His jaw clenched. “Be careful.”

“I’m always careful,” I said, knowing I wasn’t a good enough witch to have to worry about him “stealing” me. I watched the rims of his ears slowly lose their red tint. I squinted, wondering if they were a little pointed or if it was my imagination. It was hard to tell with the hat he had on. “Can you narrow it down for me?” I said. Twenty thousand dollars to sift through Cincinnati’s underworld to find out who wanted to put a crimp in Mr. Kalamack’s day by killing his potential employees. Yeah. That sounded like an easy run.

“I have lots of ideas, Ms. Morgan. Lots of enemies, lots of employees.”

“And no friends,” I added snidely, watching Sharps make serpentlike humps like a miniature Loch Ness. My breath slipped from me in a slow sound as I imagined what Ivy was going to say when I came home and told her I was working for Trent. “If I find out you’re lying, I’ll come after you myself, Kalamack. And this time, the demon won’t miss.”

He made a scoffing bark of laughter and I turned to him. “You can drop the bluff. You didn’t send that demon after me last spring.”

The slight breeze was cold, and I pulled my jacket closed as I turned. “How did you …”

Trent gazed distantly over the lower basin. “After overhearing your conversation with your boyfriend in my office and seeing your reaction to that demon, I knew it had to have been someone else, though I’ll admit seeing you beaten and blue after I freed that demon to go back to kill its summoner nearly had me convinced.”

I didn’t like that he had overheard me talking to Nick. Or that he had responded the exact same way as I had after gaining control over Algaliarept. Trent’s shoes scuffed, and a cautious inquiry came into his eyes. “Your demon scar …” He hesitated, and the flicker of haunted emotion strengthened. “It was an accident?” he finished.

I watched the ripples from Sharps’s disappearing humps. “It bled me so badly that—” I stopped, my lips pressing together. Why was I telling him this? “Yeah. It was.”

“Good,” he said, his gaze still upon the pond. “I’m glad to hear that.”

Ass, I thought, thinking whoever had sent Algaliarept after us had gotten a double whammy of pain that night. “Someone sure didn’t like us talking, did they,” I said, then froze. My face went cold and I held my breath. What if the attacks on our lives and the recent violence were connected? Perhaps I was supposed to have been the witch hunter’s first victim?

Heart pounding, I held myself still, thinking. Every single one of the victims had died in their own personal hell: the swimmer drowned, the rat caretaker ripped apart and eaten alive, two women raped, a man working with horses pressed to death. Algaliarept had been told to kill me in terror, taking the time to find out what my strongest fear was. Damn. It was the same person.