“I want her guarded around the clock,” Meredith shouted into the phone. “She almost killed one of our detectives.” Silas watched her pace the room, the dull ache of his body as he came out of sleep growing more intense. And he was thirsty. Very thirsty.

“Thank you. Okay. Got it. I’ll be here until then.” Meredith slid the phone back into her pocket. “How ya feeling, Alpha?”

“Like burnt toast,” he rasped.

“Exactly how you look then.” She nabbed a plastic cup from the bedside table and brought a straw to his lips. He sucked greedily, expecting water but getting a delicious sweet liquid instead. With raised eyebrows, he pinned the cup between two bandaged hands and drained it dry.

“Peony nectar,” she said. “It’s supposed to speed healing. They covered your burns in fire lily balm, but the doctor said it would take at least twenty-four hours for your skin to grow back. And it’s not going to feel good when it does.”

“Heart?”

“I have it. It’s fine. Your backpack is ruined, but dragon hearts are remarkably heat resistant.” She laughed.

“She said it was a trap.”

“Really? The person trying to steal the heart told you the heart was leading you down a road to doom. You don’t say?”

He licked his lips. “She said someone tricked her into giving me the heart. What if she wasn’t lying? What if someone manipulated Soleil?”

The corners of Meredith’s mouth pulled back in contemplation. “I think she gave you the heart to win you back. Her demon lover got angry, demanded its return. She sensed it was over with you anyway and regretted her earlier generosity.”

“It is the simplest explanation,” he mumbled.

“Occam’s razor, the simplest hypothesis is the most likely to be true.”

He shook his head slightly. “She said… there was something she couldn’t tell me. A reason she’d changed her mind.”

“Hmm. That’s convenient.”

“I think one of us should interrogate her.”

“Well, when she wakes up, that might be an option. Right now, a bunch of fae doctors are trying to pick the iron out of her chest without starting themselves on fire.”

With a moan, he sought to scratch his shoulder, the movement causing pain to radiate through his entire body. Meredith carefully scratched the spot for him.

“I can ask them to give you something for the pain.” She refilled his drink from a pitcher on the bedside table. “But Jason and Selene are on their way to give you an update. You might want to stay sharp.”

As promised, a knock came on the door a few minutes later, and Jason and Selene entered. “We came as soon as we heard.”

Meredith welcomed them in. Kissing a small space above Silas’s right eyebrow that didn’t hurt as much as the rest of him, she gathered her things. “While you three talk, I’m going to go take care of a few things. I’ll be back later.” She swept from the room.

“How’s it going, brother?” Jason said, scanning his bandages with a look of pity.

“Hurts,” Silas said. He didn’t expand on the statement. Even his lips hurt.

“We’re about to make you feel a hell of a lot better.” Jason took a seat in the chair near the bed. “Ryker wasn’t happy when he heard you had the heart. Soleil had promised to keep it in her possession while Alex was on the move, and Ryker was worried it wasn’t safe enough in his shop anyway. Apparently, celestial fae are known to have hiding places that are impervious to outsiders. He acted rather hoodwinked and regretted taking Soleil up on her offer, although the sex was, in his words, delectable.”

Silas scowled. So it wasn’t Ryker who pressured Soleil to get the heart back. He didn’t even know she’d given it to him until Jason had said something.

“Sorry. That last part was probably an unnecessary detail.” Jason crossed his arms. “Maybe you should take this, Selene.”

With a conciliatory nod, Selene said, “When we asked Ryker about the ritual, he became extremely agitated. After a cursory inspection of his inventory, he admitted he’d only ever heard of one book with magic dark enough to mingle dimensions. It’s a text called The Book of Flesh and Bone. It’s like Panaal’s own grimoire or something. It’s written in blood on dried human skin with spells that Ryker said are powerful enough to raise the dead. Only, there’s one copy, and he says it’s been missing for years.”

“No. He did not say that,” Silas mumbled. “The Book of Flesh and Bone? Are you sure?”

“Yes. He said it used to belong to a clan of shifters.”

“Nekomata,” Silas said.

“How did you know that?”

