Hope decanted out of John’s chest, leaving behind a sour tightness.

He went up to Fritz, butler extraordinaire, who greeted him with a brilliant smile on his old, wrinkled face. “Hello, sire, how fare thee?”

John signed in front of his chest so no one else could see. Listen, have you seen…

Shit, he didn’t want to make a panic in the household for no reason other than that he was jumping to conclusions. The mansion was huge and Tohr could be anywhere.

…anyone? he finished.

Fritz’s fuzzy white eyebrows pulled together. “Anyone, sire? Do you refer to the ladies of the house or-”

Males, he signed. Have you seen any of the Brothers?

“Well, I have been here preparing dinner for much of the last hour, but I know that several have come home from the field. Rhage had his sandwiches as soon as he returned, Wrath is in the study, and Zsadist is with the young one in the bath. Let’s see…oh, and I believe Butch and Vishous are playing pool, as one of my staff served them drinks in the billiards room just a moment ago.”

Right, John thought. If a Brother who no one had seen out and about for, oh, say, four months had shown up, surely his name would have been at the top of the list.

Thanks, Fritz.

“Was there anyone in particular you were searching for?”

John shook his head and went back out into the foyer, this time moving with heavy feet. As he walked into the library, he didn’t expect to find anyone, and what do you know. The room was full of books and completely devoid of any Tohr.

Where could-

Maybe he wasn’t in the house at all.

John bolted from the library and skidded around the bottom of the grand staircase, the soles of his shitkickers squeaking as he turned the corner. Ripping open the hidden door beneath the steps, he took the underground tunnel away from the mansion.

Of course. Tohr would go to the training center. If he were going to wake up and start living, that would mean he was going back into the field. And that meant working out and getting his body back into shape.

As John emerged into the facility’s office, he had fully returned to hope-land, and when Tohr wasn’t at the desk, he wasn’t surprised.

That was where he had been told about Wellsie’s death.

John hauled ass out into the corridor, and the dim sound of weights clanking together was a fucking symphony to his ears, relief blooming in his chest until his hands and feet tingled.

But he had to be cool. Approaching the workout room, he shook off his smile, and opened the door wide-

Blaylock glanced over from the bench. Qhuinn’s head bobbed up and down on the StairMaster.

As John looked around, both stopped what they were doing, Blay resetting the weight bar, Qhuinn slowly sinking down to the floor.

Have you seen Tohr? John signed.

“No,” Qhuinn said while wiping his face with a towel. “Why would he be in here?”

John left in a hurry and headed into the gym, where he found nothing but caged lights and glossy pine floors and bright blue mats. The equipment room had only equipment in it. PT suite was empty. Jane’s medical clinic was the same.

He broke out in a run as he gunned back for the tunnel to the main house.

Once he got there, he went directly upstairs to the study’s open doors, and he didn’t knock on the jamb this time. He walked straight up to Wrath’s desk and signed, Tohr is gone.

As the Domino’s delivery guy fumbled to catch the pizza box, everyone else went stock-still.

“That was close,” the human said. “Don’t want to get it-”

The guy froze in a crouch as his eyes traced the black stain on the wall to the crumpled, moaning lesser who’d made it. “…on…your…carpet.”

“Christ,” Lash spat, grabbing the switchblade out of his breast pocket, triggering the blade, and going up behind the man. As Domino’s got to his feet, Lash locked his arm around his neck and drove the knife straight into his heart.

As the guy shriveled and gasped, the pizza box landed on the floor and busted open, the tomato sauce and pepperoni in the same color family as the blood that was leaking from the wound.

Grady jumped off his stool and pointed at the slayer who was still on his feet. “He let me order the pizza!”

Lash pointed the tip of the knife in the idiot’s direction. “Shut the fuck up.”

Grady sank back onto his bar stool.

Mr. D was vicious pissed as he went up to the remaining slayer. “You let him order that there pizza? Didja?”

The lesser snarled back, “You asked me to go in and guard the window in the back bedroom. That’s how we found out the jars were gone, remember? Ass-wipe on the carpet over there was the one who let him call.”

Mr. D didn’t seem to care about the logic, and as fun as it might have been to watch him go Jack Russell on that rat of a lesser, there was not a lot of time. This human who’d shown up with the ’za wasn’t going back to make more deliveries, and his cronies in uniform were going to tweak to that soon enough.

“Call reinforcements,” Lash said, closing up his blade and going over to the incapacitated lesser. “Have them come with a truck. Then get the gun crates. We’re evac’ing here and downstairs.”

Mr. D got on the horn and started barking orders while the other slayer went into the far bedroom.

Lash looked over at Grady, who was staring at the pizza as if he were seriously considering eating it off the rug. “Next time you-”

“Guns are gone.”

Lash turned his head to the lesser. “Excuse me.”

“Gun crates are not in the closet.”

For a split second, all Lash could think about was killing something, and the only thing that saved Grady from being that guy was that he ducked into the kitchen, getting out of the visual field.

Logic took over emotion, however, and he looked over at Mr. D. “You are responsible for the evac.”

“Y’sir.”

Lash pointed to the slayer on the ground. “I want him taken to the persuasion center.”

“Y’sir.”

“Grady?” When there was no answer, Lash cursed and went into the kitchen to find the guy leaning into the refrigerator and shaking his head at the empty shelves. Fucker was either very tight in the head or truly self-involved, and Lash was betting it was the latter. “We’re leaving.”

The human shut the fridge door and came like the dog he was: quickly and without argument, moving so fast he left his coat behind.

Lash and Grady bolted out into the cold, and the Mercedes’ warm interior was a relief.

As Lash slowly eased out of the complex, because hurrying might have gotten people’s attention, Grady looked over. “That guy…not the pizza one…the one who died…he wasn’t normal.”

“Nope. He wasn’t.”

“Neither are you.”

“Nope. I am divine.”

TWENTY-SIX

After night fell, Ehlena dressed in her uniform even though she wasn’t going into the clinic. This was for two reasons: One, it helped with her father, who didn’t deal well with any changes in schedule. And two, she felt as though it would buy her a little distance when she met with Rehvenge.

She hadn’t slept at all during the day. Images from the morgue and memories of the way Rehvenge’s strained voice had sounded were a hell of a tag team, battering at her as she lay in the dark, her emotions spinning and flipping until her chest ached.

Was she really going to meet Rehvenge now? At his home? How had this happened?

It helped to remind herself that she was just going to deliver meds to him. This was caretaking on a clinical level, nurse to patient. For godsakes, he’d agreed she shouldn’t be dating anyone, and it wasn’t as if he’d asked her for dinner. She was going to drop off the pills and try to persuade him to go see Havers. That was it.

After checking on her father and giving him his meds, she dematerialized to the sidewalk in front of the Commodore building in the thick of downtown. Standing in the shadows, looking up at the high-rise’s sleek flank, she was struck by its contrast to the dingy, low-to-the-ground place she rented.