The power shut off instantly. Amaury sat up, clear calculation in his eyes. “Every magic user in this region is mine to control, and their magic mine to use as I choose.” He tilted his head slightly. “It has been so since I held back the waters of Katrina and saved the coast and the city.”

Jo’s lip curled. “You took their power as payment for saving them?”

“I did. It was fair recompense for my services.”

“Sure. Whatever,” I said. “We’ve made the required appearance and now we need to be outta here. We were called here for a purpose. We have business to attend to.”

“Wait.” Joanne kept staring at Amaury like he was something the cat dragged in, but she still ignored me even when I rolled my head until my neck popped and glared at her. “All the magic here flows through you?”

Amaury nodded once. Jo made fists and stood her ground. “Then you’ve got to know what called us here. There’s something that needs doing here, and either you know what it is or you’re not as hot as you think you are.”

The casual insult rolled off her tongue so trippingly it took a moment for Amaury’s expression to go black. Then it shivered back to reasonable so fast I wasn’t sure I’d seen the darkness. Calculation lay beneath the reason, though: he was assessing us, deciding what to say, while Leo watched me a little too intently, a little too much of the predator in his gaze.

“There has been a disturbance,” Amaury finally said.

I grinned, thinking, in the force, but I didn’t say it. Go me. Jo sucked her cheeks in like she was holding back a grin herself, and I had a feeling that if we looked at each other, we’d start to giggle. Not gonna happen. I kept my eyes on Amaury and forced my lips down.

“A girl, a voodooine, was given a task. A simple task, and she failed.” His sneer came and went in a flash, which I thought took a lot of cajones from a guy who couldn’t even maintain a power base without stealing magic from other people. “She was meant to create a love spell, and instead I have sensed a rift and the arrival of a thing I do not recognize. A demon, I should say, which not even my power can locate or contain. Perhaps this demon is why you have been called to my territory.”