"Oui, we been hashing t'ings out, us. What you need, child?"

Drawing in a quick breath, Kallie told her, passing along the Alpha's instructions.

"We be dere, girl. Don't you worry. I'll let dem know dey have an opportunity to make up for deir earlier foolishness."

"Merci, Ti-tante."

When Kallie returned to the stone cottage, she told January, "They've agreed."

"Then I'll get Rene on his way." The Alpha's eyes unfocused, her gaze seeming to turn inward, and remembering how Devlin had delved into her mind, Kallie suspected the loup-garou was using telepathy to contact Rene.

A moment later, January slanted a glance at Angelique. "He's taking Jubilee and Dorian with him, and Moss will keep an eye on your sleeping cubs in the meantime."

The traiteur smiled. "Good."

"You have children?" Kallie asked.

"Double handful," Merlin replied, pride in his voice. "Twins, a boy and girl."

And, Kallie thought, sympathy prickling through her as she glanced at the stone cottage behind the shuvano, half bloods.

"Who's gonna be your partner in the ritual?" Angelique asked. She flicked a speculative glance toward Layne. "If it's going to be too awkward to do it with your nomad friend, I'm sure I can round up volunteers. Merlin is skilled in sex magic and rituals-one of his specialties, actually. You couldn't ask for better."

"Thanks, hun," Merlin replied, smiling at Angelique.

Kallie's cheeks flamed. She looked up at Layne. His best friend had died in her bed and that was something she wasn't sure either of them could get past just yet. Or, in Layne's case, ever. No matter how much she wanted Layne, being together like this would be awkward, especially with everything that hung in the balance. But hopping into the sack for a long, boisterous round of ritual sex with a stranger would be even more so.

"I'll understand if you say no," Kallie said. "Please don't feel-"

Bending, Layne brushed his lips against hers and stopped her words. "Ain't saying no, Kallie," he murmured. His dreads lifted into the wind, pale tendrils against the fading night.

She touched her fingers to his face. Saw the grief and guilt he buried in the depths of his eyes. "Merci, cher."

"Let's get going," Angelique said. "There's a lot we need to do to get you two ready and-" She stopped talking and her gaze turned inward, as though she was listening to something only she could hear. Kallie noticed that January had the same introspective expression.

"Mon Dieu," Angelique said a moment later, expression dismayed. "According to what Rene just heard on TV, landfall is in fifteen hours, not twenty or thirty. And Evelyn is still a category five."

Dread folded through Kallie. If Evelyn landed as a five, nothing would be left in her wake. Reaching for Layne's hand, she met Angelique's glowing eyes and said, "Then tell us what we need to do."

THIRTY-NINE.

CONSECRATION.

Kallie rose shivering from her cold, sea-salt-charged bath, the water's cinnamon, cloves, and neroli fragrance clinging to her wet body and hair, and stepped out of the tin tub and onto a plush towel resting on the consultation room's hardwood floor. The wolf-clawed skin above her left breast stung and ached from the salt water.

"Ready," she said, through nearly chattering teeth.

It turned out that the first things Kallie and Layne needed to do before they could begin to spark a fire between them hot enough to incinerate the black dust in a column of molten flame-and thus save magic, Jackson, Louisiana, and her own existence-were to be ritually bathed, smudged, and anointed.

Angelique had led Kallie and Belladonna back to the cottage she shared with her husband, while Merlin had ushered Layne to a raised cabane the loups-garous used for seasonal ceremonies and celebrations when the weather refused to allow such to be performed outside beneath the moon.

"There's a lot more to this than just fucking, bro," Merlin tells Layne as they walk away. "A helluva lot more."

While the bathwater dried on Kallie's goosebumping skin, Belladonna moved behind her and began to gently towel-dry her hair. The pungent aroma of cedar and juniper and cypress curled into the air from the brazier Angelique held.

The traiteur stepped in front of Kallie, using a peacock feather fan to wave the smoke over her nude body, taking care that the fragrant smoke touched every part of Kallie, beginning with her feet.

Consecrating her. Blessing her. Purifying her.

Despite the fact that she was chock-full of a dead root doctor's poisonous black dust, not to mention a hexwebbed loa-thanks to the same black dust and her mama.

As Belladonna and Angelique murmured prayers of protection, Kallie hugged her arms over her breasts and breathed in the smoke, suspecting Layne was going through the same process.

As much as she'd been longing to tumble the nomad into bed, this wasn't the same thing. Their joining would be deliberate, a means to an end-a delicious and pleasurable means, sure-but not a spontaneous moment of mutual passion.

And once again, as though reading her mind, Belladonna murmured, "Wonder if Layne is feeling like a virgin bride being prepared for a randy groom too?"

Picturing that, Kallie laughed, and some of tension unwound from her muscles. Belladonna's lips curved into a satisfied smile.

