That meddling Demigod asshole thought he could strong-arm me into getting what he wanted. He thought he could play Mordecai’s condition against me.

But he didn’t realize that, in my moments of weakness, I had two awesome kids to band together and raise me up.

“Keep that egging idea on the back burner,” I said, my natural fire and aggression coming to the surface. When life gave you lemons, find someone to chuck them at.

Even if that someone was a Demigod.

“What are you going to do?” Daisy asked.

“I’m going to tell a Demigod where to shove it.”

I grabbed a sweatshirt from my room and marched toward the door.

“Keep your clothes on this time,” Daisy yelled after me.

39

Alexis

“Any of them in the yard?” I asked Frank as I slung my purse, now misshapen as well as discolored, across my body.

“Yes, ma’am, there is. Right over there.” Frank pointed at the overgrown shrubs hugging the corner of my house.

They weren’t thick or extremely high, but if it hadn’t been for Frank, I never would’ve guessed some big guy lurked within them.

I stalked that way, Frank at my side. “Should I check in with the eyes at the rear?” he asked, clearly digging this bit of spy speak.

“No need.”

Donovan, with his perpetually tousled hair that worked so well for him, looked up with haunted eyes, his smile long gone. He wasn’t nearly as excited about his job as Frank was about leading my surveillance team. Then again, he had been kicked in the keister by a ghost.

He stood slowly, knowing the jig was up. He didn’t bother asking how I knew he was there.

“Tell your boss I’m on my way to meet him,” I said without preamble. “I assume the location in that envelope is good?”

Donovan looked down at his arms before shivering. His hairs were probably standing on end. He felt Frank’s presence. “Yes. He’s already there.”

“Is he, now? So sure I’d accept his offer?”

“Do you have any choice?” Donovan shrugged. “It benefits everyone. Why wouldn’t you take it?”

“Oh, I don’t know, because he’s manipulating me? Because he’s trying to trap me into giving him what he wants?”

“If you want to beat the player, you have to learn how to play the game,” Donovan said with a smirk.

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Kick him again, Frank.”

“With pleasure.” Frank rubbed his hands together.

I spun and stalked across the grass to my car.

The meet-up wasn’t far, on the cliffs overlooking the ocean. I parked as close as I could, next to his shiny Ferrari that sorely needed a key scrape down the side and a few eggs, before hiking up the hill toward the brick wall enclosing the magical zone. The paved path ended and a dirt trail took over, turning sandy as I wound around a couple of trees and along the steep cliff.

A mostly broken wood and wire fence leaned badly, warning people and dogs alike from going too near the cliff’s edge. Huge sections were missing, and others dangled down, falling as the cliff eroded away.

Not far in the distance, the non-magical fence sparkled silver in the late afternoon sun. Coiled barbed wire looped on top and little white signs hung at chest level, their words lost to the distance, but I knew they warned of a life-threatening shock should anyone touch the fence.

I checked the map Kieran had sent, then followed the curve of the cliff through another outcropping of wind-whipped trees. My shoes sank into the sand and the cold ocean breeze bit my cheeks. At the edge of the tree line the world stretched out before me, blue water reaching from one side to the other. Cold gray sky sank until it met the ocean in the distance.

A small green bench sat in the middle of a flat area overlooking the magnificent view. Ten feet beyond, the land dropped abruptly, and no fence stood in the way of that expanse of land and sky.

Kieran sat on that weathered bench, his large back bowed as though the weight on his shoulders was too heavy for him to sit up straight. And it was. His mother stood beside him, her hand resting on his shoulder in comfort, staring out at the sea with him. The memories of the lost were plaguing his mind.

The fire, and the frustration, the intense anger—it all dried up within me. My heart swelled…then sank.

He was a little boy in grief. A man traumatized by loss. A son pinned between the actions of a father and the suffering of a mother.

I remembered losing my own mother. Remembered getting that call from the hospital, and feeling the world come crashing down around me. I had been able to assist her through the transition to the other side, but Kieran felt helpless to do anything for his mother. I could see it in the droop of his large shoulders, and I’d bet there were grief lines on his face.

I was witnessing his personal Vietnam, just as he’d witnessed mine when watching me try to buy that blanket.

He was asking for a way out, in exchange for offering me a way out.

The scene before me swam in tears as his mother slowly turned toward me. Her sorrow-infused eyes pleaded with me more than any words could. “Help him,” she said, her voice like a bell, her tone aching. “Please. Help my son. He doesn’t deserve this.”

I turned to the side and blinked away tears.

This was why I hated getting involved. Because in these situations, saying no just wasn’t in me. I couldn’t, in good conscience, let someone drown in grief when I could help. I just couldn’t.

“Hey,” I said softly.

The effort it took Kieran to straighten up was obvious.

“Take your hand off him,” I told his mother. “You need to know when it’s helping, and when it’s hindering. Right now, it is hindering. He needs to be able to snap out of it so he can function.”

He spun around then, his eyes haunted and his face lined in grief, exactly how I’d predicted.

“Help him,” she said again, walking toward the cliff. With a last look behind her, she stepped off the edge and fell.

“Good…God.” I clenched my teeth. “Seeing that is hard. I mean, I know she’s already…” I cleared my throat. No need to remind the poor guy.

I gingerly sat at the very edge of the bench, trying to put as much room between us as I could. Even still, a delicious (though worrying) hum settled within me, responding to the electricity passing between us.

“Alexis.” His gaze roamed my face. He turned back to the ocean. “I knew you’d come. Angry, sad, desperate—I wasn’t sure which mood I’d get, but I knew you’d come.”

“Congratulations. You’ve manipulated me into getting what you want.”

Surprisingly, he shook his head and leaned back like his whole body ached. “I got the opposite of what I want.”

I lifted my eyebrows. “So…you didn’t want me to come?”

“I wanted you to come. I want your help. I want you spread and panting beneath me.”

Out of nowhere, heat roared through my body. I clutched the edge of the bench, fighting the impulse to run a hand up that defined arm.

“But I don’t want to coerce you,” he went on. “Not like this.” He blew out a breath. “My father trapped my mother. He met her one day, walking along the beach, and her beauty and her strength—both the strength of her magic, and her as a person—entranced him. Like you do me.” He paused for a moment, looking over at me. Fire lit his eyes and matched that of my body. “He wanted her for his own. To keep her. At first, she was more than willing. She forgot about her skin for a time, losing herself to the exotic pleasures of dry land. But to a selkie, the call of the ocean is impossible to ignore. One day, he woke up, and she was gone.”

“Which is how things usually go with a selkie, right?” I said quietly.

“Exactly.” He turned back to the ocean. “But my father is not a rational man in many things. Nor a forgiving man. I’m sure you know that.”

Everyone knew that, yes.

“As a Demigod of Poseidon, lord of the sea, my father had the rare ability to have her tracked down. To have her brought back to land. He couldn’t accept that the ocean had more power than he does. He rules the ocean, after all.”