I trailed after him as he went to retrieve an item wrapped in dark blue velvet cloth from a sideboard. With one of his formal little half bows, Stefan presented it to me.
I removed the cloth to reveal a round steel shield. Other than a hand grip welded onto the concave back, it was plain and unadorned. It was both smaller and heavier than I would have imagined, and polished to a mirror-bright shine inside and out. “You got me a shield?”
“You were having difficulty visualizing one,” he said. “I thought this might help.”
“Where do you buy a shield?” I asked. “And it’s so . . . petite! Did you have to have it custom made?”
He smiled deeply enough for his dimples to emerge. “I have an acquaintance in the historical replica industry. This is actually their standard base model buckler, but I had it specially burnished.”
Flexing the fingers of my left hand, I curved them around the grip and hoisted the shield aloft.
It felt good.
I gazed at my distorted reflection in the concave surface facing me, then lowered the shield. “Okay. And, um, thank you. Shall we try it again?”
In the center of the living room, Stefan took a stance opposite me, his back to the window. “Yes.”
When we’d done this before, Stefan hadn’t menaced me in earnest. This time, he did. With the sun in my eyes, I couldn’t see the warning shift of his pupils, but I felt the inexorable tide of his hunger pulling at me.
Without thinking, I swung the shield up between us. Brilliant sunlight splintered off the highly polished surface, sending a thousand scintillating points of light dancing around the room. And just like that, something clicked inside me. I kindled the same mirror-bright blaze in my thoughts, holding it between us, a barrier that reflected Stefan’s hunger back at him while it reflected my own emotions and feelings back into me.
“Ha!” Stefan broke into a grin. “That’s it! Perfect! You did it, Daisy!”
Blinking against the brightness, I held the shield—the real one and the one in my head—in place. “What happens now?”
“Now?” His grin turned fierce. “Now we practice.”
If you think holding a single image blazing in your mind sounds like easy work, think again. Despite my breakthrough, it was hard. Stefan worked me ruthlessly. And just when I thought I was becoming adept, he made me put down the physical shield, forcing me to conjure the mental image without it.
By the time he called a halt, I was exhausted and elated. I could do it. I could conjure a shield capable of holding a six-hundred-year-old ghoul—oops, Outcast—at bay. And for the first time since I’d begun to serve as an agent of Hel, my frustration at my own relative powerlessness abated.
I could do something. Something magical.
“Thank you,” I said again to Stefan, this time with the sincerity and gratitude he deserved. “This is amazing, truly. How did you know?”
“It was a hunch.” Returning from the kitchen with two glasses of water, he handed one to me. “But I have some experience with these matters.”
I took a long drink of water. “Teaching people to protect themselves from you?”
A shadow crossed his face. “Yes.”
Okay, probably not the time to get too personal with that line of questioning. I sat on his leather couch. “Can anyone learn to do it?”
“No.” Taking a seat in an adjacent chair, Stefan shook his head. “There is a quality one must possess in abundance. The ancient Greeks called it pneuma, the breath of life.”
“How can you tell when someone’s got lots of pneuma?” I asked.
“One learns to sense such things,” he said. “Especially when one is Outcast.” He sipped his water and smiled a little. “In your case, the fact that your emotions are actually capable of effecting change on your physical environment was a good indicator that you were brimming with it.”
Huh. And here I’d thought my volatile temper wasn’t good for anything. “What else does it work on other than the Outcast?” I asked him. “Could I stop Emmeline Palmer from putting a hex on me?”
“No,” Stefan said with regret. “It is ineffective against spellcasting. But if you are diligent in your practice, you can defend yourself from all manner of compulsion, such as vampiric hypnosis and demonic persuasion.”
“Ooh!”
He pointed a stern finger at me. “If you are diligent, Daisy. It is like any skill. It must be honed until it is second nature to you, until the act of raising and maintaining a shield requires no more effort than breathing.”
“Duly noted.” I shifted and began to curl my legs beneath me, then changed my mind when I saw a look of polite dismay flit over Stefan’s face. Right. No shoes on the fancy leather couch. “Stefan . . . if this energy, this pneuma, can be used to raise a defensive shield, can it be used as an offensive weapon, too?”
