Theo had retreated to the bedroom he'd chosen on the second floor for the night, his store of comaraderie apparently used up. He wasn't exactly an outgoing guy. Sparkly personality had passed him by when he was born. Or maybe it wasn't because of genes, but rather the ordeal he'd gone through when he'd been a teenager.

Theodosius Winters was one of the more powerful earth witches that the Coven knew of. When Theo had been seventeen, the Duskoff had kidnapped him because of his strength.

The Duskoff did that sometimes, took more powerful witches when they were vulnerable in order to break them young and use them for their own purposes. If they were air witches, sometimes they used them in blood rituals or other really distasteful things.

A good rule of thumb was to never allow yourself to be taken by the warlocks.

In any case, they'd tortured Theo until he was almost dead, trying to break his spirit and turn him. They'd never succeeded and had intended to kill him. But the Coven had sent a rescue party, a young Thomas Monahan included, and broke him out before they could do that.

Theo hadn't escaped without being scarred, though, mentally and physically. He'd been in a psychiatric ward for a while after the hospital had discharged him. Eventually, he'd come to work for the Coven, having a special grudge against the Duskoff.

Deep furrows marked the skin of Theo's chest, shoulders, and back, probably made by a bull whip. Adam had seen him bare from the waist up, seen how Theo had riffed off the scars with black tribal-like tattoos all over. The tats were charged with power the way earth witches stored it. Theo packed a lot of magick on him now—all kinds of spells he'd cooked up and stored. He was the Arnold Schwarzenegger of magick.

Adam knew Theo was itching for an all-out with the Duskoff, but these days the warlocks were nowhere to be found. At least, not the head honchos, not Stefan Faucheux and his inner circle. They'd disappeared after the battle with Erasmus Boyle. Stefan had called to taunt Isabelle with the fact he'd escaped Gribben, the magick-free prison on the Coven's property, and then vanished.

Duskoff International, a conglomerate with headquarters in New York, ran like any other evil corporation these days, manufacturing goods in sweatshops, outsourcing their labor, and laying off employees. No human knew warlocks sat in the executive's chairs, of course. No human could feel the warding that circled the Duskoff building or understood the tongue-in-cheek elevator music: "I Put a Spell on You," "Black Magic Woman," "Season of the Witch," and other assorted cheesiness.

So, yeah, Theo had a hell of a grudge to bring to bear on the Duskoff these days. Most of the Coven witches did. Adam didn't. Not specifically. Adam just had gratitude to the Coven, lots of it. Gratitude and loyalty.

The grudge he bore was only against himself.