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She grabbed his chin and forced his face to hers. “Look at me. Look at me.”

His wild stare shot to hers, and when it did, she brought the lys forward. “You know why I’m here and who sent me. It’s not Wrath.”

Montrag clearly had enough air still going to his brain, because his lips mouthed, Rehvenge, in horror, before those eyeballs of his started rolling again.

She let go of his chin and slapped him hard. “Pay attention, asshole. Look at me.”

With their stares locked and her grip back on his jaw, she peeled the upper and lower lids of his left eye even wider. “Look at me.”

As she took the lys and pressed it into the socket at the corner near his nose, she reached into his brain and triggered all sorts of memories. Ah…interesting. He’d been a conniving fucker for real, specializing in screwing people about money.

Montrag’s hands slapped into the rug and dug in hard as he gurgled his way through a scream. The eyeball came out of the skull like a scoop of honeydew off its rind, as perfectly round and clean as you’d want. The right eye was just the same, and she put both of them in a lined velvet pouch as Montrag’s arms and legs jerked and flopped on his expensive rug, his lips peeling back such that every single one of his teeth including his molars showed.

Xhex left him to his sloppy death, walking right out of the French door behind the desk and dematerializing to the maple she’d first cased the place from the day before. She waited there for about twenty minutes and then watched as a doggen entered the study, saw the body, and dropped the silver tray she was carrying.

As the teapot and the china bounced, Xhex cocked her phone open, hit send, and put the thing to her ear. When Rehv’s deep voice answered she said, “It’s done and they’ve found him. Kill was clean and I’m bringing you the souvenir. ETA ten minutes.”

“Well-done,” Rehv said in a husky voice. “Well-fucking-done.”

TWENTY-THREE

Wrath frowned as he spoke into his cell phone. “Now? You want me to come upstate now?”

Rehv’s voice was all about the I’m-not-fucking-around. “This has to be done in person, and I’m immobile.”

Across the study, Vishous, who had been about to report on the work he’d been doing tracking those crates of guns, mouthed, What the fuck?

Which was exactly what Wrath was thinking. A symphath calls you two hours before dawn and asks you to come upstate because he has “something he needs to give you.” Yeah, okay, the bastard was Bella’s brother, but his nature was what it was and sure as shit, the “something” was not a fruit basket.

“Wrath, this is important,” the guy said.

“Okay, I’m coming right now.” Wrath clipped his phone shut and looked at Vishous. “I’m—”

“Phury’s out hunting tonight. You can’t go there alone.”

“The Chosen are in the house.” And had been staying off and on at Rehv’s Great Camp since Phury had taken the reins as Primale.

“Not exactly the kind of protection I had in mind.”

“I can handle myself, fuck you very much.”

V crossed his arms over his chest, his diamond eyes flashing. “Are we going now? Or after you waste time trying to change my mind?”

“Fine. Whatever. I’ll meet you in the foyer in five.”

As they left the study together, V said, “About those guns? I’m still working on the trace. Right now, I’ve got nothing, but you know me. That ain’t going to last, true. I don’t care if the serial numbers are scrubbed, I’m going to find out where the hell they got them.”

“Confidence is high, my brother. Confidence is very high.”

After they were fully armed, the two of them traveled in a loose dance of molecules up north, zeroing in on Rehv’s Great Camp in the Adirondacks and materializing on the shores of a quiet lake. Up ahead, the house was a huge rambler of a Victorian, shingled and diamond paned, with cedar-post porches on both stories.

Lot of corners. Lot of shadows. And a lot of those windows looked like eyes.

The mansion was spooky enough on its own, but with it surrounded by