she hissed.
“You’re not going in.” He glanced at the top of the wall. “I am.” He held out his hand. “Give me the branch. Look, I can easily jump that wall, then make myself virtually invisible once I get on the other side. I’ll drop the stick in and be back here before you know it.”
She looked like she was about to argue.
He sighed. “You should have let me do this in the first place.”
“I was trying to let you heal.”
He softened his tone. “I appreciate that, but you’re also at risk here—what if Ava Mae was just waiting for you to come back so she could slip inside you again?”
Harlow’s eyes rounded slightly as if that possibility hadn’t occurred to her. “I’ll let you do this on one condition.”
“What?”
“We get home, you’re going right back to bed. You need to heal.”
That he did. “Agreed.” He’d expected more of a fight, but then maybe Zara’s pond wasn’t a place Harlow was eager to visit again.
He must have been right because her shoulders dropped like a weight had been removed from them. “Lally wants a soil sample, too.”
“For what?”
Harlow shrugged. “Said she wanted to know what she was dealing with.” She reached into her jacket and pulled out a long narrow thing tied up in an old scarf. “Here’s the piece of the tree.” He reached for it but she pulled it away before he could grab it. “Do not touch it under any circumstances.”
“Got it.” This time she let him take it. He stuck it in the back pocket of his jeans.
She handed him a little plastic sandwich bag. “For the soil.”
“Thanks.” He tucked that in a front pocket. “Anything else?”
She made a strange face. “Yes.” Then went up on her tiptoes and kissed his mouth. “Be careful. Remember Cy’s in there.”
“I know. That part’s killing me.”
“Me, too.”
“Okay.” He gave her a little nod goodbye. “I’ll see you at home.”
She frowned. “You’ll see me right here. I’m not going anywhere until you’re done.”
“Stubborn as your mother,” he muttered.
She squinted at him, the moonlight turning her eyes almost colorless. “I heard that.”
“Back in a few.” He took a couple of steps away, then sprang over the wall.
He bent his knees as he landed, but the impact, even on grass, forced him to stifle a groan as his ribs protested. He fell forward onto his knees and stayed there, waiting a few breaths to make sure he hadn’t tripped some kind of witchcraft alarm system. The house remained dark.
He returned to his transparent half form and crept toward the pond, keeping in the tree shadows as much as possible for good measure. The moon wasn’t full, but it was bright enough to see by and he didn’t want to risk it. When he got to within feet of the water, he dropped to the ground and crawled the rest of the way. His ribs made it slow going, but he gutted it out.
At the pond’s edge, he stopped behind a clump of tall, feathery grasses. He stared through them into the water. Slivers of white and orange undulated beneath the surface. Koi, he realized. Hard to imagine that this pond was really more of a hellmouth and that somewhere under that water was one of his lieutenants.
He took the branch from his pocket and unwrapped it until he held it in two scarf-draped fingers. It was black and sooty and smelled of ash and dark magic. He tossed it into the pond. With a small splash it hit the water and sank. Little ripples rode toward his hiding place. He stuffed the scarf back into his pocket.
Not wanting to be there longer than he had to, he used the dagger in his boot to pry up a chunk of earth, bagged it and made his way back to the wall. He leaped over, and again the landing sent new jolts of agony through him. He hissed out a breath and leaned back against the wall until the pain dissipated, somehow managing not to pass out.
“Are you okay?” she whispered.
He nodded, trying to breathe through the dull ache that had taken hold of his entire body. If she thought he was going to put up a fight about going back to bed, she was dead wrong. He might fall asleep before he made it to bed. He slumped against the stucco wall. Exhaustion and pain had begun to shut his body down. “Dropped the stick in. Dirt’s in the bag.”
“You look like crap.”
He