“Damn it, damn it, damn it—”

The whole time, she searched the windows and braced for one of those . . . things . . . to come at her, cross the beams of the headlights, tear her door off, grab her, take her to her grave.

But there was nothing.

Nothing moving. Nothing coming for her. Nothing that was out of place.

Easing up on her lead foot, she panted. And then tried to coax the car backward, giving only a little gas—and as the tires finally grabbed, she resisted the urge to Danica Patrick. Inch by inch, or so it seemed, she moved down Tallah’s little driveway so she could turn around, all the while keeping her hands locked on the wheel as her eyes bounced between the front windshield and the rearview mirror.

Mae hated the idea of leaving the elderly female alone in the cottage.

But she had no choice. Rhoger needed fresh ice.

And besides, it had been her blood that had gone into that silver dish. Whatever was out there, whatever they’d called out of Dhunhd?

It was after her, and no one else.

Tallah would be safe . . . even if Mae was not.

As a symphath, Rehv had never minded dropping drama bombs. When you took a person by surprise or better yet, a whole room full of them got a shot of WTF!?! from something you’d said, you ended up with all kinds of fun emotions roiling around, grids lighting up, people talking over each other.

Chaos. Dissention. Disagreement. All fueled by a delicious underlying anxiety that proved mortals with hypo-deductive reasoning could get wound at the drop of a hat.

Symphaths fed off that shit. Ate it like cake.

That was not the case right now, however.

Well, okay, yes, the Brotherhood’s current raft of buzzy aggression was all on him and his little news flash from that parking garage. But as he sat in one of the silk chairs in the King’s study and listened to all his nearest-and-dearest bubble over with aggression, he was not happy about the angst he’d caused.

See? Symphaths weren’t all bad.

Just mostly. And he was half vampire, thanks to his mahmen.

Of course, the first meeting they’d had about the Book thing and that female had gone okay. Last night, people had kept their cool. Listened. Been content for more information. Now, though, they’d had nearly twenty-four hours to think about the implications of it all, so this “simple status update” had turned into Dramaggedon.

“. . . all bullshit,” someone was saying. “It was just rumors. Fucking gossip—”

“My grandmahmen told me about the magic in the Old Country—are you calling her a liar? Are you saying my grandmahmen is a fucking liar—”

Oh, great. The only thing worse than someone calling a Brother’s mahmen out was if the offender went up a generation in the bloodline and tossed his granny on the bonfire of disgrace.

Rehv checked his rose gold Royal Oak. Christ, they’d been in here for an hour and a half. And with the way things were going? This bunch of hotheads was going to be trading rythes for the rest of the night.

At least Fritz, the mansion’s butler, would be happy. That doggen loved to clean blood out of expensive carpets. If the male’s gig running this household full of killers ever went tits-up, he had a future at Stanley Steemer—

Boom!

As Wrath’s fist slammed into the great wooden desk, everybody shut up, but no one jumped in surprise. Frankly, Rehv had been waiting for the kibosh. He was willing to bet they all had.

“Enough of this bullshit,” Wrath ground out while he stroked George’s chin to calm the golden’s nerves. “We’re done debating whether magic exists or it doesn’t. You want to jerk yourselves off on that subject—or all over each other’s fucking relatives—you can do it on your own fucking time.”

Ah, yes. Nothing like a leader with the interpersonal skills of a chain saw.

Those black wraparounds swung to V, who was smoking a hand-rolled by the fireplace. “You haven’t found the female yet.”

“No, I mean, I tracked the car registration and the address tied to that license plate, but that’s just what she fronts to the human world. I checked out the house in question, but there were no vampires anywhere in it. I haven’t found anything else on her, but if she and her bloodline haven’t volunteered to be in a database, it’s going to be needle-and-a-haystack time. But whatever, I’ll go deeper, true?”

“That’s what he said,” someone muttered on reflex.

“When I saw her,” Rehv murmured, “she seemed . . . really normal. Way too vanilla for where she came to find me. Hard to imagine what someone like that would want with the Book. Repaint her house? Find a missing Blockbuster videotape from back before the Internet existed?”

“You don’t go after something like that unless you’re crazy,” Butch said.

Rehv nodded. “I read her grid. She’s way fucking desperate. But her parents died, like, three years ago, and I don’t think she’s mated, given how she was with one of the fighters. I sensed a sibling, a brother . . . what’s she missing? What does she need so badly that she’s willing to roll dice with black magic.”

“Most of the time”—V ashed on the hot side of the fender—“if I can see where someone’s been, I can figure out where they’re headed.”

“It just doesn’t add up.”

“You’d be surprised how many people’s insides don’t match their outsides.”

Somebody from the back piped in, “Does this mean you secretly like to cuddle, V?”

As V flipped off Rhage, conversation re-bubbled, although at a much more reasonable volume level—which wasn’t going to last.

And as the Brothers started to get louder again, a voice cut in, “This is a seriously dangerous situation. No matter who the female is or what she’s using the Book for.”

Everyone looked to the study’s doors. Another interested party had entered the chat, but with all the hot air in the room, nobody had noticed the arrival.

Lassiter, the fallen angel, was leaning back against the closed doors, arms crossed over a t-shirt that read “BOY MILK” on his pecs. With his zebra-print leggings, his blond-and-black hair spilling down, and all of his gold chains and piercings, he was what David Lee Roth going through a Mr. T phase would have looked like.

“The forces that can be unleashed courtesy of those pages?” Lassiter shrugged. “They’re like nothing else on the planet. Real finger-of-God shit. And the problem is going to be, once you release those energies, it’s a tiger out of the cage. Who hasn’t eaten for a month. There’s no reasoning with them, no stopping them.”

“Why hasn’t this come along before?” Tohr demanded. “I mean, we have stories and rumors from the Old Country. But nothing substantial.”

“Balance.” Lassiter fiddled with some of his bracelets, winding them around his thick wrist, the links offering up a soft chatter of metal on metal. “There has to be balance in the world, and the Omega was weighty enough on the bad-news side of the scale. He’s gone now, though, and destiny has a horror vacui. That dark presence has to be replaced with something, and it has been.”

“You know,” Rhage muttered, “I have to say this again. I was really looking forward to a vacation. Not forever, but, like, twenty-five, maybe fifty years of coasting woulda been great. I mean, I’ve just started my online encyclopedia of ice cream favors.”