Everything happened so fast. One moment, the two of them were playing tug-o’-war with his arm, the next?

The lights flickered in the stairwell, and then something grabbed Syphon around the chest and peeled him back. But he did not fall. He became suspended in the air over the steep steps.

A shadow, that somehow had strength and substance, was clutching him like he was prey, claiming his fighter’s body. And Syphon was arching back and screaming in agony, his face running pale, his eyes peeling wide.

Save him, Balz told himself. Save—

And yet he glanced back at the door that had opened for him. The pull to proceed inside, to enter and be lost in the darkness, was like a tangible stroke over all of his skin, a beckoning that was food to a starving male, cash to the poor, recovery to the terminal. Something was in there for him that would save him, save him from—

Syphon screamed again, and the sound of the bloody agony snapped Balz out of the thrall. With a gasp, he wrenched around and grabbed for his forty.

That was when the perfume came.

The smell was grape-ish and deep, an old fragrance that he had scented back in the eighties, on females in the species who were above him socially, on women outside of the species who lived in cities and walked the night streets on the arms of men in tuxedos.

Poison by Dior. He’d looked up the name because he’d loved it so much—

Even before he turned his head back to the void, he knew what he was going to see in the darkness.

He was not wrong.

From out of a black hole, the brunette of his dreams appeared, and she was magically beautiful, unreal yet solid.

“It’s you . . .” he breathed.

As she smiled at him, Syphon screamed again, but it was as if her presence turned down the volume on everything else on the planet—including his cousin.

What was happening over the staircase suddenly seemed like the dream instead of her.

“Miss me?” Her voice was heaven, absolute heaven, in his ears . . . a symphony mixed with a marching band, seasoned with hip-hop and some jazz. “I missed you. It feels like forever since we were together. Why don’t you come inside, I have a bed we could use—”

Syphon screamed even louder.

“Don’t worry about him.” She licked her red lips like she was anticipating what Balz’s cock would taste like. “He’s got nothing to do with us.”

His woman stepped back into the darkness and beckoned him with her blood red fingernail. “Come with me, Balthazar, and I will show you pleasure you have never known and riches that will make even you stop stealing. No more hollow places to fill with the objects of others, no more itch that cannot be scratched. You will finally be sated. You will finally find the peace that has eluded you. With me, you can rest, Balthazar.”

Tears speared into his eyes. “How do you know me,” he whispered.

“Silly male, I’ve been inside you. Did you think I wasn’t walking your halls and trying out your furniture while I was there? Lonely place, your soul, and I’ve seen a lot of them. But you don’t have to worry about that anymore. I’ll be with you every step of the way from now on. All you have to do is come to me now.”

The decision was made before he was aware of arriving at a conclusion: His body took a step forward. And another.

Balz didn’t look back at his cousin.

He was powerless to deny this female.

Anything.

• • •

As Mae dematerialized, Sahvage rearranged his erection in his pants and went back into the cottage.

Shutting things up, he looked around the heavy hutch through to the back and saw that the cellar door was open. But Tallah wasn’t in the kitchen or moving around upstairs.

Clearly, she was back in the cellar, something forgotten or required in her underground quarters, and he was guessing it had to do with her outfit. The old female certainly stayed true to her glymera roots. Even though she wasn’t living in a mansion, she dressed the part. She’d come out for Monopoly looking like she was going to a formal event—and it was kind of sweet the way she blushed whenever she looked at him.

A little sad, too.

And it was obvious how much she meant to Mae, and vice versa. No wonder that Book was such a topic of discussion. If there were any lives worth preserving with dark magic? Tallah would be on the list.

He glanced over at the dirty dishes that were left.

But God, that stew had been awful.

Determined to be useful and not just decorative, he took over where Mae had left off, picking up her soggy, soapy paper towel wad and going to work on the remaining stuff in the sink. How Tallah had managed to use seven hundred thousand pots and pans was a mystery. There had been all of two root vegetables and a couple handfuls of meat in that liquid-cement broth.

As he washed and rinsed, he thought about Mae standing against that bathroom door, her eyes on his hand job like it was the most amazing thing she had ever seen. Fucking hell, he’d felt like he’d had a palm full of gold as she’d watched him, but when he’d learned that she was . . .

Of course he still wanted the female. He just didn’t want to take something permanent from her when he was less than temporary in her life.

It wasn’t fair.

With that thought in mind, he got through the mess in the sink. Dried everything off. Put things away in the places Tallah had gotten them out of.

And just as he checked the clock over on the wall, something registered, his inner bell getting rung, even though he wasn’t sure by what.

Although the fact that Mae had been gone almost an hour was not great news.

Palming up the gun he’d tucked, he glanced to the refrigerator barricading the back door. Looked out toward the front door. Checked the cellar stairs. What the hell was it—

As his eyes surfed across the table, they double-backed to what had caught his subconscious attention.

“Shit.”

Shoving the forty back into his waistband, he picked up the nine millimeter he’d gotten for Mae. She’d left it behind in her frazzled rush to leave.

“I’ll be right back,” he called down at the basement.

Dematerializing, he traveled up to the second floor and out of the shutter he’d left cracked since the night before. There was no trouble finding Mae’s ranch, and as he re-formed by the garage, the lights were on inside of it.

The shutter around back was still as they’d left it, so he was able to get in by her car with no problem—and he frowned. The scent of fresh exhaust was obvious, so she’d clearly gone out for some supplies—and the door into the rear of the house was propped open with a stop.

He wished he could have helped bring whatever it was in for her.

Stepping into a short hallway, he saw Mae’s purse and car keys on the washer-dryer. Her jacket, too.

There was a damp trail on the tile that led into a modest kitchen, and as he followed it, he heard a strange rushing sound deeper inside the house. As he went along, he found the single-story ranch small, with furniture that wasn’t new, but everything was clean and he felt comfortable with the lack of fussiness.

Another round of that whoosh sound escorted him even farther into the house, to a hall that he assumed took him to the layout of upper bedrooms. A bathroom door was open halfway down, and he started to smile as Mae’s scent got louder in his nose.

“Can I help you—”