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Samael strode in, followed by his enforcers dragging a third man between them. Their prisoner looked worse than I did, blood matted in his dark hair and dried on his face. His clothes were torn, and one arm hung at a nauseating angle. He was a vampire. I knew it with a sixth sense that my animal side provided.

“Elias here has been going behind our backs,” Samael said as they approached me. “Plotting. Conspiring.” His grin was all teeth. “Find out what he’s up to.”

I swallowed, my throat feeling like sandpaper. “Did you try asking him?”

My audacity earned me a fist in the gut that would’ve emptied my stomach if it weren’t already hollowed out. He gestured over his shoulder, and this Elias was hauled forward to stand directly in front of me. The vampire swayed on his feet, eyes nearly swollen shut, but that didn’t hide his desperate fear.

“Touch him,” Samael ordered.

Elias hesitated, confusion flickering across his battered face. One of the enforcers slapped the back of his head hard enough to snap it sideways.

“Touch. Him.”

The vampire lifted a trembling hand. When his fingers brushed my bare chest, the contact was electric. I was vulnerable, no guard left to speak of, and my ability surged. There was no question that the connection was made. All I could do was mouth an apology before the enforcer skillfully rendered him unconscious.

My brother brought his attention back to me. “Your turn.”

I opened my eyes to sunlight and a warm, golden afternoon. I was in a park, lush and green, wearing clothes that weren’t mine and sitting on a bench with a man I didn’t recognize.

A memory. The vampire’s memory.

The transition was always disorienting at first. Stepping into someone else’s skin, seeing through their eyes, feeling the echo of their emotions like a second heartbeat. I knew that Elias was thirty-two. I knew that he worked at a vampire club on the southside called Midnight. And I knew that he was scared.

The man sitting beside him was older, graying at the temples, with the weathered look of someone who’d seen terrible things. Done terrible things. Much of Elias’s fear was directed at him. They were arguing, voices low and tense, but it wasn’t about an uprising or coup. It was about money. Elias owed him, and the older man wanted payment.

I nudged further, sifting through Elias’s memories like pages in a book. A girlfriend who’d left. A reckless gambling binge. Meetings with other vampires, yes—but they were discussing shift rotations at the club, not insurrection. I dug as deep as I dared, searching for anything that would support Samael’s accusations.

There was nothing. Elias had just made bad choices and fallen in with worse company. He was no threat.

Something pulled at me, a mental tug with all the subtlety of a freight train.

“—wake up. Hey!”

Someone was roughly slapping my cheek. I blinked and the warehouse resolved around me. Samael was leaning in, studying my face with impatience.

“Well?”

I worked my jaw, a deep ache settling in the back of my skull. “Nothing. He’s just a bartender with a gambling problem.”

My brother smirked. He didn’t look surprised, not even a little. The realization dawned on me: he’d known. He’d known Elias was innocent before they brought him in. This had been a test. A warm-up.

“Well, at least he won’t have to worry about his debts anymore.” Samael laughed, the cruel sound bouncing off the empty walls. He nodded at one of his men. “Get rid of that—” he toed the vampire’s unconscious body, still crumpled on the dirty floor, “—and bring in the next one.”

16

CORDELIA

I was a bundle of nerves by the time Friday came. I hadn’t seen any of the guys all week, and I knew I should’ve been happy about that, but their absence had my magic on edge. Hopefully I’d be able to lose myself in the music and moves tonight to reclaim a bit of calm.

I stared at myself in the full-length mirror in the dressing room, giving my outfit one more quick check. The strappy black bralette with rainbow iridescent beads stitched into it was reminiscent of a raven’s feathers. It would catch the club lights perfectly. Matching high-waisted booty shorts amplified my modest curves, and the shiny black pumps on my feet made my legs look a mile long.

The ensemble made me feel good. Made me feel sexy.

“Absolutely not,” a familiar male voice said from behind me as I was reaching for my feathered mask. I jerked my head up to find Bellamy’s reflection in the mirror, and heat bloomed in my chest. “You can’t wear that. Do you know how many men I’ll have to blind just for looking at you?”

The threat should have been teasing, but it wasn’t, and my magic fully approved.

“Who let you back here?” I tried to lace the words with disapproving suspicion, but they went a little breathless when I turned to face him. He was wearing a dark button-down, the collar open to reveal a glimpse of his toned chest. The look on his face was almost feral, his amber eyes dragging over my outfit and all the skin it exposed. He kept his hands clenched into tight fists at his sides, but my magic reached out with its claws, beckoning him closer.