I pressed the buzzer to Luke’s apartment, and he answered within moments.

“Luke? It’s, uh… Dawn. Again. I just left my makeup in there,” I bluffed. “I just need to grab a few things, and I’ll be on my way.”

“Of course!” he said hurriedly. “Then we can talk about getting away from here.”

My blood boiled, but I tried to stay focused. “Right. Getting away.”

He buzzed me in, and I pushed through the door with Balthazar following close behind me. I climbed the stairs, my breath shallow in my throat. I ran my fingers over the bannister, trying to keep my thoughts clear.

Were there really things in this world that most people couldn’t see? No. That sounded nuts. I’d probably just seen an intruder, and my mind had invented a bit of smoke and eeriness in the panic of it all.

At the top of the stairs, I paused at Holly’s door, then carried on down the hall. Balthazar hung back, just like I’d asked him to. I didn’t want his presence setting Luke off and getting us sidetracked. I had a few questions I wanted to ask Luke before he… ‘met‘ Balthazar. For one thing, I wanted to figure out if he was lying, or if he’d somehow been brainwashed along with the other neighbors.

I knocked on Luke’s door, and after a moment, it creaked open. He peered out, frowning. The sight of him sent a sharp stab of disgust through my ribs. Just last night, I’d worn his T-shirt to bed. Now the sight of him made me feel sick.

He narrowed his eyes. “Dawn?”

“I want to talk about Holly. Maybe I can jog your memory. In high school—”

His brow furrowed in confusion. “Holly? I told you. I have no idea who you’re talking about.” He leaned against the doorframe, reaching for my arm, his grip a little too hard. “I think you’ve just fabricated a way to come crawling back to me, desperate to—”

In a blur of movement, Balthazar was at Luke’s throat, lifting him into the air. How was he that strong? That fast? A strange, raw power seemed to curl off his body in waves.

“You won’t touch her again,” he said through gritted teeth.

My stomach clenched at the sudden viciousness. Luke’s face reddened in the professor’s grip.

“Stop it!” I shouted.

Balthazar dropped Luke back into his apartment, and Luke sprawled across the floor, gasping for breath.

Between gasps, he managed, “what did I tell you, Dawn? He’s a predator. Stay away from him!”

Balthazar slammed the door, then peered down at me. “That maggot can’t help you.”

I stared up at him. “Do you have some kind of history with him?”

Balthazar narrowed his eyes. “No. Why would you ask that?”

“He hates you for reasons I’ve never understood. He calls you a predator.”

“He’s a fucking child.” Balthazar was already moving on to Holly’s apartment.

Two men who hated each other, and maybe both were untrustworthy. But so far, only one of them had left bruises on my body.

Balthazar paused outside Holly’s door, and I sidled up next to him. It was at that point that I smelled the professor for the first time—a distinctly masculine scent of leather and musk.

I looked up at him. I wasn’t sure if it was the stress of the evening or another sign that I was losing my mind, but I felt an overwhelming, otherworldly power emanating from his body, almost like something was skimming over my bare skin. So close to him, I wasn’t sure if I felt safer or more vulnerable.

“Will you come in with me?” I asked, glancing between him and Holly’s door.

I didn’t want to admit I was too scared to go in by myself, but of course I was terrified. Even if he was an Ivy League professor, Balthazar would clearly be able to kick the crap out of anyone I might find in there.

I wasn’t exactly sure of the Lord’s role in all this, or why he was even helping me. But right now he was the only one even pretending to think I was telling the truth.

Holly’s apartment door was still unlocked, and when Balthazar pushed it all the way open, I braced for impact. When nothing slammed into me from the shadows, I strained my eyes in the darkness, searching for threats. But nothing was there.

I really mean nothing.

Even a big old sign that read “Welcome to Chez Gary Shoe” would have been more satisfying and informative than what I found there. When my trembling hand finally found the bravery to slap against the light switch, the overhead illuminated… nothing.

Holly wasn’t here.

But neither was there any demon, or vampire, or icy-eyed devil. No furniture—no worn gray sofa with a rainbow afghan, no colorful rug or string beads in the doorway. No table of healing crystals and incense… it was just empty.

The blood roared in my ears as I tried to make sense of all this.

“Right.” Balthazar folded his arms across his broad chest. “I’d love to know what conclusions you’ve drawn from this empty room.”

I glared at him. I had the feeling he’d already discovered some game-changing clues but wanted to test me. Before I could answer, I’d have to claw my way out of the panic smothering my brain.

I folded my arms across my sheer dress, mirroring his pose by accident. “Well, we have an empty apartment. It used to be a full apartment. As in, full of my friend and her stuff.” I pointed to a bare spot on the floor. “We used to sit on a sofa, there, eating spring rolls and watching The Bachelor. She always left pint glasses of water around the place, mostly because she was often hung over. The apartment usually smelled like garlic and ginger from whatever she was cooking.” I loosed a sigh. “Now it’s just empty. That’s the conclusion I’ve drawn so far. What have you got?”

“It’s not totally empty.”

I surveyed the room, my heart threatening to gallop out of my chest. I tried to focus, taking in the dusty wood floor, the ever-so-slightly chipped white paint on the walls. I turned, tracing my finger over a dent right by the door, and felt my expression turn stony as I remembered Holly and me moving her couch in here and smacking the corner on the wall, making this very mark. She had been here. She had been real. I hadn’t imagined my best friend.

