“Of course. He tells me everything.”

I doubted that was true. But there was no point in asking Levi more questions about it. He’d just get suspicious.

He walked to the kitchen island. Sat down on a stool. “And Clive just hates you.” There was a hint of dark joy in his eyes when he said that. Was he happy to pit us against each other, with him in the middle?

“He hates me?”

“Of course. You’re from Cadogan House. Spoiled.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “He doesn’t know you like I know you.”

You don’t know me at all, I thought. Didn’t know me or the monster, and was more than willing to offer up his brother as a foil for his devotion.

“Maybe we were too late,” he muttered to himself. “You saved him—Connor Keene—yesterday.”

While fury burned, I kept it off my face, leaned in conspiratorially. “You tried to hit Connor?”

“Maybe,” he said, pleasure on his cheeks.

“To protect me,” I said, and he nodded, looked relieved.

“Just like I’m protecting you right now,” he said, “from that roughneck you’ve been spending time with. I don’t get why you’re dating a dog. You could have any vampire you wanted. After all I tried to do for you—getting you on the right path, saving you from the den of iniquity you grew up in.”

I blinked in feigned confusion. “The den of iniquity? You don’t like Cadogan House?”

“They wouldn’t let me in,” he said, his laugh a bubble of madness.

I stared at him. “What?”

“They wouldn’t let me in. I applied. I wanted to be in Chicago; it was close to home. They let you run wild, but they wouldn’t let me in.”

My parents hadn’t said a thing. Had they known, but not told me? No. They absolutely would have. So, assuming he was telling the truth, they hadn’t made the connection.

“Clive said the House was never good enough for me,” Levi continued, “that it was full of lawlessness and disrespect. But look at me now. Now I’m here, in your place, with you. I’ve come full circle.”

How much, I wondered, had Clive fed his brother’s madness? His obsessions? Clive had to have known. A man this troubled didn’t go through life without family noticing. Without having hurt someone before. Was that why Clive was so focused on rules? On control? Because that’s how he kept Levi in line?

“So you know I’d decided to stay in Chicago,” I prompted, trying to keep him talking.

“Of course. I’m older than you, had to wait for you to grow up. But then you were in Paris, and I had to wait for you to come back here. And now we’re here together.”

And now I was creeped out in a completely new way. I had to get out.

“We could make it work,” I said, softening my voice. “I didn’t know you were . . . ready for that kind of relationship. We could leave here right now, and be together. Just me and you.”

I could see that he wanted to believe it, the struggle on his face as truth and falsity warred in his troubled mind. But he shook his head. “You chose them over me. You’re a traitor, just like Clive said.”

“He called me a traitor?” I actually made my lip quiver.

“You picked the shifters,” Levi said again, emphasizing each word with a shake of the knife.

“But I didn’t,” I said and nodded to the room. “It’s just me and you in here right now. I didn’t know you’d be here, that you would be waiting for me. But that was a nice surprise.”

He watched me for a moment, hope blooming. “Really?”

“Of course. Shifters are really rough. They don’t have nearly as much class as vampires.”

The scrape of metal on metal rose up from the street, and my blood went cold. Connor. But even as my heart pounded, I had to fight not to struggle. If I broke character, I knew I’d lose Levi, and have no chance to get out of here—or to get to Connor.

He can take care of himself, I repeated silently, a mantra, and nodded, all the while working to loosen my bonds, even as fabric scraped raw skin. I frowned, feigned confusion. “But what about Blake? Why did I need protecting from him?”

In a flash, the pleasure was replaced by anger again. “He hated you even more than Clive. Wanted to tear you apart. He played nice, sure, but that was just his play. His face. Sometimes we wear faces that aren’t who we really are.”

Like the innocuous vampire who showed up outside my door the night of the party, I thought. Like you.

“What about Miranda?”

“The girl who turned you in?”

“The girl . . .” was as far as I made it before my own fury exploded, and brought the monster with it.

It hadn’t been a shifter from Minnesota who’d called the AAM. It had been Miranda. She’d set all of this—the AAM, the stalker, Connor’s injuries, Blake’s death—in motion. Oh, we were going to have some fucking words, Miranda and me.

“Did you attack her? That girl?” My voice was shaking now as anger burned. I pushed one wrist against the other, trying to force one hand through the fabric, and wanted to scream with frustration.