“Because I helped Grateful Knight defeat the last group of supernatural baddies that tried to use that book to change the natural law.” Too many words. Silas pressed the cold side of his cup against his sore lips. He needed to talk to Grateful. He tried to sit up, but the pain was too great. He fell back onto the pillow with a groan.

Looking worried, Selene reached for the call button. “Do you need me to call the nurse?”

Shaking his head no, Silas breathed through the pain and tried to speak without moving his lips. “A few years ago, a group of vampires attempted to use The Book of Flesh and Bone to make themselves daywalkers. Grateful defeated them and took possession of the book. As far as I know, she still has it.”

“That’s good news. If she has it, then Alex doesn’t,” Selene said.

“But Alex has a spell. We know that he’s working toward a major event,” Jason said.

“Ask Grateful,” Silas mumbled.

“Laina was going there anyway. I’ll text her,” Jason said.

“If she’ll let us see it, if we know what the spell is, it might not matter how Alex got a copy. We might be able to stop him,” Selene said.

Silas nodded, then pointed at the call button. “Nurse,” he said. He needed medication for the pain and anything that might help him heal faster. If Alex had a spell from The Book of Flesh and Bone, things had gone from bad to much, much worse.

* * *

“We have a problem.”

Silas woke to a worried-looking Grateful Knight standing over his bed. The drugs the fae nurse had given him were still raging in his system, and his vision wavered like he was viewing her in a funhouse mirror. “Whassup, homegirl?”

“By the goddess. Seriously, Silas? Sober up. We’ve got trouble. Big, fucking trouble.” Grateful rubbed her lower back with both hands, her belly looking even larger than the last time he’d seen her.

He tried to sit up, shaking his head to clear it. “You heard ’bout the book?”

“Yeah… I heard. Laina stopped by to ask me about the ritual. Jason texted her about the book while she was still at my place.”

“Do you think it could be the source of the ritual Alex is attempting?”

“The Book of Flesh and Bone is the same cursed text that opened up the Hellmouth in the cemetery behind my house. It has the power to raise the dead, to build a bridge between hell and our world. And the spells and rituals inside can be wielded by anyone, even humans.”

“And werewolves,” he babbled.

“Yes. Even werewolves. If Alex has a spell from this book, we’re in trouble. This isn’t about your pack anymore. This concerns all of us.”

“But you have the book. How could he have a spell if you have the book?”

“After I battled the Nekomata for that book, I knew there was no place I could hide it that would be safe. I was a new witch. My magic wasn’t strong enough to protect it at the time.”

“So, where is the book now?”

“Luckily, a very powerful supernatural being owed me a favor. See I’d saved this person and her friend from certain death at the hands of a mountain troll.” Grateful’s eyes widened.

“Mountain troll? Wait, you don’t mean…”

“I gave it to Soleil to protect for me. She sealed it inside the marble floor of her bedroom. Celestial fae have hiding places that are impenetrable. It was the vampires who wanted it and I knew it would be safe there because they can’t touch her.”

“But it’s not only the vampires who want it anymore.”

“No.”

“Is the book still sealed within Soleil’s floor?”

“I assume so, but given that she’s still unconscious and barely clinging to life in a room down the hall, this isn’t the right time to ask her.”

“Fuck. If she gave Alex that book… She told me someone tricked her.”

“She can’t give it to anyone. Soleil offered me a fae favor. A fae favor is not like a favor between humans or even you and me. It’s a binding magical contract. I asked her to seal the book within her protective walls for her lifetime. She did so. It can’t be undone. A fae favor is as good as gold, and it lasts their entire life.”

“Which means the book can only be accessed if and when Soleil dies,” Silas said, suddenly sobering.

“Yes.” Grateful’s face fell. “So you see the problem. Celestial fae usually live thousands of years, unless they’re shot with iron bullets. Seems too coincidental that Soleil gets shot exactly when Alex needs the book most.”

“But, this doesn’t make sense. Meredith shot Soleil to stop her from stealing the heart. It had nothing to do with Alex.” He sighed. “We need to find out if that book is still in her room at the bordello.”

Grateful frowned. “Soleil alone can access her hiding place.”

Silas sighed heavily, the pain creeping up on him like a bad cold. He closed his eyes. “Then we wait until she’s awake and we ask her.”