Despite the rough start, I had an extraordinary date with Brick. His smile as we walked along hand in hand was brilliant, and he stopped several times just to pull me into his arms and kiss me.

He admitted that although he missed his regular body, it was nice to be able to blend in with the crowd and not receive judgemental stares for his orcish heritage.

“I know we’ll go back eventually, but being here with you like it’s a normal thing and we’re a normal couple… This is more than I ever dreamed I could have,” he’d whispered as we sat on a park bench and watched people walking their dogs. “I think this is the happiest I’ve ever been. Or on par with that first week with you, anyway. That was pretty amazing, too.”

We’d stopped into a specialist bakery after that and bought a platter of doughnuts, cronuts, custard slices and pastry turnovers. Brick was practically salivating and was grilling the bakery owner on what techniques he’d used.

After we picked up our groceries – laden with a whole extra bag of experimental baking ingredients for Brick to try, and a box of fresh strawberries for Jackal – we’d headed home, and I was ready to go lie down and digest all the carbs.

We still had a lot of work to do, but I had to go in to work in the morning and hand in my notice, so I was a little hesitant to overwork two days in a row. I needed some emotional energy reserve if I wanted to endure working out my notice period across from Jeremy.

To my delight, Mrs. Greaves was still absent from her ground floor office, so we headed straight up to the third floor. When we reached our apartment, the door was ajar and we could hear voices from inside, including a woman’s.

My feet froze as I tried to pick up who the voice belonged to. The worst-case scenario would be Mrs. Greaves, but the voice didn’t have her low pitch.

“What’s wrong?” Brick asked, looking at me with concern. “You think there’s something wrong in there?”

“I don’t know.” I chewed my lip nervously. There were relatively few women who would come to our house. Maybe it was one of the neighbours, asking for a cup of sugar?

“You take the bags, I’ll go in first,” Brick said, his brow lowering as he got into a battle-ready stance.

“No!” I said, pushing the bags back at him. “We won’t have to fight. I’m sure it’ll be fine. Come on, there’s no point waiting around outside.”

I strode forwards and pushed into the apartment and saw my half-sister, Leticia, sitting on the couch between a very uncomfortable-looking Jackal and Bruiser. Nightfall and Bastion stood off to the side, staring at them with crossed arms while James was pacing in the kitchen.

“Emma!” Leticia bounced up and pulled me into an energetic hug. “How’s my favourite sister?”

“Leticia. You should have called ahead. If you’re looking for a place to stay, we’re kind of full.”

“Maybe I just wanted to come visit you!” Leticia said, bouncing on her heels. “Looks like you’ve been busy. Jackal here was telling me he’s your new boyfriend! What happened with James?”

She was looking over my shoulder at James, who had stopped pacing and was now sending her dirty looks. Things hadn’t ended nicely between them when we’d had to kick Leticia out after she overstayed her welcome.

“We broke up,” I said simply. “Now seriously, what are you doing here?”

Leticia sighed dramatically. “Well, if you must know, Mum sent me. She’s all bent in a twist because your dad died and there’s been all this lawyery stuff going on.”

“Sorry, what?”

“Yeah, your dad died. I’m sorry for your loss or whatever, I suppose. I mean, you don’t actually care, do you? He wasn’t ever even around.”

I mean, I didn’t care, but it also didn’t feel great to have someone else writing it off. My dad had barely stayed past me learning my first word, and I hadn’t seen him at all after that, although he’d always sent his child support payments through without fail and there had been a small fund set aside when I went to do my accounting course.

“I mean, I guess it doesn’t change much,” I admitted with a shrug.

“Great,” Leticia smiled. “Anyway, she has some paperwork you’ve got to sign, something about the will being split equally between beneficiaries. I said I’d bring it over though, since I haven’t seen you in like months.”

She sounded so nostalgic, and I wondered if she’d forgotten the whole three-way argument between herself, Mrs. Greaves and James. I held my hand out and looked over the paperwork.

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“This says she wants to contest the will,” I said in confusion. “And… Leticia, why are you named as a beneficiary? He wasn’t even your dad.”

“Okay, look, I didn’t really even want to bring this over if I’m being totally honest…”

“Are you being totally honest?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die!” Leticia enthused. “So, your daddy left everything to you, but Mum wants a cut, and she totally just put me in there as a bit of a bribe, but I didn’t ask her to do it. But tell you what, I reckon you should just keep the money, buy a big ol’ house, and I’ll move in with you again! It’ll be just like old times! I’m kind of sick of staying at her place again, anyway. She’s so cranky since her and Blake split up.”

I shook my head. “Sorry, what? I need to sit down.”

“I don’t blame you. It’s a lot of money to get your head around. A couple million, actually – your dad was loaded!” Leticia patted my knee. “And look, sis, I know you’re not the best at spending money, but I’ll help you figure out a way to enjoy it. Maybe after you buy a house, we could go out and get our nails done. Proper French tips. It’ll be great. And then we’ll go shopping!”

