Munro (Immortals After Dark #18) by Kresley Cole

            How much Munro detested magic; how much he was beginning to rely on it.

            He tore open the package, thinking, If Tàmhas could see me now. Munro had forbidden the mortal boy to get a simple protection spell, calling his request blasphemy.

            Yet Munro now stood in a Loremart full of hexed goods, his body healed from some kind of witchly brew, and he’d hoped for exactly such a spell for his mortal mate. What a godsdamned hypocrite.

            When he clasped the phone, pain pricked his hand. He flipped the case over, saw that the phone had sucked a drop of his blood into a tiny reservoir. “What the hell, priestess?”

            “Ah, that. Your lifeblood powers a spell that will siphon the information from your previous phone. That’s a beta feature, so your patience is requested.”

            He glanced at the screen, saw his information slowly populating. He gazed over at Kereny. “I’ve got to make a few calls. Why don’t you look around for some gear? But stay away from the windows. And try no’ to antagonize the snake. And touch nothing that looks like it was made for immortals.”

            She quirked a brow. “Wolf, I did manage to keep myself alive all this time.”

            “Nay, lass, you dinna. Twice you dinna make it to thirty.”

            Kereny narrowed her eyes. “That remains to be seen.”

            “Come, mortal,” Loa told her, breaking up the tension, “let’s shop!”

            Once they’d headed across the store, Munro rang his wards but got neither Rónan nor Benneit. He called King Lachlain; no answer. Where was everyone?

            Munro dialed Madadh’s line, intending only to leave a message, yet Madadh quickly answered.

            “Was hoping you got out,” the male said in Gaelic. As Glenrial’s master of the watch, he would be instrumental in its protection.

            Munro replied in the same language, “I dinna expect you to have a phone so soon.”

            He admitted, “Some bloody Wicca tech or something.”

            “I as well. Have you seen Rónan or Ben?”

            “I dispatched a sentry to retrieve them. They’re out camping. With witches.”

            Another worry for another day. Add it to the list. “How much do you remember?”

            “Every bloody second.”

            Munro remembered too. Please, mister, no! Since none of his victims had resurrected, that young father had died beneath Munro’s fangs. Shaking off those memories, he said, “On my way out of Quondam, I might’ve destroyed the warlocks’ temple and their time-travel gateway and gotten Ormlo killed. Jels was winged as well.” Shame that arm would grow back.

            “The tits.” Madadh was a wolf of few words. “What of your married mate?”

            “She dinna resurrect.” Munro’s gaze fell on her across the shop. “So I went to the past to collect her again. She’s still mortal.”

            Madadh grunted.

            Munro knew him well enough to translate that sound: Bad bounce, that. “I’m getting a boundary spell for Glenrial. No vassal will be able to pierce the witches’ protection, but we canna depend on that forever. We need to train our sentries no’ to release their beast if the Forgotten show.”

            “On it. Will no’ happen overnight.” He grew quiet for a beat.

            Munro knew they were both remembering when a vassaled Madadh had turned on his packmates in Quondam. “Look, if you had no’ attacked us that night, I would no’ have my mate.”

            “I’ll tell myself that. A lot.”

            Munro said, “I have no idea when I’ll be back to Glenrial.”

            “I’ll hold down the fort.” Pause. “I sired two newlings in Quondam. Want to reach them.”

            The Lykae clan’s law decreed that any newling must be secured in the dungeon of Kinevane Castle, the royal seat in Scotland, until he or she learned to control the beast. If one did.