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“You’ll be as long as it takes. And Trez and I’ll be waiting.”

Phury returned from the Other Side and poofed his ass right to ZeroSum. He made his buy from iAm as Rehv was out and the Moor had been left in charge, and then he went back home and jogged up to his bedroom.

He was going to have a blunt to take the edge off before he knocked on Cormia’s door and told her she was free to return to the Sanctuary. And when he talked to her, he was going to give her his vow that he would never call on her as Primale, and tell her that he would protect her from comment or criticism.

He was also going to make it clear that he was sorry for shutting her out on this side.

As he sat on his bed and picked up his rolling papers, he tried to practice what he would say to her . . . and ended up thinking of her undressing him the night before, her pale, elegant hands tugging at his belt before taking on the waistband of his leathers. In a rush, a shot of red-hot rabid-erotic nailed into the head of his cock, and though he did his best not to dwell on it, pretending he was calm and cool was like being in the kitchen of a house that was on fire.

You tended to notice the heat and all the smoke alarms that were going off.

Ah . . . but it didn’t last. The fire engine and its crew of masked and gloved arrived in the form of an image of all those empty cribs. The memory of them was like a loaded gun to his head, and sure as shit put the douse on his flames.

The wizard appeared in his mind, standing in his field of skulls, silhouetted against the gray sky. When you were growing up, your father was drunk night and day. Do you remember what that made you feel like? Tell me, mate, what kind of papa are you going to be to all of these young of your loins, considering you’re smoked out twenty-four/seven?

Phury stopped what he was doing and thought of the number of times he had picked his father up out of the weeds of the garden and dragged him back into the house right as the sun was rising. He’d been five when he’d first done it . . . and terrified that he wouldn’t be able to get his father’s tremendous weight to shelter soon enough. What a horror. That messy garden had seemed big as a jungle, and his little hands had kept losing their grip on his father’s belt. Tears of panic had streamed down his face as he’d checked the sun’s progress over and over and over again.

When he’d finally gotten his father into the house, Ahgony ’s eyes had opened, and he’d slapped Phury across the face with a hand as big as a frying pan.

I’d meant to die there, you idiot. There had been a beat of silence; then his father had burst into tears and grabbed him and held him and promised never to try and kill himself again.

Except there had been a next time. And a next time. And a next time. Always with the same exchange at the end.

Phury had done the saving, because he’d been determined that Zsadist would come home to a father.

The wizard smiled. And yet that wasn’t what happened, was it, mate. Your father died anyway, and Zsadist never knew him.

Good thing you took up smoking so that Z got to experience the family legacy firsthand after all.

Phury frowned and looked through the double doors of the bathroom to the toilet. Closing his fist around the bag of red smoke, he started to get up, ready to do some serious flushing.

The wizard laughed. You won’t be able to do it. There’s no bloody way you can quit. You can’t even make it for four hours in the afternoon without getting panicked. Can you honestly imagine never having another smoke for the next seven hundred years of your life? Come on, mate, be sensible.

Phury sat back down on the bed.

Oh, look, he has a brain. What a shock.

His heart was killing him as he finished the lick and twist on the blunt in his hand and put the thing between his lips. Just as he got his lighter out, his phone went off across the room.

Intuition told him who it was, and when he fished the cell from his leathers, he was right. Zsadist. And the brother had called three times.

As he answered, he wished his blunt