I woke up on the couch in the main living room of the Henhouse to the soft murmur of voices and the smell of vanilla and spice. I was wrapped in a quilt with my head resting on a warm, muscled thigh. I knew that thigh, that warm energy, that scent. Alek.

"Hey," I said, struggling to unwrap myself as I turned my head and looked up at him, squinting into the light from the lamp beyond his shoulder.

"You all right?" he asked. He helped me sit up.

"Yeah." If I hadn't been, the concern and love emanating from his ice-blue eyes would have fixed any ill, I was sure. I poked at the yellow-green bruise and thin pink line on my leg which was all that remained of where the Fomoire hound had slashed at me.

"Good to see you again, Jade," said a rough, almost gravelly male voice and I looked over to see Aurelio, the alpha of the Bitterroot pack, sitting cross-legged on the floor. His shaggy black hair with its shock of bright white was loose over his bare shoulders and I swear he was wearing the same green sweats I'd last seen him in, a month earlier.

"Wish we could meet when things aren't trying to kill us, eh?" I said. "I thought you were leaving the area."

"I tried," Aurelio said with a grim smile. "Seems my pack is still needed. The forest is unquiet."

I looked around the living room. Judging from how healed my wound was, I'd been out at an hour or so. Max was wrapped in a quilt similar to the one around my almost naked torso and fast asleep in one of the oversize chairs. Harper and Rosie sat at the dining room table, their heads together as they spoke in voices too low for me to understand.

"Ezee is with Levi and Junebug upstairs," Alek said. "They are hurt, but nothing a few days of rest and Rosie's cooking can't cure."

Memories flooded back and I stared down at the dried blood rimming my fingernails. "Tess?" She was a sorceress, like me. She'd live through a wound like that, but it wouldn't be fun.

Alek jerked his chin toward the hall and the room where Harper had convalesced last month after nearly being turned into furry BBQ by Haruki the assassin. "Vivian is with her, seeing what she can do to get the bleeding to stop and close the wound."

"She'll heal, like I always do," I said. I stood up, wrapping the quilt around my body like a towel and tucking in the corner, since I had nothing but my bra covering my chest. Alek caught my hand and raised a pale eyebrow at me.

"I'm getting some water," I said. "And maybe finding a shirt."

I walked to the kitchen, not wanting to go see Tess yet. She'd come back. Part of me was relieved, in no small part because she'd probably saved Levi's life by appearing when she had. Part of me was afraid.

It was no coincidence that all this was happening now. I couldn't afford to be that naïve or optimistic. She'd shown up at precisely the right time, hadn't she? I hated myself a bit for being so suspicious. I clenched my hands into fists and went to wash her damn blood off them.

Harper and Rosie both looked at me but I shook my head in a "later" gesture and they let me pass without conversation. The kitchen was occupied, however. Brie and Yosemite stood there, arguing in Old Irish, keeping their voices low, but clearly not so concerned that anyone would hear them. I paused in the doorway, but they did little more than glance my way before resuming their conversation. Ciaran must not have told them I spoke Irish, or if he had, they assumed he'd meant only the modern language, not all its iterations.

"You cannot come with us," Yosemite said. "Ciaran comes home tomorrow, but he will not be in time. I cannot wait. You know that. If you were to lose yourself without him there…" he trailed off.

"You need my help. The two of you alone are not powerful enough if it is what we fear," Brie said. "I cannot let you go into the woods alone, not again."

"Who will stay and protect the unicorn?" Yosemite countered.

"The pack is here, and the sorceress can handle herself."

I finished rinsing my hands and poured a glass of water, taking a sip, swishing, and spitting it out. I drained the cup and turned to face them both. Yosemite's dual-colored eyes were shadowed by dark circles and his thick shoulders were hunched. He looked more exhausted than I still felt, a tree ready to topple in the next stiff breeze.

Brie appeared different. There was no trace of exhaustion around her. Her green eyes were bright, her curls somehow bouncier, and her lips and skin practically dewy with health and youth. She looked ten years younger. Her apron was gone, replaced by a teeshirt that read "Frag the Weak," which I recognized as one of Harper's.

"I'll go with you," I said to Yosemite as they stopped talking and regarded me in turn. I'd already figured the second person Brie had meant was Alek, and I wasn't letting him run off into the wilderness without me again.

"You?" Brie snorted. "You can barely stand up."

"I'll be fine by morning," I said, mostly sure I wasn't lying. I was tired, but the worst of the exhaustion had passed and my magic was there and strong when I reached for it.

"Please, Brigit," Yosemite said in Old Irish. "Stay and wait for Ciaran."

Brigit? The way he said the name rang a bell in my head, but whatever thought it was ran off before I could grasp it. Whatever Brie was, she was no hearth witch.

"Fine," she said after a moment. "You better let nothing happen to him."

"I believe Iollan can look after himself," I said in Old Irish, enunciating the words. "Or perhaps you missed the fight I just witnessed."

"I miss very little. Something it would seem we have in common, Jade Crow," she said, her mood changing from pissy to grinning in the blink of an eye. "I will wait and keep watch while you sleep," she said to Yosemite. She walked out of the kitchen and toward the back door.

"Who is she?" I asked the druid. We both knew I really meant "what is she?"

"That is a long story, and not mine to tell," he said. "I must rest. We will leave at dawn, before the trail goes too cold." He moved to follow Brie, stripping his clothing as he went, his steps lumbering and pained.

I set down my glass. Hadn't expected a strip show. Who were these people?

