“That you give them Olivia,” Gabriel said, barely able to force the words out. “She is marked for the sluagh.”

Veronica’s green eyes rounded. “Absolutely not. We promised them no one. Nor any power over either of you. That would be unthinkable.”

“So what did you give them?” Ricky said.

“Access to Grace’s building,” I murmured. “It’s a refuge for fae. You give them asylum there.”

“Yes.”

“And you allowed Olivia to move in?” Gabriel said. “You let her—”

“We granted access to the building for one manifested sluagh who had been injured and could not cross back to its own dimension.”

“Manifested?” I said. “A high-ranking one, then. A powerful sluagh.”

“Yes, but we only granted it five years of access, on the understanding that it would not provide us with a Gwynn until the end of those five years. We didn’t want the sluagh in Cainsville after he was here. Of course, that didn’t work out as we’d hoped, and you did not grow up here, Gabriel, but the sluagh was still gone before you were born.”

“Except it left a door open,” I said. “So it could come back.”

Veronica let out a bitter laugh. “A mere child sees what we did not.” She shook her head. “Sorry. I know you aren’t a child, but compared to us, you are, and the fact you can see what they did is only all the more damning.”

“But I have the hindsight of knowing it came back. I’m just making the logical connection.”

“Still, we should have foreseen the possibility that we’d been tricked. They are sluagh, after all.”

Ricky pushed his plate aside. “So you guys let it board at Grace’s, and it kept the key when it left.”

“You granted access once,” Gabriel said, “which inadvertently granted it permanently.”

“Yes and yes,” Veronica said. “In order to allow a sluagh to stay at Grace’s, I had to undo some of my wards. Of course, I reactivated them afterwards, but it seems that once it had been allowed in, the wards were no longer effective against that particular sluagh. It had the key, so to speak.”

“Like vampire lore,” Gabriel said. “Once they are invited in, you can’t rescind the invitation and your wards are no longer effective.”

“Looks like you finally get vampires,” I said to him. “I know you’ve been waiting.”

He sighed.

I turned to Veronica. “Okay, so you guys made a deal with the sluagh to get Gabriel. That deal granted the sluagh access to Cainsville. I know you’re kicking yourselves for not foreseeing the trickery, but what’s done is done, and neither of us was harmed by the sudden appearance of the scary sluagh, so presuming you can keep them out now, we’re okay, right?”

“Can you keep them out?” Ricky said. “Is Liv safe here?”