“Who was royally fucked up,” I said. “Now I have Roland. That kind of says it all right there. My only living blood relative is a megalomaniac with cosmic power and an unshakable belief that he knows best.” And saying it out loud just hammered it home. Ugh. “We just don’t have the best luck with fathers. But you knew all that.”

“It occurred to me that one day I will be a father,” he said. “And I have no idea how the hell I’m going to do that.”

“You’re already a father. Sort of.”

“Julie was already a good kid when you found her. Most of the hard work was done. I am talking about raising a little human from the first breath. I don’t even know what the hell I would do with a baby.”

“I think you will make an excellent father. I’d worry more about what kind of mother I would make.”

We would screw up our children. It was inevitable. Julie had taught me that you never get the child you want or expect. You get the child you get and you try your best to make sure they turn out to be a decent human being. That was all that mattered.

An image of pregnant Andrea sitting on our lawn and eating the remnants of a bull flashed across my mind. “If I get pregnant and we kill something magic, don’t let me eat it.”

He grinned.

“If Aunt B were alive, there’s no way Andrea could get away with it.”

But Aunt B was dead. She would never see Raphael and Andrea’s baby. Hugh d’Ambray’s Iron Dogs had killed her, but Hugh was a tool and my father used him like a battering ram when he wanted to break down a door. Roland bore the ultimate responsibility for it.

“I found out what it means to claim the land,” I said.

“Tell me.”

I did. “It wasn’t a hallucination, Curran. I improved when I shouldn’t have.”

He made a noise, half a growl, half a frustrated grunt. “That means he wields magic even during tech. He won’t hesitate to shield himself.”

“Yes. Attacking him during technology while he is in his territory means risking the lives of everyone in it. He will drain them dry to keep himself alive. He will deeply regret it and be conflicted about it later, but he will do it. His will to live trumps everything else.”

“We’ll get him,” Curran said.

“I know.” I just had no idea how. How do you kill someone with that much power?

“We’re going to be smart about this. We’re going to watch him, test him, and when we know we can win, we’ll crush him.”

And that was why he was a scary bastard. “Curran . . .”

He kissed my hair. “Yes?”