My lip curled, and I moved on to the master suite, a space that was sectioned off not by walls, but by three stairs leading up to a raised platform. I checked the master bathroom and the closet, then headed down a short hallway that led to a powder room, a guest room with another full bath, a study, and a utility room with laundry machines that looked like they’d never been used. Like, literally, they still had the stickers sealing the doors shut.

Nobody was home, that much was clear, so I headed back into the main living area to prepare for Carmichael’s arrival. I lost the polyester room service garb, then took off my coat, sword harness, and sweatshirt, laying it all out on the kitchen table. I wasn’t too worried about Carmichael seeing my stuff and bolting. By the time he was in the door, it would already be too late for him. I set Garth’s phone on the table beside my jacket, then tucked the lock-picking tools back into their little case and returned it to my sweatshirt pocket.

I gave the loft a slow scan and exhaled heavily. “Nothing to do now but wait,” I said, both to myself and to Dom. I was already bored. “Gah . . . this is the worst part.”

“I always enjoyed the waiting,” Dom said. “It gave me a chance to collect my thoughts, to center myself. To come to peace within myself with the fact that I was about to take a life, so the guilt wouldn’t crush me once the deed was done.”

Have I mentioned that Dom spent centuries as Heru’s go-to assassin? Where those darker arts were concerned, he was the best of the best. But he’d had his fill of killing long ago, and he’d given it up in exchange for assisting Heru in other ways, namely by interrogating and torturing his enemies. Dom’s well-known distaste for killing was one of the things that made him such an effective interrogator. His subjects could always be certain that death wouldn’t end the pain, not while Dom was still in the room.

I was lucky enough to be one of the few he’d taken under his wing. He’d invested a shit-ton of time and energy in me, teaching me everything he knew. I wasn’t quite as good as him—or as good as he’d been when he was still technically alive—but I was close.

“At least Carmichael’s got a killer view,” I said, crossing the living room between a couch that I thought might actually be made of a solid piece of wood and a zebra-striped bearskin rug. The general shape gave away the fact that it wasn’t an actual zebra. So did the bear head. “This place is practically waterfront.”

I stopped at the window, appreciating a beautiful thing when I saw it. Even with the overcast sky and the shortened line of sight due to the rain, the Sound was still as stunning as ever. The loft’s view was a hell of a lot better than its interior, that was for damn sure. I stood there, admiring the Puget Sound in all of its gray, slightly gloomy glory, for what felt like eons.