Stefan didn’t answer right away. His pupils contracted in his pale blue eyes, giving him that eerie, sightless look. “Against some opponents, yes,” he said at length, sounding reluctant. “But to do so is dangerous, exposing you to far greater vulnerability. Promise me that you will not attempt it.”“What if—”
His pupils zoomed. “If the time comes when I deem you ready, we will speak further of this. Until then, promise me.”
“Okay, okay!” I raised my hands in surrender. Well, one hand and my water glass. “I promise.”
“Thank you.”
I considered Stefan for a while. “Why are you doing this?” I asked him eventually. “Helping me?”
“Why would I not?” he replied. “You are Hel’s liaison, and there is a debt of honor between us.”
I wasn’t entirely sold. After all, he was the six-hundred-year-old son of a Bohemian count, and I was a twenty-four-year-old American hell-spawn who grew up in a mobile home. Of course, Lurine had a couple of millennia on him, and then there was the matter of Hel herself, but . . . somehow this was different. They weren’t human. Stefan was, or at least he had been.
“And I like you, Daisy,” Stefan added unexpectedly, summoning one of those surprisingly charming smiles. “Is that so difficult to believe?”
“A little,” I admitted. “Do you mean you like me, or you like me like me?”
He raised one eyebrow. “Are you asking if I harbor romantic feelings toward you?”
“Do you?” I countered.
“How would you feel about it if I did?” Although his gaze was steady, the hint of a smile continued to play over his lips. I couldn’t tell if he was teasing or flirting.
“Honestly? I’m not sure. And this isn’t the best time for me to figure it out. But you probably knew that, too.” I set my water glass on a polished marble coaster. “Look, I really should be going. Thank you again.”
Stefan rose gracefully. “You are welcome. Take the buckler with you. It will help you focus as you begin to practice. Just take care not to become dependent on it.”
“I will.”
As he escorted me to the door, the painted shield in its Plexiglas case caught my eye again. This time I noticed that the case was carefully positioned to avoid direct sunlight, and I suspected it was climate controlled, too.
My only keepsake, he’d said. I snuck a look at Stefan’s face, wondering if I dared risk a question. Judging by his expression, yes, but not a probing one. “Will you tell me its story one day?”
“Perhaps.” Inclining his head, Stefan opened the door for me. “We will see.”
I guessed that would have to do.
Twenty-one
The next morning, I logged on to Facebook to find that Dan Stanton had approved my friend request. I felt awkward sending a message to an alias—what if this Dan Stanton turned out to be another shirtless Australian guy instead of Lee Hastings?—but I went ahead and composed a note saying I was hoping he was Lee and that he might be able to give me some advice on a computer project.
After calling in to the station to confirm there wasn’t any new filing for me, I spent half an hour practicing shield drill.
Okay, twenty minutes. It was harder to maintain focus without an actual opponent.
I checked Facebook again to see if Dan Stanton had replied to my message. He hadn’t, but a few minutes after I’d logged in, a chat bubble with his name on it popped up.
U there Daisy?
This might sound weird, but I’m not a fan of all things instant and chatty. It always feels like there’s too much pressure to reply immediately. But then, I was the one asking the favor, so I didn’t have a lot of choice.
Yes. Lee, is that you?
There was a short lag, then a reply. If you want to talk, meet me at the glug-a-slug in fifteen minutes.
On that cryptic note, Dan Stanton went offline. Well, not that cryptic. Back in high school “glug-a-slug” was what we called the Sit’n Sip, Pemkowet’s only twenty-four-hour diner, located about half a mile from the interstate highway exit. It was where teenagers went to eat hash browns, drink coffee, and sober up after clandestine keg parties. But Lee wasn’t the kind of kid who got invited to a lot of parties. He was the kind of smart, aloof, unpopular kid who wouldn’t deign to use the in-crowd’s pet slang terms, and I couldn’t imagine he would have changed that much, which meant that the fact that he was using one of them now was weird and cryptic.
Then again, I’d contacted him through an alias, so I don’t know why I would have expected anything else.
About ten minutes later, I walked into the Sit’n Sip. Lee Hastings was lounging in a booth in the far corner, long legs stretched out, the rest of him slouched intently over a computer tablet. Although I hadn’t seen him in a good six years, I recognized his tall, bony figure immediately, even wrapped in a full-length black leather duster despite the lingering summer warmth.
“Hey, hon!” a cheerful waitress called to me. “Sit anywhere you like.”