It hurt to rise. Hurt to breathe. But nothing prevented him from doing either, meaning he had not sustained any mobility-threatening injuries.

Patrick cursed under his breath and said, “You’ve sliced open your arm.”

As he remembered cutting his arm, he felt it, both the throbbing pain and the dripping blood. He glanced to see a gash about three inches long. While he’d had the forethought to roll up his sleeves, it hadn’t saved his shirt. He sighed softly, and twisted his arm for a better look at the damage.

“You need to bind that,” Patrick said. “I’ll look for a rag.”

“Anything you find down here will be filthy. I’d be safer bleeding. I can bind it with my shirt, which is already ruined. I’ve done this before.”

Which might suggest he should start carrying a roll of bandages. Or buying cheaper shirts.

He pulled the shirt off, trying not to wince. While he didn’t appear to have broken anything, it felt as if he’d broken everything. When he went to rip the fabric, the tensing muscles made his arm gush fresh blood.

“Give me that.” Patrick took the shirt from Gabriel, tore a strip off the bottom, and said, “Now your arm,” and seemed surprised when Gabriel complied. “There. Looks like you’ve got a few other scrapes, and you’ll probably have—” He swore as he circled Gabriel, shining the light on him. “You’ve scratched up your back, too. They’re shallow, though. They look more like…Um, unless the floor also nipped your collarbone, I’m guessing that’s preexisting damage. Please tell me it was Liv.”

“As opposed to…?”

“Anyone else.”

Gabriel gave him a look.

Patrick raised his hands. “Hey, I write romances. I know that old saw. Try to get a woman’s attention by messing around with someone else, making her jealous and proving that other women find you irresistible.”

Gabriel shrugged on the remains of his shirt. “I would hope it’s obvious I have both the intelligence and the self-respect never to consider such a moronic stunt.”

“Good. Wait. So…Liv? Yes? You’re telling me that you and Olivia—”

“I’m telling you that we were just attacked by the sluagh and fell through three floors, and this may not be the time to discuss my love life.”

“Love life. You said love life. Not sex life. Meaning it wasn’t a heat-of-the-moment tryst followed by oh-no-we-really-shouldn’t followed by another whoops—Yes, I write romances.”

Gabriel ignored him and concentrated on the door, which naturally did not open. He shone the light from his miraculously-still-functioning cell phone at the gap, and when he turned the knob, he watched the latch retract. So there was no lock. Instead, dark horizontal strips on the other side suggested the door had been boarded shut.