Velvet Haven

This is where you will find the first key.”
    “I know,” Mairi whispered, hugging her friend. Rowan always said something about a key, but who or what she was talking about remained a mystery, a vision only she could see. Mairi had tried to put the pieces of the puzzle together, but always came up empty. The only thing they had to go on was a sketch Rowan had drawn during one of her visions. It didn’t look like any sort of key either of them had seen. In fact, it didn’t look like a key at all.
    “Before you arrived, she said hellhounds were coming, coming to tear apart the raven,” Sayer murmured to Bran.
    “What would a mor—” Bran stopped midsentence, glanced at her. He didn’t finish what he had started to say.
    “Whatever she’s doing, I want her out of my club before the cops come. Understand?” MacDonald thundered. “Use the back door and get her gone.”
    Mairi tried to find the best way to explain things. “Rowan has these spells a lot. She has . . . a . . . a tumor in her brain,” she went on softly, saying the words out loud for the first time. “She goes for surgery next week to have it removed. This”—Mairi indicated Rowan’s trancelike state with a wave of her hand—“usually happens before a seizure.”
    A low growl broke the quiet from the other side of the room. Mairi turned and saw Keir in the shadowed corner. The look on his face momentarily shook her. The pain she saw in his eyes didn’t make sense.

    “ What’s up with the Shadow Wraith? ” Bran mentally asked Sayer.
    Sayer glanced at the Keir. “ I don’t know. But he says that she’s not all human.”
    Bran’s gaze shot back to the woman called Rowan. He studied how she paced, how she seemed to be in a deep trance, watching something she only saw in her mind.
    “She described the Wastelands, and the hellhounds that are coming—three of them. She said Morgan has found a way to free herself from Cailleach’s punishment.”
    “ How the hell does she know any of this? ” he snapped.
    “If you two are done with your little tête-à-tête,” MacDonald exploded, looking between Bran and Sayer, “we should get going. If hellhounds are coming, then we need to prepare. And I’m not above giving them what they want. If you know what I mean.”
    What they wanted was him.
    “Look, I doubt anyone is coming,” Mairi said. “It’s the tumor. It gives Rowan . . . I don’t know. Visions.”
    “To disbelieve would be a mistake.” The Shadow Wraith’s voice was soft but sure. Bran glared in warning, but Keir met his glare head-on with his ever- changing eyes, which were now electric blue. “She sees.”
    Bran thought back to Rowan’s aura, the indigo and black melding together. Marked for death, but a seeker as well.
    Damn it, he didn’t have time to figure out the woman, and how she could see Annwyn. If Morgan was near he needed to act. His powers were weak, and in the mortal realm they were all but nonexistent.
    A brilliant flash of white lit up the window of the office. It was followed by an earth-shattering rumble. The growl of the hellhounds.
    “Ah, shit,” Sayer groaned.
    Bran reached for Mairi. “Get down,” he hissed in her ear before he shoved her to her knees. “Under the desk. Now! ”
    Sayer reached for Rowan, but Keir already had her. She was in his arms, her eyes closed, her body limp against his chest. “I can walk past them.”
    True. The lucky son of a bitch. For some reason hellhounds were scared shitless of the bastard.
    “I’ll get the women out,” Keir muttered, “but first, you gotta do your thing.”
    Bran hoped he had enough magic to do it. Closing his eyes, he concentrated on the thoughts he needed, trying to block out the growling that was growing louder, hungrier. He tried not to hear Mairi’s breathing, as fast and harsh as when she had come for him.
    A vision of her flashed before his eyes. Thighs spread, waiting for him to taste her. He tried to concentrate on the vision he needed to summon magic, but Mairi was all he could see.
    “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Sayer cursed, “we’ll be here all night if we wait for him.” Waving his hand over the room, he wove an enchantment spell from his palm. “Neither woman will remember anything from the time they entered this room. It’s not protection magic, but it’s the best I can do.”
    With a flash, Keir was gone with Rowan.
    Bran looked helplessly down at Mairi. What did these strange feelings he was having mean?
    Bran