“Whatever is in this house,” Wes said, “it’s not your friend. It’s not in need. It’s not trapped.” He began ticking off fingers. “It’s not a little girl, boy, pet, doll, goldfish, old man, old woman, mermaid, unicorn, or any other cute or benign thing. You understand that . . . don’t you?”

His kohl-rimmed eyes bored into mine.

Rain started pouring outside, its hush like a too-late warning. I spared a quick glance once more to Patrick, whose anxious expression mirrored my own. And that doubled my worry that Lucas had made a horrible mistake in keeping the specifics from the rest of the team. Or had it been my mistake not to insist that I be the one to tell them what happened?

“He—” I started, but Wes cut me off.

“It,” he corrected. “What did it tell you?”

“No,” I said, because Erik wasn’t an “it.” I paused, stalling for time and wishing all the while this guy would freaking blink. Instead, his eyes grew wide. Afraid like Patrick’s. Like because I hadn’t told them about my interactions with both Zedok and Erik, we might now be in more danger than we knew.

Again, I looked to Patrick, whose eyes bounced between me and Wes, as if he only needed the slightest signal to shift his sneakers into marathon mode.

That’s when the deafening bang of a downstairs door made us all jump.

A scream followed.

Charlotte’s.

FORTY-SIX

Zedok

I had still been in the kitchen when they arrived—Stephanie and the small band of investigators I had warned her to never allow on the premises. Of course, her young man was among them.

I had stood there listening. To every word exchanged between the five of them.

That was, until it became clear that she would be heading upstairs.

Stephanie. She had come back. As I’d known she would. But why this entourage?

Of course. Erik. She had come back to rescue Erik.

The rose in my chest contracted, strained by the notion that this all could have been avoided if only I had told her the truth.

The rose, though. It bought me time.

Promptly, I crossed out of Stephanie’s kitchen to stand upon the top step leading into my cellar. My plan was to lure Stephanie from the company of her cohorts in order to speak to her directly—something I could, if we were lucky, manage without losing my new heart. I had halted just short of closing the door to my side, however, when my attention was arrested by a fervent argument that, along with the useless sage smoke, drifted down the hallway toward me. The argument would not have commanded my attention except that it had contained, of all things, my name.

“You should have told us about Erik,” came a young woman’s unfamiliar voice.

“I did.” This from the boy.

So, Stephanie had shared information with him regarding our interactions. But what? And how much . . . ?