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before anything had been settled. Yet more irritation. “I have no time for your police.”
    “They’ll probably want you to make time.” Maggie kept a tight grip on the girl.
    Eileen was still shaking her head in awe. “Did you see that, Maggie? He, like, poofed right in front of us. And the knots are still tied. That was so great. Way cooler than that magician we watched on TV last month.”
    “Do you still have the pendant?” Culhane ignored the child and concentrated instead on the woman he’d come to see. As he watched, the blood drained from her face and her eyes became a dark, deep, troubled blue.
    “What do you know about that?”
    “What pendant?” Eileen demanded.
    “Do you have it?”
    “No,” she said. “It was broken. I left it.”
    “What pendant?” Eileen repeated. “And where’d you leave it?”
    The dog began to snore.
    “The pendant’s owner?”
    Maggie cringed a little, glanced at the girl beside her and hedged, “Gone.”
    “According to prophecy.”
    “What prophecy?” Eileen’s voice was getting louder in response to being ignored.
    “It was an accident, sort of,” Maggie told him.
    “Doesn’t matter. It happened as it was meant to. The dust touched you.”
    “There was dust in the pendant?” Eileen tugged on Maggie’s arm, but her aunt didn’t tear her gaze from Culhane’s.
    “Um . . . yeah. It did.”
    “I feel the power,” he said, taking one step closer to her, keeping their gazes locked. “Even now it’s taking you over.”
    “What is?” Eileen wanted to know. “Dust? How does dust take you over? Over into what? And what pendant?”
    “No, it’s not,” Maggie argued, holding up one hand to show him what was left of the faint glow in her fingertips. “It’s fading.”
    So much she didn’t know. So much she had to learn. “No, it’s not fading. It’s becoming a part of you. Becoming stronger.”
    Her jaw dropped and her eyes looked even wider than before. If she became much paler she would simply blend in with the white cabinets behind her. “What?”
    “Aunt Maggie . . .”
    “Not now, sweetie.” Maggie looked at her hands, then at him, and Culhane felt her fear. Good. She should be afraid. Gods knew he wasn’t looking forward to this any more than she was.
    “Look, this is all some kind of mistake.” Maggie held her niece close to her side. “I’m sure we can work something out. Maybe I could go get the pendant and have it fixed.”
    “It wouldn’t change anything.”
    “You know,” she said, as if her fear were slowly being replaced by a sense of outrage, “I’ve had a really crappy day. And I’m done talking about all of this. So unless you want to take a fun ride in a squad car with some nice officers, I suggest you hit the road.”
    “You’re telling me to leave?” He couldn’t believe her audacity. “I leave when I decide to, and I return the same way. As much as you would wish to ignore everything that’s happened today, there is no going back now, Maggie Donovan. You can’t undo what happened any more than I can.” He stepped into a pale wash of light sliding through the kitchen window. Outside, clouds filled the skies and a storm built its fury.
    Inside, a storm of another kind was building.
    “You’re the one.” Culhane stood tall and straight, looking down into her eyes, willing her to feel the inevitability of this moment. He drew on his centuries of power, of strength of command, to impart to her the gravity of the situation they all found themselves in. “This is immutable. I’ve waited. Watched. But that is over now. Your time of destiny has arrived.”
    She looked from him to the girl and back again. Then she smiled. “Sure it has.”
    He sighed.
    Pulling Eileen even closer to her, she wrapped both arms around the girl and glared at him. “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, but the cops are almost here, so if you’re planning a stealthy escape you might want to work on that.”
    “I’ll be