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“About the red smoke.” The Reverend’s voice was bladed like a knife. “I’ve just run out of it.”

A flicker of unease tightened Phury’s chest. He looked over his shoulder. “There are other dealers.”

“Have fun finding them.”

Phury put his hand on the doorknob. When it refused to turn, he glanced back across the room. The Reverend was watching him, still as a cat. And trapping him in the office with his will.

Phury tightened his grip and pulled, tearing the piece of brass right off. As the door lolled open, he tossed the knob onto the Reverend’s desk.

“Guess you’re going to have to fix this.”

He took two steps before a hand grabbed onto his arm. The Reverend’s face was hard as stone, and so was his grip. With the blink of a violet eye, something flared between them, some kind of exchange…a current….

From out of nowhere, Phury felt an overwhelming tide of guilt, like someone had popped the lid off all his deepest concerns and his fears for the future of the race. He had to respond to it, couldn’t bear the pressure.

Riding the wave, he found himself saying in a rush, “We live and die for our kind. The species is our first and only concern. We fight every night and count the jars of the lessers we kill. Stealth is the way we protect the civilians. The less they know about us, the safer they are. That is why we disappeared.”

As soon as the words left him, he cursed.

Goddamn it, you could never trust a symphath, he thought. Or the feelings you had while you were around them.

“Let go of me, sin-eater,” he gritted. “And stay the fuck out of my head.”

The hard grip dissolved and the Reverend bowed a little, a measure of respect that was a shocker. “Well, what do you know, warrior. A shipment of red smoke just came in.”

The male brushed by and walked slowly into the crowd, his mohawk, his thick shoulders, his aura getting lost in the people whose addictions he fed.

Bella took form in front of her family’s home. The exterior lights were off, which was strange, but she was crying, so it wasn’t like she would have seen much anyway. She let herself in, turned off the security alarm, and stood in the foyer.

How could Zsadist do that to her? For all it hurt, he might as well have had sex in front of her. God, she’d always known he could be cruel, but that went too far, even for him….

Except it wasn’t about retaliation for the social slight, was it? No, that was too petty. She suspected he’d bitten that human for a declarative break. Because he wanted to send a message, a totally incontrovertible message that Bella wasn’t welcome in his life.

Well, it worked.

Deflated, defeated, she glanced around her family’s front hall. Everything was the same. The blue silk wallpaper, the black marble floor, the sparkling chandelier overhead. It was like stepping back in time. She’d grown up in this house, the last young her mother would ever bear, the cosseted sister of a brother who loved her, the daughter of a father she’d never known….

Wait a minute. It was quiet. Way too quiet.

“Mahmen? Lahni?” Silence. She wiped her tears away. “Lahni?”

Where were the doggen? And her mother? She knew Rehv would be out doing whatever he did during the nights, so she didn’t expect to see him. But the others were always home.

Bella walked over to the curving staircase and called out, “Mahmen?”

She went upstairs and jogged down to her mother’s bedroom. The sheets on the bed were thrown back, all a mess…something the doggen would never have allowed normally. With a feeling of dread she went down the hall to Rehvenge’s room. His bed was also disheveled, the Frette sheets and the heaps and heaps of fur comforters he always used thrown to one side. The disorder was unheard-of.

The house was not safe. That was why Rehv had insisted she stay with the Brotherhood.

Bella rushed out into the hall and ran down the stairs. She needed to be outdoors to dematerialize, because the walls of the mansion were all inlaid with steel.

She tore out of the front door…and didn’t know where she could go. Not even she knew the address of her brother’s safe house,