“What is it?” His tongue was still fuzzy from the aftereffects of the potion and his sense of smell was dicey at best. The frozen spring roll he’d heated up for breakfast had smelled strongly of acrylic paint—which, granted, might have been the spring roll since it was a month or two past its best-before date.

“It’s coffee; organic, free-traded Mexican, picked by barefoot, sloe-eyed virgins.”

“Really?”

“I couldn’t swear to the virgins. There’s cream in the fridge and sugar in that bunny bowl on the counter.” She shoved Whitby out of the way with the side of her foot and headed out of the kitchen.

Tony hurriedly splashed some cream in his coffee—wondered briefly about a bloody plate of liver a little too interestingly arranged to be food—and followed. He found the wizard at her computers, both screens showing games of spider solitaire.

“Mouse is fine,” she told him, laying a jack of hearts on its queen. “Where fine means he has a broken jaw and an extraordinarily pissed-off wife. I told the hospital I found him wandering around disoriented and he passed out once I got him into the car.” She shuffled two columns, finished the run of hearts, and moved to the other game as the cards flipped down to the bottom of the screen. “They bought it.” Eight of clubs on a nine of spades, six of diamonds on the seven of spades, and the eight of clubs moved again to the proper nine now uncovered. “How are you?”

His lip hurt, both palms were scabby, his torso was coloring up nicely, but he wasn’t pissing blood so, all good. “I’m fine.”

“All right. What happened at the gate?”

“Nothing.”

“Where nothing means . . . ?”

Tony forced his attention away from the hypnotic movement of the cards. “Nothing . . .”

“It’s about to open.”

Tony glanced over at Henry and wished he hadn’t. The vampire’s eyes were dark and his lips were pulled back off his teeth. Nothing he hadn’t seen a hundred times before, but tonight the knowledge of his place in the Hunter/hunted scheme of things was just a little too close to the surface. Then he started to feel the buzz and Henry became of secondary importance.

As the vibrations grew stronger, he had a pretty good idea why Lee had reacted the way he had.

The last gate opening had been no more annoying than having a wasp caught in his skull. The potential for disaster was there, sure, but the actuality was pretty much all sound and fury. Tonight it was like having teeth drilled just as the Novocaine was wearing off. Not screaming pain, not yet, but every muscle tensed against the rising vibrations, anticipating the moment when the soft tissue would be hit.

“There’s no one here. None of the other shadow-held have returned,” Henry clarified as Tony stared at him blankly.

“So what do we do?”