“Hi,” the woman drawled as she leaned up against the house, right over the salt container. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Her eyes were jet black and gleaming like they were backlit, and her lips were blood red, and she was as beautiful a woman as he had ever seen.

And her malevolence made him want to get his other gun back out. So he fucking did.

“Now, now,” she said, “is that really necessary. We haven’t even been properly introduced. If you’re going to shoot me, shouldn’t we at least shake hands first?”

With a graceful bend, she picked up the Morton’s. Meeting his eyes, she ran one blood red fingernail around the open metal spout.

“Just so you know, I’m totally resisting the urge to make some ‘you so salty’ jokes right now.” That finger continued to play with the opening. “I’ll say it again, do you really think you can keep me out of anywhere?”

In the pool of light thrown by an exterior fixture, she was an all-wrong trying to pull off perfectly-normal: The shadows under her body moved even when she didn’t, and then there was her aura. A pitch-black shimmer tinted the air around her.

Because she radiated evil.

She tossed the Morton’s over her shoulder, and the container bounced away like it was running from her. “You’re going to need a lot more than shit for seasoning French fries to keep me out. But enough about entrances and exits, tell me something, does this skirt make my ass look big.”

Pivoting around, she struck a pose and stared over her shoulder—as her hand took a stroll down the tuck of her waist to the perfectly proportioned swell of her hip.

“Hm?” she prompted in a throat purr. “What do you think of my ass.”

Sahvage blocked his thoughts by picturing a closet, a closet that had shelves running up its walls from floor to ceiling. Inside his closet, the shelves were empty, the bald overhead light revealing all the absolutely-nothing in there. When he was sure he could see the details clearly, from the wood graining on those vertical boards to the little string hanging from the bulb, he shut the closet door. And locked it.

As the woman stroked her rear assets, he held that final image foremost in his mind: A stout door, a thick door, a reinforced door that was dead-bolted, protecting a closet with nothing in it.

The woman chuckled. “Look at you, with the parlor tricks.”

Say nothing, he told himself. You give nothing out loud.

“So protective of the female under this roof, you are.” The woman—“woman”—glanced at the house. “You must care deeply for her. Or are you just making sure she lives long enough so you can fuck her?”

Sahvage stared forward and barely blinked.

“I’m right, aren’t I.” The woman smiled as she turned back around to face him. “You haven’t fucked her yet. But you want to, don’t you. You want her naked under you and you’re going to mark her as your own—like that means anything these days. Haven’t you heard that monogamy is out of style?”

Her voice was low and seductive, backing up her body, her lips, her hair. She was such an enticing package, but once you got that ribbon off? Ripped free the wrapping paper?

“Or maybe there’s more to you two.” She extended an elegant hand and pointed her blood red forefinger at the center of his chest. “Does she have this? What beats in here . . . has she taken your heart?” There was a pause. “Already . . . wow. I’ll have to take some pointers from her. She’s not much to look at, but her game is evidently on fire.”

I give nothing, Sahvage thought. I give nothing, Igivenothing, IgivenothingIgivenothingIgive—

Her eyes gleamed with menace. “You know, you make me want to get inside of you. I think it would be fun—for me, at least. And for you, for a short while. But hey, sometimes in life, all you get are short little funs, right? Itty-bitty funs. So what do you say, fighter. How about we fuck and I show you a really good time.”

From out of the blue, a thought came to him, like a paper airplane sailing into his line of sight.

This woman, who was not a woman at all but something else . . . was his ticket off the planet.

After all these years, his death, which he had so often wished for, and too many times been denied, had finally crossed the threshold of his inner house and sat down in a chair.

To wait for the right moment.

The woman smiled, her blood red lips pulling into an expression of evil satisfaction. “You’re going to be mine.”

• • •

The rush of the ice bouncing off Rhoger’s immobile chest and falling into the sides of the tub was the kind of thing Mae was going to hear in her nightmares forever. And the tinkling sounds, so soft, so gentle, reminded her of how unhinged she had become. Even as she was able to dress herself properly and eat her meals and drive her car without disaster, she was chaos barely reined in, the undercarriage of all her seemingly a-okay really ten thousand volts of fucked-in-the-head.

“It’s going to be fine,” she told her brother as she crumpled up the dripping, empty bag.

Reaching for the next one, she tore through its plastic skin and then realized she’d forgotten to bang it on the floor first. It was a solid frozen chunk.

“Damn it.”

Grabbing a towel off the rack, she wrapped the bag up and dropped the thing on the bath mat a couple of times, the shattering inside too close for comfort.

Now the chips poured out, though.

When she was finished refilling things, she sat back on her heels and propped her hands on the slick rim of the tub. Staring at her brother’s face through the tesserae’d ice, she couldn’t recognize his features. But she wasn’t sure she would have anyway.

It had been a long time since she’d properly looked him in the eye, and not because he had passed.

“I’m so sorry,” she croaked out. “I didn’t mean . . . that night you left, I didn’t mean to yell at you. I really didn’t.”

There was no answer coming back at her. Which hadn’t been the way things were. Before Rhoger had taken off that night and not come home, they’d been fighting constantly.

Over such insignificant things—or so it seemed now.

God, she wished she had been more patient. Or maybe not have dug so deep with the criticism. Maybe if she hadn’t been so hard on him, he would have stayed home that night.

Maybe . . .

She thought of the summoning spell. And everything Tallah had told her the Book would do for her.

Yes, she wanted to bring Rhoger back. But the truth was, it was her wrong that she wanted to rectify. She had started the downward spiral that had ended in his tragic death: After that particularly brutal argument, he had stormed out . . . and then crossed the path of his murderer at some point.

With a curse, she remembered those terrible days of waiting, sitting in the hard chair in the kitchen, praying for a call from him. And then the nights, trying to work at her desk, braced for the door to open when he came home.

The latter had happened, eventually . . . nearly two weeks after he had gone missing. She had smelled the fresh blood first, and then heard the stumbling feet. Rushing out of her room, she had come down the hall just as he had collapsed inside the front door, his loose limbs and out-of-joint torso the most terrifying thing she had ever seen.