Maybe the intruders—whoever they were—had forgotten about her. Maybe the hulking man in the doorway had gone away. Maybe this was her chance to get out of here.

Moving slowly, she peeked around the edge of the table and saw only a smoldering fire in a trash can over in the corner of the room. Smoke wafted through the air. She inched out a little more, straining to hear any other sounds from inside the house. She didn’t know who the party crashers were and wanted to avoid them. With her luck they were worse than Stefan and his ilk.

Movement. The swirl of a long black duster.

The man was still there. Peeking out, she watched him circle the room, languid, lethal. His muscular body seemed tense with the desire to kill something, didn’t really matter what. The man turned toward her and she ducked back behind the table and closed her eyes, praying he’d pass her by.

“Warlock.”

A hand grasped her collar and lifted her straight up. Sarafina screamed and Grosset exploded in a flurry of Pomeranian rage. He snapped and growled at the man who’d trapped her in his big, sweaty, meaty hands—hands big enough to snap her neck in two seconds flat, she noted with unease.

“Tell your dog to chill.” The words came out gravelly, like they were forced from an infrequently used set of vocal cords. His grim expression grew even darker, his eyebrows coming together in the middle and the lines around his mouth deepening.

If she’d met this man on the street, she’d turn and walk the other way out of sheer instinct for self-preservation.

And she was currently caught in his powerful hands.

She stood trembling with fear, pulling as far away from him as his grip on her shirt would allow. “G-Grosset, baby, it’s okay. S-shhh. S’okay, baby.”

Grosset could scent her fear and hear the tremor in her voice. He wasn’t a stupid dog and knew when his mistress was lying. The crazy dust mop only yapped louder. Pomeranians had no sense of size. He thought he was a Rott weiler.

The man growled and yanked her forward. “You’re coming with me, warlock. You were all cozy in here with Faucheux. That means you’re special, and you’ve got tales to tell.”

Warlock? What the hell? What was a warlock? Wasn’t a warlock a male witch? Couldn’t he fucking see she had boobs? Her mind spun. She’d just gotten used to the idea of witches. Now there were warlocks? “Listen, I’m not—”

He shook her once. That was enough. Her brain rattled in her skull and she snapped her mouth closed. “Quiet,” he snarled.