As V stopped in front of her, her shoulders tightened up until she felt an ache at the base of her skull. “Yes,” she snapped, “I will set the security system after you leave. And I know how to work the remotes. You showed me that earlier, although I can assure you, I don’t even care about Game of Thrones at this point.”

It was so unlike her to be bitchy, but she was down the proverbial rabbit hole, lost to who and what she normally was.

“Xcor escaped. Last night.”

Layla recoiled so sharply she nearly fell off the chair. And before she could ask, the Brother said, “No one was killed in the process. But he ended up locking Qhuinn in the Tomb—which was where we were keeping him. And he left the key behind.”

Layla’s heart started to pound, but before she could say anything, or really even gather her thoughts, Vishous arched a brow. “Still feel safe on your own?”

She leveled a hard stare at him. “Are you actually worried about that?”

“You remain a member of the family.”

“Uh-huh. Right.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, he’s not going to come for me, if that’s what you’re concerned about. He’s done with me. There is literally nothing that could make that male get anywhere near me—which gives him something in common with Qhuinn, ironically.”

Vishous didn’t respond. He just loomed over her, his icy eyes tracking every nuance of her body, her affect, her very breathing.

It was kind of like being onstage in front of a hundred million people. With theater lights burning your retinas.

Exactly what she was in the mood for.

“You don’t think Xcor would want to know where you are?” The question was posed with such an even tone, it was impossible to guess whether it was an actual inquiry or a rhetorical one.

Either way, she knew the answer. “Nope. Not a chance.”

She turned away and refocused on the darkness outside the sliders. Her heart was beating hard in her chest, but she was determined to try to keep that to herself.

“You still love him,” V said remotely. “Don’t you.”

“Does it matter?”

As Vishous lit another hand-rolled, he paced around, going back by the stove where he had been standing. Then over to the door into the basement. And finally returning to the table where she was seated.

In a low voice, he said, “I’m not sure how much you know about Jane and me, but I had to wipe her memories of me once. The circumstances aren’t important, and destiny had other ideas, thank fuck … but I know what it’s like not to be with the one you love. Also know what it’s like when nothing about the relationship makes sense to anybody but the two of you. I mean, I fell for a fucking human, and then she died. So now I’m in love with a ghost, and not in a metaphoric sense. This Xcor thing? I know you would have chosen a different path if you could have.”

As Layla looked up at the Brother, she could feel her eyes popping. Of all the things Vishous could have said? She would have been less surprised if he’d told her he was buying stock in Apple.

“Wait … what?” she blurted.

“Sometimes the heart shit doesn’t make sense. And you know, at the end of it all, Xcor didn’t hurt you. You saw him for how long? He never terrorized you or those young. I hate the motherfucker, don’t get me wrong, and you did consort with the enemy. But damn him to hell, he sure as fuck wasn’t acting like one, at least not when it came to you—and he also never attacked us, did he. All that time, he knew where we were, but the Band of Bastards never came on the property. I’m not saying I want to sit down and have a drink with the SOB, or that you weren’t in the wrong. But the good thing about being logical is that you can judge both history and the present with clarity—and I’m a very logical male.”

Layla’s eyes began to water. And then in a broken voice, she whispered, “I hated myself the whole time. But … I loved him. And I fear I always will.”

Vishous’s diamond eyes shifted down so that they seemed to rest on his shitkickers. Then he stretched an arm out and grabbed the mug he’d been using as an ashtray. Tapping his hand-rolled over the thing, he shrugged. “We don’t get to pick who we fall for, and trying to talk yourself out of emotions is a recipe for failure. You were not wrong in loving him, true? That part, no one can blame you for, ’cuz it is what it is—and you’ve suffered enough. Besides, like I said … he never hurt you, did he. So there has to be something in him that isn’t evil.”

“I looked in his eyes.” She sniffled and wiped her cheeks with the backs of her hands. “I saw the truth in them and it was that he would never injure me or anyone I loved. And as for why our relationship ended? He didn’t want to love me any more than I wanted to love him.”

She was ready to talk more, hungry for the unexpected relief that came with someone understanding where she was at. But all at once, V’s compassion was gone, the impenetrable mask he usually wore back in place on his face, the door to the discussion closed as if it had never been opened.

“Here.” The Brother put his cell phone on the table. “The passcode’s ten ten. I don’t know how long Wrath is going to take to decide what kind of visitation schedule there’s going to be, but you can assume you’re going to be in this house for a while. Call me if you need us. My second phone is listed under V two in the contacts list.”

Layla reached out and took the cell. It was still warm from him holding it.

“Thank you,” she said softly as she held the thing up. “And not just for this.”

“Whatever,” he muttered. “Funny how curses can come in all kinds of different flavors, true. My mom was creative like that.”

Down in the underground tunnel, Qhuinn made his way from the training center’s medical clinic to the mansion like a drunk, his stride as uncoordinated as a dice roll, his head spinning, his stomach rolling, the stitches in his side hurting so badly he stopped from time to time to lift up his hospital gown and check that he hadn’t Alien’d something out of his gut.

All he wanted was a straight shot up to the twins, an unimpeded route from the hidden door under the big house’s grand staircase to that bedroom up on the second floor: no concerned looks from doggen, no confrontational glares from his brothers, nobody trying to feed him. And please, dear God, nothing at all from Lassiter.

As he emerged out from under the stairs, he paused before he went any further into the foyer and took a listen. First Meal had come and was in the process of being gone, the servants cleaning things up in the dining room, their soft patter of talk and the quiet sound of sterling being cleared from porcelain whispering out from the open archway up ahead.

Nothing from the billiards room.

Nobody on the red-carpeted stairs—

Right on schedule—not—a strange pool of light appeared directly in the center of the vast, resplendent space, as if someone had carved a hole in the ceiling and an improbable noonday sun was shining in through the roof.

For a second, all Qhuinn could think of was thank God. The human second coming had arrived just in time to kill all of his suffering on a oner—and actually, a figure did appear in the midst of the shaft of light. But it was not the Christ that Butch prayed to all the time.

It was also not Santa Claus with his streusel gut and his ponies with horns or whatever the fuck they were—which given the Christmas season might have been an option.

Nope, it was the Great Immortal Agitator: Lassiter, the fallen angel, materialized in the midst of the great, source-less illumination, and the sparkling glow faded as he took his form like it was the delivery system that had brought him from wherever he had been.

Okay, the clothes were weird, Qhuinn thought.

And not in the crazy fuck’s normal bizarre-drobe of zebra stripes and feather boas. The angel had a flannel shirt tied around his waist. Blue jeans that were one trip through the wash away from losing their structural integrity. And a Nirvana shirt from the Saint Andrew’s Hall performance in Detroit on October 11, 1991.

That music wasn’t his usual his jam, either. Lassiter was a Fetty Wap fan when he wasn’t swooning over Midler.