“No,” Levi said, oblivious to my struggle. “She brought me here to you. Why would I?”

Because she was all of it, I thought. She was cause and effect and all the rest.

“I’m sorry. I’m just so confused. She was hurt, and blamed it on vampires. So typical.”

“So typical,” he agreed.

“I don’t know how I should thank you,” I said and looked coyly away. “Especially with the AAM hunting me.”

“You just have to join a House. That’s not hard. Pick one, and I’ll stay here, and we can live in Chicago and be happy. You have to join a House,” he said again, eyes reeling. “You have to. You have to. We need to be part of a House. It’s crucial.” He stopped in front of me. “It’s everything.”

There was something pitiable about him, about the world he’d created in his mind, that made it hard to loathe him. But I persisted.

“You don’t think we’d be okay without joining a House?”

He backhanded me.

Knuckle hit bone, and flesh struck flesh, and the insult of pain was nearly blinding. “I just said you have to join a House. You have to. Don’t you understand?”

I understood plenty, I thought, as my face throbbed, the skin tingling. I understood I’d run out of patience. I’d run out of time to play nice, to wait. To hope we could get out of this without death.

Go, I told the monster. And it wasted no time, pushing forward through me with a speed that had me jerking in the chair.

I lifted my head, let Levi see what I was. That would be his punishment, or part of it. To watch his dream dissolve in fear, in the haze of my red eyes.

Horror smeared across his face like a stain, contorting his brow. “What are you?”

“Not like you,” I said, and the monster had us rocking forward in the chair, slamming my forehead into his.

Levi stumbled back to the kitchen island, swore. He braced his hand against it, then used the other to wipe the blood now pouring from his nose.

“You bitch!” he screamed, spittle flying with rage. The words were loud enough that I hoped someone would think to call the CPD, but I’d have to protect myself before he did.

Still tied to the chair, the fabric around my hands looser from working but not yet undone, I swung to the side, trying to strike him with the tall ladder back.

It grazed him, but he just reversed the momentum, throwing me to the ground. I hit the floor on the shoulder I’d injured at the Grove, pain ripping through it again. Nausea rose, but I refused to acknowledge it.

The fall had buckled the chair. Levi came closer, lifted his leg to kick, and I gathered up all the power I could and slammed it into the floor. The chair’s back shattered. The monster in the lead, we ripped my wrists apart, sending fabric remnants flying.

Levi and I lunged at each other. He grabbed at my hair and I kicked, catching his shin and twisting my leg to shift his ankle and unbalance him. But he grabbed me, brought me down with him. We hit the coffee table, which toppled, sending pottery and detritus flying. We rolled once, twice, until he was on top of me, hands pinning my arms.

“You could have had me,” he said, lips hovering near mine, my bile threatening to rise.

“I want no part of you, asshole.”

I aimed a knee between his legs, but he blocked. The move caused him to shift his weight just enough for me to scissor my legs, bring myself to the top. I crawled away, but he grabbed my ankle. The monster kicked back, smashing fingers under boots, and reveled in his scream.

I climbed to my knees, pain radiating in a dozen places, and then to my feet, my cheek throbbing with pain with each movement.

Levi had done the same, but he’d picked up a piece of the broken chair. I hoped to god Lulu hadn’t bought aspen.

He speared it toward me. I kicked, heard his wrist snap. The stake dropped, and he leaned down to grab it again when a roar filled the air, shaking the windows.

Too late, I thought, and I could feel the magic roaring toward us from the hallway. He was coming.

“The wolf,” I said, in a voice not quite my own.

Levi, face bloodied, leered at me. “Filthy bitch,” he spat, and with speed I’d never seen before, he darted to a window I belatedly realized was open. And then he was gone.

The loft door burst open, and I snapped my gaze to it.

Wolf, the monster said again, and retreated to heal.

Connor’s hair was mussed, his shirt torn, but he was whole. And he was furious.

“It was Levi,” I said, cradling my shoulder. “Clive’s brother. He went out the window.”

Connor ran to it, looked outside. “Gone,” he said and cursed viciously. Then he turned back to me, eyes hard and cold and blue, but anger faded to relief. He strode toward me, put his hands on my arms. And then he went rigid with anger I could actually feel percolating in the air.