The witches had been tucked away with Leo and Imani and the Alpha from Perigee night that reminded Tisper all too much of a robust female viking—or maybe a pirate without a parrot and a peg-leg. Acadia, they'd called her. She'd arrived some time after dinner, of course a few cases of beer hauled in from her trunk.

The Watch had grown increasingly crowded and unbearably stuffy and the rooms had to be shuffled to make space for the witches and the fifth alpha. So Tisper and Sadie joined Matt and Alex's room, more bedding than floor to walk on. Quentin had been given a second blood transfusion, which, according to Imani, would at least provide a temporary defense against infection and slow the deterioration around his wounds. It bought them time, but it would never be enough.

Eventually, Imani and the others would come to an agreement on their next course of action. For now, Tisper wasn't willing to sit in wait. For eight hours that day, she fired her arrows—stopping only to eat and escape the sun, which had returned with a grueling vengeance. That night, when she returned to practice again, she couldn't feel the arrows beneath her fingers.

It was a struggle to nock them in place, and her first shot faltered and struck the base of the tree. The next three hardly made it across the lawn.

"Doing a fine job of shooting the dirt."

She screamed at the voice—a short, shameless wail into he night. He hadn't been there a moment ago, but Felix sat on that boulder he'd lounged on before—his clothing rugged and worn, caked in dirt and sprinkled with foliage. He held a mug of black coffee in his hands and filth on his face. Tisper's heart still slammed in her chest and she clutched at it while she narrowed on him.

"Where the hell have you been?"

Three days, Felix had been missing. She'd noticed at the dinner Lisa made, the day after when the witches arrived, and now today—while they were all agonizing over the silence, Felix had been the only one not around.

"Why?" he asked, tapping a spare arrow to that cocksure grin of his. "Miss me?"

Tisper nocked her next arrow onto her bow and drew back. This one hit the tree steadily—but no where near the target. "What do you want?"

He gave his mug a glance and gestured with it. "How'd ye make that coffee." As were all of Felix's questions, this one sounded more like a statement. An entitled demand.

"What coffee?" Tisper stomped her way to the tree, ripping the arrow fiercely from the flesh.

"That cup ye' made the other night." Felix said, dumping his mug into the grass. "This doesn't taste as good."

She glanced to him over her shoulder with a deep scoff, backing up until her toes touched the twig she'd use to mark her range. Then Tisper set her arrow in place again. This time, she couldn't feel the string of her bow beneath her fingers. She couldn't feel its pull. She couldn't feel anything.

The arrow dropped dead from her bow and she hurled out a frustrated sound. From the corner of her eye, she saw Felix rise.

"Don't," she hissed, swiping her arrow from the ground. "I don't want any of your lessons or your snickers or your condensation. Not tonight."

"My condensation?" asked Felix.

"Condescension!" Tisper cried, pointing her arrow to his chest. "I'm tired. And not in the mood for games."

Felix moved forward, brazenly disregarding her pointy stick. "What games?"

She felt her face flaring. The last time she'd seen Felix, she'd had a hand on all the warm, hard hills of his abs. And for a moment, she'd considered allowing herself the fantasies of feeling them again—but then she remembered the blonde from the crowning ceremony. The gemstone resting at the center of her womanly bust. Her small shoulders and her heart-shaped face and her long, silken hair.

Those games. She didn't want to play those games. The ones she'd played with Matt. The ones that made her think they were anything but a game, until she was the loser in it all.

She jabbed the arrow at Felix's chest. "Games," she said. "You know exactly what games." And as she said the word games, Tisper jabbed him again.

Felix splayed his hands in the air, and slipped back a step. "What games?"

"Please!" groaned Tisper. She pointed the arrow to his face. "You." And with the fletching end, she batted up the front of his shirt, just enough to show that chiseled, stony middle. "And those." That grin on his face was definite, and it only angered her more. "You're playing games." Tisper gave him another jab with the arrow for fair measure and Felix staggered back a step.

"I knew it," he said, scrutinizing her with a bit too much fun for her liking. "Jealousy is a hard look to pin on you."

Tisper guffawed. "What in the hell are you talking about?"

But that large man, with his long, lanky frame, dared to move forward. "Perigee night," he said. "That look ye' gave me. That cold shoulder after."

"I was not—" Tisper flustered. "No."

"Ahh," crooned Felix. "We're good at spotting lies, ye' know. Can feel it in the heartbeat."

The night air wasn't cool enough to relieve the heat on Tisper's cheeks. "I," she began, jabbing him again, "was—" and again "—not—" and once more "—Jealous."

By then, Felix was pressed so far back against the old, mossy boulder, he dropped into the weathered seat of the stone, rubbing all those spots on his chest that she'd prodded away at.

"Aye—alright. Enough," he said. "It stops being sexy after the fifth time."

"You smell like a swamp," she said for a change in subject. "You kind of look like a swamp too, what happened to you?"

"Aren't many waters around here to bathe away in," Felix said. "Besides, a bit of mud does the heart good."

"So you didn't bother to shower while you were inside making coffee?"

"Arse-water more like it," Felix said.

Tisper—still surely red—crossed her arms, arrow tucked into her elbow. "I told you. No one really likes their coffee black."

The way he looked at her then could have struck her dead.