I pulled one of the dining chairs over and sat on it, trying to clear my head. Brick rested his hand on the back of it in a silent show of support.

“Who’s this guy?” Leticia asked, looking Brick up and down curiously. “Why’s your house full of guys, anyway? Did you join a gang or something?”

“Leticia, how did you know how much the inheritance is?”

“Mum opened your mail,” Leticia shrugged. “It only arrived a couple of days ago.”

“Of course she did.” I clenched my jaw. It didn’t matter that opening other people’s mail was a crime. If my mother felt she was entitled to something, laws and ethics came secondary. It had always been that way with her. I could call the police, but I could probably bypass the whole issue if I could just phone the lawyer. “Leave the paperwork with me and get out.”

“You can’t just kick me out, Ems! I’m family! You should have someone to help you out when you’re going through a hard time!”

“I don’t want you here, Leticia. Just go.”

“I’m not leaving until this is sorted out. Either sign the paperwork or let me help you figure out what else you’re doing with the money.”

“She said go.” Jackal stood and strode over between us, looking stern and foreboding.

“Look, Emma, I didn’t want to tell you this because I hoped it wouldn’t come to it, but you remember Pooky?”

My stomach churned as Leticia said the name of my childhood pet. Pooky had been a gift from my mother’s third husband – the one after Leticia’s dad – but the little Pomeranian had been my best friend for years. It had broken my heart when I’d had to move out of home and leave her behind, and she’d been the ultimate bargaining chip every time my mum asked for money.

‘I just wouldn’t be able to pay her vet bills, sweetheart. Euthanasia is so much more affordable. Or Blake said he could take her out back and shoot her in the head.’

I could leave my mother to rot in her own debts, but I couldn’t do that to Pooky.

“Mum said if you don’t sign it, that’s it for Pooky,” Leticia said, her voice taking on a nasty tone. “But if you split it three ways, you’ll still have like three quarters of a million, and I bet mum would throw in the dog. Just do it.”

“Are you… threatening my dog?” I asked in shock. I’d had plenty of manipulative guilt tripping, but this was the first actual direct threat. “You’re threatening me?”

That seemed to be enough for Jackal. He grabbed Leticia by the back of her hoodie and her waistband and hoisted her up into the air, making her shriek in surprise.

“Jackal, what are you doing?”

“No one threatens you,” he said, carrying her over to the window and nudging it open. He’d half shoved her out by the time James and I grabbed her ankles.

“Dude! What the fuck?”

“Jackal, you can’t just pitch her out the window!”

“But she’s an enemy. She threatened you.”

“Yeah, but she’s also my half-sister.” I shook my head, hauling her back inside, where she collapsed on the ground in a quivering pool of tears.

“Emma, how could you! I’m gonna call the cops!”

“And tell them you’ve been opening people’s mail and threatening their dogs?” James spat. “You’re fine, Leticia. He wouldn’t have actually hurt you. Just leave and this time, don’t come back.”

Jackal was busy insisting to James that he would have hurt her, while James desperately tried to shut him up. I pulled Leticia out to the front door and shoved her out.

“Look, it’s not a good time. But I’ll look over the papers and sort something out later. It would be best if you don’t come back, especially without texting ahead.”

This time she was a lot keener to leave and scrambled down the three flights of stairs faster than I thought she was athletically capable of.

“Jackal, seriously, what were you thinking?” I said, shutting the door behind me with a snap.

“I was trying to protect you. She was being nasty to you, and she said your dog was going to die,” he frowned. “I didn’t know you had a dog.”

“Technically, Pooky is my mum’s dog, but she was my best friend for years. I used to look after her, take her for walks. We… anyway, it doesn’t matter. You can’t just go around throwing people out windows. They’ll die.”

“That was the idea,” Jackal said, like it was obvious.

“You can’t just kill people in this world,” James said, running his hands down his face. He looked like the guy in The Scream, living his own personal nightmare. “There’s police and stuff. They’ll find out and they’ll put you in jail.”

“They didn’t last time,” Jackal said blithely.

I stared at him open-mouthed. “Jackal… you haven’t killed anyone here, have you?”

“Just one. That troll boss lady.”

The room felt like it was tilting sideways.

“Jackal… you didn’t… you didn’t kill our landlady, did you? Mrs. Greaves?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

“Dude! WHAT THE FUCK?”

“It happened days ago; her body would have disappeared ages ago. No one found out, no police, nothing. It’s all good.” Jackal looked utterly unrepentant.

“But… why?” I felt like I was going to black out.

“She was going to kick you out of the apartment, which meant she was going to unplug the computer, which meant she was going to destroy our world,” Jackal said, counting it off on his fingers before cocking his head at me. “That’s the same reason you killed the necromancer, right? I was there. You splatted his head with that big weapon.”

“I…” I didn’t know what to say to that.

I fainted instead.