“I was trying to save her. She was dying of loupism.”

“Yes, they are susceptible. Wolves, horses, and birds of prey, those are her things. That’s how they came to battle, riding their horses, guarded by their birds of prey and their wolves. Your great-grandfather fought a bloody war for thirty years just to keep the people of Koorgahn out of our valley as they were sweeping west. How ironic that you would find one in this age and in this place, yet have no idea how to use her.”

“I don’t want to use her. She is my kid.”

Erra sighed. “We’ll talk about this and what happened today later. Now I will go and see if your ‘kid’ knows the extent of her powers.”

“Good luck with that. I can’t even get her to clean her room.”

I turned and went upstairs. I locked the bedroom door and walked into the bathroom. Curran was already in the shower.

I stripped my clothes off and went in there with him.

He stared at my body. I looked like a gang of street thugs with steel-toed boots had worked me over. I stepped under the water and hugged him.

He hugged me back.

•   •   •

SOMETHING TOUCHED MY ear. I shrugged off sleep long enough to open my eyes and saw Curran holding the phone. For me. Ugh.

“Yes?” I said into the phone.

“What do you need?” Saiman asked.

Well, he didn’t last long. “Let me make you a list . . .”

“Do spare me the smartass comments. What do you need me to do?”

“A way to kill or contain my father. Failing that, I need a record of what he wrote on my skin.”

“Your office in two hours.”

He hung up. I opened my eyes and looked at Curran. “What time is it?”

“Six o’clock.”

“You let me sleep for four hours straight?” I’d stay up all night.

“Sixteen,” he said. “It’s six in the morning. You needed it.”

After the shower I’d crashed. The thing with my aunt had taken a lot out of me, and the thing with Andrea’s baby didn’t help either. Sooner or later, you had to pay the piper. I dimly recalled waking up at some point, because I had dreamed Dali died and Jim wouldn’t let me go to her funeral, but exhaustion had soon dragged me back under.

“Did you have dinner last night?”

“Yes. The kids and I went to George and Eduardo’s,” he said. “Mahon’s bear guards arrived with honey muffins and roasted deer and we all ate ourselves into a coma.”

“That’s nice.” I hugged my pillow. “Will you wake me up in an hour?”

He picked me up and stood me upright on my feet. I punched him in the neck. Not very hard and not very fast. I missed.

“The medmage is here.”

“I don’t need a medmage.” I yawned.