Finally, there was light. It streaked up from the room below through rectangular openings where the ceiling’s plastic panels were missing. Thick wiring and shiny gray ducts wound among steel crossbeams, and a metal grid stretched into the farthest corners of the building, unbroken by the rooms and halls underneath.

The crawlspace, hidden between the ceiling of the room below and the floor of the level above, was barely two and a half feet high, forcing me to lay face down with my arms and legs braced on metal supports. The steel bruised my skin as I held my torso off the flimsy white panel under me. Zylas had disappeared into the darkness, crawling noiselessly across the beams. The ceiling was too low for a piggyback ride.

As I waited, voices drifted to my ears, their words inaudible. One male voice, one female. Conversational tones.

Crimson eyes appeared as Zylas crawled under a silver duct. He moved cautiously, navigating over and around heavy crossbeams and bundles of wiring. The muscles in his arms and thighs flexed with strength I didn’t have as he shifted across the awkward, fragile obstacle course.

He braced himself on the grid beside me. “Vampires in three rooms.”

“How many?”

“I cannot see into the third room. In the others, there are rēsh. Ten,” he corrected, translating for me.

Ten vampires plus an unknown number in another room? Well, this would probably break Zora’s record for the largest nest she’d ever encountered.

“In one room,” he whispered, shifting so close his warm breath teased my ear, “there are … papers. Do you want to see this?”

“Yes,” I breathed. “Which way?”

He started cautiously across the ceiling. I crawled after him, trying to keep up but not rushing. The slightest noise could betray our presence. My muscles burned from the effort of holding my body rigid above the panels as I ducked under hanging wires and cables. The murmuring of voices from below grew louder.

Zylas crept up to a missing panel, the rectangular opening lit from below. I wobbled over to him, arms trembling. Talk about a workout. It was like nonstop planking and pushups.

As I puffed out a pained breath, I realized I couldn’t hold myself above the panels. My muscles were too tired—which left me only one option. Brow scrunching and cheeks already heating, I put an arm across Zylas. His head tilted in my direction as I pulled myself on top of him and lay across his back, letting him support us both.

He had said I wasn’t heavy. I refused to feel guilty.

Holding his shoulders, I peered into the spacious room below. Surrounded by closed doors and scattered with abandoned construction supplies, it would probably be filled with cubicles once the reno was finished. The farthest end was set up like a slumber party—rows of sleeping bags, pillows, yoga mats for mattresses, and a few extra blankets.

In a different corner, someone had laid a sheet of drywall across a double stack of twenty-gallon buckets, and loose papers and folders were arranged on top in three tidy piles.

A few feet from the makeshift table, a man and woman sat on the floor. They’d propped an old lamp, its lone bulb glowing half-heartedly, on top of a dusty piece of equipment with a yellow tank on the bottom. An air compressor? Three red jerry cans were lined up nearby, as though the tool’s owner had expected to return the next day to resume work.

The woman was peering at a monitor, set up on the floor beside a black computer with severed cords hanging off it. Claude’s computer, stolen from his townhouse.

The man threw a handful of papers into an empty bucket. “Found anything yet?”

His companion glanced up from the monitor, her brown ponytail bobbing. “Everything important is encrypted. This isn’t my area of expertise.”

“You’re a computer science major.”

“That doesn’t make me a hacker. I didn’t even get to graduate,” she added, bitter accusation layering the statement.

The other man shrugged as he skimmed another paper. “We can’t change what happened to us. Just be glad you were turned around the time Lord Vasilii arrived.”

Lord Vasilii? What kind of name was that? It sounded like a cartoon villain.

“You’re too new to know,” the man continued in a low voice, “but we used to hide in sewers all day hoping the hunters wouldn’t find us. All we could think about was blood. But in the last two months, Lord Vasilii changed all of that.”

“How?” she asked uncertainly.

“When he’s nearby … can’t you feel it? Maybe you can’t yet, but it’s like being new again. It’s like my head is clear for the first time in years. I can think about more than blood.” He tossed another page into his discard bucket. “He makes this life almost bearable.”

The woman’s shoulders drooped as though she were discomforted rather than reassured by his words.

He tilted a few papers toward her. “This looks promising.”

She hunched more. “Add it to the pile.”

Pushing to his feet, the man placed the new pages on the makeshift table. He returned to his spot and read the next document. Were those papers also from Claude’s townhouse? Or could they be from Uncle Jack’s safe?

Zylas, I thought clearly, not wanting to speak aloud with the vampires so close. I need those papers.

Shifting back from the opening, he canted his head in a silent command. I slid off him and onto the nearby crossbeam. He drew his legs up, positioning himself in a compact crouch at the edge. Faint red magic veined across his hands.

He hopped through the gap and landed on the concrete with barely a thump, but both vampires turned at the sound. He was already flashing toward them. His hands closed around their throats, crushing their windpipes so they couldn’t cry out, then crimson talons sprouted from his fingers and he rammed them into the vampires’ chests. Catching both his victims as they collapsed, he eased them silently to the floor.

My heart twisted as the young computer science major slumped lifelessly, and I reminded myself about Zora’s hard-earned wisdom: Killing them was a mercy.

I clambered off the beam, scooted closer, and dangled my feet through the hole. Returning to the opening, Zylas reached up. I pushed off the edge. He caught me and set me down.

Too many blank doors—probably leading to future executive offices—looked into this large room and it made me nervous. I turned to the papers. The sheet the male vampire had added contained a handwritten list of names and phone numbers titled “Emergency Contacts.” I recognized Uncle Jack’s messy scrawl.

I scooped the papers up and clamped them to my chest. For good measure, I snatched the other piles too.

“This is what I need,” I whispered. “Let’s—”

“Do you smell that?”

The sharp question, muffled by a wall, echoed from somewhere nearby, but I didn’t know which room the sound had come from.

Zylas snatched me by the waist and boosted me toward the ceiling. I grabbed the lip and scrambled into the gap, and he jumped up after me. He rolled away from the opening, tail sweeping up into the darkness.

Footsteps thudded across the concrete.

“What?” a shocked voice barked. “They’re dead?”

Not daring to move, I peeked sideways through the gap. All I could see were the slain vampires’ legs. At least three new figures had gathered around the bodies.