Slipping back into the house, he moved through both the mudroom and the kitchen, heading out into the foyer. As he came up to the grand staircase, he went around to the side and opened the hidden door.

The subterranean tunnel that connected the Pit, the mansion, and the training center was a straight shot of concrete through the earth, and he made as good time as he could given the way that dopamine he had to take created numbness in his legs and feet. Thank God for his cane.

He emerged through the supply closet into the office, then pushed through the glass door and strode forth into the training center proper.

Following his blood in the veins of his female, he went down to the clinical area and stopped in front of the closed door of an examination room.

Knocking softly, he wanted to break the panel apart with his bare hands—

“Is that my hellren?” came Ehlena’s muffled voice.

Rehv pushed his way in. His beloved female was over at the desk, typing into the computer. Dressed in scrubs, she had a surgical net on her hair, surgical booties on her Crocs, and the tight brows of concentration with which he was well familiar.

For a moment, all he could do was stare at her. And think of that first time he had seen her, in Havers’s old clinic. She had come into an examination room to check him into the system, and he had been . . . obsessed from the start—

Ehlena turned and smiled. “This is such a nice surprise!”

Wordlessly, he walked over and took her into his arms, gathering her up and out of the rolling chair. Closing his eyes, he held on to her.

“Are you okay?” she said as she stroked his back through the mink. “Rehv, what’s wrong?”

“I just had to see you.”

“Did something happen?”

How did he answer that, he wondered, without alarming her. And he wasn’t thinking about the Book, or magic in the wrong hands, or what might be in any of those coffins. No, he was thinking about whether or not love actually survived even the cold hand of death. Ask any romantic and they’d say it was true—hell, if you believed in the Fade, it was true. You got your forever with your soul mate. But if you were a skeptic?

“No, nothing happened. I just wanted to see the female I love.”

“You can talk to me,” she murmured. “You know that, right. You can tell me what’s going on.”

“Like I said, it’s nothing.”

Well, nothing except for the fact that skeptics, generally speaking, didn’t like to see coffins. They were a reminder that life ended, and he could not bear the thought of losing his shellan.

He literally did not know what he would do without—

Rehv jerked back as the image of that female at the parking garage—and her grid—shot into his mind.

“Oh, my God,” he blurted. “She wants to bring someone back from the dead.”

Ehlena shook her head. “I’m sorry, what—”

“A nice, normal civilian going after something evil? The only reason they’d do it is if someone they love is dead and they can’t live with the pain. Her brother. It has to be her brother—it’s the only person left in her family. I’ll bet you something happened to him.”

Sahvage rematerialized off to the side of the garage Mae had just parked her car in. As the panels started to drop back down, he glanced over his shoulder. Looked to the front of the one-story house. Checked what he could see in the back. He did not want her to get out of that fucking vehicle until things were safe—

And she didn’t. She waited until everything was closed up.

“Good girl,” he said softly. Even though she wouldn’t have approved of being called a girl.

Sticking to the shadows, he got out of his pack what he had stolen from the cottage when she’d been taking Tallah to bed: Morton’s un-iodized salt. Although he’d have taken it with the iodine. Didn’t matter.

With a steady hand, he popped the top, and he was lucky on two parts: The container was almost full, and the seventies-era ranch wasn’t big. Still, he was careful to ration the stuff. He only poured it on the ground in front of the doors and the windows. He’d have preferred to do the sealing all the way around, but he couldn’t risk running out with any of the job left undone.

After he’d covered the ground floor, he materialized up onto the roof. No chimney, but there were two pipe vents, probably for the bathrooms, and he poured the salt on the shingles around them on a just-in-case.

Then he sat his ass on the mid-beam of the house and kicked his legs out in front of himself on the easy slope. He wondered what the female was doing beneath him, maybe grabbing something to eat, going through her mail. She would head back to the cottage for the day, though. She wasn’t going to want that old female left alone.

Cursing himself, cursing Mae, he scanned the yard and the neighborhood with not just his eyes, but every sense and instinct he had.

He wasn’t sure he believed in the salt. But it was something Rahvyn had always sworn by, and that was as good a recommendation as he was going to get in this nightmare.

God, he wished his cousin were here. She would know what to do.

Hell, maybe she could have talked Mae out of this madness—

The first thing he noticed was the stars disappearing overhead. But not because of clouds. It was as if a black shroud had been pulled across the sky directly above the ranch.

“Fuck.”

Getting to his feet, he outed both of his guns, and eyed the neighborhood, which was suburban-tight and suburban-peopled: Both houses on either side, as well as the ones across the street, had humans in them, men and women winding down in bed, watching TV, having midnight snacks. The last thing he needed was a bunch of forefingers dialing 911 when he was trying to save that female’s life.

“Fuck.”

With grim purpose, he walked down the roof incline to the gutter and jumped to the ground, landing with a boom. Turning to the front door, he was going to bang on it—except he stopped himself.

The garage. He hadn’t sealed the garage door.

Shoving one of the guns into its holster, he ripped the Morton’s back out, and ran for the tiny seam between those retractable panels and the concrete lip of the garage slab. The salt needed to be down on the ground before whatever had shown up at the cottage turned up again—

“You don’t actually think that’s going to work, do you.”

The voice was female, and seemed to be coming from every direction. But as much of a shocker as it was, he refused to be diverted. He kept pouring, the lightness of the container freaking him out as he closed in on the far side of the broad entrance. Faster. Faster. Fasterfasterfaster—

Sahvage all but threw the goddamn container at the corner formed by the house’s edge and the concrete—on the theory that the salt was still in place, even if there was a cylindrical cardboard container wrapping around it.

It was as he looked up that he saw the leg.

The very shapely leg . . . that was plugged into a shiny black stiletto with a red sole.

His eyes followed the dainty ankle to its delicate calf—and went farther up to a very lady-like knee. After that, there were the thighs, the incredibly smooth thighs that were set on display by a black miniskirt that gave both “skintight” and “short” new meaning. And Jesus . . . the top half of the woman more than lived up to the bottom part. Between the black push-up bustier, and all that brunette hair, and that face . . .