My eyes widened, and I took my foot off the gas when I realized Kisten’s light show was among it, the metal scaffolding bent and twisted as if it had been pulled from the ceiling without regard. The colored lights were smashed, and his pool table was leaning atop it.

“Rache,” Jenks said, chilling me, “that pile of trash just moved.”

Fear slid through me, and my heart jumped. It was Kisten sitting on the curb between the mounds of debris. Sun glinting on his blond hair, he threw something into the pile with a metallic ting. He looked rumpled in his red silk shirt and black linen slacks. Discarded.

“Oh, my God,” I whispered. His head came up as I swung the car around to point my nose to the exit, parking sideways against the faded lines. There was anger in his absolutely black eyes—utter hatred blending with betrayal and frustration.

“Ah, Rachel, maybe you should stay in the car.”

Heart pounding, I fumbled for the door, and Jenks zipped out before me, aggressive and wary. Kisten stood, and, leaving the car running, I glanced at the dark restaurant and the upper windows overlooking the parking lot. Nothing moved but a scrap of paper taped to the door. Worried, I paced to him, my kick-butt boots tapping. “Kisten?”

“What are you doing here?” he barked, and I jerked to a stop, confused.

I stood there for a moment with the nearby cars whooshing past, trying to realign my thinking. “Piscary evicted us,” I said, Jenks’s wings clattering as he hovered. “What happened?” I said, gesturing to his club, now on the curb.

“What do you think happened!” he shouted, looking at the silent restaurant. “The son of a bitch kicked me out! He kicked me out and gave my last blood to someone.”

God help us. His last blood? As in “Here he is, have fun draining him to death”?

Pulse quickening, I dropped back when Kisten swooped down to the fragments of his dance club. With vampiric strength he flung a chair at the front door, the metal tumbling and clanking to a stop short of the entryway. The wind from the nearby river tugged at my braid, and I felt cold despite the two shirts I had on. “Kisten,” I said, frightened, “it’s going to be okay.”

But my confidence trickled away when he turned to me, his shoulders hunched and dark fear and hatred in his eyes. “No,” he rasped. “It isn’t. He gave me to someone as a thank-you. To kill. For their enjoyment. And no one will stop him because he’s a fucking god!”

The draft from Jenks’s wings tickled my neck, and an iron-cold band of fear slithered through my heart. There was death in Kisten’s eyes. There in the sunshine, death waited. Backing up another step, I felt my mouth go dry.