Curran spoke slowly, pronouncing each word exactly. “What made you think that the two of us together couldn’t handle a single vampire?”

Myles swallowed. “It was my call. I take full responsibility.”

“Go back to the Keep,” Curran said, his voice eerily calm.

The shapeshifters turned around and fled.

Ghastek’s vampire slipped out the window. Curran and I looked at each other.

They’d broken the door to the apartment he’d made for me. For some reason that hit me harder than knowing the Pack Council didn’t want him to come and rescue me.

“I’ll have it repaired,” he said.

They would break it down again the next time. “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s just a door. We might as well go back to the Keep.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

I smiled at him. “I knew what I signed up for.”

He was worth it.

• • •

WE TOOK OUR time. By the time we rolled into the Keep’s courtyard, the night was in full swing. We trudged up the stairs, while Derek trailed after us and spit out facts: triple patrols, Keep on high alert, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah . . . I stopped listening. The last drops of my patience had evaporated long ago.

We went straight to our rooms. Curran shut the door. I landed on our couch. Outside the large living room window the night reigned, Atlanta a distant smudge of deeper darkness studded with pale blue feylantern lights.

Home . . .

The door swung open. Barabas stepped inside, his face serious, his eyes slightly distant, as if he were looking at something far away. Something was wrong. He always knocked.

“The visitor you were waiting for is here,” Barabas said.

He stepped aside and held the door open. A person wrapped in a plain brown cloak with a deep hood walked in. Barabas bowed a little, walked out, and shut the door behind him. The figure pulled back the hood, revealing my father’s face.

Why me?

Curran started toward Roland. His eyes were on fire.

I shot between them and blocked him with my body. “Stop.”

“Move, Kate,” Curran said, his voice calm.

Roland smiled. “I mean no harm. I just came to see my daughter. No audience, no need for any grand gestures. I simply wish to talk.”

I turned my back to him so I could see Curran’s face. “Please, stop.”

He finally looked at me.

“Stop,” I asked him.

He took a step back, leaned against the couch’s side, and crossed his arms. “Touch her, and I’ll end you.”

“May I sit down?” Roland asked me.

His magic wrapped around him like a mantle, muted. I still felt it, but he seemed much more human now. This must’ve been his version of traveling incognito. Nobody would ever know. Yeah, right.

I sat on the couch. “Sure.”

“Thank you.” He sat in the soft chair across from me.