I wrenched my arm free, threw a jab, but he ducked, kicked, and managed a glancing blow off my hip. I sliced upward, smelled his blood—dense with magic—before I heard his groan of pain. He hit the ground, a foot-long laceration in the top of his thigh.
“On your knees,” I demanded, chest heaving and shoulder singing, and pointed the sword at his heart.
Connor and Theo rushed into the room. “Lis?” Connor asked.
“I’m fine,” I told him, but kept my gaze on Black. “We have a guest.”
While Theo searched for bandages, Connor dragged Jonathan Black to a chair at a small dining table and pushed him down. Magic or not, Black made no effort to fight back.
He looked at me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know who you were.”
A lie, but it hardly mattered now.
“Talk,” Connor ordered, as Theo wrapped a kitchen towel around Black’s thigh, used duct tape to adhere it.
“Fancy,” I said, using another towel to wipe the blood from my sword.
“I’m looking for evidence,” Jonathan said.
“For your ‘clients,’ ” Theo said, using air quotes. “Unless Ariel’s one of your clients, and we all know a waitress at a shifter bar isn’t paying your fees, you have no cause to be in here.”
“You don’t have a warrant,” Jonathan spat back.
“The door was open,” Theo said helpfully. “We have a little thing called probable cause.”
“Talk,” I told him, “or we play with the katana again.”
He cursed with impressive creativity. “The magic they’re using is an ignition spell,” he finally said. “It’s intended to start an apocalypse.”
We all stared at him.
“An apocalypse,” I said. “Zombies, robots, locusts? War? Pestilence? What exactly are we talking about?”
“That depends on the caster,” he said, which mirrored Petra’s conclusion. “I don’t know.”
Connor’s gaze was narrowed. “How do you know that’s what it is?”
But I knew the answer before Jonathan had a chance to speak it, because I finally realized where I’d felt this kind of magic before: in my own house.
“You’re a sorcerer,” I said. No wonder he had so much magic and was so well-equipped at hiding it.
“Half,” he said, and there was impatience in his tone. “Part elf, part sorcerer. Too much of both, and not enough of either.”
“Why hide it?” Connor asked.
“I don’t,” Jonathan said, leveling his gaze at me. “But people see the ears, and they believe what they want.”
Guilty as charged. “And why do your clients care about this apocalypse specifically?” I asked. “How are they—and you—involved?”
He looked at the ceiling, began to hum a tune as if bored by the entire proceedings.
“He got into the apartment,” Theo said. “The door was open to us, but it wasn’t busted, and the locks weren’t scratched.”
I looked back at the door, then Jonathan, and understood the point Theo was making. “Either the door was open when you got here, or you had a key.” I saw the quick tightening around his eyes and understood. “Ariel gave you a key. You’re together?”
“Were,” Jonathan said. “Not anymore.”
“You’re lying,” I told him. “You told me you’d just moved to Chicago.”
