“Fourth of July cake. Fruit cake. Bundt cake. Pineapple upside-down cake—”

“What’s Fourth of July cake?”

“It’s a red, white, and blue cake. Then there’s funfetti, red velvet, Black Forest, pavlova, Yule log—”

“Wait, so are you researching holidays and celebrations? Or cakes.”

“Both.”

He thought of Rhage’s famous appetite. “Is your dad on this committee?”

“How did you know?”

With a wave, the girl strode off with her list, and Blay intended to return to the article he’d been reading. Too bad his eyes refused to get with the back-and-forth program. He just kept staring at that fish with its bicycle. The rainbow trout was anthropomorphized, dressed in a suit and pedaling with his back fins, the basket in front filled with what looked like groceries.

None of the drawing made any sense. Not the clothes, not the food, not the breathing without water. Then again, it was just a cartoon, free to be some kind of metaphor, the point of the pen-and-ink artistry unclear to Blay at the moment.

Maybe it was merely a whimsical sketch, like a vase of flowers for the eye in the midst of an article about something serious.

He checked his watch. A little after ten p.m.

The night seemed long as a lifetime, and he couldn’t wait for Qhuinn to get back from his shift on rotation. The pair of them were allowed to be in the field together, but they were never paired up, and sometimes, like this evening, one of them was off while the other was working. It was fine. There were always the daylight hours.

Blay smiled as he thought of the bed they shared.

And what they did in it.

Okay, fine, no wonder he blushed so much around his mate. But that was nothing Bitty ever needed to worry about.

Forcing his eyes to get going with the busywork of tracking letters, words and sentences, he had to push aside a lingering distraction. The sense that something was off-kilter in the universe, some kind of calamity due to arrive at any minute, was the worst company a guy could have.

Especially when the male you loved more than anybody else in the world was out in the cold in the field.

Blay let his head fall back again. The ceiling was about thirty feet up, and it had old beams that were varnished the same tone as all the mahogany wood of the shelves, the hearth mantel, the floor. Whenever he retreated to this room, he alw

ays thought that this must be what the inside of a jewelry box was like, the glow of gold from all the spines of the ancient tomes like an extension of the crackling fire, the sense of protection and being among that which was rare making him feel kind of special himself.

He looked to the archway. Voices of doggen and Brothers and fighters wove together, some louder than others depending on whether they were next door in the billiards room, coming down from the grand staircase, or out in the dining room.

The mansion was never truly quiet.

And on a night like tonight, when he was on edge for no good reason…

It was such a reassurance to know that he was not alone.

CHAPTER THREE

As Elle landed facedown in the snow, she flipped onto her back and braced herself for a knife, a gun, a fist—whatever came at her. Mostly, the defensive response was because she wanted to fight for her life, but she was also a coward because she couldn’t watch Terrie’s face while she got murdered. She already knew her sister was screaming in the driver’s seat. She could hear it. And the fact that this was Elle’s fault, all of it, from the drive, to the wrong exit, to the bad turn, to the snowbank, was—

“Relax, kid.”

The voice above her was grave and very deep, the kind of thing a radio-show host would use when making a public service announcement. It was also slightly bored, as if sniveling, panicked teenage girls and their bigmouthed sisters hadn’t been on the man’s list of things to do tonight.

Elle paused with her flailing on the snowpack. “What?”

“You can stop freaking out, okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”

The guy was absolutely enormous as he loomed over her, and she had a feeling he wasn’t just a tow truck guy. After all, his leather jacket was open, and there was something strapped, handles down, to his huge chest. Knives? And what else from Fortnite could be under there? Add those piercings and the laser-eye routine, and she was pretty sure that he was speaking in a foreign language and she’d translated “I’m going to fuck you up” incorrectly.