I SOMEHOW FOUND myself surrounded by security, being hustled into the lobby of the California Street building.

They seemed to come out of nowhere.

I was standing there, breathing, being half-crushed in the arms of Black, when they surrounded us, bringing us back with them across the stretch of sidewalk to the glass doors. I watched one of them take the keys to the MacLaren from Black, right before they jogged around to the driver’s side and climbed in to start the engine.

The white and black car was pulling away from the curb before we were halfway to the doors leading into the California Street building.

They stayed with us until we entered the elevator.

Then one of them, Javier, I realized when I focused on his face, quirked an eyebrow at Black in a silent question.

“We’re good,” Black said, his voice a growl. “You’ve got the description?”

Javier nodded. “Got it, boss. Don’t worry. They’re already out there.”

“Find whoever the fuck that was. I want you to call me the second you’ve got an ID. Take their picture first and send it to my phone, so Miri can take a look at it… then bring them in. Try to do it legally, if you can, but if you can’t, bring them in anyway. I don’t care if you have to knock the fucker out to do it. If he exists, I want him inside this building within the hour.”

Javier gave him a short salute. “Understood.”

Black nodded, once, his jaw hard.

Leaning down, he crushed me against his side as he jabbed at the “PH” button for the penthouse floor.

I blinked.

Before I’d finished the blink, the elevator doors were closing.

I realized only then that Black hadn’t released me the whole time we were standing there. His arm remained wrapped tightly around me, holding me flush to his chest and side. He was breathing harder than usual, and I could feel adrenaline shooting through his veins, speeding up his heart, tensing his muscles.

For the first handful of floors, we didn’t speak.

“What the hell was that, doc?” he said.

I bit my tongue, hard enough that I winced.

“It wasn’t Nick, Miri,” he growled, his voice hard. “Could it have been someone dressed up to look like him?”

Thinking about that, I shook my head slowly, but not really in a no.

“It wasn’t the clothes,” I said after another beat. I frowned, my voice sounding strangely distant. “No. The clothes were all wrong––”

“I saw,” Black growled. “I went into your head and looked, Miri.”

Maybe feeling something off me––confusion, a flicker of surprise, even tension––Black looked down at my face, scowling. He continued to look at me as his arm tightened around me even more, his light wrapping deeper into mine.

“You weren’t fucking answering me, doc,” he said, gruff. “I’m sorry I went into you like that, but I panicked. I looked at what you thought you saw, got all the details, then fed them to the security detail. I looked for him, too. I looked exactly where I’d seen you staring, but there was nothing there. I don’t know if whoever it was ran off when I grabbed you, or when the security team showed up… or before that. You were starting to pass out by then. Of course, is someone implanted the image, all of that is moot––”

“Implanted the image?” Turning, I stared up at him, bewildered. “What does that mean?”

“A seer,” he growled. “Highly trained infiltrators can do that kind of thing, doc. They can make you see things that aren’t there.” Exhaling, still breathing too hard, he added, “Normally, I would say no one could penetrate your shield––or mine––not without me feeling it. But we were outside, and your uncle has a whole new team of infiltrators working for him now. Not to mention other advantages.”

At my blank stare, Black’s voice lowered to a deeper, gruffer growl.

“The construct, doc. Remember? Your uncle has that construct over most of the country. There’s a good chance he has people on us all the time now.”

Still frowning, he stared at the elevator doors without seeing them.

“Due to the construct alone, he now has a fair bit of control over the Barrier space all over the country. He also has probably a hundred seers, if not three times that, maintaining the fucking thing. He could conceivably force an image into your mind, make you believe you were really seeing it. Hell, given how many seers walked through those inter-dimensional doors, he’s likely got some real talent on that front now. Someone who specializes in those kinds of Barrier headfucks. He’s also got Raven. Jem says she can do that kind of thing.”

I stared at him, still frowning.

I fought to think about his words.

My brow furrowed as I did.

“Why would Charles show me Nick?” I said.

“I have no idea,” Black growled. “To turn us against the vampires? To try and recruit us to his fucked-up cause? To make us paranoid? I can think of a number of reasons. Why the fuck did someone call Yumi Tanaka? Because someone is screwing with you, doc. Or screwing with me… or with both of us.”

Squeezing me tighter against him, he looked down.

“If there was an actual person standing there, doc, we’re going to find them… and my people are going to bring him back here, and we’re going to have a little chat with him.”

His voice lowered, shifting into a furious mutter,

“If this person really exists, I’m especially going to have a chat with him. I’m going to have a nice, long, leisurely, threat-laden conversation with this piece of shit, whoever he is… and find out exactly what the hell is going on, and who hired him.”

Black’s words trailed as the elevator slowed, reaching the top of the building.

Still holding me around the waist, he steered me out of the elevator car in front of him when the doors opened with a melodic ping.

