Cas is pounding on the door like a madman when I open it.

“Sshhh! What is wrong with you?” I whisper crossly. “Noah’s sleeping. You’re going to wake him up!” My eyes go to his face, which is bruised under his eye and rapidly swelling. “Oh my God, what happened? Did Angel —”

Cas brushes me off with a short wave of his hand. It’s obvious he’s not really listening to me. He looks like a man possessed as he pushes past me and starts to stalk around the room, his eyes dark and stormy. His boots clomp loudly on the wood floor, and I shush him again, but he doesn’t pay any attention. Suddenly, he stops, and stares fixedly for a moment at a spot in the corner.

I’m seriously alarmed now. I’ve never seen him like this. “Cas!” I cry, forgetting about Noah. “What the hell is —”

“Sshhh!” he hisses, and grabs me by the arm. He leads me out the front door onto the landing, glancing over toward the house next door as he does so.

“We don’t need to be this quiet,” I say, folding my arms. “We just need to —”

“I’m not worried about Noah,” he says, cutting me off.

“Cas, what is going on? You’re acting like a crazy person.”

“Who got you this place?” he demands.

“My dad,” I reply, not understanding. “I’ve told you that before. Why?”

“Has anyone else been in the apartment besides you and Noah since you moved in?”

“You mean besides you?” Frowning, I think back over the weeks. “Well, yeah,” I say after a moment. “My dad was here the other night. And, oh, the landlord, of course. The man who lives next door. Charlie.” I suppress a shiver. “He came over about a week and a half ago. Said he needed to find the source of a leak or something. I guess water was coming through the ceiling to the tattoo place downstairs.”

“Were you in here with him the whole time when he was in the apartment?” Cas is eyeing me intently.

“No,” I reply. “Gross. That guy creeps me out. And besides, I had to go to work. So I let him in and then left with Noah.”

Cas swears softly and looks back inside with a worried expression.

“Cas, what is it?” I repeat. “Did you find something out?”

“Nothing specific,” he mutters. “Just a hunch.” He stops to think for a moment. “Do you have a screwdriver? Flathead.”

“I think so,” I say uncertainly. “Will a Swiss Army knife attachment do?”

“Yeah. That’s fine. Okay, let’s go back inside. But don’t talk.”

Don’t talk?

I follow him back into the apartment, and go rummage in a kitchen junk drawer. Eventually I find the knockoff Swiss Army knife. I pull out the screwdriver blade and go back into the living room, where Cas is moving around the room, running his hands around the moldings and peering behind shelves.

I hold out the knife and hand it to him. “This is the best I can do,” I whisper.

Cal puts his finger to his lips wordlessly. He nods and takes the knife from me, then bends down. I watch him as he starts to unscrew the strike plates to the electrical outlets. On the third one, he lets out a huff of breath and stands up. He holds his hand out to me, and I see that in his palm is a small object. It’s about an inch and a half by an inch and a half, and black. It sort of looks like a square domino with no dots on it.

“What is it?” I mouth.

Cas crooks a finger and I follow him back out onto the landing. He tosses the object down on the ground and brings his heel down on it, smashing it.

“It’s a bug,” he says, turning it over in his palm.

“What?” I cry. “Like, a spy bug?”

“Sshhh,” he says urgently, and glances over his shoulder. “There might be more inside.”

“Cas, what is going on?” I say urgently, trying to keep my voice low. “You have got to explain all this to me, right now!” My heart is starting to race. I’m being bugged? Does that mean someone’s been hearing everything I do?

“I will,” he promises, grabbing my hands in his. “But first, let’s go back in and keep looking. I’m going to bet there are a few more of these around somewhere. Once we’re pretty sure we’ve got them all, I’ll tell you everything I know.”

Cas finally seems to really look at me then, for the first time since he got here. He must see that I’m starting to panic, because his eyes soften and he reaches up to softly caress my face. “Jen. It’s okay,” he murmurs. “I’m with you. We just need to deal with this right now.”

“I know,” I say. My voice is starting to shake and I can’t seem to control it. I already wasn’t feeling very well earlier, and now I’m starting to feel a little wobbly. “I know. I’m just… this is a lot to take in. I just feel kind of… sick, and violated, you know?”

“I know, babe.” Tenderly, more tender than I’ve ever known him to be, he plants a soft kiss on my forehead. “We’ll figure this out. I’ll get to the bottom of this.” His eyes flash with anger. “And I swear to you, whoever’s behind all of this is going to pay.”

“Yeah,” I say miserably. “But what if the person behind it is my father?”