Angelique finished with the smudging and returned the fan and brazier to her worktable. "We're almost done," she said, picking up a small blue bottle and carrying it over to Kallie. "When we get to the cabane, Merlin will have a potion for you-an aphrodisiac to awaken and alter your consciousness so you can channel the fire, the pure blazing energy, you and your nomad will be creating."

"What do I need to do?" Kallie asked.

"For the most part, just what comes naturally when left alone with a handsome naked man," Angelique replied with a smile. "Once you two get busy, let the energy build, let it flow through you, between you. Abandon yourself to it, even as you direct it. The main thing-and this is what takes the longest, probably all of the time the Baron allotted you-will be opening one another's chakras. Each chakra needs to be opened in turn, a sevenfold path to the sacred fire."

"Does it need to be done slowly?"

"Yes. It needs to be kindled, fed, developed into a holy bonfire within you both. Too fast, too soon, and it dies, a tiny flame. And the black dust will remain."

Kallie smelled rose and lavender and frankincense as Angelique anointed her chakra points with the oil at the crown of her head, between her eyebrows, on her throat, her sternum, her navel, then-with a gentle touch-just above her crotch.

"I'll let you get the last one, chere." Angelique handed Kallie the bottle.

With a drop of aromatic oil glistening on her fingertip, Kallie anointed the most intimate part of her anatomy. Heat rushed into her cheeks as she thought of Layne touching her in the same place. Tasting her. Exploring.

"Not sure I'm going to need the aphrodisiac," she muttered, giving the bottle of oil back to the traiteur.

"It's not just for intensifying desire," Angelique reminded her, a knowing glint in her emerald eyes. "You're going to need endurance and strength to get through this ritual. Here." She handed Kallie a red silk bathrobe and a pair of slippers for the walk outside. "Are you on birth control?"

"Yup."

"But this will be your first time with Layne, right?"

"Yeah," Kallie answered softly, belting on the robe. "The first time." And a far cry from her fantasy of a broken-down car and a helpful nomad in a kilt.

Angelique filled the robe's pocket with a double handful of foil-wrapped condoms. "So you don't know where that boy has been. You can never be too safe."

"Am I going to need this many?"

Angelique shrugged. "Young man. Revved up on a passion potion. Hours to open your chakras and awaken the fire. Most likely. Better too many than not enough."

Kallie nodded. "For true."

Belladonna pulled her into a quick hug. "I know you can do this, Shug. Forget about everything except Layne. Just focus on each other. And ravish the bejesus out of that nomad."

"Evil," Kallie declared, planting a kiss on Belladonna's cheek before slipping free of her embrace. "Thanks, Bell."

"Ah," the traiteur murmured. "Rene's back, and the hoodoos-including your aunt-are waiting at the cabane. Time for us to go."

Kallie followed Angelique out of the cottage and into the gray, windy dawn, her heart and belly full of butterflies.

Only eight hours remained until the Baron's deadline. Thirteen till landfall.

The cabane's black-painted interior was supposed to represent outside, Layne reflected, as he stepped from the tin tub's cinnamon- and cloves-fragrant water-road rash stinging and burning all along his right side-and onto a braided rug.

Curving up from the cypress wood floor, across the north wall, and trailing across the ceiling, then down again, the moon had been painted in all its phases surrounded by soft blue-white stars, transforming the black room into a night sky brimming with a simple promise: everything has a season, a place.

Now that Divinity's potion had worn off, pain throbbed at the back of Layne's head, echoing with a dull ache between his eyes. Something he'd told Merlin about in case it could affect the ritual, and the shuvano had assured him that he'd be given a potion later.

"You been with this girl before?" Merlin asked as he smudged Layne's wet body with smoke redolent of a deep wood forest-cedar and cypress and juniper.

Cupping his hands, Layne drew the pungent smoke over his face and head. "No," he admitted. "Not yet. It's ... complicated."

His thoughts flipped back to the botanica and Kallie's sudden kiss, her lips soft and insistent, her warm and curvy body pressed up against his, remembered the silken feel of her thick tresses entangled in his fingers, remembered the intense heat, the thought-blanking desire that had swept through him.

Remembered Gage sprawled bloody and lifeless in her bed. Sharp-edged sorrow and guilt pierced him. He quickly shoved the image aside. "But I don't deny that I want her. That I care about her. When I look into her eyes ..." Layne shook his head, his dreads sweeping against his bare skin.

"Funny, ain't it," Merlin drawled, "how the most natural thing in the world between two people can become the most complicated when we allow our heads to lead us instead of following our hearts and bodies. Arms out to the sides, bro."

Stretching out his arms so the smoke could caress the skin beneath, Layne said, "So is that how a nomad shuvano wound up living in a hidden loup-garou village? By following his heart and body?"