I found myself glancing around the glass-enclosed lobby of the penthouse floor, weirdly unnerved by the silence.

Everything looked exactly the same as it always did, though.

The tall windows on either side of the elevator’s foyer, and the high ceiling made of glass, showed nothing but cloud-filled night sky. Straight in front of me stood the brushed copper door of the main offices of Black Securities and Investigations. That door, with its long, vertical cylinder for a handle, like a thick copper pipe, was closed. As it had since I’d first seen it, the effect of all that glass with the wedge-like shape made me think of the prow of a ship.

Now, however, the glass walls were dim to each side.

The offices looked closed.

I didn’t sense any movement back there, either.

As we walked past, I glanced at the company’s eagle logo etched into the translucent, plate glass walls that angled back on either side of the door. The glass formed a near pyramid shape with the copper door at one end and diagonal hallways on either side.

Everything looked the same.

Nothing looked different.

Even so, the hairs on my arms were standing up as I stood there, head-cocked, listening.

I realized Black was doing the same next to me.

“You feel something, doc?” he muttered.

After a too-long pause, I shook my head, slow.

“No,” I said, frowning. “I don’t feel anything.” I hesitated. “But I feel like I should feel something. I feel like something should be off.”

Black didn’t bother to interrogate what I meant by that.

Instead he stood there, head cocked, listening.

After another long pause, he nudged me gently with his light.

“Come on,” he said, gruff. “Everyone’s probably in one of the conference rooms.”

I nodded, but still found myself listening to the silence. I had no idea what I was listening for. I didn’t know if it was fear I was feeling exactly, or more some lingering tilt in my light from what I’d seen under that burnt-out streetlight.

It didn’t really feel concrete enough to be fear.

Rather, I felt a kind of underlying hum, like there was a strain of music I couldn’t quite pick out, that was just out of my reach.

“I feel it too, doc,” Black murmured.

When I glanced at him, he only frowned.

Tightening his arm where it had loosened around my waist, he led me past the glass walls of Black Securities and Investigations and towards his penthouse apartment, which lived at the end of the left-hand corridor and took up more than half of the floor.

Unlike the first time I’d ventured up here, I now knew Black’s company offices took up much more than simply part of this floor, even though reception lived on this level.

The bulk of his offices encompassed the entirety of the three floors below this one.

The only thing on this floor really was reception, most of the IT department, and Black’s own office, along with a large conference room and an equipment room directly below the stairs up to the helipad on the roof. My office now lived on this floor as well. Also, part of the IT department had been moved to the floor below.

I’d heard Black muttering recently about expanding it down two more floors, now that we were absorbing the influx of new seers. He’d asked my thoughts on creating what amounted to an “infiltration department” for the company to take up one of those floors, although it obviously wouldn’t be called that.

He’d considered asking Yarli and/or Jem to run it, possibly both of them together.

Unlike most of the other departments, which reported either to Dex or Kiko, the infiltration department would report directly to Black.

I wondered if Black already had some of those same seers coordinating with Javier and his team as they looked for whoever I’d seen down there on the street––assuming I’d seen anyone at all. I still couldn’t really wrap my mind around the possibility that I might not have seen anyone, even now.

At the same time, it struck me as less and less likely that I’d actually seen Nick.

The image felt burned into my brain, though.

I wondered if it really could be a hallucination. If so, I knew my mind wouldn’t view it any differently than if it were real. If Black was right, and Charles was behind this, I would have no idea my mind was being tampered with at all.

I wondered if we were still going to Cal’s restaurant.

“No.” Black glanced at me, muttering, “No North Beach tonight, doc. Sorry. We’ll go tomorrow, okay?”

I bit my lip, but didn’t answer.

Brick would be here tomorrow.

It certainly didn’t take long for our post-Santa Cruz glow to wear off.

We were approaching our front door now, and I could hear something. I could really hear something, unlike that phantom melody that nagged at me before.

Black stiffened as we got closer, clearly hearing it too.

“Did you leave anything on, doc?” he said. “Television? The sound system?”

I frowned, thinking, then shook my head. “No.”

“You’re sure?” Releasing me, he motioned me to the side of the corridor, the opposite side from where the door opened. He reached behind him and under the jacket he wore. “Go through your memories, doc. Be sure.”

I did, and shook my head slowly.

“I’m sure. It wasn’t me.”

Watching him pull a gun out of his jacket, from a holster that must sit at the base of his back, I felt my adrenaline spike, and not only because I hadn’t known he was carrying. I watched as he checked the chamber, then the clip, unmoving.

I wondered if he’d been carrying the whole time we were in Santa Cruz.

He grunted, glancing at me. “Of course I was fucking carrying, doc. I had a crew watching us while we surfed at the lighthouse, too… and security watching the house all night and the next day until we left, including when we were fucking in that hot tub. Given everything going on right now, I’ll be carrying in the shower pretty soon.”

