It’s late afternoon by the time I rise, tromping into the kitchen to the scent of brewing coffee and the chatter of my family. Everyone else is already awake, and I slide into a chair at the table beside Colin, who’s showing Liam the knife marks from his training.

I barely get a glass of orange juice before Nora’s doling out tasks. We spend the rest of the morning and early afternoon cleaning up the inn. A lot of the decorations will have to be replaced, which I know bothers Nora to no end. She spent a very long time collecting everything.

Most of my family sustained minor wounds last night, but nothing serious. Gran splinted Colin’s wrist and I have a few bruises from Fin’s telekinesis, but for the most part the house is the only one with any serious damage. Most of it the house can repair on its own, but Uncle Roy still has to take his truck down to the local hardware store for some wood and paint.

Liam regales us with tales from the Otherworld while we work, and we tell him about what happened with Fin and Kaden on our side, and all the while I wait for him to ask Colin the question that I don’t want to hear.

Now that Liam’s here, Colin doesn’t need us anymore.

By the time we have the place in decent shape that evening, we’re all exhausted. The twins disappeared over an hour ago, no doubt to crawl into their beds and sleep some more. Gran is nowhere to be found, and Aunt Elaine and Uncle Roy are on the porch drinking tea. Nora, ever the diligent one, is packaging the leftover food with Liam’s help.

“Just a small break.” I drag Colin over to the remnants of the bonfire and drop into a seat.

He lowers himself slowly down beside me. Though he tries to hide it, his stiffness is obvious. He went blow for blow with an ancient king and still helped clean up; I’m not complaining.

Max joins us, curling up in Colin’s lap.

“I heard Nora say she’s going to start working with you on your powers,” he says. “You’re going to do a reading?”

I grin, propping my feet up on the fire pit edge, and grab us each a still cold root beer from the cooler. “Soon! Apparently psychometrists can also read the history of objects. I can help people find lost things like a pocket dragon or tell them stories about people and things they don’t know from their past.”

“That’s awesome,” he says. “Anna the anecdotalist.”

“You made that one up.”

“An anecdotalist is someone who is skilled at telling stories or—”

I groan, and Colin laughs. I nudge his shoulder. “What about you? Now that Liam’s back…” I trail off, but Colin gets where I was going.