Days passed. I wrote a little. The manuscript grew slowly. Too slowly for my liking. When the words refused to budge out of my brain I retreated to the balcony. I had things to think about. Doreen left me more puzzled than informed. She needed help. From a Warrior of the Celestial Blade.

Why?

Her demon blood should make us natural enemies.

Only another interdimensional creature could threaten her. The Nörglein came to mind. Why else would she bring me information on how to banish the bastard?

I knew the dark elf had some kind of connection to Cooper’s Furniture Emporium. What had he done that Doreen needed help getting rid of him?

The rain faded to a thick mist and the wind died down. A tug hauling three long barges headed north, toward the ports on the Columbia River. I followed it with my gaze as it disappeared into the thick air beyond the bridge.

Things lurked in the mist and shadows. Things more dangerous than gravel barges on the river.

I heard a car door slam. Nothing between me and the river but a public paved path and access to a marina. All the cars were parked on the other side of the building. Whoever disturbed the midday, mid-week quiet had packed some anger into the closing of the car for me to hear it so clearly.

Serious footsteps clanged on the exterior staircase; I felt the vibrations in the railing.

Knowing my neighbors and their routine visitors, I suspected I was the target of all that energy. With a sigh, I pivoted clumsily and wrestled with the French door that wanted to close too quickly in the increasing breeze at my back.

I had no idea if Allie had retreated to the bedroom or gone out to avoid my moody silence or not.

“Who is it, Scrap?”

Since I was out of action Scrap spent more time with Ginkgo than he did with me.

Jealous? Scrap came through clearer.

“Get your ass back here. We’ve company of the unpleasant kind.”

I hobbled over to the door, opening it at the first trace of a knock, before the visitor could pound it to smithereens.

“Why, Donovan, how good to see you. Would you like a cup of coffee?” I hadn’t seen him since he’d dropped off and picked up Doreen from the café two weeks ago.

“How’d you do it, Tess?” he snarled. His fists clenched at his sides and his face darkened with suffused blood. The copper highlights in his skin grew dominant. His chocolate-colored eyes became deep holes of blackness.

The force of his emotions pushed me backward, almost physically. I raised my hand to the talisman of my pearls. They didn’t help. This must have been what Scrap felt whenever he and Donovan were in the same room before Scrap overcame the darkness in his soul; the repellant force field of an active gargoyle.

He’s human now, I reminded myself. He’s no longer a gargoyle.

I turned away and fussed with the coffeemaker in the kitchen rather than face him. “How’d I do what?” I returned.

“I’ve just come from my appeal on the custody hearing for my daughter.”

“I gather that it did not go well. MoonFeather retains custody.” My aunt hadn’t called in tears to tell me she’d lost the baby. Therefore, she hadn’t been forced to turn Lilly over to Donovan.

I added soy creamer and sugar to my cup along with fresh coffee. Donovan’s cup of black brew remained untouched on the counter.

“Your aunt has no right to my daughter. I’m Lilly’s father.” He moved closer, looming over me with barely controlled anger.

I had the crutches to fend him off if necessary.

“King Scazzy, prison warden of the Universe, ordered MoonFeather to raise WindScribe’s child,” I replied mildly.

“That has no bearing in mundane courts. Lilly is my daughter.”

“So, what did I do to push the courts to honor MoonFeather’s commitment to the baby? She is darling. Only nine months old and trying to walk already.” My aunt emailed me pictures every week.

“My DNA test. How’d you get it altered? According to the lab my genes aren’t even close to Lilly’s.” He wrapped his hand around the coffee mug like he wished it was my neck and he could strangle me.

“I did nothing. Perhaps Lilly isn’t your daughter. Perhaps WindScribe slept with someone else.” I shrugged and moved past him into the living room. If I had to defend myself I wanted space. “Rumor has it she seduced the king of Faery just before she killed him.”

Coming. He popped into view behind Donovan’s head, his wings beating wildly enough to create a draft. He bared his multiple rows of dagger-shaped teeth and made ugly faces. Then he turned his hind end toward our guest and farted so loud and noxiously I was sure Donovan could hear and smell it.

