“Oh, are we going to compare past atrocities now?” he said even as he began writing a list of ingredients beside the pentagram.

I cocked my hip and watched him; his penmanship was as precise as his dress. “Stealing healthy babies and substituting your own failing infants is pretty nasty.”

“So is a thousand years of slavery. Or creating a species for your own pleasure, one that necessitates acts of perverted brutality to survive, acts committed on the people you love.”

He was talking about the vampires. “No worse than destroying your enemy by attacking their unborn children.”

Landon stopped writing. “They did it first.”

But who really knew the truth? I couldn’t solve a puzzle two thousand years dead.

His motion cocky, Landon spun the paper to me. Listed was a mix of plants, objects, and ley line equipment designed to sympathetically harness intent: blood, hummingbird egg white, sunrise spider silk, aspen sap, a copper Möbius strip, silk scarf, salt—probably to scribe the pentagram with—and a familiar phrase of Latin. Tislan, tislan. Ta na shay cooreen na da.

My lips parted and a wave of disconnection flooded me as the words rose from my mind. “That’s the phrase Trent used to move my soul,” I said, my voice sounding hollow, as if from outside myself.

Landon frowned, actually doing a double take as I blinked to find myself. “Trent has done this? Are you kidding me?”

“Not this one,” I reassured him. “But he held my soul in a bottle for three days while my aura replenished itself. I remember the words.”

Ta na shay cooreen na da. It flowed through me, and I held the counter as if it wasn’t real. I’d been trapped in my mind, standing at this very spot making cookies that faded away until Trent and I worked together, a symbol of us joining our minds so he could pull me out.

“Kalamack put your soul into a bottle?” Landon said, his disbelief obvious.

My breath came in a rush, as if I’d forgotten how to breathe. “My aura was burned off when I fought Ku’Sox. My mind thought I was dead, and he kept me on life support until my body was recovered and my aura was strong enough.” It had taken a kiss to break the spell, seeing as it was a very old charm to “wake the princess” from a lifesaving coma. I was starting to think that was when I’d begun to love him.

Oh shit. I love him.

The realization fell on me hard. My knees went wobbly, and I held the counter as a surge of emotion rose. I loved Trent. Sure, I’d toyed with the idea before, but now, after seeing him with Ellasbeth and giving him the foolhardy chance to make amends with her, I knew it was true. Damn it, this wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. It was supposed to be romantic, with flowers and sun or moonlight, his touch on my face, and the scent of our hair mingling as we kissed. But no. It was me in my kitchen standing before a man I loathed, listening to the muted strains of the man I loved persuading his ex to get over herself and play by his rules.