Page 108 of The Darkest Night

Mae pursed her lips. “As long as they don’t poke and prod me, I’ll talk to them.”

Bryony beamed, her exhaustion seemingly vanishing like mist.

Mae furrowed her brow.She got me, dammit.

A man with a mop of brown hair and blue eyes appeared in the doorway.

“My team and I are in position,” he told Bryony. “We’ve secured the properties adjoining this one as well as the house across the road.”

Mae blinked slowly. “Huh?”

“Oh.” Bryony’s expression turned guilty. “I should have asked you first, but I thought you’d approve. In view of what happened to your sister and your grandmother yesterday, I decided to assign a security team to guard your family twenty-four-seven. We bought out your neighbors.” She indicated the man with the brown hair. “This is Noah Tegner. He’s my nephew and a powerful sorcerer. He’ll be your protection team lead for the foreseeable future.”

Noah dipped his chin respectfully at Mae.

Mae’s head spun. She dimly recalled seeing moving vans on the street when they’d come home last night.

Noah grimaced when he saw her expression. “I’m sorry, I hope you weren’t close to your neighbors.”

“Not particularly.” Mae chewed her lip. It seemed the New York coven were determined to do whatever it took to make her happy. And she could not deny her relief at knowing her family would be protected from now on. “My mom and my grandma did like to play Mahjong with the old couple across the road.”

Noah pressed his earpiece. “Anyone know how to play Mahjong?” There was a pause. “Good. Ask Joe to buy some Mahjong sets. We start training tonight.”

Everyone left a while later, Dickson taking some leftoverHoeddeokhome. It was late by the time Mae returned to her apartment with Brimstone and Hellreaver. She closed the door, dropped her keys in the tray on the console table, and shrugged out of her jacket. The silence felt loud when she stopped in the middle of the living room.

With the current situation resolved and the Dark Council regrouping in Europe, there was no need for the others to stay over anymore.

“Has it always been this quiet?” she mumbled.

A knock came at the entrance. Mae stiffened.

Brimstone spoke.It is not an enemy.

She retraced her steps to the hallway and opened the front door warily.

Nikolai stood on the landing, a rucksack on his shoulder and an enigmatic expression on his face. “Your mom said you needed a tenant.”

He walked past her without giving her a chance to utter a word. Alastair greeted Brimstone and Hellreaver with a flutter of his wings.

Mae frowned and slowly closed the door. “I don’t do tenants.”

Nikolai stopped and dropped his bag on the floor. “Why don’t we try it for a couple of months?” His gaze found Brimstone and Hellreaver. “I hear a pound of ribeye steak is going for almost twenty-five dollars these days.”

Mae pursed her lips. She headed over to the refrigerator, grabbed a bottle of beer, and lobbed another one at Nikolai. “I thought Bryony was gonna offer you a place to stay, what with you helping the New York coven and all.”

Bryony’s solution to Nikolai’s problem of what he should do now that he had parted ways with his father and the Dark Council had been to offer him an advisory position in her coven while awaiting further discussions with the other councils. The fact that he was the only sorcerer they knew of who could use ley lines meant the job came with a generous salary and perks.

Nikolai sighed and rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “She did offer me an apartment. And a car.”

Mae stared. “So, why are you here?”

“They were too—” Nikolai grimaced and waved a vague hand, “modern and glamorous.”

Mae clamped down on the smile tugging at her lips. “So, you’re saying you like old things?”

Nikolai scowled and folded his arms across his chest. “There was a glass fountain in the lobby of the building. That’s just an accident waiting to happen.”

“One month.”

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