Micah understood the warning in Adam's tone and gave him his full attention. "Obviously, not hurting Claire is my primary concern, Adam, but we're dealing with alien magick here. I don't even know if this spell will work. It's not like we could test it beforehand. It's the result of days of meticulous research and preparation, not years. I can't read the future."

She squeezed Adam's hand. "It's okay, Adam, I'm willing to take a risk to get this junk out of me."

He turned to stare deeply into her eyes. "You might be willing to risk your well-being, Claire, but I'm not willing to risk you."

The words, the warm, honeyed tone of his voice, and the emotion in his eyes left her speechless.

Adam turned to Micah. "You know what I will do to you if you hurt her, right?"

It was the threat of an alpha male in a situation in which he felt powerless. Adam wanted to control things and couldn't, so he threatened. Claire recognized the behavior immediately, having seen it often in Ytrayi males. Adam cared for her enough to be terrified right now, maybe even more terrified than she was.

"Cut it out, Adam," Thomas growled. "You know the last thing Micah wants is to harm someone."

Claire cleared her throat. "Let's get on with this. Every moment we wait is another moment the demons could be tracking the other witches." She leaned back and closed her eyes, thankful for the steadiness of Adam's hand around hers.

Paper rustled, items on the table were picked up, set down. A wooden spoon hit the side of the spell pot. Low words were muttered in a masculine voice.

Lethargy.

It stole over her body slowly, moving from her toes up her body like some super-enhanced meditation. Her muscles, tense from stress and fear, relaxed one by one, giving up their strain to a curious irrational peacefulness.

It was a little like when she'd been a child with a bad appendix and the Ytrayi healers had been forced to remove it. Back then they'd used a spell like this one to put her mind elsewhere while they cut the offending part from her body.

What Micah did now was also a kind of surgery and the sensation she felt was her anesthesia. It was so powerful that even if she'd wanted to fight it—and a part of her did from simple instinct—she could not.

Her body went limp and heavy, as though in slumber. But she could still hear what was going on around her, still feel sensation in her body and the steady, reassuring clasp of Adam's hand.

The first touch of the foreign tendril of power entering her wasn't even a shock. The curling bit of earth magick went for the seat of her magick first. Inwardly, she pulled herself around it, protecting it, though she knew that was not what Micah sought.