A gasp made me swing the barrel to the bed.

I’d suddenly fallen down the rabbit hole.

Five seconds went by, and I was pretty sure the stunned face staring back at me had the same exact expression as mine.

“Sian?”

“Charlie? What are you doing here?”

I frowned. “Me? What are you doing here?”

Grigori Tennin’s only child cast her indigo eyes to the rumpled bed on which she sat, hugging her knees to her chest. Her long, snow-white hair was down, parted in the middle and framing her flawless light gray skin. She was a hybrid, a rare offspring of a jinn father and a human mother. A prized commodity in the jinn world, but rejected by other Charbydons and Elysians, and a fair share of humans, for her bi-racial blood. Looking at her more closely revealed tearstains on her cheeks and damp eyelashes, and she was clutching a small oval picture frame in her hand.

I lowered the gun, holstering it and trying to make sense of her presence here. “Please tell me you’re not involved in this.”

“Charlie.” Hank’s quiet voice made me glance over, and I was met with an expectant look as he gestured toward the picture.

“What?”

His response was an eye roll and a sigh. Obviously I was missing something. Hank holstered the Hefty, walked to the bed, and held out his hand. Sian handed him the picture frame. Hank gave it to me before he went to the small writing desk and pulled out the chair. He sat down, leaning forward to drape his forearms over his knees. “So how long have you been seeing Daya?”

My brow shot up.

Oh.

I flipped the frame over to see a photograph of what had to be Daya Machanna. My gaze went from Hank to Sian. Yeah. Totally didn’t see that one coming.

“About four months. If anyone ever found out … I mean, I’m a jinn, and worse, a hybrid. And she’s Elysian. A nymph. No one would understand.” Fresh tears fell, and she sniffed, swiping them from her cheeks.

I went to the dresser and leaned against it, setting the frame down and then crossing my arms over my chest, still stunned. “No one knew?”

Sian shook her head. “No. We made sure to be careful. And if anyone did see us together, we just acted like friends.”

“This is why you called in sick, then?” Hank asked gently. “You found out she’s gone.”

Her body stilled, and then her shoulders hunched and she cried harder. Hank and I exchanged a quick look. We allowed her time to compose herself, not pushing. After Sian finally lifted her head, casting a grief-stricken gaze to the ceiling, she released a ragged breath. “It was all over Underground yesterday.”

Not surprising. Ebelwyn was a darkling fae. His office was on Solomon Street, which meant he answered to Grigori Tennin. Which meant, after he called me, he went and reported to Grigori and probably anyone else who’d listen.

“I knew it was her,” Sian said quietly. “She was supposed to meet me here after going to the gym that morning. We were going to have breakfast before she went to work.”

“So who is S. Yavesh?” I asked.

“He’s the guy who owns the place. Daya was doing freelance work for him, restoring some old artifacts. He told her she could stay here whenever she wanted, so we’ve sort of been using it to meet up. I don’t think he ever comes here.”

“What’s he look like?”

“I’ve never met him, but Daya said he was an Adonai.”

My brow raised at that, and I immediately suspected S. Yavesh was an alias for Llyran.

“She tell you what she was working on?” Hank asked. “Did you see any of it?”

“No. She was working on restoring the items in her lab at the Fernbank Museum.” Sian stared at the wall, completely lost. “I just can’t believe she’s gone.”

“Come on …” I pushed away from the dresser and approached the bed to help her up. “Let’s get you home.”

“No. I don’t want to go. This is all I have left of her. I can’t go.”

“You can’t stay here, Sian. If your father finds out you’re here and what you’ve been doing here, he’ll go completely ballistic.”

She sniffed and wiped her nose, looking up at me with round eyes. “No,” she said simply. “He’d just kill me and that’d be the end of it. He despises me already for not getting him the things he wants from work.”

I took her by the arm and gently urged her off the bed. “I doubt he holds you responsible for that one.”

After all, if Grigori was pissed at anyone, it’d be me. I was the one who’d agreed to get his daughter a job at the ITF as payment for a blood debt I owed him. He’d wanted a mole. And what he got was a lot of useless information. Sian had a job at the ITF, but her psycho dad never said she had to have clearance or access codes to case files and ITF documents. Fuck him—not my problem that he hadn’t made the terms clear.

Okay, so it was my problem. Or, I should say, Grigori Tennin was my problem. And he wasn’t going away anytime soon. In fact, my guess was the bastard was sitting back and waiting to see what chaos the darkness wrought, and secretly fanning the flames.

One problem at a time, though.

“Come on, Sian. You need to go home.” She gave in without a fight, and walked on her own down the hallway. As we passed the wall of windows, a dark, fluttering blur outside caught my eye. I steered Sian to the open door and the clerk waiting in the hallway. “Escort Miss Tennin to the lobby, please.” I told the clerk.

The hairs on my arms stood as they retreated toward the elevator. My hand moved to my Hefty. I flicked the snap to the leather strap that held my weapon. As soon as the elevator doors slid open and they entered, I pulled my weapon.

“Outside. Terrace,” Hank said, his own weapon drawn and already with his back against the wall and ready to cover me as I entered.

Carefully we reentered the penthouse, approaching the floor-to-ceiling windows, moving quietly around the furniture to the sliding glass doors. Beyond the glass, a figure sat with his back to us, cross-legged on the ledge of the terrace, knees overhanging forty-six stories below. His black linen shirt flapped in the breeze. Shoulder-length red hair stirred.

Llyran.

I pushed the glass doors apart just enough to squeeze through. Once we were out onto the stone terrace, I nodded to Hank to let him know I’d take the right, but a voice stopped me midstride.

“Hello again, Charlie.”

My fingers flexed around the Hefty as Llyran stood on the narrow ledge and turned around to face us. The fact that he was standing forty-six stories up on a ledge as wide as his feet were long didn’t seem to distress him in the least. “And Mister Williams,” he said. “Brother. Malakim. Fellow Elysian …”

Malakim?

I fired.

The Hefty’s tag thunked into his chest, pinning the linen to his skin. A sound wave–induced shudder went through him as his arms stretched wide. A smug smile grew on his perfect face as though the universe was his to own and operate.

And then he let himself fall backward into thin air.

I ran to the ledge to see his black-clad form freefall at a terrifying speed.

Hank’s shoulder bumped mine as he leaned over the ledge. “Holy shit.”

Somewhere around ten stories down, a tunnel of darkness snaked down, slicing through the air to curl around his body like a python in a death squeeze, pulling him back up and into its lofty, murky clouds.

Hank and I just stood there, dumbfounded. One second Llyran was falling, and the next …

I turned to my partner, mouth open, trying to wrap my mind around what I’d just witnessed, trying to think of an appropriate response, but nothing came.

Hank took a few steps back, dragged his fingers through his hair, and then turned, hands on hips and eyeing me with a stupefied look that instantly shifted to horror. He leapt toward me.

I glanced over my shoulder just in time to see Llyran flying toward me.