Carl forced me to finish watching Jaws before we started the job, which didn’t bother me one bit. I needed a moment of big, dumb fun since my life recently had been filled with too much big, dumb idiocy and danger. When it was done, he wrote down the address for me and sent his men to get their weapons, just in case. When he handed me the address, I laughed.

“Do you think I’m stupid?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“This isn’t a police impound. This is Jing Hai’s warehouse, biggest heroin dealer in Los Angeles.”

“All right.” He shrugged. “You got me. So what? Are you going to tattle on me or something?”

“That depends. Is there any other way to get my wand back from you without killing you?”

He held the wand at either end between his hands. “I guess if you want it broken. Otherwise, you get the wand when we get the goods.”

Jing Hai wasn’t going to like this one bit. Ten million dollars in product was nothing to his multibillion-dollar operation, but word that somebody stole from him would get out, especially when he started to find his H on the street when he hadn’t gotten his cut. I’d had a good working relationship with Jing Hai for years. I never used him for drugs, but his boats smuggled all kinds of things. His people were experts at evading law enforcement, which was advantageous for getting rare magic into the country.

Worse yet, if I helped Carl and his idiots, one of them would talk, probably more than one, even if it was just pillow talk with an overeager escort, and it would come back to me eventually. There were only so many portal-jumping women who wore sunglasses and a long trench coat and who could make it past all of his guards unseen.

But I couldn’t let that wand out of my sight either. I would never find another like it.

“I’ll play your game, Carl,” I said. “But you better not break that wand.”

“As long as we get ten million in H, I’ll be happy, and then—” He pointed the wand to me. “You’ll be happy.”

“Then let’s go. Porth i warwa Jing Hai.”

One problem with portals was they were imprecise. While somebody like Kimberly could home in on an exact location, portals were more like subways. The barrier between time and space wasn’t thin everywhere, and portals could only materialize where the thinnest of membranes existed, which meant that you didn’t always get as close as you wanted to your target.

Another problem was that portals were big and loud. Anyone guarding, say, a secluded heroin warehouse would be able to see it. I hoped to use that to my advantage and alert the guards to my presence before we got far.

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It worked.

By the time Carl’s crew came through the portal, we ended up in the far corner of the warehouse. Three of Jing Hair’s men rushed toward us, forcing us to put up our hands.

Theirs was a big, bad, stupid plan, and it failed spectacularly in a matter of moments. Mine was just as risky and only slightly less stupid, and it relied on Jing Hai liking me a lot more than he let on and trusting that I would never screw him.

The eight of us were led into a pitch-black room and tied to chairs. I could have easily broken free, but I didn’t want to piss off yet another dealer. My business relied on them all liking me, or at least tolerating me.

I kept a stiff upper lip when I heard the screams of Carl’s men around me in the darkness. Somebody must have told them not to hurt me, or maybe that I couldn’t be hurt because they never came for me.

I didn’t know how long I was under the black hood they stuffed over my head. Eventually, two men pulled me from the chair and led me across the warehouse. It had been a long time since I heard any other voices or even the sound of breathing. That could not have been a good sign.

When the guards slammed me down again in a chair, they pulled off my mask, and Jing Hai, dapper, suave, graceful Jing Hai, was waving my wand in front of his face. When he saw me looking at him, he turned and smiled.

“Ah, Ollie. Long time no see. I hoped we would meet again, but under different circumstances.”

“Me too, Jing Hai.” I bowed my head. “It’s an honor to see you again.”

“Is it?” He stopped playing with the wand and placed it on the table in front of him. “Because it would seem you are working with a group of changelings to steal from me.”

I shook my head. “They weren’t smart enough to steal from you—I assume it’s were and not are. They were impulsive, and they blackmailed me into helping you.”

“How the mighty have fallen. Tsk tsk tsk.” He sounded genuinely disappointed. “I thought so highly of you.”

“I didn’t want to work with them. I have had a terrible time of it since December. I lost my car. I lost my money.” I took a breath. “And I lost my wand, which is on your desk. I was just trying to get it back.”

Jing Hai sat down in a high back rolling chair across from me. “Why should I believe you?”

“We both know that if I wanted to, I could rip all of your heads off and escape. I’m not doing that because I respect you.”

“But not enough to refrain from stealing my property.”

“Please, if you heard those idiots’ plan, you would have known they had no chance of actually stealing even a kilo of H from this warehouse. They were clowns.”

Jing Hai laughed. “I did hear it while I tortured the life out of them.” He tented his hands in front of him. “This is the cost of doing business, I suppose. I’m ashamed of you, Ollie. I thought you were a better class of villain.”

I shrugged. “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

He pushed the wand across the table. “You got what you came for. You can take this.”

I picked up the wand. “Thank you. Are we cool?”

He shook his head. “No. I only give people one chance with me, and you burned that. However, since I can’t kill you, I’ll have to ask you to respect staying out of my business.” Because I was half angel, he thought killing me would offend God. I wasn’t about to tell him that God didn’t care about me. I’ll let the good Christian drug smuggler have his virtuosity as it suited my needs. “I can’t destroy you, but I can destroy your reputation, which I will if I ever hear you interfere with me again.”

“I’m sorry it’s come to this,” I said, bowing my head again. “But I understand.”

“I knew you would.” He gestured me to leave. “And Ollie, be careful. I hear there’s a two-million-dollar price on your head.”

I nodded. “Yeah, that’s the word on the street.”

There was honor among thieves, but it only went so far. I had to figure out how to stop this stupid hit before somebody was less forgiving than Jing Hai.