My eyes fluttered open to a ray of sunshine cutting through a nearby window. My heartbeat pounded behind my eyes, sending a sharp pain through my skull. Where was I? What happened? The sharp scent of herbs tickled my nose as I shifted around on the soft mattress beneath me.

Mattress? Shouldn’t I be on Danny’s couch?

Adrenaline pumped through me, jolting me awake. I hadn’t slept in a bed in days. What was I doing in one now? And where was the smell of herbs coming from?

Something wasn’t right.

I attempted to sit up, but a tightness across my right shoulder constricted my movements. Tape pulled at my skin. I glanced at the area in question. Wait a minute, whose shirt was I wearing?

I struggled to remember anything prior to waking up, but continued to draw a blank. The more I moved around, the stronger the scent of Mason on me became. It must linger in the fabric.

What was I doing wearing his shirt?

I lifted the sleeve up. A large bandage had been taped over my shoulder. Why? Had Mason and I done something, and he bit me during it? I wouldn’t regret it if it happened. I just wished I could remember it. The last thing I remembered was eating popcorn while sitting on Danny’s couch. How had I gone from that to this?

I glanced around. Where was I now? Mason’s? No. I knew this place. It was Danny’s bedroom. What was I doing in here?

Heat crept across my skin. Oh no. Had Mason and I done something in my brother’s bed? While I’d be lying if I said I’d never imagined sleeping with Mason, it didn’t mean I could stomach the thought of doing it here. In Danny’s bed.

How could I not remember what happened last night?

Mason couldn’t have been that bad in the sack. Of course, he wasn’t. There was no way. Why couldn’t I remember then? Oh, God. What if I wasn’t any good? I didn’t have much experience. I’d been with a guy before, but I didn’t sleep around. I wanted to make sure the guy thought I was worth the wait before I slept with him. It was something my mother had taught me. She’d always said if a guy couldn’t wait around for a few months to get to know me without pushing for sex, then he wasn’t interested for the right reasons and wasn’t worth my time anyway.

I ran my fingers through my hair. That couldn’t have been what happened last night. No matter how attractive Mason was, I didn’t think I’d be willing to abandon values and beliefs the instant his lips touched mine. And, I damn sure didn’t think I’d do it in my brother’s bed.

The sound of someone clicking a computer mouse from somewhere outside the closed bedroom door caught my attention.

It had to be Mason.

He was here. I slipped out of bed and tiptoed to the door. It creaked when I opened it, making my heart hammer against my rib cage. When I peeked out, I spotted Mason at the bar off the kitchen with his laptop in front of him. The scent of french fries hit my nose, and my feet propelled me toward it. A deep, gut-twisting growl of hunger spurred from my stomach.

Jesus, how long had I been out for?

“You’re awake. Thank God. I was beginning to wonder if you’d ever wake,” Mason said without shifting around in his seat to look at me. His focus was strictly on whatever he was doing on his laptop. Once he finished whatever movement on the image he’d been creating, he spun around to face me. “How are you feeling?” His eyes seemed to smolder with intensity at the sight of me.

Even though I had on an oversized shirt, I still felt naked beneath his heated gaze. When his eyes raked over the length of my body, focusing on my bare legs more than anything else, the flickers of unease festering in the pit of my stomach grew.

“Confused, hungry, weirdly energetic,” I said as I crossed the apartment to grab some yoga pants from my bag by the couch. “Naked.”

“Oh, right. Sorry.” He swiveled around on his stool until he was facing his computer again.

I rummaged through my bag until I found the pants I’d been searching for. After I tugged them on, I moved to sit on the stool beside Mason.

“Are you hungry? It’s nearly four in the afternoon,” he said. How could it be so late in the day? While I’d be the first to admit I wasn’t a morning person, I also wasn’t the type to sleep the day away. “I got you something from Dark Horse Diner earlier. It’s in fridge.” Mason closed out of a couple open tabs on his laptop. I didn’t get a good look at what he’d been doing beforehand.

How long had he been sitting here, waiting on me to wake? All day?

While I was starved, there were more pressing issues to discuss than food—like what the hell had happened last night for starters.

“You’ve been hanging out here all day?” I asked, deciding it was as good a place to start as any. It at least didn’t make me sound like a complete idiot who’d randomly woke up with some form of amnesia. Maybe Mason would give me a clue that pertained to last night without meaning to, and it would jog something.

My stomach grumbled again. I reached for one of the fries on Mason’s plate, unable to resist. I popped it in my mouth. It was cold, but I’d never tasted anything better. I could eat and figure out what was going on at the same time. Multitasking at its finest.

“Yeah, pretty much.” His eyes locked on mine. “I didn’t feel comfortable leaving you alone after everything last night. I hope that’s okay.”

A shiver ran along my spine. His words made whatever had happened last night seem scary. Had something serious happened to me? Was the bandage on my shoulder not covering a bite mark from him? Or was that what he was talking about? Did he feel guilty?

I shrugged my good shoulder in an attempt to play it cool. “No, it’s fine. Thanks for staying, I guess.”

“You guess?” His face scrunched.

“Well, yeah.” I might as well put it all out in the open now because there was no way I could fake this anymore. Lying had never been my thing. “I don’t have any memory of last night, so I don’t know why you wouldn’t have felt comfortable leaving me here alone while I slept.” The reality of what I was saying hit me square in the gut.

“Are you serious?”

