It did hurt, a shocking, stunning pain that radiated from his chest to every cell of his body. Brad bore down on it, used it, and forced his lips into a smile as he stared at the horror-movie images of his friends.

“You guys are seriously messed up.” He managed what passed for a laugh, fought not to pass out.

And woke shuddering with cold in his own bed.

Rubbing a hand on his throbbing chest, he sat up, took a deep gulp of air. “Well, it’s about f**king time.”

“SO, we really looked gross?”

Flynn offered Brad a sunny smile. They sat with Jordan at Brad’s kitchen table. He’d waited until morning to call, though it had been a very long two hours alone with the images of his experience chasing through his head.

He’d told them nothing but that he needed them to come. And, of course, they had.

Now, in the bright light, with the scent of coffee and toasted bagels, the entire experience seemed overblown and sloppy. Too many nightmares piled into one, in Brad’s opinion, for it to hold solid.

“Let’s see, most of your throat was gone, and a good part of your chest was missing. And you,” he said to Jordan, “your left eye was dangling pretty effectively out of its socket, and some of your face was torn away.”

“Could only be an improvement,” Flynn commented.

“I think I slipped on some of your brains,” Brad told him. “Not that you’ll miss them.”

“Flynn slips on his own brains half the time,” Jordan shot back. He studied Brad over the rim of his mug. “You hurt?”

“Chest throbbed like a bitch for about an hour, and I came back with the mother of all headaches, but that’s about it.”

“So the question hangs, how did you get back?”

“First, I had more time to prepare, knowing what happened to each of you. More time to figure out what might be coming and what to do about it. I had this little thing going in my head, what you could call a key word that I had planted there to snap me out. It worked.”

Flynn bit into bagel. “And the word is?”

“ ‘Bullshit.’ It’s crude,” he continued as Flynn sprayed crumbs. “And it’s human and to the point. And the other thing is, well, he was sloppy. I can’t say it wasn’t effective, especially at first. I felt sixteen. Hell, I was sitting by the campfire, drinking warm beer and thinking about Patsy Hourback’s body.”

“She did have a great body,” Jordan recalled.

“Anyway, I was pretty obsessed with Patsy that summer. Actually I was mostly obsessed with sex, but Patsy was the headliner. So in the beginning of it, I was back there, in the woods by the Peak. Then Flynn starts screaming like a girl—”

“How do you know it wasn’t Jordan?” Insulted, Flynn sulked over his bagel. “How come I have to scream like a girl?”

“Take it up with Kane,” Brad suggested. “At that point, I was just whacked out. You were both screaming and calling for me. But it started to go off, just a little. The wind, the fog, the cold. It was overkill, and it started to click in my head. When I saw you, the two of you lying there, I lost it again for a minute. Then I was sliding on Flynn’s brains, or maybe his intestines.”

“Trying to eat here,” Flynn complained.

“It was too much, you know? And it wasn’t holding. I wasn’t sixteen anymore, not in my head. He’d lost the grip, I guess you could say. And I knew it was him. I knew it was bullshit.”

Brad rose to get the coffeepot. “Going over it for the last couple hours, I figured out what he was trying to do.”

“Separate us,” Jordan said.

“Got it in one. Isolate me—sitting alone while you two are off together. Then finding you mauled when you’d been calling to me for help.”

“Then having us turn on you,” Flynn finished. “The zombie twins. Pits us against you. How are you going to trust, much less work with, a couple of guys who try to eat your brains? I’ve seen the movies,” he added. “That’s what zombies do.”

“He wanted me to feel alone and alienated, and threatened.”

“Maybe worse,” Jordan added. “If you hadn’t yanked yourself out, we might have done some damage. When he tries for you again, he’ll be more direct.”

“That’s okay.” Brad picked up his coffee. “So will I.”

“I think you need more than your dashing good looks when you’re taking on a sorcerer, pal,” Flynn pointed out.

Nodding, Brad picked up the knife beside his plate, flipped a thumb over the tip. “Even sorcerers bleed.”

“Are you planning on telling Zoe what happened?” Jordan asked.

“Yeah. We stick together on this, until it’s done. I thought I’d run by Indulgence this morning.”

“She’s not going in until afternoon,” Flynn told him. “Malory said she had things to take care of at home first.”

“Even better.”

HE finished up a call on his cell phone as he pulled in behind her car, then took a minute to plug in the new appointment on his Palm Pilot. Thinking of the meeting with his architect, the expansion plans, and the changes he wanted to implement in the design, he walked to the front door and knocked.

All of that dropped right out of his head when she answered.

She was wearing jeans ripped at both knees and one of those belly-baring tops. It was the bar today, he noted. That erotic little silver bar glinting in her navel.

Her feet were bare, with toes painted an Easter-egg pink, thin and enormous silver hoops swung at her ears. And she held a rag that smelled strongly of lemon.

“I’ve been cleaning,” she said quickly. “I just finished in the bedroom.” As if realizing she held her polishing rag, she stuffed it into her back pocket. “I needed to have some time around here before I went in today.”

“Okay.” He stepped in, managed to take his eyes off her long enough to look around the living room. Every inch of wood gleamed, every piece of glass sparkled. “You’ve been busy.”

“Cleaning gets my mind going, and I was thinking about the house. That maybe the house is part of it. And if I took the time, paid attention to it, to everything in it, things might—What is it?” Flushing a little under his unblinking stare, she rubbed at her cheek. “Is my face dirty?”