I only nodded.

There wasn’t a whole lot I could say to that.

We’d reached the penthouse door though, and now I could hear the music even through the thick, metal-plated panel. Whoever left it on, they’d cranked the volume up high. If this was a normal apartment, the sound would have filled the hallway.

“What about Lizbeth?” I said, as we approached the door. “Or the cleaning crew?”

“It would be a first,” Black said, his mouth firming as he gave me a look. “A first in over ten years, doc.”

I didn’t answer.

We were close enough now I recognized the song.

It almost sounded like…

“Monster Mash,” Black muttered.

I frowned. He was right.

It was that Halloween song.

His gold eyes darted to mine.

His expression grew so hard, it almost didn’t look like him.

“Stay here, Miriam.” He motioned for me to stay behind the door. “Don’t come in. Not until I tell you it’s okay. I fucking mean it.”

I frowned at him, shaking my head. “Call someone, Black. Right now.”

His hand was already on the door handle. He paused long enough to reach into his jacket, pulling out and handing me his phone.

“You call,” he said. “Call Kiko. Tell her to send a team.”

I took the phone, wanting to argue with him, but he jerked open the door before I could speak. Sound erupted into the hallway, so loud it was nearly deafening. I’d never heard Black’s speakers that loud before, not even the one time we had a small get-together there and someone, probably Nick or Angel, got drunk enough to crank up the music for dancing.

I watched Black disappear through the opening, his gun up.

Feeling a ripple of pain and fear flood my light, ratcheting up my heartrate as I watched Black disappear from my view, I considered following him, then decided to call his team in first. Swiping the front of his phone, I entered his password, then immediately went into his phone app and hit the number for Kiko.

She didn’t pick up.

I hit the contact for Dex next.

He didn’t pick up, either.

Adrenaline shot down my spine, making my muscles tense.

That wasn’t just unusual. It was unheard of.

Clenching my jaw, I hit the contact number for Javier.

He picked up on the first ring.

“Javier,” I said, before he could speak. “Get back here. Now. Something’s happening in the penthouse. We might have an intruder.” I paused a half-breath, biting the inside of my cheek. “Dex and Kiko aren’t picking up.”

Javier didn’t need to hear any more.

“On my way.” His voice turned military blunt. “Did Black go in?”

“Yes. He’s in the penthouse now. He just went in. Alone. With a gun. I’m out in the hall.”

“All right. We’re on our way. Stay put, Mrs. Black. I’ll go through the list and see if I can get you and Black support from someone closer.”

I hung up the line, staring at the door.

Black had left it open a crack. The music filled the hall, but even closing it that much muffled the sound significantly. I stared at the door handle for what must have been a good half-minute before my jaw hardened.

Gripping it in one hand, I yanked the door the rest of the way open.

I winced at the volume of the stereo once I stepped inside, but it didn’t slow me down. I made my way into the foyer in a half-crouch, keeping to the wall so I wouldn’t be immediately visible in the sunken living area.

I didn’t see Black.

I didn’t see or hear anything out of place––just that lilting Halloween song coupled with the view out the huge bay windows overlooking downtown and the Bay Bridge. Still keeping low and to the wall, I made my way in further.

I wondered why Black hadn’t turned off the music.

Whoever put it on, they’d set the song to repeat.

The campy, Frankenstein-like voice rose and fell, tilting my mind like a carnival ride. The background chorus chanted in the background, so loud they sounded like screams. It made me feel disoriented, even slightly drunk, maybe because I usually only heard that song at Halloween parties in the first place, where everyone mostly got hammered by the end of the night, or maybe just because it had that kind of melody.

Either way, it was like walking inside a mirrored funhouse––in the bad way.

“Black!” I yelled out his name, blurting it on impulse.

No one answered.

Truthfully, I doubted he could hear me.

He might not have heard me even if he was standing right next to me, although he would have felt me shouting through his light if he stood anywhere close by. Venturing in deeper, I stopped at the closet, dumping my purse on the table and easing out of the long coat I wore, which I let drop the floor.

Once my arms were free, I eased open a drawer on the same table.

Glancing inside, I didn’t see the gun Black usually kept in there. Frowning, I pushed through the contents of the drawer until I found a letter opener. I snatched it up, figuring it was better than nothing, even as I gritted my teeth.

Gripping the silver opener at my side, I walked past the end of the hall.

Once I had, I came to a dead stop.

The walls on either side of the sunken living room had come into view. To my right, towards the kitchen, everything looked the same as I remembered.

The view to my left is was what brought me to a halt.

I stared up at the smashed, wall-mounted television screen, and the streaks of… fuck… I raised a hand to my mouth and nose, the same one that gripped the silver letter opener. I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed it before.

Blood. It smelled like blood.