"He's going to recharge," Ezee said behind me. "He'll sleep out under the sky tonight, his body in contact with the earth. Tomorrow morning when the sun rises, he will be ready to go off and be a big damn hero again."

I looked over at my friend. Ezee wore another borrowed shirt, this one just plain black with a power button symbol on it. His hair was pulled back from his tired face and still damp from a shower. His brown eyes closed for a moment as Yosemite, now stark naked, left through the back door and vanished into the night.

"So," I said. "You and the druid, eh? When did that happen?"

"It didn't," Ezee said. "I mean, it does, sometimes. It isn't serious; we just see each other when he's in town sometimes. Rarely."

"Methinks you doth protest too much."

"Funny," he said, waving a hand at me in a vague STFU gesture.

"Seriously," I said. "You two seem pretty close."

"A bird may love a fish, but where would they build a home together?" he quoted.

"You know, they get together and live happily ever after at the end of that movie," I said.

"What? What movie? I'm quoting Fiddler on the Roof."

Ha, whoops. "I thought you were quoting Ever After . I'll take 'nerds mixing up references' for six hundred, Alex."

We smiled at each other. Our smiles didn't last. Too much had happened.

"You know about folklore and stuff, right?" I said. "Why is Fomoire familiar to me?"

"So you'll actually take 'white people's legends' for six hundred," Ezee said. "The Fomorians were the original people in Ireland, I think. Irish myth isn't exactly my area of expertise. They were bad folk, but of course the people who fought against them and destroyed them would say that."

We shared another, sadder smile. Try growing up Native American if you ever want a stark lesson in how the conquerors rewrite history and even myth to suit themselves.

"Yosemite said those demon things were Fomoire hounds. They seemed pretty damn evil to me," I said.

"I'll ask him tomorrow," Ezee said. "Who is the woman that Vivian is trying to patch up? Seemed like you knew her."

Shit. I knew I couldn't dodge this question forever. But maybe a little longer.

"How is Levi?" I asked, aware of how obvious my ploy was.

"He'll be fine, thanks in part to that woman showing up and saving his ass, apparently. So?"

"I'd better tell everyone at once," I said.

"Levi is asleep and Junebug won't leave his side, so the rest of us will have to do," Ezee said, following me into the living room.

Harper and Rosie had moved from the table to the second couch, probably trying to give those of us in the kitchen some privacy. Max was awake, sipping tea.

"Can I borrow a shirt?" I asked Harper.

She jumped up and ran upstairs, returning with a grey long-sleeved teeshirt that had Pikachu on it. Mistake on her part, because I wasn't sure I'd give this one back. It was one of my favorites of hers. I pulled it on and took up a spot on the couch next to Alek.

"The woman who showed up tonight," I said, motioning with one hand toward the room where Vivian and Tess were. "She's a sorceress, like me. Kind of exactly like me." I took a deep breath, searching for the words. "She ran away from Samir this week and came to me. Or so she says."

"Samir?" Aurelio asked.

"Psycho sorcerer ex-boyfriend," Harper supplied. "He's been fucking with Jade, trying to kill her for, like, years now."

"Why didn't you tell us she was in town?"

I glanced at Alek, but he only raised his eyebrows at me. This was my mess and while his arm came around my shoulders in silent support, he wasn't going to clean it up for me.

"Because I sent her away, or at least I tried to. I don't trust her. You think all this stuff is happening right when she shows up is a coincidence? This is more of Samir's stupid games."

"So she's here to kill you?" Ezee asked.

"I don't know," I said. "She said she wasn't, and Alek says she's telling the truth, but I just don't know. I can't take the chance. Things are dangerous enough."

"If she wanted to hurt you, she has one heck of a way of showing it," Rosie said. "I saw her appear like that, put herself right between that demon and Levi."

"She saved my brother's life," Ezee said. "He told me. And now she's half dead in that room, her guts everywhere, half her blood on the driveway. Pretty shit plan if she wanted to harm us, no?"

I hated their logic. I hated that I still felt so much suspicion. I hated that I had sent her away and she had come anyway, showed up in my moment of need and done something I had failed to do. Saved my friend.

Letting out my breath slowly, I pushed all the hate away. Maybe that was the problem. Too much hatred for Samir, too much pain, so much it was blinding me when it came to him, to anything he'd touched. Maybe it was time to try accepting Tess at her word, give her a chance.

"I know," I said. "I might be wrong. I'm going to talk to her, see what she knows. This isn't a coincidence."

"Maybe he's pissed that she ran," Harper said. "Could he be here? Summoning those things? They weren't natural."

A small thrill went through me, followed by a spike of dread. If he was here, I wasn't ready. But I didn't know if I would ever be ready.

"I don't know. I'm going to talk to her, when she's awake."

Vivian emerged from the room, stepping into the hallway and turning toward us as our worried gazes all fixed on her. She wiped a bloody hand over her forehead, leaving a pink smear.

"She wants to talk to Jade," she said. "Don't overtax her. She's healing, but it'll be a while and she needs rest."

Be a while ? I raised my eyebrows at that. Vivian didn't know how fast sorceresses healed. Tess's wound would already be closing after an hour. She'd have a hell of a bruise by morning and probably be tired and slow for a day or two, but by week's end she would be right as rain with just an ugly fading mark to show for being nearly bitten in half.

I got up, and Alek followed me. Behind me I heard Rosie offering Vivian a room and a change of clothes.

Tess was in the bed, quilts pulled up to her chin. Her face was pale, her cheeks sunken hollows. She opened her eyes as we entered.

"So," I said. "We meet again."