“I’m not crazy,” I muttered, sounding very much like a crazy person.

When I glanced back at the empty apartment, I couldn’t escape the sense of menace hanging in the air. Something in the darkest depths of my mind was screaming at me to get out, to leave this place and never return.

My legs were trembling and I shook my head, refocusing on Balthazar’s question—my conclusions. “I don’t know. I see an empty room. The only thing distinct about it is the pervasive sense of evil in the air.”

Balthazar’s silhouette looked enormous in the doorframe, and I wasn’t sure if his size was comforting or intimidating. “That evil you’re sensing is the smell.”

I breathed in deeply. “It smells like….” I sniffed a couple more times, trying to pick out what exactly that was. “Burning. Asphalt? Tar. Smells like someone’s laying down a road outside. I don’t understand. What does it mean?”

“It’s creosote.”

“Right,” I said evenly. So I was pretty much right—the smell of tar. I didn’t know why he felt the need to get so specific about it. “And does that mean something to you?” Against my will, I shivered.

Instead of answering me, Balthazar frowned at me disapprovingly. “You’re cold.” Somehow he managed to make this benign observation sound like an insult, like I’d failed him.

“I’m just a little creeped out by being in here without her,” I said, unsure of why I had so readily told him my true feelings. “I barely even… feel her here anymore. It’s like there’s a whole new atmosphere in here.”

He began tracing his fingertips over the wall. “Something dark has imprinted here. Something that reeks of death and isolation, of human blood and sea-battered cliffs.”

I had no idea what in the blazes he was talking about, but a shudder raced up my spine anyway. What did you say to a comment like that?

“We should leave now,” he said abruptly. And with that, he was out of the room.

Without anyone else around, a sense of dread washed over me, sending chills racing up my neck. The word danger screamed in the hollows of my mind.

I rushed out of the apartment—smack into Balthazar’s muscled body.

I backed up hastily and smoothed down the thin fabric of my dress, trying to regain my composure. “Now what?”

When I looked up at him, to my slight surprise, he was already staring down at me with those incredible, intense, dark eyes of his. More surprising still, he didn’t look away when I caught him pinning me with his stare. Under his gaze, I felt vulnerable, acutely aware of the way my dress was clinging to my body.

And as crazy as it sounded, for just a moment, I glimpsed something under the surface of his sophisticated exterior—something almost feral. Primal.

I shook off the feeling. The fact was, even if I didn’t trust Balthazar, I didn’t have anyone else right now.

“Have you been reading the news? Dangerous people are all around us, Dawn.” The way he said my name—that accent of his—made the hairs on the back of my neck prick up.

“I know. I feel like I’ve stumbled into some insane conspiracy.” I shot a look in the direction of Luke’s door. How could he have picked now to act so insane? Now that my best friend was missing? Anger pricked at my chest.

“You’ll stay at my house tonight.”

I opened my mouth to protest, then quickly closed it again. Where else was I planning on staying? Luke’s place was out of the question, and Holly’s was full of evil.

But I could at least let him know how I felt about it, how… improper it was. “I don’t even know who you are,” I said quietly, looking up at him.

He glared back down at me, but I was beginning to realize that his glares didn’t always mean anger. That was just his natural look: intense. Thoughtful. It was almost as if he were irritated by absolutely everything; his expression implied that he found most things to be beneath him, but just about tolerable. I was already getting used to it.

“What exactly do you need to know about me?” he asked.

“If you’re…”

“Yes?”

I let silence surround us. “Dangerous.” I don’t know if there’s some kind of primal creature under all that sophistication.

As if answering my accusation, I felt a rush of raw power thrumming off his body, raising goosebumps on my drenched skin.

For the first time, I saw what it looked like when the Lord of Cambridge allowed his pensive glare to fade. “Stay with me if you want, or don’t, if you don’t want to. I don’t give a fuck. It seems to me you don’t have a lot of options. Maybe I am dangerous, but not to you. And I can’t say the same for Luke, or for whatever it was that took your friend. But I won’t make the decision for you. Even if you look like a drowned sorority girl, you’re a grownup, and you can make your own choices.”

“Not very polite, are you?”

“Your friend was just kidnapped, and the crime level is out of control right now. This is hardly the time to worry about manners.”

As much as he irritated me, he was right about the fact that I didn’t have a lot of choices right now. In fact, he’d echoed my own earlier thoughts.

As he turned to walk away from me, I grabbed his arm, almost like I wanted to convince him that my situation wasn’t as screwed as he had implied. “I could try the police.” I shook my wet hair out of my face in what I hoped was a show of defiance and aloofness.

He snorted. “You’re running around talking about angels and missing girls—and don’t think I haven’t noticed that you’re wearing a dress that barely conceals your body. But like I said. You can make your own choices.”

I gave him my very best glare, but he had already turned to head down the stairs. I followed. Even if the arrogant bastard pissed me off, some instinct in the back of my brain told me that he was my best option right now.

Something real was going on here, and somehow I was involved—me, who had never been involved in so much as a speeding ticket until now. And Balthazar, whether or not I could trust him, seemed to be the only person around with any answers so far.

There was only one thing bugging me, and it took me until we had crossed the street and reached his front door to realize exactly what it was.

I had called him dangerous, expecting him to try to put my mind at ease, at the very least. But he hadn’t made any effort to deny my accusation… at all.