"To make a long story short-yup. But my love life ain't what we're here to discuss, now, is it, drom-prala?"

"No, shuvano. But there's something else I need to tell you-I'm a Vessel and I have a ghost on board."

Merlin whistled. "I knew I sensed something different about you. Holy shit. A Vessel. Oh. You can put your arms down now." Finished with the smudging, he carried the brazier back to the kitchenette worktable tucked up against the west wall. "Your ghost is gonna hafta disembark. The sacred fire might not harm him or her, but then again it might. I just don't know for sure."

"That's what I was wondering."

Merlin returned with a jar of salve and bandages. "Sit," he said, nodding his head at a low stool.

Layne did as directed and, as the shuvano tended to the raw abrasions on his skin, he turned his attention inward, summoned Augustine from his safety bubble, and explained the reason for the upcoming sacred fire ritual, including the Brit's imminent need to depart.

As the spinning slowed to a halt, Layne felt a tap on his shoulder. Heard Merlin's irritated voice. "You listening to me? These are goddamned important instructions, road rider."

"Apologies, shuvano," Layne murmured. "I'm listening."

"You need to open her chakras slow, one by one," Merlin repeated. "And she needs to be opening yours. Restrain yourself from just jumping her bones, 'cuz building the fire's gonna take a long time. Each orgasm, each time one of you comes, adds more fuel, more intensity, to that fire. Now stand up."

Layne rose to his feet, fresh gauze crinkling against his side, and turned to face the shuvano, who continued to instruct him in a low voice as he anointed him with oil smelling of lavender, rose, and frankincense at each chakra point, handing Layne the bottle of oil so he could finish.

"Looks like the cold-water effect has worn off," Merlin said with a grin. He handed Layne his boxers and a glass. "I added a few things to your aphrodisiac to help with your headache, so drink up. Your girl will be here soon. I'm gonna go out and get the hoodoos organized."

Layne swallowed the potion down in two long gulps, catching a hint of bitterness underneath its strawberry-wine sweetness, then pulled on his boxers. Thinking of Kallie, of lying next to her skin to skin, trailing his fingers down her bare back, he felt himself stir. Then his heart kicked against his ribs and his hands went cold.

They had to get this right.

Everything depended upon it. Including Kallie's life.

Dawn smudged the horizon a tropical-punch pink, a color soon swallowed by bruised and sullen clouds as Kallie walked with Angelique to the cabane.

Divinity and Gabrielle waited beside Merlin on the lantern-lit porch, as did a third, smaller figure. The muscles in Kallie's shoulders knotted as she recognized McKenna. Given the circumstances, she hadn't expected the nomad to accompany the others, and now she wondered how much information her aunt had shared with everyone.

Maybe the woman's simply a glutton for punishment.

Just as Kallie was about to follow Angelique up the steps, she caught a glimpse of movement from the corner of her eye. Pausing, she turned to look, and the claw marks on her chest throbbed and ached anew when she saw a lean silhouette with long, wild hair and glowing ash eyes watching from within the gloom-veiled trees.

Devlin Daniels.

But when Kallie looked again, she saw nothing-no silhouette, no ashy eyes-just darkness. She studied the shadowed depths, deciding she'd been wrong, the Le Nique loups-garous would never have allowed him so close, judging by their previous reaction to his presence. She couldn't help but wonder why he wasn't welcome.

Taking a deep breath of air heavy with the smells of the bayou-fish, cattails, and waterlogged cypress-and fighting to keep her robe down in a sudden gust of rain-sprinkled wind, Kallie climbed up to the porch.

Divinity enfolded her in a tight hug smelling of her herbs, comfrey and sage, before releasing her and stepping back. She tsked. Folded her arms over her bosom. "Funny how you left out de part about you pissing off de Baron in our conversation, you," she said.

"I didn't want you getting all worked up," Kallie replied. "Besides, I was trying to scare off Cash, not insult the Baron, but it went all wrong."

"There's a surprise," McKenna muttered.

Divinity's eyes narrowed. "Well, mais oui, ain't nothing to get worked up over, now, is dere? It ain't like Jackson will lose his life or dat you will be left wandering in de Between Places or nothing if t'ings go wrong again."

"Ain't gonna let that happen," Kallie said, returning her aunt's glare and lifting her chin. She hoped, anyway. The butterflies returned.

Divinity's expression softened. "No, I know you ain't, Kallie-girl."

"So how do we want to do this?" Gabrielle asked. "Take one-hour shifts?"

"Yeah, that'd be best." Merlin handed Kallie a glass, urging her to drink the contents with a nod of his head as he returned his attention to the Outsiders. "Five people at a time-one at the north side of the cabane, one each east and west, two on the south end-so we can form a pentagram."