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“As I was saying, I’ve already helped you, and I hope by now, you realize I’m not here to hurt you.”

“Not hurt me?” A thin laugh tittered out of me. “So what was that, last night?”

“A mutually beneficial arrangement.”

“A mutually . . . what now? That’s what that was?” I stood, and breathed through the head-spinning nausea. “It’s funny but I don’t recall agreeing to you sucking on my dick—my vein! I said my vein, not . . . what?”

Reynard gazed back, perfectly poised and untouchable. “Whatever you think, the wards allowed it, ipso facto, you wanted it.”

Stupid wards. I was trying to regain some higher ground here. “Ipso facto, I was drunk. That’s probably why my blood tasted strange—if it tasted strange. Did it? Never mind. Tom Collins for sure put cocaine in that pink drink. I need to talk to that bartender. Where did he even get cocaine? He can’t be putting class A drugs in people’s drinks.”

“I’m something of an expert in blood, having consumed it from many a vein over the years, some laced with cocaine. Yours was not that.”

Oh. “Maybe it wasn’t cocaine?”

“Adam,” he sighed. “I appreciate you have secrets and have no intention of delving into them. I want to help you save Zodiac.”

“Why?”

“Well, for one, I don’t like to be thrown through windows. Two, Gideon Cain owes me for a perfectly good suit, and three, frankly, I had no wish to overstep our friendship boundaries as I did last night. He forced my hand in a number of things, and I’m . . . unhappy.”

“You’re unhappy?”

“I don’t like to be unhappy, Adam.”

I was definitely getting a whole murder vibe off him, and he had protected me from the shadowbeast. In truth, I needed him. I didn’t have anyone else. And Gideon had made it clear he intended to ruin me. “We’re . . . friends?”

“If you’ll have me.”

Did he really just want to be friends, or was there more to it? “What do you get from this arrangement?”

He sucked in a long, leveling breath. “The occasional taste?”

“Occasional taste of . . . ?” His eyes narrowed. Ah, me. He meant me. “I see. Friends with benefits.” He’d already had an explicit taste of me. What were a few more bites in exchange for his help in saving Zee? “Alright. On one condition.”

“Another condition, besides saving the demon?”

“The demon has a name, and yes, the next time you need to—” I flicked a hand at my neck. “Take me out to dinner first?” That seemed fair.

He blinked and his eyebrows pinched. “I don’t typically date my food.”

Was he smiling, or was that just a twitch? “Are you being funny? Was that an attempt at a joke? Because it’s not funny—you’re not funny. Also, not a date. A courtesy.” If he was going to make me come so hard I passed out, then the least he could do was buy me dinner first.

“As you wish.”

His tone of voice was like chocolate to the brain, or chocolate lathered all over me, there for him to lick off. I really needed Zee back, so I could see the woods through the very sexy vampire trees that were watching me now through cat-like eyes. Uh, my throbbing head was full of chocolate and trees, and none of this made any sense. “Alright. So what did we learn?” I moved to the window and stood in bright sunlight, absorbing it into my weary bones.

Reynard sipped his tea. “Gideon Cain is a capable sorcerer, able to summon creatures from between the veil.”

The Lost Ones came from the world beyond the veil—a physical, solid, real world that had the same rules as ours, based on gravity and physics. Creatures from between the veil had no such limits, hence the shadowbeast being made of shadows, while also having the ability to crush the life out of me and shove Reynard through a window.

“Do you think that’s how he got a body in here?” I asked, remembering the very dead Mr. Reese, who we’d found face down at the foot of Reynard’s bed.

“I do.”

“Killed outside the hotel, and left here,” I mused aloud. “Like a smoking gun. Creatures with ill intent like that shadowbeast can’t manifest inside the hotel, not with the wards in place.”

“Manifest, no. But they can walk in like everyone else, and being made of shadow, they can pass unnoticed by most everyone inside.”