“Narc.” I hit the button for the garage door and motioned for Dylan to get into the passenger seat of my sleek Maserati.

“I’m not sure if we’ll be safer together, or in more danger,” Dylan said as I backed out of the garage. “We each have a highly desired magic.”

“It’ll take a Demigod some time to organize a crew to come after us. Anyone else doesn’t stand a chance. If they get in close, I’ll take their soul. Otherwise, you can blast a hole through their head. Nothing to it.”

“There is that.”

“The others will probably meet us for a beer, anyway. Bria never misses an opportunity to belly up to a dive bar.” Something in my stomach twisted, and I added, “Even though it’s probably all sleek and shiny now.”

My stomach did some more twisting as we neared my old house. The house I grew up in. I hadn’t been back in months. I’d never rented it out, or even fixed it up. I’d just left it. Half of me was glad the memories had been left intact, and the other half felt sad that I’d just walked away. All that time in this place, and I’d taken off and never looked back.

I parked next to the cracked curb. A moment later, I stood on the walkway, looking at a place that seemed so much smaller than I remembered.

“Wow.” Dylan stood behind me, taking in the lack of view.

Two steps led up to the faded wood of the old door. I took out my keys as I stepped up, peering down at the bush beside me, where Kieran had placed the bag containing Mordecai’s blanket. At that time, I’d had no notion of what he would come to mean to me. Of how my life would change. I said as much with tears filling my eyes.

“He saved my kid. Mordecai never would’ve made it to adulthood. And Daisy…” I licked my lips. “I didn’t have any paperwork for her. She would’ve been completely unprepared for adult life. She would’ve had to hustle for the rest of her days. I was merely keeping them alive. Kieran gave them a future.” I wiped the tears from my face. “It’s so strange to stand here, thinking about all of this from the right side of things. I might be in a lot of danger now, but at least my kids are comfortable. At least they have a future.”

“I saw your kids with you in that café,” Dylan said softly, and I felt him gingerly touch my shoulder. “They love you. Whatever you were doing was plenty. More than plenty. I’ve lived in luxury for most of my life, but I was alone and unhappy. You gave your kids a family, and that’s not nothing. In fact, it’s worth more than all the money in the world. Please trust me on this.”

I wiped my face again. “I’m going to have to. I can’t go back and change it now.”

The key slipped into the well-used lock and I turned it, ready for more bittersweet memories.

“You lived here all your life?” Dylan asked.

“Until Kieran found me, yeah. I considered myself lucky to have a place at all.”

I pushed in through the front door, hit with stale air and the damp smell of home. The itty-bitty round kitchen table spanned the line between the teensy-weensy kitchen and the tiny living room. The low ceiling pressed down on me, reminding me of its trademark popcorn texture. Down the short hall I found my bedroom, so small that I fleetingly wondered how I’d even turned around in it. The kids’ room was next door, their two beds crammed into the tight space. Mordecai had nearly died more than once in there, coughing up blood and keeping us up half the night nursing him.

Tears came to my eyes again and my chest burned.

I took a deep breath and traced the scuffed paint where Jack had rammed my head into the wall. He’d attacked me as part of a training exercise—and found himself facing a harder fight than he’d anticipated. “Kieran saved my wards, but I couldn’t save his brother in arms. One of the Hades Demigods came for me, and Jack got in the way.” Tears trailed down my cheeks. “I miss him, so much. It’s not the same when a person is in spirit. I miss watching his big arms flex whenever he cracked an egg. It made me laugh to see all that muscle used on something so benign as cracking an egg. I miss the way Donovan and Jack always bantered when they were putting together a meal, and the way Jack coached Mordecai. I miss him calling Daisy a little gremlin. I hate that Kieran gets a pang of sorrow every time he sees Jack in spirit.”

A sob broke free, along with the realization that I’d never properly grieved for Jack. I let a few more emotions roll through me and then tucked them away again. Now wasn’t the time. The right time would probably be when Jack officially crossed the Line, and I couldn’t bear to think about that.

I took a deep breath and checked out the bathroom that we’d all shared. One sink, one medicine cabinet, a few drawers. The lack of space hadn’t mattered because we hadn’t owned much stuff to keep in there anyway.

Back in the living room, I wiped my face and lowered into a chair at the kitchen table. It creaked with my weight.

“At one point we had five people living in this house. My mom, me, and three other kids, including Mordecai. All of us squished in together.”

Dylan finally took a step away from the front door. He glanced in the kitchen before taking a seat opposite me. He leaned his forearms on the scratched and beat-up wood before clasping his hands.

“None of us minded. We didn’t know any better,” I said with a sad smile. At least those were pleasant memories. “Well…” I shrugged, picking at the wood. “My mother might’ve. She’s the one that had a hard go of it, I guess. She had to give everything up when she realized I was Magnus’s kid. And she must’ve realized it, or else why would she have hidden me away like she did?”

“How did she hide you away, that’s my question,” Dylan said. “She must’ve been at least partially powerful to produce you, even with a Demigod father. She would’ve been on the books. How’d she keep you from getting tested?”

“She didn’t. I altered my results.”

He tilted his head to the side. “What does that mean? How’d you do that?”

“She taught me. You just…like…focus your magic on muddling the outcome. I always envisioned a red needle dancing within a green screen, and that was what my magic would do to the testing machine. I wasn’t as good as my mom—she could skew it so the readings would be about the same every time. I always had to be tested a few times, and when two of the results were close together, they’d take that. The results were always low—level one and two—so they didn’t take more time than they needed to.”

He leaned over the table. “I’ve never heard of altering the machine readouts.”

“I don’t think many people have done it. No one questioned it until I met Kieran. He felt my magical level and got suspicious when my records didn’t match up.”

Dylan leaned back and looked around again. “I’ll be damned. No wonder he followed you around. This is a mind fuck. All of that magic”—he made circles with his pointer finger before jabbing it toward my chest—“and you lived here. Here! This is poverty.”

“Yeah. We took a lot of handouts and charity.”

“Demigod Kieran pulled you up out of this.”

“Well…” I frowned at him. “It’s not like it was a Cinderella story. The kids and I helped him when he went to war against his father. We earned our keep and held our own. He paid for the privilege.”