A lot of fucking blood.

It filled my nose and mouth, a nauseating, cloying, coppery scent.

My stomach lurched, hard enough that I had to fight not to throw up.

Still struggling with my bile and gut, I walked in further, breathing harder now as I gripped the letter opener, still covering my nose and mouth with my other hand.

I got past the hall leading into the back bedroom when I saw him.

Black knelt by one of the couches in the sunken living room.

I froze, staring down at him, and at what he hovered over.

A body sprawled there.

A body sprawled, naked, on Black’s white leather couch.

It was a woman.

Stepping closer, half in panic, I stumbled, then caught my balance, aiming my feet for the stairs to the lower level. Black didn’t look up from the woman on the couch as I descended down to where he was. He knelt there on the bloody carpet, his gun still in his hand, his face drawn and pale. He looked like he was in shock.

I winced at the marks covering the parts of the woman’s body I could see. Bite marks, bruises and scratches marred seemingly every inch of her pale skin.

I watched Black check her pulse, his fingers careful, tentative.

By then, I’d stepped close enough to both of them to see her face.

It was Kiko.

Holy christ… it was Kiko.

From the blood covering her neck and chest, it looked like her throat had been torn out.

“Jesus fucking christ…” I breathed in a rush.

I lowered the letter opener, then stood there, frozen in shock.

Black couldn’t have heard me, but he must have felt me.

He looked over at where I stood, meeting my gaze. I’d never seen that exact look on his face before. Helpless, panicked, grief-stricken shock stood there, making his skin paler than I’d ever seen it. I saw rage underlying the shock, even now––an out of control, violent, powerless-feeling rage––but I’d never seen him so completely lost before, or so afraid.

Before I could fully take in that expression, or what it meant, his mental voice rose in my mind.

That voice was disturbing, too. Stripped entirely of emotion, it didn’t reflect any part of what I saw in his eyes or light.

It was so dead, so empty, it made my heart stop.

I checked the rest of the apartment, he sent. I think they’re gone. But be fucking careful, Miri. He nodded towards a small Chinese-style table on the other side of the foyer. There’s a gun in there. Get it. Now.

I nodded, jerking my chin up and down like a marionette.

I walked-ran to the cabinet, pocketing the letter opener as I yanked open the drawer. In it, a Beretta APX 9mm sat there in a vinyl holster. I yanked it out, then turned back towards Black and walked in his direction, checking the chamber as I walked.

Walking to the edge of where the blood started on the white carpet, I watched him brush the hair carefully away from Kiko’s face, nearly a caress. I felt the fury on him worsen, along with a grief that nearly buckled my knees.

I was afraid to ask. I was afraid to ask him if––

She’s not dead, he sent. Bastard raped her, pushed her to give him head, then drained her almost to death… but she’s not dead. Not yet.

He looked up at me, his eyes now as empty as his voice.

I read her. She’s unconscious, but I read her. That’s how I know. He erased or blurred her memory of who he was, but he let her remember the details of what he did to her.

I nodded, fighting tears.

I couldn’t quite comprehend Kiko herself, not yet.

She didn’t even look like the woman I knew, not like she was now. I knew that wasn’t all of it, of course. Already, just from Black’s few words, it was hitting at memories of mine that I couldn’t handle, couldn’t face, especially not in relation to my friend.

Unlike my own trauma crap, the grief and anger and helplessness coming off Black hit at me like a physical punch. It flooded into my light so intensely I could barely think, could barely comprehend anything else.

Still holding the gun, I aimed it at the ceiling, the safety still on, as I reached where he was. I didn’t get too close. I could feel Black trying to decide if he should risk picking her up, to bring her closer to the paramedics, which he’d already called, using a landline I didn’t even know we had. Now that I was closer to both of them, I could see her chest moving up and down slowly, enough to know Black was right.

She was alive.

The music still blared through the penthouse apartment.

I barely noticed it now.

I found myself looking around at the hardwood floor, taking in the bloody footprints on the white rug. I frowned, staring around at all of it, the splatters on the couch, on the walls. It was too much blood. I glanced at more blood on the windows, pausing where someone had smashed a Thai mixed-media art piece.

My eyes stopped again on an original painting Black bought me in New York.

Someone had taken a knife to it, cutting the canvas to ribbons.

My eyes scaled up, to the smashed television, the streaks of blood I’d first seen covering that part of the wall.

That’s when I saw it.

They hadn’t just painted our wall with random splashes of blood.

There was writing there.

Someone wrote a message in two-foot-high letters, in blood.

I didn’t know if it was Kiko’s blood.

It still seemed like too much blood to me, like there had to be other bodies, more than hers. Even as that thought nagged at the back of my head, making my breath come faster, I stared at the words, reading them over and over, unable to comprehend them.

The letters spelled out a brief, simple message:

To Black With Love.