I was entertaining a particularly fascinating dream about shirtless athletes — male and female — when a heinous monster harpooned me into consciousness by tipping the mattress on its side. I tumbled down the slope like a snowboarding accident, hitting the floorboards with bone-jarring force. Groaning, I rolled into the nearest blanket, fully intent on going back to sleep right there on the floor.

The monster would have none of that.

"Get dressed," Ruben said, nudging me with a hard-pointed shoe. "You're going to be late."

"Ew," I said, flinging away his foot. If those were the shoes he wore to the bar, I didn't even want to think about what they'd come into contact with over the years. "Go away."

"That wasn't a request." This time, the flat of his shoe found my hip, and he shoved me off the blankets.

I was about to tell the bastard to shove an assortment of sharp things in crude places when it hit me properly that Ruben was in my bedroom. I shot upright, pawing at the crust in my eyes until I could finally wrench my gummy lashes apart. What happened to all of the locks on my bedroom door? I must have been too exhausted to latch them properly, I realised, cursing my stupidity.

The only silver lining was that I'd also been too lazy to get undressed, so I'd fallen asleep in a full set of clothes. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Ruben waited with an aloof, regal patience that belief his gym attire, hands clasped behind his back. His sandy-brown skin seemed to take on the glow of the fairy-lights wrapped around my bed frame, and I was surprised to realise how handsome he was. My eyes usually skirted over him at the bar; I was always looking at his aura or his hands as he prepared me a drink, only occasionally glancing up at his face to check if I'd elicited a reaction.

It was hard not to pay attention to the face of a strange man standing in my room. I guessed he was Vietnamese, maybe even Japanese, with ebon eyes that reflected perfect copies of the movie posters collaged on the walls. His build was tall and slim, but there was an elegance to his every movement that suggested extreme precision, as though he'd trained in the art of dance or music. Still, there was a lithe strength in his torso, evidenced by the sliver of muscle where his tracksuit hung low off his hips.

They were too intimate, the kind of pants that close friends or romantic partners wore around each other. And his shirt was rumpled, along with his hair. It was decidedly out of character.

"Did we...?" I trailed off, making an obscene gesture.

Ruben arched an eyebrow, the only expression on his otherwise deadpan face. "No."

"Of course not," I said, feeling flustered all of a sudden. I'd never brought anyone home with me before; I felt unusually vulnerable here, surrounded by all of my personal belongings. "Something like that would be memorable."

He crossed his arms, not flattered or fazed in the least. His lips looked a little swollen, but it looked more like a bruise than evidence of kissing, as if he'd been in a fight since I saw him last. And his aura was sparkling amethyst as always, without even the slightest trace of emotional impurity.

"Get up and get dressed," he said again. "We have a training session to attend."

I frowned. "You mean for the task force? But I was only conscripted last night."

"And?"

"What time is it?" I asked, suspicion creeping into my tone.

Ruben strode over to the window and yanked on the curtain cord, revealing a dusky cityscape smattered with pinpricks of light. The sun looked the way I felt, bloated and sullen and on the verge of collapsing back into the dark abyss of sleep.

"That had better be a sunset," I said slowly, feeling the quiet beginnings of a full-blown rage.

Ruben shook his head. "It's already 7:32am. I let you sleep as long as I could, but we really must get going. Training starts at eight."

"Sunrise," I said aloud, trying to terms with the concept that I'd gone to sleep a mere two hours ago.

"Yes."

"Dawn," I reworded, just in case this was all some huge misunderstanding.

"We established that."

I inhaled sharply through my nose. "How dare you?"

Ruben headed for my walk-in wardrobe, oblivious to the holes I was trying to drill into his back with my eyes.

"Your mother warned me you'd be like this," he said in a conversational tone, tugging an old but sturdy duffle bag from the top shelf. "She said you wouldn't get up to answer the door if I knocked, which is why she gave me a spare key. And leverage."

"Leverage?" I asked, taken aback by the efficiency with which he packed all my clothes. He lingered over nothing, taking only what was necessary, and I wondered if I should feel offended. The answer was probably yes, for the blatant invasion of my privacy if nothing else, but the whole situation was so baffling it almost bordered on amusing.

"Yes," he said, moving onto the next draw down. To my surprise, he was as judicial as he was efficient in the selection of my underwear, picking only those that were practical and flattering. "Ms. Walker said to relay that if you don't attend the training session this morning, she will personally track you down and drain your aura. She said she'd leave you with the exact amount of energy you need to continue living and no more."

I froze. "She said that?"

"Does that surprise you?"

"No, not really." Mum had never threatened that before, but I didn't doubt for a second that she could do it. For a sweat-inducing moment, I entertained the notion of her storm-cell aura next to mine, which would look like a cute little dust-devil in comparison.

I'd worked so hard to cultivate my darkness, to armour myself in the promise of its power. But this threat revealed more about the nature of our family feud than Ruben realised. It was sobering to realise how utterly I was at my mother's mercy, that she could secure her mantle as Southern Dark Witch literally any time, without even breaking a sweat.

So what was she waiting for? I had it on good authority she was going to try and kill me one day, and like a sentimental idiot I'd given her the benefit of the doubt, hoping for the best while quietly preparing for the worst. She was negligent, yes; dismissive and distant, but never violent.

Now I was beginning if her motives were even more selfish than I'd anticipated. If she could drain my aura, it was possible that she was waiting for my power to mature. Was that why she was constantly pushing for me to attend the Incantum and realise my full potential? So that she could take it for herself?

"Nora?"

Ruben's voice pulled me from the nauseating spiral of my thoughts. "Yes?"

"It's time to go."

You will never be safe with her, crooned a baritone voice from memory, and it carried the weight of a prophecy. I stamped the memory down, but it bucked and splashed before eventually going still, too spent to continue.

Relief and fear rolled through me in equal measure as it sank, disappearing from sight. It was gone for now, but I knew with bone-chilling certainty the memory was biding its time and regaining its strength, preparing to strike again.

The blankets lost their appeal. A distraction was in order, and the task-force training session was readily available.

"Alright," I said, climbing to my feet. "I'm coming. But I expect a ribbon of participation at the very least for my efforts."

"Certainly." Ruben said it so easily it that it had to be a lie. "Any day that you're up before noon is an occasion to be celebrated."