“As a matter of fact, I do,” he said softly.

Mae had to look away—on account of a second warm flush that went up her throat and into her face. But surely she was reading . . . everything . . . wrong. A male like him? He was going to go for one of those fight-club women or females, the ones who belonged in the wait line with the others at the parking garage, the ones with the hips and the boobs and the outfits to show those kinds of assets off.

“What would you do to keep someone you loved alive?” she asked to get herself back on track.

No hesitation: “I’d kill anybody. Anything.”

She eyed his jacket, and thought of what was underneath it. “I believe that. But I’m not talking about defending them. What if you could . . . make them live again? What if you had the ability to bring them back, change destiny, take fate into your own hands. Take control of a wrong result.”

There was a long pause, and then his eyes left her. “You’re talking about resurrection.”

“See,” she said. “I told you it’s crazy.”

“It’s not crazy.” His obsidian stare returned to hers. “Unbelievable, maybe, but not crazy.”

“Aren’t those the same thing?”

“What exactly are we talking about here, Mae.”

It was a while before she could answer, before she could choose the right words. And then she lied. “Tallah is all I have left. She’s coming to the end of her life. I can’t let her die. I just . . . you have to understand. I have no one else in this world, and I’m not losing her, too.”

Mae burst up from the chair again. Given that there was nothing left of the tea to tidy, no reason other than her anxiety to move around, she reached across to the silver dish. Picking it up, she went to the sink and rinsed the basin off.

“Sometimes you have to let people go,” Sahvage said softly.

She glanced back at him. “Well, I don’t want to.”

“And you think this Book is your answer. She lives forever after you do what? Wave a wand over her forehead?”

“That’s not funny.”

“It wasn’t intended to be. What’s in the Book.”

As Mae didn’t have a solid answer for that, the flimsiness of her plan, or solution, seemed rickety to a house-of-cards degree.

“It’s going to tell me what to do. To save her.”

“Spells, huh.” He took another drink from the mug. “God, I haven’t heard of shit like this since the Old Country. And as for the immortality stuff, be careful what you wish for. Sometimes, you actually get it.”

“Exactly. I don’t want her to die and she’ll be alive.”

“People aren’t supposed to live forever.”

“I don’t care.”

He laughed in a short rush. “You know, I have a lot of respect for your kind of arrogant aggression. And on that note, how’re you going to find this Book?”

Pulling a dish towel free of the stove handle, she dried the little silver basin. “We already did what you’re supposed to do.”

“Which is?” He held up his forefinger. “Wait, let me guess. Go to a bare-knuckle fight and try to get a guy killed by distracting him as a blood sacrifice. Great plan, and it’s worked so well.”

“You were going to murder that human.”

“No, I wasn’t.” After a moment, he made a meh motion with his free hand. “Okay, fine, maybe I was. But it wasn’t murder. He asked for it, and I’ve always said that other people’s stupid decisions are not my problem. Now what did you do to get the Book. Search Amazon under Hocus-Pocus for Dummies?”

“It was a summoning spell. And I’m quite intelligent, thank you very much.”

Although she felt like she hadn’t been winning many IQ prizes lately.

His eyes narrowed. “So the Book is here.”

“Not yet.”

“When did you do the spell?”

“Right before . . .” She cleared her throat. “Right before you came.”

There was a period of silence. Then he muttered, “And I’ll say it again—you wonder why that shadow showed up?”

Actually, she didn’t. “I think we should double-check your wounds. Just make sure you’re okay.”

“Changing the subject, are we.”

“Not at all.”

Sahvage put his mug to his lips and tilted his head back, finishing the coffee. When he set the empty down on the table, he smiled at her in that way he did—one side of his mouth lifting up, a knowing look in those glossy black eyes.

Like he had all the answers and every time he opened his piehole was an opportunity to man-splain things.

“FYI, I know what you’re doing,” he said.

Bingo. “What’s that. And should I take notes, or is this going to be another statement of the obvious—”

“As you hear yourself talk, you realize how insane you’re behaving, but your heart isn’t going to let it rest, so you have to divert things. It’s fine. We can look at my injuries again. But I don’t think we should ignore what’s actually happening here.”

“You don’t know a damn thing about me.”

“You’re right. I’m totally off base. So by all means, let’s check me out because I’m the one who needs help.”

With that happy little pronouncement, Sahvage took the ends of his shirt and did not look away as he slowly raised the damn thing . . . revealing that tattoo and all the musculature under his inked skin. As he tossed what had covered his torso aside, he resettled back in the chair like he was fully naked. Like he was absolutely confident in his body. Like he was very aware she couldn’t not notice what he was showing her.

And respond to it.

FFS, with his chest now bare, he seemed to be even larger, and Mae swallowed through a tight throat. But not because she was afraid.

No, fear wasn’t the problem. Not even close.

“Come tend to my wounds,” he said in a low murmur. “And by the way, you can touch me anywhere. You know, for clinical purposes. Far be it from me to deny any assessments as to my health and overall well-being.”

Mae blinked. Then recovered. “You are an ass.”

“Yeah, I know.” He leaned in and lowered his lids. “But you want me anyway.”

Deep in the heart of downtown, Detective Erika Saunders pulled her unmarked over to the side of an alley that ran between two apartment buildings. Putting things in park, her headlights shed a whole lot of lookey-lookey on a boxy black SUV that was snuggled up close to a dumpster. Over to the left, there were a couple of uniformed officers milling around, and a patrol car was blocking the entrance off Trade. No news crews.

That was not going to last.

Getting out, she snapped on nitrile gloves and palmed her flashlight. The unis fell silent as she approached, and she gave them a nod as she zeroed in on the SUV’s driver’s-side door.

“When was this called in?” she said as she trained the beam inside the vehicle—or tried to. The windows were blacked out.

Leaning around to the hood, without touching the side of the vehicle, she pointed her flashlight in through the front windshield—