I nodded as I reached another fry from his plate. “Dead serious. Why would I joke about something like that?” Butterflies broke out in my stomach. Was he pissed I didn’t remember the night? I tried to gauge his reaction while I ate the fry, but his face was unreadable. “I remember leaving the bookstore after Lena told us where the book was hidden and about the hellhound. I remember saying goodnight to you and getting in my pajamas. I made a bowl of popcorn. Then the last thing I remember is sitting on the couch, eating it. Next thing I know, I’m waking up in my brother’s bed dressed in your shirt with a super-sized bandage taped to my right shoulder.”

I knew my words were coming out nonchalant, but I was freaked out. I’d never blacked out before. Not even after a night of heavy drinking with my dorm roomie, which happened more often than it probably should.

Mason ran a hand through his sandy blond hair and lifted his gaze to the ceiling. A long breath expelled past his lips. “You had to have opened the book. Last night, you were attacked by the hellhound. I heard you yelling and came running. I got here just in time to see the beast sink its massive teeth into your shoulder. That’s why you have the bandage. How do you not remember that?” He shook his head as though annoyed with me.

My mouth fell open. “I opened the book?”

Even after Lena had warned me a hellhound would come running if anyone opened the book, I went ahead and did it. Yeah, that sounded like something I’d do. Damn it. I never listened to anyone.

“Yeah, you did. And Lena was right when she said the hellhound would come if anyone opened it. He was guarding the book. Why, I still don’t know. I tried to do some research online, but I wasn’t able to find anything about it. The internet is being shitty today too, so I gave up.”

“What happened to the hellhound? How did we get away?” I asked as I glanced around as though the thing was lurking in a corner somewhere waiting for the perfect moment to jump out and attack. My panther begged to be set free, but I knew shifting wasn’t something my body could handle in its current state. I would need to heal first.

“I took care of it. Don’t worry.” Mason averted his gaze to his closed laptop. “I cleaned the place up for you, too. I wasn’t sure how you’d feel when you finally woke up.”

The tension building in my muscles melted away. If Mason said he’d taken care of it, I believed him.

“Thanks.” I grabbed another fry off his plate and he pushed it toward me.

“You can have the rest,” he said.

I grabbed another one and popped it in my mouth. Time ticked away while neither of us talked. I was trapped in my head, still struggling to pull up memories of what he’d said happened. Nothing was there. I pressed my fingers to my temples. My head was going to explode if I didn’t find those memories again. They couldn’t have disappeared.

Could they?

My gaze trailed back to the empty plate of fries Mason had slid toward me.

“I didn’t think vampires ate real food,” I said. Mason flinched at the mention of the V word, reminding me how much he hated what he was. “Also, if the hellhound was taken care of, why didn’t you open the book to find out what it pertains to instead of looking online?”

“We do eat real food. It’s more out of habit than necessity, though.” A tightness pinched at the corners of his eyes. “And I didn’t read it because I’m not sure I should. I don’t want to touch it again. It’s like it gets in my head somehow. There’s this warmth I feel when I touch it like its power is calling to me, begging me to read its pages.”

“It probably is.” I meant what I said. I wasn’t sure why, but I knew there was some truth to my words. “What about the bandage and the herbs I smell on my skin. Where did all that come from?”

“You had me take you to Ida, the old lady who owns the bakery. I wanted to take you to the hospital because you had lost so much blood, but you wanted to see her. Ida and her granddaughter, Gwen, did a healing spell that involved water from the channel by the willow tree. They created a tonic or something. Ida made me drink it, too. Surprisingly, it didn’t taste bad.” He lifted his right hand, and for the first time, I noticed a bandage matching my own there that reeked of similar herbs.

“Why didn’t we heal on our own?” I knew I could regenerate—I’d done it before since my panther had been triggered—and I was pretty sure vampires held the same capability.

“There was something in the saliva of the hellhound, like a poison or venom, that blocked our regeneration capabilities. The water from the channel at the base of the willow tree holds healing properties, and the herbs amplify them. At least that’s what Ida said.”

The more Mason talked about Ida, the more images from last night resurfaced.

She must have placed a layered spell on me. One that helped me sleep so her tonic and poultice could work to heal me. Now that I was awake and obviously feeling better, the spell must be wearing off.

Images and memories flickered through my mind like an old slideshow.

“About the book, you said it gets into your mind somehow and calls to you with power when you touch it?” Everything I’d read from the book last night came rushing back.

“Yeah, I assumed it holds some kind of wicked magic and that’s why there was a hellhound guarding it. Maybe it lures people in.”

“It does, but not like you think. I read the first few pages before I was attacked last night.”

“Is everything coming back to you now?”

“Yeah, it is.” I nodded. “And, from what I read, Danny was right. The book holds something within its pages every vampire in the world would kill to get their hands on. It’s not even an actual book. Not like a textbook anyway. It’s a guide or a handbook of some sort written by a hunter.”

“Vampire hunter? Like the group here in Willow Harbor?”

“Not exactly,” I said as I tried to think of the best way to explain the differences between the two. “There are different kinds of hunters. The ones that live here are sort of like supernatural police. They ensure we all get along. They also help to keep any evil creatures who might find their way here by accident away. The vampire hunter who created this book is nothing like them.”

“Okay, so why would a vampire hunter’s handbook be of use to vampires? Everyone knows how vampires can be killed.”

“True, but not all know how a vampire can become even more powerful.”

“This is big.” He rubbed his hands over his face. “Powerful in what way?”

“From what I read, the vampire hunter the guide belonged to came across a vampire who had the ability to not only feed on the blood of a living being, but also on their life energy. He documented it all for the love of his life—a female vampire.”