Fluffster screams.

Not chirps or screeches as per normal chinchilla vocalizations, but screams a wail I didn’t know his little throat could produce.

He then begins to shake as though having an epileptic seizure—or perhaps more apt, like he’s being put to death by an electric chair.

“Stop! You’re going to kill him!” I scan the room for something heavy to bang Baba Yaga over the head with.

“He’ll be fine,” the witch grits out. “He’s just an old and strong specimen of his kind, that’s all.”

The energy keeps spewing from her fingers, and Fluffster’s fur stands up in every direction, as though he’s turned into a porcupine.

In the next instant, his thrashing stops, and he collapses onto his side.

Baba Yaga’s energy pierces his lifeless-looking body for a moment, then ceases.

The witch looks pale as she grips the table with a shaking hand.

“You better be worth it, girl,” she says in a barely audible whisper. “I haven’t expended this much juice for fifty years.”

Ignoring the witch, I lean over Fluffster and put a hand to his chest.

His heartbeat is slow and his breathing shallow, but he’s clearly alive—which means Baba Yaga will also live, though how I could’ve killed her in revenge is an interesting puzzle.

“Bud,” I say to the domovoi. “Are you okay?”

He doesn’t respond.

“You better take him to his domain.” The witch plops wearily into a chair, her movements now more consistent with her age. “His domain is your home, in case you’re ignorant of his nature.”

“Thanks.” It takes all my acting prowess not to smack her in the wrinkled face. “I’ll go do that right now.”

Cradling Fluffster’s tiny body against my chest, I head for the door, leaving the carrier cage for Baba Yaga as a souvenir.

Koschei opens the wooden door in that very second, as though he’s the psychic instead of me.

I pass him without a second glance, and sprint for Ariel’s table.

“What’s wrong?” Ariel says as soon as she sees me. Then her gaze falls on my hands. “Is Fluffster okay?”

“He better be. He needs to get home, the sooner the better.”

“Of course.” She leaps to her feet. “Let’s go.”

Using her supernatural strength, Ariel pushes a path for us through the crowd. To my relief, the mobsters she all but assaults act as though we’ve grown invisible.

“The car. Now,” I shout at the valet as soon as we get outside. To reinforce my words, Ariel pulls out a twenty and thrusts it into the guy’s hand.

The valet hurries around the corner, and after a few long seconds, he backs into our street in Ariel’s Hummer.

“Floor it,” I tell Ariel when we get inside.

She does, and the tires screech as we torpedo forward.

Ariel must’ve learned aggressive driving in the army. The Hummer slices through the traffic like a tank; everyone, even the yellow cabs, yield to us, clearing the way.

To distract myself from an incipient panic attack from Ariel’s driving, I tell her what happened in Baba Yaga’s wooden office in minute detail.

“Thank goodness you had Rose’s protection,” Ariel says. “If Yaga had succeeded in her spell, she’d have complete and utter control over you. It’s even worse than the sire bond.”

Suppressing a shudder, I stroke Fluffster’s limp body. “What’s a sire bond?”

Ariel skids onto the highway, the car’s tires leaving a black streak in our wake. “If a pre-vamp drinks the blood of a fully-fledged vampire before dying, the donor vampire will be the resulting vamp’s sire—and the new vamp will have to do his bidding for a decade.”

“Wow. Why would a pre-vamp ever drink the blood, given the consequences?”

“It’s the only sure way for a pre-vamp to turn.” Without signaling her intent, Ariel switches into the middle lane—right in front of an express bus. “If a pre-vamp isn’t powerful enough, they may not turn when they die. They might just die for real—and the only way to find out is to actually die without drinking the blood of another vamp. Most prefer the certainty of the sire bond to the uncertainty of freedom with a chance of fatality.”

I ponder that kind of choice as we switch to the fast lane and accelerate to triple the speed limit.

