’m curious, what were you going to do if it turned out I was working for the bad guys?” I peeked at her jacket, trying to see what books she might have hidden away.

She swatted me back. “Be grateful you’ll never know.” She tensed suddenly, her attention focused past me to a yellow cricket the size of a small paper clip that had jumped into the room from the kitchen.

I stooped to grab the cricket, but it hopped away. “They’re for Smudge. I keep them in a screen-covered bucket in the office, but occasionally one sneaks out.”

“Sure,” Deb said, her muscles tight. She tracked the cricket’s motion as it retreated beneath one of the bookshelves. “I need help, Isaac. Someone I can trust. I’m officially reassigning you back to the field.”

The words were a sucker punch to the gut, smashing through my drug-induced high to steal the breath from my lungs. Hope, fear, and excitement duked it out behind my rib cage. Under normal circumstances, only the Regional Masters could reassign someone, but with Gutenberg gone and the Porters in a state of crisis, this would fall under a field agent’s emergency powers. Barely. “What about Lena?”

“Hm?” Deb wrenched her attention back to the two of us. “I can’t do anything for her officially, but you took out four vampires between the pair of you. That’s good enough for me. If you vouch for her, I want her along, too.”

Uncomfortable as I was with fieldwork, this could put me back on the path toward magical research. With one simple sentence, Deb had rekindled a dream two years dead. Pallas would have to sign off on everything, but if we could stop these attacks on the Porters, how could she refuse?

If I could stay focused. If I kept from losing control of my magic this time.

I pulled Deb into a hug. Her surprised squawk relaxed into laughter, and she pushed me away, grinning.