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"I need you to walk me through this," I say through clenched teeth, doing my best to keep the wine and whatever else I've eaten today firmly in my stomach. "What exactly is going on, and what do you mean you're a bear?"

"Well, that would be the most interesting part for you, wouldn't it now? You saw me shift in front of the whole Council," he says, grinning at me.

I put my hands on my hips and wish, not for the first time, that I were a little bit taller. All right, I'd have to be a lot a bit taller to even begin to register as a threat to this man, but still.

"Assuming that I am not high, and that you are not some figment of my overwrought imagination, and that I'm not having a complete psychotic break⁠—"

"That's a lot of things to assume, ain't it? And you still haven't introduced yourself to me," he says. A dimple forms on his cheek the harder he smiles at me.

Christ, he's really handsome.

"I'm gonna call the cops," I say, unsure of why I've announced that intention to a man who could no doubt overpower me without a second thought.

"Go right ahead if it makes you feel better, lassie." He holds both hands up, and I narrow my eyes at him as I fish around the backpack for my cell phone.

"Shit," I say, trying to juggle the astrolabe as I continue rooting through the pack. "I don't know where my cell phone is," I finally admit.

"Would it make you feel better to call the cops?"

"It would make me feel better to know what the hell is going on!" I finally say, completely upset.

"Do you want me to make you a spot of tea? We can sit down and talk about it. Or do you still feel like you might throw up?" He seems genuinely concerned about my well-being, and that, more than anything, confuses me. I can't remember the last time anyone was concerned for my well-being except for me—and I'm not sure I've been very good at that, for what it's worth.

"Can you just tell me—give me the short version?"

"I can try. It's not really the short kind of story, though. I don't think you'll find it very satisfying," he says with a shrug. "You're somehow a blood relative of House Midnight."

"House Midnight?" I say, some of the fog of red wine and whatever the hell happened to me in the tunnels dissipating. "Noctis Domus," I say, reciting the Latin.

"Aye, the very one," Lachlan says, raising a shaggy brow at me. “Quod tenet Aurora mendax cognomina litus, et media sinistra freti.”

And I feel the color leave my face, replaced by a sort of awe and dread. He shouldn’t know that.

Dizzy, I start to wobble, and his arm reaches out, catching me around the waist before I can fall onto the black-and-white checkered floor.

"You don't need to be fainting, lass," he says with a laugh. "But if you need to, I'll catch you. That's what I'm here for."

"Where exactly is here?" I say, dread rising.

"Well, you're the new seat of House Midnight, aren't you?" He grins at me, looking highly amused. "Och, lass, you're turning green again. There's no vampires to throw up on here, so I don't think I'll like that quite as much," he says with a little laugh.

"Vampires?" I repeat. There was something in all the texts I'd seen that had referred to them as bloodthirsty, but I, of course, assumed that meant in the warlike sense, not in the literal bloodthirsty sense. But now, after having my neck in the jaws of a near seven-foot man who somehow turned into a bear, I'm wondering if everything I took to be a literary device isn't a sign that these societies I've dedicated years of my life to tracking down might not be so figurative at all.

"Vampires. Ye’ve said the words, so you must know some of it. How else could you have become the leader of House Midnight without knowing anything of yer own world?" A furrowed brow and a frown punctuate that question, and all I can do is shrug."How'd they keep you hidden from me? I would have come into your service a long time ago had I known there was another heir to House Midnight.”

“I don’t know how you expect me to answer that,” I interrupt.

"Quite rude, really, for you to be hiding from me for so long."

There's something strange in the way he says the last bit, but my brain is too full of noise to make sense of it.

"I'm sorry," I say reflexively.

"Don't apologize, lass. I'll make sure you make it up to me," he says with a laugh, half helping me walk, half dragging me into the next room.

"What is the Midnight House?" I say—making myself say it, afraid I already know the answer all too well

"You're standing in it," he says. "One of the few of the mighty houses left, once long thought extinct. Hundreds of years it stood without an heir to watch over it, without a warden of the magic itself, and a seat on the Council empty just as long."