MANSON: Well, how do you explain that the front and side doors were dead-bolted and chained yet the back door was wide open? What makes sense is that the victim came into the house with her assailant or she let him in, then locked the door behind him. Then after he killed her, he unlocked the back door and left, leaving the door a foot open so he wouldn’t make any more noise than was necessary. That’s the most logical scenario.

Gabriel was climbing the stairs to his apartment, wondering what exactly he should tell Sara—or not tell her—when the door was flung open and she stared down at him.

“Thank God you’re home.”

“Why, what’s wrong?” Concern kicked in and he jogged up the remaining steps. Sara looked pale and shaken.

“Who’s Alex?” she asked.

Great. Just what he needed, Alex sniffing around Sara. There was no telling what the demon would say to her. “I’ve known him a long time. Why? Was he here?”

“Yes. He was sitting on the couch when I got home. He said you gave him a key because you’re old friends. I thought he brought this—”

She reached behind her and pulled a bottle off the table in his entryway. “But he said he didn’t. It was just sitting outside the front door. Who would do that?”

It was a bottle of absinthe. Gabriel’s mouth went dry. Alex was either lying and had in fact brought it as a way to mock him, or it had been another demon. Possibly Raphael. Only demons knew who Gabriel was, and what he had been. There wouldn’t be any reason for anyone else to associate him with absinthe.

Whoever it had been, they were pushing him into a confrontation. He wasn’t going to tolerate anyone interfering in his life, his problems. With his Sara.

But his first priority was reassuring her.

“I don’t know who would do that.” He took her elbow and gently urged her inside. “Come on, let’s go in.”

“Do you think . . .” She swallowed hard. “Do you think someone could have seen me last night? Drinking the absinthe and . . . everything?”

By everything, she meant touching herself. Lifting her skirt and stroking herself to a beautiful, shuddering orgasm. Then leaning against his piano while he tasted between her thighs with his tongue and lips. It was an everything he would love to repeat.

He wouldn’t. Not after Rochelle.

But then again, Sara didn’t seem obsessed with him in the aftermath, and he had poured all of his passion, feeling, intensity into her. It had been a touching with intimacy and emotion, frustration and lust, and yet while she had responded as a woman, she didn’t seem to have altered her attitude toward him. Maybe she was immune to his punishment.

It was a dangerous path of rationalization.