If Donovan did, he didn’t let it divert him from stalking me.

Scrap landed on my shoulder, glowing pink. He prepared to turn into the blade and defend us. But he stayed pink, not vermilion. Donovan wanted to scare me, not hurt me.

“You and I both know that Lilly is mine.”

“WindScribe did not name you as the father. She did sign a paper requesting MoonFeather, her mentor and friend, adopt her child. The courts agreed.”

“I am Lilly’s father. How’d you alter my DNA test showing differently?”

“I didn’t.”

“You must have. No one else ...”

“King Scazzamurieddu has more reason than I to keep you away from the baby.”

“He wouldn’t dare.”

“Why not? What are you going to do, tattle on him to the Powers That Be?” My insides quaked in memory of my one and only interview with the board of seven beings, each from a different dimension, each with a different agenda, each shadowed deep within a robe’s cowl, and unidentifiable.

“Why have you dared breach our portal?” I heard again the deep booming voice. A ten-foot tentacle stretched across the tall judicial bench toward my throat. “What are you prepared to offer in return for your audacity?”

Forcibly, I yanked myself away from that memory.

“Oh, God, they’re still punishing me,” Donovan gasped, dropping onto the sofa. He set the cup down and buried his face in his hands.

Scrap faded back to his normal gray-green. Time for a snack, babe. We going out or eating in?

I didn’t answer him.

In. He popped out, probably to the laundry room in the basement where mold grew thick and deep behind the washing machines.

“Maybe they are ensuring Lilly is loved and cared for by the best person for her to learn about life, from both sides of the chat room. Maybe they need you to settle down and live a normal life with a wife and no more plans to create a homeland for half-breed demons before entrusting you with a precious child,” I said soothingly.

“Marry me. Help me prove that I’m the best person to raise my daughter.” He looked up, catching my gaze and holding it.

“Sorry. Wrong formula again.” His third proposal and he still didn’t get it that he needed to ask me because he wanted me, just me, to be the love of his life. He always put his agenda ahead of that, not realizing that if he loved me, and me him, then I’d gladly help him with anything he needed. “Why don’t you discuss it with your girlfriend? I believe you are seeing Doreen.”

“Doreen can’t compare to you and what you and I have together, what we can do for each other. What’s it going to take to convince you that we belong together? The other women are just diversions to distract me from you.” He rose up to his full six feet of height, shoulders hunching upward in anger again.

“Figure out what I need and we might have something. Until then, I’m sorry you can’t have Lilly. Maybe you should move to Cape Cod. Then you could at least visit her more often.”

“If you’re trying to get rid of me, I don’t have to move three thousand miles away. Good-bye.”

The doorframe shook for long seconds after he slammed it in his wake.

“So, when’s the wedding?” I asked casually. Since I’d discarded the crutches in favor of an ugly strap-on boot over the cast—Dr. Sean still refused the lighter air cast, wanting to keep me as immobile as possible—I’d retaken control of my kitchen. In a few minutes we’d have fish baked in a gentle lime and mango chutney sauce, brown rice pilaf, and a salad with a variety of fresh local produce from the farmers market.

At least I had an appetite again. My brain had only partially awakened along with my stomach. I’d added three chapters to my manuscript, enough to send to my editor as proof of my progress. That should buy another extension on the due date.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t squeeze any more money out of them until I finished the book. Maybe my royalty statement next month could breathe some life into my checking account.

“We have to decide some things before we set a date,” Allie said. Her dreamy-eyed gaze and humming halted abruptly. She began twisting her ring round and round her finger.

Until that moment, she’d looked happier and more relaxed than I’d seen her in a long time.

Uh oh, trouble in Lovesville, Scrap chomped down on his cigar. Don’t want to hear it. Don’t want to deal with it. He flew from his perch on the wine glass rack, which now held two glasses, through the closed French doors onto the patio.

“Decide what?” I hadn’t asked why she lingered in my apartment a week after she’d been cleared of wrongdoing on her job, two weeks after Steve returned to his house and job in Illinois.

