I followed the cat’s gaze in slow motion towards the sash window to see the dark-haired male peering round its edge. The shadows were gone from his face and the details of his features embedded themselves razor-sharp into my mind. Black-brown hair, long enough to show a slight wave, pale skin with a smattering of freckles on the bridge of his straight nose, hazel-coloured eyes tinged with green and edged with thick black lashes, generous mouth parted in dismay to give a glimpse of straight white teeth, and even a thin line of stubble along his left jaw where he must have been hasty in shaving.

I’d be able to pick him out in a crowd of similar-looking men a hundred years from now.

I wasn’t going to need to. I knew who he was.

Marc. Katie’s boyfriend.

But even as I questioned what the hell Katie’s boyfriend was doing casing the gnome’s joint, or spying on me, and what I was going to do about it, the dream moved on.

I found myself outside the gnome’s house with Katie, her grey eyes rounding with alarm as she pointed at the park, her mouth forming the words. ‘In those bushes!’

Then I was racing towards the bushes, the sword Ascalon in my hand, clearly seeing the way the leaves trembled, despite the summer-still air, as if someone had held them back and just released them—

Another shout from Katie and I was staring towards the trees.

Only now my sharpened dream vision showed me an amorphous grey shape, low to the ground, crouched on all fours, its eyes reflecting eerily in the darkness like a cat’s, and large enough to be a werewolf in its wolf form. But I was too far away, and the shadows too dense, to be sure that it was a wolf and not some other animal, like a large dog or even a small bear.

The animal slowly backed up and disappeared.

Frustration sifted through me. I wanted to race down there, grab it by the throat, pull it out into the light and see exactly what it was, but the hovering conscious part of my brain knew the Morpheus Memory Aid potion didn’t work that way. It worked to enhance whatever you wanted to remember.

The view of the park disappeared beneath a blinding snow storm. The reek of fresh-spilled blood choked my throat.

And a familiar voice with its not-quite-English accent sounded in my mind.

Genevieve.

Chapter Twenty

Genevieve. You should not be here.

Malik’s voice came again, the urgency in it tugging me out of the dream. For a moment I drifted, then horror slipped inside me as the dream pulled me under again, back to a wide, moon-bright plateau. The plateau stretched out to both sides of me, one edge hugging the steep mountain face, the other falling into the clouds roiling below. The ground was covered with an ankle-deep blanket of snow and wolves were howling all around me, their keening riding the wind that dragged anxious fingers through my hair and sent icy snowflakes to sting my face. I knelt in the snow, blood staining it in a ragged circle, like crimson petals scattered from a rose, as I denied my terror, my revulsion, and schooled my face. I was listening, as I had long ago, to the figure before me talking about . . . something . . . that filled me with desolation, even as it lifted my soul with fledgling hope. Only the words didn’t make any sense—

Genevieve.

Malik’s harsh whisper jerked me awake and the dream shredded like fog chased away by a resolute wind. Adrenalin sped my pulse, my left wrist banded with pain, and I jerked up, ripping off the sleep mask and searching my bedroom for him.

Dawn light streamed through the open window, washing over the sloping white-painted walls, the copper paint on my iron bedstead, and throwing shadows behind the rail holding my clothes. But as I peered at the dark corner, trying to see if he stood there, shaded from the sun, my inner radar kicked in and told me the room was empty.

Disappointment rolled over me. I rubbed my wrist, trying to soothe the stinging soreness there and wondering if I had really gatecrashed Malik’s dream, which was how it had felt, or was the nightmare down to the Morpheus Memory Aid backfiring? After all, it wouldn’t be the first time magic had gone haywire on me—

My bed was covered in rose petals. Those were definitely nothing to do with the Morpheus spell. The dark crimson petals were scattered over the white sheets like fresh blood on snow. Even with the obvious references to Malik’s and my time together in the hotel function room, and the dream I’d just woken from, and knowing I was alone, part of me hoped the velvety petals filling the room with a familiar dark spice scent were a clichéd romantic gesture on Malik’s part. Only, I didn’t need the unease in my gut to tell me they were nothing to do with romance.

I scooped up a petal praying it was an illusion that would dissipate with touch.

It didn’t.

My unease grew. Where had they come from? What were they to do with the dream? What did the dream have to do with Malik? How had I heard his voice if he wasn’t here? And more worryingly, if the petals were as real as they felt, how the hell had someone – Malik? –got them past the Wards?

I lookedat the open window. In my sight, it disappeared behind a magical steel shutter. The magical steel shone deep purple and the combination of blood and power fuelling the Ward made it hum like a megawatt transformer. My flat was the safest place in England right now. Or at least it was meant to be. Nothing could, or should, get past the Ward, not even a five-hundred-plus-year-old vamp who normally had an open invitation over any threshold I was behind, thanks to my being stupid enough to give him my blood freely.

Agitated, I swung out of bed, grabbed my robe and hurried into the living room. The Wards covering the flat’s front door and the window were, like the one in the bedroom, intact, and a quick scan of the room told me everything appeared undisturbed. I pulled the sheet off the wardrobe leading into Sylvia’s Between.

The wardrobe, too, appeared undisturbed.

But appearances could be deceiving. Warily, I waved my hand over the wardrobe’s handles – intricately carved oak leaves that were recent replacements for the original brass ones – careful not to actually touch them. Robur, the ancient dryad now resident in the wardrobe’s wood (and the reason why the wardrobe was no longer in my bedroom), wasn’t the cheeriest of folk, and since I’d sprayed him with lemon polish not long after he’d moved in, he’d taken a distinct dislike to me. The wardrobe made an irritated creaking noise and the whorls in the wooden door shifted into an approximation of a face. Hooded brown eyes drilled me with a malevolent glare.

‘Everything okay in there?’ I asked.

‘Why, what have you done now?’

At Robur’s accusing tone, I clamped down on my defensive ‘nothing’, and instead said calmly, ‘I’m concerned someone may have bypassed the Wards.’

‘Impossible! I would know.’

Arrogant much?‘Are you sure?’

The hooded eyes narrowed to disdainful cracks. ‘There are three pigeons sitting on the apex of the roof. The witch who lives the floor below is meditating, unfortunately not skyclad as she should be and she has neglected to light her elemental candles. The witch on the second floor is snoring, despite her extremely shrill alarm attempting to wake her three times. The goblin cleaner is polishing the woodwork on the stairs, correctly, I might add, using a lint-free cloth, unperfumed beeswax and working along the grain—’

‘Fine,’ I interrupted, before I ended up with another lecture, ‘you’re sure. I get it. But someone still left rose petals on my bed during the night.’

‘Your vampire paramour, I suspect.’

I huffed under my breath, ignoring the insult. ‘So he was here then?’

‘No.’