Afterward I dried off and put on the robe. Sky was taller than I was, and the robe bunched at my feet, looking shapeless and drab. I pulled a comb through my wet hair and went back downstairs.

Sky was sitting in one of the armchairs, but as I came down, she rose gracefully to her feet and went up to her room. As she passed me, she let her hand rest briefly on my shoulder.

Hunter stood at the fireplace, feeding a log to the fire. A small ceramic teapot and two mugs sat on the coffee table. He turned to face me, and I was keenly aware of how good-looking he was.

I settled myself on the sofa, and Hunter sat in a worn armchair. "Better?" he asked.

"A little." My chest and throat weren't quite as sore, and my eyes had stopped stinging.

Hunter's green eyes were locked on me. "I need you to tell me what happened."

I took a deep breath; then I told him how Sky and I had scryed together. How she'd helped me to spy on Cal and his mother in their spell-guarded house as they talked to their coconspirators about killing me if I refused to join them. How I saw that Cal had been assigned to seduce me, to get me onto their side so that my power could be joined with theirs. How I'd learned that they were also after my birth mother's coven tools, objects of enormous power that they wanted to add to their arsenal of magickal weapons. How I'd gone to talk to Cal, how he'd overpowered me with magick and taken me back to his house.

"He put me in a seomar in the back of the pool house," I said, a vivid picture of the horrible little secret room rising in my mind. "The walls were covered with dark runes. He must have knocked me unconscious. When I came to, I heard Selene arguing with him outside. She was telling him not to do it, not to set it on fire. But Cal said" — my voice broke again—"he said he was solving the problem. He meant me. I was the p-p-problem."