Felix's eyes were some of the most stunning jewels Tisper had ever seen. They weren't a unique color, like the icy blue of Jaylin's; they were the color of the mossy tree-sides in a dark, overgrown forest. But it was the way they looked. The way there was always a shimmer, light in the fractures of a stone. They stared into her with that honest way about them. That look that always meant something more than it did—not that she'd ever deciphered exactly what that was.

"Do you know me better than myself?" Felix asked.

Tisper didn't respond, because she couldn't tell the intention behind that question. Whether it was honest, or whether he was berating her. Whether it was rhetorical, or whether he truly wanted an answer. More than anything, she wondered if he was really asking her, or if that question was one for himself.

She jumped when he took her by the hand and turned her palm up to the moon.

"Ye'll have no fingers left by the end of this," Felix said. His hand looked so dark compared to her own. Dusty with dried dirt and mud, but she didn't mind. He went over each finger with one of his own. "Callouses, blisters," he said. "Blisters beneath callouses... How long've ye been at it?"

Tisper took her hand away and curled it to her chest. "You never answered my question."

"I must've been distracted by all the attempted bludgeoning," Felix quipped.

Tisper scraped a bit of dirt from the head of her arrow and asked as nonchalantly as she could, "Where'd you go?"

"Went wolf for a while," Felix said. "Life's easier when all've ye got to worry about is finding your next meal."

"Explains the smell," Tisper said. Staring at her fingers now, they were truly battered. The skin hard and darkened at the tips.

"Planned to deal with that," said Felix. "First, tell me why yer out here at nine at night, shooting arrows into the ground."

Tisper sighed and dropped her bow to the grass. Then she gestured over her shoulder and stocked off toward a gap in the trees. She didn't look back to see if Felix followed, she could hear his footsteps just behind her.

A trail had been stamped into the ground, the earth thinning beneath her feet. California forests weren't nearly as dense as the ones at homes, and not nearly as dark. The moon lit the long path through scattered alders, until it stopped at a clearing. An old abandoned lot of overgrown grass, probably used decades ago for sheep or goats. It didn't matter what, the place was well beyond forgotten.

The grass had been freshly flattened in the center like it was smashed down by something heavy. A crop circle, but no alien ship to show for it. And there Jaylin stood, naked in a pool of blood, the stuff dripping down from his fingertips, swelling on the ground.

"Focus." Nicon paced around him slowly, a long metal cane under hand. "In through your feet, up through your head. Breathe," he said. "When you're ready."

Something rippled beneath Jaylin's skin. Then something more, a steady boil beneath the flesh. He curled forward, his spine arched, his skin went black, burnt beneath the summer moon. And then he burst, all at once—a spray of blood, orbing out from his body, raining down on the ground. The lichund rose from a simple mound of black fur, onto its four feet. His mane spilled with blood as he wavering there—his large hands splashing down into the mud below. Those yellow eyes beamed in the moonlight, his breath heaving, each a potent growl from his chest.

His head rose and he took in a deep draft of night air, ears perking to the rustle of finches in the trees nearby.

"Don't," Nicon said. The lich turned to him, those same ears folding back now. "Look at me, Jaylin." 

The beast pinned his stare on Nicon, but not without a disgruntled snarl. He stepped forward in his puddle of gore.

"No," Nicon said. "Stay just where you are." And when Jaylin didn't, he raised his stick—prodded it at the beast. The end crackled, zapped him with a small pop of electricity. Tisper's heart ached to see him shrink back, to lower himself into the earth the way he did.

Once he showed no sign of aggression, Nicon continued, "You're going to turn back now, just like before. In through your head," he said, circling Jaylin still. "Out through your feet."

And all those seams in that giant beast ripped apart, imploded into heaps of black fur and carnage. And Jaylin's small body staggered up from the ashes, heaving for breath, fighting the wet ground for his footing—clutching the pain in his arm where he'd been shocked to obedience.

"Good," Nicon told him, bits of blood stuck to his clothing. A crow crooned from a tree nearby, and a breeze rattled through Tisper, brought that awful bloody smell her way. "Are you okay to continue?"

Jaylin hadn't the air to make words, so he nodded, breath heaving, blood falling from his chin.

"Alright then. Again," Nicon said. "In through your feet."

Unable to stomach much more, Tisper turned away. She could hear the blood hit the ground like rain.

"Why's he doing that?" Felix asked, still watching Jaylin go from lichund to man and back again.

"He thinks that if he can teach himself to turn, if he can figure out how to control the lichund, he'll be able to save Quentin. The stun stick was an extra precaution, but he keeps trying to attack Nicon."

Felix released a breath through his nose. "All the lad's doing is draining himself dry."

"At least he's doing something."

"Nothing that'll matter in the end."

"And what've you done?" Tisper snapped. "You ran off with your tail literally between your legs."

She expected one of Felix's usual silver-tongued lashes. Anything to challenge her sudden snipe. Instead he watched Jaylin turn with his jaw set, those jewels for eyes drinking in all that moonlight. Glowing, truly glowing.

"That I did," Felix said.

His voice was so soft when he'd said it, it settled in Tisper—stuck in the walls of her like a bad dream. She let out a deep breath as she passed him by. "Go take a shower. You smell awful."

She was halfway toward that crack in the forest wall when she heard him say, "Princess." She turned to find him standing just where he'd been, not looking away from Jaylin. Watching him burst apart and rebuild again—back into that wild black beast. "Was it cinnamon?"

For the first time all day, Tisper found herself smiling.

"Felix, would you like for me to ruin your coffee again?"

"Please," she heard him say.