Unlike mine, Fluffster’s breathing and heartbeat are unchanged—though I should be grateful things haven’t gotten worse.

The rest of the ride is a haze of adrenaline for me, and I only exhale a frightened breath when we get to Battery Park and Ariel hits the brakes for the first time since we left the restaurant.

With a jerk so violent that my bruised shoulder starts to ache again, we stop.

I hold Fluffster in my left hand as I open the car door with my right, breathing in the smell of burned rubber from the tires.

Ariel’s phone chirps with an arriving text.

She looks at it and winces. “I have to go. I’ll be back later. Can you text me as soon as Fluffster is feeling better?”

I nod and rush to our building.

If I weren’t in a hurry, I would’ve asked Ariel what that was about, but I have my suspicions anyway. It was probably another booty call from Gaius. Or is it a neck call, or blood call, if your “just a friend” is a vampire?

It may be my imagination, but the chinchilla feels warmer to the touch when we enter the building, and his breathing is more even by the time I exit the elevator on our floor.

Taking out my keys, I open the apartment door and walk into the kitchen. Placing Fluffster on the table, I examine him thoroughly.

His breathing is normal now, his heartbeat steady, but he still doesn’t reply when I call out to him.

“You’re going to be fine,” I tell the unconscious chinchilla. “Let me go take off my dirty shoes and turn off the light by the front door.”

My hope is that the prospect of saving on electricity would get a reaction from him, but no such luck.

When I get back to the door, I notice a package there. Felix must’ve brought it in earlier, which means he must be home.

Looking around, I see Felix’s favorite pair of sneakers here too.

If he’s home, though, it’s odd that he didn’t come out to greet me. Maybe he has his headphones on?

Then a see a dainty pair of stilettos that don’t belong to either me or Ariel.

Unless Felix decided to experiment with drag, he must be in the middle of an actual Netflix-and-chill date.

I take my shoes off, and my gaze falls on the package again.

It’s got an eBay logo on it, so it must be my VCR purchase—something I completely forgot about with all the misadventures.

Then I notice the name of the sender, and my eyes threaten to jump out of their sockets.

“How?” I mutter as I read it again.

The package is from Darian.

He would’ve had to list the VCR at just the right moment and at just the right price for me to buy it when I did. But why bother with such a charade? First, he sends me the VHS tape, then sells me a device needed to play it.

If I weren’t worried about Fluffster, I’d rip the package open right this second, but as is, I turn to go back to the kitchen—and that’s when I finally notice the scent.

A yummy scent I’ve smelled before, during my nearly fatal liaison with Harper the Incubus at Nero’s Earth Club.

Just remembering the encounter makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up—just as the magic of the smell wields its aphrodisiac effect on other parts of my body.

Like a hound, I let my nose guide me, and the scent gets stronger as I approach Felix’s room.

When I’m almost there, a strong sense of foreboding forces me to stop and take in a calming breath.

Only inhaling deeply turns out to be a bad idea.

It increases how much incubus juju gets into my lungs.

My mind is on the verge of going completely muddy, but with a sheer effort of will, I stave off the unwelcome arousal.

How is this happening?

Why am I smelling Harper?

More than ever, I want my stupid powers to work.

Nero said I need to believe in myself, but the frustrating thing is that in this moment, I believe in my powers completely and utterly—except it doesn’t seem to do me any good.

The smell further intensifies, leaving no doubt in my mind as to its source—Felix’s room.

This is when the smell, or the stress of it, creates the strangest feeling ever.

Lightning bolts explode in my vision.

Did I just hit my head?

The lightning effect feels like it’s streaming from my hands directly into my eyeballs.

Just as suddenly as it arrived, the visual illusion disappears, leaving me standing in front of Felix’s door.

A moan reaches me from under the door. It’s hard to tell if it’s a moan of pain or pleasure—not that either is good, given Harper’s powers.

My body working as though on autopilot, I gather all my strength and kick in the door.