“Don’t stare.”

“You said you were comfortable.”

Comfortable was one thing. Being on the receiving end of a very male stare was another.

“How about we find some gauze and bandage your shoulders,” I suggested.

“It really isn’t that bad.”

We walked toward the horse.

“What were you doing in front of me anyway?” I asked.

“You had that dark-haired bitch by the throat and kept beating her head against the wall for almost three minutes,” he said. “I became concerned…”

A red and gold silhouette plummeted from the sky. It dived at the horse, bit the Bone Staff, ripping it from the leather, and shot up to the clouds.

Holy shit.

Roman fell to his knees. He opened his mouth and let out a wordless scream of pure rage. “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

“It will be okay,” I told him.

“I had it! It was in my hands!” He showed me his hands, as if expecting the staff to materialize in his fingers. “In my hands! Eight hundred years!”

“I know,” I told him. “I know.”

He slumped forward. “I had it and I lost it. I lost it!”

“Come on,” I told him. “Let’s get ourselves home before we both pass out.”

We climbed the stairs to my apartment. I had collapsed on the street, my body finally giving out, and we had ended up riding Roman’s horse after all. Roman moved like a zombie. Despondent didn’t even begin to describe him. If despair was liquid, he’d be dripping buckets of it with every step.

“I had it in my hands,” he told me mournfully, halfway up the stairs.

“I’m sure I have some honey in my pantry,” I told him. “And lemon juice. We can have a nice cup of hot tea.”

The landing smelled like fresh banana bread. Mrs. Haffey had been baking again. I slid the key into the lock and swung the door open.

A pair of familiar black boots sat in the shoe rack in my foyer, between my black pumps and my yellow work boots.

You’ve got to be kidding me. He didn’t.

“Something wrong?” Roman asked.

On the right, a row of hooks was attached to the wall—I usually hung my rain-dampened jackets there to dry out before taking them to the closet. A large black leather jacket hung on the middle hook.

I marched into my apartment. What must be a spare set of Raphael’s keys was in the round plastic dish where I normally left mine. In the kitchen a hanging pot rack had been installed over my dining room table. Raphael’s copper-bottomed pots hung from it, and in the corner, his wine cabinet sat next to my spice shelves.