We reached one of the side windows. Adam pulled an alarm sensor from his kit.

“It’s armed,” he said. “You want to handle this?”

“Go ahead.”

He glanced over his shoulder at me. “You don’t need spells to disarm it.”

“I’m good.”

His lips compressed and he slapped his tool kit into my hand.

“Disarm the damned window, Savannah.”

“Hey!”

“Don’t hey me,” he said, his whisper harsh. “Remember when you broke your foot riding? Laid on the couch for a week, sulking and making everyone run around for you?”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m fifteen, Adam.”

“I’m not. When you were fifteen, I let you lie on the couch until you got bored. But you’re not fifteen anymore, and you’re no more disabled now than you were then.”

I scowled.

“Don’t scowl at me either,” he said. “You’ve had your sulking time. Either you get back on the damned horse or I take you someplace safe and chase down leads on my own, because if you’re not helping, you’re dead weight.”

I wanted to smack him with an energy bolt. Or at least scream and stamp my feet. Yes, I wasn’t feeling very mature right now. Wasn’t acting very mature either.

So I disarmed the window. Then I cut out the pane of glass and checked inside for a motion detector. Nothing. I crawled through. Adam followed.

We crouched on the floor, looking and listening. When all stayed quiet, Adam whispered, “Head upstairs. You lead. I’ll cover.”

In the entry hall, I noticed a glimmer of silver. A dog’s leash hung by the front door. I pointed it out to Adam. He cocked his head, listening for a dog, but the house stayed still.

That’s when I noticed the deadbolt on the front door. Adam did, too, and let out a quiet curse.

The bolt was unlocked. Beside the door, a security panel flashed. A row of red lights, and one green. Adam shone the flashlight on it.

“Front door’s disarmed,” he whispered.

Down the hall from us, a door was partly open. I could see papers scattered in the room beyond it.

I started toward it, moving slowly along the hardwood floor, Adam at my back. As I neared the door, I tucked myself against the wall, then sidled along until I could peer through the doorway. Inside was an office. A man sat at a chair, his back to us as he gazed out the window.

I motioned to Adam. He took over, creeping into the office, up behind the man, then—

“Shit,” he whispered.

He grasped the man’s shoulder, spinning the chair around, then falling back with a shocked grunt.

The man was tied hand and foot to the chair. His legs were bent wrong, kneecaps bashed in. His eyes were empty, bloody holes. Dried blood covered his hands and chin. His teeth and fingertips sat in a line on the edge of the desk. Adam looked at those and rubbed his mouth, gaze darting to the doorway, as if wondering where the bathroom was, should he need it. After a couple of deep breaths, he turned his back on the desk.

He glanced at me. Had it been Paige or Lucas, I’d have feigned a look of horror. With Adam, that wasn’t necessary. He just checked, making sure I was okay, but knowing I would be, and not thinking any less of me for it.

What did I feel when I looked on this mutilated, tortured body? Disgust. Whoever did this had enjoyed inflicting pain way too much—if you didn’t get what you wanted after half as much effort, then there was nothing to get.

Why didn’t I feel more? I can’t say it was my upbringing. My mom certainly never let me see anything like this.

I know that if this man had been a friend, I’d have seethed with grief and rage, and vowed to avenge him. As it was . . . well, I didn’t know the guy, and though I was pretty sure he hadn’t done anything to deserve such an awful death, it wasn’t really my call.

“Do you know if that’s . . . ?” I began.

“It’s Walter Alston.”

I looked around the office. Papers littered the floor. Books had been yanked from shelves and tossed aside. Cables on the desk led to nothing.

“Searched his files. Rifled his books. Stole his laptop. This was someone nasty. Which, given the guy’s clientele, probably doesn’t narrow it down.”

“It doesn’t.” Adam knelt beside a pile of papers and thumbed through them. “If he was as careful as Holly said, we aren’t going to find clues about those two activists or what they wanted. And this”—he waved at Alston’s corpse—“isn’t our business. But now that we’ve been here, we can’t just leave him sitting there.”

In other words, we had to dispose of the body. Since this was almost certainly a supernatural crime, as tempting as it was to walk away, we couldn’t.

“I’ll check for a basement,” I said. “If there is one, I’ll see whether there’s a place down there we can stash him long enough to decompose.” Not an ideal solution, but a lot safer than smuggling him out of the house.

Adam started to stand, as if ready to come with me. Then he hesitated and said, “You’re good?”

I picked up the flashlight he’d set down on the desk. “I’m good. I may need to consider investing in an actual weapon, though. And learning how to use it.”

“We’ll get you a really big flashlight.”

“Thanks.”

I was almost into the kitchen, searching for a basement door, when a skritch-skritch sounded behind me. I stopped. A low growl reverberated through the hall.

We’d forgotten about the damned dog.

nine

I turned slowly. A Rottweiler stood ten feet away, growling. Bloody froth dripped from its open mouth.

Great. Confronted by a rabid dog the size of a lion, while I’m armed with . . . I looked down. A pocket light.

“Um, Adam?” I called, as loud as I dared.

He stepped from the office. “Shit.”

That about summed it up.

“Hey, pooch,” he called lifting his glowing fingers. “How about you come play with me instead?”

The dog took two lurching steps my way. Adam started forward, then stopped.

“If I come after it, it might charge you,” he said.

“Then don’t come after it. Please.”

“Okay. Remember how Lucas taught you to handle dogs?”