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being the Aegis had felt more like I was a customer service representative or a court advocate. I helped people. I fought for them when something wasn’t right. I took care of their needs.
    I never thought of my position as one of authority.
    Well, except under the right circumstances, like when I banished an incubus to his home dimension. Or told the Leprechaun Mafia to get the hell out of my town. Or when I threatened the head of the city council of Sausalito.
    And then there was that first time I met Bernice. Completely unimpressed with her job title, I came damn close to bitch slapping her for taking me prisoner.
    Okay, fine. I guess I did—under the right circumstances—take the bossy-pants stance.
    And I was about to do it again.
    * * *
    I’m not sure why I thought Maurice would be pleased to have an under-the-bed monster staying with us. At the risk of sounding racist or speciesist or whatever, I’d kind of wondered if they would already know each other, since they were almost the same kind of creature.
    In fact, he did recognize her immediately. But he wasn’t at all pleased.
    He looked her up and down and scowled. “It was you parading around in front of humans and endangering all of us?”
    She smiled, but it wasn’t friendly. “Hello, Maurice. Looks like you landed on your feet here.”
    He shook his head in disgust. “I swear to the gods, Stacy, you don’t have the brains of a mollusk. You were raised better than that.”
    She folded her arms and lifted her chin. “You don’t get to tell me how to live. And you hardly have judging room, my friend.”
    I didn’t have to be an empath to feel the tension spark off the two of them. Whatever their history was, it wasn’t good. Which made me feel a bit squidgy about what I was about to do.
    “Actually, Stacy, he does get to tell you how to live. At least for now. You are now officially under his care.”
    Stacy froze, the green draining from her face. Her mouth opened and closed like a goldfish, as if fighting to keep her objections from bubbling up her throat and out her mouth.
    If I didn’t know and love Maurice as much as I did, my blood would have turned to ice water from the look he gave me. Or maybe battery acid.
    He gritted his teeth and narrowed his eyes. “Zoey, can I speak to you alone, please?”
    Riley put a hand on my shoulder and gave me a reassuring squeeze. “Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll stay with her.”
    Stacy’s frozen stare of shock melted into a fake, sickening-sweet smile. She plopped into a chair and busied herself with the task of fluffing her tutu.
    Maurice turned on his heel and left the room without checking to see if I followed. He led me through the kitchen and out the back door.
    In the recent past, my back yard had been used as a refugee camp for lost monsters. To keep them safe and undetected, both by everyday humans and the henchman of the terrifying Collector who had been kidnapping them, Maurice had overseen the creation of a protective bubble around the space. While the entire property had the advantage of a fairy ring around it as an early-warning system and first line of defense, this backyard bubble worked by hiding its contents from view.
    When we stepped through the bubble, no one outside could either see or hear us. The bubble was imprinted with a small, recorded loop of time—about thirty seconds worth. From my kitchen window, if you watched for more than a minute, you could see the same bunny run across the yard several times. Sound, too, was imbedded into the recording, repeating the same birdcalls and pattern of blowing wind every half minute.
    It was genius.
    At that moment, we only had a handful of guests on the property, and none of them were in sight. This meant that Maurice had me pretty much alone in a soundproof room.
    “I’m begging you, Zoey,” he said. “I do everything you ask me to do around here. Please don’t put me in charge of her. I can’t do this.”
    His desperation crept