“If I want to go back to being a cop. Do we want to live in Chicago,” she mumbled almost inaudibly. “Can I stand living in Cape Cod if I’m not a cop? Can Steve tolerate going home again? Can we find jobs out here?”

A long moment of silence. What did I say to that?

“Tess, I’ve wanted to leave home for a long time. But I didn’t dare get too far away from The House without you there to guard it. How could you leave vulnerable a plot of neutral ground containing the right energies to open a rogue portal to a demon dimension? How could you leave your father and his life partner alone with no protection?”

“Your cop partner can guard it,” I mumbled.

“Mike went back to Miami.”

“Say again?” I’d heard her. I needed confirmation.

“Mike, the part water demon, went back to Miami now that Darren Estevez no longer holds his family hostage. The House is wide open to attack.”

“Would you believe I took out some insurance before I left?”

“What kind of insurance?”

The scar on my face grew hot and knife fresh. I was surprised Allie couldn’t see it glowing. “Insurance that cost me a lot.”

I set my chin in an expression she had to know meant I would say no more.

I couldn’t say more.

My hand shook as badly as it had when I held a very special onyx fountain pen. I felt it between my fingers, watched myself dip the nib in a pool of my own blood and sign my name. My full name that only my mother used: Teresa Louise Noncoiré. With each stroke my veins and arteries filled with searing warmth, a precursor to the flames that would consume the document and myself from within if I ever violated that contract of silence or returned to The House for more than five days at a stretch.

The House stood on neutral ground. It had to remain in neutral hands. As a Warrior of the Celestial Blade I was decidedly not neutral. My dad and his partner were.

Donovan had signed a similar oath about his past as a gargoyle after he fell. I’d had to figure out his “Big Secret” on my own.

Allie set her chin in a similar stubbornness to mine. “Tomorrow morning I’m going to make some calls, start looking for a new career.” She pocketed her phone decisively and rose from her curled position on the end of the sofa.

“Doing what?”

She shrugged and began setting places for us on the bar.

“Allie, this isn’t like you. You don’t know how to not be a cop. I remember you breaking up a fistfight between two bullies when we were ten. You read them their rights!” I paused in scooping rice onto our plates. “I’ve driven patrol with you, helped close down bar fights. Being a cop is who you are.”

“I know.” Her eyes moistened. “Police work made me feel useful. I could protect ordinary people, make the streets a tad safer, bring a sense of order and balance into our chaotic world.”

“But then life showed an ugly side you want to run away from.” Been there, done that. Just now crawling out from under my rock.

“Yeah. I can’t be a good cop if I’m looking at every teen as a potential drug addict, every poorly dressed female with a passel of children she can’t afford to feed as a potential thief.” She gulped and closed her eyes. “Every adult male as a potential child abuser and rapist.” She bowed her head and turned her back on me.

Welcome to my world. Only I look for demons, not criminals. Same thing, I guess. There’s a reason Earth has no demon ghetto. We are our own demons.

I gave her a couple of moments to master her emotions.

“So what will you do?”

“Steve’s not really happy in Chicago. So he’s pursuing some leads in the job market in the Portland area.”

“What about you?”

She shrugged again.

“Allie. You can hide from yourself, but you can’t hide from me.” Just like I’d tried a number of times to hide from myself, only to have her ferret out the truth.

“I got my masters in criminal justice while you were off getting yours in demon fighting. I’m looking into teaching at the Police Academy, maybe one of the community colleges.” She finally looked me in the eye. “Gollum gave me some leads.”

So that’s what she’d been hiding. Not the change in career, but the source of her contacts.

Gollum was keeping tabs on me through my best friend.

“You’re welcome to stay with me for a while,” I said quietly. “I have really enjoyed having you here, appreciated your help while I recover. I still need you to drive me.”

“Thanks, Tess. I’ll repay you, someday, somehow.”

“You’ll earn your keep next week driving two hundred miles each way to High Desert Con.”

“That’s where you met Dill. Where your friend from college got killed.”

“Yeah, I’ve got a lot of memories tied up with that Science Fiction convention. Time I stopped running away from them.” And myself.