Which meant he led San Francisco by the will of the people but didn’t have the ability to vote on issues at the Magical Summit until he presented himself there officially.

He stuck out a hand for Jerry.

Jerry didn’t break eye contact with Kieran. After a tense beat, he took his hand. “You know me as Titus. But…” His gaze flicked my way. “My…fiancée introduced me by my given name. Jerry.”

“Damn right it’s Jerry,” Donovan murmured from his spot near the wall.

Thane, standing beside Donovan, said, “Jerry is right.”

Zorn gave them a hard look, probably to shut them up.

“They’re a little punch-drunk,” I explained.

“Jerry, then.” Kieran looked around the space, his eyes lingering on the other spirits. They narrowed on Harding, who was still observing everything unobtrusively. It occurred to me that he probably could’ve helped us out of the caves and clearly hadn’t bothered. He was capricious like that.

“What do you want, Demigod Drusus?” Jerry asked.

My mouth bent into an upside-down smile. I’d never heard anyone use Kieran’s last name after his Demigod title, and I wasn’t sure if it was a slight or a form of respect.

Kieran half turned to me. “How much does he know so far?”

“I’d rather hear it from you,” Jerry said before I could answer. “I want to see how well your dad has trained you.”

“Very well, I assure you.” Kieran’s gaze snagged on the single chair. “Do you have somewhere we can talk?”

“Yes. Follow me.” Jerry pushed past Kieran without reservation. We walked through a room I hadn’t been in before, the others following behind, including the spirits. A kitchen table sat off to the side with two chairs, one of them broken. A horrible smell beyond the kitchen caught my attention, and I glanced into a connected room and saw the pile of bones John had discovered.

“Had a nice wander around, huh, John?” I asked over my shoulder. “Checked out all the sights while we were having a standoff with a powerful, not-super-tall giant?”

“I wanted to make sure he didn’t have friends,” John replied.

“I would’ve felt any of his friends, John, you know that.”

“Fine. I was curious.”

“Finally. Honesty,” I muttered as we passed through the other end of the kitchen and entered a hall similar to the one on the other side, only this one was higher and broader. Rooms branched off to the right, then left, but Jerry didn’t turn into any of them. We kept climbing ever higher and deeper into the mountain, until Jerry rounded a bend, took a turn, and led us out onto something sort of like a balcony—a little cutout with a rock wall blocking a dizzying fall. Two chairs were stationed in front of it, looking over the vast blue of Montana. I’d never been this high up before. It felt like the top of the world. I wondered if we could see the whole state. I also wondered if I could get an oxygen mask because of how thin the air was.

“Please.” Jerry gestured at the chair before moving to stand near the rock equivalent of a railing, crossing his arms.

Kieran motioned for me to sit down, taking a standing position at the other side of the rock railing. Bria took the other open seat without apology and everyone else fanned out, some on the patio, some tucked back into the cave.

Silence stretched as Kieran and Jerry both stared out at the view. I had a feeling it was guy code of some sort so I just waited them out.

“She was talking to a spirit back there, wasn’t she?” Jerry finally said, still looking out at the plateau that didn’t seem real.

“Yes. They are around all the time,” Kieran answered.

Jerry shivered. “Can you see them also?”

“Yes. She initiated a soul link, allowing us to share a small portion of our magic with each other. The first morning with this new…insight was…disconcerting. The power that came with it, however, is fantastic. Very effective.”

Jerry’s arms tightened over his chest. “You essentially stumbled upon a Soul Stealer, is that correct?”

“Yes. The shock was great, I assure you. When I first met her—”

“Stalked, met—similar, I guess,” Bria said.

“—she had no idea who I was. She was utterly clueless about the magical hierarchy. She is as green as they get.”

Jerry turned to me. “You weren’t lying. You weren’t brought up in the magical world?”

Bria huffed out a laugh. “How dense are you? Even a reclusive nutcase who eats his kills can see that.”

Jerry’s eyebrows lowered.

“Yeah, Jerry,” Donovan said from within the mountain.

“Duh, Jerry,” Thane said.

“What the fuck is your problem?” Zorn asked them in a forceful hush, out of sight.

“She battled my father only months after learning the true nature of her magic,” Kieran said, his gaze shifting to me. “Her first proper introduction to the magical world was on the news. I put her in incredible danger. You wonder why I’m here? For help. She will never be safe. Not as long as she lives. Someone will always be trying to take her, to use her. You should’ve seen the look on my father’s face when he realized what she was. He’d always told me it would be a foolish mistake to mark any woman in my life. He was so adamant that he never told me how to do it. But the second he saw the woman I had marked, his tune changed completely. He hoped I’d done it to claim her. They’ll all think like that. They’ll use it as an excuse to try to rip her from me, and they’ll try to kill me to make it easier. I’m doing everything in my power to give us some protection. Any protection.”

Jerry grinned without humor. His bald head shone in the dying sun. “You are good, Demigod Drusus.”

“That was the truth.”

“Oh, I know it. And you knew exactly which truth to share with me.”

Kieran let a moment pass, looking out at the incredible view. “Yes, I did.”

“What makes you think you’re different from all the other Demigods?” Jerry asked, thick arms still crossed over his chest.

“I grew up with impeccable training—training that’ll make me the best. It was hard-won. As my father prepared me for a magical life, my mother was suffering and fading away. Because of what he was doing to her. I didn’t battle my father for his territory, and if Alexis and her kids hadn’t made me want more from life, I wouldn’t have taken it—”

Jerry’s gaze snapped to me. “You have kids?”

“Wards, really,” I said. “They aren’t biologically mine. My mother saved them off the streets, and I took up the baton after she passed. One of my wards is non-magical, and the other was a shifter with Moonmoth disease, where the human side tries to fight the magical blood. Kieran saved Mordecai before he had any claim on me. He bought us food, too, and he and his guys even showed up to cook it. You asked what makes Kieran different? It’s that he is genuine when it counts. The first day he met me, when he thought I might have been hired to spy on him, he still went out of his way to buy a blanket for my very sick ward. He left it at the door without so much as a note. Kieran looks after his guys like they are family. He takes it in stride when Bria”—she raised her hand, eyes still closed—“talks back and drags me into terrible schemes, because she’s family, too. He hasn’t forgotten the lessons he learned from his mother.”