“You’re letting him get to you. You’re like a walking mythological encyclopedia, Kate. You pull random mystical crap out of your head and figure out that a giant monster nobody has seen on the face of the planet for three thousand years is allergic to hedgehogs and then you find a cute hedgehog and stab the monster in the eye with it.”

“Where do you even get this shit?”

“I’m giving you a theoretical example. There has to be something, some talisman, some spell, some creature, something that he has a weakness to.”

“I’m his weakness. He hid those thirty crosses from me, because he wanted to be a good father and he didn’t want me to get upset. He isn’t killing me in the visions. He’s killing my husband and my child!”

Two women at the far table glared at me. I looked back at them and they decided to glare somewhere else.

“The only person who was close enough and who could have known about his weakness is Erra, and I killed her. I’d ask my grandmother, but she’s too far gone—she’s an elemental presence, not a person. She doesn’t answer questions. She . . . feels.”

“Too bad you didn’t ask your aunt more questions before you killed her . . .”

Andrea flinched and tensed.

“What is it?”

“We need to go to the Keep.”

“Why?”

Panic shivered in her eyes. “The baby is coming.”

“Now?”

“Yes, right now!”

Shit. I threw money on the table. “Can you make it down the stairs?”

She growled. “I’m a fucking former knight of the Order. Go get the car.”

I sprinted out of the building to the car. The magic was down and the gasoline engine purred as soon as I turned the key. I roared out of the parking lot and screeched to a stop before the building. Andrea stumbled out. I jumped out, threw the back door open, and stuffed her into the backseat.

“I can get us to Memorial in twenty minutes. Hold on.”

“No! We have to get back to the Keep. This is a high-risk pregnancy. Doolittle thinks I might die in labor.”

Damn it all to hell and back. I ran around the car, landed in the driver’s seat, buckled up, and floored it. “How is it that Doolittle let you out?”

“He didn’t. I escaped.”

“What? You told me he knew where you were.”

“He did. I left him . . . a note . . . It’s more like he knew where I wasn’t . . . Argh, hurts like a sonovabitch.”

“After you deliver this baby, I’m going to kill you. What the hell were you thinking?”